The Cloud of Unknowing

Last week I was on retreat in the Trough of Bowland.  Stunning! I hear you cry, and yes, that’s precisely why I went to the trouble of booking that particular place, schlepping all the self-catering shopping, organising Spiritual Drection and a pattern of prayer, worship, Ashing and the Eucharist, not to mention the dogs and all of their kit and kaboodle up the motorway.

‘When I sit and look out of the panoramic windows (yes, on three sides of the lounge) and think on God, it will all be worth it,’ I sighed as I pulled into the drive in brilliant sunshine on Sunday afternoon.  The view down through the valley, across the neighbouring farms in the low afternoon sun was indeed, stunning.  Smokey white clouds barely grazed the azure sky, the grass was dry enough for a spot of cricket practice and running to and fro fetching the balls brought more fresh air into my lungs than I’ve experienced in a long time. Bliss!

I went to Christchurch to share in one of my old Area Dean’s said Eucharist’s.  He has such a way of making you feel that every word has been thought up with you in mind, embodying the presence of a priest who still inhabits sacred spaces in the everyday and the mundane, making them meaningful in ways you hadn’t noticed before.  His wife – about to have their second child – was pregnant with laughter as usual, and his daughter the delight that she always is.  She later introduced me to Roger, the hamster, showing me how to hand-feed him. I was suprised by how long it had been since I’d spent a long, slow moment with a child, listening to them and sharing in their delight.

Reflection, challenge, direction later and my first night of going to bed at a reasonable hour without a single email to check felt like absolute heaven and I could not wait for the week to unfold. Walks and views and vistas beckoned to me from all around and I shivered with delight at the potential for meeting with God amidst such beauty, enjoying long uninterrupted conversations, one-sided as they might tend to be… Oooh transcendence was on the tip of my spirit!

The next morning, sweeping the curtains with glee from the virtually all glass lounge I was met with a wall of white.  The fog was so dense I could barely see the church outlined like a charcoal drawing by an amateur; more smudge than line.

I can’t tell you how my spirits sank as I realised that not only was the fog not lifting, but that it was thickening in a curling brew like a head of steam from some invisible dragon whose lair I had accidentally gate-crashed.  Winds buffeted the bungalow and I needed my ski-jacket to brace the weather outside of any door.  I couldn’t drive anywhere, I couldn’t walk anywhere, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.  The dogs were walked around the bungalow day and night for their toilet trips and even they pulled to get back inside – my two!  On some days the Lychgate was no more than a suggestion, walking smack bang into the church a distinct possibility.  When I saw Fr. Phil at the end of the week he laughed and said, ‘It’s unbelievable!  Lancaster is fine, but it’s like the end of the world out here!’

So I spent a week in the cloud of unknowing.  I didn’t know when it would lift.  I didn’t know what lay before me.  I didn’t know what I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t ‘see’ God, not in the way that I usually do.  I was absolutely forced to be still.  And yes, it’s a silent place out there, but during the days of the fog, not even the birds sang which I hadn’t realised until – yes, you guessed it, on the day I packed up the fog faded into clouds, and they scurried off sheepishly as I re-packed my car in the sunshine, – a robin alighted on the fence and sang to me with all her heart. It reminded me of Phil’s reading on the Sunday evening of my arrival,

‘And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of silence. ¹³ And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.’ (taken from 1 Kings 19)

So for once, I haven’t come back from retreat having walked for miles, exploring and singing my way through well-known wildernesses.  I haven’t got a journal full of prayerful listenings and revelation. I just have the memory of being still in a cloud of unknowing, and knowing that that was alright.

Jesus? Jesus Christ? Meh.

Last night I was in the company of some rather brilliant priests, doing a wee Mary.  We were discussing Mission after a wickedly pointed paper from the marvellous parish priest currently bringing a quiet joy to Flixton’s Parish Church, Rev’d Dr Vicky Johnson (who cooks an amazing French chicken casserole, btw).

We looked at it from the perspective of the five marks of mission from the context of the Anglican Church.  Boring, boring, boring?  Switching off? Well, with Synod off the ground and a great swell of purple protestors, it is interesting to be reminded that we are called to:

To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
To respond to human need by loving service
To seek to transform unjust structures of society
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
(Bonds of Affection-1984 ACC-6 p49, Mission in a Broken World-1990 ACC-8 p101)

We discussed, challenged, cogitated, reflected and on the odd occasion diametrically opposed one another – in love, you understand.  But the most disturbing line of the evening, without a doubt, was a senior cleric sharing that the biggest challenge the Church faces today isn’t atheism, new atheism, fundamentalism or even the finer details of enculturation, it is pure and simply this: meh.

Jesus saves.  Meh.

God loves you. Meh.

Your sins will be forgiven, heaven awaits, the Spirit will inspire, life will change… meh.

Pure, unadulturated indifference.  ’Where do you go with that?’ he said.  Yup, you’re on a road to nowhere…

I wonder if it’s that the fear of all sorts of things does not tend to be a burning issue in our minds – being fed from our own crops, premature death, sickness and all of the fear of the unknown that even severe weather brought in those dark, superstitious days of medieval-dom?  Something tells me not, because, as any parish priest or hospital chaplain will tell you, existential crises – or death – do tend to force issues of mortality and eternity to the surface in any old century.

We talked about the individualisation of faith, the lack of community – and I don’t mean our Facebook friends and tweeps we’ve never met but can tweet anything to – but people we wake up with, and work with and wail and walk on air with.  People we would lay down our lives for, our fidelities to people and place as fiercely loyal as any wee Nac Mac Feegals.

The conversation has haunted me this last twenty-four hours, and in letting the program run in the background I’ve come to a realisation, true for me if not for any other.

The only way I have ever been privileged to bring anyone to faith is when I’ve simply been living mine.  I don’t mean spouting off about it, getting into gear with my apologetics, lining up scripture and prophecy like a loaded weapon ready to fire off at any oncoming missile of doubt or reason.  I mean, simply being joyful, taking care of somebody who doesn’t actually care for me, standing my ground over an issue of justice even though it will cost me, and yes, happening to mention Jesus, or a particular event at Church anecdotally in the ‘what did you do this weekend’ vein.  Words have rarely won people over unless their hearts and eyes had first been drawn to something beyond them.

For the only time that people have genuinely wanted to hear my personal witness has been at times when I’ve least wanted to give it.  A throw-away comment that has lead to a deep and meaningful exchange – even an amusing, irreligious tweet.  What I am very clumsily trying to say, is that my faith, and my relationship with Jesus does the witnessing all by itself, and that whenever I’ve ‘tried’ to fulfil ‘the great commission‘, or to nudge somebody a little way towards the Narrow Gate, my will and my purpose have so overshadowed the light I am trying to bear that indeed, it has been snuffed out.  The nearest image that comes to mind is that I bear a torch, but as soon as I begin running after people with it, the wind simply blows it out, whereas continuing on at a regular pace simply bearing it, casts a lot of light around and about, often shining into places it had never occurred to me it would.

tó μαρτύριον (marturion) means not just a witness or a testimony, but evidence or proof.  Surely that can only be seen in the pudding?  (Oh go one then, you can call me Pudding, but I should like to be an almond and cherry frangipan, I thank you.)

Currently, all we are often verbally and bodily witnessing to is exclusion, spite, judgement, condemnation, ignorance, fear and any number of ‘isms’ beginning but not ending with race.  Talking to others about sin, repentance and redemption sounds like a bit rich in the face such institutionalised dysfunction.  So of course Jesus gets a ‘meh’ because we are His only witnesses, we are His last will and testament in the most literal sense we can imagine, until His final revelation in the fullness of time.  In the meantime, many are on the road to nowhere, and truth be told,  if we don’t refocus our energies into laying down our lives for others and loving one another as God loves us – without many and varied party lines - so are we.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷ He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.  (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Our message and our ministry is reconciliation:  μαρτύριον

Siblings and Civil Partnerships

This is just a very quick post in response to a rather nowty stream of tweets I received over the weekend which elevated me to the status of ‘Church of England spokesperson’ and also said that I thought siblings could engage in a Civil Partnerships, neither of which are true.

I do understand the frustration of siblings and other relatives who, as carers often eschew marriage (or a civil partnership for that matter) in order to look after their relatives.  Of course it seems unfair that the household they have been contributing to then leaves them liable for inheritance tax, and there was much talk and fighting and even a vote on whether or not siblings aught to be included in the Civil Partnership Act.  It was called ‘discriminatory’ that they could not.

But let’s just follow that logic through and see where the real seed of discrimination lies?

‘Why shouldn’t I have the same rights as gay people?’ says the singleton paying inheritance tax on her sister’s house. 

Rights which were generated from the cry, ‘Why don’t we have the same rights as straight couples?’

So let’s have a look at those actual rights, shall we? 

A spouse automatically inherits their spouses’ half of the communal property UNLESS the spouse has bequeathed it to somebody else.  That’s right, you could find that your spouse has bequeathed the other half of your house to your children who – let’s say, emigrate, are in debt, are made redundant, are mean as a mustard on chilli with extra jalapenos sandwich, or indeed, they’ve left it to your mother-in-law who’s been after ousting you since she pebble-dashed you with rice at the wedding.

I’ve just bought (and sold) a property with a friend and you can choose whether or not that property is passed to them on taking out the mortgage, or whether it is none of their business and you leave the proceeds to your own family (Tenancy in Common).

Life has changed, people need to share like they didn’t in the past mortgages and salaries being what they are, and the law allows for it in a number of ways, whether or not you are blood related.  Therefore, I could have given said friend the same rights over my property as a spouse/civil partner would have and I could do the same with a sibling.  We could  buy a house together as a ’Joint Tenants‘ in order that the property is passed to the other on death (financial obligations notwithstanding).  So the arguing about Civil Partnerships is a moot point, becuase if you were contributing to the house i.e. had a joint mortgage, you would have the above options open to you.

Civil Partnerships came at a time when same-sex couple did not have those options open to them, and blood was thicker than the law when it came to the disposal of their homes.  Parents who had long rejected their children on the grounds of their sexuality could inherit their son or daughter’s home as official next of kin and leaving their child’s partner both homeless and penniless, never mind distraught.  Of course there needed to be legal recourse, for when two people join their households and finances, they aught to be the ones recouping the time, energy and resources they’ve poured into it, not have it snatched away.  This situation has now been rectified and ratified.  It is not discriminatory, it is the end of a particular act of discrimination.

If we perceive that another discimination (against singletons) exists, it is for us to fight it together as adults, not to childishly say, well if I can’t have an ice-cream you’re not having one either’ as we dash somebody elses’ hopes to the floor.

Remember this? (NB clever advert not advocating)

Maybe if we shifted that focus, we might see that inheritance tax affects everybody, including the children of the deceased, and support instead the idea that inheritance tax encourages marriage and civil partnerships consequently building a more stable society in which are tax bill is reduced as mental health, longevity and physical health are raised whilst all that drains our public purse is reduced the more happy couples society supports.

And perhaps siblings who are that close that they’ve been living together for twelve years might have a chat about wills and house-ownership before 11:59.  If it were my house and my sister, I know I would.

(Funnily enough, sibling ownership was a hot-topic some years BCE…)  The daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, belonged to the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah. They approached the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders and the whole assembly, and said, “Our father died in the desert. He was not among Korah’s followers, who banded together against the Lord, but he died for his own sin and left no sons. Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s relatives.”

So Moses brought their case before the Lord and the Lord said to him, “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and turn their father’s inheritance over to them.

“Say to the Israelites, ‘If a man dies and leaves no son, turn his inheritance over to his daughter. If he has no daughter, give his inheritance to his brothers. If he has no brothers, give his inheritance to his father’s brothers. If his father had no brothers, give his inheritance to the nearest relative in his clan, that he may possess it. This is to be a legal requirement for the Israelites, as the Lord commanded Moses.’”  Numbers 27:1-11