Author: Theology Everywhere

by Elaine Lindridge.

This is the first of a two-part series by Elaine. Part two will follow next week.

Scratch Art Cards were originally a children’s toy but are now quite popular for all ages. They work by scratching off a thick, dark layer of ink to reveal a lighter coloured layer beneath.

As a child, long before they were cheaply available on Amazon, we used to make them at school. The teacher would give us a sheet of card and using wax crayons we’d fill it with a rainbow of colours. Then the thick black wax crayon was used to completely cover over the colour. We’d be given a sharp implement (how times have changed!) and told to scrape off the black to make a new picture.

The memory of carefully scrapping off the black wax to discover a new picture made with beautiful rainbow colours has resurfaced in my thoughts recently. Mainly because I feel like I’m in the process of scraping away some unhelpful beliefs I’ve unwittingly inherited, and in doing so I’m discovering a thing of beauty.  

I could give many examples, but I’d like to focus on the person of Mary. Beautiful, colourful Mary Magdalene whose story has been forcibly cloaked in darkness for far too long.

This new picture has emerged for me through the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault, Diana Butler Bass, and Mary herself in the words of the Gospel of Mary. I am no expert and I’m not going to pretend to have fully grasped the implications of all I am sharing. I simply offer this reflection as part of my own learning, journey and exploration into the divine feminine.

There is perhaps much ‘unlearning’ we need to do about Mary in order to discover something new in our understanding. The fabrication about Mary being a prostitute permeated the church so deeply that it took nearly 2000 years before it was rescinded – yet even now I still hear people talking about Mary the prostitute. What a travesty that this woman who was marked by Jesus as being ‘worthy’ has been denigrated by man-made lies for millennia. It was Pope Gregory in 591 who first pronounced her a ‘sinful woman’ even though there was evidence to the contrary in the Gospels. Before I was even born, Pope Paul VI removed the identification of Mary as a prostitute – and yet still this view remains in popular culture. Sometimes lies are more readily accepted than the truth.

So what do we actually know about her. Re-reading her story, I want to add my voice to those who now name her as the Apostle to the Apostles. News of the resurrection, and therefore Christianity, is derived from her being the first to encounter the risen Jesus and the first to act as a witness to that event and share the good news with others. She is named as the premier witness to the resurrection. Not only was she there, but she had faithfully and steadfastly remained with Jesus throughout the crucifixion. Hear Cynthia Bourgeault reflect on this;

          ‘All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run, she does not betray or lie about her commitment, she witnesses. But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed? How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if [the role of Magdalene was acknowledged?] What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone & rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? For surely this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church?’[1]

When the Holy Week liturgies only remind us that Jesus was betrayed, denied, and deserted, then we are merely shown a half-truth. Only telling those stories is like using a thick, black wax crayon to obliterate a beautiful story of faithful devotion and love. Where are the sermons and liturgies that reflect the dedication that Mary demonstrated?

This is all in our gospels and it’s only our perception that needs to be altered in order to see it. But what do we not see – or what have we been prevented from seeing? Surely questions need to be asked about Mary’s gospel, even if no clear answers are found. Deemed unorthodox by the men of the day, I can’t help but wonder if the attempted eradication of the text was simply a fear response. Was Mary and her message just too hot to handle? If so, that makes me want to study her gospel even more!

 And what if there is literally some black crayon that obscures some of the original texts that were deemed orthodox and make up the bible as we have it today? We will consider that next week.

To be continued!

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[1] ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene

by Josie Smith.

I am not by nature a marcher or a flag-waver or a displayer of placards.   But there are two protests I felt keenly and was not able to make, years ago, and still recall.

The first was in my Primary School days.    We walked to school alone at that time, or with friends we met on the way (something my great-grandchildren find incomprehensible in these fearful days when parents accompany their children to the school gates.   Didn’t my parents care, they want to know) – or sometimes in my case running to try to keep up with a long-legged and fast-walking male teacher at the same school, who lived next door to our family, made no concession for my little legs, and obviously found me an encumbrance.    It was quite a distance.

The school was led by an old-style head teacher, who was nearing retirement age and was remote and austere and frightening.   Each morning, he would lead the assembly, and we would dutifully sing the day’s hymn, and recite the Lord’s Prayer which we had learned by rote and didn’t mean much to most of us – but then he would call up to the platform those who had broken school rules or in other way transgressed.   And that was the point at which his cane came out.

I shall never forget a quiet boy called Michael, who was persistently late for school.    And just as persistently he was caned for being late, on the platform in front of the entire school.    After morning worship.     Did anyone ever ask why he was so often late?    Was he what these days we would call a Young Carer, having to do a lot of work at home to make life possible for a sick mother? Did anyone ever enquire into his home life? What effect this routine beating had on him I can’t guess, nor why it just went on happening, but my grown-up self still feels a sense of outrage.

I left that school when we moved house and I was nine years old, and one was not permitted to question the behaviour of grown-ups.

The second occasion was in church, when I was older, but still diffident.   Some small children were whispering to each other, making a bit of a disturbance and putting the elderly local preacher off his stride.    He stopped speaking, leaned forward with his hands grasping the pulpit Bible, and addressed these kids in a stern voice.     ‘God won’t love you if you’re naughty!’ he said, before resuming his task.

My whole being was shocked.     I wanted to stand up in my pew (we had pews then) and say ‘BUT THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!’   Did he not remember that bit about ‘while we were yet sinners’?    The Grace of God is never conditional!    To this day I feel – again – a sense of outrage.     My adult self wants me to have protested then, but I was only a young member, and was surrounded by elders of the congregation who did nothing.     And one did not answer back in church.

It is often said that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’.     So, I thank God that there are people who have the guts to shout, and march, and protest, and DO SOMETHING.    Heaven knows, there is so much that is wrong, so much hatred and injustice and cruelty and suffering in the world, and doing nothing is not an option.    So I am on the side of the marchers, the whistleblowers, the little solitary Greta Thunbergs pictured on the school steps, the victims of ill-considered decisions – and all who, in whatever way, speak truth to power.    Though my active days are behind me, I can still use words, to Them in Westminster, and to local government, and to businesses, and in encouragement to those who have the energy I no longer have; to light their own candle in the darkness.

by Andrew Pratt.

I walked into a café. You may know it. No matter. There were three floors. The appeal was that I entered at ground level. My right knee had been troubling me and I didn’t want to climb more than I had to. Each floor had a series of tables occupied by one, two, occasionally four people. Though the people were working this wasn’t the usual plethora of laptops, headphones and other paraphernalia. Casual conversation could be heard between the individuals, nothing intense. The atmosphere was relaxed. They were, you might say, pottering. And that sowed the seed of a thought, a germ of spirituality.

Jeremiah, I think, spoke? Wrote? It matters not how the picture developed. It told of a potter and a spoilt jar, squashed, broken, beaten down, then remodelled, refashioned. An allegory of healing? Of reconciliation? Of salvation?

And I noticed that the people were handling pottery, turning it this way and that, carefully manipulating its position so that different, sides, facets, shapes were exposed to view. Gently, or vigorously, they applied paint. Delicate shades like clouds of coloured mist, or sharp jagged lettering describing words, short, staccato sentences.

I wonder if people you see and the things they’re doing ever make you think laterally, take a sideways jump into something unrelated. Perhaps it’s me, though I’ve noticed it in comedians, that it’s not unusual to have an unexpected perspective that makes you think, or laugh, or perhaps both.

That visit to a café, if you want to seek it out it’s in Conwy in North Wales, prompted a train of thought that I want to share. It relates to our ability to use art, words, images to transcend solid things round us and enter something which for me can have a spiritual dimension. Let me explain.

As the people talked, ordinary conversation, the message was not in their words, but the actions in which they were involved. In the throwing of the pottery shape and form had been determined. This was now redefined as colour, light and shade offered perspective. If this had been thought and argument, I sensed that the conversation was shifting. This was now a matter of co-creativity, substance and creator cooperating, or resisting, something new, or evolved. A unique perspective was emerging.

What had been soft, malleable, wet, had now been shaped, then shaded. Ultimately each observer determined when completion was reached, or at least this act of creation, of evolution, could go no further. To kiln and fire each object found itself consigned. Here the testing heat would confirm and set, or fracture, and destroy what had been made.

And as I reflected this mirrored for me something of the life of faith. We grasp something which changes the direction of our lives, a moment of conversion, if you like. Then how we live as much, if not more than what we believe, changes. And are we as human beings tested like the pot being fired, in some parallel way? And if, in our audacity, we strive to improve on this cosmos, which has hatched and nurtured us, and we let our pride run free, what will be the conclusion? If we risk running with the change our faith has formed, humbly accepting that we owe to each other, and to the cosmos, little less than our whole being, what then?

Will fire allow our hatred to exist? Or will our kindness sear our being so that we, born of this earth, this clay, permeate all we are? Might not that greater goodness be the endpoint of our existence?

by Stephen Lindridge.

Though it’s only early September the autumn weather has already brushed up close. Having moved nearer the coast I had my my first taste of fog. A warm summer day lead to a muggy and very dense day of fog. It seemed almost like low cloud. What could be seen so clearly the day before, now it was like it didn’t exist.

The sunning views over the Tyne and down the coast were gone. It’s funny how the mind works when something you knew was there suddenly cannot be seen. I could get lost in a range of pondering questions but the simple truth I reflected on was how the fog brought my focus upon what was close up. No longer casting an eye upon the horizon but to what was before me.

Some might say in the same foggy conditions “you can’t see very much!” True, but it does bring the immediate space you can see into greater attention. The parallel between these unexpected weather conditions and my own situation, caused me to stop and reflect. Having just left a role I have served in for nearly a decade, these last few weeks have felt a little like my focus is very much on what’s immediately before me. I have to say it has brought me much joy and thanksgiving.

To gain a fresh look and some basic things and having the gift of time to truly be attentive to them has been a great blessing. It brought to my mind the time when Jesus’ focus changes, in his journey to raise Jairus’ daughter, as a woman grasps the hem of his garment (verse 30 in Mark 5:20-43). Jesus turns his attention from the on coming to the present, his time is given to attend to the now.

The Bible has a lot to say about the heart. Our heart, God’s heart and what’s being described about it. I am learning that ‘being present’ is a not so much a head action but that it’s a heart one. Those who’ve studied ‘heart-math’^[1], know our hearts are far more complicated, and modern science is discovering again what the ancients knew all too well. We need to attend to our hearts, what’s right in front of us and hear, see, feel, what’s being encountered.

Scientists have discovered the heart has its own complex nervous system. Based on over 25 years of scientific research observing interactions between the heart and the brain they have discovered that the heart possess a network of nerves which contain over 40,000 neurones. More than this the heart communicates with the brain through: hormones biochemically, pulse waves biophysically and energetically through electromagnetic fields.

So we think about what scripture has to say to us about a pure heart (Matthew 5: 8). Jesus said pure hearts can receive love. Love is the way that brings tenderness and forgiveness and compassion to ourselves, that is honest with how we are feeling. It is actually important to stop and notice, to recognise when we’re very stressed out, or anxious, angry, frustrated, and being able to listen to that. Don’t suppress it, listen to it. Don’t resist it, for that is wisdom of the heart – welcome it and see what it has to say to you. Because resisting it can affect your heart rhythm pattern and therefore your thinking. Learning how to change your heart rhythm back in to a regular pattern that restores a balance in our system, bringing a calm state where we can make wise decisions, and order harmony to our minds.

As we attend to our emotions and allow them to flow naturally our hearts will be pure. We can’t have a pure heart when we are emotionally constipated. When we attend to our emotions they naturally dissolve – resting in the heart of God. The heart invites us to ask – what’s the most important thing in this life I need to attend to?

We can find a myriad of ways to let God’s love fill our hearts. The important things is that we do it. I was speaking to a retired senior leader some time back and he said to me the hamster wheel just seemed to be getting faster and faster over this last decade. He said he was more convinced than ever we need to make time every day and in the everyday to drink in what God through Christ’s love wants to breath into us. So I welcomed the fog descending, shortening my focus and reminding me again to pay attention to what’s before me, what’s in my heart and to discover a fresh the value of life in all its fulness. What unexpected interruptions help you to notice God and what the Holy Spirit may be whispering to you to be attentive to?

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^[1] https://www.heartmath.com/science/

by Josie Smith.

I have always valued the hymn ‘Now thank we all our God’, and when I was an active preacher I used it frequently as the final hymn in acts of worship. Gratitude is something I feel every day (just for still being alive, for one thing!) but it is only recently that it occurred to me what sickeningly familiar circumstances this hymn arose from.

The author was a pastor in a town on land contested by warring nations.  Refugees from the surrounding countryside, rendered homeless, had moved within the town walls ‘for safety’ as first one army, then the other, gained the upper hand.   Farms were abandoned, crops ruined, food became scarce, prices rose, people were constantly hungry, and overcrowding led to infections spreading throughout the population.   Increasing numbers of people simply had nowhere safe to go.   We have seen it, and agonised over it, in so many parts of the world today.   When will we ever learn?

And then came an infection so horrible that people died from it in huge numbers.   The pastor was kept increasingly occupied conducting the funerals of his parishioners, at first in ones and twos, but later things became so bad that mass funerals had to be held, and mass graves dug. 

His own wife was among those who died.   

It was a long time ago – at the time of what came to be known as the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).     The epidemic which killed large numbers of the population was the Plague, which later spread to our little offshore islands and is a familiar chapter in our own history books.   But the pattern is repeated wherever there is fighting over the possession of land.     As though the land can ever be said to ‘belong’ to anyone except the Creator.

And it was Martin Rinkart who wrote this hymn of gratitude and praise.

Now thank we all our God,
with hearts and hands and voices,
who wondrous things hath done,
in whom His world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms
has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.

It is difficult to be aware, as we are via the media, of world events as they happen, and not to feel a sense of despair that we as one human race continue to inflict so much terrible suffering on our fellow human beings.   And yet there are lovely human stories all around us of help and healing and hope in the face of all the inhumanity.   

I am writing this late in the day of Pentecost.     May the flame which ignited the early church spread, to counter the plague of human stupidity.

And may we help to fan the flame by being people of hope.

Now thank we all our God!

by Philip Sudworth.

A long time ago there lived a man who loved flowers and plants.  As he wandered around the countryside, he would plant seeds in barren areas and he would encourage plants by removing the thistles that were choking them, by watering those wilting in the heat and by giving them vital nutrients.  If he thought that a plant was too weak to survive where it was, he would replant it near his house so that he could give it special care.  He was able to see the potential beauty in plants that were nearly dead and people were astonished at how he could transform a sickly specimen into a magnificent bloom.

His work, particularly with the flowers round his house, attracted interest and a few people started to help him on a regular basis and to learn from him how to bring out the best in plants.  He had a simple slogan – “Plants are beautiful!”  He became known as “the plantsman”.

One day he had to leave for a distant country where his father needed him.  He left his assistants to carry on his work and they in turn recruited more helpers. 

All went well for a while, but plant seeds are blown by the wind and bees cross-pollinate flowers.  Several helpers became concerned that some flowers were mutating and producing different colours and shapes, and the new generations of others were growing further from the house.

It was decided to build a high wall round the plants nearest to the house to create a garden, so that the plant strains could be kept pure.  Gardeners were appointed to look after the plants within the garden.  They found it easier to work on a simple rule that any plants outside the garden were weeds. 

The head gardener drew up, using stories and letters about the plantsman, details of what each plant must look like to be accepted as beautiful.  These criteria became known as the beauty rules.  Any plant in the garden that did not conform to these rules had to be dug up and burnt.  The slogan was amended to: ‘Only the beautiful are plants’, because they decided that this is what the plantsman had really meant to say.

Gardeners still went out into the countryside to search for plants that had the potential to fit into the garden.  Some were very diligent in this.  If they found any that met the beauty rules, they would try their best to transplant them into the garden, though some of these wilted in the new surroundings.

By now there was no-one left who’d met the plantsman in the flesh.  They eagerly listened to stories about him or read reports of what he had said.  One popular story was that the plantsman’s last words had been that he would be back and they fully expected him to return sometime soon. The gardeners were convinced that with their help he would apply the beauty rules across the world, root out all the weeds and turn the world into one big garden of beautiful plants that met all the criteria.

One day the plantsman did return but his appearance had changed a great deal over the years and no-one recognized him in modern clothes.  Most gardeners were too busy maintaining the garden to take much account of the quiet figure.  He was very sad to see the high wall and the new division between garden plants and weeds that he saw as wild flowers, because he still loved all plants and could see the beauty in all of them. 

He watched what the gardeners were doing and occasionally asked them questions.  Many laughed at the old fellow who couldn’t understand the beauty rules, but some were greatly encouraged by his interest and a few felt strangely challenged by his concern for wildflowers.  Most of the time, however, he spent back at his old task of nurturing and rescuing the plants in the countryside.  Occasionally, he came into the garden unseen and added nutrients to certain plants.  Both in the garden and in the countryside you could see where he had been, because the plants there bloomed at their very best and gave joy to all who saw them.

• Who or what do you identify with in the story?  How does that relate to the church today?

• How do we relate to those people that our society, our church or even ourselves dismiss as weeds, as worthless or outside the scope of salvation.

by Tom Stuckey.

In 2006, as President of the Conference, I stated that we were ‘On the Edge of Pentecost’. Was this a prophetic vision or simply a catchy strap line? Given the traumatic events which have shaken the world since then together with the precarious state of Institutional Christianity in Britain, the idea of an imminent Pentecost for Methodism in Britain seems far-fetched, though the apocalyptic context of Joel (Acts 2.17-21) remains pertinent. I suggest the metaphor now is ‘HOLY SATURDAY’.

Holy Saturday is the waiting time between Good Friday and Easter Day. Contemporary Methodists are like those bewildered disciples who waited in the liminal time gap between crucifixion and resurrection. Holy Saturday is the Christological equivalent of Israel’s desert experience.

Belden Lane – who describes himself as ‘burnt out on shallow religion’– labels Mark’s Gospel as a ‘Desert Gospel’.[1]His temptation narrative is sandwiched between our Lord’s baptism and the start of his public ministry in Galilee. The wilderness provides the link between God’s announcement of Christ’s identity and our Lord’s declaration of his vision. It is the ‘how’ between the ‘who’ and the ‘what’.

The same dynamic is played out in Mark’s truncated resurrection narrative (16.1-8) where both the reader and the women are left hanging on a promise without any resurrection appearance. The disciples have to go back to Galilee, where it all started, in order to have the resurrection validated. Mark’s chapter 16 can be viewed as a commentary on Holy Saturday. Living in the context of Holy Saturday requires us to be brutally honest with where we are and to speak the unspeakable. Holy Saturday encourages us to ‘lament’, properly reclaim our past and receive God’s vision for our future. I understand the word ‘vision’ to be a prophetic gift which awaits its proper time (Hab.2.3).  It has little to do with our modern get-togethers on a Saturday morning for a ‘Vision Day’.

At the end of each Conference we sing: “By Thine unerring Spirit led, we shall not in the desert stray; We shall not full direction need, nor miss our providential way.”   There is irony here because I believe the Holy Spirit is driving us back into the desert so that we can re-discover our providential way.

There were 136,891 members of the Methodist Church in 2022.  When I began training for the Ministry in 1965 the membership figure was 701,306. I am concerned but not worried about our falling numbers or ageing congregations. My theology recognises that the tides of the Spirit ebb and flow. If churches are to be genuine signs of the Kingdom of God then they will reflect strength and weakness, hiddenness and visibility, numerical increase and decrease, vulnerability and power. They are indicators of God’s redemptive purposes in judgement and renewal, death and resurrection. I have written elsewhere that we must rejoice in being small. I think that Methodist Connexionalism is no longer fit for purpose. Our future lies in decentralization and dispersion as we work for justice and seek secular partners.[2] Although we strive to be a ‘justice seeking church’, this should not be the overriding message.  Our primary theme should be ‘grace’. Sadly we hear so little about it today. As someone reminded me recently ‘the heart of the gospel is not that we get what we deserve (justice) but that we can receive what we never deserve (grace). The only claim we have is our need’.

So what next?  Like most mainstream churches in Britain, Methodism will continue to decline numerically. I suspect we will soldier-on with our gruelling ‘cut and paste strategy’ in the circuits and districts. This will probably precipitate further collapse in many more areas though some significant churches may remain. Over and against this I see the appearance of small clusters of local Christians who, regardless of the grinding mechanisms of their parent Churches, will be thrown together. In waiting prayerfully upon God they will weep and lament but their sorrow will be turned into joy. The Kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit and comfort is found by those who mourn. As we relive the Holy Saturday experience, God’s unerring Spirit will again move among us and usher in something entirely new.

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[1] Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, OUP 1998

[2] Tom Stuckey, Covid-19: God’s Wake-Up Call?, Amazon 2021

by Jan Berry and Tim Baker.

We are pleased to continue our partnership with Spectrum, a community of Christians of all denominations which encourages groups and individuals to explore the Christian faith in depth. This year the study papers are on the theme of ‘Heartfelt Worship’ by Rev’d Jan Berry (author and former principal of Luther King House, Manchester) and Tim Baker (Local Preacher, All We Can’s Churches and Volunteers Manager and contributor to the Twelve Baskets Worship Resources Group).

This is the fifth of the series, which is a report on a group process and an invitation to join in – which we hope inspires the imagination and creativity of Theology Everywhere readers.

As an opening exercise participants were asked to write down five words which had stood out for them during the Spectrum conference, and each person was asked to share one of their words and listed them on a flipchart.

The resulting list was:

withness
sharing
partnership
image
honest
re-awakening
here
patience
unfettered
authentic
community
justice
questioning
space
engaging
reflection
refraction
situated
home
feeling
listening
together
kidneys

We then asked everyone to write a line, phrase or sentence using one or more of these words.

We wrote up some examples:

‘Here is our gathering
authentic community’
‘We were welcomed to share in the passion and inclusive theology of worship that was interesting, engaging and fun’
‘I reflect upon the honesty of engaging with the image of kidney as an authentic metaphor!’
‘With grace we awaken our memory so we embody your justice’

Participants were then given the rest of the session to write their own material for worship, whether hymns, prayers or reflections. Some of these were shared in the final session the following day; here are some of the contributions:

God of WITHNESS — this is our space as well as Yours
Such places are all too rare
Here honest questioning
finds breath
unfettered by the boundaries
of niceness
or need to skirt around
con-tro-ver-sy
Here in this place
passionate pleas for justice find their voice
Crafted by worthy wordsmiths
whilst wizards reveal their images that seal the deal
And gifted kidneys
are hymned in laughter and refractive praise
For here in this blessed community
we engage in talk of God
in-com-pre-hen-si-bly made
you and me
so girls in far off lands may
cycle home for tea
( Rob Hufton)

Here in our gathering,
authentic community,
a home for our heart,
a space for our life;
here in our sharing,
our questioning, our searching
we walk in your light
travel in your truth;
Here in our trusting in you
and each other,
we grow and we flourish
to bring forth good fruit
of justice and care,
compassion and nurture,
to reach out to all
and live in your love. 
(Tony Buglass)

Lord I have questions
large and deep,                                                                  I find it hard my faith to
keep                                                                                        No answers come
when prayers are made                                                                                                      In darkness
black
when all hopes fade
Yet still small voice fair nags inside,                                                     Faith and
trust, though small, abide,                                         Awaken hope and love to
cheer,
Our God unknown is with us HERE.             (Richard Firth)

Readers are invited to do a similar creative writing exercise to share. It could be a hymn, a prayer, a poem, or a piece of prose for use in worship.

by Will Fletcher.

I have a love/hate relationship with tidying up. I hate not being able to find anything for those few weeks afterwards when everything that had been out and handy, is now put away in its supposedly rightful place! However, I love those things I discover that I had forgotten I had!

I recently discovered a forgotten bag of magazines stashed behind an armchair that someone gave me. All the magazines were from a series called Methodist and the publication went out of print in the summer of 1969 to give you an idea of how old they were. I’ll let you decide whether that feels quite recent or not!

It has been interesting having a read through some of them to see what was being discussed in Methodism 50+ years ago. It has sometimes been sad to see the topics talked about then, that don’t feel like they’ve progressed much since. One of them was the whole subject of Church unity.

In one of the 1969 editions there were some reflections on Church unity, which had real hope that it might be over the horizon. Sadly, this has not been the case. In one of the articles the author reflected on some of the prayers that were part of that year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Part of the prayer (a challenge for those of us praying it now as much as then) said:

Keep us, O Lord, from growing accustomed to our divisions:

Save us from considering as normal that which is a scandal to the world and an offence against thy love.

The first thing to say is that there are structural conversations around unity with various denominations, and I’m not really going to address those, as they often feel beyond most of us. However, the work for unity is something which anyone can engage in, in their local context. In my experience I have found that tea, cake, and a chinwag is a good place to begin.

So often it seems as though we approach Church unity from a purely pragmatic position. We seek to work together because we can do more than we could do apart. With churches of many denominations finding it hard to fill the necessary roles, it can be tempting to think that joining together might ease some of those burdens. There is some truth to this.

However, I wonder whether part of the reason that ecumenism can feel so hard, or even something that we can’t be bothered with, is because of just such a feeling. If we seek to enter into these relationships only in order to make our lives a little easier, or for some other benefit, it is easy to break off from them when it feels like it takes too much effort, of the benefits don’t appear forthcoming. Would these relationships and our commitment to them feel any different if we entered into them from a position of love and following the desire of God?

I also recognise that being the Church today is quite a challenge, and seeking after unity feels an extra that we don’t often have time or energy for. However, it feels somewhat disingenuous to preach a Gospel of reconciliation that can overcome any chasm with one breath, whilst in the next saying that seeking after Church unity is impossible or not even desirable.  

As I write this, I acknowledge that making such a desire into a reality isn’t fully within our power. Any relationship of two or more parties has to be mutual and depend on prayer and the input of the Holy Spirit. There have been disappointments of the past and present, that were not, and are not, of our making. I’ve had my share of being shunned or ignored by some clergy because of our position on certain issues, or our church doesn’t seem as glamorous or exciting as others – in fact one such email came in as I was writing this article! So this isn’t written completely with naïvety or blind optimism – just enough in order to keep hoping!

As I close, some questions to ponder:

• What have been the qualities of good ecumenical relationships that you have been part of?
• How has it felt when there has been a negative ecumenical relationship?
• Have we grown accustomed to our divisions? If so, what needs to change in our mindset and practice?
• What could you do where you are to make an inroad, however small?

by Frances Young.

Around eighteen months ago we retired from Birmingham and settled in Sheffield – our 2022 Christmas letter gave notice of our new address. Believe it or not, a contact in the Mid-West of America, prompted doubtless by Wikipedia, responded with the information that there is a Neolithic stone carving in the Eccleshall Woods close by us. For me the woods were already a regular retreat for exercise and reflection, and the search began. Discovery was by no means immediate. Our son eventually found a hint as to its whereabouts and walking “off-piste” in that area I probably passed it at least once without finding it! Then, one day, descending the slope rather than ascending, I almost tripped over a flat rock protruding out of the leaf mould, looked down and there on its top were carved shapes, predominantly spherical – there it was, stylistically similar to carvings we had once seen at Carnac in Brittany, where there are avenues of standing stones and other prehistoric monuments.

Since the discovery I have often included it in my walks, either alone or showing it off to interested visitors. I’ve contemplated it while listening to the amazing variations of a song thrush in spring. I’ve walked to it under the perpendicular fan vaulting of the leafless trees in winter – a natural cathedral. And I have reflected on deep time – the thousands of years that humankind has contemplated the mysteries of which we are a part, responding with art and music, fear and celebration, wondering at beauty and otherness, acknowledging smallness, transience and vulnerability, seeking meaning and truth.

In the perspective of deep time such essentially religious responses to life and its environment are seemingly natural, and in the perspective of multiple historical cultures they are seemingly universal. Yet modernity has produced the first post-religious society, as more than one generation has reacted against the faith of their forebears and deprived the next generation of serious engagement with it. Secularised the world has lost its enchantment. Yet maybe there’s something instinctive in the use of symbols in a search for meaning, something now suppressed by the illusion that truth is mere facticity while metaphor and myth are but the false product of mere imagination?

On a previous occasion I wrote about consciousness and the remarkable work of Iain McGilchrist offering my summary of his work as a neuroscientist with detailed references. His basic thesis is that our culture is dominated by left-brain analytical reasoning and has lost the wisdom that comes from the right-brain’s wholistic response to experience, its capacity to deal with mystery and symbol rather than reduce everything to what is quantifiable, logical and manipulable – indeed, under our control. Wonder, mystery and humility he reckons we need to reclaim: “…while fully acknowledging the problematic nature of the word God, I feel our repudiation of God is not a wise move,” he writes. He affirms metaphor and myth, over against mechanistic reductionism, for “deep truths about reality are likely to appear initially paradoxical” – he cites the way science has uncovered interdependent processes – “flow” rather than “things”. “Mystery does not mean muddled thinking,” he writes; “on the other hand, thinking you could be clear about something which in its nature is essentially mysterious is muddled thinking. Nor does mystery betoken a lack of meaning – rather a superabundance of meaning in relation to our normal finite vision.” He challenges fundamentalisms whether in science or religion – propositions and rationalisation in terms of left-brain analysis may be useful, but such conceptuality needs to be taken up again into the right-brain’s experiential response to the whole. McGilchrist takes on the “New Atheists”, suggesting that other ages and cultures had a wisdom we have simply lost.

Our culture is being challenged from various directions – its exploitation of nature, its casual despoliation and toxic disregard for natural ecologies, its consumerism and constant economic growth, all factors contributing to mass extinctions and climate change… Humankind has over-reached itself – been too clever by half … I guess post-Covid there is more talk of our connectedness to the natural world… but ???

An awareness of deep time – maybe the religious instinct is not quite dead yet … though I guess institutional religion remains problematic for many – there’s a general bias against institutions in our individualistic culture. But might the resurgence of Orthodoxy in the post-communist, once atheistic, societies of Eastern Europe be a sign of religion’s ultimate resilience?