A book you must read.

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Kath

I’m not sure I’ve banged on about my love of Eugene Peterson enough on this blog recently. He’s the kind of author whose books I get and then they sit on my shelf with a kind of warm glow about them waiting for just the right moment for me to sink into a chair and swim in his beautiful writing once more. I’ve had The Pastor on my shelf for the last year, and this week was the right time to delve into it. It’s a book you should read, yes you, whoever you are reading this right now. Whether you are a pastor or not. Usually it takes me a good few months to get through a Eugene book, sentences and paragraphs are usually enough to make me stop in my tracks and have to ponder on them for a good while before daring to go any further. The beauty is sometimes just to much to take. When reflecting on this with husbandface we both confessed to not really understanding some of what he says but that he says it in such a pretty God soaked way makes us love it anyway.

The Pastor however is more of a story, the story of his calling to be a pastor and how he worked that out in one context for 30 years. It’s a book that cuts through all the crazy rubbish that surrounds church leadership manuals, a book that rejects programmes and schemes to grow our churches, a book that says there is something deeper going on in our life together as the body of Christ here on earth.  He sometimes feels like a lone voice in a church gone mad on visible results right now but he knows the reality that life as a pastor is about calling attention to God in the everyday ordinary walking around life that we live in.

I started it in some trepidation thinking it might just make me resentful of my own church leaders and want to turn them into mini Eugene’s. Thankfully it didn’t do that, it made me very glad that I am part of a small church family that can’t do the outwardly impressive stuff, we have to plod on seeking to see God at work in and through our lives together and in our city as we live, work and play here. It made me pray for my own pastor and resolve to buy him a copy (hold me to that if you are reading Carl) for his encouragement and reminder that he’s doing a vital job in our lives.

It’s not a book that tells all the story, it tells the bits of the story that are needed to remind us all that this life with God thing is worked out in the everyday, that we come together each week to remember that and that God works over long long periods of time. Wonderfully it says that all in a beautifully written way. So off you go, get it now and enjoy the world of being rooted in one place with one people and a God who does everyday miracles and is in it for the long haul. Then pray for your church leaders. They have a crazy job that is often overlooked, is too tempting for their pride and are called to pay attention to the unseen in a world obsessed with the seen.

Here’s a quote that pretty much sums it up, oddly not from Eugene himself but from a seminarian on a retreat he was leading:

“When I get a congregation, I want to be a patient pastor. I want to have eyes to see and ears to hear what God is doing and saying in their lives. I don’t want to judge them in terms of what I think they should be doing. I want to be a witness to what God is doing in their lives, not a school mistress handing out grades for how well they are doing something for God. I think I see something unique about being a pastor that I had never noticed: the pastor is the one person in the community who is free to take men and women seriously as they are, appreciate them just as they are, give them the dignity that derives from being the ‘image of God’, a God created being who has eternal worth without having to prove usefulness or be good for anything… I don’t want to be so impatient with the mess that I am not around to see the miracle being formed. I don’t want to concieve of my life as pastor so functionally that the mystery gets squeezed out of both me and the congregation.”

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Acedia 2

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Kath

The second in my posting thoughts on Acedia, from Kathleen Norris’ excellent book on the subject. One of the hardest parts of this struggle is not being able to put thoughts into words, explaining my inner thoughts to people without the medium of pen and paper is impossibly hard (just ask the ever patient husbandface).

 

It’s good to have words that describe this struggle and it’s effects on us. So here are some good quotes that sum it up oh so well.

“Acedia contains within itself so many concepts: weariness, despair, ennui, boredom, restlessness, impasse, futility…. At the first sign of difficulty or obstruction you try to think of ways to move past it, but at every turn you defeat yourself, shooting each fresh idea down as unlikely to work. How foolish of you to have ever believed in that person, that project, that God. You tell yourself that whatever may have worked won’t help you now and you grow cynical in your despair… you are severely tempted to abandon whatever once gave your life joy and meaning…. “The most confusing and damnable part of the dark night”, notes the Carmelite Constance Fitzgerald, “is the suspicion and fear that much of the darkness is of ones own making.”

It’s the last sentence here that gets to me, that’s always my deepest fear, that I am making this all up in my head and that I’m just not trying hard enough to get through it. I love that other people know this fear, that I am not alone.

“How is it possible to maintain our sanity, let alone to foster hope? Acedia is a particularly savage enemy, because it is not content with just a part of us. Evagrius writes that “the other demons are like the rising or setting sun in that they are found in only a part of the soul.  The noonday demon, however, is accustomed to embrace the entire soul and oppress the spirit….”

Too true. It’s a cold blanket that covers and taints everything with grey hideous fog. Every relationship is affected, every thought has black edges, nothing escapes it’s grasp.

 “The kingdom of God within us is not something we gain through training, wit or skill. It comes to us as pure gift and we are free to nourish it, curb it or ignore it. Given the power and resilience of this grace, it is a terrible irony that the despairing so often feel rejected by a distant and uncaring God. When we are convinced that we are beyond the reach of grace, acedia has done it’s work. John Cassian states that acedia’s whole purpose is to sever us from thoughts of God.”

It’s where the devil would love us to stay, deeply believing that the God who passionately and lavishly pours his love out on us is a lie. It’s the deepest darkness to believe that you are beyond the grace and compassion of our God.

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October

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Kath

I’m not sure how it escaped my attention but I now realise we are three days into October.  This leads me to do what has now become an annual tradition, post the classic U2 song, October. Simple and eloquent it says all that needs to be said about this time of year and life itself. Play on repeat for a bit and spoil yourself on this blustery rainy Autumnal day.


October
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care

October
And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on
And on

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A year on

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Kath

Today we’re remembering that it’s a year since we said goodbye to husbandface’s Mum, Geraldine Cunningham.  Strange times considering all that has happened since. One of husbandface’s colleagues commented that we’ve gone through the full circle of life in a year.

All I want to say I wrote last year when I wrote this in tribute to her.

The excellent Jason also did this drawing

And so today we lean on those everlasting arms knowing that those who mourn will be comforted.

This seems as good a time as any to listen to the words of ‘O love that will not let me go’. We rest our weary souls in him and look for the rainbow through the rain.

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

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Acedia – What is it?

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Kath

I’ve been ploughing through Kathleen Norris’ excellent book on Acedia recently and over the next week or so I want to put up some quotes and reflections from my time in the book. Mainly so I can remember them in the years to come. They fit in well with the backdrop of the guest post I wrote for Tanya over at Thorns and Gold this week. It was a post that got me thinking about what term I am comfortable using for the darkness that envelopes my soul at times. I shy away from calling it full blown depression, it’s not clinical depression although at times it can verge on that. It’s more of a melancholic disposition. I’m concerned about ascribing something I think affects many of us on this earth with a label. I think lots of us experience the draining apathy of acedia and it’s time we talked about it.  I think it’s a fairly normal part of our lives as Christians not a label for a few but a state that many of us find ourselves in on a regular basis.  That’s why I think it’s helpful to have it laid out bare for all to see.

Here are a few definitions for us:

acedia:
1.the deadly sin of sloth
2.spiritual torpor and apathy
(Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1976)

acedia:
a mental syndrome, the chief features of which are listlessness, carelessness, apathy and melancholia.
(Online Medical Dictionary, 2000)

Monks knew about it:

“The demon of acedia- also called the noonday demon- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all… first of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and as if the day is fifty hours long… then too he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor. He leads him to reflect that charity has departed from among the brethren, that there is no-one to give encouragement.  This demon drives him along to desire other sites where he can more easily procure life’s necessities, more readily find work and make a real success of himself… He depicts life stretching out for a long period of time, and brings before the mind’s eye the toil of the ascetic struggle and, as the saying has it, leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to forsake the cell and drop out of the fight.  No other demon follows close on the heals of this one (when he is defeated) but only a state of deep peace and inexpressible joy rise out of this struggle.” (Evagrius Ponticus)

There is a fight on in our souls against this demon. It’s not a fight to become a happy positive person, it’s a fight for hope, reality and meaning in the midst of these times, it’s a fight to see the sun again.  It’s a fight for vitality and devotion against the torpor of despair and apathy. That’s where the hope lies.

More to follow on the effects of acedia and the path to some kind of recovery each time it strikes.

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