Restoring the Woven Cord

The Great Omission

2007-01-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

In preparation for a few days off after Christmas we stopped by the local branch of our public library to pick up some light fiction for the trip. On our way in I glanced over the religion section of the new books and spotted The Great Omission by Dallas Willard. No one could ever accuse Willard of producing “light reading,” but I recalled someone recommending the book so I checked it out with a couple of odd mystery novels.
It turns out Willard’s book was not that new. In fact, it is a collection of essays, articles and addresses given over a number of years. All the content is around Willard’s passion – discipleship. The title of the book is, of course, a commentary on the Christian church’s failure to take Jesus at his word: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
While Willard does eventually get into the topic of what discipleship looks like, the topic of spiritual formation, one consistent theme in the earlier portion is the criticism that the church has made discipleship an optional extra. Yet nearly all of Jesus’ teaching in the synoptic Gospels is about the life of a disciple. The absurdity of the situation should bring us to our knees.
Looking into the sources of the various chapters, it seems most of Willard’s audience are Christians from evangelical traditions. Yet his indictment stands for evangelicals and mainline churches, for Protestants and Pentecostals and Roman Catholics and Orthodox. However, rather than flog ourselves or blame others for this state of affairs, we can benefit from Willard’s approach and start learning about how to be disciples and then doing it. Which brings me to our Community and the Aidan Way of Life.
If discipleship is not an “optional extra” for those who like or have time for that sort of thing, what does that say about the Aidan Way (or any other religious community)? As I am reading Willard, I find that most of what he describes as the path of discipleship is contained in our Way. The Way then becomes one way of doing what all Christians are supposed to be about. Further, the flexibility of the Way means that any congregation of any tradition can find it an open door for correcting the “great omission.”
I’m not suggesting that the Aidan Way is the universal solution, only that it is one currently extant way to aid Christian communities. The important thing for members of our community to note is, given the Lord’s universal call to discipleship, the primary importance of our community is not it’s rooting in the Celtic saints, nor even in the aspect of wholeness it represents. Our primary importance is that members, by becoming members, have also signed on as disciples of Jesus Christ. That alone gives value to the distinctiveness of the Aidan Way.

Engagement and solitude

2006-07-21T21:00:00.000-06:00

Last Monday I gave a talk to the Renovare' retreat on the movement from engagement to solitude. With some editing, here is the text of the talk

Waymarks: The Principles

Have you ever visited Lindisfarne? It’s a tidal island, connected to the mainland and low tide and cut off as an island when the tide returns. There’s a paved causeway from the mainland to the island that handles significant tourist traffic. But if you visit the island, keep the tide table in mind. The causeway closes when the tide comes in and there’s no way back until it goes out again.
Have you ever stayed for three or four days or more on Lindisfarne? Dorie Ann and I had the privilege to do that twice. The experience is remarkable. After the tourists leave a wonderful quiet settles over the place. Though the villagers remain, and their normal life goes on there is yet a stillness that resonates deep within the soul.
Lindisfarne is widely known by another name: Holy Isle. But I’ve found my own name for the place: “the island that breathes.” The island breaths not air, but the breath of God. Drawing us to the Island, inhaling to solitude and prayer, sending us from the Island, exhaling to action and witness.
Nearly 1400 years ago, an Irish monk came from a Scottish community to serve and Anglo-Saxon king who wanted his people to receive the Gospel. When Aidan arrived in the kingdom of Northumbria he was given his choice of anywhere in the kingdom to establish his base community. Aidan chose the island that breathes.
It was an odd choice. The crossing is dangerous even when the tide is out with quicksand not that far off the main path. In 1860, local authorities placed a series of posts to mark a safe route to the island. But Aidan’s company had no such waymarks. I think it was the breathing that attracted Aidan. Here was part of God’s creation that paralleled the spiritual movement between solitude and engagement. This movement is essential to the with God life. It is found in many of the lives of the Celtic saints.
But why Celtic Christians? Who are these people and why should we pay them such attention? I’ll leave the fuller explanation for your own research. Suffice it to say that the Christians in the lands of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man who served their Lord in the 4th – 12th centuries made an impact on the Christian communities of Europe far in excess of their numbers. Though they were as bound by sins of pride and anger and self-sufficiency as we are, there were certain things about their life that command our attention. For our purposes tonight, the key characteristic was wholeness. It was the life of disciples of Jesus with nothing left out.
A few years back, a physician in North Carolina who had been studying the Way of Life of our Community made this observation: “There’s nothing in here that I haven’t seen elsewhere. But I’ve never seen it all in one place.” She hadn’t yet read Streams of Living Water – for that, in it’s own way, is a very Celtic approach to being a disciple. Take some time to examine the Rule of the Northumbria Community: you will find a wholeness there that simply isn’t found in most Western Christian traditions.
One aspect of that wholeness is this movement, spiritually natural or naturally spiritual, between solitude and engagement. Columbanus was an Irishman who led a group of disciples across Europe in the 6th century. His wanderings took him through much of present day France and Switzerland and finally into northern Italy. Wherever he went, he established Christian communities. His earliest community was at Annegray in France. Some seven miles distant from the community Columbanus found a cave where he retired for extended periods of solitude in order to maintain the rhythms of spiritual wholeness.
Cuthbert was an Anglo-Saxon trained by Celtic Christians. He was a notable and energetic preacher who ended up on Lindisfarne after Aidan’s time, taking the job of prior, the primary administrator of the community. Off the island of Lindisfarne is a very small islet, which, like the main island, was accessible in the low tide and cut off from Lindisfarne when the tide came in. On this islet Cuthbert built a cell where he could seek the solitude of prayer as the rhythms of wholeness moved through his life.
Along with Aidan’s choice of Lindisfarne, these two stories are our first Waymark on the journey, our first principle: The active life and contemplative life are not mutually exclusive. There is a rhythm of solitude and engagement built into the soul. They are both complementary and mutually corrective.
Last year Dorie Ann and I traveled to England to attend the annual gathering of the Community of Aidan and Hilda. On Friday night two new Explorers joined the Community, Michael and Penny Warren. They were a lovely couple on an intriguing journey. Penny identified Michael as primarily drawn to the Charismatic stream, while she found herself drawn to the Contemplative one.
They had found space for them both in the Community’s Way of Life, but still there was a distance between them, even on this common path. After taking their vows, Ray Simpson, the Guardian of the Community, invited the various leaders present to gather around Michael and Penny and pray for them. Particularly we were to pray for any prophetic messages God might have for them on this journey. Several were given and as we prayed, I had a vision of Lindisfarne. I was looking from above the island, seeing both the island and the mainland. In this vision my attention was drawn particularly to the causeway. My understanding of this vision was that God was telling them the way of wholeness that they’d chosen would function as a causeway between their paths, occasionally calling Michael to solitude or calling Penny to engagement and yet blessing each in their own path.
Cuthbert, in his time as prior, found himself more and more drawn to the work of solitude. Eventually, he withdrew from the community on Lindisfarne and built a small cell on the island of Inner Farne. Here he remained as a valiant intercessor and was quite content in solitude. When a church gathering elected him as bishop he was reluctant to leave his retreat. It took a special embassy of a bishop with brothers of the Lindisfarne community to persuade him to accept the post. For two years Cuthbert labored diligently but as he felt death approaching, he returned to the solitary life.
In the history of Western Christian spirituality we have long identified some souls as active and some as contemplative. More often the experience of Christians is movement between engagement and solitude. This movement, however, is not some fixed formula, and that brings us to the second Waymark on this journey, our second principle: Most all of us have a natural inclination. Like Michael and Penny Warren we may find in ourselves a preference. Like Cuthbert, that may change over our lifetime. Yet the movement within us continues.
The Gospels note several occasions when Jesus withdraws from engagement with his ministry to find places of solitude, to spend intimate time with the Father. Since the Gospels are not biography but portraits of God’s intervention in Jesus, we can safely assume that these episodes are not simply noted because they occurred but because the witnesses on whose records the Gospels are based saw something of great significance in these events.
These movements from engagement to solitude occur at key moments in Jesus’ ministry. There is one particular movement that we rarely identify as a movement to solitude, but is essential for our understanding. After Jesus is baptized, all three synoptic Gospels tell us that Jesus went into the wilderness for his encounter with Satan.
Each of the three Gospels tells the story in a different way. While each note that it was by the Spirit’s inspiration that Jesus went into solitude, each uses a different Greek verb to describe that inspiration. Mark, the Gospel given to the most action scenes, uses the most active description: The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The word Mark uses is the same Luke uses in Acts when the crew of Paul’s prison transport ship, caught up in a violent storm, throws the cargo overboard. Jesus was thrust into the wilderness. Matthew and Luke use gentler terms, but different terms. The word Luke uses connotes someone awaiting release being conducted to their anticipated place, much like the ushers in some churches releasing people in a pew to go forward for Holy Communion. Jesus was released to move into the solitude of the wilderness. Matthew’s image of the Spirit’s work is also like an usher, but this time the usher at a wedding conducting a guest to their seat. Jesus did not wander aimlessly into the desert; he was thrust there, released to go there, conducted there by divine intent.
Next we are told that Jesus fasted while out there. This wasn’t poor planning, as if, several miles into the journey, Jesus suddenly remembered that he’d left the sandwiches on the counter. Fasting in Scripture is coupled with prayer, it is a way of intensifying, focusing our prayer. When things get desperate, add fasting to your prayer.
As neither the movement into the desert, nor the fasting in the desert were random movements, then why the solitude, why the prayer? The late Anglican priest, Fr. Martin Thornton, saw this action as a calculated campaign to trap the evil one in a confrontation. When Satan appeared, Jesus was ready.
When Cuthbert first retreated to Inner Farne, the historian Bede notes that he spent his first days contending with demons. The stories of the Desert Fathers often speak of such spiritual wrestling in the solitude of the cell. It is not, however, a case of some poor Christian on retreat being mugged by evil spirits. It is that in solitude we find ourselves utterly and solely reliant on God. In that reliance is all the power necessary to contend with principalities and powers.
This gives us our third Waymark, our third principle: The call to solitude is not a corrective but an aspect of wholeness. It is not a case of needing a break, of recharging our batteries. It is a necessary part of the reality of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
It’s important to note that in the Gospels this kind of contention occurs but once, and that at the beginning. When Cuthbert retreated to Inner Farne, it was at the start of his stay that he engaged in spiritual warfare. In truth, such encounters are not characteristic of the movement to solitude. Rather these episodes are preserved to provide us with a more general warning.
We live in a noisy world. It is not uncommon to surround ourselves with some form of entertainment from the moment we arise to the moment we fall asleep. For many years radio alarm clocks have provided us with a button that allows us to fall asleep to the sound of the radio, finally turning itself off after a set amount of time.
We tune in to morning TV or radio while breakfasting. Our commute is often accompanied by sound tracks or talk radio. Our workplaces have music pumped out of the sound system. Our evenings are spent in front of the TV or the computer. Then at last we retire, setting the radio alarm to lull us to sleep with even more noise.
As bad as that sounds, the worst sign of our problem has been around for sometime as well. I remember watching a television commercial many years ago, shortly after the Sony Walkman had been introduced. In the commercial a young couple were hiking through a beautiful wilderness. Cool forest, bright meadow, rippling brook all combined to give a sense of an idyllic paradise. I could imagine the voice of the birds and the croak of the frogs and the chirrups of the insects and the song of the stream. I could imagine it, but in the commercial you couldn’t hear it. What you heard instead was some country music star singing: “You stomped on my heart and you mashed that sucker flat.” Well, at least I think those were the words. The commercial was for a local country music station. The young couple was walking through the wilderness with Sony Walkmans plugged in and tuned to the station. Every fiber of my being cried out: this is insane! But the battle was lost before it began.
Today the Sony Walkman is old technology, long passed by the MP3 player and the IPod. The problem the Walkman created is the same: we can carry our noise with us anywhere. When we first release ourselves into the movement to solitude we may leave the technological sound track of modern life behind us, but we bring our minds full of the things we should have been thinking over, sorting out, rejoicing over, grieving about but we never gave ourselves the silence to think.
Just as Jesus first dealt with the Evil One before solitude could become a place of refuge, just as Cuthbert did battle with the demons before Inner Farne could be a place of solitude, so we must train our minds to quiet. I note in your schedule that on this retreat you are devoting an hour and a half each morning to the Discipline of Silence with an option to continue that discipline during track specific time in the afternoon. All of that is good and necessary. It is also, if I may be so bold, risky.
Morton Kelsey, in his book The Other Side of Silence, tells a story of a businessman who was seeing a therapist because of increasing anxiety. The therapist told him to spend an hour each day alone. At the next session the businessman said that there had been no change in his condition. The therapist asked him about the hours of solitude. So the businessman said he would go to his study with the newspaper or a book and spend the hour in quiet. The therapist remarked that the instruction had been to be alone: no newspaper, no magazine, and no book – just alone. Just spend the time with yourself. The businessman was horrified at the thought. “I’m the last person on earth I’d want to spend time with.”
I’ve also noted that during your time on this retreat that you have spiritual companions with whom you meet. In our Community such companions are essential to our Way of Life. We call such companions our “soul friends” and part of their task is to help us prepare for the movements into solitude. The soul friend was essential in the lives of the Celtic saints and in the lives of the desert fathers and mothers. If you have not yet trained yourself to silence, make use of your companion faithfully for that person is your key ally in dealing with what you may find in the silence.
That is the last Waymark, the last principle I share this evening: The call to solitude is deceptively difficult in our culture. Solitude is not necessary solitary.
As I mentioned earlier, the path from the English mainland to the island of Lindisfarne was not always paved. The villagers and pilgrims would walk across the sands at low tide, but not all of the sands were safe. A series of posts were placed to mark the safe way from engagement to solitude and from solitude to engagement. There may be other posts, other Waymarks you will learn about on this retreat or in your path of discipleship. I think these four I’ve shared tonight make a good beginning.

First Waymark: The active life and contemplative life are not mutually exclusive.
Second Waymark: Most all of us have a natural inclination. Recognize your own and adjust your path accordingly.
Third Waymark: The call to solitude is not a corrective but an aspect of wholeness.
Fourth Waymark: Solitude is not necessary solitary.

Weaving Cords

2006-06-16T16:33:00.000-06:00

Ten years ago my friend Michael Mitton published a book in the UK: Restoring the Woven Cord. It was picked up in the US by Twenty-Third Publications and printed with the title: The Soul of Celtic Spirituality In the Lives of Its Saints. (What WERE they thinking!?) The thesis of the book was his personal journey of weaving. It was not a weaving of cloth, but of strands of his spiritual life. He found a model in the lives of Celtic Christian saints from the 4th-11th centuries - not a perfect model by any means, but a certainly more useful than the models of Christian discipleship he found in contemporary Christian bodies.

Michael's journey parallelled my own. In 1993, a chance conversation netted me an invitation to a symposium on "Celtic Christianity: Roots for Renewal" being held in the UK in March 1994. That symposium introduced a new ministry, The St. Aidan Trust, and a new community, The Order of St. Aidan. As I read the elements of the Aidan Way of Life I knew I'd found what I had been searching for over the last quarter century. The result of that encounter led to the establishing of the Trust and the Order in the USA.

There's a great deal more to the story, and I'll probably deal with that in future postings. In the meantime, it's a sort of introduction to why this blog exists. Taking a style of Christianity that flourished in an agrarian and tribal society and applying it to an urban, individualistic world is no mean task. However, the hunger for wholeness drives us relentlessly, so far yielding some fairly encouraging results. These too I want to share.

Not being a very disciplined writer, creating a blog has intimidated me for some time. I've decided to risk it as a) I need to sort out what's going on and b) there are a fair number of our community who might want to chime in and c) just about everything useful I've learned in the last half century I've learned from listening to others. Till the next post...

The Holy Three in One guard and keep you.

Jack Stapleton+
St. Aidan Trust