The excluded

Well, I’ve made it through my first twenty four hours as a fully prayed-up member of a French monastic community. I was up at the crack of dawn and found the church locked and inaccessible, I was about to go back to bed when someone opened it, so I went back and another day began behind the rope.

It is a really strange feeling to observer worship from afar, struggling to catch the chanted word in a foreign language. There is very little concession made for external participants like me, even though they are intrigued that ‘un pretre anglicain d’Angleterre’ (I can't work out how to do accents int he blogo-o-sphere) should be with them and I am clearly an object of some fascination.

At communion today, though, the rope was drawn back. There were about 50 other ‘normal’ worshippers with me, and the whole thing was much like an ordinary church. It felt bizarre to be welcome, somehow.

It does make me wonder about our identity in worship. To what extent is it right to separate ourselves and how far should we go to include the visitor? How far is prayer about an established community expressing itself, and how far is it about embracing those who are not yet part of the family?

My heart is with the latter, but I do wonder. Is there a place, even a need for both? I shall continue to ponder.

The pain of the prophet

I have a dreadful confession to make.

In November I realised that I would have a journey by myself across France which would take hours and hours and hours. I knew that I would need something to help pass the time, so I downloaded the podcasts of ‘The Archers’ from BBC Radio 4 and didn’t listen to any of them. I thought it was as good an audio story as any to listen to as I crawled across the European mainland.

I always knew that it would be irritating to have the journey interrupted every 14 minutes by a double rendition of “Du du der, du du du dah…” and I was right. However it was something else entirely that took me completely by storm.

You see, I caught the news on Radio 4 over the New Year. ‘The Archers’ was 600 years old, or something, and there was a big episode to celebrate. I was listening to the ‘Today’ programme when the editor of the ‘The Archers’ gave away that Nigel had died when he fell from the roof of his stately home.

This meant that, as I listened to six weeks’ worth of programmes I knew that Freddie and Lily were about to lose a father and Elizabeth about to be widowed. It was excruciating. Each interaction became an ordeal; how would they have coped if they had known?

I entitled this post ‘the Pain of the Prophet’, but of course that’s not right. Prophecy rarely predicts the future. It delivers the heart of God, His insight, warning, invitation or rebuke. The future is not for us to know…

I am not sure if we could cope if we did.

Strange to leave

Today has been a strange day. Early in the morning various alarms went off and people started to bash around the chalet preparing to catch an early bus to the airport. I wasn’t due to leave until later as I was driving so I wandered down to wave them off and then, after freezing in the early Alpine morning while they loaded up, wandered back.

The building which had been home to a community of 12 was now empty, and will probably never house that community again. I packed stuff away, emptied bins, checked for things that had been left, and did some last bits of cleaning, and as I wandered around I could still see and hear the various group members with their own different ways of being and doing.

Some time in the car, and now I am in a monastery, with another community, but how different it is. In the first we were friends, we all belonged. We spoke the same language, shared similar humour and were together for a common task. Here I am an outsider. I am foreign, I speak a different language, I am a man and I am in different holy orders.

When I join them in the chapel, which is beautiful by the way (I tried to sneak this photo even though I am not meant to), I have to sit behind a rope at the back and then they all process in and chant in French without announcing readings or Psalms. 

The action starts about ten minutes before the service as a very ancient nun in a wheelchair enters and takes about 9 of the 10 minutes to get to her seat. It continues with various of them bobbing around doing this and that. I thought I was a bit of an expert on ecclesiastical procedure, but I sit there fascinated as to what is going to happen next.

It’s good to be here, but it is interesting to reflect again on fellowship. We were designed to be in community, both with God and others. Being an outsider is not a comfortable place to be, but for a while it gives space to reflect, to pray, to read and to write… and perhaps to learn more about what fellowship really is and where it is really rooted.

Fair game?

They hunt in packs, you know… they deliberately destroy the pistes and then block them by lying for a rest side by side across the entire breadth of the mountain.

Snow boarders can be a menace really. I mean, I know some and love them dearly, but they don’t board in groups of 327 and then hide round corners which they have deliberately scrubbed clean of snow so that an unexpecting group of skiers come slithering round clinging tentatively to life on the back of one ski desperately trying to remain vaguely upright and then find themselves with precisely 10.7mm of pistes left uncluttered by lounging boarders.

Neither do they slide ponderously slowly down long traverses and wait until the exact moment that some poor innocent skier has committed themselves to passing them several metres to their left and then decide that it’s time to jerk to the left with the elegance and predictability of a baboon on heat.

The question we have been pondering, therefore, as a group of skiers, is whether boarders are fair game. Is it justifiable to observe a prostrate boarder from afar and choose to turn vigorously just uphill, unfortunately causing a shower of snow which wouldn’t matter at all to anyone who was actually on their feet?

Unfortunately I have to come to the conclusion that I might be biased in this regard. I can see my favourite snowboard enthusiast’s face in my mind’s eye, and I know what he would say… and he’s right.

However many encounters we may have, they are just another tribe, having fun just like we are. I happen to be reading a book about Northern Ireland at the moment. It is salutary to think how quickly and unpredictably tribalism can escalate. Identity is good, but only with love. Love is patient, kind, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, and so on.

So… screw your courage to the sticking place and let’s go love some boarders…

The sound of silence

I found myself alone and still on the mountain the other day. It’s more unusual, at least in my experience, than you might think. I tend to ski with groups, and when I am not with others I tend to be heading off somewhere, which is why I have gone off on my own.

On this occasion, though, I was by myself and still… and the silence was almost physical. 

It was quite shockingly beautiful, and to my surprise I almost resented it when skiers shot past making noise that broke the peace. (I wasn’t surprised at all that the boarders broke the peace; they always do!)

It’s well known that Elijah fled to the mountain of God in fear and confusion and when there witnessed earthquake, wind, and fire. “But God was not in [them]”, the text says. “Then came the sound of silence” is how it goes on, although it is usually translated as “a still small voice”.

What am I working towards? Some say that all silence is holy, but this patently cannot be true. The silence of the lonely is a mocking expression of pain. The silence of the mortuary is a constant reminder of our mortality. Silence is, at one level, simply an absence of noise and as such is morally neutral.

It is, however, often a moment of respite in a mad, noisy, and demanding world. This, in itself is deeply precious. I love the silence of home after a long drive, for example. I lie in bed and can still hear the drumming of the tyres on the road, but am at peace in the knowledge that it is but a memory.

Silence, however, can be more. It is a space in which we can search, and find God. Or, more accurately, it is a space in which we can recognise that God is on the hunt for us, and respond as He finds us. 

Silence is precious, it is beautiful, not merely as a gift in its own right, but because of the one who inhabits it and will meet us if we dare to raise our eyes.

The lost sheep

Intermittent web access means I am rather losing track of time, blogwise, but yesterday we managed to lose one of the group. We were skiing together in the afternoon, shepherding along those who had only begun skiing the day before. All was going swimmingly well, until someone failed to stop at a junction and skiid off down the wrong piste.

I knew where we were going, so I showed someone else the simple way home that I had planned to take, and bombed off after the lost sheep of the group.

He hadn’t stopped at the next junction either. I assumed he had carried on along the same piste and shot from red-topped man to red-topped man, with junctions flying by on the left and the right. He was nowhere to be seen, and as I approached a lift I worked out that I have less than a 5% chance of finding him, with all the options that had come up for changing route.

So I abandoned him.

I felt bad, mind you, but what else could I do? The lifts were not far off closing, and I still had to traverse most of the mountain. I figured he would find a route back, or if the worst came to the worst he would get a taxi or bus from whatever resort he ended up in at the bottom of the piste.

WWJD? You’ve seen the bracelets, but what would Jesus have done then? The good shepherd abandoned the 99 and went and found the one. I left the 6 and tried to find the one, but he couldn’t be found. He is an adult and chose his own route, and got back in the end.

I wonder how God feels about us choosing to be alone, though? He’s better at finding us, but allows us the respect of making our own choices.

Content Adult

I mentioned before about the range of ability in the group of us skiing. A couple of the guys came back on the first day saying that they had skied the whole area and were going to drive off and use other resorts. One of the group, in particular, was pleased to have got back alive having slithered tentatively round the local slopes.

Being somewhere in the middle, I wonder who is happier?

Part of me looks back to the process of learning to ski with nostalgia. It was fun and exciting. Part of me looks at the experts with green-tinged-goggles.

Actually, though, I am just loving what I am able to do. It really doesn’t matter to me what others can find to enjoy, in the sense that there is plenty for all. I am content; and that is a real gift.

I think it is a discipline that I need to practise, and I suspect I am not alone. Contentment in all things is a gift, a discipline and an art. Yet what is true here is true in life, isn’t it? There is so much in which we can take joy if we choose to.

We took our children to stay in a shanty town in South Africa last year. My daughter pulled me over to her at one point and quietly asked me why the children were smiling so much. I could see her logic. They have so little and in their place we would be utterly dejected and miserable. What have they to celebrate.

Yet, of course, they have something we have so often lost: the gift of joy in what they have rather than misery at what they don’t.

Contentment… now there’s a thing.

A ship of fellows

What an interesting day; skiing with twelve men, some of them strangers others known to me because we have been part of the same church for four years. More than that, the ability in the group ranges from absolute beginner to expert, from the ‘I-can-get-down-hills-it’s-just-that-I-am-on-my-bottom’ club to the the ‘ski-so-fast-the-snow-melts behind-me’ brigade.

As usual, though, everyone wants it to work, and we naturally spit into three groups who skied together in the morning, and then a larger group messed around on the slopes in the afternoon. 

It does make me realise, though, that what passes for fellowship in the church, very often is nothing of the kind. You’re always going to get to know people better when you come away with them, but I find that I basically know those in the group with whom I have worked in different roles in the church. Just sitting alongside people in the pews and shaking hands in the peace is not fellowship.

I wonder: do we expect to have fellowship with too many people? Have we lost the wisdom of being deeply rooted and deeply content with the gift of fellowship with a few? I’ve been thinking more about contentment, but maybe I’ll come back to that another day.  I wonder if we would be more content, more peaceful, more joyful, more at peace if we learned to be close to a few rather than wanting the thrill and stimulation of everything that everyone has to offer. Jesus, after all basically invested in twelve men didn’t He?

Twelve men… now there’s a thought. It doesn’t say they ever went skiing, though does it??

Nous sommes arrive... je pense

Nous sommes arrivé!

The first bit of the plan has come together. My journey across France alone with my trusty old Landrover has gone swimmingly well and I arrived on schedule in the Alps, closely followed by eleven other blokes with whom I will ski for the next week.

The strange thing, though, is that they all speak English. I mean, I know that is not strange really, but I have been so psyching myself up to have to survive in French that I have found myself thinking of French words this afternoon even though I don’t need to. Moreover, I have been doing the talking to the French people, despite the fact that the last time I practiced was over twenty years ago.

I don’t say this to give the impression that I am anywhere near fluent. All the people I have spoken to know I am English, and two days ago most of them replied to me in English. Yesterday, though, no-one did. I lay in bed last night and realised I had conducted the whole day in a foreign language. And today I find that I am not embarrassed to talk my school-boy French in front of friends.

Being among people fluent in a different language, even for a day, has changed me. Perhaps just a little, but it has changed me.

Years ago I invited Chris Bowater to lead an event for me in Durham. We gave him tea beforehand chez nous, and I remember him saying over the dinner table, “if you want to grow in a spiritual gift then you should hang around people who use that gift well.” It’s the same thing really. If you want to enjoy rugby hand around rugby fans, to speak French hang around French speakers, to be holy hang around truly holy people.

Perhaps in matters spiritual we will always speak with an accent, or walk with a limp, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn. And in learning we find ourselves in some beautiful places. Here’s a picture of Big Mandy (as the Landrover is called) with the view I shall wake up to tomorrow morning.

The importance of being real

Well, this has been my view for eight hours today. 420 miles of French roads at an average speed of just over 50 mph in an old diesel Landrover…

It’s made me think about my sense of self importance. I would never normally give myself time just to sit and think for eight hours. Even days off work have a list of things that must get done, and the truth is that there is never enough time. But today, all I could do was sit still as the countryside rolled by on shockingly expensive French toll roads.

Yesterday I had a problem. I realised I had not activated ‘roaming’ on my mobile phone, so I could not receive any texts that my family sent me. I asked my wife to ring the mobile provider and activate it for me. She did, but they wouldn’t. Apparently only I can do it, even though she knows the answers to all my security questions. I had to ring them from France and do it myself… which is easier said than done. I tried and failed and was a bit stuck. When talking to my son on Skype he suggested that he ring the mobile operator free on his PAYG phone, as he’s on the same network, and then put the phone on loudspeaker next to the computer. I was about to dismiss the idea; I was tired and did not really want to bother, when I realised I had nothing to lose by trying and lots to gain.

It worked - what a strange world we live in, though, where I can sit in France on a free internet link to England and talk to someone in India on a free mobile phone call.

I have reflected on that today. Why should me being tired make me assume that only I can come up with solutions to my problems, and that a boy can’t do what I can’t do. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t get more done if I tried to do less.

Ironically the man from India reinforced this. He turned on my roaming feature and then informed me of the charges. £14.02 per minute to receive a call in France, he said and £28.08 to make one.

"Surely not?" I queried, I was sure it should be less than that. Several times he asked me why I thought he would lie to me. This was his job, he knew the figures. Then I found the website for the phone company. I assured him that it was probably just me being confused, but asked him to clarify why the website said it was 14.2 and 28.8 pence respectively. He had to go and find out, but did find out that the website was right and he was wrong. Mildly frustrating, but not a big issue. It helped me today in reflecting that there are often things that get seen better by those who have a looser grip on the value of their own insight.

Now to try and live it...

Setting Sail

Just one more post for today, seeing as it is the first day of this blog. (Don't expect this every day, though: not every monastery will be as high-tech as this one and have wifi (or as the French say "wee-fee" - I thought that meant pay-as-you-go loos, but there you go))


Anyway; it has been a strange day. It is hard to leave family as fantastic as mine are behind for any length of time, and this really hit me as I set sail from Calais. The drive down had been OK, but I find when I have a long journey with a deadline looming that I focus on getting there. This was particularly true as I was driving my old Landrover on our first long journey together (more in later blogs I suspect). I got to Dover and it was amazingly efficient; after a moment to change voicemail messages and stick things on the headlights I was embarked and ready to go.


With barely a bellow of fumes we set sail, and I was abroad; sailing into the unknown.


In that moment, I found myself praying... I want to journey into the undiscovered country which God has for me. I am not sure I want to live there yet as too much of me likes what I know, but I do want to explore, to grow, to travel and to learn.


A clear picture today, I suspect, of what could be a daily prayer. How will I respond, though, when God answers it? And what will it make me into?

Here we go

On 19th January 2010 a lonely Vicar from North Yorkshire sets off on his first ever sabbatical... and now pauses on night one in a French monastery to reflect.


The plan is to spend a week skiing with 6 other men from Holy Trinity to ease me into the discipline of slowing down, reading, praying, building and writing. Then some time in more French monasteries, to establish a rhythm of prayer in a language which is not my own. I am deeply aware of my own 'over-familiarity with my own idea of prayer' and need to address it.


Familiarity, it seems to me, is much like oxygen. Without it we simply could not survive. Being in France opens my eyes to how much energy it takes to cope in unfamiliar settings. This evening, for example I needed to eat, but arrived at the Abbaye de Saint Vaast after the evening meal had been served. I wandered into the stunning beautiful town centre (see photo) and walked around the multitude of restaurants for ages before feeling sure enough of myself to commit to walking in. Were I with friends, in other words carrying my familiarity with me, I would have chosen quicker and approached with more confidence.


However, familiarity, like oxygen has another side. Oxygen is highly toxic when taken to a partial pressure of more than 1.6. In other words, if you were to breath pure oxygen from a SCUBA tank when you were more than 6 metres under water you would die. It's true, google it and see. Familiarity, similarly, can blind us, cut us off, and inure us to the very things that we would love the most. I am sure, for example, that I noticed more of Arras tonight because I was alone and a little uncomfortable.


When it comes to praying, familiarity, or at least over familiarity should come with a health warning. God cannot and will not be tamed, yet so often my prayer seems to do exactly that. Pray with me, that this time will be a time of breaking out of the mo(u)ld and discovering the beauty, freshness, power and grace of our wild God.