Retirement Blog Three

Contemplating Contemplation

(Transcript of Lent Lunch Talk at Shrewsbury Abbey 2019)

What are the three most common questions when we meet someone for the first time?

What’s your name, where do you come from and what do you do?

A quick glance at our surnames will often tell you that this has been so for quite a number of years.

Surnames like, Fletcher, Butcher, Baker, Arrowsmith, Coffin, Smith, Carter.

Why do we continue to ask the question about what people do meaning, invariably, their job or profession?

So what then happens when we no longer have a job – how are we to be defined then?

Richard Rhor has written a very helpful book called 'Falling Upwards: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.'

In his recent blog reflecting on this he wrote this about his own father…

‘In the second half of life, we start to understand that life is not only about doing; it’s about being. I remember going home to Kansas after my father had just retired at age sixty-five. For thirty-six years, he had painted trains for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. Daddy grew up very poor during the Depression and the dust storms of western Kansas.

In his generation, of course, a job was something you valued deeply; and once you got it, you weren’t going to lose it. He never missed a day of work in all those years. He turned on the lights every morning, they told us.

After he retired, my father cried in my arms and said, “I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know who I am. . . . Pray with me, pray with me.” Here I was a grown-up man, a priest, supposed to be strong for my father. I didn’t know how to do it. I guess I said the appropriate priestly words. But I didn’t know how to guide him into the second half of life, and he was begging for a guide.’

I am retiring this coming June and so this is all very real and something I am processing and reflecting on deeply.

And strange as it may seem my Church Army uniform is playing a key part in all of this.

For several years now Church Army have been downplaying its militaristic image and dropping off uniforms and from 2020 the titles of Captain’s and Sisters is being slowly phased out.

In 2017 we changed our logo and colour of what is termed Church Army casual attire.  We are not supposed to be wearing the apparel I most often wear, a blue polo shirt and blue sweat shirt.

When I first joined Church Army in 1978 most Officers wore a grey battle dress uniform. In the 80’s this began to be replaced by casual wear. First it was maroon, then green, then blue and today black, white or grey.

Life in ministry is a very peculiar thing and the edges between life, leisure and work or ministry is very blurred.

It was also confusing for our three children because daddy worked at home as well as going out and about.

So, when was daddy available and able to take us to the park or read with us or whatever?

When was daddy ‘off duty’?

So I took to nearly always wearing something Church Army when I was on duty.  That helped the children understand that dad might be available but then again he might not – but if he didn’t have his Church Army gear on he was fully available.

It also has helped me make a switch on my day off and on holidays.

So, the Church Army is no longer a unformed organisation. 

I can if I want wear a Church Army polo shirt and fleece with our new style logo.

After 30 years of wearing 'uniform' is will feel very odd when it comes to retirement.  

And without it who will I be then? Where will be my identity?

I will no longer be the Mission and Growth Partner in the Staffordshire Episcopal Area in the Diocese of Lichfield – so what and who will I be?

And in some ways I can trace this question way back to 1965/66 when I was 14/15.

I began to have an adolescent angst about my mortality and in particular dying unknown, as a non-event.

My own father was killed in a road traffic accident when I was just turned six.

In keeping with the time he was laid to rest in our front room with the coffin lid off.

My abiding memory isn’t so much of dad laid there, but his coffin lid standing at the side with his name the date of his birth and the date of his death.

Was that it – he was born on and then died on!

So it’s a story for another time, but on the same day the already famous Gordon Banks was in goal for England at Wembley, July 30^th 1966, I set off to Newmarket to sign on an Apprentice Jockey.

I was hoping to become famous  so that when I died people would speak of me and remember me.

Ten years on and not at all famous and now working for Spillers as an Animal Technician I came to meet David who was a Christian of the type I had not met before – a born again type.

Again cutting to the chase I went to work at Spillers on the 4^th March 1974 and David and God got to work and in November David gave me a Bible of my own.

In that Bible I discovered Colossians 3.3…

‘For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’

I came to realise that I needed to die to all my own ambitions, all my striving and worrying about being famous – because God loved me and had an amazing plan for my life.

I didn’t need my name in headlines or anywhere other than the Lamb’s Book of Life.

On the 1^st January 1975 I made a New Years’ Resolution to become a Christian.

That eventually took me to into joining the Church Army in August 1978 as I mentioned earlier. I was appointed as Warden/Manager of a Conference and Holiday Centre in Central London.

And that has kept me busy serving first in Luton, then up the North East in Prudhoe. This was followed by sixteen months unemployed.  

Again one of those times when you can easily become a ‘nobody.’

I was eventually appointed as East Wivelshire Deanery Evangelist in the Truro Diocese. After five years that ministry extended out to cover the whole of the diocese.

From there after ten years I traveled along the coast to Brighton and took up a post as Diocesan Evangelist in the Chichester Diocese.

Nine years there and time for another move as the diocesan underwent radical restructuring.

So, we moved to Stafford in January 2015. 

During the time I was in London I took the opportunity to visit as many different types of Churches as I could, from the very high Anglo-Catholic, to Holy Trinity Brompton, All Souls Langham Place and many others.

I reveled in the wonderful admixture of the sacramental, the charismatic and evangelical fervour. I joined the Anglo-Catholic Charismatic movement that met in Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral. Later on this month I will be attending a Conference with an off-shoot of that group, called ‘On Fire Mission.’

I also visited various Religious Houses and Monasteries like Pricknash Abbey.  

I was and still am very attracted to this way of community life.  In particular I discovered silence and contemplation and those all too rare occasions when time simply disappears when in a state of deep meditation and contemplation.

And now as I move towards retirement I find that craving for silence and stillness almost as a kind of painful desire within me that I find hard to express in words.

And as I look towards older, older age, should God grant me the years, I am contemplating contemplation.

We know that many people of all ages suffer from chronic loneliness, which is a little bit of a puzzle considering we have never been so well connected through social media, Skype, etc.

But this tells me of the deep desire to see, touch, taste and smell other human’s beings because we are social animals. There are a few who desire the solitary life but not many

So we have this deep human need for companionship, someone to sit alongside us. And yet for a whole raft of reasons many people, particularly the elderly, find themselves living isolated and alone.

What I wonder, and this is what Richard Rhor and others seem to be suggesting, is that if we have cultivated a life of prayer, of contemplation, of being very comfortable with ourselves and within ourselves.  If we are at ease in the world, not overly troubled and anxious, if we can learn in the first half of life that we are known and loved of God. That our names are carved on the palms of God’s hand. Then in the second half of life we can begin to learn to live with open hands and hearts and letting go of everything.  Because the reality is that in the end that is exactly what we all will face – giving up everything, even our own bodies, breath and life itself.

Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace:  

  your word has been fulfilled.

My own eyes have seen the salvation  

  which you have prepared in the sight of every people;

A light to reveal you to the nations  

  and the glory of your people Israel.

I don’t know but I am hopeful that should the time come when I find myself alone I will be at peace, knowing that I am never alone with God. Knowing that through practice I can enter into the Scriptures, enter into prayer, and enter into deep communion with God.

And I appreciate that all requires a certain mental alertness that may not be present.

And yet if you engage with those who sufferer mental loss, particular those who recited the Lord’s Prayer in their earlier years, prayers like that become a remembered touch stone.

Therefore I am keen to journey deeper into contemplation and keen to help others make a similar journey.

I am hopeful that I am laying down a familiar pathway I can walk along as I journey towards the great release, the ultimate time of open handedness.

I might have this all wrong – I just don’t know and over lunch I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

But for now I would like to take us into contemplation in the style of St Ignatius and Scriptural imaginings.

Feeding of the 5,000 Mark 6: 34 -44

Can you hear the lapping of the waves in the distance?

The grass is green and spring is in the air

What do you see – what do you smell

What do you notice?

What else can you hear?

You notice an anxious look of the faces of the disciples and many arms waving across the huge crowd. You see Jesus smiling in a kindly and almost playful manner.

Now the disciples are bringing something to him and they have also found several baskets which they put down in front of Jesus who is still smiling.

You see Jesus stand up, lift up one of the baskets and pray.

Then the miracle happened – fish and bread simply kept multiplying and with incredible ease and efficiency the great crowd was organised into groupings, with each offered a basket of fish and bread to share.

Very soon musical instruments appeared and spontaneous music and dancing began to break out everywhere – people shouting, the Lord, the Lord the Lord has visited His people.

Now after the wondrous and joyful celebration hear everyone slipping away with many a loud cry of jubilation and promises to live better lives in love and care for each other.

But you remain still and quiet – with an occasional nod at friends and family as they pass by.

You notice Jesus’ disciples are busy organizing everybody safely away, hurrying up children to catch up with their parents.

Jesus however remains sat on a small boulder.

Gradually everything grows quiet and there is only you and Jesus sat there.

He looks at you sitting there and beckons you over.

You get up and walk gently towards Jesus who is smiling and welcoming you.

You sit down in front of Jesus.

What do you want to say to Jesus?

What does Jesus want to say to you?

A prayer of abandonment Brother Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) that expresses openness and intention to give up control to God in the middle of life, even before our physical death:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me
and in all your creatures—

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.