Retreat

Currently on retreat at Holy Trinity Abbey, New Norcia, about 150 km north of Perth.
I am spending a lot of down time - reading, chatting and internet browsing!
Strangley, all of these things are a preperation for prayer, both my private prayers, and joining with those of the monks in the divine office. Slowing down means less over thinking - as those who know me well are all too aware I over do..
What a change from wanting to pray so desperately that it was all effort and no grace, all me and not God...

Lovely too, that community member Linda, who works in New Norica, was here at the same time.

At lunch with the monks yesterday, we were privelaged to share the table with Terry Waite, the Anglican priest who spent 5 years as a kidnapped hostage of the PLO. A very gracious man with an open heart and a wonderfully healed perspective on his ordeal. Honestly, the people you meet in monasteries!

[prayer]

[terry waite]

[monastery]

Civility and Language

I wrote this in one sitting.
It’s probably heresy or just plain flawed…

How do you “speak” as a Christian?
How do I “speak” as a Christian?
How is this any different to a “Non Christian”?
Does it make a difference any way?

Maggi Dawn writes on her blog beautifully about what it means to act and speak like a Christian, away from the “niceness” and “agreeing-ness” that characterises so much of our interactions in church .She met the all round interesting biblical scholar and church analyst John Drane, and managed to get to take him for a drink. Apparently he was pretty non-plussed until he heard her say something interesting and then launched in and began the conversation, without many of the usual social niceties (and Maggi, if you read this, I am happy to be corrected if I have miss represented your blog entry…)

We are all so bloody nice all the time that it negates the value of any passionate, vital discussion.

In community, this issue becomes vital of course. When sharing your life closely with others, being polite, being courteous, using your manners, all grease the wheels of community life. However (and a big one at that...), this shouldn’t stop us from speaking what we think, debating an issue, being passionate, being involved, bringing justice, loving others enough to do and say the hard things – and learning when to speak, when to not, and how much, or how little, to say.

Perhaps we also need to allow people to think out loud, to formulate ideas in relationship, without jumping down their throat if they are not us…

It reminds me of a story I heard about the German biblical scholar Gerald Von Rad (in Eugene Petersons book, Take and Read) that when asked to speak at a book club he avoided all small talk and preliminaries, speaking instead about Abraham, mystery, darkness, faith and prayer – all in 2 or 3 minutes! Whilst Peterson can’t remember what the specific content of his talk was, the impression he left lingered on. Von Rad chose his words to express what he wanted to say, no more, no less, and consequently opened the door to who he was.

The economy of our language, the content of what we say, the importance we attach to our words, and how we let them go, all identify our “Christlike – ness” and may well bring others to the table of faith.

Our Father Benedict says:
“ Take care to avoid speech that is evil and degenerate.
It is also well to avoid empty talk that has no purpose…”
(Rule of St Benedict, Chapter 4)
Seems worth a thought to me.

Community

Easy to say. Impossible to do apart from Grace.
I don’t say that flippantly. Experience bears us out.
What else could hold people together for 8 years and counting?
Friendship sure helps. So do meals and wine.
But sharing life closely has its ups and downs, its challenges and joys.
Marriage, children, job change, moving house, stress, all affect our relationships with one another and the way we gather.
On the other hand, we are lucky to travel together.
To have a group of people who really know you. Who care about you.
The children are lucky to share life closely outside of their immediate family.
Forgiveness is key –
Especially the forgiveness that comes with acceptance and letting go.
Being forgiven even before you stuff up is a gift beyond price.
Other communities have inspired us, and encouraged us.
Read about one here. Monkfish Abbey . Their offical site is here.

St Benedict

One of the main influences of our community has been the Benedictine Community of New Norcia. The men of the group started retreating there in 2000, and have continued visiting them, along with the ladies and others, ever since. We generally visit them for the Easter Vigil, and help with the liturgy as we are asked. It is a terrific time as we all live together in community for a few days in a beautiful old building, cooking, chilling, praying, chatting, drinking and caring for the children.

Our experience has been deepened by our relationship with Dom John (Hi!) who taught us much about prayer and life in the Benedictine way. He now runs the Dardanup House of Prayer, south of Perth, and browsing the chronicle on his site, has a vital and busy task bringing his wisdom to others.

Interestingly, we are not the only ones using St Benedict’s wisdom to support our community life. Grace community in London have recently run a Benedictine Spirituality night. They have posted some terrific resources here.

Some more on Benedictine Values in our community tomorrow

This blog is not dead

For all those wondering about what has happened since the departure of our resident artist, a small ditty inspired by (read ripped off from) Strong Bad from HSR;

The Pete man
Where did we go wrong?
It seems like only yesterday we were setting fire to Chris's underwear...
This one's for you man!

We cracked wise at the Pete,
For screwing up the jumble caper.
I hope we don't see his name in the paper,
In the obituariiiies,
'Cause that would mean that he's dead...

The Pete is not dead,
We're so glad the Pete is not dead.
Pete is not dead,
We're so glad the Pete is not dead.
Pete is not dead,
We're so glad the Pete is not dead.

(Apologies to the Brothers Chap and Strong Bad)

Miss you already the Pete (you squeaky guy you). Here's praying Tassie will be able to offer you all you expect and more. You'll always be a part of us even from a distance. We are all one in prayer no matter where we are.

MJ

Breakfast

One of our community rituals is Saturday morning breakfast out. Various combinations of us, including children, head to Leederville, and one of our favourite café’s for coffee(s) and breakfast.

Like all good ritual’s, it has along and varied history. It started as “Fat boy’s walking” when 4 or 5 men friends got together to walk, talk and breakfast. It was a special time and we all shared fairly deeply, and we often long for part of that time to come back.
But things change - marriages, babies, new homes – and these all changed the nature of our experience. Children started coming. We were more tired. Our wives and girlfriends wanted to come too (none of us had both simultaneously…). Now we all go, if we can, and start the weekend together before going our separate ways home, or to ballet, or shopping, or back to bed.

Our time is fairly short, we meet at 8:00 and are usually all gone by 9:30, but it is a stable fixture in our lives. I would go so far as to suggest that it is equally as important as our Wednesday night dinner and prayer times, in the sense that community is tangibly present, and that it is inclusive in that our children are part of it too. Coffee, of course, is a great equalizer now that the children can sip their Babycino’s along with our lattes, long Macs, and tea’s.

Now to theologise, how do we see Christ in our breakfast experience?
Simply a community gathered around a meal.
Choosing again to share life together – which requires constant choosing over other options.
As we share, plan, laugh, debate, we are drawing closer to each other, living out the spiritual experience of our Wednesday nights.

Perhaps others from the community have their own opinions?Chris

Ideas Ideas

Bit late last night, so in the vague hope of not embarrassing myself too much, here’s some sites which I regularly check out for my enjoyment,

Kairos Kisses: Andrew Dowsett's site. An adventure to find God’s place for him.
Maggi Dawn: Anglican priest in the UK. Ritual, Sermons, Theology. Great
Jonny Baker: Very experienced emerging church blogger from the UK. Great visual site with an awesome link and resources listing.
Steve Taylor: A local emerging church voice from NZ. His book “Outward bound
church” is fab.
Prodigal Kiwi’s: Another NZ site and one which is a fantastic array of spirituality, theology, reflection, politics and discussion. Good one lads!!

Check these sites out and let us know what you think.
Or leave a comment with your top faith sites to visit…
Chris

A New Year

Ok Ok Ok!
The emails have been unrelenting! Are you guys dead?? Has the community broken up? Is the sky falling down?

The answer to all of these is, of course - no! Although things are on the move. We sadly bid goodbye to Pete last week as he makes his way to Tasmania to pusue his art further. We will miss his art, his dry wit, and his adventures at Curtin uni. You can see more of his art here.

So the community has changed. Over the next few weeks I will try to blog daily as an experiment in "thinking out loud theologically" about our community life and how God is seen and present in it. Hopefully other members of the community will join the discussion, as hopefully will you dear reader.

Some themes which spring to mind are silence, meals, children, breakfast, wine, retreat, monks. Any more ideas??

Advent

Things are winding up and down simultaneously in the west. Wnding up as the Christmas period and all the ensuing mayhem really hit full throttle, and winding down as school ends and people generally slow down for the next few months.

Our prayertime and community life always reflect this in Late November and the whole of Decemeber. We are tired, frantic and disconnected from ourselves, and often each other. Often it is little more than we can cope with to share a meal, some laughter and wine, a brief moment of prayer and silence, and then return to our lives. Jason and Rachel are having a new baby soon, so they must be really feeling it!

This year, we have used a few resources from the Bread for the world site. They have a terrifc selection of prayers for Advent which focus on the less wealthy, the less fortunate and the less able. We will use one of their evening prayers this evening to stimulate us from our weariness.

If you read this, pray for us. We need it.

Weddings, Parties, Anything

The last few weeks have been a blur of opposities: Preparing for Matt and Linda's Wedding, My Dad critically ill in hospital, Running Sunday School, Writing Reports, Coralie Away, End of year exams for some, Buisness Hassles, Great food at Bible Study, Baptisms, Music - It all seems to have been happening.

What binds us, is our prayer life. Matt keeps on turning up for Prayers on Monday night (and a G and T) with Shelle. Wednesday night usually has 7 or 8 of us at least. We seem to keep on making it to church on the weekend (somehow). That in itself is a blessing. We are lucky we hjave each other - so lucky I don't think we realise it sometimes. This weekend we all head north for the wedding. Bring it on.

Chris

Community life

I have been enjoying reading Andrew Dowsetts blog and this week he has written some interesting stuff on being a community which is incarnational (christlike) vs attractional (join us 'cos you like what you see) . Got me thinking about Transfiguration and what we are doing. Where do we sit on this dicotomy? I suspect that all communities are neither one nor the other, they are a combination of both in varying degrees. We have at our heart the incarnational model, we are trying to be christlike, to live out the new kingdom, to be God's family. On the other hand we are liturgical which is attractional by nature -come and see and join in. If our liturgical life is leading us to deeper incarnational relationship then great, but if it becomes a sole means of "look at us!!" then we are off beam. The reality is that we swing between these poles with no trouble at alland more importantly, it gives us life.

Lets continue an ongoing conversation about this nature of our community by commenting below!!

with love

Chris

Holidays

Happy birthday to Matt and Linda for this month.
Chris, Coralie and Shelle away in NZ for a few weeks - see the link at ayearslife opposite.
Hope the rest of our community family are well.
Can you see the tree ?? This is the view form our home in Nelson, NZ.

World

As we have continued our study of St Francis, we have been encouraged and challenged to intersect our faith with the issues confronting us on a local and global level. Hurricance Katrina was high on the agenda this week, and particularly the terrible portrayl of humanity which was chronicled afterwards. We discussed the need to become more loving, more forgiving, more selfless, more human so that we can truly reach out to others from our centre. As we considered the future of the three, soon to be four, children in our group, the issues became more imporatnt and focused, encourging local community transformation and stronger positions.

Pete and Moid were off doing their thing, but given the weather it was a miracle any of us got together!

Last night was one of those nights when everyone seemed really really tired it is funny when one of us feels tired we all seem to be in the same boat! We shared a fabulous meal at the Smiths- thanks Jas and really just sat and chatted over the meal (and a couple of bottles of fine red wine!). We missed Coralie who has not been well and thank God that she is on the mend, Chris joined us late after visiting Eliza's school for Father's night. We talked about the Taize service a few of us attended last Wed at the Cathederal and the Taize service we ran at St Phillips on Sunday evening.
Due to the tiredness and long meal we opted to have a social evening and chat instead of a more formalised study- I thing it is these types of evenings that keep us together and so strong. It is funny how the conversation does always seem to come back to Church no matter where the conversation has gone in between time!!!!
We continue to pray for Coralie's continued healing, Jason's healing, for Pete, Moid and Karen and Michelle and their families who have recently lost Grandparents.
God bless
I hope you all have a good week,
Shelle :)

August Taize at St Philip's

Thankyou all so much for Taize Sunday evening.

I was feeling pretty weary and as we worshipped it was as though the Lord
just lifted me into his presence and allowed me to rest there; no agendas,
no work to do, nothing to think about, just being with him. For me this was
a huge [and somewhat unexpected gift] for which I thank you and Him.

I really appreciated the simple music from the back
I found it haunting and it helped me connect with the simplicity of the
occasion.

To you all once again Thanks.
Malcolm

Taize Funeral

Last night the community was pleased to assist at the ecumenical memorial service for Br. Roger. It was a time of great beauty and peace, St Georges Cathederal almost full.
The title of this entry will take you to the Taize page of photos and text from the funeral.

Brother Roger

Brother Roger of Taize

R.I.P

While we met last night, more importantly we awoke to the news that last night Brother Roger, founder of the Taize community, was slain by a mentally deranged woman during Vespers.
We share the shock of the entire world, especially our monastic brothers and sisters , including our good friend from Taize, Brother Gishlan.
The community will offer prayers for the Taize Community through the week.
For more information link here

If you wish to leave a comment about Taize, please do so and I will forward it to them for their book of rememberence.

The Moid Link

Fo you Moid! Email here

Art

Shrine, 2004, (installation view)

Art by community member, Peter.

Anniversary

Although we have been meeting together for the last 7 years - can you believe it? - last night we celebrated our First anniversary as the Transfiguration Community. To mark this occasion, we made promises, not vows, to support our community life. Here is what we promised:

We will honor:

The light of our Benedictine Heritage.
May we always value silence, stillness and prayer

The light of Hospitality.
May we always nourish one another.

The light of Relationship.
May we always remember to value one another, married or Single.

The light of compassion.
May we always be generous in our care for one another.

The light of work.
May we always value each others occupations and activities.

The light of our children.
May we always see them as gifts from God.

The light of faithfulness
May we continue to be faithful to our community life.

The light of honesty
May we continue to share with humor and truthfulness.

The light of Openness.
May we always be open to the work of the Spirit within us.

The light of newness
May our minds not be closed to the adventure of faith.

And our thanks to you who read this webpage and support us with prayer.
May God continue to bless you.
Chris