Poasis

Gospel as Kids Musical and Revelation Choir

2009-04-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

Plant Life...come touch & hear/ Caleb & Aaron Speller

2009-02-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Showing at The Ministry of Casual Living

1442 Haultain, Feb. 20th - 28th

Closing party with black and green tea,

Sat. Feb. 28th 10am - noon

Plant Life

We reserve places to walk through nature, and reserve places to destroy it. We inherently protect bits and pieces of it while we naturally battle against its confines. Our relationship with plants enlivens our senses by creating endless experiences and questions. We connect with their textures, patterns, and fragrances; we are shaded from the sun by them, while we eat their leaves.

Plant Life gives the viewer a physical, visual and, auditory connection with nature. A pathway made of dirt leads the viewer to a few drawings, the first of which are lushly exaggerated representations of nature. Further along the path lies a portrait of Dede, an Indonesian who has been dubbed Tree-man due to his curse of having bark-like warts grow all over his body. Individual soundscapes, reworked from Stevie Wonders Album Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, spread throughout the space and pay tribute to natures persistent melodic hum.

Plant Life is an art show which can be seen, felt, and listened to.

ART BY

caleb speller

SOUNDSCAPES BY

aaron speller

Check these for more!

www.calebshows.blogspot.com
www.calebart.blogspot.com
www.calebceramics.blogspot.comler

street poet...The Mustard Seed, more than a food bank

2009-02-18T15:53:00.000-08:00

Gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

It turns what we have into enough.

And more!

It turns denial into acceptance.

Chaos into order.

Confusion into clarity.

It can turn a meal into a feast.

A stranger into a friend.

Gratitude makes sense of our past.

It brings peace for today,

and creates a vision,

For a better tomorrow.

by Al Kirkwood...poet, dumpster diver, Victoria BC.

Most will not even heard of the name Al Kirkwood, let alone even seen his face. Like his poetry, Al is unrefined, rough around the edges. The lines in his face look like they have been etched with a chisel, a road map revealing the many years of living rough on the street. Rough on the street, is an alley way, a storefront door way, under the blue bridge...your bag of earthly belongings your pillow, the sidewalk your bed mat. Al does have a routine to his life, he dumpster dives, recycles, sells what he finds and unbelievable, manages to even give some away to those in worse shape.

Al's a saint, with a love for Jesus...and alcohol. He does walk a narrow path, with deep ditches on each side that he tends to fall into from time to time. He is one of the most spiritual people I've met, he practices a kind of monasticism that baffles me.

The first time I met Al was down at The Seed. As our conversation unraveled, Al talked about writing and pulled open his back pack. It was filled with his life, not things...but words. There were note pads of all sizes, scraps of paper, napkins, pencils and pens. They were filled words, the mind, the heart and spirit of Al Kirkwood. Al spends literally most of his day writing poetry and short stories about life on the street, Jesus, God...alcohol, drugs, poverty...very raw. You might even call them, the Street Psalms, as there is dispair, sin, betrayal, pain, suffering, but there is also grace, redemption and hope.

Over the past year, with the help of friends, they've been typing out Al's words, trying to leave them as close to his as possible, with the hope they might be published.

Anyways we're hoping ( fingers crossed ) that Al will come to read his poetry for the benefit Sunday evening for the Mustard Seed. I say, fingers crossed because, remember the path with big ditches on each side...one never knows. Anyways, if Al doesn't show the honor falls upon me to read his words, and I don't say that lightly. To read the words of a poet, is read something that is deeply apart of them...most of Al's words come from a place I've never been.

So as I said above, there is a Mustard Seed benefit fundraiser this Sunday...here's the details.

The Mustard Seed...more than a food bank

Sunday February 22nd from 6:30pm til 8:30pm

Saanichton Bible Fellowship

( church ph.#- (250)-652-6311 or 652-6344 )

2159 Mt. Newton X-Rd.

Saanichton, BC

( Map )

For contact info: John and Gail Bones (250)-652-4002

The Mustard Seed...more than a Food Bank " An evening on awareness of what the Mustard Seed is all about. Stories, faces and places around the many diverse ministries of The Mustard Seed Church, an inner city church in the heart of Victoria. Into the evening we’ll weave the blues, alternative folk, poetry and more.

Cost: donation, all proceeds to the Mustard Seed Ministries

Concert at Knox Presbyterian

2008-10-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

Steve Sturgess from Knox presbyterian sent this invite out:

Paul Rumbolt (IN CONCERT)

Saturday, November 15th 7:30$15 adults / $10 students / $5 child 12 and under
Tickets are available at the church office,2964 Richmond Road, Victoria,
Tues to Fri from 9am to 1pm or call 250-592-6323or at the door.

Paul is an accomplished musician and arranger, gifted songwriter, and captivating performer. When writing songs for his new album, SongSmith, Paul traveled coast to coast and south of the border in search of experiences that would ultimately become songs. A native of Newfoundland and a 15-year resident of the Alberta Foothills area, Paul has performed on large stages, in intimate coffee houses, churches and house concerts alike in his travels across the country.Paul spent 20 years as an ordained United Church minister in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. Paul’s worship music is used extensively in congregations and can be found in More Voices, the supplement to the United Church hymnbook, Voices United.If you have yet to hear Paul's music, or know him well but haven't heard the new album, we would encourage you to visit www.paulrumbolt.com for samples of his music.Visit our website, www.knoxpcvictoria.org for more information.

Steve Bell on music and community worship

2008-10-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

Steve Bell, award winning singer/songwriter/storyteller, grass roots theologian and all around beautiful soul is coming to Lambrick Park Church this Saturday, Oct 4th. Doors open around 6:45. Concert starts at 7:30.

Tickets in advance from LPC, Christian Book and Music Store, or at the door (all are $20 b ut purchasing in advance gets you in the door quicker to find a seat).

I thought those of you with Poasis connections might be interested to read these words from Steve on the new album and its deep connection to the worshipping life of St Benedict's Table - Steve's church community. A little less than 1 year ago we were treated to a weekend with Jamie Howison (parish priest for that community) and Gord Johnson (musician and songwriter).

Here's what Steve has to say:

Hello everyone, hope your summer was great and you are getting back into the swing of things. I just wanted to catch you up on my new worship album D E V O T I O N and the fall touring schedule.

This is the first of my recordings that is deliberately and consciously a “worship” album in that most of the songs were written specifically for a worshiping community and with the intention of helping that community find its common voice in praise of God. In the case of this collection, the particular community is my home church in Winnipeg (St. Benedict’s Table) and the author of all but two of the songs is not myself but rather, long time friend Gord Johnson.

For years, Gord has been writing in the singer/songwriter tradition - personal reflections, stories, thoughtful recollections, social and political observations, etc.- with a keen eye for issues of justice. But more recently Gord has been impacted by the Taize community in France whose music has begun to make inroads into worshipping communities all over the world.

Taize music is very simple. Usually it consists of one or two lines of scripture sung slowly, reverently and repeatedly. The idea is for the community to enter into communal contemplation – to get past the melody and words and enter into the mystery of the story of God and God’s people. No rules, no particular form – just worship guided by those goals and entered into through music. Learning as a community to hear and follow the Spirit’s gentle nudging is a beautiful and deepening experience. Examples on this album are “Embrace the Mystery”, “Who Condemns You Now”, “Everything We Need” and “Gone is the Light”.

Other songs on this album have more traditional song form but all have that same reverential, devotional quality.

The sequence of the songs was deliberately chosen to follow an arc of worship that has a liturgical logic. Think of the album in four sections: The first four songs (“Almighty God”, “In the Morning”, “He Will Know” and “Praise the Father”) celebrate the sovereign transcendence and immanence of God, God’s Triune Nature and our loving dependence and gratitude.

“Gone is the Light” marks a shift of focus to a penitential/confessional acknowledgment of sin and brokenness – aligning ourselves with the shattered thief on the Cross.

The next three songs (“Embrace the Mystery, “Jesus Feed Us”, and “Who Condemns You Now”) celebrate the Incarnation - Word becoming flesh (body and blood / bread and wine), uniting to our own, and nourishing us back to health and dignity.

Finally, with “The Lorica”, a joyful reaffirmation of the gift of our relational proximity to the “triune God of Grace” and the host of angelic and saintly luminaries we know as the family of God, and with “Benediction”, we entrust our souls to the care of God whose loving self-donation has won our peace.

This is an enhanced CD and includes lyrics, lead sheets and bonus video. We decided to include lead sheets so individuals and congregations may have ready access to this music. Just pop the CD into your computer to get access to these extras.

I'm pretty excited to hear Steve and get my hands on the new CD. Hope to see many of you there.

Christine

Poetry Workshop - almost free!

2008-05-28T18:30:00.001-07:00

Emmanuel Baptist is hosting a poetry workshop with Carla Funk next Saturday am, June 7th.
Cost is only $5, but you MUST pre-register with Joan Dosso before the event. Call 592-2418 for more information.

Music Teaser for the Prodigal Hours

2008-05-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

None of the images in this video are actually being used on the night, but all the music is.

Coming May 26th....the Prodigal Hours

2008-05-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

May 26th Poasis Presents "Prodigal Hours"

This is a one-time event featuring the following:1. Free-standing visual artwork by several local artists,2. Readings by Victoria's poet laureate Carla Funk3. A soundtrack/audio collage composed and compiled by Matthew Christopher Davidson, local musician.

The theme of the evening is reconciliation. We would love to see you there! There is no cost to come, it is on a Monday night, and refreshments will be available by donation.

There is a 70-minute 'program' of short poetry readings at 10-minute intervals, and music in between, starting at around 7:20 PM, but it is totally informal and so it's OK to just drop in, although you're encouraged to come for the whole program, as it promises to be excellent

a little something interesting from Caleb Speller

2008-04-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

check this out..

GROUP SHOW AT SLIDE ROOM!

CASSETTE
April 25 - May 12

Curatorial project by Marlene Bouchard based on the idea that all lines are indicators of movement (such as the spinning line in a cassette tape). All artists will present records of their unique interpretations of what line means to them in their practice as well as participants in Victoria's urban system.
Installation in process (open for viewing) April 25-May 2.

Slide Room Gallery
2549 Quadra St
Victoria, BC V8T 4E1

Opening reception: Friday, May 2 @ 7:30 pm

Caleb Speller
Gedidiah McCaughey
Jeff Morton
Lyle Shultz
Marlaina Buch
Rhonda Usipiuk
Susu Robin
Tyler Hodgins

Check these for more!

www.calebshows.blogspot.com
www.calebart.blogspot.com
www.calebceramics.blogspot.com

Caleb Speller at the Fifty Fifty | March 21-30

2008-03-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Local artist Caleb Speller currently has a show running down at the Fifty Fifty Arts Collective.

The show runs till March 30th, and pictures from the opening night are available here.

From the official invite:

May Gill, (1914 - 2005) tought me how to braid. When i was a kid, I would sneak down into her bedroom early in the morning to make a braclet. She would help me choose three different colours from her thread box, and show me how to connect them. She spent her time knitting sweaters for pretty much the entire extended family and for kids in bad living conditions in Africa. Thread, wool and connecting lines were what her hands spent most of her life creating. This art show is dedicated to the arthritic hands of my Grammy, May Gill. This show is one multicoloured connected line.

You Go GIrls!!!

2008-02-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

CONGRATULATIONS Caren Willms and Jaqueline Van Voorst!
These 2 gifted artists (both attendees of Telling the Truth 2007) have been chosen to exhibit in :

Myself/Women in the World"
an art show featuring women, designed to be enjoyed by all
ie: "y" chromosomes welcomed!

Opening Reception: this Fri Feb 29, 6-9
at the Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria gallery -

G-6 1001 Douglas Street, Victoria, B.C. V8W 2C5

Ph: (250) 381-2787 - in the Sussex Place courtyard downtown

you can access it via For Street or Douglas Or Broughton

Drop by and say Hi to Caren and Jaqueline! The gallery is also open Mon- Sat 12-4pm from the 29th to the 12th of March.

Jason and Rhonda's "Love Show"

2008-02-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

What could be better than 2 great artists sharing "The Love"?

Jason Nobel and Rhonda Soullier are putting on a stellar display of some of their latest and greatest creative works.
Friday Feb 22nd starting at 7PM,
in Cafe Suburbia at Lambrick Park Church
and this time...you can take it with you!
Proceeds from the art sold will go to The Belo Project, as well as towards the very honourable cause of supporting Jason and Rhonda in their work as artists.

So mark it in your calendars to come out, soak in the great art, enjoy good company and tasty treats, and remember that for one night only...money can buy some love!

Love Poetry and Chocolate

2008-02-06T20:56:00.001-08:00

A Valentines Treat for all:
What could be better for "starving artists" than free chocolate and free flowing poetry!
Check out our friend Carla Funk and local poets at City Hall this saturday, Feb 9th. Not only will they be reading original works, serving coffee, silk road teas and chocolate.....there will be draws for prizes from sponsors and even the chance to have a personalized poem written for you "improve style" (right on the spot).

The event starts right at 2:00 #1 Centennial Square. Seating is limited , so arrive a few minutes early - and enjoy!

Poetry hits City Hall

2008-01-29T00:18:00.001-08:00

This Wednesday (Jan 30th) at 7:30 pm

POET LAUREATE X3
"An evening of poetry and conversation with three of Canada's Poet Laureates: Agnes Walsh, Lorri Neilson Glenn, and Carla Funk"

In the AnteChamber of Victoria City Hall #1 Centennial Square

Admission is free but seating will be limitted, so come early!

Shout out to Women of Poasis

2008-01-26T16:40:00.000-08:00

Well ladies - time to finish up your latest and greatest projects. Jaqueline Van Voorst has this invite from the Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria (CACGV) to submit work to be considered for an exhibition for International women's day.

Here's all the info. If you have more questions, leave a comment and I'll put you in touch with Jaqueline:

The CACGV will convene a ‘jpeg jury’ for a regional show entitled “Myself: Women In The World” to take place in the CAC Gallery from Feb 29-Mar 12, ‘08. The exhibition is being held to celebrate International Womens’ Day - March 8 - and the Call is to women artists of all backgrounds and all cultures who reside on in Greater Victoria. We invite submissions from recent immigrants to the area, Indigenous First Nations women, those of European, Asian and Eastern descent and world citizens.

Theme: Global inspirations or roots; works that show the artists relating to the world as women, taking on the world as women, relationships, challenges, triumphs, self-portraits or even imaginings of the world from a woman’s point of view.

Media: Works in all media will be accepted for jurying: paintings, prints, drawings, fabric, collage, sculpture, photography, film and video. We are looking for work in both traditional, neo-traditional and contemporary techniques. All work must be new or done in the last year.

Dimensions of works: The maximum dimensions for 2D work is 36”x40”. The maximum for 3D work is 2’x2’x2’.

Submissions: All submissions must be digital and be comprised of two parts:

1. jpeg of the artwork to be submitted (two maximum, 72 dpi only). Jpegs must be labeled with the title, artist’s name, and medium.

2. a short artist’s statement and a brief CV (resume), all on one page in a Word document.

Deadline: Submissions must be emailed to the CACGV offices by Monday Feb 11, 2008, by 5 pm.

Cindy Davis Live in Concert | Sat Jan 19 and Sun Jan 20th

2008-01-15T08:37:00.001-08:00

Cindy Davis
Live in Concert
w/ special Guest Justin Hewitt

Saturday January 19th
Sunday January 20th

Metro Studio Theater
Doors 7:30/Show 8pm

Tix available online through www.rmts.bc.ca

myspace.com facebook CindyDavis.com

If you've yet to hear Cindy's music, or seen her play live, you're missing a beautiful thing. She's just released a new album (iTunes) of moody, melodic and extremely catchy music.

my show tonight

2007-11-23T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

Just writing a quick note to tell anyone who doesn't already know that I'm playing a show tonight.
Cover: $8
Friday, November 23, 2007
7:30pm - 10:00pm
Solstice Cafe
529 Pandora St.

Messiah is coming.... to ebc church

2007-11-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

(click image to enlarge)

table to Table...an Advent Rhythm for 2007

2007-11-19T18:33:00.000-08:00

Table to Table: An Advent contemplative series

Wenesday December 5, 12, 19 at St. Philip's Anglican Church 2928 Eastdowne Rd.
Meal: 6:30pm Service: 7:30pm

An invitation to participate with body, mind and spirit in an evening series of community, contemplation and communion. We will start at 6:30 with a simple free-will offering meal of soup and bread. Bring something out of love or bring a willingness to receive out of humility; each are required. We come to give and receive the gifts of hospitality. At 7:30 we will have a contemplative Eucharist with song and silence in the sanctuary. We come to surrender our brokenness and receive the gift of life. You are welcome to come to both the meal and the service or just one or the other.

Contact Ernest Morrow ernestmorrow@gmail.com for more info

Here's the map of how to get there.

1st keynote from TellingtheTruth 2007 and a little bit more!

2007-11-17T23:09:00.000-08:00

Well, before you get down to reading the Keynote address that got the conference rolling this year, a few Poasis news flashes:

1. This Sunday night, Nov 18th 7pm - Sidney Pentecostal Church hosts "Venite" a service of preparation for advent. Join Ron Cole, Bruce Leslie Thomas, Dan Rowbothan and Bill Hardie for an evening of scripture readings, songs and silent spaces of waiting (no charge for this service)

2. Friday Nov 23rd, Matthew Christopher Davidson plays at Solstice Cafe starting at 7:30. The event should pack out, so don't be late. There is an $8 cover charge.

3. We received an invitation from Cadboro bay United Church to check out their " Musical Musings on the Mystics - a Concert for Advent" on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007: 7pm Cadboro Bay United Church: 2625 Arbutus Road. If you're interested, check out :http://www.cadbayuc.org/index.php?in=news office@cadbayuc.org 250.477.2715

OK - now..on to the keynote:

"How can we not sing the Lord's song in a strange land:
retexting the community through art, word and music"

An address given by Jamie Howison at Telling the Truth ’07: a conference on the arts and the worshipping church, October 25, 2007, Victoria, B.C. This is a transcript based on the text as delivered, but is really only a shadow of its original self, in that it is missing the songs of praise and contemplation which Gord Johnson wove in and out through the address.

“Before the message there must be the vision, before the sermon the hymn, before prose the poem.”[1]
Amos Wilder

I wonder to what degree we have really faced the reality that the church in many quarters has not only declined numerically, but has also been deprivileged? That, to borrow an image from Walter Brueggemann, the church has been moved from judge’s bench to witness stand, where we’ve found that we are but one in a whole series of others, all waiting to give witness in an increasingly pluralistic society? The truth is that we are no longer a key societal arbiter of what is right or true or good, but one of the many voices asking to be heard. We are in a situation analogous to Israel in exile – though our move into exile has not been marked by that level of violence and upheaval – wherein our language and our practices are not echoed, carried or supported by the broader culture; certainly not in any significant way

Exile is an image mined deeply and fruitfully by a string of theological voices over the past 40 years. It is used in a ground-breaking way by the Anglican writer William Stringfellow in his 1973 book, An Ethic for Christians and other Aliens in a Strange Land, in which he wrote,

(B)iblical ethics asks how to live humanly in the midst of death’s reign. And biblical politics, therefore, as it manifests resistance to the power of death, is, at once, celebration of human life in society. Or, by parable, biblical politics means the practice of the vocation to live as Jerusalem, the holy nation, amidst Babylon.[2]

“To live as Jerusalem amidst Babylon” – to know with great clarity that we are in exile, but to then live alternately. The image, or parable as Stringfellow has it, lies at the heart of Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s Resident Aliens, and really runs through all of Hauerwas’s deeply influential work. It is, though, probably nowhere more powerfully employed than by the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann.

In an article entitled “Rethinking Church Models through Scripture,” Brueggemann writes of how the stable model of temple and palace as the twin anchors for Israelite faith and society,

…was swept away in a cultural-geopolitical upheaval. Moreover, the reason given for its being swept away is that the model had defaulted in its God-given vocation and was no longer acceptable to God. Obviously I focus on this crisis because I believe we are in a moment of like cultural-geopolitical upheaval that undoes us personally and institutionally.[3]

We have become strangers in an increasingly strange land; exiles in a place we used to know as home, in which, at least in principle, church and state shared a common mother tongue; that is simply not the case any more. When did it end? Well, we can all come up with examples and illustrations of key moments – when Sunday shopping began, when the Lord’s Prayer disappeared from school, when the theatre began showing movies on Sunday; and maybe some of you come from communities where not all such changes have not yet been fully made; they are coming. The church as we knew it has gone into a kind of free-fall; we are just not clear how, and if, our song is to be sung

But – and here the experience of Israel under the iron thumb of Babylon might contain seeds of hope for us – Brueggemann continues, “It is worth noting that the collapse and failure of this model in 587 BCE generated in ancient Israel enormous pluralism and vitality as the community quested about for new and viable models of life and faith.” [4]

Psalm 137 stands as a stark example of what I’m speaking about. You probably know it best in a form shorn of its hardest verses; a prettified song about weeping by the banks of some Babylonian river. Yet its force as an expression of the agony of trying to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land is so much more than those more comfortable versions. Here it is offered from the New Revised Standard Version:
By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
- When we remembered Jerusalem, hundreds of miles away, lying in devastation thanks to the calculated violence of the conquering Babylonian army -
2On the willows* there we hung up our harps. 3For there our captors asked us for songs,and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
The singers hang their guitars up on the tree branches, because the soldiers charged with keeping the peace in that prison ghetto have asked that the songs of Zion, the hymns of the tradition, be sung for entertainment. Maybe the closest we can get to this is the image of white slave owners in the deep south asking the slaves to sing their gospel songs to entertain dinner guests in the plantation mansion, or maybe Jewish musicians in concentration camps being forced to form orchestras to play at German military cocktail parties.
4How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? 5If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! 6Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you,if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
How could one possibly sing the Lord’s song in the midst of this hell of Babylonian exile? If I forget you, O Jerusalem; if we turn our backs on the news that has come from the prophet Jeremiah, telling us that the whole city has gone up in smoke, then let my right hand wither and my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth. What does it mean for a singer or a musician to have a withered right hand and a useless tongue? No song.
And then comes the hard stuff, the material we don’t often hear in our hymns:
7Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall,how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!’ 8O daughter Babylon, you devastator!* Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! 9Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
The hoped-for, prayer-for violence is shocking, yet who can blame them for daring to tell this truth to God? God’s reply is not noted here, but we do know the message Jeremiah sent to this broken and exiled community:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:4-7, NRSV)
Violence will not be met by violence; the hoped for vengeance is not delivered, and instead the people are invited to partake in a long-haul restoration. Thing is, when these singers ask the question, “how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” and vow themselves to silence, how is this expressed? They sing it.
“Now in our wonderment, bafflement, and sometimes despair, we wonder if the plot has run out, or if like in our ancient paradigm, a new word can be uttered about God’s stunning newness.”[5] That “word of stunning newness” is God’s to be spoken, and not ours to provoke or create. As Archbishop Rowan Williams said in an address to a meeting of the Primates – an address given while he was still the Bishop of Monmouth, and not yet Archbishop of Canterbury – “the Church, we could say, is what happens when God’s call is heard, (and) the biblical vision… reminds us that we exist as church by God’s gift only.”[6] In other words, if we are to have a future, it will be by grace alone.

Yet there is work to be done in the meantime, and key to that work is the scribal vocation of “re-texting” the community.[7] Get rid of your stereotypes that place scribes as part of the phrase “scribes and Pharisees,” which we almost always hear as “hypocrites” Line up instead in your imaginations Baruch, Seraiah, Ezra, and the nameless others who, by faithfully writing down and bringing forward the story, awoke in Israel a deep memory of its own selfhood in God. And at the heart of the texts they relay to us is this: Moses and Nathan, Elijah and Daniel do not have the starring roles in this narrative; God is the principle character. Scribal work is meant to awaken what Brueggemann calls “dangerous memories,” and these are critical - indispensable in fact – to cultivating a people who might just hear God’s new word

For Israel in exile there were two real temptations:
To throw in the towel on the past, believing that only present circumstance and present survival mean anything at all; or worse, only imminent collapse is worthy of attention
To work only with respectable and reasonable memories; the stuff of romanticism, sentimentality and nostalgia

These twin temptations were both killers for Israel in Exile, and they are for us too, in our own exilic state. Each temptation in its own way risks a deep rootlessness, and one that will not serve our communities as a discipline of readiness for God’s inbreaking new word. It is a rootlessness that courts what Marva Dawn would call “dumbed down,” and interestingly, each of the twin temptations can find a home at both ends of the “churchland” spectrum. Both the so-called conservatives and the so-called liberals, believing themselves to be truly and deeply positioned in the real tradition, risk never quite dealing with our deeper, dangerous memories. The present defines all; the past is not taken seriously as more than a source for a kind of shallow proof-texting. Were either ecclesial camp to go deeper into those odd and dangerous memories, it would discover that the future, like the past, can only be approached and lived “by faith;” not by strategy, not by technique, not by morality, not by some self-defined orthodoxy. Not by political posturing, not by lobbying, not by convincing, coercing, badgering, barnstorming or bitching. By faith. But that would be to remember dangerously.

Robert Farrar Capon suggests that reading the bible is like watching a movie; you have to watch the whole film, and you can’t stop it at any point and say, ‘ah, this is what it all means.’ It is like watching a foreign film, says Capon, a foreign film with no subtitles; you have to watch it, and rewatch it and watch it again in order to have a real sense of what is going on.[8] I think Capon is fundamentally on to something, and it is on this point that I depart fairly significantly from Brueggemann when he writes in Texts Under Negotiation that increasingly we should learn to go “underneath” what he calls thematization:

…to urge that our proper subject in each case is the specific text, without any necessary relation to other texts or any coherent pattern read out of or into the text. This approach requires relishing and paying attention to each text, and lingering over it for the sake of its own claim, which may be strange, odd, or even offensive. It is evident that this approach is congenial to postmodern perspective, as it focuses on ‘little’ stories to the disadvantage of the ‘great story.’[9]

I think Brueggemann is right in insisting that we not gloss over or avoid the texts that strike us as odd and problematic – something the current lectionary is quite guilty of – but to try to receive them outside of the whole film is equally problematic. To tell each piece as part of the whole story – particularly if one is prepared to confess its strangeness and lack of easy unity – is not necessarily to domesticate the text ideologically or dogmatically, as Brueggemann apparently fears. But we do have to be prepared to tell the whole story – to watch the whole movie – including those parts that embarrass or unsettle us. Those parts may be exactly what we need, as may be the case with the bloody verses at the end of Psalm 137. Those writers needed to express that rage, and there are times when we need to read them as we explore the faith that transcends any polite or saccharine religion of a “nice” God and a “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”

Says the American Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor,

The poet is traditionally a blind man. But the Christian poet, and the storyteller as well, is like the blind man Christ touched, who looked then and saw men as if they were trees – but walking. Christ touched him again, and he saw clearly. We will not see clearly until Christ touches us in death, but this first touch is the beginning of vision, and it is an invitation to deeper and stranger visions that we shall have to accept if we want to realize a Catholic literature. [10]

“Deeper and stranger visions;” the stuff of dangerous memories and of a future that will come from God’s grace, not from our making.

“Any community that has a story such at ‘The Black Rabbit of Inle’ in its tradition can never assume that it ‘has control’ of its existence.[11]” That is a quote from a marvelous essay by Stanley Hauerwas called “A Story-Formed Community,” from A Community of Character. In that essay he takes the reader through Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down in a demonstration of how story shapes the community that tells it. In Watership Down, a small group of rabbits flee from their home, a warren called “Sandleford,” which one of this group of escapees has discerned is about to be destroyed by some new force; in fact, a new housing development. In Sandleford, the stories of the great tradition has been told, “but primarily as a means of entertainment, for it was assumed that the warren had weathered the worst,”[12] when it had survived a disease plague through a ruthless policy of quarantine and exclusion. As these rabbits travel in search of a new home, they encounter two other warrens: a nameless one - in which the stories are no longer told at all, and in which individualism has trumped any sense of collectivity – and the highly militaristic Efrafa, in which the stories are simply outlawed.

Throughout the book, this exiled group gradually becomes a community, in large because they tell and retell their foundational stories as the basis upon which they dare to continue to seek a new home. It is at a most pivotal point that the story of The Black Rabbit of Inle – a kind of passion story in fact – is told; a story which shakes them from any illusion and en-courages them for what lies ahead. Again, “Any community that has a story such at ‘The Black Rabbit of Inle’ in its tradition can never assume that it ‘has control’ of its existence.”

As much as (they) desire a warren they can call home, they know also that they can never cease being on a journey. When rabbits yearn for and try to secure complete safety, their nature is perverted. They can only continue to rely on their wit and their courage and each other.[13]

All of which, Adams emphasizes again and again, are gifts of the creator.

Now Hauerwas’s point in offering reflection on this story is the same as the one which I want to make: the church in a very particular way is a community formed by the story it tells. The church has lived in settings not unlike Efrafa; in fact we were birthed in a Roman Empire decidedly hostile to the telling of this story, and Christians have lived under Stalin, under Mao, under current day regimes which seek to end the very telling of our narratives. The church currently tries to live against the grain in any number of settings in the Western world, in which the stories cease to be told, having been judged to be irrelevant; and in fact so often in such contexts we begin to discover to our horror that our own children hardly know our narratives. And in so many ways, parts of the church have treated our own narratives as the stories were treated in Sandleford warren; as polite and interesting entertainments for a Sunday morning, but ones which don’t much impact the other parts of our lives

Were I to rewrite Adams’ book, I would have to add another warren, and maybe two; in these warrens, the stories are told, but ever so selectively. In this way, the heart of the narratives become so distorted as to become almost unrecognizable… and this both on the right and the left of the ecclesial spectrum. At risk of just setting up straw man targets, I think on the one end of the so-called prosperity gospel which insists on reading the texts in a way sufficiently thin so as to support an unsupportable ideology, and on the other the kind of self-defined progressive faith that quite happily unravels the trinity or blithely misses the power of the nativity story because 100 years ago Rudolph Bultmann ranked it as a mythologized attempt to have the birth of Jesus rival that of the various Caesars. Both warrens would, I think, be unable to read the story of the Black Rabbit of Inle, and so each in its own way would finally be unable to sustain a community in exile or on an exodus journey.

Again, we need to be soaked and retexted in this Christian narrative in its entirety and for all of its sometimes unsettling oddness. From beginning to end – Genesis to Revelation – again and again until we begin to see the world through the lenses of the biblical landscape

At the heart of the retexting is the written text; read and spoken. One of the discoveries made by this exiled Israel was its own need to know this stuff, and so in fact much was collected, codified, even written in the exilic and post-exilic period; ironically, perhaps, this is one of the most creative and fertile times in the whole of the history of Israel. Part of what just might face us now is the prospect of such a fertile and creative time in the life of the displaced Christian church. But whereas Israel in exile was retexted through texts – written texts, but also narratives told and retold, often in the context of home-based practice – our own times may well call out for a more varied kind of retexting – one which includes the visual arts, and also music, film, theatre, fiction.

There is a long, long history of a Christian engagement with the arts. The American novelist Reynolds Price writes, “A few of those servants (of Christ) have given to Western Civilization its central masterpieces of literature, painting, sculpture, music and architecture. Remove Christian art from postclassical Western art and very little, prior to 1880, survives.”[14] So what happens at 1880? At least in the world of the arts, it seems to be that the move into exile has begun. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, for instance, starts its collection at 1880. I spent a day there last January, and was quite struck by how little, relative to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, themes of faith are explored. How much art of the past 130 years has been created and offered without any reference to the Christian faith? How much which is, if not openly hostile, utterly indifferent? And even more pressing, to what degree have we attempted to create a Christian church without reference to the poetic and artistic imagination? Oh, there are these Christian musicians, Christian artists, Christian novelists; but how often do we push them into very particular boxes, allowing them to speak or paint or write only within very tightly defined parameters?

Calvin Seerveld, a scholar in the field of philosophical aesthetics, writes,
…sentimental, beautified travesties of our Lord Jesus Christ or bowdlerized so-called ‘religious fiction’ or photography of model children with never dirt behind their ears as church magazines sometimes show, all such sincere, innocuous presentations not only devastate understanding art but also misrepresent, take the bite and grit and twentieth-century life out of the Christian commitment. I wonder if our resurrected Lord at the right hand of the Father ever weeps any more at our oh so uncomprehending faith.[15]

Do we call our artists, our singers, our poets, to undo us, break our hearts, help us to see with new eyes? Or do we insist instead that they behave, and give us only that which reinforces all we think we already know? Why has Thomas Kincade, with his paintings of quaint cottages and lighthouses, been deemed the artist of choice in North American evangelical subculture, and even christened the “painter of light?” He may paint a nice little lighthouse, but it has nothing on something like van Gogh’s “Starry Night; a painting which seems to actually project its own light. And are you familiar with what is sometimes called the “J-factor” in the Christian music scene? That is the number of times an artist uses the name of Jesus in a song, and it is actually one of the things that the industry looks for when it programs for radio.

I know that you can all come up with examples of material that doesn’t fit here: the music of Bruce Cockburn or Sufjan Stevens, the novels of Graham Green or Frederick Buechner, the poetry of T.S. Eliot or Lucy Shaw; and thank goodness there are such examples… but the fact is, this is the cluster of artists and writers who almost always leap to mind. They are a distinct minority.

And again, how could we possibly think it wise to attempt to shape a Christian church without reference to the poetic and artistic imagination? Without telling– and telling it in all of its oddness - the story that in fact shapes us? Not a partial, tidied up, edges-sanded-off polite version of the story; the whole works. Isaiah, for instance, will remember in his poetry the story about the barrenness of Sarah and Abraham; an embarrassing story not often spoken in the corridors of power of the Jerusalem palace…

How comfortably we tell the story of Christmas: “this year, come home for Christmas” ran the advertising campaign in one Canadian diocese some years back. Home? The uprooted Mary and Joseph, being forced to have this baby in a barn? The story of which we follow with the Matthaean narratives about the death squads Herod sends in to Bethlehem? How homey is that? But if we tell the whole narrative, as both Matthew and Luke tell it, what might we actually come to know about the staggering risk of the Incarnation? What might we come to know about the potentially staggering cost of discipleship?

From Cal Seerveld again:

What really has given ‘christian art’ its bad name has been the cheap way that stock
motifs such as conversions, happy endings or Bible phrases are popped in like vitamin pills to pep up one-dimensional, outdated material which is then sold as ‘Christian novels,’ Christian plays,’ or Christian songs.’ Using Christ in that way is, in my judgment, taking his Name in vain. You do not get the rare pearl of Christian art by dubbing in a few crosses or chalices, or by draping a good-old-days kind of atmosphere around a trite plot. Christian art in our days, I believe, will take suffering to produce.[16]

It will take suffering to produce? Suffering? Who is going to sign up for that? Yet for the artist who is a Christian, maybe it is not so much a case of signing on as it is being simply prepared to do one’s art authentically. When, for instance, a major record company suggested to Steve Bell that that he would be more marketable if he didn’t sing all of those psalms, he basically had to confront the fact that psalms are what he does; to trim the faith out of his music would be to truncate himself, both as a person and as an artist.

From Walter Brueggemann again: “… an alternative world is possible. The old world is not a given; it is a fraud. Another world is possible – in our imaginations: we listen and imagine differently. In our liberation we entertain different realities not yet given in hardware, so far only very soft ware, carried only by narrative and song and poem and oracle (and I would add, by painting and sculpture and dance and, and, and…) said before being embodied, but said and we listen. As we listen we push out to the possibility and are held by it like a visioning child with a dream.”[17] (Preaching as Subversion, p. 17). And from imagination comes practice; not just personal practice, but communal, public practice which from time to time actually manages to do something real and lasting.

I’d push Brueggemann, though, on his image of the “visioning child with a dream,” because sometimes it the retexting our poets and painters shake us with is almost more like a nightmare, or maybe a wake-up call. Listen to these lyrics from Bruce Cockburn’s song “Maybe the Poet,” from 1984’s Stealing Fire album:

Male female slave or free Peaceful or disorderly Maybe you and he will not agree But you need him to show you new ways to see Don't let the system fool you All it wants to do is rule you Pay attention to the poet You need him and you know it[18]

You need the poet to teach you new ways to see; “Pay attention to the poet, you need him and you know it,” sings Cockburn. So why, then, do we keep using the arts for little more than glorified sermon illustrations? Music as the emotional tag that gets us opened up for the preacher?

Is it possible to create the kind of Christian communities wherein the poets are listened to, nurtured, and supported? In real ways? What might it look like to take seriously our deprivileged and exiled status, and began to rise to the challenge of retexting our communities not only with the preached word – which is something I’m pretty committed to – but also the word painted, sculpted, sung, chanted, filmed, danced, performed and offered in every way imaginable… literally imaginable! Most churches, including my own, have a full time preacher and a part-time musician, but why don’t we have a poet or a painter on our staff? A writer in residence? A film-maker? A director? A choreographer?

In this Christian vision, suggests Seerveld, “art and literature as human activity is not simply a harmless pleasurable emotion or a cultured response to unconscious drives which is the artist’s own business: this vision takes art and literature and brings it firmly into the presence of God and an earthshaking drama where angels peer expectantly over the human shoulders to see what is coming out of the palette or typewriter.”[19] And the angels peer expectantly because they know how deeply we need to be re-immersed in our foundational story; how badly we need to be fundamentally and imaginatively retexted; how powerfully we need to relearn how to sing the Lord’s song in this strange land.

In these few days of this conference, this small circle has an opportunity to taste a bit of what such re-immersion, retexting, relearning might be like. But can we take that all back to our churches, our homes, our circles of friendship? Can we afford not to? I opened by quoting from Amos Wilder’s Theopoetic, and it is to Wilder I turn for my closing words: “When imagination fails doctrines become ossified, witness and proclamation wooden, doxologies and litanies empty, consolations hollow, and ethics legalistic.”[20] Can we afford to not learn to sing the Lord’s song in new and imaginative ways in this increasingly strange land?

Jamie Howison

[1] Amos Wilder, Theopoetic, p. 1.
[2] William Stringfellow, , An Ethic for Christians and other Aliens in a Strange Land, p. 151.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, “Rethinking Church Models Through Scripture,” Cadences of Home, p. 101.
[4] Ibid., p. 101.
[5] Walter Brueggemann, “Disciplines of Readiness,” Cadences of Home, p. 119.
[6] Rowan Williams,
[7] This concept of re-texting is drawn from Brueggemann’s essay “The Preacher as Scribe,” Inscribing the Text, pp. 5-19.
[8] In October 2003, I interviewed Robert Farrar Capon at a time when he was fleshing out this image, later published in his book Genesis: the movie.
[9] Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation, pp. 57-58.
[10] Flannery O’Connor, cited in Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, p. 351

[11] Stanley Hauerwas , “A Story-Formed Community,” A Community of Character, p. 25.
[12] Ibid., p. 17.
[13] Ibid., p. 25.
[14] Reynolds Price, A Serious Way of Wondering, p. 118.
[15] Calvin Seerveld, A Christian Critique of Art and Literature, pp. 50-51.
[16] Calvin Seerveld, Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves, p. 17.
[17] Walter Brueggemann, “Preaching as Subversion,” Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), p. 17.
[18] Bruce Cockburn, “Maybe the Poet,” Stealing Fire, True North Records 1984.
[19] Seerveld, A Christian Critique of Art and Literature, p. 16.
[20] Wilder, Theopoetic, p. 2.

Advent Concert at Cadboro Bay United

2007-11-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

Musical Musings on the Mystics - a Concert for Advent
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007: 7pm
Cadboro Bay United Church
2625 Arbutus Road, Victoria BC

Paul Miles, spoken word
Christine Chepyha, bandura
An evening of music inspired by the words of mystics throughout the ages, providing a quiet time to start the busy season that precedes Christmas.
Tickets available at the door.

For more information:
http://www.cadbayuc.org/index.php?in=news
office@cadbayuc.org
250.477.2715

2007-11-09T15:23:00.000-08:00

Venite...the time of Waiting

Next Sunday night ( November 18th ), at 7 PM, there will be a service hosted by Sidney Pentecostal Church (on 10364 Mc Donald Park Rd, in Sidney...here's the map ). The service is titled "Venite: The Time of Waiting." It will be a candle-lit service of readings, creative reflections and music lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes.The service was originally put together by myself and members of the Poasis Arts Collective - www.poasis.blogspot.com. This year there will be a number of churches hosting this Advent service, I'll keep you posted as to where and when.

It promises to be a beautiful and reflective time - a great way to open up this hectic season of Advent. Please come if you can, and bring a friend or two. Look forward to seeing you there.

The evening will be a tapestry of Word from Isaiah, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Romans and from Luke...in which music and reflective space is weaved into. Advent is a time to fast, to hunger and thirst...for a time in which we feast upon the Living Word made flesh. Come and still yourself with us as we listen for that voice that crys from the wilderness.

Advent is near

2007-11-07T14:17:00.001-08:00

A sweet surprise colaborative effort, poem and image from me...and the video work from Simon Rundell in the UK.

Rounding out the conference...one week later

2007-11-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a week now since the conference took place and we're still watching the excitement grow. If you're just checking in on the website now, we've updated it with pictures, more pictures, a request for your feedback, and Jamie's keynote from Saturday.

Of course, we'll continue to follow up on the conference as the weeks progress, but we'll also be updating the site with news about other art+church stuff going down around town, so make sure to check back regularly.

TTT '07 | Saturday's Keynote | Jamie Howison

2007-11-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

Don’t Just Do Something; Stand There:
Relearning contemplative practice in the life of a worshiping church
Jamie Howison

*Originally addressed at Telling the Truth ’07: a conference on the arts and the worshipping church, October 27, 2007, Victoria, B.C.

This is a transcript based on the text as delivered, but is really only a shadow of its original self, in that it is missing the songs of praise and contemplation which Gord Johnson wove in and out through the address.

The title for this address can be attributed to a former Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Howard Clark, who at some argumentative synod or gathering stopped the proceedings by saying, “Don’t just do something; stand there.” In other words, stop the words and the posturing and the combative entrenchment of what you take to be self-evidently true, and just be still for a bit… advice that might well be offered in just about any meeting of just about any church at just about any time. Of course, it runs counter to our basic instincts as children of the Western world; we are conditioned to do as our default setting. As Ghandi once remarked to the American missionary Charles Andrews, “The trouble with you Americans is that you start doing before being.” Not only do we “start doing,” but we have terrible trouble with spaces in which “nothing happens;” we tend to do our ‘vegging’ out with the TV on – firing non-stop audio-visuals into our brains - we plug ourselves into MP3 players when we are alone, we click on the stereo every time we get into the car, we spend countless hours surfing the net… input, input, input. What we’re going to suggest here this morning – and demonstrate in practice tonight at the Hear the Silence liturgy – is that one of the things that Christian communities might profitably do is relearn some things about stillness, silence, and contemplative practice.

Sadly, often the clergy get as caught up in a culture of utility as does anyone else; in fact, we sometimes cultivate it. Some 40 years ago, Martin Thornton wrote:

One calls in a plumber because he understands plumbing, not because of his wide experience of life, and one is coached by a golf professional because he is not a week-end amateur. One is suspicious of a doctor who has read no medical book for twenty years and knows nothing of modern drugs, and I suspect that intelligent modern Christians are getting suspicious of clergy who are for ever engaged in something other than prayer, learning and such-like professional occupations…. It is precisely by not being busily activist that we may really learn to serve and love those who have to be. It is because the priest has time for prayer, study and reflection that his guidance of those in the world’s hurly-burly is likely to be worth having. If the priest is to have any loving impact on modern people in a modern world, then he must take his job with dedicated seriousness and not make himself ridiculous by making an amateurish mess of some other job.1

This is echoed by Eugene Peterson, in the book he co-authored with Marva Dawn, The Unnecessary Pastor:

If (the cultural forces of the day) don’t turn us into merely nice people, they turn us into replicas of our cultural leaders, seeking after power and influence and prestige. These insistent voices drum away at us, telling us pastors to go out and compete against the successful executives and entertainers who have made it to the top, so that we can put our churches on the map and make it big in the world. 2

Lest you think Peterson is exaggerating here, I once heard a bishop tell a group of teenaged confirmation candidates that “a bishop’s job is like a CEO of a corporation;” an image so driven by contemporary culture it makes the head spin.

Peterson went on to comment that when he “first proposed the phrase ‘The Unnecessary Pastor’ as the heading for the conference at Regent College, I was told, ‘You can’t call it that; nobody will come. No pastor in North America wants to be told that he or she is unnecessary. Get a phrase that is more positive, more encouraging.’” He doesn’t tell us who so actively discouraged him from using the title, but he does add: “But then it sold out, filled with men and women seeking to strip away the cultural plaque and get on with biblical ministry.”3

I think that we in the ordained ministry intuitively know this, but we get so easily overwhelmed by a sense that we need to do, do, do; it usually lands us up as hopelessly overwhelmed sanctified social workers, fried from trying to meet the non-stop emotional needs of those around us, or as great attenders of all manner of committee meetings. I have witnessed more than a few area clericus meetings, in which the point seemed to be to demonstrate who was busier, whose church was doing something bigger or better or more innovative, whose Sunday School was booming… the pastoral version of a spitting context, and about as sad a sight to behold as one can imagine.

St Gregory Nazianzen wrote of the madman as being the one who is breathless, to which the theologian stands in contrast as one not out of breath. The theologian is one whose prayer is true, which means in part that prayer is the thing that keeps us from getting out of breath, from running around like so many of those proverbial headless chickens. But it is hard to do in a society that wants us to do, do, do. Prove yourself. Account for your hours and your salary, and what it is and who it is you are.

Kenneth Leech, another English writer, say this:

Our society is filled with functionaries. And the church has conformed to, and colluded with, the managerial, secular models, so that priests and ministers come to be seen as religious functionaries. On this model, prayer, silence, fasting, and the study of theology are valued, if they are valued at all, only as aids to a more efficient pastoral functioning. But priesthood is not a function: it is an identity, a solidarity with Christ crucified and risen. The only kind of priests who can be of true Christ-centred service in the world are those whose priesthood is interiorized, integrated into their humanity, and constantly strengthened by prayer. 4

Now, I need to be clear here that I am not by nature a contemplative sort, and so I read these lengthy quotes as much to keep schooling myself as to shape your thinking on this stuff. Some people are quite contemplative by nature, maybe by nature and training, but while I very much like, even crave, solitude and silence, my mind very seldom stops ticking. The tradition has tended to make a distinction between two basic approaches to the spiritual life, and if you’ve read much of the material on prayer and contemplation you’ve probably bumped into this.

1. There is first the kataphatic way – the positive way, or the way of affirmation. It is a path which uses images, language, feeling, symbols and signs and other sensate ways of experience. Do you pray with music and words? Find inspiration with visuals like icons or Rembrandt’s painting of the return of the prodigal? Find that a church with stained glass, incense and loads of visual stimuli is prayerful? That is the way of affirmation

2. The second is the apophatic way – the via negativa or way of negation. This way emphasizes “the truth of God that lies behind, beyond, or hidden within all sensory or intellectual representations.”5 This is the way of seeking God by dropping any and all reliance on word, symbol or experience; it is the kind of contemplative prayer that is taught, for instance, in the medieval classic The Cloud of Unknowing, and in a different manner by John of the Cross in The Dark Night of the Soul. It is the kind of prayer cultivated by a practice such as centering prayer, in which one tries to locate oneself in the presence of God by using but a single word or phrase – or no word at all - as the means of prayer.

I am, by nature and nurture both, a person most at home on the kataphatic way; the way of images, and so it always sort of bugs me to find that the literature on prayer tends to privilege the apophatic, presenting the kataphatic as a kind of school for beginners!

More problematic, though, is the suggestion sometimes made that since prayer of contemplation and of silence is only for seasoned and mature veterans, a contemplative approach is in fact dangerous for the beginner. That was what a trainer in centering prayer said to me when I enquired about doing some instruction for interested folks in our church; “Oh, they aren’t nearly mature enough for contemplation; it would be spiritually dangerous.” Almost as if moving into the silence is only for realized spiritual giants, and not – and lets be honest here – for the rest of us. But, says Martin Thornton:

We have seen with crystal clarity from the Bible that this retreat into the desert, rather than being only possible after the defeat of sin, is in fact the battle itself. There is a strong case for the view that it is the sinner not the saint for whom such prayer is meant, yet in the text-books it is the sinner who is precluded from attempting it.6

“We have seen with crystal clarity from the Bible…” Lets get ready to hear from the Bible, and see what we can discern.

Let me set this up for you. The prophet Elijah, after a major confrontation with the reigning powers of his day – Ahab and Jezebel and the religious functionaries they have surrounded themselves with – flees to the wilderness, where he actually lays down and wishes that death would take him; a failure, he sees in himself, and only a failure. Yet Elijah is met there – an angel comes to him, first with food and drink, and then with a commission to travel further; this time 40 days into the wilderness, to Mount Horeb. It is there that this narrative opens:

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ 10He answered, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.’

11 He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.” (1 Kings 19:9b-13a, NRSV)

What Elijah hears in “the sound of sheer silence” – that is the translation in the NRSV – or in “the still, small voice,” is a new commission, a new beginning, a new song to be sung against the killing powers. This is not the end for him, but rather beginning.

Of this narrative, Thornton observes that it follows a common pattern; a common biblical pattern, but also a common pattern in our own lives: “fear and danger, followed by rest and safety, followed by creativity, prophecy and victory.”7 And then he continues:

The desert of silence will at first be frightening and dangerous, and considerable tensions will develop. Everything seems strange and artificial, and of special consequence to modern Christians there may be a sense of false piety, of religiousity. In spite of everything previously explained, here I am devoutly saying my prayers in apparent isolation from the world. It is all very uncomfortable. But the Bible has explained this as normal, as the proper start of the creative prayer of silence: it is Elijah giving up and petitioning for death; Christ sweating blood in Gethsemane. It is all part of the game.8

Silence and stillness are very much a part of what we need; at times desperately so. Elijah needs to be still, so that he can hear past the whirlwind and past the earthquake to the still, small voice. And how often does Jesus go into the desert, into a quiet place, up on a mountain, away from the crowds, to pray? It is not just Gethsemane, with the crisis building and his courage flagging. It is steadily there in his ministry, from that first long 40 day sojourn alone in the desert, facing epic temptation and finding out just who he is. It is steady; and if it is steady for him, why would we think it shouldn’t be steady for us? All of us need to go into the desert; sometimes life takes us there, sometimes we need to step aside from the busy-ness of life to go there, almost against the grain. But we all need to go to the desert and to be still and to know – or try to know or be open to knowing – that God alone is God. But I don’t do silence like that; not naturally. I’d have to take a book, and maybe a journal or a laptop so that I could do some writing about my experience of silence in the desert; maybe I’d prepare a keynote address! All the more reason, then, to build silence and stillness into my discipline and – and here is what I’m increasingly convinced is indispensable – into the discipline of our community’s liturgical life.

We’ve begun to seek ways at saint benedict’s table to build silence and stillness – to build opportunities for wilderness – into our common, shared liturgical life. We do that around the liturgical year, and most obviously the season of Lent, which lends itself to a kind of voluntary movement into the desert. Every year coming into Lent, I speak about why it might be important to give something up or take something on just to change the pattern and rhythm of life. For the past two years, I’ve stopped having the radio or stereo on when I get into the car. If you’re someone who routinely clicks on the stereo every time you get in the car, you’d be struck by how not doing that reminds you daily of being in a different season. Those kinds of little pattern changes help us move into different rhythm. And liturgically, we build a different kind of sensibility into our collective Lenten observance, offering even more space and more silence and more contemplative music than at other times of the year. It is built into the fabric of our Sunday night Lenten liturgies.

But beyond that we also have this thing called Hear the Silence. It is a time of music, song, stillness, periods of absolute silence, prayer, a couple of brief readings. It takes about an hour; an hour which lets people move into that alternative space, and to shift gears from the usual pace of life. Two things: I love those evenings, and I need those evenings. At the last one, I quickly became aware that I simply could not get my mind to stop racing. I had 101 things on my plate, and finally this hour to just sit still and be… and my brain went into overdrive trying to cover off a whole bunch of tasks that I’d been putting to the side. It took… well, it probably took about 55 of the 60 minutes to finally get slowed down to the point where I was able to simply indwell the liturgy; to just pray and sing and be; to be more deeply aware of the God in whom I always dwell. That’s the thing, of course: God didn’t arrive after 55 minutes, when I’m finally quiet. God is there all the time; where else could God be? We live and move and have our being in God; how could we be anywhere but in the presence of God? Sometimes, though, it takes guys like me 55 minutes to finally slow down sufficiently to be aware of that.

Someone once asked Michael Ramsay, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, how long he prayed each day. “Oh, about 2 minutes,” he replied, “but I spend an hour preparing.” I get that. “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24); from all of the limits that I wear? I get that too! On my own, I can’t do this very well; but with training and discipline in a community that understands that its liturgy is, among other things, a school of prayer and a time apart? That is a different thing. That is the point that I really begin to enter this stuff, but I need the discipline.

We’ve learned in our community to build silence and contemplative music – space - into all of our liturgies; not to be in a hurry. To realize it is okay to sit for 60 seconds after the reading of scripture – just be with it - before the preacher has to stand up, and sometimes be tempted to explain it all away… To my surprise and delight, over the years I find that the gears are shifting, and that this space, this silence, this room to be before doing – is actually undoing and remaking me. Among other things, it is remaking me as someone who has been able to be impatient with so much of what society tosses at us; critical of the claims that advertising constantly tries to make, suspicious of the whole array of idolatries that so narcotize us, self-aware of my own weaknesses, in a growing realization that another way and another rhythm is actually possible. It has allowed me to do things like look at a painting like James Nesbitt’s The Hospitality of Polycarp, and actually see it, and find myself being really taken apart by it.

You see, the thing is most of us know in our hearts that much of what is sold to us in the broader culture is a lie. We know that you can’t consume your way, you can’t buy your way, you can’t accumulate your way, you can’t shop your way to anything; we know it. Many in the church, and many who have never crossed its threshold, suspect that all those promises with which we’re bombarded day in and day out – those idolatrous promises –are worse than hollow; they’re cancer. So when we’re driven to do and to prove and to be productive; to show what a shining example of success we are, one of the most subversive and daring acts, one of the most gospel-driven acts that we can do as Christian communities is to cultivate the alternative, and together – not just all alone in some sunny corner of our living room with an icon and a prayer book – but together, when we gather, dare to hear the silence.

1. Martin Thornton, The Rock and the River, pp. 141-42.
2. Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn, The Unnecessary Pastor, p. 1.
3. Peterson and Dawn, p. 11.
4. Kenneth Leech, Silence and Ministry, p. 10.
5. Gerald May, Care of Mind/Care of Spirit, p. 10.
6. Thornton, Prayer, p. 172.
7.Thornton, Prayer, p. 170.
8.Ibid., p. 171.