Tim Abbott

Seven sacred spaces

I was greatly inspired by David Keen's post on Fresh Expressions of Bookshop which cites an article by George Lings of Church Army. George has written about the 7 sacred spaces (Word Doc download) found within 'new' and old monasticism which express the life of the community. They are:

Chapel - place of public worship
Chapter - place of decision making and ordering community life
Refectory - place of eating and hospitality, community and service.
Cell - place of private prayer
Cloister - 'inbetween' space, unstructured, allows for informal interaction
Garden - place of manual work
Scriptorum - place of study.

David goes on to reflect on how these characteristics might be lived out by a church, and then by a Christian bookshop.

But, as someone with an interest in creating 'sacred spaces in schools' it also got me wondering about where else we might take Sanctum.

The Road - the book

I was given this book for Christmas by Joel and read it in a day!

The story is now surely well enough known. A father and son making their way through a desolate America following an unexplained catastrophic event that has wiped out animal life and most people. Cormack McCarthy writes with a lean attention to detail that conveys powerfully the intimacy of the father / son relationship without ever losing the impact of the bleak, cold, grey, destroyed world through which they struggle. I felt the cold reading it.

There is no real explanation of the apocalyptic events that precede the story, but such is the lean power of his storytelling that no significant back-story is required. This is a world substantially without history, apart from this now distant cataclysmic event. The past hardly counts any more, morally or materially, except for what can be scavanged from it. The survivors are new citizens in a new world and are compelled to find a way and a morality that works. Most people, it seems, divide into 'the good guys' and 'the bad guys', the latter often defined by cannibalism, graphically implied in a way more shocking than any explicit description could be. The boy is anxious to know that he and his father are 'the good guys'. His natural inner compassion for others in a world stripped bare becomes, on a few occasions, a motivating morality for his father who has known the world before, unlike his son who only knows the world now. This is not a world that's going to get any better any time soon.

In keeping with McCarthy's stye there is no neat golden ending. We join a story that has been unfolding for a while, walk with the characters for a time and then leave them again to continue their journey into an unknown future. Actually most of life is like that which is why I love his style of writing. And there are no chapters. But in the end there is some hope.

What Matters Now

Seth Godin asked over 70 writers and thinkers to share an idea and then published it as an ebook which you can download for free here.
I downloaded it a couple of days ago. Very inspiring indeed.

I once was a Buddhist nun

Esther Baker grew up in a home hostile to Christianity and the church. A passionate seeker after the truth, she followed a passing interest in several faiths and worldviews, before finally arriving at Buddhism. Her journey took her to various parts of Asia leading her eventually to ordination as a Buddhist nun in an English monastery.  It was there that God started to make himself known to Esther, stirring her spirit to seek him.

It was Good Friday, and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I really wanted to know what had happened to Jesus that day. It wasn’t rational; I can’t explain why I suddenly wanted to know.

God continued to bring people across her path who, each in their own small way, nudged Esther towards him. An encounter with some Christians protesting outside an inter-faith gathering at Canterbury Cathedral began to sow seeds of doubt about whether Buddhism was really the truth. She started helping an elderly Anglican nun who lived in the village. A visitor spoke enthusiastically about a programme she had seen on TV in which a lady called Jackie Pullinger prayed for drug addicts in the name of Jesus and saw them released from addiction. One night, the abbott of the monastery showed a video of this programme. The impact on Esther was almost overwhelming and all the more remarkable in that no one else in the monastery seemed to have been moved by it. She felt devastated and confused with a battle going on in her soul.

One sleepless night, in desperation, I called out to God. “God, if you are real, please come.” And God came! After I had prayed I felt a sense of peace and well-being flooding my heart and body. This was the first time I had invited God to touch my own life, invited him in and asked for his help. I knew he had answered my prayer.

Over a period of several months, during which time she was able to spend more time with Christians, Esther’s inner turmoil resolved to a new commitment to Christ, and the knowledge that she needed to disrobe as a nun and leave Buddhism. In time God led her to work with Jackie Pullinger in Hong Kong, ministering in exactly the same way that she had first seen on the video in the monastery. She now works in Thailand, a country steeped in Buddhism, where she is involved in a ministry of healing and discipleship helping to build the church and, in her own words, “helping to make the bride of Christ more beautiful and more ready for him.”

Esther writes in a straightforward and very readable style, her own story effectively interwoven with clear teaching about Theravada Buddhism and Christianity. This is a book about the impact that these two faiths have had on one person’s life - the testimony of a journey and a search for truth. It is as honest about the Buddhism that she abandoned as the Christianity that she embraced and I would have no hesitation in recommending it to someone who was dabbling in Buddhism but still searching, or, for that matter, anyone interested to know whether God is real.

I once was a Buddhist nun - Esther Baker: IVP

Reading update

As a result of this Missional Leadership course my reading list has had a bit of a major update.
I've finally finished Contemplative Youth Ministry by Mark Yaconelli which is amazing and should be required reading for all youth workers. Now I've got two of Martin Robinson's books to polish off in a month (as well as a few articles from the course reader) and I've decided to re-read Kester's book, The Complex Christ (or Signs of Emergence for US readers).
There's still a few books related to research into teen spirituality which I ought to finish off too.
I'm going to have to re-order my life a bit...!

Dawkins - The need to believe?

An interesting review today here in the Sunday Times as Rod Liddle considers Richard Dawkins new book, "The God Delusion". Liddle has little time for Christianity, but here he reveals that he also has little time for 'evangelistic atheism' and deconstructs Dawkins argument, revealing the faith inherent in Dawkins leap from scientism to atheism.
Liddle concludes:

It is evident in the fury and passion with which Dawkins et al advance their cause: they proselytise, they evangelise, they demand our repentance and our acceptance of their own creed. I’d rather treat science as a wonderful human creation for describing the world around us — often in metaphors that have an agreeably biblical ring to them. And, at the same time, I suspect — Betjeman called it, in a lovely oxymoron, a “faint conviction” — that we do not know everything, nor ever shall, and that there is a ghost somewhere in the machine.

Power, gift and mission

This evening I had the house and garden to myself since my wife was out at a Deanery meeting, one son was off to Frinton with a load of mates and the other son was celebrating the end of term by going to a party in Braintree.
The perfect opportunity to sit in the garden with a beer and continue my current read, 'How (not) to speak of God' by Peter Rollins.

For those of you who haven't yet read this book (and with apologies to those of you who have) the basic premise is that the ways we sometimes speak of God can often create more problems of understanding than they solve. I'm still processing the first few chapters, and I'm not yet sure to what extent I agree with him, but I'm finding a certain resonance with many of his key points.

Today I got to chapter 3 and Peter's analysis of what he calls the 'power discourses' that can be a feature of much of our evangelism. This is where the apologetic of the word, ("this makes so much sense you'd be a fool not to believe it") or of wonder ("see the miracle and believe") can be presented in a way that is more an exercise of power than of gift. He writes:

"In this way, the acceptance or rejection of the system is based, not upon a love for the system or a feeling of overwhelming seduction by it, but rather upon the accumulation of evidence that stands secure, regardless of the motive and desires of the individual."

I'd prefer it if he replaced 'the system' with 'Christ', but I know what he's getting at (sometimes evangelism can be a bit like inviting someone into a system!)

In all of our evangelistic endeavours with young people I am acutely aware that it's too easy to overwhelm with a stark choice, a killer argument or even an irresistible emotional appeal. Peter again:

"Like a lover of nuts who is offered thousands of shells with no centre, so we offer God thousands of 'converts' with no heart."

I fear this can too often be tragically true. However, I also know people who responded to an 'appeal' but weren't quite sure afterwards what they had done and yet that decision marked the beginning of a journey of becoming Christian, a point at which their heart changed towards God.

And yet, and yet... in avoiding the excesses of coercion and in my longing that people will ask, as they did of the Apostle Peter, "What must we do to be saved", I still believe God intended for his word to be shared and spoken about, and for his Spirit to work signs and wonders to bless unbelievers and believers alike. The difference seems to be whether we do this because we have the power, or because we are offering a gift on behalf of the giver.

The Books the Church Suppressed

If you've ever wondered, or ever been asked (as we often are in school), how we can trust what the bible says about Jesus and the early church this is the book for you. It takes you through the whole process of the formation of the New Testament and in particular deals with the (false) accusation that the bible we have today is corrupted, biased and has been altered to the point of being unreliable. Michael Green's clear demonstration of the reliability of the New Testament is easy to read, fascinating in its detail and exudes the conviction of a passionate evangelist. If you ask nicely I might lend it to you, as long as I know you and you promise to give it back...