Formation for participraying

As I've been thinking about the difference between group processes for intercessory (rather than 'merely' petitionary) prayer meetings (see previous post if you've started on this one). It has been occuring to me that there are certain characteristics of behaviour and attitude that are needed by participants -this then is about Christian formation.

I've been aware too, as I wrote, that some of what I've been suggesting is quite like Quaker discernment practices -so that's a cross-reference point. I have long thought that part of the unspoken (!) underpinning for Quaker practice* is a set of internalised rules about conduct in a meeting. It is this sense of  the processes needing a good human habitus that I'm trying here to sketch out.

So, what is required, humanly speaking, for a group intercessory prayer process to work as well as it can?

Well, the things that most readily come to mind are as follows. They form a sort of core competency list which suggests some things that are necessary in initial Christian formation (discipling, baptism and confirmation preparation -probably). They are in no particular order. Though perhaps the first really is foremost.

Listening to God. As a gateway to this, I'd suggest a thorough grounding in lectio Divina or a robust version of the Quiet Time. It seems to me that the core of this discipline (I take they view that they are basically the same thing differently contextualised), is hearing the words of scripture with openness and sifting our own responses to note what in our own reactions may indicate God's Spirit drawing us to a particular word or phrase and being prepared to stay with that long enough to understand how and why it is settling with us.

Listening to others. This means not only hearing and understanding (which may in turn imply we ask some questions sometimes to improve our comprehension) but dwelling with what is said in such a way that we can suss out what it in resonates with us, unpick our own responses and so weigh up what is of God in it. It's rather different to listening for the next cue or gap where we can say our own piece. It requires patience and self-control (fruit of the Spirit). Asking clarificatory questions well will require gentleness and kindness (also fruit of the Spirit) in attitude to enable a genuine sharing and not trigger defensiveness or anxiety in our conversation partners.

Self awareness -related to the previous paragraph; being aware of our own responses and being familiar enough with our habits of response enables us to own our own 'stuff' and so refrain from projecting onto other humans or onto God.

Self examination. Being aware of our own motivations and being prepared to notice and take responsibility for our own reactions. This enables us to offer things to the group with less entanglement from the less worthy side of us. It won't go away except by us becoming aware and dealing with it appropriately. So we may want to set aside time to consider our participation and what drives it.

Becoming comfortable with silence. Much of what is written above requires us to be able to give attention to what our inner world is doing. This is likely to mean that we (and others) are quiet for periods of time to do so. We need to be okay with that for enough time to let things happen.

Loving challenge: kind and respectful speech. It is likely that from time to time, we find that we sense that something is mentioned or shared that for some reason seems 'off'. Obviously we need to examine ourselves to understand better why it may seem 'off' to us. However, if having done so we feel we should try to put things right or back on track, we will need to offer a corrective or at least a question. As we do so, we do well when we recognise that the person who shared has probably done so in good faith and may feel somewhat vulnerable having done so. Loving challenge recognises that and seeks to reassure that person that their effort is appreciated, that they are respected even while questioning what may have been shared. It may not always be explicitly said, depending on the level of trust and friendship in the group, but it should always be conveyed by the way that things are said and by choices of words that are not derogatory or shaming. We want people to feel that they can continue to be wrong sometimes without being derogated for it. Being wrong is a great way to learn how to be right more often. We'd want that encouragement for ourselves, so we should model it ourselves in relation to others. Having a meeting which is slow and thoughtful, will help in this since we are less likely to 'shoot from the hip' in such an atmosphere.

 There's a PS to this short series here.

Starred Note

*I'm not a Quaker but I have long been interested in their origins and sympathetic to their historical roots. I dissent from their standing aside from the dominical sacraments. I value their conviction that there is that of God in everyone -I'd elucidate: the Spirit is at work in all. And I value their experience in  developing ways to listen to the movements of the Spirit in individuals and collectively. I think that churches could and should learn from their discernment processes.

Turning over the Church's year

 I find myself saying from time to time that we should make more of Holy Saturday. I know that the Orthodox have a liturgy about the burial of Christ's body. I think that holding it as a day of lament, a day to consider what it would be like to live, for example, in a meaningless universe without God, a day to remember the finality of death -holding back from anticipating a relativising of that finality. This appears not to be what the Orthodox do -as they think about the harrowing of hell and the 'resting' of Christ -which still seems framed by the hint of resurrection. I think we could do with an exploration of the darkness, maybe.

But then as I think about adjusting our liturgical practice, a flow of other things I'd like to explore about the church's year starts (some of which I've posted before) ...

I think that we should perhaps start the church's year with Creationtide; in September. This would align with the new academic year and draw us much closer to our Jewish roots. I'd suggest that the liturgical colour should be green and that to compensate, we might take another colour for 'ordinary time'. I'd suggest a pale grey or cream -something basically perceived as neutral.

Then in November we've lately begun to have Kingdomtide. How about we have that as the penitential preparation for the Christmas season? -And use purple or deep blue as the season's colour? Maybe during this season we might fast a la Ramadan -not eating during daylight hours.

I'd suggest then we swap the Advent colour for a festal red (and inter-shot with green?) recognising that December is essentially in experiential terms in our society, greater Christmas: let it be and don't fight it -hence penitential prep in November, Kingdomtide which lends itself to the themes of death, judgement, the last things etc.

I think I'd suggest that the liturgical colours for Lent should be brown and/ or sack-cloth should be used. This suggests soil, humility and the basis for new growth. To support this, I'd suggest we use ash and/or soil instead of (or as an optional alternate to) holy water at the entrance to church buildings during this season encouraging people to mark themselves with a streak or two. I'd also suggest exploring a fresh ashing on Good Friday -perhaps as a way to start a Stations of the Cross or similar.

During Holy Week, I reckon black and grey should be the theme palette. This resonates with the way that black is generally conceived in wider society as a colour of sombreness and mourning. Perhaps dark grey during most of the week and black for Good Friday and Holy Saturday -which we should definitely do more with liturgically. A day of lament and consideration of loss -including the death of God, hope etc.

Easter. Yes, gold is a good colour. But how about also using vivid spring greens? -Certainly for the Easter season. I'd strongly discourage any celebration of Easter before sunset of the eve. I'd encourage more careful consideration to strengthen the experience in the liturgy of darkness contrasted by light -which is often lost in the practical enactment of the rites. I've written more about this elsewhere.

I keep wondering whether at Pentecost, we should take an idea from the Holi festival in India (and beyond): "one and all, chase each other around with dry paint or coloured water, in water pistols or balloons!". And perhaps a good colour to use in this season would be sunny yellow or a warm orange to pick up on the fiame imagery of Pentecost.

I also think that it'd be great to have a festival -a change of colour- somewhere between the end of Pentecost and the start of Creationtide. So, there's midsummer, traditionally associated with the feast of John the Baptiser on 24 June and there's Transfiguration on 6 August.  The latter should be bright white and maybe a week or two of  that. Midsummer might run from 20 -25 June? Gold?

The other thing is to think through the environmental dimensions of many of these seasons and give them greater prominence. This is important because of the times we live in: we need to bring our relation to the non-human creation into a bigger part of our thinking on the way to becoming better climate citizens. So this could involve recognising Lost Species Remembrance day at the end of November -which would fit with All Souls on 2nd and Remembrance day on and around 11th. Transfiguration could have a dimension of the transfiguration of all creation in the Fullness of Time. Easter holds promise for all of creation. Some days hold seasons of the year significances which could be brought out more: spring, midsummer, autumn and midwinter have ecclesiastical near-neighbours which have traditionally been celebrated togther. There or also cross quarter-days of Candlemas, Mayday, Lammas, Hallows'eve which could be opportunities to consider our human relationship to our environment and our Christian discipleship in the natural world in which God has placed us and in which so many of us encounter God. 

I'd suggest that we should be holding days of penitence and lament around Earth Overshoot days. And Rogationtide might gain more prominence as days to consider and pray about our food systems globally as well as locally. Since Rogationtide is tied to the feast of the Ascension, it would serve as a short penitential lead-in to that feast. It might be that we look at the tradition of 'beating the bounds' at Rogationtide, -maybe to take in how our 'bounds' have been breached by pollution and by extraction, globalisation and colonialism. The message would be that, yes, we have to look after and know our own patch but also it is not possible to be simply parochial.

There are probably things I've been thinking about that I've for the moment missed out. I'll add more if/when I recall any.

I've been noticing signs of this a bit lately with some of the people I work among.

It would seem that younger males especially are being bombarded with hyper-idealised images of not only what females “should” look like, but also how they themselves “should” look. By watching those fit, hairless (but presumably sexually successful) specimens on television programmes or on social media, it’s as if the famed “male gaze” is being savagely and pitilessly turned back on themselves.

It's not the first time I've remarked on it. but I do think maybe there's another question to ask that could potentially help in understanding this. It's rooted in my own pre-adolescent experience and reflecting on how that played into growing up subsequently. As I wrote there;

As an 8-year old boy I can distinctly remember two interacting issues being a part of my life. One was reading comics of the superhero genre; especially Spider-Man. The other issue was that I was very thin (mostly as a result of having thin bones). The problem I had with these two things together was that I was taking in images on a regular basis of male bodies which were well muscled, though not body-builder beefy, and graceful (lovingly drawn?) This male body shape filled my imaginative space and what I take to be my mimetic instinct drew me towards a desire to be something like that image. 

What I'm now reflecting further on is what stood in the way of myself and, presumably, my peers following through in the way that many young men do in the studies the linked article report? Clearly the incipient pressures were present -and the Charles Atlas body-building adverts in our comics and the 'Boy's Own' articles for training regimes were trading off (literally) some concerns that pre-pubescent boys had but what made the difference so that we largely followed a trajectory which didn't involve such body modding and extreme body-image issues? (And while I'm asking that question, I'm wondering what was the experience of my female peers at that time?).

I know for myself that part of what helped was seeing pop-stars who were slim or even thin and not fulfilling the film-star 'good looks' paradigm. In doing that, I was able to begin to re-calibrate my sense of what counted as beautiful (or at least okay) and to critique the given images. I think I began to think that a set of norms that excluded so many of us were suspect.

It's worth thinking about some more. My question remains, how to help other and many more young people to be weaned off toxic imagery and norms.

Learning war no more

 It used to be the case that the psychological studies seemed to indicate that video games didn't cause violence. I guess that they were mainly showing that there was not a direct causal link. But I had always thought that it wouldn't be a direct link, rather it would be creating dispositions and habits of thought -a 'mentality' as I expressed it, more likely to result in violent attitudes and in turn attitudes would be more likely to foster behaviours. The obverse side to that would be that by funding our imaginations so heavily with responses of violence and aggression, we are failing to develop a repertoire of reactions and attitudes that could lead to non-violent outcomes, defusing tension, reconciliation etc.


So, yet more research has been added to the more recent discoveries in research that indeed the intuition I (and others) had is broadly correct. So:

Children who repeatedly play violent video games are learning thought patterns that will stick with them and influence behaviors as they grow older, according to a new study. The effect is the same regardless of age, gender or culture. The lead researcher says it is really no different than learning math or to play the piano.

Life lessons: Children learn aggressive ways of thinking and behaving from violent video games, study finds -- ScienceDaily:

 Of course, we now have a problem: the earlier directly causal research now inhabits a broad public perception of the matter so there's a culturally significant attitude that we don't have to worry about violence in computer games or on television because it doesn't cause violence and it might even be cathartic. So we have a challenge to reverse that now that we know better: we have to try to get the attitude changed to one of 'garbage in, garbage out: violence in gaming trains us in violent reactions and attitudes'.



Then, what we've got to do is find ways to develop games that are engaging, 'fun' and credible but which 'train' us in conflict resolution and fund imaginations for non-violent reacting. I wonder if anyone is trying to do that?

Asymmetric insight

I'm finding these things increasingly fascinating because they seem for me to connect with other things I know from other parts of my life. So, it starts with an intriguing title like this one:
Why You Can't Truly Know Other People (and What You Can Do About It), and what then catches my attention is this:

This phenomeon—what psychologists call the illusion of asymmetric insight—creates a lot of problems. For instance, it allows you to completely reject what others believe because you think you understand it, and remain convinced that they'd agree with you if only they understood your point of view. Basically, you think you can understand everyone else and nobody can understand you

Which seems to be related strongly to that crucial and basic counselling insight; active listening is important because it actually helps people get beyond the isolation that can be brought about by asymmetric insight (no-body understands me) and it also helps get past the first-foot attitude we all tend to start with; that others don't understand us. Active listening helps overcome both those related things.

Note too the importance of this insight for everyday peace-making (and remember 'blessed are the peacemakers ...'); we have to make sure that we do both learn to understand and empathise with others and also demonstrate to them that we really do and that perhaps we understand their point of view. This requires a great deal of humility: the insight that we all think we understand ourselves but no-one else does. It is also part of the 'deal' that if we start from a perspective that others would agree with us if they understood our point of view, then we can't really properly consider changing or moving from our pov until we grasp that the someone else really does understand it. After all, if it's not understood, how can we consider dropping it or modifying it in favour of someone else's unknown perspective? When we truly grasp that our pov is properly understood (in a way that we could recognise it as our own) and yet not necessarily agreed with, then it is that we can move on. This, of course, is the reason why real reconciliation and peace-building is so hard: getting people to listen and to feel heard when the situation is a clash of stereotyping, miscomprehension and dismissal.

The other thing it reminded me of, though, is the acute inner embarrassment (I can't think of a better term just now) as I catch a glimpse of how I might be perceived by others and that they may understand something about me that I hadn't really got hold of. The asymmetry doesn't grant us unique and wholly accurate insight into ourselves. How could it? We are because others are; some of who we are is 'out there' in our social world.

Finding explanations in charity

This is so important. I didn't realise that I'd internalised it and a held-principle until relatively recently when confronted with people not doing it. It's always humbling and salutary (in the sense of salvation- and health- bearing) to look back at oneself and realise that one may have been guilty of, in this case, immature and uncharitable judgementalism. "It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.” Of course, the ironic reflex of this is noticing the temptation to fall again into judgmentalism -this time of the judgmental!

7 Tips for Minding My Own Business | Psychology Today:

The bug fix

This blog is worth subscribing to; every so often there is a rather lovely, or insightful or just downright witty 'definition'. So check this out: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows — the bug fix. I reckon this fits in the category of 'interesting and possibly insightful':

"the bug fix
n. the satisfaction of updating software, which gains effortless new features inside the cocoon of the progress bar, whereas your personality—a beta version with compatibility issues, unstable memory and a quirky interface—is open source, trusting peers to collaboratively debug your emotional source code until it’s stable enough for official release into adulthood."

I like the recognition that personality has a component that is socially-formed. It would be worth exploring the metaphor further: are we prepared to 'open source' ourselves? That's the big challenge of Christian community. And is there a way that the mention of adulthood should be interrogated? I'm mindful of Steve Taylor's poem (can't recall which just now) where there is the line: "When I grow up I want to be a child".

Just Church

Having once been pastorally responsible for planting a 'fresh expression' of church based in valuing justice, peace and the integrity of creation, I was really pleased to find this site which offers resources for bringing the justice end of that trinity more fully into the capability of ordinary congregations. I commend it to you. I'm thinking of adapting some of the resources to use with the spirituality side of ministerial formation at college.
Just Church

training church leadership

I posted something a few days back that included a bit on training for ministry under the heading 'post academic training'. Well timely or what? Maggi [see header ref] and Jonny are now discussion how to train folk for emergin church leadership etc. Of course there is some appearance of disagreement but it does seem clear to me that there is both a need for church leadership that is theologically literate and also practically competant. CLearly too there is a perception that too much theology does not make connections with ministry. In actual fact these are cartoon positions. I'm married to someone currently being processed in a vicar factory. My reflection are in the earlier post though I would like to add a few things in the light of the current debate I've just referenced.

There is a trend in the training institutions for the CofE to try to develop skills of theological reflection; if I understand it aright the aim is to develop reflective practitioners of ministry. However there are countervailing forces, to some extent, in the form of the Church's ministry commissioners [ABM] who seem to have become fixated on more traditionally academic rigour. This wouldn't be so difficult an issue if this rigour could be applied n creative ways [and there is some good work being done on assesment related to creative and practical/vocational subjects]. However, man academics are reared scholastically in the old school and both harbour suspicion of stepping outside of what they know and also have not [yet!] developed the imaginitive purchase to 'see' how it might be done differently. All of which is not helped either by the cultural prejudices of our society which disparages non-traditional subjects, and this prejudice is often all to easily uncritically absorbed by academics cought up in the cut-throat business of defending their turf and prestige. So it is in the teeth of all this opposition and misunderstanding that we have to push forward the perfectly possible project of retrofitting training for ministry.

This is why I thinkit is important that we find helpful analogues o f what we are trying to do and I will say it again: the training of medics [including especially nurses, paramedics, physios etc]; the training of actors and artists; the training of post-compulsory teachers/lecturers all have academic rigour but a huge vocational and creative component. It can be done.

I reiterate too that I think that it is uefuyl for us to have in mind the idea of the 'scientist- practitioner'. This is a model that I uncovered while researching for my dissertation on Life Coaching and Spritual Direction in a paper on the professinalisation of life coaching. There's alot we can learn from reflection on this issue and perhaps when the dissertation is ready for publication you might read it [email me I hope to have pre-submission copy in the new year].

Let me quote a bit from this paper which I think is helpful in the debate.
Practitioners are trained within this framework to have a working understanding of the principles and methodology of research. This understanding then enable them to apply informed critical thought to the evaluation of their practice drawing on and being informed by the relevant academic literature to design and implement relevant evidence-based interventions evaluating client progress and adhering to relevant ethical practice.

Now it is not a direct analogy to ministry but there is enough to pursue, I think. The idea of enabling the application of 'informed critical thought' etc seeems fairly straightforward in thinking about pastoral care, leading worship, teaching the faith, developing and 'growing' people and facilitating mission. And in that sense 'evidence-based interventions' become understandable if we include in 'evidence' the data of biblical and theological reflection. 'Client progress' would be broadened to include 'church or project progress' or somesuch. Ethical consideration go almost without saying.

I still think that my suggestions earlier about the pattern of training could be a good way to develop this agenda, but I'm open to other ideas too.

routine exercise of imagination

Fast Company | Fast Forward 2005: 67-70: Couldn't help wondering what Church would look like if we took this idea seriously. "one of the most intriguing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission is 'to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.' In every organization, bureaucratic or not, liberating imagination is at the core of competitive advantage. How to do so? The commission suggests: creating a team that regularly dishes up analysis from the perspective of the enemy, or in business terms, your toughest competitor; developing a set of telltale indicators to better predict an attack, perhaps a rival lining up a key supplier; having a management process to monitor and act on such signals; and ensuring that someone is held accountable for it all."

It fits in with my feeling that decision-making bodies in church could do with training in things like the Edward de Bono mind tools and where use of stuff like 'six thinking hats' was normal ...

Reenvisaging the CofE? [2]

The rant I've title-reference-linked is the proverbial bucket of cold water to wake you up before I get onto the next reforms. It's referenced because I think that it is the foil against which institutional reform needs to be played. You are of course quite entitled to read this first!

Anyway on to the reforms. The is the 'post' section. You may want to look at the first posting in this mini-series and the next post (much delayed).

Post denominational Let's face it: it's hard to come up with any very good arguments to support denominationalism. The real glue holding a denomination together is finance and governance, not theological emphasis or even any great commitment to ecclesiology. So let's go with that. Don't worry about formal mergers, just free up the situations so that ministers/priests/pastors can serve flexibly across denominational boundaries. There are some practicalties involved but are they really so onerous? So why shouldn't I, as an ordained Anglican serve in a Baptist or Methodist Church? It might be helpful, why not take up two part-time pastorates one Anglican the other URC? And so on ... Probably someone is going to object; something about catholicity of orders? Excuse me; read again what I've said and think about the meaning of the word 'catholicity'.

Post academic training. I think that we have to recognise that ministry is not an academic activity and training people as if they were likely to go into research is a big mistake. Don't get me wrong: I think that having church leaders and the like who are able to deal with the issues, questions and challenges in a well-thought-out way is a Good Thing. However, I think that we need some other analogue than academic research as a root metaphor for ministerial training. The leading contenders, in my view, should be performance arts and medical practitioners. In both of these fields professional and academically rigorous training takes place. However, in both fields it is also allied strongly to praxis. There is a heavy empahsis on reflective learning. I choose these two analogues because part of the ministerial role is like medics: it involves seeing people, helping them to articulate what's up and then evolving appropriate responses in ways that help them to make progress and finding healing [cf cure of souls]. Some of the role is like a performer: the need to lead a group of people, live, through a journey of discovery and contact with the ineffable; the need to do so in an embodied way and to use all the physical and mental resources at your disposal to do so.

So I would like to develop the current mixed-mode training even further. In this development an even higher emphasis would be placed on the individual supervision so that the trainee minster's academic curriculum was set more fully by the experience of working ministerially. This means the trainer/tutor acts in a more 'coach' mode and need sto be theological astute as a practical/community theologian rather than a discarnated academic. Now I know that there's a cartoon in that but the big-bold drawing will suffice to get over the thrust of what I'm saying.

The interesting link up here is that the role of trainer/tutor/coach would be somewhat analogous to that of coach/bishop as I suggested in the previous posting on this and, of course, this suggests that episcope is a shared ministry.

Post-Parochial For the time being anyway, geographical situation is not such a strong determiner of social network. Many churches operate in effect as post paochial. eE need to find good mechanisms for working network 'parishes' as well as geographical. And in fact it makes little sense for the kind of parish boundariedness that has been used in the past to continue in certain areas. Either we need to be able to redraw them more easily or in some areas simply to pool sovereignty, or something like that. 'Post'in this case does not mean 'without' but 'supplemented by something else'.

In this connection I think that we should note an important development; the rise of network communities. The Northumbria Community, The Community of Aidan and Hilda, The Iona Community, and perhaps even Spring Harvest, Soul Survivor and Greenbelt all form significant nexuses of spiritual resourcing. I think that it may be that for many people allegiance to these 'dispersed communities' is greater than to the local church which serves more as a point of contact for things spiritual between dispersed comunity events and activities. If the local church ties in with these 'parachurches' then that's helpful to the 'punter'. Perhaps the nearest precedent I can come up with to this is the pre-Reformation Churhc in Britain where local churches, as I understand it, we effectively run by the various monastic organisations with a few exceptions where the leading priest was called a Rector because he had control rather than being appointed by a monastery. I wonder whether we could be heading in that direction, cross-denominationally? If so why not actually go with it?

Post-hierarchical This is partly about things like equalising stipends across the board but it is also about clearing out the informal elitism. I keep noticing that some people seem to be approached to do stuff seemingly because of their background rather than, necessarily ability. I'm not syaing they don't have ability, merely that sometimtes the combination of some ability plus having gone to the 'right' universities/schools/ dioceses/parishes seems to score over ability on its own. This shouldn't be the way it is in church, natural and understandable as it is, we should be past this, folks.

I commend the current Archbishop of York for chosing to serve his last years before retirement in a parish ministry [and the loss of pension that implies too]. I hope that we can move to a church where this isn't so unusual an idea because there is a genuine valuing of ministry rather than status. A bishop is a 'job'/'ministry', so is a deacon, and so, for that matter is being a Reader or a secretary.... its an endemic problem, history tells us. so can't we be serious about finding systemic ways to encourage it?