We spent some time with Mark Scandrette earlier this year when he stayed with us in Oxford. A recent talk of his, available as a podcast here, talks about 5 myths of community… in which he makes some points that help question what we mean by ‘community’ and how we go about nurturing it – and he questions some of hype around the buzz word of ‘community’. It’s worth a listen, but I’ll summarise here:

1. Myth of belonging: We seem to believe that the ‘right’ community/group will meet our needs and as a result we will have community… which can mean we take community and dump all our needs into it, approaching it as what I can ‘get from’ rather than what I can ‘give’.

“Belonging and community are something that we bring ourselves to – it is a practice, we practice love and sometimes the fringe benefit is that we feel ‘it’ [belonging], but when you don’t it doesn’t mean ‘it’ is not there.”

There is often a tendency to create community around conversation, eg meals, and Mark says, one lunch like that seems to always lead to another, instead he talks of inviting people to join us to do something.

“Community is not a good goal in itself, but it is a good by-product of seeking God’s Kingdom together.”

2. Myth of the healthy sceptic: There are too many critics in the world, often armchair critics.

3. Myth of the super leader: Mark says we wrongly believe that the good community needs that special super leader.

4. Myth of flat leadership: We’ve seen the celebratory leaders, and decided we don’t need leaders, we’ll just do it all together. But community is always initiated by someone/some group of people – someone says “what are we going to do?”

5. Myth of community without conflict: We’re never going to get over the drama. The drama is where we are learning. How we are learning is in that tension. Get comfortable with being broken, admitting we’re wrong.

In this week’s Something Understood on Radio 4, Mark Tully talked to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, about his personal understanding of prayer… and it is one of the best descriptions of prayer that I’ve heard in ages.

He talks of prayer as stilling your body and imagination, which aid communion with God and make us present… practices that I’ve been exploring particularly over the past year, and which I’ve found helpfully explored in the book Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird.

But what in particular I found helpful in this interview was Rowan’s explanation of intercessory prayer, especially when viewed from this understanding of a more ‘internal prayer’. He moves us away from the ‘shopping list of prayers’ that we often find practiced in the church, and moves us towards a definition of intercessory prayer that says: “I’m going to spend ten minutes just thinking about you and Jesus.”

“You don’t send in a list of requests. You don’t bombard God with your demands. You just hold the image, the sense of a person or a situation in the presence of God, as if you want to let the one seep into the other, bringing those realities together in your mind and heart.”

That he says is how he finds intercession works, which makes much sense to me.

Inevitably our emotions move us towards asking for help for this person or to let this to happen, but Rowan says – “the bottom line is holding them there, your emotions push you to saying these things, and there is no need to be ashamed of that, but the reality is letting God into the situation.”

You’ve got a few days to listen to the programme itself on the BBC iPlayer if interested.

Just thought I’d share a few things that have been inspiring me lately….

Conversations
Had some great conversations with a few people lately… sharing hopes and sparking ideas… conversations with people you love and respect surely have to be one of the best ways of finding inspiration.

“Be the change you want to see”
Enjoying the quote above, credited to Mahatma Ghandi, at the moment. Came across it recently here, and finding it inspirational especially when played alongside the song Given, from the album Hope for a Tree Cut Down.

Do lectures
Have enjoyed catching-up with some of the Do Lectures from last year, and looking forward to the new ones coming up later next month.

Riceboy Sleeps
Really enjoying the sounds of Riceboy Sleeps.

Later in the week we’ll be heading to Brussels for a few days… and then we’ll be looking to Greenbelt for some further inspiration…

Mark Scandrette, originally uploaded by mattfreer.

Really enjoyed the company of Mark Scandrette and family who stayed with us at House244 whilst visiting Oxford at the weekend. They joined us for hOME’s Pentecost service and Mark and Lisa spoke about their community ReImagine in San Fransisco and their involvement with their wider community… incarnational radical presence… inspiring… so much so that I’ve just ordered his book Soul Graffiti.

It has been a long time since any updates on the blog… and a lot has been changing for us…

Back in March I finished working at CMS, and earlier this month I started working for the Social Responsibility Department of the Diocese of Oxford. My work at the diocese is focussed around the environment, supporting the diocese as it responds to Climate Change and encouraging environmental awareness in it’s parishes. Work at the diocese isn’t full-time, so at the moment I’m sharing child-care of Ayla (which is great), as well as working freelance and exploring some other projects.

We’ve been trying to get busy in the garden at House244 as well… some of those efforts can be see from the photos below.

Boy with the purple hat #1, originally uploaded by Matt & Polly.

I’ve recently been re-reading From Brokenness to Community by Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arch. It is a great little book based on lectures he gave at Harvard, and is one of the best books I’ve read on the area of community. So I was particularly pleased to hear this weeks Something Understood that looks at Hospitality with a rare interview with Jean Vanier.

You can listen to the programme on the BBC iPlayer for a short time.

The conversation covers a number of things that have been on my mind recently, and which come up in the book. For instance our tendency to always ‘do, do and do’, often as a way to get more power and control, rather than to genuinely help others. In relation to this I was again struck by the notion that it is easier to be the person who is offering the hospitality, than the person receiving hospitality, because of the power gained from offering hospitality.

The importance of listening and of celebrating life together – as well as living day to day in the here and now, are themes that also come up in the programme, and the book… not bad for a 30 minute radio programme and a 50 page book!

“We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.”

Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community

“Our world will only be a place of peace if we listen and understand and are in relation to those that are different.”

Jean Vanier on Something Understood

A while back I finally got round to reading Finding Sanctuary by Abbot Christopher Jamison, the Abbot from Worth Abbey that gained a lot of attention through the BBC TV’s ‘The Monastery’ a few years back. I really enjoyed it and in particular welcomed the chapter on ‘community’, which starts to explore some of what Saint Benedict had to say on the subject. As a result I’ve also started reading further into the Rule of Saint Benedict (having read Abbot Christopher’s new book Finding Happiness and started the Rule of Benedict by Joan D. Chittister) and I’m finding it really helpful in thinking through the whole area of how we endeavour to ‘live intentionally in community.’

In Finding Sanctuary, Abbot Christopher talks of the way Benedict wanted community to be where people can express individuality rather than individualism: “Individualism is simply doing your own thing in your own way and blanking out the other people. Individuality involves bringing your particular contribution to bear on the life of the community…” I have found this a really helpful way to look at the life of community in tension to our culture of ‘me, my and I’.

He also talks of the importance of a rule for community – because it provides an agreed way of doing things, and as a result people know what to expect and what is expected of them, which leads to, “community life sustain[ing] good conversations by encouraging it and contain[ing] good conversation by setting boundaries.” Finally he explains how Benedict put the structures of the rule in place through ritual: “Small rituals can transform ordinary events into powerful ways to build community.”

These points, of rule, structure and ritual, are often seen in the negative by society at large, and yet increasingly I am seeing the liberating role they play in the lives of many, particularly, in monastic communities. A recent example of this was whilst staying at a Franciscan monastery, where I was struck by the rule of silence that was practiced for the majority of each day which enabled the monks to communicate much more efficiently and clearly than most of us stuck in the rule of noise, and also freed them from the need for constant noise amongst themselves.

At House244 we are just starting to work through some of these issues of role, responsibility and leadership – and I’m finding lessons from our monastic relatives really helpful.

Whilst working for CMS I was involved in getting a long awaited resource called 21M finished, and it is now available…

21M is an eight-part DVD resource that explores the Five Marks of Mission, which were produced by the Anglican church to help give a broad understanding of ‘mission’. Others might talk of integral mission or holistic mission. I have some questions about the language of the Five Marks (which I will blog about at another time), but overall they are a helpful tool for a deeper understanding and practice of what the church calls ‘mission’… and hopefully 21M will be a useful resource that enables churches and groups to explore them.

21M aims to inspire churches and groups into action. It uses group activities and games, Bible studies, interviews with current thinkers and practitioners, and examples from around the world to explore the Marks of Mission in some depth. It’s designed to be a flexible resource, but is structured as an eight-week course that could be used by cell and home groups, youth groups (aged 14+), lent groups, and whole churches. Elements of the course could be used alone to explore particular areas of mission. The DVD comes with an in-depth Leader’s Guide attached. Further information is at: www.cms-uk.org/21m

The normal selling price of 21M is £14.95, but apparently it is currently at an introductory offer of £4.95 at the CMS online shop.

path to the sea2, originally uploaded by mattfreer.

Being awoken by a baby early in the morning can have its benefits… one such benefit was discovering Radio 4’s Something Understood programme last year. Each week it looks at “some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry.” We are rarely now up at 6am on a Sunday, but with the wonders of the BBC iPlayer I always try and listen.

This weeks programme looked at Mysticism and Resistance, with a focus on how our lives respond to and set off on paths we discover along the way, which often involve difficult choices. I particularly liked the poem quoted this week, The road not taken by Robert Frost… At a time when I am looking out for a new path to take, in terms of jobs (I’ve yet to mention it on my blog, but my role at CMS was made redundant last year and so I am leaving CMS in two weeks time), it is particularly poignant:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970
by Leslie Frost Ballantine.