On being formed...

I just read something really disturbing. What makes it so disturbing is that I think it's true. Jim Wallis (in The Call to Conversion) is talking about watching TV one evening, and as he considered the ads selling an array of 'stuff' he said: "what was happening through television that night was spiritual formation. Far more effective than totalitarianism, this continual electronic suasion is forming the values, the mind, and the spirit of each of us in our all-consuming society."

I guess it caught my attention because I'm just completing a module on yes, you guessed it, 'spiritual formation'. And while I've been practising lectio divina, silence, bodily prayer, labyrinth, meditation, fasting etc all with the goal of being fashioned more into the image of Christ, the vast majority of people are, as Mr Wallis suggests, being formed into consumption machines, perfectly adapted to want to consume more and more products of endless variety.

In saying this I'm not claiming to be immune - I too fall prey to the consumer-formers. It is endemic in the church: another new song with which to worship, the next must-have spiritual book, another week's podcast sermons from countless high profile speakers...on the face of it, all good stuff through which to develop our faith. And yet...there's something that disturbs me about all this: with all these resources available, is my faith any stronger than that of my predecessors who had barely a Bible; and, are we not just immitating the secular world in our insatiable appetites for more?

Ultimately, does all this Christian stuff feed our flesh more than it feeds our spirits, and actually distract us from the Source?

Father Joe

I've been itching to write this for some days, but hadn't found the time. Father Joe was a person. 'Father Joe' is a book. It's a fabulous book. Sounds like he was a fabulous person. You may have read it, but in case you haven't... It's written by Tony Hendra, a Cambridge graduate, satirist, one-time associate of the Monty Python crew, co-creator of 'Spitting Image' - and all the fractured, stimulant-assisted, relationship-breaking lifestyle that often goes with being a part of that world. The book is his autobiography, within which there's this central figure, Father Joe, who Hendra meets when he's 14 and who continues to play a key part thereafter.

Father Joe was a Benedictine Monk, who lived most of his life in a monastery on the Isle of Wight. He was apparently blissfully unaware of and disconnected from modern life as we know it. Yet the understanding and wisdom with which he guided the author through his turbulent years is utterly incredible, and always with such great love and grace: "I was always somewhat baffled that this monk, who had never slept with man or woman, who had confined himself in a cloister in late puberty, could know and feel so much about a matter he'd taken a strong vow to know not...He had none of that , yet he got it all. Nothing shocked or surprised him, he always grasped immediately the core of a sexual crisis, he always offered practical solutions. It was a mystery."

I found the book totally compelling and thoroughly absorbing. At an emotional level it left me in tears. At a spiritual level it left me in awe. I hope I've said enough to 'sell' it to you.

(Oddly, it isn't very available in the UK, but you can get one from USA via Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Father-Joe-Man-Saved-Soul/dp/1400061849/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207923848&sr=8-1.)

The sound of silence

I posed the question, what would a five-a-day spiritual diet look like. At the heart of my own reflection lies a strangely simple, apparently accessible, though often illusive reality - silence. Karin alluded to this in her response. For thousands of years, silence has been practised as one of the most common spiritual disciplines, often in association with solitude, sometimes as a basis for other disciplines such as centred prayer and meditation.

I've said it is often illusive, thinking that, with wall-to-wall, 24/7 media available, and with the frenetic pace of much of modern life, silence is increasingly difficult to access. However, given the prominence of silence among the disciplines, I'm thinking that maybe it's always been difficult to find - that it has always required DISCIPLINE. We have TV, radios, iPods, etc. 1st century Christians would mostly have lived in the midst of heaving, chattering, singing, shouting community - large families meshed together with neighbours and relatives. The Desert Fathers were known as such because they sought the solitude of the desert, away from the distractions of community life.


And in recent weeks, I've found silence to be the most precious of gifts. I'm not really talking about lack of noise - that's just quiet, and it's an important part of this. I'm talking about a condition of the heart, still before God, becoming aware of his ever-presence, attentive. Beautiful. Henri Nouwen reports meeting with Mother Teresa and pouring out his troubles. When he'd stopped, Mother T said: "When you spend one hour a day adoring your Lord and never doing anything you know to be wrong...you'll be fine."