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GROWING HOPE Daily Readings
Some sample pages
Neil Paynter
WILD GOOSE PUBLICATIONS
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Contents of book © the individual contributors Compilation © 2006 Neil Paynter First published 2006 by Wild Goose Publications, 4th Floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK. Wild Goose Publications is the publishing division of the Iona Community. Scottish Charity No. SCO03794. Limited Company Reg. No. SCO96243. www.ionabooks.com ISBN 1-901557-99-5 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-901557-99-2 Cover illustration © The Iona Community Neil Paynter has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1998 to be identified as the author of this collection. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means including photocopying or any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Overseas distribution: Australia: Willow Connection Pty Ltd, Unit 4A, 3-9 Kenneth Road, Manly Vale, NSW 2093 New Zealand: Pleroma, Higginson Street, Otane 4170, Central Hawkes Bay Canada: Novalis/Bayard Publishing & Distribution, 10 Lower Spadina Ave., Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario M5V 2Z2 Permission to reproduce any part of this work in Australia or New Zealand should be sought from Willow Connection. Printed by Bell & Bain, Thornliebank, Glasgow
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INTRODUCTION This book grew out of a call to Iona Community members to send in their favourite quotes – quotes that have influenced and inspired them, quotes they have copied down in notebooks and diaries, quotes they have taken with them on demonstrations and rallies, quotes they have carried around in their minds, in their hearts … Not every quote I received for Growing Hope made the book, unfortunately. I am sorry about that. Many did. I had to make choices (an editor’s responsibility and privilege). In the end, I had to make it ‘easy’ for myself and choose material I could source and which our budget could afford. There was lot of ‘work and worship’ involved, a lot of digging and praying. Still, it was a work of love. Thank you to everyone who took the time and trouble to send me quotes; and thank you to everyone who gave permission for quotes to be included. Many contributors e-mailed me back almost immediately to give their goahead, happy and honoured to be part of a project supporting the Iona Community and the Growing Hope Appeal. If I have failed to obtain permission from anyone I hope they will forgive me; I have tried my best. Thanks also to Sandra Kramer, Tri Boi Ta, Alex O’Neill, Jane Riley and Suet-Lin Teo at Wild Goose Publications – you are amazing. Growing Hope is not a comprehensive book detailing the influences and inspirations of the Iona Community. If I put out another call I would receive different quotes, and some of the same quotes no doubt. There are many writers and thinkers not included here who I know could be – theologians like Walter Wink and Gustavo Gutierrez, poets like Whitman and Ben Okri … Still this book does express, to a good extent I think, and in a scattered, rich way, the concerns and spirit of the Iona Community. It is also, of course, a book about hope; hope runs through it. In a time when George Bush and Tony Blair are sowing and reaping the weeds of war, people around the world are being
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uprooted and scattered by governments, death squads and multi-national corporations, and climate change is creating chaos, we need hope. Growing Hope is a book for daily reflection and meditation. A book to keep in your handbag or your briefcase. A book to keep on your bedside table or to read on the train in to work. A book to read in spare moments, and a book to read in the thick of it. Some readings are a sentence or two, others are a few paragraphs. They are short and to the point. Short and to the point because, it seems, that brevity and compactness is what the modern person has space and time for, but also because there is little time left, I feel – unless we act. I hope this book gives you comfort but doesn’t make you feel cosy. I hope it deepens your connection to the world in some way. May these little readings be seeds of hope; may they fall on good ground; may they sink in and take root in you. ‘Hope comes from the grass roots,’ somebody said. Hope comes from you and me, from everyday folk working in their communities. There are so many amazing, wonderful, committed people working to make this world a better place – I meet them all the time, working in nursing homes, working in youth clubs, working with children, working for nuclear disarmament, working in the environmental movement, working … It gives me hope. Let’s get it together; let’s get together. Let’s wrest this world away from the politicians and ‘the money boys’, as George MacLeod named them. I don’t know about you, but I am no longer interested in building walls of security and privilege, in withdrawing into shopping, drugs, virtual reality … I no longer believe the lies: We are not alone. We are one body. We are in community. We are all connected on this precious, fragile, miracle of a planet. We are not powerless. We have enormous potential power – let’s use it. Let’s scare the life out of the powers that be. Let’s turn the tables. ‘Never doubt,’ wrote Margaret Mead (see the reading for July 21). Never doubt. Hope. This book owes something to the booklets Peter and Dorothy Millar produced to help fund charitable projects in South India, where they worked
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for many years (Prayers from a Columban House, Notes for a Pilgrim, Seeds of Hope). If you like this book you will probably profit from their beautiful booklets. These are available from the Iona Community Shop on the isle of Iona (write to: The Iona Community’s Shop, Isle of Iona, Argyll PA76 6SN). If you would like to read Dorothy and Peter’s booklets, travel to Iona; they are there in the south aisle chapel of Iona Abbey, a deeply prayerful place, full of light and warmth and God’s energy. Go to Iona, read a quote, light a candle … Read the quotes in this book each day and light a candle. Pray for the concerns suggested by the readings; pray for yourself and those close to you; think about ways to act in your community, in the wider world. Go out and make some difference; help to make hope grow. Be a candle. Be a seed. There is no other reason for you to be here on Earth really. Is there? What are we waiting for? What are we so frightened of? God is with us. ‘Let your light shine,’ said Jesus. Camas and Iona are places of light. Crossroads where pilgrims from around the world – from Pakistan and Pollokshaws, from Uganda and Somerset – meet to share ideas, experiences, food, music, stories, late night talks and early morning worship; where folk learn to work together and to play again; where people can recharge, be accepted for who they are, gain understanding and strength and go out again on their journeys. The world desperately needs places like Camas and Iona; places where hope grows and spreads out – places where people can experience hope, love, trust, freedom … The ‘slogan’ of the Growing Hope Appeal is ‘Hope, Friends, Love, Trust, Freedom’. It’s a good ‘slogan’ in this world of 24-hour commercials, ads, jingles … It’s certainly a much better ‘slogan’ than ‘Four More Years!’, or ‘Whoever has the most toys wins’, or ‘It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration. Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking?’ (the Conservative Party, 2005) … ‘Hope, Friends, Love, Trust, Freedom’– don’t you wish a political party would run on that platform? I’d certainly vote for them. Or is that naïve, to believe in love, hope, friends, trust, freedom in this complicated time, dark age?
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O God, help my unbelief. Help me to believe in love, hope, friends love, trust, freedom: Hope in the future, Friends who affirm and challenge and inspire us, Love as the guiding force of the universe, Trust between peoples and nations, Freedom from suffering for the world’s oppressed and marginalised people. O God, make me your child. Neil Paynter Biggar, Scotland, Advent 2005
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January
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January 1 NEW WAYS God of our lives, you are always calling us to follow you into the future, inviting us to new ventures, new challenges, new ways to care, new ways to touch the hearts of all. When we are fearful of the unknown, give us courage. When we worry that we are not up to the task, remind us that you would not call us if you did not believe in us. When we get tired, or feel disappointed with the way things are going, remind us that you can bring change and hope out of the most difficult situations. Kathy Galloway, a member of the Iona Community
Leader: ALL:
This is the day that God has made; WE WILL REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT.
Leader:
We will not offer to God
ALL:
OFFERINGS THAT COST US NOTHING.
Leader:
Go in peace to love and to serve;
ALL:
WE WILL SEEK PEACE AND PURSUE IT.
Leader: ALL:
In the name of the trinity of love, GOD IN COMMUNITY, HOLY AND ONE.
Responses used in Iona Abbey
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January 2 To walk in the light is to walk freely not fearfully, to see and delight in all the beauty around us: in people, in nature, desiring it to be allowed to remain beautiful. It is to walk with a light heart, relaxed not tense, to have choices. The light is in the world. There is an old Jewish saying, ‘Do not say, God is in my heart. Rather, say, I am in the heart of God.’ The gospel of Jesus says precisely this thing. I am in God’s heart, and you, and you and you. Loved, valued, unconditionally accepted, we live and move and have our being in the heart of God, which is the light of God. Kathy Galloway
Follow the light you have and pray for more light. George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community
January 3 NOW The reawakening to mystery is leading us to an attentiveness to the present moment … This moment that we’re given is, in itself, a precious moment, and we ourselves are precious within it. Peter Millar, a member of the Iona Community, from a sermon
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Living with cancer Thank you for giving me a wake-up call: to look at the world with new eyes, to live NOW – not stuck in the past, not fretting away for an unknown and unknowable future. Thank you for giving me the chance to look at life afresh. I know to trust you and not to worry: to live fully and value each precious moment, to cherish each part of your creation, to seek you in each person I meet, to live with joy, which I have too often denied. Thank you for blessing me. Zam Walker Coleman, a member of the Iona Community
To become aware of the sacramental nature of the cosmos, to be open to the sacramental possibilities of each moment, to see the face of Christ in every person – these things are not novel, but their rediscovery is the beginning of our health. Ron Ferguson, a member of the Iona Community
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January 4 Spirituality is what makes you get out of bed in the morning. Kathy Galloway
A PRAYER FOR THIS DAY God of the dawning, grant me hope for this day that I may walk in your pathway and live in your light. God of the morning, grant me purpose to go forward to respond to the promise of opportunities to love and serve. God of the noontide, grant me strength as I labour to serve, to keep my head high, and fulfil my commitment to the task. God of the rest-hour, grant me grace to be still, to know the healing balm of time alone, and to find you in the peace. God of the evening, grant me space and time to let go of my responsibilities, to enjoy the pleasures of rest and the company of those I love. God of the night, grant me the faith to face the darkness without fear, to know that you will hold me in the blessed sleep of time and eternity. God of all my days, grant me the promise of days yet to come, and the thankfulness of past days well used. Tom Gordon, a member of the Iona Community
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January 5 ACKNOWLEDGING OUR FRAGILITY Just after the Christmas and New Year holidays it occurred to me that the only organisation that met during the holidays in the church was Alcoholics Anonymous. It was the only organisation crucial enough for its members that it had to keep going over the holidays. Obviously that said something about A.A., but it also says something about the church. What were the lessons? Alcoholics Anonymous is not only a community of the fragile, it is a community whose members, day by day, week by week, acknowledge their fragility; they remind themselves and each other of how fragile they are. Not so the church. You may come to the church as a ‘sinner’, but you are expected to get ‘better’. Your life is supposed to take on shape, and substance, and a kind of certainty. If ‘your faith’ cannot sustain you through anxiety, illness or bereavement, then that’s seen as a judgement on your faith; your faith is flawed. If the church member who was once perhaps a boozer goes back on the booze, what does the church say? ‘Shame, shame, terrible, terrible!’ If you are a church member you are supposed to be a coping sort of person. Are we not too respectable, are we also too secure? Too respectable and secure to have much hope of having ears that hear the expected word of grace, or eyes that see the unexpected vision of grace. Are we too respectable, too secure? Are we? I wonder. Or are we not perhaps much more like the alcoholic who will not admit his alcoholism? The alcoholic who says, ‘Who me? I’ve nae drink problem … look at these hands, steady as a rock,’ even if he’s bevvied out his mind at the time
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of speaking. Are we not conditioned in the Kirk to wear a facade of certainty and respectability, however fragile and uncertain a heart beats within us? Has the church not conditioned us to think that it’s somehow improper to show our insecurity? How can we ever become the kind of community that brings life where there is death – and make no mistake, the faith is about something as dramatic as that – how can we be that kind of community if we are conditioned, for whatever reasons the church may have had, if we are conditioned to hide the death and decay of our living? Erik Cramb, a member of the Iona Community
Prayer O God, help us to admit our fragility and to be gentle with each other. Neil Paynter
January 6 EPIPHANY If you are going on pilgrimage to find Christ, you will only find him if you carry him in your heart. Irish monastic saying
Let your feet follow your heart until you find your place of resurrection. Celtic Christian saying
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Blessing Bless O God, the journey ahead. Bless the travelling and the arrival. Bless those who welcome and those who accept hospitality, that Christ may come among us in journeying and in stillness. Kate Mcllhagga, a member of the Iona Community
January 7 INTO THE THICK OF THINGS Our hearts are set on pilgrim roads not to satisfy ourselves with finding one holy place, not to romanticise this thin place, but to take the experience of the presence of the Holy back into the thick of things. When our hearts are set on pilgrim roads, we can come to know God’s spirit who permeates ‘every blessed thing’ and every blessed body; when our hearts are set on pilgrimage roads we struggle to find the HOLY where we are – in the ordinary cities and towns where we live, in this world where, as the Peruvian poet says, ‘suffering and death increase sixty minutes in every second’. The life of discipleship brings us to see and know the face of Jesus in his most distressing guise: in the poor, the hungry, the stranger, the abused, the addict, the desperate and deranged, the elderly and the demented, the panhandlers and prostitutes, the criminal and the condemned. Because these are the friends of Jesus, the poor and the poor
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in spirit, the vulnerable, those who know their need for healing and cannot hide their vulnerability and desperation. When our eyes can see with pilgrim hearts through the thick grime and human wreckage we know with clarity and certainty that these – the least of our sisters and brothers – are those in whom Jesus Christ hides himself and invites us to recognise him and reach out in solidarity and love. Murphy Davis, The Open Door Community, Atlanta, Georgia, after pilgrimage to Iona in 2002
January 8 A THREAD OF GOLD A 19th-century teacher in Celtic tradition used the analogy of royal garments. In the 19th century royal garments were still woven through with a costly thread, a thread of gold. If somehow the golden thread were removed from the garment, the entire garment would unravel. So it is, he said, with the image of God woven into the fabric of our being. If somehow it were taken out of us, we would unravel, we would cease to be. The image of God is not simply a characteristic of who we are, which may or may not be there depending on whether or not we have received the grace of baptism. The image of God is the essence of our being, and sin has not had the power to undo what God has woven into the fabric of our being. The belief that what is deepest in us is the image of God has a number of radically important implications for our spirituality. It is to say that the wisdom of God is deeper in our souls than the ignorance of what we have become. It is to say that the beauty of God is truer to our depths than the ugliness of what we
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have done. Similarly it is to say that the creativity of God and the passion of God for what is just and right is deeper than any barrenness or apathy in our lives. And above all else it is to say that love, the desire to love and the desire to be loved, is at the very centre of the mystery of our being, deeper than any fear or hatred that may hold us hostage. This is not to be naïve about the power of sin and the perversion of what has gone wrong in our souls and relationships. It is simply to say that what God has planted at the core of our beings has not been undone by sin. J Philip Newell, an associate member of the Iona Community and former warden of Iona Abbey
WE AFFIRM THAT WE ARE MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE, BEFRIENDED BY CHRIST, EMPOWERED BY THE SPIRIT. From the affirmation of the morning service, Iona Abbey
January 9 REBORN It is impossible to live and work among Muslims without being very aware of the five pillars of Islam, by which their lives are regulated, and to see their universal observance – people really do stop what they are doing to pray five times a day, they do fast at Ramadan, they do give alms if they are able, they do proclaim their faith once in their lifetime and they do all long to be able to make the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca during the last month of the Muslim year).
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Just before I left Qasmiyeh in 1994, my neighbour, Im Fahmi, a widow, and her unmarried daughter, Miriam, wanted to go to Mecca. It is forbidden for any unmarried woman to go unless with her brother. All Miriam’s brothers are living in Germany so she was temporarily married ‘on paper’ to the uncle who was going to escort them. On the day of their departure they had to dress in the obligatory white garments and we all gathered to speed them on their way. The Hajj is a real endurance test – millions of pilgrims, heat, dust and walking and walking. The travel and accommodation are carefully arranged and the pilgrims are housed together with fellow pilgrims from their country of origin, for, of course, they come from all over the world. Very wisely every pilgrim is issued with a wrist band on which the name and the hotel where they are staying is written, a wise precaution as Miriam unfortunately became separated from her mother but was later reunited. It was a miracle to me that Im Fahmi, who is in her sixties, survived and completed the whole of the Hajj … One of Im Fahmi’s sons travelled specially from Germany to Qasmiyeh to prepare the welcome home for his mother and sister. He paved the entrance to their house, previously a muddy path, and erected an arch painted with congratulatory slogans decorated with flowers. They arrived home safely albeit exhausted, but renewed. The Hajj carries a most definite meaning – it is not a holiday, nor a picnic, it is not just a ritual and not only an obligation, it should be a profound spiritual experience. Im Fahmi and Miriam returned radiant, saying they had been through a process of purification and felt reborn and should never again say anything bad about other people. Dr Runa Mackay, a member of the Iona Community
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January 10 THE FRUITS OF LOVING In the joy of conversations, in the laughter of jokes, in the risk of encountering personality, in the fear of exposed vulnerability, in the danger of loving, in the unpredictability of all relationships, in the midst of all of these, we find strength for the way. Affirmation of our humanity, solace for our souls. We glimpse the deep potentials of life, the joy of growth, and the realisation of our identity. For the way of love is at cost, a way of pain, brutality, risk. But a way which is of life and all its fullness. A life which blossoms with the seed of our human potential. The life we were meant to lead is found. Scott Blythe, a member of the Iona Community