Reading Retreat

Many of you know that, for me, a retreat to get stuck into reading is the best way for me to keep fresh. I like lectures and conferences but probably learn more with my head in a book than any other way. It also explains why I occasionally mispronounce words I have only read, never heard, and attempt to use.

I am back from a few days away. I finished four books this retreat and made a start on a few others.

Rowan Williams - Being Disciples
Rowan Williams is a poet and a wordsmith. He is also aware that nuancing words is all we got, although he wouldn't have put it that way. Nuancing gave us the Good Friday agreement.

This is a short book that demands slow reading. It contains treasure. As Williams says in chapter five, on Faith in Society:

Churches and other faith groups might be called trustees or custodians of the long-term questions, because they own a vision of human nature that does not depend on political fashions and majorities.

He gives me a quiet confidence in my own inadequacy.


Carlo Rovelli - Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
I didn't pay attention in science at school. I wish I had but was never gripped. Maybe if this had been the first set book things would have turned out differently, in physics at least. Writing in English English rather than scientific English (in translation from Italian Italian I suppose) Rovelli covers relativity, quantum, cosmology, particles, loop quantum gravity (I know), time and in a beautiful final chapter, ourselves.

It is short, graspable for a non-scientist and very, very readable.


A.C.Grayling - The God Argument
I persist in consuming the output of those we might call 'the new atheists'. For it is the readers of books such as this with whom Christians will have to reason in the market place.

The difficulty for me is always that the 'religion' Grayling shoots at is often one I would also see as the target. I do not think he can imagine a Christian who does not take the Bible literally, or one who believes that morality is a human struggle and the answer is not usually beamed down from above. Even if it is we still have to engage with others in terms that allow for the incredulity that such might happen. He believes that morality, for the religious, comes only from a transcendent source such as divine command and does not arise from reflection on human realities and relationships. He's wrong.

For me, life as a Christian is life lived immersed in a different set of stories. There are not proof-texts but there are those who have gone before. There are not certainties but faith, hope and waiting. There is not separation from the way the world does its thinking; Christian and non-Christian minds are wired the same way.

But there is a man, on a cross, in the middle of human history, who points in a different direction to selfishness, pragmatism and finding someone to blame for all the trouble.


David Byrne - How Music Works
This book starts with the note that orchestras got bigger to compensate for the problem of string quartets not being heard in venues where everyone persisted in talking. It ends with the reminder that a 1969 UNESCO resolution confirms a person's right to silence,

In between music, and the industry attached to it, is dismantled before our eyes in order to be explained. The value of music to society is seen in co-operation. You can't fight if you're in time. Quoting William McNeil he says:

We don't dance because we're human as much as we are human because we dance.

Almost spiritual.

Why Retreat?

From time to time, those who have pretty ordinary working lives look across at us clergy and wonder why it is necessary to take sabbaticals or go on retreat quite so regularly. 'Chance would be a fine thing', you almost hear them say.

Don't get me wrong. Retreat time as part of work is a privilege and not one I take for granted. I also get to worship and pray as part of my working life. Equally nice.

Someone once, in a fine evangelical sermon, used the example of the two biblical seas. The Sea of Galilee receives and gives and is alive; the Dead Sea only receives and is dead.

It reminded us all of the need to serve and be served if we want to live as Christians. I have met followers of Jesus who were out of kilter in both directions.

If you only give, only serve, especially as a preacher and teacher, you will soon not only dry up, but cease to exist. A sea that doesn't receive will soon be a place where the water used to be.

So I am away for a few days. I am with a friend who shares a comfort with the routine and timetable we have established over the years. We set aside times to talk - about what we are reading and about our ministries. We set times to eat and times to read and even a time to nap in the afternoon.

It is a luxury. But our churches would not want to experience us trying to minister without this six monthly half week away. It is not holiday. It is an investment in our being better by stepping back. To this end it would be a useful addition to the annual timetable of many senior leaders in industry. Stopping to think is not actually a luxury. It is a necessary. Many walks of life would be the better for those responsible having not just holiday, but thinking breaks.

You can often better reflect on your situation by getting out of it for a while. Get away.

Advent Retreat, Bishop's Palace, Wells 2010

I was given a digital camea for Christmas last year. I'm not very good yet but am enjoying the effort and am happy to begin sharing it, as you may have noticed.

I took it on our archdeaconry Advent retreat day this week.

Since all the other clergy rushed to sit by the log fires and in the comfortable chairs during the silences I spent the first period sitting alone in a dining room chair in a less-than-hot room. In the afternoon, anxious to stay awake after a roast dinner with steamed sponge pudding, I wandered around the Palace grounds.

The art-work in the grounds and Palace is interesting and I came across this statue called Pilgrim. I became fascinated not only by the different views of the pilgrim one might get but also by what you could and couldn't see if you stood where Pilgrim stood.

How do we see the world? How does the world see us? Sometimes a picture...

Ty-Mawr

I am in the chapel of this retreat house, waiting for the noon Eucharist to begin.

One of the sisters (SSC - Society of the Sacred Cross) here in the chapel walks up to another, older nun and says, 'Do you have the chalice card?' Once discovered in amongst the general debris of the pew shelf a piece of pale blue, laminated card is handed over. The first sister, a woman perhaps in her forties although the habit and head-covering may age her, walks across the chapel and places it in front of a third nun, this one the oldest of the four (another actor will appear on stage in a moment) by a distance.

She tuts, then whispers, not quietly enough and to no-one in particular, 'I did it yesterday.' She stands, with some difficulty and shuffles ten feet to take the card to sister 4 who accepts it with resignation.

This act of supreme ordinariness, tetchiness and routine tells more of the truth about community life than the Eucharist which follows. A great and noble attempt at poverty, chastity and obedience in this partly silent order has arrived at a state where notes are written on everything from, 'Not to be removed from the library' to 'Can any guest help fruit picking this afternoon?'

This place where the order has denounced materialism, is the most note-ridden, clutter-filled place I have ever been to. They may not be writing their names on the eggs in the fridge just yet but pickiness is rife.

Human frailty see. Can't live without it. The greatest attribute required of those who take on community life? Almost certainly forgiveness. I'd put money on it.

If you want to get away to finish your book you may meet an archbishop doing the same. The late Frank Muir, 'I went to a Mediterranean Island to finish a book - I'm a terribly slow reader.'

It's a place with no mobile signal and no web-site. It might be for you, as long as you don't want minimalism. It's just off the B4293 Chepstow to Monmouth Road, four miles south of Monmouth.
Society of the Sacred Cross
Tymawr Convent
Lydart
Monmouth
NP25 4RN

Tel. 01600 860244 7pm - 8pm but not Fridays or Sundays (dont'cha just love it)