For some the journey must now go deeper still. Deeper into the woods, the hills, the caves, the rivers and waters of our coastline. Deeper still into the aloneness with God in the isolated places of our land. Deeper still as we locate ourselves in the ascetic practice of penitence and humility, with only the promise of God to free us from the seductions of this world and bring us to the place of simple encounter.

The encounter of heaven on earth and His promise to bring us home to the eternal embrace of creations creator. For the path home, for all who crave the adornment of the soul with the full grace of heaven, must be to embrace the call to be alone with Christ in love. And this aloneness is not to be feared, but like the Baptist, it is to be known as a charism. It is the path of true discovery and not for those whose needs can be met in the comfort and safety of hearth and material home.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ³⁸and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Gospel of Matthew chapter 10.

And it is into this aloneness that winter teaches us to walk. Where our only warmth is the strangely warmed heart turned to Christ as your breath is clouded in the freezing air before your face and your knees know only grey stone. Winters song is the lonely mourning of longing for release from the shackles of our own barren sin. It is the deep frustration of knowing our own internal death, were our life blood and spirit has frozen still and in our muteness and paralysis we strain our eyes upward pleading for release. And God whose deep affection stokes our cheek with a reassurance of tomorrows safety, awakens our voice to simple worlds of love. The silent prayers of our hearts move the coldness to a touch of warmth, a few words of connection and understanding, and our dull minds awaken to the language of the eternal Holy Spirit.

Then finally we reach out beyond ourselves and we are touched by the green shoots of spring. The moisture of grass and the pent-up energy of the budding blossom that is now pregnant with an explosion of colour, and we await the first rays of The Son’s spring sunshine. The grafted branch that has been so lifeless now tastes the early sweetness of Christ’s flowing life-giving sap, bringing love and potential back to our lonely lives. And as we awaken we find our struggle is the voice of our land crying for an end to its winter of discontent and suffering. For our land has forgotten He who formed it, and our lonely prayers are the first whispering dreams that call it back to the warmth of His glorious summer.

I start this blog with a quote from the American agrarian mystic Wendell Berry taken from his 1969 essay entitled The Native Hill.

The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is a little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of a movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such as obstacles as it meets it goes around. A road, on the other hand, even the most primitive road, embodies a resistance against landscape. Its reason is not simply the necessity of movement, but haste. Its wish is to avoid contact with the landscape; it seeks so far as possible to go over the country, rather than through it… It is destructive seeking to remove or destroy all obstacles in its way.

A similar idea had occurred to me on my recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo as I was visiting small-scale gold mines, and Berry helped to crystallise the essential paradox of what I was experiencing in a way I could not fully grasp at the time. As we drove north from Bunia on the Mongbwalu road, we travelled on a road constructed by the infamous Anglo-gold Ashanti too facilitate their huge open cast gold mining operation. It carved it way through the landscape, bisecting entire villages, leaping over rivers and meandering its way mercilessly through the terrain, dominating everything in its way. The ride was a smooth one, yet somehow unnatural and intrusive. When we came to visit the small-scale artisanal operation we had to wander single file through Plantain fields that glided down the valley. The path itself barely perceptible. Its impact minimal, natural and strangely wholesome.

The trip became an external  metaphor for the internal challenges I face as a contemplative. There is a sense as I journey towards God I must abandon the arrogance of the concrete road and stand in simple awe of the delicate path that leads me forward. The road is an age old symbol of arrogance, the path the lightest touch on a living landscape of awe and encounter. On the path I discover the joy of travelling with the few, as the path itself cannot contain the masses you find on the road. Here there is no speed, no traffic, no noise, no congestion of the soul. Your companions become the natural contours of land and sky, sun and moon, heat and cold, light and darkness. The natural fragility of the path attracts the ancient friendship of creation. The other day as I travelled on a back lane towards my place of prayer in the Mardens I was forced to stop as three white stag deer crossed my path. On the pathway, creation steps forward as its true self, and that which is fallen must stop to share the Eden encounter.

The pathway to the top of Chanctonbury Ring

In contrast the road stops for nothing and this was evidenced a few years ago on the road I use to get to my secluded prayer spot. A car had collided with a young deer leaving its body twisted and broken on the road side, with the offending driver having fled the tragic scene. I was grateful to the game-keeper who was able to clinically dispatch the broken beast and end its obvious suffering. That which is fallen ploughed through that which is a theophany of God in creation and the guilt of the fallen, was not the accident itself, but the arrogance of assuming that the animals life was of no moral consequence, a mere inconvenience.

The narrow path has space for myself and one or two other travel companions, the narrow door of my homecoming being sized for one entrant at a time. This mystical path is perhaps the one part of modern western life that cannot be concreted over by the road builders of commodified religion and the mega church megalomaniacs. The narrow path stands in true contrast to this mega-church construct. It speaks of uniqueness and the authenticity of the human soul in its true proportionality to the Divine God of our origin. On the path we become a peregrinus for Christ. St. Columbanus the 6th century Irish monk spoke of, ‘life being the path that leads us to home’. Travel light was his injunction and don’t be fooled into thinking the road is your home.

This is perhaps the most important lesson that I have been learning in recent months. The road can be deeply seductive and speaks of being served, of material comfort, material wealth, security and of emotional gratification. It can lull you into thinking that you have arrived. A little like driving on the motorway, stopping at a service station and calling it Paradise. One can only mistake a service station for Paradise if ones formative introduction to Christ is shaped through a lens of Christianity being a religion that delivers prosperity and self serving convenience. Jesus does not eat at MacDonalds.

I am slowly abandoning the road and the concrete boulevards of the false self. I am looking for a simple path, the narrow path that leads me onwards and upwards to the narrow door of my true home. This narrow path is full of new friends such as silence, stillness, and the discomfort of my own self-awakening. To contemplate Christ seems to me to be the discipline of losing yourself and the discovery of your own absence. An absence that is not self destructive, rather an absence that finally accepts a true perspective on the value of life and the part you play in it. St John of the Cross seemed to capture this journey far better than I ever will when he wrote,

I live without inhabiting

Myself – in such a wise that I

Am dying that I do not die.

Within myself I do not dwell

Since without God I cannot live.

Within the splendid magnificence that is God, I can now begin to glimpse my eternal value in the eyes of the one who holds the scales of justice in which we must all be weighed. The path of contemplation is teaching me, to travel light, so when I reach that day I arrive as the essence of me and I am found to be carrying no excess baggage.

In fact in many ways I am quite the opposite. I work from home, if earning a profit of £320 for the last tax year can equal work. I write the odd article for the jewellery trade press and have been working on a commissioned autobiography of my days with CRED Jewellery and the work done in fighting for justice through the jewellery trade. I don’t travel much any more, I am content to stay at home, indulge the vain love I have for my football team and try to remind myself I am more than a work machine for the worldly system.

So why the confession? Perhaps because during my short vignette I made the statement ‘that my internal journey is far more dynamic than my external one’. At the time it was a slightly off the cuff statement to a group of mainly young(ish) Christians who were aspiring to serve God in the way of social justice, experimental church communities and artistic forms of worship. And before you run away with yourself and assume I am about to launch into a diatribe against this, I am not. Quite the reverse, the enthusiasm for new expressions of faith in a volatile and insecure world, such as the one we live in, is undoubtedly important for the re-establishing of faith in a modern secular society like Britain. After all we have the freedom to do this and for us not to explore the vibrancy of the gospel and its power to change life is vital. In fact would be a crime against Heaven if we did not.

Overlooking the Umbrian Plains in the footsteps of St Francis

So my point in this short blog post is not to detract from this activity, rather to promote the need for encountering God in the mundane of daily obscurity. It is a lesson I have needed to learn over the last few years and will continue to learn as I grow older. The real change and most dynamic activity I can undertake is the discipline of the daily encounter with Christ. This contemplative activity is in itself a project. The project of the negation of the false self and embracing the silence. Of encountering the voice of God the Creator in the walk into town, filling the dish washer, having the ear to respond to the simple cry of help from a friend, the request for money from the beggar (that requires you notice him first), as well as the grander plans that may be on offer. This mundane discipline was not on the foundation course I took when I was first a follower of Christ and as far as I am aware is not part of the now world-famous Alpha franchise.

To be a Contemplative Activist is first and foremost to be a contemplative. To contemplate Christ is to learn to be undone, and in the undoing be discovered as I truly am and who I am truly called to be. This undoing often means facing the brutal facts of ones own failure, sins, and weaknesses. Of accepting the natural grace of God regardless of my failures. In fact I have discovered that God supports us in our sin, which may sound controversial, but is the scandalous nature of God’s active grace in nurturing all of life regardless of performance. To contemplate Christ is to embrace the dynamism of the inner journey that leads to Paradise and the fulfillment of the souls primal desire for authentic union with God. This union requires two simple conditions; stillness and a silent heart. Is this not the greatest battle we face in a wild, noisy, chaotic world? To be still and silent.

In the stillness and silence we allow ourselves to be embraced by the ocean that is Gods creative person, thereby dispelling any fear we may hold that stillness leads to inactivity, or silence means be mute and losing ones voice. I confess that when I first encountered God’s deep silence the fear I would lose the one commodity I seemed to have been blessed with, namely my voice, was a very real fear and one I need not have worried about. Gods activity in creation is eternally ongoing and therefore to reside within a relationship with God is therefore to reside in that ongoing creativity of Gods original voice.

The trajectory of God’s love seems to send us and receive us in the same motion, and I confess living in this vital motion is not natural to me. It does require my intentional focus and the support of a nurturing set of relationships. I am glad I have travel companions on the road home and am learning this to be the communion of the Saints.

Living in limbo is vital to me now, as it has afforded me the time and space to be discovered and is proving a healthy antidote to the worlds confusion to be busy.

There are many markers I could reference from the last 5 years that demonstrate Gods consistent faithfulness to me, even when I have been too slow and thick to realise. Prayer walking, the discovery of bird song as the chorus of heavenly worship, moving beyond buildings and discovering that creation is the cathedral of my worship, stillness and silence and the practice of learning scripture, so one is carried by the words formed in you, rather than recited in front of you, are just some of the markers on my journey. Indeed discovering that life itself is a journey and peregrination on the road that leads us home, has been a great source of comfort to me, given my continual sense of disaffection for the world and its pretenses to power and its claims of ownership over my soul. All these discoveries and more have had a profound personal impact upon me and how I see myself in the world. But they have been personal and although I am sure if I ask my wife she would say I am basically a nicer person to live with as a result, the primary beneficiary of this process has been me.

But over the last few months something has been stirring in the City of Chichester where I live. I have started to meet with other journey men and women who have been on a similar path. This pilgrimage has led all of us to discover a desire to explore a more collective approach to prayer and contemplation.

So on St Francis Day (4 October) eight of us gathered for the first time to celebrate Compline (night prayer) in a tiny 11th century chapel nestled in the South Downs. St Marys is not used for public services any more, given that the hamlet it is based in only has a few houses these days.

Although none of us really understand the nature of the journey we are on, like all travellers, we can tell you were we have come from and are sure of where we want to end up, but are often unclear as to which path to take to link the beginning and the end.We have found that our individual paths have connected and as we sat in the silence of the candle lit church, beyond the reach of roads and the general white noise of suburbia, we sensed a connection with the undertow of the Holy Spirit pulling us forward into a fresh encounter from an ancient day.

None of us know where this will lead, also none of us are interested in new models of Church or building ‘a new thing’ that can be commodified. What we do know is that as we grow in our personal rhythms of contemplative prayer, worship and allow this to impact the world around us, and the Spirit will in time find a way of pluralising the veracity of what is happening.

I am glad that I am on a journey and that I can find comfort in the fact that others are walking with me.

Greg Valerio

As I crossed through into the Umbrian Province from Tuscany, it began to rain. Throughout the ride it had been sweltering hot, now as the heat of the day burned onto Castiglione del Lago and its water hit the Umbrian hills, my second baptism of the trip took place. Within minutes I was soaked. Twice now it had rained on me, both times as I crossed respective borders and I took this as a sign of being washed and cleansed in preparation for what was to come.

The road to Assisi

Assisi is a very comfortable Italian medieval hillside city over looking the Umbrian plains and as you approach it is quite simply beautiful. I was heading for the centre of the City and snaked up streets, populated by locals and fellow pilgrims and the general vibe was one of serenity the minute you crossed through the Gates of St Peter.

Assisi is a dangerous place, this old medieval city of cobbled roads, narrow passages and shade and light draws you into its heart with stealth and conviction. I move through its history, walking in the footsteps of Francis, Clare, Bernardo and the many thousands whose call to poverty became such a powerful witness to the purity and essence of the living God. This move towards simplicity and the embracing of creation seems on reflection to act as a purifying agent, a fire that purges and exposes true motives and intent, whether in the individual or in the society of which you are a part. It has remained a constant truth on my journey with God that the draw to the imitation of Christ through a ‘de-materialised’ and stripped back faith is the closest I can find to the authentic witness of Christ crucified.

Assisi gave me the time to reflect on my contemplative jounrey and the profound shift that has taken place in my spiritual practice. Union with God is now my motivator, too ascend the mountain and commune, dwell, behold, be known by God and too know I am known. This mountain well is the daily invitation of the Spirit to drink with an open hand and to drink from deeper pools to find Gods pure source of being. The more I drink the more I am exposed to myself and the contrary motives that drive my life. Those deep addictions that mask my true self. I find myself confessing in St Clare’s church every morning ‘I am a hypocrite’. Job understood this all to well, ‘The Light is very near the darkness’ (Job 17 v12).

Discovering personal hypocrisy is one of the first steps we take on the road of contemplation. That call towards God requires daily honesty and examination of self in a spirit of gentleness and grace. I find myself more drawn and subsumed in to the mysteries of God than ever before. I recall a line from a prayer I wrote at Church Norton, near Selsey on our first Celtic Easter celebration in 2008, calling for ‘mystery over certainty’ and perhaps now I am beginning to live in the consequences of pray answered.

Assisi is a constant reminder of the power of total surrender to love. The atmosphere is pregnant with prayer. Prayer born in an attitude of surrender to the love of God. The love that defies definition or comprehension. God can be no other than Gods eternal self and if I am to abide in Gods love then I too must be no other than my eternal self to the fullest extent possible. This I am clear now can only take place in the context surrender. Each morning I find myself meditating on the vital motion towards surrender and understanding that this vital motion has a name; renunciation. If I renounce the world as the Apostle John instructs me to do (John 15 v18-19), I renounce the primal compunctions that drive life away from God; like materialism, self-aggrandisement, the power to rule, violence and revenge. I renounce the tiny seeds that each day seek to germinate in my soul the primal rebellion of Paradise; that of putting myself first. This seems to be the thrust of what Matthew was teaching in his Gospel. If I look at a woman lustfully I have put my satisfaction ahead of anothers, if I place my material comfort before the needs of the poor I have chosen to deny the poor their right to justice, if I harbour hate and vengeance in my heart, the seeds of murder are sown. Removing the seeds of the world and their daily challenges are the stumbling steps I take towards God.

I understand Francis better now. His choice of renouncing the world and embracing the mystery of God through contemplation was not some romantic gesture rooted in medieval naivety and pre-scientific ignorance. It was the steps of a man into the primal simplicity of God and the source of all life. The unintended consequence of this movement was akin to the throwing of a mountain into the pond of the world and calling out its true deception.

My friends for the journey, Columbanus and Francis, are exemplars who have travelled this road of contemplation and transformation and completed the journey. They are the pioneers of normal Christianity. I have been convicted of my own hubris in encountering them. The radical Christ is someone I have discovered is a creation of my own vanity. My own self projection of needing meaning in a mediocre pallid world. I need Christ to be radical, because I need to be seen as radical in my own eyes. But I am increasingly asking, radical for whom and in the face of what? For the followers of Christ the world is an illusionary benchmark and has nothing to offer us. The Father is our benchmark for progress and to move towards the Father of all light is not radical or ground breaking it is normal. This simple act of orientating myself towards God is an act of surrender, conformity, humility, imitation, denial. This is the normal path and it is here that friends like Columbanus and Francis help me. They have walked the road before me and have left markers in the ground that I can follow. They cannot walk the road for me for their journey is complete, but as prior pilgrims I can learn from them and hopefully meet up with them at the final destination.

As soon as arrive in Newhaven I know something is wrong. There is no ferry, no cars, no people, nothing. I check my ticket to discover ‘numpty head‘ (that is me for the non-english) has booked his ticket in reverse. I am booked on the 6am ferry from Dieppe France to Newhaven. Once I sort my ticket out, I have a few hours to kill before the midday ferry so I wonder down to the beach.

Newhaven Beach

The quintessentially English Newhaven pebble beach neighbours a still becalmed English channel. Flashing silver mackerel are leaping in the early sun and behind me in the white chalk cliffs, doves are trilling and intoning low songs, the perfect accompaniment to my morning office of Psalm 63 and Daniel 3.

The road to Bobbio.

I have wanted to visit Bobbio for years. The final resting place of St Columbanus the famous Irish missionary of the late 6 and 7 centuries, he founded his final monastery at Bobbio in circa 611. It seemed a fitting location to overnight as many Franciscan scholars believe that St Francis spent time in his early years at the monastery in Bobbio. I have always been intrigued by the similarities between the Celtic and Franciscan charism. The eremitical contemplative spirituality beautifully balanced with missionary zeal, the establishment of praying focused communities and their closeness to nature.

Dawn breaking on the summit of Monte Bianco

Riding through France was glorious; warm sunshine, open roads, miles of sunflower fields, the lush Loire Valley, past Taize and into the Alps speeding towards Mont Blanc. Snaking up the Mont Blanc pass towards the tunnel it began to rain, a symbolic baptism preparing me for the encounter with Columbanus the following morning.

St Columbanus

For a road is to be walked on and not lived on, so that they who walk upon it may dwell finally in the land that is their home. St Columbanus, Sermon v

It seemed natural to encounter the great Peregrinus of the Celtic Church so far from his beloved Ireland. His shrine was in the crypt of the Basilica named after him and stepping down the few flights of stairs I saw the simple tomb, softly lit by candles and I felt a huge surge of emotion and connection, a feeling of being discovered by a friend again whom you have not seen for many years. These mystical encounters defy language and transcend emotion. I had walked into a thin place, pregnant with potential that was not of my making. I knew I was on holy ground and holiness demands silence of those who would stand in its presence. You walk softly, but without fear, your words are few but chosen carefully as though there are a thousand ears listening, counting, weighing up the veracity of your heart and ensuring there is no vanity in your speech. A divine screening system whose purpose is to keep you honest in your prayerful discourse.

The Shrine of St Columbanus

I had taken in a few of St Columban’s sermons that he had written in the last years of his life in Bobbio. Reciting them out loud brought the words to transcendent sharpness. I could hear the old mans voice, deep and lyrical, strong and clear, encouraging me to disavow a world so encumbered with material things, so burdened with false responsibility and so disjointed from its original condition of grace. The simple truths of normal discipleship, to love God with all your heart, renounce the world and to enter into the solitude of the beloved’s desire to be fully known. He, like the St Francis I would encounter later that week, prayed ‘wound our souls with your love’.

For two hours I sat, contemplating Christ, sometimes in silence, other times conversing with St Columbanus and musing over the state of the British Church. I cannot confess to have had any grand words of wisdom or insight on the state of the British church scene, but I was deeply struck by the essential simplicity of the Celtic Abbots spirituality and I found myself weeping tears of gratitude for the exemplary nature of his faith. Equally I had to accept my anger at the sense of loss we in Britain have suffered through allowing the fire of men like Columbanus to die out. That dynamic spirituality, now commonly called Celtic, that found in ascetic practice, contemplative prayer, communal practice and creational encounter a fire that I have often likened to the coal from the throne of heaven that touched the lips of Isaiah. In our post Christian UK landscape how we need to rediscover ancient fires like these.

My peace was broken by a bus load of tourists who arrived with flashing camera’s and cans of Coke. Time to leave and head towards Assisi…

The Unacceptable Cost of Cutting Benefits.

‘Let your vigils be constant from eve to eve, under the direction of another person’

The Rule of Columba

This year I have begun exploring the practice of vigils. For clarity’s sake my efforts have been a toe in the water, yet as I have continued to explore Columban spirituality and the broader Celtic spirituality in which St. Columba was a leading figure, I have not been able to ignore his expectation that those who seek the heart and mystery of God will take part in vigils.

A vigil is a conscious journey towards GOD set within a specific time frame. It usually takes place at night when people would normally be sleeping. Just as fasting is a deliberate deprivation of food in order to suppress the natural appetite and focus on one’s dependency upon God for sustenance. So a vigil is a deliberate denial of sleep in order to be nourished by God through prayer and mediation.

On 9 June three of us gathered at my tipi retreat space on the South Downs to explore a half night vigil and to explore two practices that were used as disciplines by the early British and Irish church.

1. A search for and/or discovery of our mystical name in God
2. A search for and/or discovery of our internal prayer

Our setting was outside, within the cradle of creation. John Scottus Eriugena contends ‘Creation is the theophany of God’. Here, exposed to the elements of our landscape, where we can hear the evening birdsong, feel the breath of the wind, the dance of the trees, the warmth of fire, we are drawn into the natural rhythm of creations conversation with the Creator. And to this we can add our voice, our name and our prayerful imagination.

What is your mystical name?

Your name in God is both hidden and revealed. For Columba he had a name Colum cille that means ‘The Dove of the Church’. Yet his name hidden in the spirit was ‘Cul ri Erin’, meaning ‘back turned to Ireland’ as recorded in the poem Columcille fecit. For Columba, a spiritual exile for Christ from his homeland of Ireland, this was his daily reality as a peregrinus.   Equally Elijah, which means ‘Yahweh is my God’ was also known as ‘the troubler of Israel’ (1 Kings 18 v18) a mandate he carried exceptional well.

Your mystical name is the name you hold that describes your identity in God. It is the name that best describes you in the intersection between heaven and earth. A name that you carry in your hidden prayers and draws you closest to your intimate relationship with God. Meditating on this fact allowed us to begin the journey towards understanding our true selves, a journey that takes a lifetime that can for those who stop to listen be caught in name.

The Prophets Bed

The Prophets Bed is a derivative of an ancient practice undertaken by Celtic bards and poets to ‘find their poem or story’. Here we used it to listen for our prayer. Prayer takes shape in words, sound, physical motion, posture and expression that facilitate you to be open and transparent before the Creator. This prayer can linked to your name and takes the shape of a blessings, a Lorica or protection prayer; the most famous being Patrick’s Breastplate, and is rooted in your authentic voice before God. God always hears our authentic voice.

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you (John 15 v7).

In the darkness we allowed our minds to focus on God alone. By relaxing in the arms of creation, you are relaxing in the arms of the Father creator. Doing this in the darkness is important as God dwells in original darkness , the uncreated light of God, and from this darkness the great conversation of creation and Word of Light emerged (Gen 1 v1-2). In the stillness we allowed our prayer to emerge in feeling, expectation and the presence of God. It is here we begin to travel along the edges of time. It is here the eternal voice of the Father and our voice find unity in prayer and conversation. As this conversation emerged we wrote it down or acted it out. We did this in isolation, with no pressure to feedback or explain the encounter. These moments are sacred prophetic times and need maturing and distillation, not instant regurgitation.

The Bards and Poets of Ireland would often lie down and fast during this time. To avoid falling asleep they would place a stone under their heads or on their chest. Columba was trained as a bard by the aged Master Bard Gemman from Leinster. Indeed it seems Columba kept this practice up throughout his life as he reputedly slept on a stone pillow throughout his life.

I finish with a quote from one of us,

“The isolated location was great and certainly helped. In addition I
was surprised at how helpful the darkness and isolation was to the
second meditation, connecting with the environment and Gods essence
within. I did have to fight falling asleep, but that I guess is part
of the process”.

The Contemplative Network practices a rhythm of spiritual life based around contemplative prayer, a love of scripture, sacrificial service and active hospitality.

We adopt such a rhythm out of commitment to live authentically as followers of Jesus. Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, and more recently Thomas Merton have had cause to speak of the false self. This is like a shadow attached to each of us. Its motivation is emotional happiness; its drivers are personal power and control, personal safety and security, and personal esteem and affection. So often one of these three unconsciously informs our conscious decisions and we live out of a false identity. Only we mistake it for our authentic self! So it is no surprise that we end up in an arid desert of rigorous rules or consumed with an arrogant superiority. Some see such a rhythm as headed towards legalism or alternatively spiritual pride and elitism. Of course both pose dangers. This danger doesn’t lie in the rhythms themselves but in our common fractured humanity.

The purpose of a rhythm of life, what the ancients called a Rule of Life, is to enable each of us to find and realise God’s will for our life. Such a rhythm does not lead to special ‘spiritual‘ experiences or even guarantee a productive ‘spiritual’ life! It is merely a simple tool to help and support us in journeying deeper into the heart of God. It serves us, not the other way around.

Such rhythms are often discovered when we reach a place where we experience a deep hunger for some divine reality. Reading those who have preceded us in faithfully and obediently pursuing God, we can be in no doubt that the journey, or perhaps pilgrimage, will involve effort, meet with setbacks, and present challenges. The words of Jesus are great encouragement to us,

 ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to love his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it’. Matthew 16:24-5

‘I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ John 12:24

The word rhythm comes from the Latin word ‘regula‘ (rule). This meant ‘guidepost’ or ‘railing,’ something to hang on to in the dark, something that leads in a given direction, something that points out the road, something that gives us support as we climb. The Contemplative Network’s Rhythm of Life is more wisdom than law. It is not  a list of directives!

We all follow some Rule or Rhythm by which we live, consciously or otherwise. This consists of the little things we do that shape our life’s routines. We seek to live by some kind of collected wisdom. Our Rhythm is no more than what we determine is most important to our meaningful existence. It is a varied collection of things that matter to us; for example, I must be faithful to my friends, I must exercise, I must save money, I need to be alone. This makes our life worthwhile. It indicates what we value most. It is the glue holding our life together, how we make choices on spending time and resources, choices about how we will give of our self.

Within each of us resides a living flame of love, a secret chamber where all power and peace has made its home.  As followers of Jesus, we have come to know this secret place to contain the very Life of God, the heart of our existence;  however, in daily experience we often lack the awareness of this life, and Whom it is that we carry in these clay vessels. The purpose of a Rhythm is an attempt to discover how that living flame of love might burn brighter in the world around us. Committing to a Rhythm helps to plough the soil of our heart in which the seeds of Formation germinate, grow and blossom in abundance.

Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing

Contemplative Activism is a simple idea. An idea rooted in the belief that Jesus calls us to live in him. ‘Abide in me’, is the divine invitation to spend intentional time with Jesus. To make the point of living in the now moment. Jesus, in John 15 speaks of the vine, of being grafted in and an organic joining of being. I recollect my grandfathers, often failed attempts, at grafting new strains of peach onto his beloved peach tree. The surgical incision, the well trimmed branch, the careful insertion of the branch onto the main trunk of the tree and the binding of that grafted branch into position in the main tree. The sap from the principle tree would join to the open wood of the grafted branch and if the grafting took, would feed the new branch and in time the new branch would become one with the tree and eventually bear its unique fruit.

What is important to retain in this image is that the grafted branch does not change its DNA or its uniqueness, it merely draws its life from the mother tree and in doing so continues to live and bear fruit. The branch does not strive to fulfill its purpose, it is totally reliant on the mother tree to give of its goodness, allowing the new branch to survive and thrive.

I believe Contemplative Activism is born from the same dynamic. We abide in Christ, we are fed by Gods life giving Spirit. As we give ourselves to be grafted into the life of Christ, who is the True Vine, we know that we will bear good fruit. Our activity, so to speak, will flow organically from a place of Gods creative nature and dynamic activity in life and the world.

Many can see this as folly, passivity, or an abdication of responsibility for the world around us. This is especially true of social activists, who can often fall into the trap of thinking that their pursuit of justice and social transformation is only legitimate when they are fighting the good fight, expending all their energy in being busy (for the right reasons of course) and reshaping the world in the image of Gods justice. This identity can so easily become a false identity. For all the right intentions, the social activist can take on the strategies of the world, to change the world and in doing so, is changed into the likeness of the world.

Jesus is clear, Abide in me, be intentional with me, focus on me. I am the true Vine, make sure you are a part of me first, before anything else. For the activist this intentional step away from the distractions of changing the world and focusing on dwelling in the true vine, causes the life giving, explosive creative energy of the Spirit to work itself through our lives and into all we touch. I often think of this as taking a swim in a river. I am in the water, I am staying afloat through prayer, the current of Gods Spirit is taking me towards my destination. I am in motion, I am in the powerful flow of the water, yet I am doing very little apart from allowing the water to do its work.

This is the heart of Contemplative Activism.