Moderately Important

"One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."  CS Lewis

I bumped into this quotation from Christian Apologetics at the back end of the summer and I must confess I didn’t like it very much at all. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with it, I agree with CS Lewis as a default setting – the sum of my life’s thinking wouldn’t be a fair exchange for a half-decent paragraph of Lewis. What I didn’t like was it’s diagnosis of my spiritual condition, a soul drifting in the summer sun and allowing the crucial to become the peripheral and vice versa. There is nothing particularly wrong with Test Match Special and a glass of Rioja, but perhaps they shouldn’t be allowed to define us.

But having put on my hair shirt and thwacked myself a few times as penance, I noticed the first six words of the quotation above which are often omitted when repeated elsewhere – ‘one must keep on pointing out’. At some time in my past, and possibly yours, there was a season when my innermost being realised that to follow Christ was of infinite importance, life was (gloriously) different from that moment on. There have been various dark times since, and undoubtedly there will be in the future, but at no point have I concluded that Christianity was of no importance, I think that would be too recognisable as a dimension of the spiritual battle. But if I’m honest, living at times as if following Christ was of moderate importance is something I can be fairly accused of. Cranmer, in the Book of Common Prayer, would have us confess our sins of negligence, weakness and deliberate fault. We tend to put our hands up to the deliberate fault stuff – sorry, O Lord, that I kickest the cat verily–  but it’s harder to recognise that subtle negligence and weakness, and it is in this we reduce Jesus Christ to moderate importance. CS Lewis identifies this not as a one-off problem, but as a condition of the church that frequently needs pointing out.

So I point it out to myself again, and I point it out to my brothers and sisters at Malmesbury Abbey, that this isn’t and never was moderately important. And it crucially matters that we make very effort to stay spiritually alive and well this autumn. How vicar? I’m not sure that there is anything new under the sun really: simply engaging each week in corporate worship, serving together in ministry and mission, and allowing some space in our (daily) lives to meet with God, will go a long way to rescue us from moderation. And also not kidding ourselves that spiritual consistency and growth will happen between now and Yule unless we actually make changes to effect it.

‘Who do you say I am?’

Leadership 101: Height

It’s hard to oversee something when you’re crawling underneath it.

In the autumn of 2011 I was granted a three month sabbatical by my Bishop, Extended Study Leave to step back from the relentlessness of ordained ministry, to refresh my thinking on leadership, and to count the grains of sand on an Australian beach. Returning in January 2012 one of the surprising benefits of this disengagement was height. I understand leadership in the church (or anywhere really) to involve the overseeing of people and their life together, both their well-being and their direction - seeing both over and beyond, pastoral and prophetic. But it’s really hard to oversee something when you’re crawling underneath it, and over months and years the organisational dimensions of the pastoral and prophetic can gradually drag you in, making the over-seeing harder and eventually impossible to achieve – effectively ministering as an underseer. (I think I just invented a word.)

I was reminded of this as I crawled over the line this summer, a bit like the injured Olympian I’d seen on the BBC who bravely chose to finish the race even though one of her leg muscles was clearly shot to bits. Breaks from work this year had been curtailed because of significant pastoral matters and early-August was an oasis that couldn’t come soon enough. I was beginning to think that in the Kingdom of Heaven the out of office reply is always on and the answer machine whispers soothingly ‘leave that call to me, you go back to that nice dark room, vicar.’

But two weeks later I have height again. Was it the day on the beach, the lengths in the local pool, the new instalment in the Batman trilogy, or even the theology I enjoyed reading on a sunny, peaceful afternoon? All really, I guess. I think this regained height is a form of the practical, prophetic wisdom which the monk Thomas Merton references:

Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace,

it destroys the fruitfulness of our work

because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Although we don’t really do ‘frenzy’ in Wiltshire I like his point. His 'root' is my 'height'. I feel taller, I can see differently and I remember two bits of advice which I pass on. First, Bill Hybels saying that the best gift a leader can give to their church is a fully rested and energised self. And secondly, Jason Bourne in Robert Ludlum’s the Bourne Supremacy who points out helpfully to those of us engaged in a spiritual battle that ‘Rest is a weapon.’

Olympic Highlight

Getting quite tired of the constant Golds and Silvers being hung around the necks of GB athletes – this ruling the world is so tedious – and resisting the temptation to call family and friends in Australia and say ‘na, na, na, na, na’, I was surprised and delighted to find a deep but quirky joy in the first round of the women’s 400m hurdles.

Yes, I liked it a little that one of the fastest qualifiers from Jamaica was a Melanie Walker (54.78) – who clearly didn’t, walk that is. I also chuckled that the Liberian athlete who didn’t qualify for the next round, Raasin McIntosh (57.39) clearly wasn’t, racin’, that is. But my joy in the misfortune of another, which is obviously a dark side that I must address at some future point, was taken to higher giggly level altogether by the Bulgarian athlete Vania Stombolova – who did, at the 4^th hurdle. With a surname like that I would have chosen a seated discipline.