URC Spirituality

by Ann Morton

When I was asked if I would like to write something on Meditation for the URC Retreat Group’s magazine Encounter I felt both pleased and rather daunted as it seemed such a large subject to condense into a small enough space and do it justice. What should I put in, and what leave out?

I was drawn towards meditation some years ago through the Buddhist route. After starting out as an Anglican and then transferring to a United Reformed Church — where I experienced many years of hearing and enjoying inspirational sermons — I began to feel that, ultimately, words will always have their limitations and that I needed to explore the way beyond words and into the silence, and try to find that still point within myself where the Spirit dwells. I joined a Buddhist Sangha and there I experienced excellent teaching and the discipline of silent meditation in a group. I discovered that the teaching in no way conflicted with my understanding of Christianity, and in fact it gave me a new perspective on the Christian faith. In recent years I have let go of my attachment to the Buddhist Sangha and have been pursuing the meditative way through Christian avenues, namely through the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).

For those who are not acquainted with this organisation, the WCCM was started by John Main, a Benedictine Monk, who, having experienced meditation in the East, set out to bring this practice to ordinary people. Previously it had been largely the province of monastic orders and the churches had seldom shown any interest in it, and John Main, over many years, set out to teach and encourage meditation worldwide by the setting up of ecumenical meditation groups which could exist within or outside churches. The basis and inspiration for his teaching dated from the early monastics or “Desert Fathers and Mothers”, many of whom spent years in solitude in the desert, meditating. This way of prayer was largely lost in subsequent generations until it became almost entirely the province of monastic orders.

John Main’s work continued until he died and then his place, as Director of the WCCM was taken by the present Director, Laurence Freeman who is also a Benedictine Monk and under his guidance group meditation has continued to proliferate throughout the world.

Meditation (or Contemplation as it is sometimes called) is not an activity of the mind, in the sense of thought processes. It is an interior meeting with our true selves and thus with God — a meeting without thoughts even about God. In fact it is a “being with God” in complete silence. Thoughts will come — that cannot be helped and it doesn’t matter — but they can just be acknowledged and then let go of rather than being dwelt on and pursued. There are various practices that can be used to help meditation, such as focussing on the breath or saying a mantra: people use whatever is most helpful to assist in the stilling of the mind. If you seem to be particularly distracted one day, it doesn’t matter, it is not a matter for self-judgement. The most important factor is the regularity of the practice, even if it is only five or ten minutes twice a day, initially.

I believe it is also very important to have good teaching, Buddhists are very keen on the oral tradition being passed down through a lineage of teachers, but for Christians I think we mostly have to rely on a mixture of talks, retreats, books, CDs, the Internet, and most of all practice. It is particularly helpful to have the chance to practise in a group. The commitment and energy generated in a group usually make it a very different experience from that of meditating alone.

Meditation does not make people into recluses; it usually brings people closer to each other. In this age of so many divisions between peoples of different denominations and faiths, meditation can be a way through to meaningful connections with people of other churches and faiths or of none. There is no dogma or doctrine to divide those sitting together in meditation; on the contrary, they can find a unity which transcends all barriers and respects the differences of others. It is a practice of love.

So why are churches so reluctant to encourage meditation in their congregations? It may be because most people find it quite difficult, at first anyway. Although the practice is very simple, that does not mean it is easy. Many people find silence difficult, so that in itself is a challenge. But there is a lot of help around. We can all use what is available from sources such as the WCCM, and encourage congregations to join or set up ecumenical groups under their auspices. A huge amount of helpful material is available through the WCCM, including their website, and Laurence Freeman is a most inspirational teacher.

At the URC Centre for Reflection at Aston Tirrold, we have formed a small meditation group, run on the lines recommended by the WCCM, and we have access to a constant supply of recorded talks and other materials to assist us, for example, as introductions to our meditation sessions.

The world needs the healing that comes from silence, stillness and the alert attention focussed upon the Spirit, within that silence. It is the prayer of the heart.

by Mark Argent

In one of my first experiences of Ignatian spirituality, I did an exercise which involved reflecting back on encounters with God in the preceding week. The big surprise of that experience came when I realised what was going on each evening when I cooked: almost by accident, it had become important as an experience of God.

This was my moment of discovering that it is possible to not recognise profound experiences of God because they don’t have the label “prayer” attached to them — which is another way of saying that all things have the potential to draw people to God, and so to act as prayer.

One aspect of this is the sensuality of cooking. Sight, smell, taste and hearing are all fully engaged. There is a Buddhist practice of “mindful walking” where you go for an unhurried walk, seeking to be deeply present to the sights, sounds and smells, allowing them to draw you into the moment. In responding to the ingredients, the cook is engaging in a very similar practice.

Cooking can’t be hurried. It’s possible to turn the fire up, but that only burns the food. Instead you are held in the space for the time it takes, responding to the food as it changes, sometimes waiting, sometimes moving very quickly. This is particularly the case with south-east Asian cooking where so much in done in a wok.

At a head level, cooking is one of the few places in modern society where we engage with nature. The tomatoes have come off a tomato plant, the chicken was once alive. It’s about co-operating with nature. Adding a few tomatoes to a fish curry has a very specific effect on the taste: I can’t work against nature by adding something else and hoping for the same effect. One of my habits is to buy a chicken, take off the cuts of meat and turn the rest into stock. Partly that’s the only way to get good chicken stock, but it is also to honour the gift of the chicken, drawing every part to its full potential.

There’s also something around the social, human aspect of food. As culture, food expresses a great deal, carrying deep-seated memories of where a person feels homed. That is partly about childhood, but also about the memories of meals shared, all evoked by smell and taste.

Cooking is also a very deep act of self-giving. For me it feels far more real to cook for someone I care about than take them to a restaurant. This is about very human experiences of loving and being loved. It’s unhealthy to understate the link between the sensual, the sexual and the spiritual. In incarnational language, it is to let God be present in the deep encounter between people — in who one cooks for, eats with, and in the memory of those from whom one learned to cook.

Perhaps this is the moment to slide into eucharistic language, but that needs to be done gently. People bring many experiences and understandings to the eucharist, and while it clearly is a meal, it is often so stylised as to be more symbolic than meal.

Yet liturgies talk of bread and wine as the work of human hands. There is a wholeness in letting them become the work of human hands — of baking the bread that will be used, and letting it become holy in the context of the celebration, much as the bread and wine at the last supper were, presumably, the ordinary bread and wine on the table.

But the real point is about being truly present in the act of cooking, so that it draws one into an experience of God — experienced directly, and in others.

by Mark Argent

One of the more flexible ways of praying with scripture is imaginative contemplation. The essence is to take a bible story, read it a few times so that it becomes familiar, then settle oneself to pray perhaps breathing slowly and deeply to clear the mind, and then slowly imagine oneself into the story. Often the easiest way is to begin by picturing the scene, imagining the weather and what people are wearing, and slowly let the story unfold, perhaps being one of the characters in the story, perhaps being a bystander. Helpful additions can be to repeat the exercise as different characters, and entering into an imaginary conversation with one or more characters at the end. It’s equally helpful if the imagination simply fleshes out the details of the story, or goes off in a different direction from the biblical narrative.

This can sound as if it has too much scope for projection to be meaningful as prayer. But the point is not that what one imagines is what actually happened, but it is to enter more deeply into the story. At one level it is to invite God to be present in the imagination and then to allow what follows to become an experience of God. At another level, it’s to engage the things of the unconscious that are involved in imagination, drawing on the fact that the unconscious is a powerful place of religious experience.

Some people find that the core of this approach is to be taken up in the story, and where the imagination goes.

Some find an extra layer in talking with one or more of the characters, allowing themself to become more deeply part of the story. That can include the shift from a gospel story as a story about Jesis to being an encounter with Jesus in the story.

Some find that the art is to enter the story, and then let it slip away into stillness. In a way that is to make it the entry point to stillness, but if the last thing someone has actively chosen to think about before settling into stillness is a Bible story, the odds are that it will still be around somewhere. Surprisingly often the stray thoughts that come along either on coming out of stillness, or in the next few minutes, seem to have a link back to the story, as if it has been doing its work out if sight.

Imaginative contemplation doesn’t give the only understanding of a story, any more than a sermon gives the only possible exegesis of a text, but there is a richness in letting it be the nourishment for today, with the possibility that it may seem different, and nourish differently, tomorrow. In the context of a retreat or quiet day, there’s an added richness if there is scope for people to talk about what they have found in the same story, helping people see what they might have missed.

Although it’s a little outside what is normally called Imaginative Contemplation, all scripture had a process of being passed on, usually as oral tradition, before it was written down. The assumption is that God was in the passing-on of the stories, as well as the text passed on: Imaginative Contemplation also offers a way to deepen the sense of scripture as living story passed on.

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t”

Over the last two thousand years, Christians have found many ways to pray. Some people find it helps to focus on one way of praying for a long time so that it becomes deeply, others thrive on variety. Some people find a deep sense of freedom and connection with others in using a standard pattern of prayer — like a prayer book or order — where others prefer something more “in the moment”.

The invitation of this section of the web site is to explore, perhaps to try something different, and perhaps to understand more about what others find helpful.

by Mark Argent

Slightly confusingly, the terms “meditation” and “contemplation” get used in a variety of ways. Some treat them as interchangeable. Some make a careful distinction, though it can still end up with one person’s “meditation” being another’s “contemplation”.

So, with apologies to those who use the words differently, this article picks up practical ways of meditating — coming to a place of inner stillness and clarity by turning off the inner chatter of the mind.

Sometimes it’s helpful to use one of these techniques as a preparation for another form of prayer, perhaps engaging the imagination, creativity, or the slow reading of scripture. But it is also a profound form of prayer in its own right, and trusts that God is working in us as we come to a place of stillness, and that stillness itself brings an openness to God. It’s not a way of praying that specifically asks for something: this invitation is instead to go deeper than the words that might express our desires.

It’s usually best to begin by sitting in a position where you will be comfortable to remain still for a while, preferably with the spine vertical. If you’re sufficiently supple, sitting cross-legged on the floor can be very beneficial.

It is possible to imagine going straight to a place of stillness, but this is rarely as easy as it sounds and it usually helps to do something repetitive until you pass from repetition into stillness. Many things can be used for this. Three widely used techniques are:

• To take a word or short phrase and repeat it over and over again. The phrase should be short enough to be repeated without effort, and be reasonably gentle, so that it does not encourage strong feelings or thoughts.
• Breathing gently, count your breaths. When you have counted to ten, start from one again.
• Be sensitive to the sensations either in your nostrils, or in your torso, as you breathe in and out.

If a thought comes along, or an outside distraction, acknowledge it and gently let it go.

Just occasionally a thought or association arises that seems worth hanging on to. For those moments, I find it useful to have a piece of paper to hand so that I can briefly write it down down before returning to the meditation: this is less distracting than trying to meditate and hold onto an idea.

It doesn’t matter whether the eyes are open or closed: do whichever feels more natural. If you prefer to keep your eyes open, try to relax your vision rather than giving too much attention to what you can see. If you fall asleep, that doesn’t actually matter: it disturbs the meditation more to put effort into fighting the urge to sleep than it does to allow God to be present in sleep as in wakefulness.

It’s good to spend a reasonable amount of time in the meditative state: if possible, start with half an hour and aim to increase that time over successive meditation periods.

Which way a person uses to meditate hardly matters — they are all routes to the same place — but it is often best to stick to the same one so it begins to feel like a familiar path to stillness. On a good day this doesn’t matter, but a familiar path can be helpful when things make meditation harder.

One subtlety here is that, if you use a mantra, it is a good idea to pick one that feels relatively neutral. The reason is that the mantra in itself doesn’t matter — its role is to help the path to a place of stillness. A mantra like “God loves me” can sound appealing, but on days when it doesn’t feel like that, the words become an obstacle — yet these are the days when simply trying is most important.

It sounds as if meditation is about achieving a perfect stillness. It’s great when that happens, but actually what matters is making the choice to be still and open to God for a period of time: some people find that, when stillness is elusive, it is because there is a lot going on, so the fact that they have chosen to try achieves something.

Meditation can feel like a waste of time. Being too specific about what it might “achieve” usually puts the achieving in the place of the meditating. Having the generosity to meditate with no particular expectations maximises the scope for it to be a benefit that’s surprising.

That said, it is worth paying particular attention to thoughts which come along immediately after periods of meditation as this is often a time of heightened focus and creativity. Some people sometimes have a sense that “something” is going on, out of sight, even as they try to disengage from thinking, and gifts from that tend to appear among stray thoughts afterwards.

My second reason for having a pen and paper to hand while meditating is that sometimes things arise immediately after meditating. Like writing down a dream on waking, this is needs to be done before moving. Also like dreaming, you can’t make this happen, but it helps the process to chose to be in a place to co-operate with it if it does.

Something that’s easier on retreat than at other times, is to go for a walk, or do something relaxing immediately afterwards and then spend reflect back over that period. That creates space to get in touch with what might be released by the meditation. My experience is that this shows in stray thoughts which, like all stray thoughts, seem natural, but might be different from what would have come along if the meditation hadn’t happened.

But the primary purpose is not to get specific benefits which are obvious immediately afterwards. The sense is that there is a generosity in creating the space for God to be at work without human busy-ness getting in the way, and that reflecting on the experience afterwards is to chose to receive any gifts that might come along, rather than push them away by immediately getting on with something else.

And if the day is busy, and the meditation is a short period grabbed first thing, it is still worth being open to the possibility of being surprised: God is around in the busy-ness of the day as much as in stillness, even if our thoughts get drawn elsewhere.

by Mark Argent

Art has long been a stimulus to prayer. That includes religious art, which can invites because of its subject matter, but it’s possible to pray with any painting. Curiously, one of the suggestions I sometimes make to people on retreat is to look at the art around the retreat centre, find what attracts them most and least, and then to pray with both.

I’m often a little vague about the best way to pray with a work of art, which is to leave space for people to find their own path. When pushed, the suggestion is to use it to draw them into stillness. People often find that place easiest to enter if they begin by focussing on one thing (which is to withdraw the focus from other things) and then move past the thing focussed on. In this case one approach is to begin by treating the work of art as abstract and let the eye wander round the edges, then across it, taking in the shapes and colours. If the sense is that it is wanting to become something — perhaps because it is clearly not abstract — let it be seen as that thing. Then ask ask “Where would I place myself in this work of art?” and let the eye rest there for a while.

In effect, the final resting place of the eye is what pulls into stillness. But it is often a very dynamic stillness, where lots can happen, opening a path to visions and awareness so that it is both a stillness and a perceiving-beyond.

Encouraging people to pray with what they like and with what they don’t like unleashes a great deal because the exercise actually just needs a reaction, whether positive or negative. If someone can get past the first shock, it is often the work of art that repelled them which has the most to give in prayer.

Either way, it often helps to rest in stillness for a while and then to see what scripture comes to mind. Far from being a random process, the scripture that surfaces tends to have a connection with what’s been going on in response to the art and so lets the journey go further.

by Mark Argent

Lectio divina — or “holy reading” is a meditative way of reading a passage of scripture. The idea is to read a text slowly, entering deeply into the response to individual words and phrases. One of the strengths of this approach is that it can be used with any passage of scripture, so that it does not depend on the text telling a story. It’s an approach particularly associated with the psalms, but by no means limited to them.

It’s usually easiest to read the passage, then to take a few minutes to enter a deep stillness, perhaps by breathing slowly and deeply or using a mantra. After that preparation, re-read the text, and then read it very slowly, letting as much nourishment as possible from each word or phrase.

Sometimes the end result is to enter into a deep stillness, but more often something happens in the actual responses to the words. If a train of thought is unlocked by a particular word, it is usually worth following it. If the end result is that the whole prayer time is taken up with only part of the reading, this is fine: it is always possible to return to the passage later. At the end of the prayer period it’s helpful to look back over what has happened, and ask how this relates to other things happening in other parts of life, perhaps letting this take the form of a conversation with God.

One helpful summary of Lectio divina is to think of it in four steps: reading, pondering, stillness, and conversation with God.

In the background is an idea going back to the early days of monasticism, when few monks could read. Meditare originally meant “to memorise” and there was a tradition of people being given a word or phrase to remember and be with as they prayed or went about their work, returning to one of the monastics who could read when they were ready to move on.

There is a close parallel between this and the sense of letting the Word speak which lies at the heart of a Reformed approach to preaching, but it is worth resisting the urge to go too far down this path so that lectio divina is reduced to a pathway to sermons. Part of its richness lies in the little drops of nourishment in the fragments as they pass by, which need to be not complete in order to keep the openness for what might come next.

by Dorothy Slater

When I attended a weekend of Pathways into Prayer three years ago in connection with the URC Vision For Life I was intrigued to see among the list of workshops available to choose, one entitled Praying with the Labyrinth. I had never before come across the use of the labyrinth in prayer, only in connection with myths, usually meaning a type of puzzle or problem. So I chose that workshop which was lead by Mike Playdon.

I found out that labyrinths were a feature of many medieval cathedrals : one of the best remaining ones is in Chartres cathedral in France. They are marked out on the floor often in stone, but unlike a maze they have only one path and there are no dead ends. People walked the labyrinth slowly, as an aid to meditation and reflection or as a form of pilgrimage.

At the workshop we used a specially marked-out cloth in a large hall following the ideas and instructions given us by Mike. I found it a most inspiring and fascinating experience and in the afternoon during some free time I followed the path round the outdoor labyrinth in the grounds of The Hayes centre where we were based. That was quite a different but equally moving activity and I came home after that weekend determined to try to find a way to encourage others to have a go.

I had almost given up as I couldn’t find anywhere near us with a labyrinth, or work out how we could set up one inside for many people. However last year a young man who is a fellow member of my church, told me he’d been to a Youth for Christ weekend and had bought a special kit showing how to set up a labyrinth for a group of people indoors. When I listened to the CD I realised it was a very approachable way for our members of tackling this strange-sounding activity.

It consists of a path to be marked out on the floor of a small hall, walked while listening to a recorded soundtrack to guide you through the journey. It takes about an hour with various stopping places with objects and small activities and suggestions of points of meditation and reflection. Only three or four people were using it at a time and it was all in silence. It really offers time out of your day to think, reflect and grow deeper in your relationship with God.

We decided to have a Labyrinth Day in our church one Saturday in Lent. The people who took part were very positive in their feedback and felt it had been a most worthwhile experience and a wonderful opportunity to step aside from their daily activity. Many said “When can we have another?” So we repeated it one Saturday in Advent and this time the response was overwhelming as the word had gone round! We filled almost all the slots available in the day and had such amazing comeback about the ways people had received help for dealing with their life and coming closer to God that I thought I ought to tell others about how they could have a go at setting one up and perhaps helping their fellow “pilgrims in prayer” see how it might help them along their way.

by Mark Argent

One of the less familiar corners of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises is the obscurely-named Particular Examen. It lurks in the first part of the Exercises, where the general focus is on sin and the forgiveness of God. The word “particular” is in the title because the person making the Exercises is invited to keep track of the times when they fall into a particular sin, perhaps making some small gesture (such as discretely striking their breast) each time they catch themselves, and to periodically take stock of their performance. Confidently, Ignatius suggests a slightly bizarre diagram whose purpose is to help a person keep track of how they are improving.

On the face of it, this does not seem so helpful. There’s a whiff of Pelagianism about the idea that you can eliminate your sinfulness by trying harder, and one of the lessons of psychoanalysis is that to pushing something away tends to give it a real power, often unhelpfully expressed.

Yet throughout the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius places so much less emphasis on sin and so much more emphasis on the love of God than many of his contemporaries, that it is no great surprise that he caused the Inquisition to raise an eyebrow.

One of the modern approaches tries to catch the essence of Ignatius’ idea by turning it inside out. Rather than inviting someone to keep track of occurrences of a particular sin, the suggestion is instead to choose a personal motto, and to check in with it several times a day. The snag is that the tendency is for people to choose — or be encouraged to choose — a motto emphasising generally good things, which is to vague to make much difference. That’s also a long way from Ignatius’ idea of something particular.

An area of the Spiritual Exercises which receives rather more attention are the two sets of “Rules for discernment of spirits”. Also rooted in late Mediæval spirituality, these have stepped across the centuries more easily. Side-stepping the language of “angels” and “devils”, these provide a toolkit for dealing with the sense that some things draw us to God, some things draw us away, and patience is needed because we sometimes get this wrong.

One way of bringing this to bear on the Particular Examen is, when things are difficult, to make the assumption that the bad spirit has the upper hand, then write down in one column a list of the words that summarise the situation in one column, and, for each word, write in the second column what seems to be its opposite. If the bad spirit is behind what’s in the first column, then the suggestion is that the good spirit is behind their opposites, so, to make a phrase out of the opposites is to get a quick summary of where the good spirit might be pulling.

An example is someone who brought into their prayer a generalised sense that they were “not good enough” and “doomed to fail” — turning that into “good” and “free to succeed” brought a marked change. It could sound like a game with words, but it was enough to interrupt the sense of “how things are doomed to be” and undermine the assumption that God was somehow in collusion with this.

There are a couple of subtleties in play here. One is that the motto is private, so it doesn’t matter if it is a couple of words that wouldn’t make much sense to someone else. Another is that it is important to change the motto phrase. This is a tool for dealing with a particular moment. When circumstances change it is important to have the freedom to stop using the motto, or to change it to deal with a new situation.

Another subtlety is that this doesn’t involve looking back into a person’s story, so it side-steps the tendency to be defined by one’s past and gets in touch with the reality that religious experience happens in the present tense — though the past may make it harder to see.

In spiritual language, this approach is also about actively choosing to expose oneself to particular aspects of the forgiveness of God. This isn’t to say that all the problems in a person’s life are because of their “sin”, but is to see the potential for the forgiveness of God to step across the barriers.

Identifying where there is a sense of being drawn away from God and using a motto as a way of turning to face in the other direction is to invite God to come close.

by Mark Argent

Some people are naturally drawn to a relatively free structure for prayer from day to day, but others find a greater freedom, or a greater stability, in a regular pattern.

For Anglicans, there is the pattern of morning and evening prayer, and many communities and churches have their own forms. In essence, these give a stable framework, within which some of the prayers change by the day or by the season, and each time of prayer uses different readings.

I’ve a wonderfully free-spirited friend who had an early dalliance with the Benedictines, but left, finding the structure too rigid, who has since re-connected with this way of prayer. She now likens it to a window frame: it has the stability to let you look out to glimpse God beyond. I’ve another friend who likes his life to be ordered, for whom the stability of the rhythm echoes the stability he finds in being rooted in God.

There’s also a shared dimension: people don’t usually create their own daily offices, so there is a sense of praying with others, because of using the same prayer, even if you are not with them. The sense is of a prayer, and an experience of God, that is both private and shared.

Many people in the URC are using the Daily Devotions. Others cast around for something that suits in another denomination, or a community like the Iona Community or the Northumbria Community. Online there is a large and growing range of web sites that provide daily prayer — with the advantage that they usually add the readings for the day, and some use technology to deepen the prayer.

by Kathryn Price

The labyrinth is an ancient aid to meditation. It is symbolic of a walk into the very heart of God.

It is not a maze: there is only one way in and one way out. You cannot get lost.

Walking slowly and carefully slows down the heart rate and settles breathing, producing a feeling of calm.

Staying quietly in the centre still the mind and opens the heart to hear what God is saying.

A few basic rules:

• take off your shoes before stepping onto the canvas;
• respect one another’s journeys — do not start until there is space for you, and if you need to pass someone, just step to one side and return to the path once past.

On the way into the labyrinth, think of those things that are troubling you — questions, concerns, disappointments.

At the centre, sit or stand in silence and try to clear your mind to be able to receive new insights. Wait until you are ready to move out.

On the way out, reflect on anything that came to you in the centre that will help settle your troubles and bring you peace of mind.

Afterwards, sit for a few minutes before moving back into everyday life.

Shalom — peace be with you

About the labyrinth

A labyrinth is a meandering path, usually unicursal, with a singular path leading to a centre. Unlike a maze it is impossible to get lost if following the path. Labyrinths are an ancient archetype dating back 4,000 years or more, used symbolically, as a walking meditation, choreographed dance, or site of rituals and ceremony, among other things.

Labyrinths are tools for personal, psychological and spiritual transformation, also thought to enhance right-brain activity. Labyrinths evoke metaphor, sacred geometry, spiritual pilgrimage, religious practice, mindfulness, environmental art, and community building.

It is generally thought that their popularity in the Middle Ages, at the time of the Crusades, was because there were so many people who were unable take on a pilgrimage to one of the holy places – Rome, Jerusalem, etc – and the labyrinth meant that they could take a local prayerful journey, which is why so many are in churches or on holy ground. The journey through the labyrinth is not straightforward and the walker can at times seem to be walking away from the centre, mirroring experiences in life.

Labyrinths are named by type and can be further identified by their number of circuits. You begin a labyrinth walk at the entrance and proceed along the path. Lines define the path and often maintain a consistent width, even around the turns. Generally at the centre you have travelled half the distance, where it is common to pause, turn around, and walk back out again.

There are many ways to use a labyrinth (see the books available) but the most common is to use the way to the centre to focus in on any issues or questions you may have, or see what comes up; then in the centre to wait on God and listen for God’s word. On the way back out, you can then ponder of God’s word to you and this time and what challenges or comfort it brings.

Labyrinths can be of any size and in many forms. The Cretan and Chartres forms are illustrated here:

Scenic canvas painted with acrylic paint forms a good serviceable portable labyrinth. They can also be mown into a lawn or laid out with stones in a garden. On the beach, stones can be used or the labyrinth can be drawn on the sand with a stick. Ropes can also be used in a hall to create another form of temporary labyrinth.

There are maps of where to find labyrinths in various books and on the internet: labyrinthlocator.org.

Small labyrinths can be printed or drawn, or – more permanently – created in felt or fabric or clay. The path is then ‘walked’ with a finger, though the prayer format remains the same.

Instructions for drawing a Cretan labyrinth or for creating one with two ropes (pdf).

by Mark Argent

That image is an extract from the Psalms Scroll in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s a very visual reminder of the very antiquity of the psalms, and hints at the range of situations in which people have drawn from them.

In the days when few could read, and scripture was hard to consult because it meant rolling and unrolling scrolls, people found ways of being with scripture that worked with memory rather than frequently looking things up. In setting words to music, the rich process begins when the words have been memorised and can begin to form part of the background of everything else going on throughout the day.

A very gentle way of being with psalms is to sit with the text and read through slowly and gently, getting a sense of the whole, and then savouring it more slowly, perhaps using the words as an invitation into stillness and stopping before the end, and perhaps letting them float in the back of the mind when not explicitly praying.
There’s a rich heritage of engaging with the intellect, the history and the context, but there’s also a generosity in assuming that one remembers what one needs to remember — and that God is in what does or doesn’t surface in the memory. This is a very gentle way of letting the text live and be a place of openness to God, without pretending to know the “mind of God”.

There is a generosity in being able to gently “be still … and know … that I … am God.” (Ps46:10) or letting God bring surprises through less promising verses.

by Mark Argent

I guess that wordiness counts as the Reformed vice. I remember a conversation about sermons between a Catholic Priest and a URC Minister: the Catholic reckoned that his congregation thought a 10 minute sermon “very long” while the Minister said his would see that as very short. More sharply, I’ve known people in the Reformed world talk of the sacramental significance of preaching in a way that Catholic colleagues find surprising. Hence the longer sermons.

A little more sharply, there can be a fair criticism of some worship, that the words “let us pray” are often followed immediately by someone speaking: where’s the space for the prayer (other than in the words of the one speaking)?

The implication is that the Reformed world is a wordy one, ill at ease with silence, which might suggest that it is also ill at ease with itself. Is that fair? It might explain why we once felt the need to call what became the URC Retreat Group the “Silence and Retreats Network”, advocating for the use of silence, as if it was something to be aimed at rather than inhabited. I am exaggerating: there are many within the URC who are nourished by deep contemplative experiences which include silence, and some of those who were uneasy when we changed our name from “Silence and Retreats Network” were uneasy because of a feeling that silence was a gift to be shared. Yet ours does remain a wordy tradition, noted more in the popular imagination for activism than contemplation.

So far, so conventional. But a string of encounters recently have made made me start to question this story. In giving retreats, I’ve found people from churches in the Reformed tradition seeming to fall eagerly on the opposite — the wordless, imageless, silent prayer that is usually referred to as apophatic. The term itself is simply a Greek term meaning “without images”, as opposed to the kataphatic, meaning “with images”. Inevitably this won’t be everyone’s preferred way of prayer, and it is not only found in the Reformed world, but I’ve seen it taken up sufficiently more often by people from a Reformed background to mean that I am wondering whether there is a direct connection with the tradition and the prayer style.

A simple answer is Denys Turner’s suggestion that the apophatic is the space you enter when you run out of words: so the more words a tradition uses, the sooner it runs out of words.

I am beginning to wonder whether it might be more nuanced than this. The words and the activism are not bad things in themselves, but I wonder whether part of their function is to keep God at a safe-enough distance. I’m thinking of the number of institutions in the Reformed world whose logo is a burning bush, which carries a sense of Moses, busy fleeing away, who is called up short by a miraculous, burning, raw encounter with the divine. That’s the same Moses who will later ask to see the face of God, and is politely told that none can look upon the face of God and live. In Jung’s lectures on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, he repeatedly quotes Hebrews: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” That’s not to see the words or the activism as bad, but perhaps to see them as reverencing the divine by acting out the need to keep it at a distance.

For those who find themselves in flight from the wordy and the busy, maybe the invitation is to see the deep stillness of the apophatic as core to our tradition, but not talked about, because it has no words, so it is a spiritual gift passed on by not being named — the ultimate apophaticism of the un-nameable.

The Reformed world is also well-known for its critique of idols — of objects experienced as in some way standing in the place of God. Maybe it’s no surprise to find a tradition which places great emphasis on the majesty of God being profoundly wary of idols, yet simultaneously using words to hold the divine at a safe-enough distance, and holding the space for those things that can’t be talked about by not talking about them.

by Kathryn Price

I was baptised at two weeks old and attended Sunday School from the age of three to eighteen. I said my prayers at bedtime like Christopher Robin, asking God to bless my nearest and dearest and when my children came along I taught them the same. In time I became an elder and a lay preacher, so imagine my sense of disturbance when the following happened:

I was working for Age Concern in Chester in the early 90s and one day found myself walking past the Cathedral. I stopped because I felt a compulsion to go in and pray. So I entered and found the side chapel, knelt down and —

I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!

How on earth could I have all that back history and still not know how to pray? After all I was leading prayer fairly regularly on Sundays, but I was good at finding other people’s words that expressed what I wished to say and was beginning to write my own. I spoke to my minister at the time, telling him of my feelings of confusion, of anger even and certainly of distress. Why did I not after all these years know how to pray for myself? Why had nobody taught me? How could I resolve this real need I felt?

It was suggested that I return to my lay preaching tutor, an experienced minister, for some guidance but his way of prayer was not something I could connect with; so another minister was suggested — a Geordie like myself, one with a robust sense of humour (he had, during a particularly dry debate, suggested District Council hold hands and try and contact the living!), but he was also someone who was immersed in the Ignatian way of prayer. Henry led me into a new way of communicating with God that was the beginning of a long, enlightening, enthralling journey into the spiritual life.

Henry was a good choice for me, because I had always thought that “spiritual” people were a bit fey, otherworldly and that rather scared me, because I didn’t feel that way at all. Henry was neither. He was ordinary, enjoyed this life and still lived and enjoyed an inner life. He showed me that “spirituality” was more than religion, but encompassed all that is. He took me out of the “prayer as words” mode and into “prayer as being with”.
Since that time I have had a range of spiritual directors — Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, lay, ordained, male, female — though it’s not a term I find all that helpful — too many implications of a right way. I’ve also explored how, as ministers and pastoral visitors, we can embrace this role ourselves through learning to listen and guide conversations in a spiritual way.

But I still often think back to that afternoon in Chester Cathedral and I have still on the noticeboard in my room a memo from Henry that says — 1) Stick with it and 2) There are no doors closed to God.

by David Parkin

At a service of Ordination to the ministry of Word and Sacraments within the United Reformed Church a number of questions are asked of the ordinand including:

“Do you believe that the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments, discerned under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the supreme authority for the faith and conduct of all God’s people?”

and to this question the ordinand is expected to reply “I do.”

There are wide differences of opinion among Christians regarding how the Bible may be seen as the Word of God, and this may be evidenced from the various translations. For instance, the Preface to the New International Version states:

“the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s word in written form. They believe that it contains the divine answer to the deepest needs of humanity, that it sheds unique light on our path in a dark world, and that it sets forth the way to our eternal well-being,”

whereas the translators of the New Revised Standard Version are not prepared to be so dogmatic:

“in traditional Judaism and Christianity, the Bible has been more than a historical document to be preserved or a classic of literature to be cherished and admired; it is recognised as the unique record of God’s dealing with people over all the ages… the Bible carries its full message… to all persons and communities who read it so they may discern and understand what God is saying to them.”

Few perhaps would now hold that God in some way dictated the Bible, that those who wrote the words did so by the sacred equivalent of automatic writing, but many would argue that God, through the working of the Spirit in the minds of authors, editors or compilers, ensured that the result was without error. But if this is the case the problem then arises as to whether this accuracy extends to the various translations. To take one illustration — in the Authorised Version, Deuteronomy 33: 27 reads:

“The eternal God is thy refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

words that have been of great comfort to many people, particularly in times of great distress, and this understanding is maintained by others including the Revised Standard, Good News and New International versions. Yet several recent translations (New English, Revised English and New Revised Standard) change the sense completely, the New Revised Standard Version reading:

“He subdues the ancient gods,
shatters the forces of old.”

These are difficulties to be faced in the inerrant reading of the Bible. By way of contrast, in What is the Bible? John Barton writes: “The Bible is not a book written by the hand of God which dropped from heaven. It is a compendium of human responses to God’s input into the human situation.”

What then is “The Authority of the Bible?”

To the person who believes that the Bible is the inerrant word of God then it may be sufficient authority that “the Bible says”, and to seek to apply its teachings to any situation or matter of conduct. But for those who cannot accept this then the authority of the Bible comes from its pointing beyond itself to the God who inspired its writing and to his “salvation history” supremely in Jesus.

For Christians the authority of the Old Testament lies in the belief that the God whom they worship was, and remains, the God of Judaism, the God who spoke words of promise through the writers, editors and compilers of the Old Testament — people who were not Christians (who could not have been so) but who developed a deep understanding of the nature of God. The authority of the New Testament lies in the belief that it is this self-same God who is revealed in the witness of the early church to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

The authority of the Bible is the authority of God who speaks through it to God’s creation. It is through its promise and its witness that readers are enabled to hear the incarnate Word of God — Jesus who became the Christ.

by Mark Argent

There’s a profound freedom in claiming the space to be wrong. That might be a problem for a surgeon or an accountant, but in prayer it offers real gifts.

Very often it’s in seeking out the places of deepest freedom that the space to encounter God is opened up. Paradoxically, the freedom to get things wrong, by liberating people from the pressure not to make mistakes, creates the freedom to encounter God, even if the actual prayer doesn’t follow any accepted guidelines.

Talking with the participants on a recent weekend of cooking and spirituality I found myself saying that one of the consequences of being a member of a small denomination is that I can’t suggest that my church is right, or the only church. This is a real blessing, because it’s a constant reminder that God as approached through my URC heritage — for all its riches — can’t possibly be the whole story. It’s a gentle nudge that God is always more than we think.

My sense is that a similar sentiment lies beneath the commitment of all the mainstream churches to ecumenism. From time to time — usually when things are particularly pressured — we lapse into denominational bunkers, but for the most part we all recognise that no one church in isolation has a monopoly on God. It’s as though the good spirit gently nudges us to be aware that there are insights outside as well as inside our own churches, and the bad spirit uses moments of crisis to try to cut us off from that.

In the one-to-one context of spiritual direction, there is a convention that the director shouldn’t seek to impose their own doctrinal or spiritual perspectives on the directee. The most basic wisdom is that this stops a needy director from foisting their own stuff on the directee. More importantly, it gives both people the scope to discover new things by making mistakes. That’s not cavalier: if the desire is to enter deeply into the experience of God, then that desire alone is enough to make it likely to happen, provided there is the willingness to realise that the experience of God a person receives might not look like what they are expecting.

Interesting, if unhealthy, things happen when a director does start to impose their own position. The first casualty is an openness to change, as the director is seduced into holding their own position more tightly as they try to persuade. However the directee reacts, the director has lost some of their capacity to enter more deeply into an experience of God. It’s as though the pressure to be right quietly sidelines God.

If instead the director allows themself the freedom to be wrong, and puts in the extra effort of opening up new space and inviting the directee to explore rather than trying to give answers, then the dynamic is very different. Both people have the freedom to change and be changed. From the directee’s perspective, the greatest gift is often not what is explicitly learned from the director, but what is picked up from the director modelling the willingness to go deeper and an openness to change.

That has interesting implications for how we teach methods of prayer. If its done by implying that there is a “right” way to use a particular method, then the implication is that there is also a “wrong” way. In the fear of getting things “wrong” people risk losing the very freedom in which they are most likely to find God. This needn’t stop people talking about ways of praying, but is an encouragement for that to be an invitation to explore and discover.

There’s another layer beneath all of this. Genuine religious experience usually engages the unconscious at least as much as the conscious mind. It’s usually the conscious mind that gets hung up on the need to be right and the fear of being wrong. Allowing the space to be wrong is a very effective way of engaging what is beyond a person’s conscious control. It’s to give space to the deeper unconscious space where the richest experiences of God are rooted.

I look as an outsider at the three vows made by people in religious life — poverty, chastity and obedience. My sense is that they are not automatically positive, but can be lived in a way which becomes life-giving. The vow of obedience, at its best, is about contradicting the ego’s desire to be in control, so that these deeper places of religious experience may have precedence. It’s interesting to see a deeply-rooted tradition at the heart of Christianity where people put themselves into the position of non-dominance, of not being able to be “right”, in order to enter more deeply into God.

There might be a parallel with what happens when people pray through painting. It’s one thing for a person to paint what they set out to paint, but rather more interesting things happen when the painting goes wrong or takes off in an unexpected direction. If someone has the freedom to go where the painting is taking them, the results can be really fascinating. It’s surprising how often the painting that “accidentally” goes “wrong”, is in touch with the space a person will be in a few days later. It’s as though allowing things to go “wrong” allows the conscious thinking process to be sidelined so that deeper things can emerge. The freedom to go “wrong” becomes the freedom to explore new and life-giving territory.

Whatever else happens, there is a delicious excitement in discovering that the freedom to be “wrong” can open up whole new experiences of God.

by Mark Argent

The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius are one of the cornerstones of contemporary Christian spirituality. They were put together by Ignatius of Loyola in the early sixteenth-century. They draw on his own spiritual journey and the resources he had found helpful, and his experience of guiding others. Significant new departures include extensive use of the imagination in prayer and his own exceptional spiritual and psychological awareness.

By the time they’d reached their final form, it’s clear that Ignatius expected the Exercises to be undertaken by someone in a silent, individually-guided retreat, typically lasting around a month. Flexibility is key to the process and Ignatius also suggests that, where it’s not possible to go away for a month the Exercises could be made in daily life, praying for an hour each day and meeting a spiritual director once a week.

Despite that flexibility, it took only a few generations before the Exercises had been standardised to a group experience comprising five talks a day over 30 days. When the Second Vatican Council encouraged religious orders to look to their roots the Jesuits re-visited Ignatius’ own instructions, and began to revive the Exercises as an individually-guided experience. This was pioneered in the early 1970s at St Beuno’s in the UK and Guelph in Canada. The result was dramatic. Ignatius’ insights connect well with modern psychoanalytic understandings, and the Exercises step neatly across five centuries to reach a wide range of people today.

The actual text is primarily a blueprint for the person directing the retreat and gently opens up the space for deep experience. It’s brief, and leaves space for people to make the Exercises from a range of theological and spiritual perspectives. As an example, I can remember someone who was wanting to do the Spiritual Exercises, but nervous because he didn’t believe in the virgin birth. I showed him the text, and he was relieved to discover that there was nothing that required him to believe that. On the other hand, I’ve also known people do the Spiritual Exercises who wouldn’t think to question the virgin birth at any stage in the process and assume the text supports them.

The Exercises help a person to know the forgiveness of God, and then take them through a deep encounter with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. They can be used to help someone make a major decision, but they’re also a powerful tool for someone simply wanting to deepen their spiritual life.

Today there are three common ways to make the Exercises. One is a 30-day individually-guided retreat (usually with some days of preparation beforehand and reflection afterwards). Making the Exercises in daily life is also well-established — it’s usually referred to as the “19th annotation” because the idea is floated in the 19th annotation (note) to the Exercises. Some places off them in chunks — usually three 10-day retreats — and there are also ways of making them online. It’s not usually worth getting into a discussion of which way is “best”: it’s usually wisest to work out which route is practical, and which one goes with what someone actually desires, and then to let that be the best way.

Imaginative contemplation is one of the most widely-used prayer techniques to come out of the Exercises and the tools of the Exercises underpin much of what happens in shorter other individually-guided retreats: even where these are not labelled as Ignatian, they often owe a great debt to Ignatius.

Are the Spiritual Exercises Catholic?

How far the Exercises are specifically-Catholic is an open question. Some would assume that they are intrinsically Catholic, and intrinsically Jesuit. But Ignatius (1491–1556) was a close contemporary of Martin Luther (1483–1546). The crucial experience on the way to formulating the Exercises was in 1521, just four years after Martin Luther had posted his 95 theses for discussion in Wittenburg. Some powerful personal and political forces pulled Ignatius to be loyal to Rome as those going the other way pulled Luther’s Germany away, but the Inqusition were right to be suspicious of Ignatius. The appeal to personal and direct experience of God in the Exercises sounds very much like similar appeals by the key figures of the Reformation, and where Luther ignited the Reformation by questioning the over-use of indulgences, Ignatius makes no mention of purgatory — completely ignoring the idea on which the sale of indulgences is based. It is as if they are part of the same reforming spirit.

Subsequent generations mobilised the Jesuits as defenders of Catholicism, which partly explains the big shift in the way they were given over the next century, but the return to Ignatius’ actual model since the 1970s has had a huge impact on spiritual direction generally. That creates huge scope for people in the Reformed world to ask what the Exercises have to offer them, rather than assume they have to go in a Catholic direction. They are not a “qualification”, so the invitation is to make the Exercises in what ever way turns out to be available: if the desire is to draw closer to God, then that is the most likely outcome.

Reading from a Reformed perspective

Penguin publish a volume of the Personal Writings of Ignatius of Loyola, which brings together the text of the Exercises, various of his letters and other documents. That puts the text of the Exercises in context. Starting there and asking “What does this offer?” is a better place to start than some of the re-workings of the Exercises that give them a contemporary Catholic accent.

by Mark Argent

My eye was caught a little while back by an anecdote from someone returning to the USA to teach in a theological college, who was shocked by the first student sermon he heard, which boiled down to “God is love. God loves us, so we should love each other”. What he missed were central Christian themes like the death and resurrection of Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit, or a call to change of life to be more fully in accord with the pattern of Christ’s life. The theologian was subsequently shocked to find how often he was hearing the Gospel reduced to proclamation of love.

The anecdote reveals something of the theologian’s doctrinal position, but he is right to warn. The love of God makes sense in the context of the Christian story, but leaving out the awkward bits misses something important. It can lead to quite a brutal rejection of those who don’t “fit”.

In terms of prayer, this is to say that something big is lost if spirituality is reduced to a message that life is wonderful, God is love and silence is the route to encounter. I’ve heard that language many times, and am always concerned for those for whom life is not wonderful — at least, not at that moment. The rest of the Christian story is important because it has the depth to speak at harder times, or even to enable the felt absence of God, or of hope, to become a place where God is encountered — quite possibly in a very surprising way.

Scripturally, this ushers in, for example, the use of some of the seemingly-awkward parts of the psalms as holding a sense of God-not-quite-understood in the memory of difficult times.

Spiritually there is something about not having to put on a front to be acceptable. I entitled this article “On being different” because there is something rich here about valuing difference and uniqueness. The public discourse today, rightly, is against discrimination. It’s one thing to not discriminate against someone on grounds (say) of their race. It’s something else, and much richer, to be in touch with what people bring by being different. For each of us, it is to be in touch with what we bring by our uniqueness.

I wonder. How far does the “niceness” of what one friend of mine dubs “Fluffy pink bunny rabbit spirituality” cut us off from the raw reality of praying as one bearing the image of God, and living in the full experience of God which spans the range from crucifixion to resurrection? What is it to pray in the rawness of the Holy Spirit, rather than simple conventionality?

by Mark Argent

For some, silence has connotations of austerity. I used to have someone in my District as an Elder who, since the death of her husband, had lived with great loneliness. She was reluctant to make a silent retreat because, spending a painfully large amount of time alone, she was keen to be with people whenever she was able to go away. A few times I gently floated the idea that the aim of a silent retreat as something that helps someone to draw closer to God could have helped in her loneliness, but the time didn’t seem right for that.

The reality is that silence is just a tool to help a person deepen their contemplative experience and their experience of God. At the start of a retreat I usually say to people that it serves two functions. One is that it is usually easier to tune into God, or to encounter God in the subtle shifts of the inner life, if you are not also trying to tune into other people. The other reason, which may be more obvious to those giving retreats than those making them, is that each person on an individually-guided retreat follows their own path: it is highly unlikely that two people meeting over coffee would be in the same space inside, so a conversation would be likely to get in the way for both of them. Though I don’t like to be too rigid about this as I’ve also had experiences where a chance conversation on retreat has been a helpful turning point.

When people are struggling with the silence there is often something quite profound going on, perhaps around a fear of the deep encounter with God or a fear of what they might face in themselves. That can sometimes feel and sound like shallowness of faith: in fact it is usually the exact opposite, expressing an awareness of the richness of the territory people are entering.

There’s a common perception that introverts take better to silence than extraverts. To an extent that is true, particularly for people having their first experiences of silence. But part of any person’s journey towards an integrated wholeness involves drawing appropriately on their inner resources. Silence can be particularly valuable for the extravert, for whom it is all the more valuable for being less often naturally a part of their daily life.

While silence can be a powerful tool, something interesting happens when it is disturbed. On the one hand, it is possible to pray with quite real infractions of silence: I met this frequently working at Osterley Retreats, which was directly under a Heathrow flight path, and have been humbled by the contemplative experiences of people who hear voices, for whom the speech which could disturb their prayer can’t be avoided because it is in their own heads. Yet if a person is struggling to pray, tiny infractions of the silence can seem like major obstacles and become the focus of frustration: the trick is often to have the generosity on oneself and others to seek to find God in or around those infractions.

That is something which leads directly into the contemplative’s experience outside times of retreat. At its best a retreat is not a time when there are certain hours of prayer, separated by “time off”, but a time of continual openness, both in and between times of formal prayer. Outside a time of retreat it’s not normally possible to set aside large slabs of time for silence. A more helpful model is to think of tuning in to the presence of a God who is always there — whether acknowledged or not — using times of silence or stillness to adjust one’s tuning and awareness.

Prayerfully thinking back over the past day, perhaps asking the question “Where was God in the experience?”, is a way of deepening this awareness because it helps us to be more in tune with the stillness of deep presence, and of the subtle movements in our spirits which give glimpses of what is going on at the deeper levels in our hearts, both when we are aware of them at the time, and when, in hindsight, we can see that we were choosing not to be aware. For me, the nurturing of those awarenesses is the real purpose of silence in prayer. I find it often more helpful to think in terms of “listening” rather than “silence”.

While silence is very helpful, it’s not the whole story because many of these subtle changes happen in response to the things of daily life. The trick is to use silence as a way of listening. I find myself trying not to limit the contemplative experience to times of silence, instead seeking the generosity to myself and others that enables me to meet God in deep silence in a world that is far from silent.