It happens too often that, in ecumenical conversations between Anglicans and churches whose ministry is not ordered by bishops in historic succession, the question of ministry becomes the sole sticking point, thus appearing to give the ordained ministry of the church a greater importance than our understanding of salvation or the Trinity. Of course, there may be some Anglicans who will insist that there is no salvation outside the sacramental life of a church ordered with bishops in apostolic succession, but I imagine that they are a tiny minority. After all, our common baptism has been recognised ecumenically for some time.

Briefly, the standard Anglican position on the importance of the apostolic succession of bishops is that it is a necessity for churches who unite but is not essential for the recognition of the sacramental efficacy of ministry in other churches. If it were, there would be no possibility of entering the kind of local ecumenical partnerships that happen all over the UK. Bishops in historic succession are seen as a sign, but not a guarantee of the apostolicity, unity and catholicity of the church. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, which has stood as a standard position for Anglicans for over a century, places historic episcopate locally adapted, alongside the Scriptures, Dominical Sacraments and historic creeds as the conditions necessary for the uniting of churches. This statement could, of course, be altered by a Lambeth Conference, but this is not likely in the near future and I would be among those arguing for a maintenance of the place of the historic episcopate in our church, albeit constantly evolving in response to changing circumstances. I wonder, though, if it is possible to imagine an approach that does not alter this position, but makes one simple step that would remove a significant block to ecumenical progress in many places. That simple step would be the removal of the necessity of episcopal ordination, but not oversight, for any presbyter or deacon seeking to work in an Anglican context, either in a permanent or occasional capacity.

As a starter, I would suggest the following rationale and conditions for such a move:

• First of all, the reason for the change would be to allow greater sharing of ministry in a context where mission is the key driver for the church’s ongoing life and witness. The missionary focus of ecumenism is increasingly recongised in the WCC (The Church, Towards a Common Vision and Together Towards Life) and in the thinking of Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium).
• The key theological rationale for this move would be the acceptance that God’s action through the sacramental life of the church is not primarily dependent on the nature of the minister’s ordination, but on the operation of the Holy Spirit in free and gracious response to the prayer of the church.
• In order to accept each other’s churches as expressing apostolic faith, there has to be a significant level of agreement between these churches on doctrine, founded on the historic creeds but including sacramental theology and ecclesiology (including a theology of ordained ministry as necessary to the right ordering of the sacramental and missional life of the church). This agreement would also recognise the exercise of episkope in each church. I would regard ecumenical texts such as Reuilly and Meissen as possessing such a level of agreement. To spell this out in terms that make sense in our local context, a Presbytery of the Church of Scotland clearly exercises episkope.
• One of the features of that eccesiological agreement could be the recognition of the continuity of apostolic faith expressed in the sign of a continuity of ministers ordained in historic succession (ie presbyteral rather than episcopal succession) but that this continuity is at the service of apostolic faith, not the sole guarantor of apostolicity.
• Presbyters and deacons working in an Anglican context would recognise the ministry of their bishop as a personal expression of episkope and as a sign of continuity apostolic faith. They would also accept the disciplines of that church, as an Anglican priest would do if they were working, for example, in a Reformed church.

It seems to me that this small move would signal a serious intent for Anglicans to work more closely in mission with partners in non-episcopal churches without losing the distinctive apostolic ministry of bishops. The question of the place of bishops in united churches belongs to a later stage of our growing together, but I think it would be a good first step towards greater unity if we were to leave behind the notion that only those presbyters who have been ordained by a bishop in historic succession exercise a valid sacramental ministry. Surely the Holy Spirit is not bound by such constraints.

I would be grateful if others could comment on this little bit of ‘thinking aloud’ as I think our ecumenical conversations need to grasp this nettle in creative ways as a matter of some urgency.

If you look at a map of the Sinai peninsula, you might wonder what route could possibly have taken forty years for the people of Israel to navigate from Egypt to the Promised Land. Following in the footsteps of that paradigmatic journey, you might similarly wonder why a two minute conversation with the Tempter in the desert took Jesus forty days. There seems to be a chronic case of inefficiency in the biblical world. Why don’t they just get on with things? Why do things take so long? Where’s the sense of purpose and direction?

Yes, we do like a sense of purpose and ‘wasting time’ seems like a crime against life. But what if our desire for control and ‘productivity’ is, in fact, a problem rather than a virtue? It seems to me that the long periods of wandering in the featureless landscapes of the desert – though Sinai is very beautiful in its rugged barrenness – are designed precisely to take the wanderer beyond the level of what it is merely ‘interesting’ to the deeper place of growth and wholeness. We often have a tendency to over-value our likes and preferences, our ideas and opinions. While these have their place, it is a mistake to think that ‘I’ am simply the sum total of these characteristics. Our true self is something much less clearly defined, because our true self consists in our capacity for openness, compassion and attentiveness. The testing time of desert wandering, chosen or involuntary, can be a process whereby we learn how to loosen our grip on superficial things in favour of a simpler and stronger open-heartedness. This process can be long and occasionally painful if we are very attached to these superficial things, but it’s fundamentally an enlivening process. It is also one that does not require effort so much as patience and a willingness to bear with a degree of uncertainty or ‘unfinishedness’.

Meditation is one of the ways we can practice this disposition in a regular way and Lent affords an opportunity to recommit oneself to a life of deliberate wandering.

 

I learned something new about agriculture yesterday (most things I might learn about agriculture will be new to me…). It was that there is a method of farming that rejects the tilling of the ground on the basis that the soil retains more of its nutrients when it is not disturbed. This approach also helps prevent erosion and increases the retention of moisture.

Given that ‘cultivation’ is a metaphor we use in the spiritual life, I was drawn to the idea of an uncultivated field as a different kind of metaphor for spiritual growth. In addition, I am always drawn to the cluster of metaphors around ash, dust, soil and dirt that are so prevalent on Ash Wednesday. So here goes with a bit of metaphor-stretching:

What if we turn away from ideas of the purification of the soul by removing the weeds that infest it towards an idea of the retention of all of our ‘organic matter’ – our dirt and soil – because we recognise it to be the fertile ground of our lives? Might it not be healthier for us to look towards an integration of all that we are, our faults and misdeeds included, rather than seeking a purgation of those elements of ourselves we judge to be ‘dirty’? I see a couple of good reasons for doing this. One is that we don’t always know for sure what is dirt and what is fertile soil, or what is wheat and what is weed. There may be an experience of wrongdoing that tells us something rather important about ourselves. Another is that self-judgement can easily lead to self-hatred, and I wonder how easy it is to forgive others when we can’t forgive ourselves.

Another dimension of this metaphor of an untilled field is that it suggests an approach to the spiritual life that is not over-concerned with method or refinement. The spiritual mind is our natural mind and we allow that natural mind to do its thing by letting it get on with the business of ‘minding’, ie paying attention. The Zen teacher Irmgard Schloegl was fond of the idea of ‘gentling’:

‘There clings an aspect of primitive wildness to the heart which is in need of taming, gentling, and transforming to that which it is by nature’ (The Zen Way, p.62)

For no-till agriculture is still agriculture – it requires some activity to allow the soil to be what it is by nature. Our spiritual practice, which gets an extra focus during Lent, might then be concerned with the ‘activity’ of simply letting the fertile field of our lives be what it is. It does not need forceful intervention, it just needs our attention, a quality of mind that is accepting, open and still.

 

At a time when there are increasing pressures on priests and ministers to be professional, with those who have no experience in the ‘real world’ being particularly suspected of having nothing of any use to offer, I would like to make an appeal to the urgent necessity of clerical uselessness!

• The priest has nothing to offer. He or she is only there to serve as a symbol of what is of absolute value.
• The priest has nothing to give. Each of us has all that we need to become the fully free human being we are invited to be. But it does help to have someone to remind us of this from time to time.
• The priest is primarily engaged in useless ‘activity’. Prayer, the primary business of priests (which isn’t to say that it’s not everyone else’s primary business), has no value in the world – it has no goal, no measure, no purpose and no standard. It accomplishes nothing more than is accomplished by a bird of the air or a flower of the field.
• The priest has no specialism, no professional accreditation. All that matters is that she or he is conscious of standing in a lineage of those who commit themselves to way of being. As Zen teaching would say, it’s a matter of mind-to-mind transmission, not special learning.
• The priest is incompetent. In matters of spirituality, who is competent? All that matters is that the priest has an awareness of a Great Doubt – a fundamental sense of our deepest longing – and a Great Faith – a fundamental sense that this longing can be directed towards something fulfilling.
• The priest has no work plan other than to be present.
• The only work a priest claims to do is absurd, because it claims to be the ‘work of God’.

The strange thing is, I think the church needs this particular brand of uselessness. And I dare to suggest that those not in the church are crying out for it too. Well, that’s enough for now. I’m off to sit in silence on a cushion for half an hour. What insanity!

In a fascinating piece in today’s Guardian, Tim Harford makes a very compelling argument for caution as we develop an ever more automated life for ourselves. Using the example of a tragic airplane crash where the pilots had lost the skills necessary to intervene when the autopilot handed back control to them, he urges a different approach to the use of automation in such developments as the driverless car. The problem is one that any musician or sportsperson will recognise: when you don’t practice your physical skills, you lose the ability to react well when instinctive responses are needed. It’s one thing to know in your head what you need to do, quite another to have the physical skill to enact what you know. In particular, he suggests that it is the process of regularly navigating complex or dangerous situations that prepares us for more extreme challenges. Those who have read John Irving’s book, A Prayer for Owen Meany, will remember the eponymous hero’s regular practising of ‘the move’ that he knows will someday become a matter of life and death (I won’t say more so as not to spoil the plot!).

It is no coincidence that Zen ‘practitioners’, in common with many other Buddhist traditions, speak of their ‘practice’ rather than their ‘faith’. What we do sitting on a cushion every day is nothing more nor less than practising life. It’s not a question of ‘getting our heads straight’ about life or refining our ideas about life, it’s a question of practising what it means to be alive, free from notions and attachments, free simply to live in the present attentively. This is as much a physical as a mental practice (if one can talk of these things separately) which develops our capacity to be fully present and can stand us in good stead for those times when all we want to do is be somewhere else rather than face what is in front of us.

Zen has a rather stark response to any attempt we might make at saying that this or that ‘is who I am’. Am I my job? No, that’s not it. Am I my temperament, my likes and dislikes? No, that’s not it. Am I my religion, my relationships, my memories or my history? No, that’s not it. Am I then the totality of all these things and many more besides? My body, my intellect? No, that’s not it.

So what is the answer to the question, who am I? There isn’t one. Or if there is, it’s not one we can know. If, in Christian language, we say ‘I am a child of God’, does that get us any closer? Well, in one sense it does, in that it doesn’t give us any kind of precise answer but does remind us of our common humanity, our fraternity, with all other children of God. But I think there is great wisdom in shifting attention away from the question as it is formulated. For one thing, such a question risks leading us down the path of wondering what it is that makes ‘me’ unlike ‘you’, a path of differentiation. I don’t think our identity consists in such separations.

If our response to the question ‘who am I’ is ‘I don’t know’, we are probably getting closer to truth. ‘I’ am not primarily a ‘knowing’ being, contra Descartes, but a ‘being’ being. So perhaps the question is better put as ‘how shall I live’ than ‘who am I’. In sitting zazen, we let go of the notion that we are a mind controlling a body and simply realise our existence. Indeed, one gets to the point of no longer even saying ‘I am’, but simply ‘am’ and then, perhaps, to the point of saying nothing at all. It is in the place of such self-forgetting emptiness that we touch the true fabric of life, the generative, spacious emptiness from which life springs (formless and void, to use the language of Genesis!).

But at a very practical level, there is a great simplicity and a great relief in simply letting go of the kind of self-preoccupation that places a question of our identity at the heart of life. It turns out that we realise our true identity by not fretting about it. Somewhat like ‘the birds of the air and the lilies of the field’ as one perceptive teacher once put it…

The question of how one shapes one’s life according to one’s principles and insights, religious or otherwise, is a perennial one. In Western terms, we can sometimes have a tendency to think that the basic pattern is to implement our ideas, in other words, to do what we are told. We are told to act in a particular way, let’s say by criminal law, or the rules of a sports governing body, or the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes, so all we have to do is to know something then do it. The problem is that this doesn’t work. I regularly tell myself to be more organised. I know I need to be more organised and I know how to be more organised, but I don’t do it. It’s the same thing with compulsive or addictive behaviours. We know we shouldn’t do them, but we keep on doing them all the same.

So I come to the conclusion that it’s our model that’s wrong. Maybe the whole business of transforming our lives is not a question of having the right ideas and implementing them, but of changing our way of seeing things by first changing our way of doing things. In other words, we need to learn that the business of life is a question of practice or, to use an old-fashioned religious term, discipleship. By practice, I mean the business of repeatedly doing the right thing again and again, starting with one characteristic and defining thing. In Zen practice, that one defining thing is sitting – seated, non-discursive meditation. Why should this be such an important foundation of our business of engaging with life as a matter of practice? Well, put simply, because we know it works from those who’ve tried it. I know that’s not a very clever answer, and I’m sure I could come up with other reasons, but this is a rather compelling one.

Well, maybe I will give just one or two other reasons why this kind of practice might be foundational. The main one is that this very simple practice is a way of trying out a way of living that is free from compulsion, free from our fixation with ideas and free from grand aspirations. When we sit still, breathe deeply and do not entertain our thoughts as they come and go, we learn the simple path of attentiveness. It seems to me that pretty much everything else flows from that. Of course, to set out on a course of action to change our behaviour requires that we want to change it in the first place, but even then I think it is possible to learn more about how much we want to do something simply by beginning to do it. So be a practitioner, a disciple, a beginner!

 

When I worked as a college chaplain, one of the colleagues who impressed me most with his very earthed spirituality was our head gardener. The college had extensive grounds and plenty of work to keep Michael and his team busy, but the one thing he made sure he did every day was to place fresh flowers around the building. In this simple task, he brought colour and beauty to the place and, as a useful by-product, he brought visibility to his own team’s work and put himself in the position to bump into members of the college on a daily basis. He gave himself to this task with quiet attentiveness and unfussy concentration.

In spiritual terms, this quality could be described as ‘purity of heart’ – doing one good thing with our full attention. In fact, I think that the discipline of doing one thing well is far more demanding than the more commonly praised skill of  multitasking, of doing many things at the same time. It is very easy to be doing too many things at once. As soon as we let our minds drift to the next thing on our agenda, we have ceased to do the current thing with our full attention. This is particularly problematic when that one thing is to be present to another person.

In Zen, the daily practice of zazen schools our minds and bodies in the art of doing just one thing with our full attention, but this should never be the only thing we do in this way – it is a skill for all of life. As Jesus had it (I paraphrase!), ‘seek first the Realm of God and everything else will fall into place’. The thing we are doing right now is always the ‘one thing necessary’.