Sabbatical reflections #7: threshold spaces

Mirfield I

my body

disciplined   enveloped

in a new habit

gifted    imposed

by this blessed place

my pace

slowed

down stone-lined corridors

my steps

shortened   quietened

yet insufficiently for

the nervous

squirrel startled

amid the bracken

my breaths

lengthened    quietened

not to crash

the echo

in the pause

in the plainsong

call and response

in the treetops

my shoulders

bent profoundly

as I enter under

the bowed branches

glory

to the father

and to the son and

a shimmer

a splash

"an iridescent

little downpour"

on my

anoracked head

preceding

my reaching

to cross

myself

drenched with

prevenient grace

"it is easy

to believe

in such moments

that

water

was made

primarily

for blessing" *

(* quotes are taken from Marilynne Robinson, Gilead)

"Here, there is holy water for making the sign of the cross, on entering and leaving the church.
What would it be like to do the same on entering and leaving the woods?
Or some of our community spaces?" (Thursday, 10am)

The week's silent retreat was, indeed, a changing of gears, a slowing of my pace, which allowed me to begin again, to pay better attention, both inwards and outwards. One of the things that was quite remarkable about the week was how much the "sacred spaces" of "church" and "woods" flowed, blurred, merged into each other. Retreat turned out to be a special kind of "threshold space", opening wider my eyes, ears and heart to the "threshold spaces" all around us. Most of the rest of my three months' sabbatical would not - quite intentionally - be spent in and around "churchy" spaces. But the profound "formation time" of this first week, at Mirfield, would, I hoped, ready me for encounter in all kinds of other spaces, more "worldly", more mundane, and just as beautiful and heart-breaking.

"Sabbath reminds us that we are made for joy, for beauty, for glory: to shine out with the particular glory that is ours and ours alone and that will reflect, in a way that no other life can, something of the glory of God" (Nicola Slee, Sabbath, p.156)

The journey of the week at Mirfield gifted me, among many other gifts, a renewed "in touch-ness" with what Wendell Berry's poem called "my song" - what the Mirfield compline liturgy called my "first love"... That renewal has unfolded in thanksgiving, in confession, in adoration and in intercession for others. In short, a rediscovery of what we generally call "prayer"...

"O Love,
open my eyes to look for you,
my heart is restless in longing for you,
let me seek you out and find you,
hold me close, that I may rest and delight in you,
take me by the hand, that I may go with you where you lead me;
open my ears, to listen for the song creation sings,
fire my heart, that I may hear and sing my song within it,
still me, that I may hear others to song,
filled to overflowing with your beauty,
your joy, your glory."

(Thursday, 8pm)

"During the hushed solemnity of Evensong,
the sound of raucous laughter

echoes through the near-empty, cavernous church.

Bridesmaids,
sheltering from the rain in the church porch,
waiting for their big moment -
destined for the college chapel, just across the lawn.

Later into the night,
the Vigil of the Resurrection -
high-spirited children
playing outside,
the wedding party in full swing.

It is Pentecost."

(Saturday, 9.45pm)

One of the remarkable things about the Community of the Resurrection's church in Mirfield is the Reconciliation Chapel, its semi-transparent, sound-proofed screens (installed in 2015 to enable confessions and one-to-one counselling to happen safely inside) covered with beautiful etchings by artist Mark Cazalet, telling the story of Mary Magdalene's encounters with Jesus. The third of three panels depicts the Easter Sunday scene in the garden: "the instant of recognition, when the unknown becomes the face of the beloved, and all comes back into focus". The artist, in his commentary on the scene, directs our attention particularly to the little details between Mary and Jesus. "I have always liked the element of the resurrected Christ being busy gardening, sowing and tending the first things he is concerned with. The work of a gardener speaks of order, fruitfulness and the seasons' cyclical change."

I am not, in any sense, a gardener. One of my resolutions I brought home with me from retreat was to find new ways of getting my hands dirty, literally. We have a fantastic "Green Connector", Cath, working on our estate, whose job is to bring local people together in our green spaces, and to support people to develop and share their passions and gifts to grow things and tend our growing spaces. So far, I've mostly been involved in the fundraising and project management for Cath's post. I want to find ways of getting "stuck in". Being present in my neighbourhood in new ways. Learning a skill that I'm clueless about. 

That was another of Mirfield's gifts to me. And it's connected to something much, much wider too. I've mentioned already that one of my "sabbatical hopes" was to try and get "up to speed" with eco-theology, in ways that can connect with, inform and transform both my thinking (extending the idea of "radical receptivity" to the more-than-human world) and practice (particularly our community-building work locally, and the life and mission of the church here - but also, and perhaps most profoundly, my day-to-day living). My experience of sacramental confession at Mirfield was of a "burden-lightening", a liberation - but not a "wiping out" of habits that I had come to be aware of as destructive. Forgiveness here has been a freeing up to begin to live differently. Only the beginning of the process of transformation. Another Wendell Berry poem, also quoted in Nicola's Sabbath book, pointed the way forward...

"To save yourself heartwhole
in life, in death, go back
upstream...

...to the waters of origin...

With the land
again make common cause.
In loving it, be free.
Diminished as it is,
grant it your grief and care...
So late, begin again."

(Wendell Berry, This Day, p.299)