The Swing - Spirituality in liminality

 

The Swing – spirituality during liminal seasons

Picture with me for a moment a swing.  Notice the further back it goes, the further forward it travels.  It is the same with spirituality, the further back we go into intimacy with God, the more able we are at joining His mission, the reconciliation of all things.  The swing.  We need to live the swing if we are going to survive liminal seasons.  In fact we need to live the swing for any season, if we are serious about God’s mission.  One of the requirements when I took on the role of missional listener was to retreat monthly, to find that place of stillness, to meet with God – yet if I am honest – I have largely failed in this task.  As I interview other pioneers and church leaders about their spiritual habits, they also seem to fail at living the swing.  The average minister prays for two minutes a day.  Why is this?  I wonder if it is due to a misunderstanding of what intimacy of God is about?  We seem to equate spirituality with Elijah, collapsed by a broom tree, begging God to take his life.  But if we saw retreat as more than that, and see Elijah in the cave, hearing God in the stillness and receiving not only healing from the broom tree but also the call to work with Elisha for the kingdom of God.  The swing – further back into intimacy, the more able to join in the threefold mission of love of self, neighbour and of God.  History tends to show its need…

By the end of the fourth century, church and society had become one.  General toleration of Christianity, the numbers swelled by Constantine making it the faith of the empire, and a seemingly lowering of the standards expected of believers, led to some believing that deep communion with God unattainable in existing churches.   The first monks were individuals who retreated to the desert in Syria and Egypt.  The desert Christians understood the church as an ‘alien community no longer caught up in the anxious, self-interested preservation of the world-as-it-is’.[1] Retreat was not about finding an uninterrupted quiet time but a call to live out the double commandment to love God and neighbour. Athanasius tells the story of Antony whom he portrays as the first monk.[2]  Antony visited a church whilst reflecting on how the apostles left all to follow their Lord, there he heard Jesus words to the rich man.   This encouraged him to sell all his possessions and depart for the tombs where he would retreat in solitude.  Antony practiced solitude for nearly twenty years before going on to heal many who were ill, cast out evil spirits, speak comfort to the sorrowful, reconcile arguments and exhort all to remember God’s love shown in Jesus Christ. Antony encouraged many to let go of the desire of possessions and to gain those everlasting gifts of ‘prudence, justice, temperance, courage, understanding, love, kindness to the poor, faith in Christ, freedom from wrath and hospitality’. Basil the great, bishop and an ascetic, built on this learning and helped future monasteries become more outward looking by providing medical care for the sick, relief for the poor and education.  Rowen Williams writes;

what is learned in the desert is clearly not some individual technique for communing with the divine, but the business of becoming a means of reconciliation and healing for the neighbour.  You ‘flee’ to the desert not to escape neighbours but to grasp more fully what the neighbour is… (and how we join in) connecting them with God.[3]

 

We can see the swing outlived through Benedictine monasteries and in Celtic spirituality, but for our purposes let’s look at Ignatian spirituality.   Ignatius’ career as a soldier was cut short with a leg wound in 1521, reading about the lives of Christ and the saints he resolved to become Christ’s soldier. He waited on God to know what he should do, taking a year to pray and then to go onto study.[4]  Having written his book entitled The Spiritual Exercises, he gathered a small group of young men, the Jesuits were founded, their purpose to propagate the faith by every means at their disposal.   The growth of the order was rapid as their work centred on three main tasks of education, counteracting the protestants and missionary enlargement to new parts of the world.  Dulles lists ten shining features of the Jesuits.[5]  One of which he quotes Jerome Nadal, who said of Jesuit practice,

 

seeking a perfection in prayer and spiritual exercises in order to help our neighbour, and by means of that help of neighbour acquiring yet more perfection in prayer, in order to help our neighbour even more.

 

Bonhoeffer proclaimed that,

the renewal of the church will come about through a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the sermon on the mount.[6]

 

Heuertz and Prince attempt to live out this new type of monasticism in San Francisco today.[7]  They describe this as a life compelled by intimacy with Jesus, engaging neighbourhoods and neighbours with zeal and enthusiasm and looking for transformation that comes when Christ’s kingdom is present.  They conclude that they have nothing to offer without the riches delved in contemplation.  Roy and Joshua Searle continue our thread by stating, that the call to be missional is a call to live in the reality of the presence of the kingdom of God that is now at hand, adopting practices and spiritual discipline, for the benefit and the transformation of this world.[8] 

We can see a thread throughout the centuries of the practice of retreat being about love of God and love of neighbour.  The image is that of a swing.  The further we go into God’s intimacy experienced through spiritual disciplines the further we can understand who our neighbour is and how we can join God in the transformation of all things. 

Perhaps, as we live out the swing, we can say with Jesus, ‘I only do that I see my Father doing’.

If we are serious about remaining in liminal space and if we are serious about Gods mission – let us do what the Saints of old have always done – and live the swing.  The further back into intimacy with God, the more able we are to join in the reconciliation of all things.

[1] Haeurwas and Willimon. (1992). p. 93. Resident Aliens  Nashville: Abingdon Press.

[2] Lane. (2004). p. 59.  The Lion Christian collection. Oxford: Lion Hudson. 

[3] Williams. (2003). p. 38.  Silence and Honey Cakes: The wisdom of the desert. Oxford: Lion    books.

[4] Linder. (1990). p. 418. The Catholic Reformation in Dowley, Dr T., Briggs, J.H.Y., Lindner, R and  

Wright, D.F. (eds). The History of Christianity. Oxford: Lion Hudson

[5] Dulles. (200). p. 22.  What distinguishes the Jesuits? In America 1/15/2007, Vol. 196

Issue 2

[6] Searle and Searle. (2013). Monastic practices and the missio Dei: Towards a socially

transformative understanding of missional practice from the perspective of the

Northumberland community. Journal of missional practice

[7] Heuertz and Prince. (2010). pp. 104-128. Devotional. In Bessenecker, S.A. (Editor). (2010). Living

mission: The vision and voices of new friars. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press

[8] Searle and Searle. (2013).

What might God do in the liminal?

 

2016 is what has become jokingly known as the year of no baptisms!  Of course there were many across the globe but for the first time in my ministry there was no baptisms in the church I served.  Melt down. I wrote a list of names I had baptised over the previous 8 years – 50 odd – and as I wrote each name, I realised that only one was conversion growth.  All the others were people with some sort of church background, be it children of the church, transfer from other Christian background or people who had come back to Jesus in later life.  One conversion in 8 years – blood, sweat and tears.  One! I went on a journey with the church, how might we become a church that sees third or fourth generation non-Christian come to faith and become central to our life together.  I concluded; it was almost impossible.  During this time God began to call me into missional listening. A calling, born from Paul in Athens, to listen to the community so intently that when the invitation comes to share the Gospel, I could do so from a deep place of understanding.  After many miracles this calling became an actual thing and my old identity as a Baptist minister in a traditional church had died.   As I began to listen for what might be next in my ministry, what might God have planned with the listening project – I had entered unknowingly into a liminal season, where an old identity had died but a new one was yet to be born.  A liminal space.

My favourite illustration of liminality comes from Coldplay (via Steve Aisthorpe). Liminal space is the space between the two trapezes. You have let go of one and are yet to grab the second.  Liminal space. And it is not just I that find myself there, but also many in the Western church.  Alan Donaldson spoke prophetically at Baptist Assembly last year stating ‘something has died, but something has not yet been born’, liminal space. 

Liminal space is frightening. Loss of identity is uncomfortable. Basic questions no longer have easy answers – everything feels deconstructed.  Funding can be fragile – with no exciting project to sale.  Motivation weakens to lack of end goal. Attendance is few due to people not knowing what they are signing up for. False prophets with big dreams promise huge rewards and carry people away.  It is scary in liminal seasons.

And this fear can lead us in two different ways. We can follow the Israelites in their liminality.  They have died from their old lives as slaves but not yet to reach the promised land – a time of liminal wandering, learning to trust God.  As they spend time in liminality, they cry out for their old identities in Egypt – there they knew who they were, knew things would be provided, lets go back to the dead – at least we knew who were and what we were doing.   Or we could join the disciples in the upstairs room.  They have been instructed by Jesus to not do anything, to have a time of liminality where all they do is pray – as Jesus left them for heaven – to wait until the Holy Spirit comes and compels them into their new identities.  But they can’t just wait and pray, they need to something new – lets replace Judas, call lots, call Mateus, and lets just say we do not here about Mateus again in scripture! 

We want to run back or begin the new.  I constantly want to run back to my church role, where I knew how my week worked, knew I had money and accommodation, a team to work with.  I constantly want to run forward and plant a church, or exciting mission project.  But the call is to remain in the liminal.  Because it is in the liminal that God transforms and it is out of the liminal the new is born.  In liminal space, Joseph loses his identity as favourite son and becomes redeemer of his people.  Ruth loses her identity as a Moabite and becomes part of the genealogy of Jesus.  Paul, blinded, loses his role as chief church persecutor and becomes great church planter.   It is in the liminal we are transformed and the new is then born for us. 

So how do we stay in the liminal if it is so scary and our natural instinct is to run back or forward.  Four thoughts:

1). Stillness. When you are flying from one trapeze to the other the posture needed is of absolute stillness – so that you are easy to catch.  The same is true with God. Stillness. Living life like a Swing, the further back into intimacy with God the more able to join in the mission of God. 

2). DNA. Coldplay as well as talking about trapezes mention that we are a comma not a full stop.  As we spend time looking at who we are as community, celebrating all God has done, the future is born with that same DNA but in new creative ways. 

3). Communities of discernment. The most important learning as we missionally listen was to learn to come to God with empty hands rather than full hands.  Too often we come with our ideas and plans and ask God to bless them.  Liminal space is admitting we do not have a clue what we are doing and together as community coming with empty hands asking God to show us the new. 

4). Worship. Liminal space, like all times, is a time for worship.  IT is as we worship that we are transformed and we get the opportunity to witness to our great God.  As we live lives of worship, the invitations come form our communities, and the new becomes clear.

When we began missionally listening, we believed that something new was on the horizon.  What we have learnt is that it is the liminal space that transformation takes place and outcomes beyond your imagining come about supernaturally.  May you embrace liminality (as scary as it is), and may God do beyond your imagining where you live, and the communities you serve.