I have been thinking all day about what I most want people to know. It is simple really, that God loves them - but that is a big thing to tell folk whose experience of love - or what they perceive as love - is something which is elusive, temporary and often expensively out of reach.
To tell folk that God loves them, means nothing in a society where love from others seems to fade, fit and sputter out and love for self is too often defined by what we have and our postal address.
How do you communicate a loving God to someone who really has no experience of kindness or gentleness.
I have been thinking (since yesterday was John Henry Newman's commemoration) about the slum priests - they build beautiful churches and used elaborate symbol and liturgy - and all to lift people out of where they were, to give them an understanding of both imminence - that tangibility of God through sacramental action - and transcendence - that God was above and beyond. It was, in many ways, a highly incarnational ministry.
But we shy away from this sort of otherness so often now. Terry Waite (Google him if you are too young to remember) was on the radio yesterday - I only caught a brief driving snippet but it chimed into this same thought about otherness. He grew up as a choir boy, singing the offices, repeating the words (and experience which I well relate to). When he found himself alone in captivity it was to those words he turned - he found he could recite the Offices and the Eucharist in his cell - and more interestingly he said he always used this repository of words rather than making up his own - he did not want to be overcome by despair and the words he knew offered hope, not only of salvation, but of communion with those around the globe, from whom he was seperated.
I am really concerned that we are no longer giving either experience or vocabulary to people in our churches. It is very good that people learn to pray in their own words, very good that we have services which appeal - but these things rely on mood and feeling - which are terribly unreliable in the spiritual life.
We cannot stuff all the developments back in the bag but we can look back and consider the models which are still a rich part of our heritage and think both about planting deep inside people, and lifting them out of where they are - but with a language and vocabulary which they can hold on to. Love might be God's way, but sometimes, it might not be our best word.
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