Fr Tim: Peering Through Cracks, Lightly
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.Leonard Cohen (who died November 7, 2016)
There are indeed cracks in what has been a somewhat unconsciously accepted given in the collective psyche or mental fabric of the British society into which many of us were born. This given is that the Church in Wales exists and is representative of the mainstream spiritual expression of the people of Wales, be that heartfelt, mind-thought or just nominally upheld. To be fair, the cracks have opened into earthquake-like chasms during the last forty years or so! These cracks are certainly not flooding the earth with a proportional explosion of light but I suggest to you that they do have the potential for that. I write here to ask you to keep imagining and working on the many ways you are seeking to be agents for the light but to add to all of that just one thing. Please, come and join the weekly Eucharistic gathering, at the moment at St David’s, Wernffrwd, but after Easter roaming the churches of Gower.
Why should I want to go to another Eucharist? Don’t we need to do worship that is more fun and different and attractive to the ‘great unchurched’?
Ha ha! We certainly do need to come up with imaginative and challenging ways to engage people in worship and prayer. There is much excellent work going on already and many of you are involved in the work. This is cause for celebration and I have no doubt at all that this is progressive and is engaging people. However, what will sustain the work and the progress is our own spiritual life as God’s church, God’s body, God’s disciples.
Prayer groups and Bible Study groups, Messy Church, saying the Office, reading the Bible, personal prayer rhythm, Gower walking-contemplation etc are all spiritually nourishing but we need to meet also regularly, not for sub-group or main council meetings or for discussion or social recreation but for the deepest worship known to humankind. And we need to do this together. It is not enough to meet occasionally for some big public or symbolic event and it is not enough to just go once or twice a week for Holy Eucharist at our local church like satellites in the Gower ether.
If we are to be agents of the light that seeps already through the cracks in this thin place, and not merely well intentioned eclipsotypic obstructions, then we must throw our roots deep as deep into those cracks. We must throw them direct into the heart of the One who’s body was and is and will be broken for us, whose blood of New Covenant wells up in us like living water.
Each week the Thursday night service is led by one of the Gower priests and in different ways, usually stripped down, often Celtic. The services are attracting people who don’t usually come to church, which was also part of the intention in setting them up.
Sister, brother, dewch! Let us do this thing (Mission-Dei!), by the Grace of God, together.
“I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
Isaiah 46.4
*There will also be at St David’s during Advent: Centring Prayer on Mondays at 7 pm, led by Emilia Ardouin. This is a pilot group related to Contemplative Outreach and it is open to all.
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 