I am off to a Benedictine Monastery for a week of prayer. I am privileged to share this with three caring friends - Kevin, Dion, and Peter. The gracious monks of this place of prayer have allowed us to (briefly) share their life of prayer.This monastery is perched on a hillside just outside Grahamstown looking down a valley of bushes and trees. The monks ring the bell for communal prayer (5 times a day). In between these times we will be silent. I hope to use this as a time listening to the heartbeat of the Universal Creator of Life. And of reflection.
Pray for me.
1 comment:
Hey Pete,
You continue to inspire me.
I'm up at 5.30am in the UK Autumn. Still very dark.
In a new manse, mostly unpacked, about to go and preach for the first time to a new congregation in an ecumenical team church that will be my home in part for the next decade or so.
I've effectively had 6 weeks off, packing, playing, on holiday and climbing 6 mountains in the Scottish wilderness with a good friend.
I'm nervous for the first time in a long time, because I know that in this place there is a lot at stake, and getting it "right" more often than not will make a real difference. And it feels good to feel stretched even before I begin, and to anticipate the arrival of students in a few weeks time, and all the stuff I'm going to do and be at until Christmas that exists outside the comfort of the "church", which I can massage so well.
More than anything, I feel a fraud. I have not had the kick in the bum for the past three years that has driven me to scripture and to prayer. "Working the Angles" challenges me profoundly in the direction of discipline.
It also feels like for the first time I'm going to begin a long term ministry, beyond the 4 and a bit years that has been the longest so far, and so I can wing it so far before I get found out this time.......
But I'm grinning stupidly, because I cannot help but grow here, and I feel on the brink of something enormously important and life-changing, and something that requires an open prophetic voice alongside good beer and incarnational play and conversation with students.
It's good to be alive.
For the first time, it's good to be in this country.
It's good to know who I am, and feel confident about the gospel's embracing and cutting edge in this place.
It's good to be going back into a team ministry.
It's good to have a Chairman of District who would rather be chatting in the pub than going to Synod, and who has unflinchingly paved the way for this post and for me to stay here.
It's good to have the legacy in my life of friends like you.
Keep blogging.
Rory
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