​Last weekend I travelled to a group to run ‘Living in the Awareness of God’, one of the workshop days I offer, and this coming weekend I am travelling to teach a group on ‘Listening to the Heartbeat of God’ and abiding in the Divine presence. As I have prepared and presented these teachings it has reminded me of just how important it is to dwell in the Divine presence, both in deliberate acts and disciplines, as well as in the continued awareness throughout our day, in all we do.
 
One of the illustrations I use at the start of these days is that of the air and our breathing. The Meditation teacher’s basic 101 teaching – concentrating on the breath.
As I remind the participants, I remind myself, firstly the air around us is a constant presence – it is always there, and we share it with all other life. The other people and creatures around us breathe in and out as we do, and the plants which surround us ‘breathe’ in and out opposite to the way we do – breathing in what we breathe out, and breathing out what we breathe in. The air is always there.
Secondly, we are all breathing. In and out all the time, constantly, without ceasing, day and night, in and out, breathing. Yet we are almost never in a state of conscious awareness of either of these things – the air or our breathing. Through the practice of mindful meditation we become aware of the air and of our breathing. We draw in the air, and that which was outside of us comes into us. It fills our lungs and increases our physical capacity. Then we exhale and the air flows out of us again.
 
Just as the air surrounds us all the time, so the Divine presence surrounds us all the time. Just as we breath in and out and the air, becoming our breath, flows in and out of us, so the Divine presence is not just something outside us, but something which flows through us. The air and our breathing are just like the Divine presence and our existence. Just as we can use meditation practices to draw our attention to the air and our breathing, we can use meditation practices to draw our attention to the omnipresent Divine, and its flowing through us.
 
However, there is something more about the air and our breathing.
 
We don’t just breathe in the air around us and breath it out again, there is a point to it. There is a reason that our bodies do this. The reason is because there are things in the air which we need to survive as a being – oxygen, for example. The air flows into us through our breathing, but doesn’t just flow out again, first the life giving aspects of the air penetrate our physical being, it doesn’t just flow in and out of us, it actually becomes a part of who we are as a living being. It is incorporated into our being and it is this which gives us life. We can go for a while without food. We can go for a slightly shorter while without a drink. But we cannot go long at all without taking a breath! It is the most significant aspect to our survival, based on how long we can go without the things we need to survive. Breath is what we can go without the least.
 
This is also true with the Divine presence. As the Divine presence flows through our very being, it doesn’t just stay something separate to us, it isn’t just something external which flows into our being and through us, as it does that it becomes a part of who we are as a being. And it is what we can do without the least. We can go for a while without reading the bible, or going to church, or even verbal expressions of prayer, but without the interflowing of the Divine presence into and through our being, becoming a part of who we are, we will spiritually perish. So therefore this means that just like the air and our breathing and the interaction with our physical selves, the Divine is flowing through each of us and interweaving into being a part of our existence and of our very being all the time. We just live most of our lives completely unaware of it.
 
Just as the basic first fundamental teaching of meditation and mindfulness is focus on the breathe, and is a practice continued by even the masters, so the focused awareness of the Divine presence and its interflowing and integration into our very being is a basic practice for the spiritual meditator.
And just as with all other meditation practices, the more one does it, the more one becomes aware. The more one becomes aware, the greater affect it has on our being, our living, our existence. It becomes a part of who we are, and flows out from us as we live out our lives.
 
Stop. Breathe. Live aware.

It was a few years ago now that I became a vowed member of the dispersed New Monastic community ‘The Community of Aidan & Hilda’ (CA&H). Much more recently (at time of writing) I had the privilege of facilitating the service of one of the Explorer members of CA&H taking their vows to become a Voyager. These are terms which CA&H use for those people who have been spending time exploring living by the Way of Life (our monastic Rule) who are becoming a vowed member of the Community.
On my way to the service I went to collect a friend and we both drove up together in my car. The three of us, the person taking their vows, the friend I collected, and myself, are all mutual friends, but the one I had collected did not know a great deal about CA&H or New Monasticism, so on the journey, a little over an hour each way, they took the opportunity to ask questions and discover more about it. We discussed all the different aspects of what it meant to commit to take vows to live by a monastic rule as a lay person in a dispersed community, and various thoughts on spiritual disciplines. However, it became apparent as we spoke that something was not quite matching up. My friend just wasn’t quite getting what I was saying. Then it became clear why this was. Although I was speaking clearly, some of the words I was saying were leaving my mouth one way and hitting the ears of my friend in a different way. Specifically one, quite key, phrase. You see, as I said the words ‘New Monastic’ my passenger was hearing the words ‘pneuma nastic’. Being an intelligent person, they knew that ‘pneuma’ was the Greek word for ‘spirit’ used in scripture, and so was assuming that this was something to do with the Holy Spirit, but was not really getting the gist, as this little miscommunication changed everything, and made much of what I said unintelligible. Once we had cleared up this little misunderstanding, by my friend stopping the conversation and asking me ‘what is nastic?’, and laughing about it, things began to get much clearer for my friend. However, it got me thinking, I liked the idea of ‘Pneuma Nastic’, of a Spirit led something or another, but as far as I knew, ‘nastic’ was not a real word. It wasn’t a suffix of ‘monastic’ as the prefix included the letters ‘na’ from the monos of monk, meaning ‘one’, or ‘alone’. However, I decided to look it up anyway. Some of you may already know this, because you are cleverer than me, but to my delight I discovered that ‘nastic’ is an actual word! And it has a wonderful meaning to be allegorically translated into the Christian (Pheuma led) life.
Nastic is a term which comes from botany, it is the movement of plant parts in response either to external or internal growth stimuli. Nastic movements, which are generally slow, can be observed with time laps filming, which we have probably all seen on the amazing natural history and nature programs on telly.
How wonderful! Nastic means to grow, slowly, from an internal or external stimuli. Certainly Pneuma Nastic has now become a thing, at least it has for me! Being that I am a branch of the vine which is Christ, a nice botanical allegory, Pneuma nastic is the slow and gradual transformation and growth of my inner self due to the internal work of the Holy Spirit (Pneuma) or the external work, that is, through other people, of the same.
 
Therefore I am a Pneuma nastic New Monastic!
 
However, you don’t have to be New Monastic to live a Pneuma nastic life. In fact, the Pneuma nastic growth of our inner selves is really what being a Christian is all about! For example, this is what the Apostle Paul meant when he suggested to the church in Rome that they be transformed by the renewing of their minds. This ‘renewing’ was Pneuma nastic. Or when he wrote to the church in Corinth explaining how we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next to become more and more like God, and become a better reflection of the Divine glory.
We may not all be New Monastics, but we should certainly all be Pneuma nastic! We should all be led into slow transformative growth by the prompting and stimuli of the Holy Spirit!
 
For many people the joy of spiritual disciplines, or following a monastic Rule or Way of Life is a life-giving wonder, and, speaking for myself, has been one of the greatest helps in my own growth. But whether or not you choose to be New Monastic, as we all continue on the path to which we have been led, I pray that we will all always live a Pneuma nastic life, and that the Holy Spirit will always be the stimuli for our nasticness (I think I made that last word up!).
 
 
 
 If you wanted to know more about New Monasticism, and CA&H specifically, then why not visit www.aidanandhilda.org.uk, or dip into one of these books:
New Celtic Monasticism for Everyday People by Ray Simpson; Followers of the Way by Simon Reed; or Ancient Faith, Future Mission – New Monasticism as Fresh Expression of Church. Various authors 

Have you ever been in the situation where you feel that you just don’t quite fit in? That everyone else in whatever group you happen to be with seems to slip right into the mould but you feel just a bit uncomfortable? It isn’t that you particularly dislike the people, it’s just that you don’t quite seem to dovetail as well as everyone else with everyone else and the environment. This is called monachopsis (mon-a-kop-sis), the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place; that you just don’t quite fit.
 
I suffer from a particular form of this affliction: Ecclesiastical Monachopsis. That is, the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place; that I just don’t quite fit in to conventional church (Ecclesia in Greek).
 
It isn’t that I particularly dislike the people (not all of them anyway), nor is it that I dislike gathering with the purpose of focusing on God, engaging in worship and learning (or even teaching as I do quite often) on Christ centred life and biblical understanding. In fact I love these things very much. I am, though it may seem an oxymoron, and perhaps a future blog will emerge on this, a contemplative extrovert. I love being with other people. I love chatting about real things (not a great surface converser) and I love spending time with folk over food and drink, whether it’s a meal, a cup of tea, or a pint of ale at the pub. I love engaging in different kinds and styles of worship. I don’t just mean singing, although as a musician I enjoy that style of worship, I mean practically and physically engaging in different acts of worship, spontaneous as well as ritualised. Anyone who knows me will agree that I do like to talk. I do like to teach. And I do love to pass on to whoever wants to listen anything which has helped me in my personal life journey, especially if it has helped me gain a deeper and more authentic relationship with the Divine. So in essence, I love the practical side of what happens in most churches on most Sundays. But I just can’t shake that feeling of ecclesiastical monachopsis.
 
 
I think a big part of why I feel I suffer from ecclesiastical monachopsis is that I just don’t think the mainstream presentation from the modern church is quite what Christianity is supposed to be. I think Christianity, as a faith, has slipped quite seriously from what Jesus was all about and what he, and those who taught immediately following his departure, meant by living in a relationship with God. In my experience, and I can only speak from my own experience, Church as an institutionalised organisation, on the whole, has become something apart from the teachings and person of Christ.
 
The term ‘Christian’, which has today become the title of a religion and a religious identification, was first made as a statement about the life and behaviour of a community of followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is recorded in Acts 11v26 that the followers of Christ were first called ‘Christians’ in Antioch. The word ‘Christian’ is the Greek word ‘Christianos’ and means ‘Christ-like’.  It has the suffix ‘ian’ which means ‘with the same meaning and properties as: an, ian.’ The latter is the more productive of the two suffixes in recent coinage, especially when the base noun ends in a consonant: Orwellian; Washingtonian; Christian. That means that this community of believers in Antioch was so much like the Christ they said they followed that they were identified as having the same properties, or qualities as Christ. This is, it seems, a far cry from many today who use the term ‘Christian’ to identify themselves, and of those who Mahatma Gandhi must have encountered in the mid-20th century for him to say ‘I love your Christ. It is just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ’. What has happened to cause such a chasm to have been created between the believers in Antioch and those in the 20th century whom Gandhi experienced, and those in the 21st century whom many outside the church (and often those within it, including myself) encounter today?
 
One of the key verses in scripture for me is 1 John 2v6 which says ‘[t]hose who say they live in God (or, in this context are Christians) should live their lives as Christ did’. This seems a pretty straight forward statement. Be like Christ. But something is not right.
 
I have a book by the author Margaret Silf which is a collation of stories. In this book, entitled ‘one hundred Wisdom Stories from around the world’, there is a story called The Firemaker. In this story we enter into an imagined time where people lived but knew nothing of fire. Then a man who could make fire enters a village. He shows them this amazing thing, teaches them how to use it properly so that it does not hurt them. Shows them how to use it for heat, light, firing clay, and cooking. The Firemaker finally teaches the villagers how to make fire themselves. The village elders do not like this and decide they must get rid of the Firemaker, and the only way they will be able to do this is by killing him. But his death only seems to encourage the people more. So the village elders decide to control the Firemaker following which was beginning to build up. If folk wanted to celebrate the Firemaker, then they could do it in contained meetings and specially built buildings. The village elders would organise the gatherings and would control the way in which they went. After a time the gatherings of the followers of the Firemaker became a regular thing. The followers remained faithful and paid homage to the life of the Firemaker telling stories of him and great rituals built up around the gatherings. But, as the story ends, ‘there was no fire’.
 
I think the story of the Firemaker is an excellent reflection (as is its intent) of what has happened to Christianity from the time of Christ to its mainstream expression today. Throughout Christian history pockets of fire have risen, as they do today, but it has never become ‘mainstream’. I have a desire to make fire, but I do not always find others with the same desire, so I feel out of place. Pyrotechnic monachopsis!
 
 
So what is the answer to my ecclesiastical monachopsis? To be honest I am not sure there is one, I am not sure I will ever get over it, as I am not sure that a 2,000 year old institution can be that radically changed. Not in one generation anyway. But the individuals who are its make up can be. Signs are beginning to emerge that people who are absolutely convinced that Christ is the way are becoming discontent with the current expressions and teachings within the modern church. Questions are being raised. Doubts are being aired. Books are being written (*). Fire is emerging not just in individuals, but in groups of people.
 
I don’t wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as has been the repeated pattern in church history when a ‘new way’ emerges. I don’t want to stop gathering with other people to worship and learn about God; or encouraging folk and building them up in their faith – I like those things. I want to draw on the wonder and richness of our spiritual heritage, I want to live a life like Christ, even when that might conflict with the church institution. I want to learn from and be accountable to those who make fire, whose lives are tested and proven to have depth, breadth, and to be Christ-like, not just those who happen to have gained a qualification and position in leadership.
Ecclesiastical monachopsis may be something which I will have to live with, but it isn’t something I have to resign myself to suffering from (they are not the same thing at all). I can make a difference. This is one of the reasons I felt God calling me to start Waymark Ministries in the first place, and create opportunities for those who feel the same as I do, hence the tagline ‘The message of Christ for spiritual seekers’. Having already quoted Mahatma Gandhi in this blog, I will end with another quote attributed to him which seems fitting here and sums up why I do what I do: “Be the change you want to see in the world” (or church).
 
 
 
 
(*) one or two bits of further reading:
A New Kind of Christianity. Brian McLaren
Church: why bother. Philip Yancey
So you don’t want to go to church anymore. Wayne Jacobsen & Dave Coleman
A Churchless Faith – Faith journeys beyond the churches. Alan Jamieson

How often do we feel the need to lengthen our prayers, and put great explanations out to God so that he understands what we are asking, as if he doesn't already know what is in our hearts. There are a great deal of prayers associated with Celtic Christianity, many books can be bought of beautifully worded, wonderfully crafted prayers, but below are prayers from arguably two of the most influential Celtic saints which show just how simple prayers can be.

In the first story Columba, who founded the Christian centre on Iona in the 6th century, simply shouts one word twice. That is his prayer. And angels of God know exactly what he is saying and under Divine instruction answer Columba's prayer. In the second story Aidan, who founded the Christian centre on Lindisfarne in the 7th century, simply makes a statement. That is his prayer. And the Spirit of God moves.

Simple prayers can be very powerful!


Columba sat transcribing the Scriptures in his little cell at Iona. Two brothers who were near the open door were alarmed when his countenance suddenly changed and he shouted ‘Help! help!’
‘What is the matter?’ they asked with consternation. Columba told them: ‘A brother at our monastery at Oakwood Plain in Derry was working at the very top of the large house they are building there, and he slipped and began to fall. I ordered the angel of the Lord who was standing just there among you two to go immediately to save this brother.’
Later they learned that a man had indeed fallen from that great height, but nothing was broken, and he did not even feel any bruise. As they discussed this Columba said: ‘How wonderful beyond words is the swift motion of an angel, it is as swift as lightning. For the heavenly spirit who flew from us when that man began to fall was there to support him in a twinkling of an eye before his body reached the ground. How wonderful that God gives such help through his angels, even when much land and sea lies between.’



Aidan was spending time out on the isle of Inner Farne praying in solitude and silence, the Pagan king Penda, of Mercia, began an attack on Bamburgh castle. As he could not capture it by assault or siege he attampted to set it on fire. He tore the local town apart to get fire wood and built it up against the castle and gates. Waiting for a favourable wind he lit the fire and watched the flames rise high against the castle. 
When Aidan saw the flames rising into the sky and the great plume of smoke he raised his eyes and hands towards heaven and said, with tears in his eyes, "Lord, see what evil Penda is doing!". As soon as these words had left his lips the winds changed and blew across the ocean towards the castle, pushing the flames away from the castle and towards those who had lit them. Penda and his army fled, and the fire did little damage. Later when Penda heard the story of the power of Aidan's prayer he vowed never to attack this castle again as he realized that it was Divinely protected.


​Keep it simple. Matthew 6v7-8



Wording for the Columba story taken from 'Celtic Daily Light' on the reading for September 30th. Wording for the Aidan story taken from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.