Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence was a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery who is today most commonly remembered for the closeness of his relationship to God as recorded in the classic Christian text “The Practice of the Presence of God.” It’s a wonderful and deceptively simple approach to Christian discipleship and below is an outline of his Way of following Jesus
1. Always be aware of God’s presence by talking with him throughout the day.
2. Give yourself totally to God in both temporal and spiritual affairs. Our only happiness should come from doing God’s will.
3. Be faithful, even in dry periods. It is in those dry spells that God tests our love for him.
4. Always be guided by love. Be content doing even the smallest chore if you can do it for the love of God.
5. Form the habit of continually conversing with God, telling Him everything that is happening.
6. Whenever considering doing some good deed, always consult God e.g. “Lord, I will never be able to do this/that if you don’t help me.
7. Whenever you confess it to God tell him: “I can do nothing better without you. Please keep me from falling and correct the mistakes I make.”

Henry Vaughan

Wales is known as the Land of Song. It is also a land of poetry and the land of Henry Vaughan (1621-1695). Vaughan was born in 1621 to Thomas Vaughan and Denise Morgan in Newton-upon-Usk in Breconshire, Wales. In 1638, it is assumed, he entered Oxford University with his twin brother Thomas who gained fame as a hermetic philosopher and alchemist. In 1640 Vaughan left Oxford to study law in London for two years. His studies were interrupted by the Civil War in which Vaughan briefly took the King’s side. He is thought to have served on the Royalist side in South Wales sometime around 1645. Vaughan returned to Breconshire in 1642 as secretary to Judge Lloyd, and later began to practice medicine. By 1646 he had probably married Catherine Wise with whom he was to have a son and three daughters. He is considered one of the major Metaphysical Poets whose works ponder one’s personal relationship to God. After the death of his first wife, Vaughan married her sister Elizabeth possibly in 1655. Vaughan had another son, and three more daughters by his second wife. He died on April 23, 1695, and was buried in Llansantffraed churchyard. One of my favourite poems is Peace and I find it hard to read aloud without tears coming to my eyes. Here it is.

My soul, there is a country,
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a wingèd sentry,
All skillful in the wars.
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace sits crowned with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious Friend
And (O my soul, awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave, then, thy foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure.

Singing to remember

I have a terrible memory, and so for me to remember bible verses or poems is nothing short of a miracle. But I have discovered that if I can sing it then I will remember it. This was true of some of the early Fisherfolk songs (anybody possessing a Fresh Sounds or Sounds of Living Waters song book will know who I am talking about). One of the earliest verses was “Have no anxiety about anything etc..” (Phil 4:6,7) followed by “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 6:33 etc with music by Karen Lafferty). Singing these lovely songs helped me enormously and all the verses I have learned have since been used by the Holy Spirit at various times to face the different challenges the Christian life has thrown up. It underlines for me how essential scripture memorization is as a spiritual discipline and also poses the question as to how we memorize scripture today, especially the psalms. In years gone by Christians have chanted the psalms whether using plainsong, or later Anglican chant or latterly responsorial psalms. Some writers have tried to turn the psalms into hymns, most notably the Scottish Metrical Psalter and its famous setting of Psalm 23 and some modern writers have tried their hands too (see “As the deer pants” a setting of psalm 42 by Martin Nystrom). But wonderful as these songs are they only approximate the words and are no substitute for the ‘real thing’. What we need is a recovery of chant of some sort so that the words can be sung and memorized in their entirety. I appreciate that those with a low boredom threshold will at this point let out a moan, but unless our modern writers can come up with a better alternative to chant - whether Orthodox or plainchant etc - I don’t really see any other alternative if we are to continue to memorize large chunks of scripture.

The Key to Prayer

“Why pray?” is a huge question and one which can’t be answered in a simple blog. However a common and honest response would be “because I need something.” If we read the teachings of Jesus this seems to be the general direction of what he is saying and encouraging in the gospels. For example in Luke: “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Luke chapter 11 verse 9), and similarly in John chapter 15 verse 7: “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.” Such teachings , read in isolation from their surrounding contexts, were responsible for galvanizing my early attempts at prayer after my conversion to Christ in August 1981. And, if my rather selective memory serves me right, there were lots of answers to prayer along the way. But as I read more of Jesus’ teachings and look at them not as a cache full of promises but as a means of deepening my understanding of God and growing into relationship with Him, I see things differently. The aim of prayer is not a means of getting things from God - although He graciously answers so many ill-intentioned and misdirected prayers nonetheless - but rather a means of getting to know Him better, of somehow climbing into His mind and seeing things - me, the world, God etc- from a wholly new perspective. I think it was Richard Foster (again) who said: “The key to prayer is to get hold of God not the answer.”

This comes across as we start to read the surrounding passages containing Jesus’ above promises. So in the Luke passage Jesus talks about the need to pray to God as our Father (verses 2 and 13), and in John about prayers being made in the context of a relationship with Jesus whose closeness is that of a vine with a branch.

Asking God for things, for help etc. therefore takes on a different dimension. God has a face, so to speak, and is a real person (the most real of persons) rather than a slot machine or an anonymous servant. Moreover in relating to Him as such we find that it no longer becomes just a case of asking Him for something we need, but wondering if He has a take on what we are requesting. This is why Jesus interposes the notion of God’s will being done, and His Kingdom coming as in the Lord’s prayer. Both are meant as necessary reminders that there is a bigger picture and our praying is a means of involving us in it’s painting.