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Fight! Fight! Fight!
The terraced lawns of Swanwick echoed to an unfamiliar sound: the murmured, but unmistakable playground refrain Fight! Fight! Fight!
Unaccustomed as I am to the role of gladiator, I was more than a little alarmed. And while my imagined opponent, Abbot Christopher Jamison of Worth Abbey*, may have been better equipped for battle, he was just as bemused as I was by the murmuring. We were there for a conversation, not a fight!
Our encounter was to be the last session of the Retreat Association's conference Minding the Gaps, held in May 2008 at Swanwick. Earlier in the week, Abbot Christopher had spoken on the theme Knowing, Unknowing and the Church and I on Knowing, Unknowing and the New Spirituality. On both occasions the attention in the hall was palpable and the reactions among the 340 participants strong. People were animated and passionate as they shared later in their small Soul Space groups, over meals and in corridors. Some were energised and inspired by one speaker, others, by the other speaker. We didn't set out deliberately to polarise, but we were saying very different things, and saying them out of our own experience, with our own passion and energy.
There isn't room here to detail those differences; that took two closely argued, 50 minute talks and many thousands of words. In summary, I spoke of my growing confidence that what is coming to be known as the new or progressive spirituality is, genuinely, another way of being faithful. It is, I trust but cannot know, a deeply Christian way, though many would not recognise it as such, and it is a way which involves a different kind of knowing and a deep, risky and creative relationship with unknowing.
Abbot Christopher asked What does the Church know and what does the Church not know? At the heart of his talk was a vigorous, but in no way defensive, defence of the Church as institution; as a God-inspired, God-guided and necessary arbiter and repository of sacred truth.
For many conference participants, battle-lines were drawn. Some seemed to want a knock-out punch, a decisive victory, for one or other side, when the Abbot and I came face-to-face. Others, more interestingly perhaps, wanted to find a way of believing that we were really saying the same thing; that our interpretations, convictions and experiences could somehow be harmonised.
Our conversation was brilliantly and sensitively chaired by Peter Lippiett, Spirituality Advisor in the Portsmouth Diocese. There were no punches, let alone a knock-out. There was difference, strong feeling, laughter and respect.
In the course of an hour we addressed four questions, the most important of which, for me, was Where is God in this? That is, Where is God in the New Spirituality? As part of my response I recounted a time when I was agonising over a particular situation and asking myself just that question: Where is God in this? A very wise friend turned the question around: Don't ask where is God is this he said, but where is this in God?
Immediately the question becomes one not about the narrowness of our own judgement, but one about the vastness and compassion of God's welcome.
As Tom Stella writes at the end of his book A Faith Worth Believing - Finding New Life Beyond the Rules of Religion: The truth we all seek is found not in isolation from those who differ from us, but in dialogue with them. Amen.
Eley McAinsh, Director
*Abbot Christopher's new book, Finding Happiness - Monastic Steps to Fulfilment will be published in October 2008
