Learning to ride again

This morning I read one of those articles that someone regularly puts up in ministers groups that speculates on what life will look like once what the new normal is is revealed. 

I realised after I read it that I don't want to read articles like this anymore. I don't want to read your musings which are influenced by your own dreams of church about what church will look like post lockdown. I can't do it any more. 

If there is anything this time is teaching us is that we need to wait and see. I remember just before we had to close our buildings and the feeling in those groups was that we had to make contingency plans and I did that but then two days later I ripped it all up and started again because all the social distancing ideas we put in place were not possible anymore. 

If this time teaches us anything it teaches us that we can't be in control of this. We can't predict how things are going to go. We can have ideas, we can have dreams, we can imagine that church will become everything we want it to be, but that doesn't mean that will happen. 

Our future practise will arise from our experience. I believe our call right now is to be reflective practitioners, to listen and to learn from what is happening and adjust our direction to the hand that is tugging us down the path we might not have quite noticed before. 

I was sat in a webinar (hate that word) on listening to God in lockdown on Thursday night after the end of a long day when the things that needed to be sorted in the long day had not been sorted and I was feeling a bit disheartened. One of the contributors (forgive me for forgetting who) used the image of learning to ride a bike. At the moment it's like our stabilisers have been taken off and we are very much trying to find them again to find balance.... but actually maybe our call is not to find the stabilisers, maybe actually what is happening right now is that God is helping us to learn to ride in the way he is calling us without them. 

Those stabilisers (the weekly gathering that grounds us, the routine that keeps us in rhythm) have been taken off completely, not just lost, and God has let go of the saddle as we learn to peddle in the way he has taught us to on a journey that has an unknown destination as yet. Perhaps right now, we just need to learn to ride. When you first learn to ride a bike, it's not to go anywhere, it's to learn to adjust your balance as necessary, peddle at the right pace without getting dizzy, to turn the handle bars when the signs tell you to, to press the brakes at the right pressure and to put your feet down to stop when that's what you need to do and not just fall off because the stablisers aren't there to prevent that falling anymore. 

We learn to ride by getting on that bike, reflecting on our experience when we end up with a grazed knee, and doing it a bit differently next time so it doesn't hurt in the same way anymore. 

Our destination is not in our hands right now, and while we can dream and hope, we can't fix our eyes on anything but the direction that will be revealed over time. Our future holds many possibilities, but now is not time to predict the one route that future will take us down. Now is the time to let that route arise from the steps to which we are called. Now is the time to let that route arise from within the community we serve. Now is the time for that route to be revealed by the one who knows when we will be ready to see the destination.

One of the meditations of the day in the Northumbria Community Daily Prayer talks about how "if you must lead, let it be like the wind and all its unshackled direction". That strikes me every time I read it, and is particularly appropriate right now. 

Now is the time to listen to the wind, because the wind, it blows wherever it wishes. 


Photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/danbax/8568310235/

When the wind blows....

There has been a picture being shared on social media in the last couple of days man casually mowing the grass as a tornado looms behind him. It can be found here.

The story is, that mowing the grass was on his to-do list. His wife had gone for a nap leaving him to get on with it. His daughter noticed the change in the weather and went out to tell him, but he decided to carry on mowing because that was what was on his schedule. He told her he had his eye on the tornado.

What would you do in that situation?

Carry on with the to-do list despite the tornado?

Go inside and wait to see what happens?

Wind is a mighty thing.

A few months ago, in the middle of a sermon, just at the right time our fire exit blew loudly open and made everyone jump. 

Wind has the potential to do the unexpected, to change the course, to enable a tin can to roll up hill and cause chaos and devastation. It has, I watched in Beauty and the Beast last week, the potential to open up the way to a frightening but promising new life......

John 3:8 says this:

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

That tornado could have changed direction. That tornado could have caused destruction..... Yet the man carried on with his to do list, because that's what he had always done.

Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday. On that first Pentecost I'd imagine that the arrival of the Holy Spirit was as shocking as a tornado (even though they were expecting it). The disciples were ready and prepared for it and were waiting. Their chores paused for that time....

The man in the tornado story carries on doing his to-do list - his default - his normal - keeping an eye out but not prepared to stop and think. 

Sometimes we can all be a bit like that - our to do list is done whatever is around..... 

But.... then the tornado changes direction and we miss it as we resolutely stand firm in our ways and in the past. 

Perhaps there are times when we need to pause from our to-do list - our normal - our default - and watch and see and feel where the wind is going. Watch and see and feel where the Holy Spirit is leading us. 

Times are changing. Churches are changing (where they are willing to).... and we've all got to ask ourselves the question - what are we going to be doing? 

Are we going to be resolutely carrying on mowing the lawn, or are we going to stop, pause and watch and wait, listening and then moving to where the Spirit is leading us?