Sabbatical 8

There's been a bit of a gap between blogposts, as last week I was away on retreat. This was with the Community of Aidan & Hilda, of which I am a member. Every January the 'Voyagers' (i.e. committed members, as distinct from 'Explorers' and 'Friends') spend the inside of a week together. We hold our Annual Meeting, with the usual reports, but mainly spend time in learning, prayer and fellowship together. This year's theme was 'Celtic Spirituality and Mission': we were reminded particularly of the communal life and prayer of our Celtic Christian ancestors, and how for them 'mission' was a natural outworking of their lives, not an add-on. Somehow, today, mission so often feels like something you have to do in addition to all the other things associated with being church. In fact, in those days, mission was the very essence and had as much to do with being Christ's presence in the world as with any particular activity. It flowed from their inner life, as persons and as community.

The phrase I came away with was 'in the Name of Jesus'. Not because anyone was speaking about this in particular but because for me it summed everything up. The Name of Jesus provides the incentive for all we do, giving us confidence; it calls us to account for all our words and actions; it is also the assurance that nothing we do for his sake is ever wasted, even if we don't ourselves see any result.

Among the news items last week were the shootings in Paris, with its aftermath of the street Je suis Charlie demonstrations, and the Archbishops' warnings against social inequality. International terrorism (the clash of ideologies), the gap between the very rich and poor people, together with climate change, seem to me the three greatest challenges of our day. They are all connected, of course. The recent TV programmes by Jacques Peretti, The Super Rich and Us, have shown how great the gap is, with (apparently) 85 people owning 50% of the world's wealth. The worrying thing, though, is how most billionaires just don't get it: Countess Bathurst, who appeared in one of his programmes and who organises polo matches on her country estate, said the problem belongs to the poor, who are envious, don't appreciate how hard wealthy people work, and the worries they have! The programmes showed how the super-rich live in a kind of bubble. The worst thing for me, though, was that social inequality has come about, in this country, by the deliberate policy of successive governments since the 1980s. It has suited them to make London the financial capital of the world, because the wealth of the few gives the appearance of a flourishing economy when in fact the opposite is true.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writing in Sunday's Independent, says 'Democracy will collapse and aspiration will die unless we turn back from this disastrous ideology (of 'trickle-down' economics). ...When the masses have nothing left to lose, they may rise and light a bonfire of vanities.'

The Community of Aidan & Hilda has its own version of traditional monastic vows: simplicity, obedience and purity. These qualities, lived out in today's world, stand in real contrast to some prevailing attitudes and may just save the world, as Christian mission centuries ago helped to rescue Britain from its Dark Ages.