Dear Friends
Thank you for your continued love and prayers.
The shape of Community keeps changing and a good friend of ours has described community as always being in a liminal space, on a threshold to new horizons. This can be both exhausting as well as a place of growth and new life. Richard Rohr writes about that liminal space as:
“That graced time when we are not certain or in control, when something genuinely new can happen. We are empty, receptive, an erased tablet waiting for new words.”
So, this week we were glad to welcome Eva from Ghana. Please pray for her as she continues to settle not just into community life, but adjusting to the UK climate!
We are all very grateful to the leadership of the Kitchen Team during these challenging times and we would continue to value your prayers for this Team. Our current Kitchen Team Leader is moving aside due to family commitments in the New Year, and we are also looking for a deputy Kitchen Team Leader. If you know anyone then please ask them to contact di@scargillmovement.org
Our next online Quiet Day is on Thu 20 October – please book through the website, it will be lovely to see you.
Here is Di’s reflection – enjoy!.
Two weeks ago we were visiting Bose, an ecumenical monastic community in northern Italy. Our first visit there was in 2010, after arriving at Scargill and being encouraged to go on a ‘fact finding’ expedition to visit 3 communities. We have regularly returned to Bose, a beautiful place, where we experience the warmth of the sun but also the warmth of the hospitality they share. They have a rhythm of prayer, beginning each morning at 5.30am, yes I will repeat that! Beginning at 5.30am with a rather loud, wake-up call heralding our short, silent, chill walk to the Chapel for 6am prayers, the sun just rising on the horizon. It really was my favourite time of the day, as was the breakfast of homemade bread and homemade jam with a return to bed for an hour’s nap!
This reminded me of a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze called ‘Young Knitter Asleep’, painted in 1759.
The young girl has fallen asleep while knitting. Her hands loosely hold the four fine needles required to create the enclosed shape of a stocking, whose toe curls in her lap. She has fallen asleep on duty. Oh no, surely not!
Now I have never knitted a sock, let alone a stocking, in my life! It feels like quite a momentous task for such a young girl, no wonder she has fallen asleep! But let’s take another look at the painting, notice the young girl has been quite industrious and productive; the stocking is well on the way to being completed. Very soon, I picture, this young girl’s mother will appear, gently wake her, come alongside with encouragement and the stocking will soon be finished. I do hope so. Although another thought comes to mind, a second stocking may be required before the task is fully completed!
Perhaps the best example of sleeping at the wrong time is found in the gospels just before Jesus’ death when he and the disciples are in the garden of Gethsemane.
Paula Gooder mentions that Jesus does not condemn them for sleeping too much but for sleeping at the wrong time. This was not the time to sleep. This was the time to watch and pray in preparation for the trials ahead. You see there is a time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8) and a season for every activity under the heavens, including knitting stockings!
If we move on to verse 12 the author of Ecclesiastes writes, ‘I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.’
I hope we too, though for many I am sure life at the moment feels particularly stark and demanding, can recognise this gift in our lives as we find time to not only work, rest and play but to also hear the gentle reassurance from our God, encouraging us through the Holy Spirit who is our Comforter, Counsellor, Helper, Advocate – the one who comes alongside to help and comfort and strengthen.
To finish, this morning at 8am! prayers Hilary sang these words:
‘I came to Jesus as I was,
weary, and worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting place,
and he has made me glad.’
[Words by Horatius Bonar from the hymn, ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say’]
With love and prayers from