Over the last week, or so, life has been very hectic: We turned Scargill into Narnia which was such good fun, then I was at Lee Abbey speaking on ‘Laughter and Lament’ with David Rowe, followed swiftly by my son’s wedding which was an amazing occasion.

There is a huge amount to be thankful for.

Psalm 111 says: ‘ I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.’ Meister Eckhart once said,’if the only prayer you say in your entire life is “thank you” that would suffice.’ Gratitude is a crucial spiritual discipline to foster in our lives for it is the great antidote to cynicism which has the capacity to suck the life out of us. Gratitude, I think, is the gateway to playfulness and childlikeness. 

Mark Yaconelli in his book ‘wonder, fear and longing’ writes, ‘It is good to give God thanks not only because God has given us so much,  but perhaps more importantly because of what gratitude does to us. It is hard to be anxious when you are grateful. It is difficult to keep you guard up, to be cold and defended when you are overcome with thankfulness. Prayers of gratitude open the gates of the heart so God’s love can enter in.’

A good friend of mine, who I worked with on the Lee Abbey Youth Camps, taught me the importance of gratitude even when life can seem so tough and difficult. He encouraged us to think of at least 5 things we could be thankful for, like the taste and smell of good food, the love of friends, the pleasure of sunsets, the beauty of flowers, the freshness of toothpaste, the nourishment of sleep, and the sugar rush obtained from jelly babies. Wouldn’t it be good if we could just open our eyes to give thanks daily for all of God’s grace and love that we see around us.

Giving gratitude isn’t something that comes easy to us. It is a discipline.

Joan Chittester says, ‘As he was dying, Abba Benjamin taught his disciples his last lesson,”do this,” he said,”and you will be saved: rejoice always; pray constantly; and in all circumstances give thanks.”‘

This coming week, I’m going to try my very best to be grateful. Would you like to join me?

We were focusing particularly on the Last Battle which is the last of the books and covers important topics like: deception; identity; judgement; courage; the end of the Old and the beginning of the New Narnia; and homecoming and it is this that I want to talk about briefly.

Jewel, the Unicorn, when he arrives into the New Narnia exclaims, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…..Come further up, come further in!”

For many people home has been a difficult experience, something that people don’t want to remember. If, though, we were going to look at coming home as an experience that brings life what would it look like? These were some of the comments that people said during one of our sessions this week:

‘belonging, safe place, acceptance, love and laughter, finding my true self, sometimes challenging, good food, and space to be who I am ‘

It would seem to me that there is a longing and a yearning to experience coming home, and the church community should be a place where people can experience this generous homecoming.

Sister Stan writes in Gardening of the Soul writes, ‘Home is the place where we discover who we are, where we are coming from and where we are going to. It is where we learnt to love and be loved. It is where our needs of the body, mind and spirit are first recognised and met. It is where we learn to be whole, stable and yet always open to change and surprise.’

The parable of the prodigal son, or perhaps it should be called the parable of the prodigal father, highlights the generous attitude that we are invited to show when people come home, ‘but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and was filled with compassion…’  (Luke 15 v20)

Some of our guests, who come back to Scargill, describe it as a home from home.  I like that…

His reason for wanting to do this is his longing for people to know the wonder and joy of the saving love of Jesus. This was his agenda. Paul’s words are very challenging to us as he is asking us to put aside our own judgements, and sometimes the desire to show the error of others  – It would be so nice if others could have the same understanding as us!

Accepting others and journeying with them, to be their friend and their servant is at the centre of Paul’s heart. I love the way the Message version puts it: “I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, non-religious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated and the demoralized – whoever…I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life.”

Paul is not saying that by accepting people we are agreeing with them, but his longing is that through his life, in word and action, they would experience the love of Christ. This ability to accept people as they are comes from a growing understanding of our own identity in Christ, that we are his beloved, and that our lives are about showing others that they are God’s children and deeply loved. Our security is rooted in our relationship with Jesus.

We want this attitude to be at the heart of our life here at Scargill.  We want to accept people who come through our doors even though they may not fit into our tidy theological understanding and this can obviously be disturbing.

Yet, however uncomfortable it may sometimes feel, our hope is that we show the warmth and accepting love of Jesus.  I am sure many of us have been into churches where there have been such strong theological statements about God and life, that have felt so rigid and unyielding that it leaves very little space for dialogue or movement – It can be suffocating.

Scargill is about offering a safe place where the transformative love of God can do its mysterious work. As Ann Lamott says, ” God loves you exactly as you are and far too much to leave you as you are”.

Loving and accepting people for what they are can give us permission to adopt a different narrative if that is what is required.

First up – Quantity. One of the great joys of being part of the Scargill community is the amazing variety of people that you meet. Each week we welcome various groups and individuals and each person brings something unique and something that is life giving. Then of course there is the community we are bundled together with, all from such a variety of backgrounds and experiences of God. It’s a rich, sometimes challenging, but always growing and stretching experience.

Secondly – Quality. Joining community is an opportunity to witness and be part of the unrivalled excellence of the Holy Spirit working in the real world with real people. One of the delightful aspects which keeps us on our toes is seeing how God’s loving spirit moves and works, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. The Holy Spirit is most definitely ingenious. Being on community here at Scargill inspires an openness to what our gracious God is doing and having the courage to join in.

Finally – Questions. Many people come, as guests as well as community, with an array of questions. There is space and opportunity to ask and discuss and perhaps even solve some of the burning questions that are important to your personal walk with Jesus. As one visiting clergy said ‘This is a safe place to say dangerous things.’

And of course as one community member just enthusiastically said to me, ‘I hope you got quirky in there!’ Hmm, will have to think about that!

So quantity, quality and questions and even quirkiness… all good reasons to consider joining community. QI don’t you think?

In the Scargill Community we learn about the liberating and humbling nature of forgiveness. There’s nothing more humbling than being forgiven when my weaknessess and failings are brought into the light of this grace. Community would become a very narrow place if there was no forgiveness. Our rule of life speaks of keeping our relationships open, honest and loving; a tough call, yet liberating.

Professor Jonathan Sacks, once the Chief Rabbi, says we need forgiveness as it ‘helps us sustain relationships, build marriages that last, stay close to our children and faithful to our friends. We say things that hurt and do things that harm. So do others to us. The mere fact that we can apologise and be forgiven is one of the blessed gifts of humanity, and it isn’t simple at all. It is underwritten by a certain view of the universe, the belief that God forgives’.

This last week we have been confronted with atrocities in the US, unresolved and (understandable) resentments over Mrs Thatcher’s life and death, and the ongoing relational struggles that go on in our churches and communities. A lot to process, a lot to struggle with – with God, ourselves and others as we dare to climb the ladder of forgiveness, even if we’ve only reached the first rung.

Forgiveness is not an optional extra, it is a process that brings healing to communities and ultimately to ourselves. If we want a future, then an attitude of forgiveness will be working its way into our hearts.

Loving Jesus give us your mercy and grace!

Thomas’ response, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe,’ is the response of a person who is both frustrated and feeling rejected. “What’s the matter with me?” could be a fair description of how Thomas was feeling. “Have I not been just as loyal, if not more so, than my fellow disciples? So why I did I miss out?” He had missed out on the this life-changing encounter, and the shiny eyes and smiles of his fellow disciples would do very little to comfort the distraught Thomas.

He had to wait a whole week before Jesus came amongst them again, and this time Thomas was there. He was offered the most remarkable, life giving, transformative encounter: the invitation to put his hands in the wounds of the risen Lord. The wounds of love that had changed the world, that had showed us the depths of God’s love: Thomas was invited to put his fingers in them. Now that is a bit of a ‘Wow’!

Yes, Thomas was a bit of a doubter, as John’s account portrays. But Thomas’ encounter with Jesus gives hope to all of us who feel that we’ve missed out, that we’re in some way rejected, that God has passed us by, that we were “out of the room”. For the risen Jesus truly wants to have a ‘one-to-one’ with us.

Perhaps Bruce Cockburn’s words in his wonderful song “Somebody touched me”, can be our prayer this week – great song, great lyrics. Thomas was surprised that he had a one-to-one with Jesus: may we also be surprised by the risen Christ this week.

Somebody touched me
Making everything new
Somebody touched me
I didn’t know what to do
Burned through my life
Like a bolt from the blue
Somebody touched me
I know it was you

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeuVJ_A0CoE

And on another note, I am sure that I’ll be out of the room if and when my team Spurs score a winning goal…

The resurrection though gives us a another view –  a full tomb is a bit of a disaster! Empty is liberating and life giving, Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, death has lost its sting, sin and satan are defeated. God has had the last laugh.

When thinking of the resurrection I think of Psalm 18:19; “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me”. Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, life is to be lived in that spacious place, and we to are to leave our “tombs”, to leave them empty, and move into the spacious place that our generous God has won for us in the resurrected Jesus. It does take courage and a fair amount of trust. Our tombs whatever they may be, come with all sorts of names, unforgiveness and bitterness, fear, feeling useless just to mention a few.. We live in these tombs they become our home, they are familiar, and disturbingly comfortable. Scargill is about “lives shared, lives transformed” and hopefully with Jesus right at the centre he will loving lead us out of our caves that we have uncomfortably conformed to live in.

The challenge is to leave our tombs, and move into that spacious place, and breath in that resurrection air.

A blessed Easter to you all.

We have just finished our Palm Sunday service here in the Chapel at Scargill. Many a sermon has been given on this significant day in Jesus’ life. What struck me afresh is the adulation that welcomed Jesus from the crowd as he entered Jerusalem, and then in a few days time the same crowd will be shouting insults and wanting him dead. The crowd move from blessing to cursing with unnerving ease. Henri Nouwen says that to bless is to simply says good things about another. How crucial this is as we live in a world that gives out curses so liberally. If we bless one another our understanding of who we are in God grows and deepens. Curses destroy, blessings give life.

How important it is to bless, never more so than in Community which is full of relational challenges! There is nothing like living and working together to realise the need to bless when at times there is a deep desire to curse. Our community promises speak about building community for which we will need to be ‘consistently, transparently, constructively, unsentimentally loving’. People making their promises say, “We can learn and improve in our efforts to strengthen the bonds of love in this community. Sometimes we will get very cross with people and find it difficult to love them. Sometimes they will feel the same about us. We will not say anything about others that we would not say to them directly if love and wisdom required it. With God’s help, and with encouragement and guidance from the brothers and sisters who share this pathway, we promise to try our very best to follow the example of Jesus.”

As we begin to understand that we are called ‘beloved’, what a joy it is to enable others to find that truth for themselves. Henri Nouwen goes on to say that there are many ways that we can bless people:

“Therefore we have to be reminded of our belovedness and remind others of theirs. Whether the blessing is given in words or with gestures, in a solemn or an informal way, our lives need to be blessed lives.”

So may Jesus Christ richly bless you as you journey with him this Holy Week.

Sadly the towering trees which used to line the long driveway up to Scargill House have had to be cut down. At this melancholy time Scargill’s Director Phil Stone reflects on community, culture shock and how sometimes seeds need to die if they are going to live…

This last week has been sad and significant for Scargill. Our treasured avenue of horse chestnuts, which has been part of the landscape for the last 50 years and more, have become diseased and dangerous and have had come to down. Interesting and surprisingly what has been left is a new vista where the surrounding hills look even more inviting and attractive.

We are gradually becoming aware that the rhythm of life involves some small and some significant deaths so that God can bring new life and new beginnings. The rhythm of cross and resurrection are central to our lives. Scargill itself was resurrected, but not before it had to go through a death in 2008. The whole estate was up for sale and the long ministry of Scargill had finished. The place was dead. God though had not wiped the slate with either the place or the ministry.

When Di and I came to Scargill to grow and develop the ministry at the beginning of 2010, we were excited about the new adventure, but after a while I was wondering what we had done. From being a vicar in a large inner city parish, an area dean with responsibilities, I had come to Scargill where there was just a handful of us and 10,000 sheep. However lovely those sheep are, they are not great conversationalists, and regarded me as a sort of mint sauce threat (probably rightly so). After a couple of months of this I was feeling diminished, and well out of my depth. I went to see a wise friend who listened and shared a verse from John 12: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”

Something had to die in me, for something new to come alive – never easy, often painful, but necessary. We can never jump to resurrection until we go through our own cross. Three years on Scargill is alive and thriving. The place is beginning to bear much fruit, but what is most significant is that I have deepened my understanding that I am loved by God, that I am called “his beloved”. Sometimes God has to strip away old securities so he can help us find again our true identity.

This week we begin Passiontide, with the invitation to journey with Jesus through Palm Sunday next Sunday, onto the Cross, and then onto the joy of Easter Sunday. As we journey with Jesus may we also know that he journeys with us as we face our crosses We need to ask him for courage.

This week new trees will be planted down our avenue at Scargill.

Our resurrection life continues.

The community at Scargill is always warmly welcoming new members and wishing a fond farewell to others as each person’s contract is staggered so that as we grow and change we can maintain consistency. If you are interested in spending some time as part of our community or know someone who might be interested then click here (especially if you/they have professional catering experience!). Feel free to use the contact information in the link to get in touch and start a conversation going to work out if Scargill is the right place for you to explore more about life, community and God.

Last week I was down at Coventry Cathedral attending a conference entitled Faith in Conflict. It was full of quite important influential people, I had to behave like a grown up! One of the things that we discovered (which isn’t rocket science) is that conflict is normal. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief and I know that from my experience here at Scargill we have had to work through quite a bit of conflict over the last few years. Just because we are followers of Jesus doesn’t mean we are going to get on all the time.

What is really important is how we deal with conflict. Often we are either confrontational and shout with a ‘come on if you think you’re hard enough’ attitude or the other equally unhelpful attitude is to go into silence and avoid confrontation at all costs. But what we are encouraged to do and the way forward – is to speak and to listen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow says, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Of course living in community this is essential if we are going to grow and become a place of reconciliation. The quality of our relationships is an authentic witness of God’s love. This is the heart of the Gospel. In fact one of the speakers at conference said that reconciliation is not the warm up act to hearing the Gospel – it is the Gospel.

Whenever we are reach out (and I’m not talking about with a fist!) to somebody we are in conflict with we are doing the Gospel. St Paul reminds us in 2nd Corinthians 5 that Jesus has reconciled us with God, our relationship with Him has been put right. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation.

It’s not an optional extra.

If you are on Facebook click here to Scargill’s page.