Over the past few months, I have noticed something of a negative theme emerging amongst newer clergy on the topic of retreats. This negativity concerns me deeply. The negativity can take myriad forms, but I'll share some examples:
a) Retreats are a luxury
b) Retreats are a burdensome obligation
c) Retreats are simply an unrealistic expectation to those of us with family obligations
d) Retreats are not helpful to me personally - I'd rather be at a big busy Christian Conference/a weekend party with some old friends/ a spa as I find these things nourishing
Now I am a great believer that Sabbath is for humanity and not the other way round, and so I do not want to be legalistic about this. However, I would like to challenge these negative assumptions.
I happen to feel quite strongly that retreats are no luxury, but an key aspect of our discipleship. Jesus often withdrew - and what is good enough for master, is good enough for pupil. Our ministry and our family relationships are all good and God-honouring only if they spring from relationship with God. Of course, we should all be in communication with God every day of our lives. But sometimes only generous amounts of unhurried, non-agenda-ed time with God create the space for God to speak to us, to help us identify what harries and hinders us, to show us new opportunities and possibilities, to reassure us and revitalize us...
If retreats are so vital, then the IMD adviser or training incumbent or archdeacon who recommends this activity is no unsympathetic slavedriver, but someone of wisdom and kindness who holds us to account for maintaining our first love, knowing that it is only this love which can lead to authentic service. A retreat is a gift, and one we should be prepared to give ourselves.
Going on a retreat when one has family obligations can be a painful decision. I know the pain, guilt and anxiety well. I had three children aged under five, and my youngest daughter was just six months old, when I left for three days to go to a Bishops Advisory Panel. Since then I have left the children for periods of up to nine days every year. It doesn't really get easier, but I know now from experience that the discipline of withdrawing benefits me and them.
In my experience it is actually more important for those with parish and family commiments to find a way of withdrawing. Ten months into my first year of ministry, it was Mothering Sunday, and my husband asked what I would like to do that weekend. I suddenly realized that I spent all my time thinking about the wants and needs of either my parish or my family, so I hadn't a clue about my own desires anymore. I had lost myself in the needs of others, and it took disciplined time for me and my own spiritual and emotional needs to rediscover the RevMum God had called and created.
Some argue that parish ministry already creates such demands on precious family life that to go on retreat as well is out of the question. I am afraid that my response to this is quite blunt. If parish ministry is causing you to neglect your family to such a degree that you feel unable to go on retreat, then you need to look at your parish work first. Other things must be pruned from the diary. None of us are indispensable, and an over-busy clergyperson is unhealthy for parish, family and self. Take some responsibility for your activity, and don't complain about an annual retreat!
Lastly to those who would rather meet with friends, attend a Christian Conference or go to a spa - by all means do that too! However, a retreat is something which requires space and plenty of it. Space to speak or be silent, to pray or to praise or to lament or to laugh, to create, to exercise, to be still - all as the Spirit guides, with a little outside obligation as possible. Retreats need to be time for you and God alone. By all means be creative and find a retreat experience that suits you, but ensure it has the flexibility to allow you and God plenty of unhurried time together.
I'll finish with the words of St Bernard to the perpetually busy new Pope Eugenius III:
It would be very prudent for you to withdraw from such occupations, even if it be for only a little while, rather than let them get the better of you, and , little by little, lead you where you do not want to go...to indifference.
Thursday 27 September 2012
Tuesday 4 September 2012
Submission and the Sydney Marriage Service
So the Australian diocese of Sydney have introduced a new liturgical option for marriage services where a wife may choose to "submit" to her husband.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9517680/Sydneys-Anglican-Church-introduces-submit-wedding-vows-after-Fifty-Shades-of-Grey.html
Now I am fairly live-and-let-live in my approach to such things. I accept the argument that if the husband loves the wife as Christ loves the church, then submitting to him might not be such a bad thing in practice, and so if that is what a gal wants to do...
However, I do object to some of the theological thinking behind the move. The article says the new service has been designed to combat what is perceived as a harmful rise in "egalitarianism and individualism". The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is quoted as having said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9517680/Sydneys-Anglican-Church-introduces-submit-wedding-vows-after-Fifty-Shades-of-Grey.html
Now I am fairly live-and-let-live in my approach to such things. I accept the argument that if the husband loves the wife as Christ loves the church, then submitting to him might not be such a bad thing in practice, and so if that is what a gal wants to do...
However, I do object to some of the theological thinking behind the move. The article says the new service has been designed to combat what is perceived as a harmful rise in "egalitarianism and individualism". The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is quoted as having said:
"In the last three or four decades a certain egalitarianism has crept into
society and the way people think and I understand that's the reigning
philosophy...I just happen to think it's wrong, unhelpful, and in the end we will find
it's better to recognise that men and women are different, that we have at
certain points different responsibilities and men will be better men if we
acknowledge that."
Where to begin???
Let's start with egalitarianism and individualism being linked in this way. Now I accept this was not a direct quote and may represent a misunderstanding on the part of the news report. However, if it contains truth, the implication is surely that egalitarianism is responsible for a more individual and fragmentary society. Yes, both have increased in society over recent decades, but likewise banana-consumption and lung cancer have increased at similar rates in recent decades. Ergo banana eating causes lung cancer? Nonsense.
Feminists who promote the full humanity of woman and her equality with man are at the forefront of promoting mutuality and have been key to understanding humans not as individuals acting in isolation but as part of complex "human webs". Egalitarian does not equal individualistic - I would love to discuss this further, but time and space do not allow.
So on to egalitarianism being harmful. HOW is it harmful? How is it harmful to allow women to vote, have their own bank accounts and property, be paid the same as their male colleagues, find fulfilling jobs and contribute to the support of their family, to minister to God's people and to stand eyeball to eyeball with their male counterparts in strong, honest and non-hierarchical relationship? How?
There are, of course, new challenges when things change, and with new freedoms women and men will find new ways to sin. But that doesn't make the basic premise of equality wrong. And as long as we are fighting equality, we are fighting the wrong enemy with disastrous results.
Gender hierarchy - as Genesis makes abundantly clear - is a consequence of the Fall. Paul in writing about submission within marriage was egalitarian off the scale within his social context. He begins with a cultural norm: "wives submit to your husbands" and then lobs a rhetorical grenade into the mix by demanding that "husbands love their wives". Without even getting to the part that they should love their wives as Christ loves the church, it is radical stuff. Wives were property and providers of heirs - of course, some were beloved but some were treated extremely badly and they had little protection when this happened. Paul's instruction immediately transforms wives from property and providers of offspring to people, people to be loved, people to be valued, people worthy of sacrifice. Surely this is the beginnings of the egalitarianism we see today!
And yet, we have those who would preserve gender hierarchy arguing that the wife is told to submit while the husband is told to display "agapaic" love (e.g. the love of God). On Twitter yesterday, there was a debate on the positioning of a Greek punctuation mark and its implications for the understanding of Paul's words. In my opinion, this is missing the wood for the trees. The message is clear - women/wives are people too...
I read Paul's words as words of liberation. Others read them as a reductionist recipie for the complex relationship that is marriage. The thing is that all loving relationships are a dynamic tension of loving and submitting, owning oneself and giving oneself to another, taking responsibility for one's actions and allowing others to share the burden of that responsibility. To simplify it to "the wife submits and the husband loves" is just not true or helpful.
I don't have a problem with submitting to my husband - most of the time. He is a man of faith, hard-working, loving and generous. On the rare occasions he isn't, do I still submit? Heck no! I hold him to account, look him in the eyes and tell him the truth he needs to hear. Because I love him. And then he submits to me.
Where to begin???
Let's start with egalitarianism and individualism being linked in this way. Now I accept this was not a direct quote and may represent a misunderstanding on the part of the news report. However, if it contains truth, the implication is surely that egalitarianism is responsible for a more individual and fragmentary society. Yes, both have increased in society over recent decades, but likewise banana-consumption and lung cancer have increased at similar rates in recent decades. Ergo banana eating causes lung cancer? Nonsense.
Feminists who promote the full humanity of woman and her equality with man are at the forefront of promoting mutuality and have been key to understanding humans not as individuals acting in isolation but as part of complex "human webs". Egalitarian does not equal individualistic - I would love to discuss this further, but time and space do not allow.
So on to egalitarianism being harmful. HOW is it harmful? How is it harmful to allow women to vote, have their own bank accounts and property, be paid the same as their male colleagues, find fulfilling jobs and contribute to the support of their family, to minister to God's people and to stand eyeball to eyeball with their male counterparts in strong, honest and non-hierarchical relationship? How?
There are, of course, new challenges when things change, and with new freedoms women and men will find new ways to sin. But that doesn't make the basic premise of equality wrong. And as long as we are fighting equality, we are fighting the wrong enemy with disastrous results.
Gender hierarchy - as Genesis makes abundantly clear - is a consequence of the Fall. Paul in writing about submission within marriage was egalitarian off the scale within his social context. He begins with a cultural norm: "wives submit to your husbands" and then lobs a rhetorical grenade into the mix by demanding that "husbands love their wives". Without even getting to the part that they should love their wives as Christ loves the church, it is radical stuff. Wives were property and providers of heirs - of course, some were beloved but some were treated extremely badly and they had little protection when this happened. Paul's instruction immediately transforms wives from property and providers of offspring to people, people to be loved, people to be valued, people worthy of sacrifice. Surely this is the beginnings of the egalitarianism we see today!
And yet, we have those who would preserve gender hierarchy arguing that the wife is told to submit while the husband is told to display "agapaic" love (e.g. the love of God). On Twitter yesterday, there was a debate on the positioning of a Greek punctuation mark and its implications for the understanding of Paul's words. In my opinion, this is missing the wood for the trees. The message is clear - women/wives are people too...
I read Paul's words as words of liberation. Others read them as a reductionist recipie for the complex relationship that is marriage. The thing is that all loving relationships are a dynamic tension of loving and submitting, owning oneself and giving oneself to another, taking responsibility for one's actions and allowing others to share the burden of that responsibility. To simplify it to "the wife submits and the husband loves" is just not true or helpful.
I don't have a problem with submitting to my husband - most of the time. He is a man of faith, hard-working, loving and generous. On the rare occasions he isn't, do I still submit? Heck no! I hold him to account, look him in the eyes and tell him the truth he needs to hear. Because I love him. And then he submits to me.
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