Monks, and Monday links

Since posting on Friday's Extreme Pilgrim the traffic on this blog has doubled. A little widget tells me how people found the blog, and it looks like the vast majority were searching, not for Extreme Pilgrim, or Peter Owen Jones, but Father Lazarus. This mirrors what happened after 'The Monastery' a couple of years ago - so many people were struck not only by the stories of the men taking part, but by the life of Worth Abbey itself, that they had a massive rise in enquiries about the monastic and spiritual life, and the Abbot was prompted to write the superb Finding Sanctuary in response. This ties in with what I blogged about research a few days ago - though people are less interested in the pre-packaged meals of institutional religion, there is a spiritual hunger our there. Gandhi is reported to have said that he would have become a Christian if he'd actually met one - the inference being that the Christians he did meet weren't living lives which reflected the life of their Lord. Father Lazarus reminds us that to be better Christians we don't need more information, or the latest book, or the latest worship CD, we just need a relentless and unquenchable desire for God, and to overcome our fear of letting God have mastery over us.

If you're interested 'Ulrich''s comment below posted me this link to 'monasterion' a web group for those interested in monasticism, with links to various other resouce sites.

Meanwhile, a couple of other links:
The latest Sheffield Centre bulletin on ministry with older people is out. 5 pages, easy to read, worth a look if you have an average demographic in your church!!

The Passion, a new BBC production on the last week of the life of Jesus, is being screened on the Beeb during Holy Week, and there's a new website to go with it. It will be good to have an account of the life of Jesus that's not unwatchable because of the levels of graphic violence (Mel Gibson) or flaky theology (Robert Beckford on Channel 4)

Extreme Pilgrim 3

The last Extreme Pilgrim took Peter Owen Jones to the Egyptian desert, to follow in the footsteps of St. Anthony, father of the monastic movement.

Looking at the vastness and bleakness of the desert, you can see why Anthony chose it to get away from it all, after answering God's call to sell everything and give his money to the poor. Owen-Jones was aiming to spend 3 weeks in solitude in a cave in the hills - a mere nothing compared to the decades Anthony spent up there, but most of the people he spoke to reckoned he would struggle.

I was looking forward to this one most of all, because of it's focus on Christian practice and devotion. It was a mixed bag - we met the almost luminous Father Lazarus, with a depth of wisdom and prayer hewn from decades in the desert, but spent just as long looking at camels and tracing the journey to St. Anthony's monastery. The programme was 2/3 through before POJ even got to his cave (2 doors, a narrow one into the prayer cell, a wide one into the food cell). And though the focus of monastic devotion is Jesus, the programme was more interested (as in the previous two episodes) with self-discovery rather than discovering God.

That said, there were some fascinating moments: Lazarus' first question 'how conscious are you of your own sin?' A question rarely asked but a key one. How much better would our politicians, church leaders, mothers and fathers, (in fact pretty much everyone) be if they'd spent time wrestling with that one? Or POJ's realisation "When I got here I was numb. I've only just realised that (3 weeks of solitude and prayer later), and now I'm starting to come alive." How many of the rest of us are numb but don't know it?

And the fascinating question POJ throws into the desert sky, at God, 'why is it all about you?' Well I guess there are 2 choices. Either it's all about God (and therefore Jesus, because that's how we know what God's like), or it's all about ourselves. A narcissistic, self-absorbed Western society has made self into its tribal god, and we are numb, depressed, frantic and restless. Maybe we need to get to the end of ourselves to get to the beginning of God's grace.

Again, there wasn't much reflection at the end. I would have loved to see POJ, back in England a few months later, reflecting on the 3 different pilgrimages, and what he's brought back into daily life. Because God isn't merely a 3 week adventure holiday experience, God is here and present all the time, and what we find of him in the desert is still true back in the city. Jesus took himself away to pray in order to be fully present and alive when he was with people. Good Christian monasticism, like Jesus, withdraws in order to engage, rather than withdrawing purely for the salvation of the individual. It's a rhythm taken to its limit by monks, but one which breathes life into every Christian if they can embrace it. In the series, what was notable was that Christianity was the only one of the 3 faiths to take POJ out of himself and lift his eyes to the world.

The focus (as Lazarus beautifully put it) is not ourselves, but God and other people. When we pray, we stand before God representing humanity, so if we pray all of humanity prays, and if we don't pray all of humanity turns from God, so prayer is of desperate importance.

Update: if you want to explore a bit more, there's a book on St Anthony's monastery and Father Lazarus reviewed here , and a good post about E.P. on the Mercy Blog. Strangely (or not?) posting on 'Extreme Pilgrim' has generated more hits to this blog than anything previously. I don't know what that means, but reading people's reviews of last nights programme, several were powerfully moved by Fr. Lazarus and his words. At one point I knelt in front of the TV and followed his instructions on prayer posture, which isn't something I normally do!

Extreme Pilgrim 2

Caught most of Part 2 of the fascinating Extreme Pilgrim last night. There are clips from the episode and previews of next week here. After spending a month with the Shaolin Monks, Rev Peter Owen-Jones moves to the other side of the Himalayas to join a Hindu 'sadhu' (holy man) as he makes his pilgrimage to the Ganges along with several million others for the Kumbh Mela festival. "Forget Glastonbury, forget Piccadilly Circus, there are 7 million people here at this festival, a sea of seething humanity."

The programme was a fascinating exploration of Hinduism - Owen Jones gives us a good summary of the basic ideas of the religion, a bit on the pantheon of the gods (over 100,000 - that must take a heck of a lot of organising), and a lot simply watching the way it works.

At the same time you can't help but be impressed by the way he throws himself into it. There can't be many Anglican vicars (myself included) who'd happily wrap themselves in nothing but a thong and do bad headstands by a river whilst crowds of local kids watch, and a camera crew films it for national telly. It reminded me of Jesus saying about becoming like little children: trust and enthusiasm, rather than being too aware of reputation, status and what people think.

One thing towards the end struck me. POJ heads up into the mountains to live in a cave near a poor village as a sadhu (the day he arrives it rains for the first time in 3 months - very interesting!). He comments that its the first time for 15-20 years that he's really got away from it all and had time to think. But why? Okay he had a bad time at theological college, but hopefully at some stage someone talked about retreats, prayer, and having time to reflect. There's a really nice place near Tiverton I could point him to if he wants to get away from it all without having to go all the way to India.

I guess there was more to it than that - living in a cave, without a home, posessions, etc. is a level further in detachment than simply going on a retreat. However I'm convinced that every Christian leader has a duty to themselves, and to the people they lead, to get away from it all regularly and have time to think and pray.

Sadly, the programme finished rather abruptly: amoebic dysentry struck, and as we saw Peter trudge off in search of a toilet the voiceover for next week suddenly cut in. I was waiting for the bit where it all got summed up, but maybe it was ok not to have it - life isn't neat, discipleship isn't neat, and we do sometimes abruptly go from the mountain to the valley. Straight after his transfiguration, Jesus walks into an argument over why his disciples have failed to cast out an evil spirit.

There will be a big contrast next week. For two weeks the programme has focused on religions of detachment - the focus of Buddhism and Hinduism is to liberate the self from human life. I found it odd that a chap as life-affirming as POJ didn't pick up on the massive downer these two religions have on human life, basically seen as a prison to escape from. It also seemed quite individualistic, a personal quest to get enlightened. Next weeks Christian monks will (hopefully) focus on Jesus - the worship of God incarnate, and something that's not about us, but about Him. Jesus who deliberately chooses human life, in order not to liberate people from it, but to transform it.

The danger of going as an individual pilgrim through all this stuff is that you don't critique the system, and what it does to a society and a culture. I hope there's a bit of space next week to compare and contrast.

Extreme Pilgrim

The latest thing in religious programming seems to be the 3-parter. After 'Make me a Muslim' last month, it's the turn of 'Extreme Pilgrim', featuring the very watchable Peter Owen-Jones. He's an Anglican vicar, but you never see a dog-collar, think of a cross between Indiana Jones and middle-aged hippy and you're part way there. There can't be many clergy who use roll-ups and have to be bleeped on BBC2. He's also a lot less annoying than Robert Beckford, Channel 4's house 'theologian'. With a career in advertising and marketing before he became a vicar, he 's also been behind some provocative church advertising campaigns.

The premise of the programme is that P O-J is dissatisfied with Western spirituality, and especially it's Church of England form. He's not a big fan of doctrine, and is frustrated with a Christian faith which bombards people with doctrine but doesn't seem to have spiritual depth, so he's off to try to find spiritual depth somewhere else. First stop is a month with the Shaolin Buddhist monks of China. After a week at a martial arts boot camp (fair play to him for letting himself be filmed trying and failing at things, we need a bit more of that attitude in the church), he finds the constant stream of tourists off-putting, and heads up a remote mountain pass to find a 'purer' form of Buddhism.

What he finds is a spirituality built on two things: community life, and the physical discipline of movement. As he gets into the dance-like moves (I don't know if it was tai chi, or something else, I'm not much of an expert), he discovers that he can actually meditate, clear his mind, and find the stillness he's looking for. Alongside that he finds a strong sense of community life, which seems on the surface to be at odds with Buddhist 'non-attachment', something which is never quite resolved.

It was fascinating to watch, not only to see the monks in action, and POJ's efforts to learn the moves and exercises, but then to reflect back on Christian spirituality. We talk about the body, mind and spirit as a unity, God has made us that way, but Christian spirituality is still stuck somewhere between St. Anthony and the late 20th century, in putting the mind and spirit in the spiritual Premiership and demoting the body to non-league. Discipleship, worship, ministry training, most of the life of the church is centred around words, learning and intellect. Very little is centred around practice, physicality, an embodied life of prayer and discipleship. There is much more of this in the Eastern church, and the charistmatic and (newly rediscovered) Celtic streams of Christianity are reintroducing the body to Western Christianity, but often these feel like add-ons. Last nights programme showed a community for which the physical was the path to the spiritual, a way of moving and breathing developed over centuries.

I've a couple of concerns with 'Extreme Pilgrim'. One is the 'crash diet' concern, that it might portray spirituality as something you only need a month to crack, if you put in enough effort under the right guru. More problematic is the approach, taken by 'Spirituality Shopper' a couple of years ago, of treating all religions as more or less equivalent. I wouldn't want to throw out the doctrinal baby with the bathwater - we do have to reckon with questions of truth and understanding, with who God is, how he has communicated and how we live in right relationship with him. Peter Owen-Jones is right to complain that doctrine is unduly dominant in Western Christianity, but the solution to misuse is not disuse but right use.

See other views from the Mirror, Atheist Tuesday , the Times, and a broader article on religious programming on TV from the Independent.