Author: The inner gardener

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But what happened to the slave-girl of Acts 16?

Autumn in all her glory!

I found myself quite angry this morning as I read the story of Paul’s encounter with a demonised, fortune-telling slave-girl in Philippi (Acts 16:16-40). It’s the start of a longer narrative that focusses on the consequences of this action for the protagonists.

This girl was doubly possessed – both by a spirit of divination and by her slave master. As Paul was going about his work, she was being a nuisance, following him around and shouting disruptively. Paul ignored her for several days, but his patience finally ran out and, in a burst of temper, he commanded the spirit to leave her.

Yes, the girl was freed from the spirit, but this was not a compassionate deliverance from evil, it was more like swatting an irritating fly. At least with a lucrative talent she was guaranteed some degree of security – what would happen to her now? I don’t get the slightest impression that the slave girl was seen for the precious human being she was – only for the force that controlled her.

Her slave-owners certainly didn’t value her humanity either, for them she was a way to make money, and once her special talent was gone, she was practically worthless.

I feel that Paul bears some responsibility for what happened to her next. My hope is that she was welcomed into the Christian community, perhaps by Lydia the dealer in purple cloth we read about in the verses before, but from the few words about her in the text, my fear is that she was collateral damage of Paul’s adventures in Philippi. Paul paid for the incident with beatings and imprisonment, but his prison stay was short, and his story moved on.

For what it’s worth, slave-girl of Philippi, I see you!

But that’s an easy thing to say from the comfort of my own home, with two thousand years between us. I hope I can see you when I next meet you in one of your 21st century sisters.

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How does your (inner) garden grow?

If you are in the mood for a little ‘spiritual gardening’ you might like to try to following exercise, in which you consider your life as a garden and see what emerges.

Start by becoming still and calm in the presence of God. Perhaps do a body scan or a breathing exercise.

Now review what is happening in your life right now, using whichever of the following questions you find helpful:

Where is there growth? What is blossoming? Where is there fruit?

What is fading or dying? What is on the compost heap? What needs to be put on the compost heap?

What needs to be pruned? Does anything need to be trained?

Are any areas overrun with weeds or under attack by pests?

What parts of your life need to be fed with fertiliser?

Have you sown any seeds recently?

Are there completely new areas you’d like to dig over?

Talk to God about what has come up in this time of reflection and entrust your garden to him.

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Value and identity

A perfect spinach seedling.

The other morning, I was reading the beautiful passage Philippians 2:1-11 about how Christ:

did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

However, I got a bit stuck on the words ‘in humility regard others as better than yourselves’. As someone who tends towards low self-esteem, it’s not very helpful to hear this. My default position is to feel inferior to other people, but this has nothing to do with humility and everything to do with an unhealthy place in my being. How can I regard other people as ‘better’ than myself in a way that isn’t damaging?

The writer of Philippians also says ‘let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’. Christ knew who he was, and whose he was, he knew his value and his identity. From this secure place, he was able to give everything up and serve others, even to the point of death.

Having good self-worth isn’t about dragging other people down in my mind or pushing myself up above them; it has nothing to do with comparison. It’s about my, and everyone else’s, intrinsic value as earth-creatures loved by God.

I need to keep connecting with that part of me that knows my value and identity, so that I can act from a sense of inner security and confidence, rather than stumbling down the well-trodden path to self-effacement. From that safe place, I can make a genuinely humble choice to take the last place without feeling devalued or that I’d have no right to the first place, were I to decide to take it.

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Detachment and the rich young ruler

Amethyst deceivers + puff balls, autumn chanterelles + hedgehog mushrooms, and inkcaps, collected in a nearby forest.

This is a reflection I wrote in May this year on Mark 10:17-22

I wonder how you feel about this passage? I know that this is one of those difficult encounters with Jesus that we cannot ignore, but that can leave us feeling rather uncomfortable. In this story, Jesus seems very demanding – he asks the rich man to sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, is he asking the same of us? Since only a few actually take that path, does this mean that the rest of us are failing in our Christian vocation?

How we read these words depends on our image of God, what we really believe God is like. If he is punitive, demanding and a killjoy, then the message we hear is that we must try and earn God’s love by doing difficult things and denying ourselves. However, in this passage, we read that Jesus looked at the rich man and loved him. The Bible is peppered with verses that tell us how much God loves us and wants what’s best for us, and so this reading can’t be about doing hard things to earn God’s love – that love is already given. If we can believe that God is love and has our best interests at heart, then this passage has another message for us.

Let’s take a moment to consider what was going on in the rich man’s life. He was deeply religious and conscientiously followed the religious laws. He worked hard at doing the right thing and was committed to seeking eternal life, what we might call ‘salvation’. He sensed that there was something more to the spiritual life, but seemed to have come to the end of this resources. He had heard that the Rabbi Jesus had come to town – perhaps he could show him the way? Since he was a wealthy man, he could be fairly confident that he was on the right track, because wealth was understood as a reward from God for good behaviour. So he was hopeful, looking forward to a positive interaction with this teacher who would surely recognise his virtue. He believed himself willing to do whatever was required of him in the search for God. So, in his enthusiasm, he ran to Jesus and knelt down before him, asking the question, ‘What can I do to be saved?’ Now, there are two problematic words in this question, I and do. He believed he needed to work at getting God to accept him, and believed that he effectively could save himself this way. The focus was squarely on him and what he could do.

Jesus initially appears to go along with this assumption, listing various laws that must be kept – as if that was all that was needed – perhaps this was his way to find out how serious the rich man was. Only when pressed by this earnest young man, does Jesus give his unthinkable instruction to sell what he owns, and give the money to the poor.

his wealth was a blessing from God, it made no sense to give it all up – that would be like ungratefully returning a gift to the one who gave it, and so the rich man reacted with shock and grief. He was, perhaps, looking for a new way of praying or another religious practise, but Jesus didn’t tell him to take something new on, but to let go of what he already had. Jesus made it sound easy, but it wasn’t, and wasn’t just about the money, Jesus was also asking him to give up his status, security and even his family, as there’s no way that his relatives would have remained in contact with him if he had embraced a life of poverty.

It makes me think of Jesus’ words in John 12, where he says:

24 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. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Jesus says what he does because he knows what the rich man really needs, he knows what will set him free and bring him abundant life. Giving up his wealth wouldn’t have earnt the rich man his salvation, as that is the gift of God, but it would have set him free to follow Jesus. The rich man’s life is under control, safe, he lives within comfortable limits. Jesus invites him beyond these limits, he challenges the rich man to let go of the control of his life and trust that God will catch him, but the rich man isn’t ready for that leap of faith. I also wonder whether Jesus asked the man to do the almost impossible partly to show him that he could not save himself?

Jesus’ challenge is followed by a promise and an invitation:

you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me

This invitation to ‘come follow me’ is the same as the invitation he extended to the first disciples. He called Andrew, Peter, James and John to leave their life as fishermen, but perhaps since they had less to lose it was easier for them to give up the little they had? But then Matthew left his job as a tax collector, which was a lucrative profession; in his case perhaps the fact that most people would have hated him for colluding with the occupying Romans, would have made him more willing to give it up that life? The man in our story is both rich and respectable, he has everything to lose and is too attached to his lifestyle and possessions to let go and follow Jesus. He doesn’t realise that his wealth has him trapped and is afraid of what would happen if he lost it. He isn’t free to pursue the deeper spiritual life that he desires.

Now, I just said that the rich man was too ‘attached’ to his wealth, and that was a deliberate choice of word. I want to say a just few words about the opposite: detachment. Unlike the rich man, the 12 disciples were sufficiently detached from their previous occupations to be able to leave them behind and follow Jesus. Ignatian spirituality understands detachment as a healthy impartiality, a distancing, an indifference. If we can be detached from things and habits, we are freer to choose those things and attitudes that lead to God. That isn’t to say that things are necessarily bad, quite the contrary, they can be a great blessing, but if they become too important to us, they entrap us and so hinder our growth towards God.

For the rich man, there was a call to be free from his possessions and a call to be free of the lie that there was something he could do to save himself. The rich man’s unhealthy attachments were brought to light by an encounter with Jesus; we can discover our unhealthy attachments by an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

These attachments can come in many guises, they might be material possessions or money, as in this passage, they might also be feelings and thoughts that bind us, cravings and addictions, or unhelpful thought patterns. For example, I struggle with an attachment to perfectionism. My tendency is to believe that if something I’ve done is not perfect, then it’s practically worthless. This puts the focus on me and my achievements, rather than on trusting God to use my, inevitably imperfect, efforts.

One way to test whether we are unhealthily attached to something, is to ask ourselves how we would feel if God asked us to let go of it. Our response will give us an indication of how attached we are, because, when we are free, letting go doesn’t feel difficult. Depending on what the attachment is, God may or may not ask us to let go of it, but we are invited to hold lightly even the good gifts in our lives.

The encounter in this story feels rather final. The rich man is presented with an ultimatum and declines Jesus’s invitation, albeit regretfully, as we read that he grieved as he walked away. I wonder whether the rich man might have changed his mind later on? Having had his unhealthy attachments revealed to him, perhaps, in time, he came to the point of being able to let go of them? After all, detaching from the things that keep us from a closer walk with God is a lifelong process.

To follow Jesus, the rich man needed to let go of his possessions. What are the things that limit our freedom to follow Christ? How might God be calling us into a more abundant life? Perhaps we can ask God to set us free to take risks with our time, talent and treasures for the purposes of God’s kingdom. I invite us to place all we are and have before God, giving thanks for all our blessings, and may God help us loosen our grip on whatever hinders us from serving him, confident that He won’t loosen his grip of love on us.

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Life after doom?

The cracks are where the light shines through.

I am so grateful to Brian Maclaren for writing his most recent book ‘Life after doom‘. He tackles what most of us can’t quite bear to face with wisdom and compassion, and offers ways to navigate a path through whatever scenario lies ahead of humanity. He describes four possible futures: collapse avoidance (which is really just delaying the inevitable), collapse rebirth, collapse survival, and collapse extinction.

I finished this book more at peace than when I started, and re-energised to do what I can. This is not a book that I would recommend for everyone, but if you feel ready to face the end of the world as we know it, then this might be a good place to start.

Here is a link to an interview with the author on the excellent Nomad podcast.

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A statement of faith for the end of the world (as we know it)

Rescued from the slugs, but will they ripen before they rot?

The creeds of the church were written to summarize core beliefs and engaged with the great theological questions of the day. In that spirit, I have had a go at writing my own statement of faith. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but is what speaks to me at the moment. See what you think.

I believe that in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things came into being through the Word, refined over countless aeons, from the simplest microbes to complex mammalian life.

Life evolved to self-awareness and human creativity blossomed, but in our arrogance, we have struggled to live within our means.

God loves us too much to control us, and has let us take a path to self-destruction.

I believe that the image of the invisible God was born in human likeness, into a suffering people oppressed by empire.

Jesus the Christ revealed that God is love and that the kingdom of heaven is within us.

This threatened the powers that be, who tortured him to death on a Roman cross.

In Christ, God identified with our suffering and the suffering of all things through all time.

But death was not his end and will not be our end.

On the third day Christ rose again.

I believe that we are Christ’s body now, that the Holy Spirit dwells within us, and that we are the light of the world.

In this time of unravelling, we will live as Christ did, loving our neighbours and our enemies, and hoping beyond hope.

Christ was before all things, Christ is holding all things together, and all things will end in Christ’s embrace.

Inspired by John 1, Colossians 1, Philippians 2, Luke 17, Romans 4.
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Luke 12:11-12

Mushrooms on moss – how gorgeous!

When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say. Luke 12:11-12

I used to believe this passage meant that when I was in a situation of great stress and difficulty, God would give me the perfect thing to say in a moment of divine inspiration. This, however, has not been my experience. When I feel under pressure, my mind goes entirely blank and I have absolutely nothing to say.

My evolving understanding of how God and I coexist gives me another way to understand this passage. I find I am most receptive to God when I am still and quiet, seeking that place of inner peace where the Holy Spirit dwells, or when I am on a walk in the forest or cycling somewhere (if I can stop ruminating over my never-ending to-do list and let my mind wander). At such times I am more able to tap into my God-given creativity; if I want the Holy Spirit to teach me what I ought to say, then I need to find a way to return to that place of inner connection, even when I am out and about in stressful situations.

I had a small example of that the other week. I took what was, for me, the bold step of agreeing to facilitate a peer-support group; this was the first time I had ever done anything quite like this and there were a lot of unknowns. At various points during the meeting, I felt myself becoming tense in my body and stressed in my mind about how best to respond – but I managed to catch myself doing it, so relaxed my body, took a few deep breaths and waited. The Holy Spirit did teach me what I ought to say, and it turned out that was very little, as the group pretty much ran itself 🤣.

Breathe.

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Does your bramble have thorns?

These are the first fruits of the apple and pear trees I planted five years ago – patience is a virtue!

I recently pruned my blackberry bushes. Dealing with the relatively young thornless cultivated plants was easy – I identified the canes that gave fruit this year and cut them down. Then I moved onto the blackberries that pre-dated my time in the area, in particular, a magnificent specimen beside the parking space that is particularly well-adapted to its chosen home.

Every year it puts out thick, long canes covered with vicious hooks that attack anyone who tries to get into the passenger side of the car, but, since it also produces an abundance of blackberries, it’s the passengers who have to make accommodations. This bramble is a tight tangle of canes, old and new, embracing each other in a self-preserving heap. Locating the right canes for removal is not trivial, and this year it involved me climbing right into the heart of the bush. By the end of my work, my arms and legs were ripped to shreds (I know I should have worn better clothing, but I was in too much of a rush…)

This got me to thinking. ‘Real’ blackberries, the way nature made them, are covered in thorns – this is normal. However, we don’t like the thorns, since they cause us discomfort and make collecting berries potentially painful, so we have bred varieties without them. I wonder about a parallel with modernity…

In the last hundred years or so, technological advances and cheap fuel have meant that we (in the global north) have been able to reduce our physical discomfort and pain to levels unprecedented in history. From advances in medicine and dentistry, to the invention of washing machines and cars, life in many ways has become much easier; and when we do start to feel discomfort, we have a plethora of ways to distract ourselves or numb the pain.

This is not a normal state of affairs; in most of the rest of the world, and throughout most of history, life is much harder, and it is certainly going to become increasingly difficult for everyone in the years and decades to come. In the face of threats of social, economic and ecological collapse, our expectations of life must drastically change.

Despite being abundantly blessed in so many ways, I am not a particularly grateful person. As a product of modernity, I expect life to be ‘thornless’ like my cultivated blackberry and tend to complain when things are difficult. Perhaps it would make more sense for me to expect life to be difficult to handle, like my wild bramble, full of thorns that rip and tear, and then to be grateful when life feels good and the berries are plentiful?

Do not fear what you are about to suffer Revelation 2:10a

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My turn to get it wrong

This is one of the eight salamanders I saw in the forest earlier this week!

My last post was about how traffic exemplifies our interconnectedness as human beings, and encouraged compassion on those parts of the traffic (and ourselves) that cause us difficulties. This afternoon it was my turn to be one of those difficult parts.

I accidentally drove the wrong way down an aisle of a shopping centre car-park and was confronted by the incandescent rage of a motorist coming in the opposite (correct) direction. In my defense, I had someone with reduced mobility in the car with me and was focused on finding a spot near the entrance – so when I spotted one, I turned in, not realising it meant I was breaking the rules. I was shocked by the violence of the other driver’s reaction, firstly because my misdemeanour didn’t impact upon them directly and secondly because their anger was so out of proportion to the gravity of my crime. I didn’t immediately react to the screaming, scowling and fist-shaking, because in the moment I was mostly curious about what this person was really angry about. However, I was shaken up enough to subsequently drive over a bollard when reversing into a less convenient parking spot.

It just goes to show how much damage can result from choosing to believe the worst about another person and acting on it. As for me, I am going to get myself a cup of tea and try to calm down. Let’s hope the insurance company will deal with the rest of the damage.

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Psychotherapy and inconsiderate drivers

I love spiders. This one seemed to be suspended in mid-air. If your eyesight is good, you might be able to see her web.

I’ve just returned from a five-day road trip all the way up through France and into the North of England. Thankfully there wasn’t much traffic, but there were those inevitable stretches of roadworks where everything slows down as three lanes go into two… and those infuriating drivers who, rather than considerately changing lane as soon as reasonably possible, speed along the disappearing lane and force themselves in at the very last opportunity.

As we were driving along the Paris ring road (a half-hour detour, due to over-reliance on Google maps), I pondered the fact that although traffic is comprised of many different vehicles, it behaves like an entire organism. Each individual car is impacted by the rest – someone brakes suddenly in heavy traffic, and the ripple effect causes cars further back to come to a complete standstill.

This made me think of the Internal Family Systems Model approach to psychotherapy. This sees the mind as being comprised of multiple parts, each with a distinct subpersonality. Let me introduce you to some of mine: Judge Judy, Busy Beryl, and Anxious Audrey. Each of these subpersonalities means well, but they aren’t always helpful and can sometimes be downright counterproductive. The aim is to get to a point where, rather than resenting or struggling with parts of yourself, you can see them for what they are and bring the mind back into balance.

Back to the Paris ring road. When a car committed the aforementioned sin of racing ahead and pushing in, for a brief moment I could see it as a broken, wounded part of the whole traffic, with which I also identified, and rather than get angry with it, I felt compassion. Yes, the driver was behaving badly, but there could be all manner of reasons for why they had developed this behaviour as a coping strategy for life.

This sense of being part of a larger whole also made me think of Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 about the concept of the body of Christ. Despite the culture we swim in emphasizing our individuality and personal agency, in many ways we are profoundly connected to each other. What a difference it would make to our world if we could all recognise this!