Going on retreat, toasted muesli and the Go-Between God.

I was recalling with Ken the other day the time we went on a clergy retreat to Scottish Churches House. The Director was the late Bishop John V Taylor and we looked forward to a rich time of thoughtful and theologically literate reflection. We weren't disappointed. Out of an A5 spiral notebook, with full written notes he spoke of the Christlike God and the ministry as service to the God of Creation, Reconciliation and Communion in the Trinity.

However there was not a little consternation when with episcopal authority of a unilateral kind, he announced it would be a silent retreat, with strictly designated times for talking. That was a problem for two friends who wanted to catch up. It was more of a problem when he said that meal times would be silent – I mean, how do you ask politely for the salt without which chips are incomplete? But problem became difficult to suppress hysteria at the breakfast table when in silence, around 20 people are munching the toasted muesli. My immediate memory was of my boyhood on the farms and heard the munching of bovine jaws in the byre after feeding cattle cake to 40 cows. Unconditional love of the brothers and sisters is stretched painfully when trying to chew muesli, not choke and hold back guffaws of laughter which if they erupt are likely to spray the table with semi-masticated oats much to the spiritual benefit of no one!

 Nevertheless, that was a rich encounter with Bishop John. I went on the strength of reading his The Go Between God.

That is a book of seminal importance in my thinking about the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in the created order, in the church, and in my life as it impinges on all the others who are affected by the ripples of influence that emanate from this one life.

Here is one paragraph which says so, so much:

The Holy Spirit is the invisible third party who stands between me and the other, making us mutually aware. Supremely and primarily he opens my eyes to Christ. But he also opens my eyes to the brother ans sister in Christ, or the fellow human being, or the point of need, or the heartbreaking brutality and the equally heartbreaking beauty of the world. He is the giver of that vision without which the people perish. We commonly speak about the Holy Spirit as the source of power. But in fact he enables us not by making us supernaturally strong but by opening our eyes.