Category: Texts I Travel With

In his rule St Benedict quotes John 12.35, "Run while you have the light of life…". Then, knowing that obedience is about disposition and performance, he urges those seeking God,  "If we wish to dwell in the tent of that kingdom, we must run to it by good deeds or we shall never reach it. In fact Benedict calls the life of faith a marathon in which we "run in the way of God's commandments".

The great Hebrews 12.1-2 text, "Run with persevarance the race that is set before you, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith".

My suggestion. Go listen to the London Marathon theme tune over here. (It comes from the movie "The Trap", conducted by Ron Goodwin). Then listen again but read Hebrews 12.1-2; Philippians 3.12-16 with this music as background. The months of training, the hard slog, the longing to give up, the determination to keep going – following after Jesus isn't a dawdle and it isn't a sprint. Every year I watch the start of this race – not the elite runners – the mass crowds of folk who have trained and looked forward to running the race and finishing it. As an image of the church it works quite well – running for charity, helping each other along, fulfilling a life goal, pushing beyond our comfort zones, "having the same purpose, being of the same mind", the sacrament of water for the thirsty, and the great refusal that every step represents to not give up.
  

Sometimes I need to hear a voice that doesn't mess about. Spirituality is notoriously hard to define, there's still a big argument about whether it's a subject for academic study in its own right, and often enough, even when limited to Christian Spirituality, the diversity of tradition makes it hard for us even to agree what we are talking about. And maybe we are more comfortable with an unexamined pluralism of ideas, experience and styles of spirituality, than with taking a position in which we speak with clarity and conviction about what is so. At which point Bernard of Clairvaux's astringent words are a shout for silence in this spiritual marketplace dedicated to personal choices, acting like a theological cleansing of those temples we like to build and decorate to our own spiritual specifications:

Simple really – and such a hard call. Not as easy as I thought, this spirituality stuff! Nobody said anything about absolutes! But then Bernard pre-dates postmodernist sensitivities. Actually, Bernard doesn't go much for any sensitivities that depend on letting us have our cake and eat it. His booklet, On Loving God, is one of a number of Texts I Travel With. And one of its strengths is that it recognises some essentials are precisley that – non-negotiable goals and practices of Chjristian living.

You can find the text of On Loving God online, here. I prefer to use the Classics of Western Spirituality Edition, edited by G R Evans – I suppose I'll always prefer book to screen.