We are almost at the end of the CMD calendar for the academic year 2012-2013, but there are two final events:

The Revd Ulric Gerry will lead a Seminar for clergy (stipendiary and non stipendiary) on ’Healing’ on Monday June 10th 10.30 – lunch in St Margaret’s Newlands (353 Kilmarnock Road Glasgow G43 2DS). He writes that the seminar aims to be ‘a hands-on event to help, encourage and give us the confidence to practise a healing ministry. The format of the day will include sharing of experience, a little theology, discussion of the psychological and supernatural aspects, ‘best practice’ tips and how to integrate this ministry into everyday pastoral ministry. We will also use the time to pray for each other. It will be a fun day, both informative, practical and spiritual, so come in prayerful and expectant mood’. Please register at mdo.gg@btinternet.com stating dietary requirements by June 1st.

The Revd Dr Eamonn Rodgers will lead the next meeting of the Clergy Book Group on Wednesday July 31st 14.00 – 15.45 in the Diocesan Centre when we will study Sun of Righteousness, Arise!: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth Jurgen Moltmann  SCM Press 2010 ISBN 978-0334043485. A copy will shortly be available for borrowing from the Diocesan Mission and Ministry Library.

It is ironic that at 2.20 yesterday, the Clergy Book Group was expressing its interest in the practice of ‘Scriptural Reasoning’, arising from its perusal of Ben Quash’s book Abiding.  Ironic, and desperately poignant.

For 15 years, Quash has been involved in an experiment in the study of sacred texts, a study which had academic beginnings but is now rooted as a practice in grassroots communities in London and other cities around the world. SR is the practice of reading scriptural texts from the so-called Abrahamic traditions – Judaism, Islam and Christianity – by small groups of devoted practitioners of those three faiths.

A distinctive feature of all the various forms of Scriptural Reasoning is their emphasis on the particularity, distinctiveness and integrity of each of the participating faith traditions. This is expressed in a strong respect for the cherished differences between Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other faiths, a high regard for each faith’s heritage of scholarship and tradition (‘Scriptural Traditional Reasoning’), and the fostering of good quality disagreements between participants which are concurrently contained within relationships of collegiality and friendship.

Quash says ‘One of the obvious effects of putting members of different faiths in front of the texts of traditions that are not their own is that they want to know what these texts mean and how they are made sense of by those whose texts they are. This is good’.

Pray God that in this week of Pentecost, of Babel reversed, we may learn to live with diversity and understand the God-given, world-enhancing dignity of difference.

(The next Clergy Book Group takes place on Wednesday July 31st when we will study Sun of Righteousness, Arise!: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth Jurgen Moltmann  SCM Press 2010 ISBN 978-0334043485. This will be introduced by the Revd Dr Eamonn  Rodgers)

At Midday Prayer today we will be praying especially for our sisters and brothers at The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (and for Bishop Gregor, representing the SEC therein all week), and also for those preparing for our own General Synod in a fortnight.

At this juncture, many people are working their way diligently through the (many) pages of ‘the white book’ and ‘the blue book’ in preparation for June 6th – 8th. Dioceses are holding pre-synod meetings. GSO staff are working furiously to get everything in order.

So in this Week of Pentecost, let us hold all these colleagues and the work of both assemblies in our prayers:

Come, Holy Spirit!

Come, breath of God and fill the minds and hearts of your people.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Come, fire of truth and kindle in us the flame of your love.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Come, font of wisdom, enlighten us and give us counsel and insight.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Come, leading spirit and guide our discerning.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Holy Spirit, come!

Went to see Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby  on our day off. Highly recommended if only because of Leonardo DiCaprio’s consummate acting.  I preferred it to the Jack Clayton/Redford version of my youth, partly because it captured the hedonism of the Jazz Age more immediately (and indeed viscerally) than the earlier film; partly because it mirrored the contemporary era in a startling way - there was no such parallelism in the 70’s version. (The ‘shirts scene’ in both is magical, however!)

But neither film really captures Fitzgerald’s rendering of the emptiness of Gatsby’s funeral, and his interrogation of the concept of ‘friendship’ in that bleak last chapter.

A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously and he spoke of the rain in a worried uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came. About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate–first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three month  before.

 I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby’s grave.

 We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-Eyes spoke to me by the gate.

 ”I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked.

 ”Neither could anybody else.”

 ”Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.”

 He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.

 ”The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said.

And it struck me that here was another parallel with our current age; Gatsby’s ‘friends’ were on a par with today’s ‘social media friends’. Numerous, but not truly ‘present’ at times of need.

Or am I being harsh? And what does the Church have to say about the concept of friendship today?

The Clergy Book Group will meet in the Diocesan Centre tomorrow, Wednesday, May 22nd,  14.00 – 15.30 to study Abiding. Written by the Professor of Christianity and the Arts at King’s College London, Ben Quash, the book looks at the idea of ‘abiding’ and what that means for Christian prayer and devotion. Drawing on the wisdom and imagery of modern fiction, film and art as well as key figures in the classical Christian tradition, Quash explores the implications that ‘abiding’ has for our bodies and minds, our relationships and commitments, and our spiritual lives.

The book was to have been introduced by the Revd Ian Boffey, but as he is unable to be present, the introduction will be offered instead by the MDO. One member of the group who cannot be present in person is joining by means of Skype; such a facility will be even more readily available when the current renovations to the Meeting Room have been completed.

Abiding by Ben Quash, Bloomsbury Continuum (2012) ISBN 978-1441151117 (£10.00).

A week or so ago I had the privilege of listening to and learning from the Revd Canon Phil Groves who is the facilitator within the Anglican Communion Office for ‘The Continuing  Indaba and Mutual Listening Project’.

In preparing for the meeting, I came across this volume about the indaba method entitled ‘Creating Space’ http://continuingindaba.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/creating-space.pdf  The second in a series of books published to support Continuing Indaba in the Anglican Communion, it is a compilation of  a wide variety of contextual cases studies  about ways of creating space for listening to God together and about theological dialogue. Alternatives to western models of decision-making are challenged and other cultural models proposed which may have deeper resonances with biblical models.

It is a fascinating book. I learned a lot by reading it and by meeting Phil Groves. I understand the indaba process better, and at greater depth. I commend it to you.