Celtic Daily Prayer

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Reflect and pray on who they are and what God is saying to them about what they have heard and experienced during the retreat

Magnus Magnussen put it well when he observed that Roman Clergy said ‘Do as I say and expected to be obeyed, the Celtic clergy said ‘Do as I do’ and hoped to be followed.’ That’s why Soulfriends were encouraged – Anam chara. Sr Benedicta Ward writing about the spirituality of St Cuthbert hits the mark when she says ‘By spirituality then, I mean what Cuthbert himself thought and said and did and prayed in the light of the gospel of Christ.’ Spirituality is how we live, what we think, what we say, what we do, how we pray in embracing and expressing the gospel in our everyday roles, responsibilities and relationships. For our Community this embracing and expressing of the gospel is through the lenses of our Rule of life, Availability and Vulnerability.

Midday Prayer

As a Companion, Novice, Postulant or Friend in Community, we invite you to engage, physically and spiritually, with both soil and soul, in the gardens at Nether Springs. Please be aware that there will be a significant practical element to this weekend. All that we are saying (and very tentatively at that) is that some of those biblical and ethical emphases that were central to the lifestyle and teaching of desert and Celtic monasticism have real similarities to the emphases that God has laid on our own hearts. The discovery of some of their emphases in our search for a Northumbrian spirituality, gave us a language to understand ourselves, and helped us to tell our story. The manifestation of the local expression of the Body of Christ of the Northumbria Community in Australia is a wonderful gathering of a rich and diverse group of individuals, called to honour God and to specifically act as servants to each other and to the local church. Although the group is small they are extremely diverse. A number are involved in training spiritual directors, some are writers, one is a theologian, another connected with chaplaincy work, some are engaged in creative ministries and others in hospitality work. No matter what the gifting and calling of the individuals, the essential charisma is contemplative prayer, vulnerability and availability. Worship is all that we are and all that we do, both inside and outside the structures of the church. All of our lives is a search for God so that everything we are and everything we do is an offering of worship to God. Spirituality is the whole of our lives because it is not about doing but about being. So that whatever we ‘do’ – we do it as the person we are, our personhood (mind, emotions, body, spirit, will) is an integrated whole. This is our being – the same person going to work, cooking a meal, reading the Bible, mowing the lawn, shouting at the kids, saying our prayers, watching the TV, laughing, crying, bored, excited, angry, sad whatever – spirituality touches and influences every part of our lives and every part of our lives touches and influences our spirituality – the life of the whole person in relationship with God. Relationship is not static but dynamic, it is alive and growing, developing, ‘reaching out’ in a constant movement toward change and transformation.

When Cuthbert went to his Inner Farne solitude he built a guest room for God. It is being aware of the teaching of Matthew 25 ‘Inasmuch as you did it to the least… you did it to me’ and of Hebrews 13 which speaks of our ‘entertaining angels unaware’.So the past, present and future are all linked to God’s Now. So Columba, Brigid, Hild, Aidan are all our spiritual contemporaries. Read again Hebrews 12 with this is mind. See the relay Race, the passing of the Baton as the ongoingness of the Communion of the Saints and the continuity of the Church Militant and Triumphant. We embrace the responsibility of taking the heretical imperative: by speaking out when necessary or asking awkward questions that will often upset the status quo; by making relationships the priority, and not reputation. This is why it is crucially important that our spirituality must not be seen as a separate compartment marked sacred whereas real life is lived in all the other compartments marked secular. To do this is to set limits and put boundaries on God. i.e. We only look for Him and are ready to listen to Him when we are involved in those sacred things – prayer, singing of hymns, meditation – and if for whatever reason we fail in our doing of these things then as a consequence we don’t meet with God at all. (Or worse is the thinking that if God speaks only through the Bible – then all we have to do is shut the Bible and this effectively shuts out God).

While there are a number of friends of Northumbria Community scattered across Australia, there is a group of companions and friends who meet bi-monthly in Brisbane. We gather for prayer, liturgy from the Celtic Daily Prayer, interaction with our Rule of Life and fellowship. There are also some smaller groups who meet monthly to engage with the novitiate process and discussing what the Rule looks like in their lives. We are a dispersed Christian Community scattered across the world yet united in our commitment to a daily rhythm of prayer and a common Rule of Life in saying Yes to Availability to God and others and Yes to intentional Vulnerability before God and others. Shaped on the anvil of cultural change, with more questions than answers, the Community’s origins can be traced to relationships formed in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s initially with John and Linda Skinner and Andy Raine in North Northumberland. Here God planted the seeds of vision and vocation in their hearts that bore fruit in the ideas, images, metaphors and concepts that were foundational to the ethos and spirituality of what was to become the Northumbria Community. These were often birthed and grown in the context of an Annual Easter workshop where relationship and teaching were explored. The workshops were to be “small schools of creativity… a place for sharing vision… a time of sharing and joining together as one”. This pattern (begun in 1980) has become an annual high point, underlined by the renewal of Community vows on Holy Island on Easter Sunday. Hospitality was seen in care for the poor. King Oswald gave many gifts to Aidan but he in turn shared them with the ordinary people, including a horse given away and a silver plate melted down, broken up and distributed. ‘Aidan stopped and spoke to whoever he met, both rich and poor. If they were heathen, he invited them to embrace the mystery of faith and be baptised. If they were already believers, he strengthened their faith.’ They had a strong sense of place and knew the importance of the Land, of roots and identity. They spoke of thin places, holy ground. Many of the problem spots in our world are all about land, roots, identity, holy places. If you have young children, Compline can be used as bed-time prayers with them or over them, substituting the child’s or children’s names in the boxed sections whenever they cannot say the prayer for themselves. E.g. ‘In peace will Martha lie down, for it is You, O Lord, You alone who makes her to rest secure.’A deep love of the Scriptures as God’s memory book of relationships and encounter. To listening & learning from the Scriptures, with both the prayerful reading of Lectio divina and studied research of the Bible encouraged. They had a great love of learning but it was a yearning for wisdom not necessarily knowledge. They had a wonderful balance and were known as Saints and Scholars. They wanted to learn how to live, how to follow Jesus as Lord as a way of life. New monasticism, as in any expression of Monasticism, stands in the wisdom tradition – which is not an accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, but a constant application to life actually lived. ‘A wise person does not gather and dispense insights, but rather has the heart to live those insights.’ This is specially devised for use in the middle of a busy working day. For this reason it is short, and can be prayed in the time it takes to boil a kettle, especially if committed to memory. Some find it helpful to make a point of saying it whilst moving around (whilst preparing lunch for instance) as a reminder to pray as we work and work as we pray. Others find it a welcome opportunity to withdraw from the tensions and busyness of the day to spend some time quiet and alone with God, putting the day’s work into a different perspective. When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.’ Rudolph Bahro