Capturing neighbourhood life in a civil war

Belfast is a beautiful and touching movie, that seeks to capture what life must have been like for just one family living in a Belfast neighbourhood as "the troubles" unfolded in the late 1960s. It captures the tragedy, stupidity, and humanity of civil war, violence, prejudice, and religion in its most divisive form.

The scene that I found the most poignant was when Ma and Pa (the wife and husband) argue about leaving Belfast for a better life in England. Ma says

"You an me, we have known each other since we

were toddlers. We’ve known this street, and every

street round it, all our lives, an every man, woman, an’

chil’ that lives in every bloody house, whether we like

it or not.

I like it.

An’ y’ say you’ve a wee garden for them boys? But

here they can play where the hell they like, cos

everybody knows them, everybody likes them, and

everybody looks after them.

If we go over the water, them people’s not gonna

undestan’ a word we say, an’ half o’ them’ll take the

hand outta us for soundin’ different.

The o’r half, they’ll hate us cos men here are killin

their young sons on our streets, an’ they think we

couldn’ give a shite.

Y’ think they’ll welcome us with open arms, an’ say

‘Come on in, an’ well done for stealin a house off of

us?’"

The movie is a great testimony to the value of community and of family. 

Cultivating a heart like God

What should the life of a Christian be like? Is there a "normal" Christian life? How does one balance prayer, contemplation, and action? Over the past two thousand years, many have wrestled with these questions, both theoretically and practically, and provided diverse answers. My friend and fellow "Holy" Scribbler, Charles Ringma, reflects on his own struggles, in A Fragile Hope: Cultivating a Hermitage of the Heart. In 2016, he took a six-month sabbatical and spent much of the time in a hermitage in the Australian bush, and published his reflections in Sabbath Time: A Hermitage Journey of Retreat, Return and Communion.

A Fragile Hope is the reflections of Charles motivated by feelings that on returning to a "normal" life, filled with responsibilities and distractions, he has struggled to re-create some of the special time at the hermitage. He provides a helpful summary of this book in the Afterword (page 103). 

...the Christian life is about entering into a transformative relationship with God through Christ in the Spirit. This relationship reorients us to become more and more like Christ and more and more engaged in gods concern for our world. 

But living this way is a huge challenge, for it calls us to ongoing conversion away from stubborn self-determination and futile self-sufficiency and towards greater humility, dependence on God's provision, sustanence, and direction for our lives. This means that we are called into a constant relationship with and attentiveness to the God who both nurtures us and sends us into the world. 

This journey has nothing to do with progress or status, but rather an ongoing encounter with the One who is the very source of life, who is everywhere present in our world, and calls us to intimacy and service.

This call invites us to build a hermitage of the heart. Such a hermitage is not a place, but a disposition. It is a tapestry of existence, a fabric of life, a way of being. It is who we are in both the inner recesses of our being and our engagement with others and the world. 

Such a hermitage is both a gift and a task. It is a gift from the ever-brooding Spirit, who brings to us the riches of Christ, and it is a task that we shepherd and steward as we engage those around us. 

Charles is vulnerable in the book, humbly and honestly sharing his struggles. He is eighty years old, has spent his adult life following Jesus, and by "worldly" standards, has had a "successful" Christian life. He started Teen Challenge in Australia, completed a Ph.D., has published many books, and taught in leading seminaries in Asia and in Canada. But, here you see some of his discouragements, doubts, despairs, struggles, and failings. He wrestles with his own inner turmoil, his own sin, and with God, particularly his feeling that God fails to act to reform the church and to create a more just world.

Charles shares how he has benefitted from a diversity of voices from the past two thousand years, including the spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Chapter 5), Francis (21), Ignatius (26), Benedict (14), the Celtic monks (9), and the Anabaptists (18). These brief engagements help put our twenty-first century struggles in historical context and may whet the appetite to engage more with some of these diverse and ancient traditions. 

The limitations of some metaphors for the life journey of a Christian, particularly the medieval ladder and pilgrimage are pointed out. But there should be movement: upward, inward, and outward. The journey involves moving toward God, nurturing our inner being (soul), and towards others.

There are many dimensions to the hermitage of the heart. Here are a few.

"Liminality is experiential, a sort of no man's land, where previous certainties have collapsed, and new certainties have not yet swum into view." (page 86).

Be a God botherer; not about personal circumstances, but bother God about the state of our world, and why God does not act in our world. There is a beautiful and heartfelt, song of lament, by Charles on pages 18-19.

Engage the ordinary and seek God in the ordinary.

Life is messy. Engage it but do not be consumed by it.

Hermitages are places where hermits lived. A hermitage has come to symbolise a special place where an individual may withdraw from the world and possibly encounter God. Although advocating a "hermitage of the heart", Charles still advocates for the spirituality of place. The purpose of "sacred" places "is not to contain God in some way, but to focus ourselves in relation to God" (page 32). 

Monk's Hermitage in a Cave 

How did the book challenge me personally? Unlike Charles, I am reluctant to reduce my activism and spend more time praying. I still have the naivety and hubris to think I can make a real difference.

The book is brief and could be read in a single setting. It is easy to read but deep and dense. It is better to read it slowly and return to it. There are 28 chapters in one hundred pages. Just reading a chapter a day is a good approach.

Aside: I was intrigued to know the genealogy of the "hermitage of the heart" metaphor. I discovered that at the same time last year  Hermitage of the Heart: 40 Days to Peace, Prayer, and the Presence of God by John Michael Talbot was published.

 I thank Charles for the gift of a copy of the book. Last month we discussed it at our theology reading group, with Charles present.