John Allen, Thoughts of a C of E Priest

The site is trialling a new blog from one of our readers John Allen. John is a former Priest of the C of E drawn to Sturminster in retirement by the presence of his close family.

The idea of the blog is to create a series of thought pieces each with a particular focus, ideas for life if you will. They are framed in a Christian ethical context but he insists they are written for all readers be they believers or otherwise.

John initially started these blogs as a collection of writings for a small book in which he hoped to distil his personal knowledge, experience and learning of a Christian life.  He didn’t aim to be prescriptive about his belief in God although of course he is a committed Christian but rather his main objective was and is to pass on whatever benefits arise from reading them to an eclectic and perhaps promiscuous reader.

He would much like your feedback and can be contacted on [email protected]

The blogs are broadly titled ‘LOVE IS THE MEANING’

INTRODUCTION

My purpose in writing is simply to describe and explain my personal experience of becoming aware of the presence of God in human life and a growing two-way relationship with God.    This has given me a strong sense of purpose and meaning in my life.   In spite of my many inadequacies it has enabled me to be happy and to strive for ultimate fulfilment in whatever circumstances I find myself.  It has set me free from too much self-regard, so I  can genuinely lead a humble life that refuses to be humiliated and a confident life which is free from pride but full of thanksgiving for the interior resourcefulness and sense of joy that I believe God entrusts  to me though in no way do I deserve so rich a blessing.

I feel an inner compulsion to write out of a deep concern for the many people who find it hard to believe in the existence of such a God but are aware of a deep spiritual need at the core of human existence, and for those who have a glimmer of faith which they long to hold onto but fear is getting weaker.   I write for those who feel confused and guarded about religion in general but who recognize that it is still a persistent part of the human experience.  Is it to be rejected as a false and sometimes dangerous part of human consciousness?   And I write for those who are members of various branches of the Christian Church but are sometimes disappointed and frustrated by what they perceive as these churches’ failures to make a meaningful and convincing connection with ordinary people in the world as it is today.   I write for those who would like to know more about the spiritual dimension in life and are willing to explore this possibility.

At the outset I must reassure my readers that in no way is this a polemic.   I happen to be a retired priest of the Church of England.  I worked as a parish priest for 39 years, and since 1997 continue to serve as an unpaid priest, part of a team serving parishes in Dorset.   But in all this time, though I have a deep affection and sense of gratitude to the Church of England, I have felt something of an outsider.   This sense of loving detachment has, I think, enabled me to put myself in the shoes of doubters on the fringes.  The fact is I blundered into the church rather like a cuckoo.  I have always been made to feel welcome, but there is a part of me which has always taken the official church with “a pinch of salt”.

So I am sharing my experience and reflection with you as if we are strangers who happen to meet as travellers on a journey through a new and unfamiliar landscape.   The way ahead at times seems to be perplexing and challenging but we are fired with a hopeful enthusiasm to locate and achieve our final destination and survive and enjoy the scenes through which we will pass together.   On the way we shall share one another’s insights and doubts and I hope will grow in friendship and trust.   I think it is important that we are prepared to ask searching questions,  to listen and to respond and to accept that every answer simply leads to the next question.  We will need a mutual determination to keep going on,  a desire to gain a clearer view in the distance of the place we are seeking and a willingness to tackle difficulties and setbacks with goodwill and a sense of humour.

As we look around us I think we are all amazed at the incredible diversity of the world in which we find ourselves.   No two people are completely alike.  We each have our own unique DNA.   Individual identity and personal freedom are of supreme value and yet we cannot live without a necessary interdependence on one another.   We are individuals who have to live in relationship within various social networks – family – work colleagues –  love and friendship and as members of organizations.  So at the beginning of this little book about personal faith and spirituality I have to face up to a kind of natural tension between the organized community of Faith to which I belong and my own personal experience and reflection.

I suppose we all have to live within this kind of tension.   We have to be loyal to the understanding and objectives of the social group to which we belong and so we tend to be conformists.   Sometimes it seems easier to let others do the thinking and make the decisions.   We are aware of the shortcomings and failures, and sometimes we grumble and criticise,  but it is less trouble to go along with things as they are and not to have to take personal responsibility but there is no improvement or inspiring vision unless certain individuals, at certain times,  are prepared to “stick their necks out”.   Important changes are nearly always motivated by individual people who see the bigger picture and, often at some risk to themselves, are prepared to “stand up and be counted”.

I have been most fortunate in always enjoying my job as a parish priest.   Later on in this little book I will tell you more about it.   The fact is that as a priest I have found that people looked to me for personal and spiritual help because I had an official position in the Church  similar to the way people go to a doctor to confide their troubles and fears.   As a young man I was proud to wear a clerical collar and walk about the parish in my cassock and all through my life I have been amazed and humbled by the way people have put their trust in me.

I have found myself in this position because the Church of England has entrusted to me this sacred responsibility  and yet there are times when I have felt frustrated and critical by what I see as the short sightedness and failures of the church, and I know that many good and loyal church members share in this sense of irritation and disappointment.   Now in the closing years of my life I am deeply aware of the urgency of the situation.

A world which has largely lost the sense of the presence and reality of God is nevertheless aware of an unarticulated spiritual need and longing but has lost faith and trust in organized religion.   Nations and individual people are lacking a strong,  sustaining and relevant faith and too often it seems that the

Church is preoccupied with its own domestic concerns and is out of touch with ordinary people.

To write this blog I have taken off my clerical collar.   I am simply a very ordinary human being stretching out my hand in friendship to any who care to listen.   I have begun to come to know God from outside the church but much of what I hope to share with you could only be articulated because of the loving nurture and teaching which I been so fortunate to receive within the church and yet I am no clone of the church.  I have discovered within the Church and from pondering my way through the Bible that God relates to individual people one at a time in a way to which each can respond but in the context of a community of faith and it may surprise you that this community is at its heart wildly and disturbingly radical for God is radical.  He reaches the roots of communities and individuals and transforms them, often to the discomfort of the existing world order.

I am no rebel priest sounding off from the safety of my retirement.  I trust I am not “a loose canon “ or maverick  but I simply hope to speak to others, from wherever they may come, out of the transparency of a loving heart.   I am not saying this is the way so walk in it.  I am telling you about my way with the hope that this may encourage you, in relationship with God to find the best way for you.

Finally my personal thoughts are of little value unless they grow out of an objective and inherited reality which has been authenticated by the experience of generations of wise and prayerful people.   This spiritual and intellectual inheritance is preserved in  the Bible and in two thousand years worth of Christian writing which has been,  and continues to be, tried and tested as a distinctive way of life which is strong and creative and carries people into the future with hope and confidence.    It is this alone that undergirds all I have written.

Strange though it may seem,  I have been inspired to write this little book, by a thirty year old woman who in 1373 became very ill.   Nobody has ever known her name.   She thought she was dying.  As she wrestled with her condition she experienced the gift of a series of revelatory insights into the nature of God’s love for individual people.

To her surprise she recovered and she spent the next twenty years thinking, praying and eventually writing her little book, which been a tremendous encouragement, inspiration and comfort to generations of ordinary people like ourselves who struggle to find a meaning in their lives.

“YOU WOULD KNOW GOD’S MEANING  ?    KNOW IT WELL.  LOVE WAS HIS MEANING.