Angels That Hoover

 

Our new Community Coach (our name is Soulfriend) is a double-act - Dorothy and Peter Neilson. At our annual retreat for those in vows Peter compared us to the Para Olympics: we are a Para church and a Parable - we are carrying life from God that is powerful and unpredictable. ‘I keep meeting people in this dispersed community who say “I’ve seen something”’ says Peter. ‘You are called to cradle something. A cradle contains fragility and the infinite possibility of God.’
 
Dorothy told how she could never sleep at night because she could not give up the idea that she had to be in charge. Then she shared in an Aidan and Hilda Night Prayer. Someone misread it and prayed ‘We lie down this night with God … the angels hoovering around our beds’. They should have read ‘hover’, but Dorothy, now assured that she need no longer lie awake worrying about things like hoovering,  quietly slid into sleep.
 
Peter talked about the four types of soil in Jesus’ parable of the sower. The Bible’s text is the same for all, he observed, but its effect is not. Why was Jesus’ truth not received? And why is Aidan and Hilda truth not received? Some thought they knew it already, - the seed fell on the hard, well-trodden path. The well-trodden path of Christendom and of 20th century patterns of congregation is like that. Some seed fell on to shallow soil. A danger for the new monastic movement is that early enthusiasts do not continue to dig deeper. Seeds that fell onto good soil produced varied amount of fruit. The different quantities of fruit are not a matter for comparison but for celebration.
 
Our new Community Soul Friend left us with two questions to reflect upon: What limits our flourishing? What facilitates and encourages it?
Posted at 01:16am on 19th January 2013
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