Home again

What a fantastic weekend!  We really feel we have been on holiday.  Symptoms were minimal, a tiny bit of tingling carrying my fruit and juice to the table at breakfast time, and again in my feet when the wind blew on them this morning.  And some wind and bloating which was largely due to over-eating.  The food was excellent, but seemed to come round at shorter and shorter intervals.  Dave has been very active in the pool, playing tennis and table-tennis, so was always ready for a home-made biscuit at tea and coffee breaks, but I was pernanently full.  No-one's fault but my own.  I never could resist a pudding.

We were a group of 30-odd mostly middle-aged or retired people, a good mix of gender, with couples and singles and a constantly changing mix of groups.  I wasn't aware of anyone appearing to feel isolated, and several of the couples seemed to be consciously participating as separate individuals.  If it was indeed conscious it was a lovely, gracious thing to do.

We had four sessions with our speaker, held informally in the library where there was just room for us to sit on comfy chairs all round the walls.  Our speaker was a founder member of the Northumbia Community, which is a modern-day monastic community.  Their rule of life is vulnerability and availability.  They have a mother house in Northumbria where they seek a deeper relationship with God in a daily rhythm of prayer and Scripture based on celtic spirituality.  There is a greater use of symbolism than Baptists are used to, although we are gradually losing our prejudices.  So during our weekend we used candles, a holding cross, a cairn of objects representing our memories of the weekend, a knotted prayer cord and the familiar symbols of bread and wine.  Beauty and creativity are seen as being gifts of God, to be celebrated and allowed to lead us closer to God's heart.

We didn't have lectures.  Roy did talk to us at length about his own experiences, and in particular his love of Norfolk where his uncle and aunt prayed for him, their godson, all through his childhood and young adulthood.  In each session we actively particpated: a time of silent contemplation, an exercise of imagination as we walked through a Bible story, sharing our experience of the weekend in small groups, praying for each other, collecting the cairn objects, taking communion together.  Each day we used part of the Daily Office of the Northumbria Community. 

I didn't hear a negative comment.  I am sure the weekend meant something different to each of us, but it was clear that there was much for us to think about and work on as a community, both in the deepening of our own spirituality and in our relating to an unchurched world.  Living out our relationship with God is informed by Jesus, particularly by the Sermon on the Mount.

I hope what I have written is true to what we experienced over the weekend.  The Northumbria Community has a brilliant website which explains it better than I can, although it can't tell you what Dereha Baptist got up to over the weekend.

Very tired but happy.  Going to bed now.