Wednesday 30th March 2005
Contemplative Fire is a new project by Philip Roderick to reconstruct language, liturgy, symbol and sacrament, sponsored by the diocese’s Cutting Edge Ministries fund. Its worship gatherings are packed full of people each month. Below Philip explains the project’s ‘different way of seeing’.
There’s a great deal of hunger about, and an impoverishment of spirit. Spiritual hunger and thirst either draws people towards depth and spaciousness or plunges them into anxiety and rage. I am seeing and being privileged to be on the receiving end of both in the past seven months.
Since stepping out in faith last Pentecost from parish ministry into the exhilarating but scary world of a ‘fresh expression of church’, I have known the need for wisdom and discernment as perhaps never before to such an extent. The extraordinary opportunity afforded by a personal sponsor and by the Oxford Diocese’s Cutting Edge Ministries to balance creativity and innovation with the honouring of our great spiritual tradition is wonderfully liberating and generative.
Everything emerges and interconnects unless we choose to interrupt the flow of grace. I believe that God as trinity is clearly inviting us all to be bold. For those who love and support the inherited model of church and for those who are being called out onto the edges to travel alongside deliciously subversive individuals, niche groups and sub-cultures, the invitation is clear: give and receive.
Such refining in the fire of ‘holding the tension of the opposites’ in ancient and modern has been my experience both in piloting many of the most vibrant processes within Contemplative Fire while at St Michaels, Amersham on the Hill and in the seeding and supporting the extraordinary emergence of The Quiet Garden Movement as an international ministry of hospitality and prayer. Contemplative Fire, as it births new cells and gatherings in this diocese and other areas, seeks to honour and embody such a heady admixture of legacy and innovation, groundedness and serial entrepreneurship!
Belonging
Contemplative Fire offers to ‘build belonging and guide growth’ on the journey into God. To that end, Around the Hearth groups, meeting in peoples homes in Threes, Sevens and Twelves; monthly Gatherings for contemplative communion by candlelight in simple but expressive venues; bi-monthly Pilgrimage to Now/here prayer/meditation walks on an estate near Henley on Thames.
Peregrini, or Travelling Companions are those who, through a rhythm of life, prayerfully, creatively and financially seek to express their longing for depth, openness and generosity of spirit in an extended community. These will form the core learning community for a major new opportunity for spiritual formation and discipleship which will be open to anyone. The Source: Essence and Energy on the Way of Christ will take place on the second Saturday of every other month, commencing in September in Thame Barns Centre. This major programme in the experience of Christian Spirituality will offer a different way of seeing, a different way of being for many of those who are attracted to the figure of Jesus but perhaps not so much to the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the institutional form of church.
For details of Contemplative Fire’s events please telephone Revd Philip Roderick at 01494 758878 or email: contemplativefire@btinternet.com
Photos Frank Blackwell