Nurture Your Inner Slob...

Bishop Stephen's new book 'Do nothing to change your life' started off life as a piece for The Door. He wrote about the importance of finding a few minutes each day to do nothing, to reflect: in those moments God can be found.

Below we print an extract from his book, published by Church House Publishing.

A couple of years ago I was due to lead an assembly at a Church of England comprehensive school that I visited regularly.

This is a tough gig: seven or eight hundred adolescents, crowded into a hall first thing on a Monday morning, and forced to endure a hymn, a prayer, a worthy talk and, usually, a ticking off. One rises to give the talk to be greeted by a sea of faces grimacing back, as if to say, 'Go on then: impress me!' On this occasion my anxiety levels were particularly high since I had not really prepared anything much to say. It was the beginning of Lent, and I had a vague idea about encouraging them to take something on rather than give something up, but as I walked to the school I was all too aware that I was in the fast lane of the motorway, with no petrol in the tank and I had just driven past the services.

But these moments of panic can also be moments of prayer, moments when we are more open to the wiles of God. And it was almost as I got up to speak that a crazy idea was suddenly born within me. Now, I don't really know where these ideas come from.  They appear to come from without and it's hard to even categorise them as your idea at all. It is like a gift. Suddenly one is aware of what to say and what to do, and if there was time to analyse it, or even prepare it more carefully, it wouldn't have the same power. So I stood up and found myself saying something like this: 'We live in a crazy, frantic world. Our world is full of movement and noise. Even this morning in the few hours since you woke up you have probably filled your time with the radio, the TV, the computer, the play-station; you've probably phoned someone and texted half a dozen others. As you got dressed, washed, showered, ate your breakfast, came to school, noise and busyness have been accompanying your every move. I believe many of the world's problems are caused by our inability to sit still and to be quiet and to reflect. I believe that in this season of Lent we should try to give up being so frantic, and we should take on some moments of stillness.' Then I stopped, as if I had lost my thread (actually it felt as if the thread were being handed to me inch by inch, and even I was not aware what was at the end). And I said to them, 'Hey, you don't know what on earth I'm talking about, so let me give you a demonstration. This is what I'm suggesting you do, each day in Lent, for exactly one minute. It will change your life.' I then picked up a chair, placed it in the centre of the stage, and slowly and carefully sat down upon it, with my feet slightly part, and with my back straight and with my hands resting gently on my knees. And for a minute I sat still. I didn't say anything, and I didn't do anything. I wasn't even consciously praying. I was just sitting there. And I breathed deeply, and I thought about my breathing. And when I reckoned the minute was over, I stood up.

But before I could say my next bit, there was a huge, spontaneous round of applause.  Now, I had done lots of assemblies in that school On many occasions I had slaved over what I would do or say to capture the imaginations of the young people. But I had never had a response like this.

In fact, in the days that followed, I was stopped in the street on several occasions by parents who told me that their child had come home and told them about the priest who took assembly and just sat on the stage in silence for a minute and then suggested they might do the same thing. Because when the applause died down that's what I said. I just suggested that sitting still, being silently attentive to things deep within ourselves and things beyond ourselves, would make a difference. You didn't need to call it prayer. You didn't need to call it anything, because it would be in those moments of sedulous stillness that God could be discovered.

Like all the best sermons, I really needed to hear that one myself. I shudder to think of people who know me reading this book. I fall a long way short of the diligent day dreaming I am recommending here, and they know it! But I believe that people will either recover this way of living and enjoying life, or they will perish. We urgently need to stop imagining everything is so urgent. Thus we will learn to nurture our inner slob.