Disciplined reflection on experience
Centering the soul’s aspirations entirely on God
We are about to begin the Saint Scholastica Cycle of Shaping the Parish (STP). We’ll start with about 40 participants, most from US parishes, a bit more than a third from Zambia, Dubai, Haiti and Canada. The parishes are small and large, rich and poor, in Manhattan and in Circle, Alaska. They are stable, in decline and growing. Most of those who begin will continue with it for the two years. Some will withdraw – health issues, job changes, discovering that a Zoom based program doesn’t provide the social glue they desire, and finding that they can’t keep up with the amount of reading and preparation necessary.
They are joining together in this work because they love God and love their parish churches.
They are joining together in a process of learning through disciplined reflection on their experience
That disciplined reflection has at least two aspects to it. First, there’s a process, steps or stages. Second, there are models and theories that offer a lens to look through so you might better understand your experience.
The process
A stance and a competency
There are two elements to this. First, it’s about taking on a reflective stance. A willingness to ponder and be thoughtful. It requires accessing our curiosity rather than our defensiveness. There’s a need for a reflective spirit in parish churches.
Esther de Waal's wrote in Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality. “It is very fascinating to see how, in the ten years since this book was first written, increasing numbers of lay people like myself are turning to the monastic tradition. Here they find support on their Christian journey which they often fail to find in the institutional church, where parish and diocesan life can be extremely busy, and seemingly lacking in any sort of contemplative focus.”
In the 1988 retreat of the Order of the Ascension Father Kenneth Leech said this –"Any authentic priesthood must derive from an inner core of silence, a life hid with Christ in God ...Only those who are at home with silence and darkness will be able to survive in, and minister to, the perplexity and confusion of the modern world. Let us seek that dark silence out of which an authentic ministry and a renewed theology can grow and flourish.” In those days all the Professed Members were priests. Obviously, his wisdom applies to all the baptized. To live as we are called to live, to share in the Divine Life, we need an inner silence.
The second element is some competency with the steps of effective reflection upon experience. One method for doing that is to think of the process as involving four stages.
1. Experience – the incident or possibly a pattern of behavior in the parish or a group
2. Identify – This is attaching a name to the incident or experience. We want everyone to be looking at the same thing.
3. Analyze – We might explore the identified experience in terms of what we felt, thought and did during the incident. And we might also make use of a model or theory.
4. Generalize – This might be a statement of what we’ve learned and what we might do differently in a similar situation.
For example, suppose we have developed a sense that the parish isn’t having a very significant impact in the lives of its parishioners. In the language of David Brooks, it isn’t leaving much of a beneficial mark upon people. That would be a very broad concern. Different from trying to understand the conflict between Martha and Mary at the vestry meeting last night. And suppose we decide to see if we might better understand the weak impact and find ways to improve things by exploring it in terms of cultural density. We’d use the theory to analyze. And that in turn might lead us to a few actions we could take to improve.
The competency involved isn’t as much about following the four stages as it is in being aware of the four stages and working to engage each. Some groups will be very disciplined and go through this step by step. But frequently the process will be more erratic with members jumping to a generalization and then realizing they don’t have much data to support that learning. Or they’ll be analyzing what happened during the meeting and all of a sudden realize that half the group is looking at an event that occurred just after the beginning and others are talking about what happened much later. They haven’t really identified the experience they want to explore.
MORE - Learning from Experience A resource used in lab training programs to learn from the group’s experience.
Models, maps and theory
Like a pane of glass framing and subtly distorting our vision, mental models determine what we see. - Peter Senge
In The Mystery of Sacrifice Evelyn Underhill offers us an ascetical model, “You are the Body of Christ....That is to say; in you and through you the method and work of the Incarnation must go forward. You are meant to incarnate in your lives the themes of your adoration. You are to be taken, consecrated, broken, and made a means of grace; vehicles of the Eternal Charity.” It’s a kind of map for the journey we’re all on. It tells me who we are, “the Body of Christ”; something about our purpose, “vehicles of the Eternal Charity” and what we might expect on our journey of being made into that, “You are to be taken, consecrated, broken, and made a means of grace.” And in the course of things it’s likely that some spiritual guide will note that this was the pathway of Jesus and is the action of the Eucharist. And all that might cause a person to see Sunday mass and their own life in a new way. It’s a mental model that can help me see something that is taking place.
When participants in STP gather on September 20 they’ll make use of two mental models. First will be the “Three Purposes of the Parish Church” a model that looks at the parish in regard to 1. The worship of God 2. The formation of the People of God for the sake of the world 3. Being a sanctifying presence in the broader community. They’ll have done some reading and used an assessment form as tools to reflect upon their parishes. A bit later they’ll be asked to use another model to reflect on how the group worked together in the first part of their time together. They’ll explore how the group dealt with the task it had and how well it managed the relationships in the group as they worked on the task.
By the time they complete the programs they’ll have repeated that process dozens of times as they build up a degree of competence in applying models, theories and maps to both the parish as a body, a system, and to themselves as actors within the body.
Along the way we’ll look at how our mental models can also confuse and mislead us. From “How Cognitive Biases Affect Our Thinking” – “Cognitive biases are part of being human. Mental shortcuts allow us to function in a complex world and ensure our safety and survival. But in some situations they misfire and cause us to simplify the world in an inaccurate way. But with conscious effort, we can work to overcome them.”
More on models – In An Energy Not Its Own, Appendix C “About Models” and “Jumping into our place: Mental models and images” “The Purposes of the Parish Church”, Chapter One in An Energy Not Its Own and “The worship of God: It carried within it an energy not its own”
Prayer and spiritual practice
The words … stay with me throughout the day
On most mornings Sister Michelle and I say the Daily Office together on Zoom. It’s part of the Rule of the Order of the Ascension and it’s one of the central spiritual disciplines in Anglican tradition. We say the psalms, read Scripture, and pray the ancient collects. We do all that knowing that others are doing the same in homes, parish chapels, and using Zoom and livestream. Today Job, Acts and John are with us offering another lens through which to see our lives and our world.
Blessed be the Lord! * for he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city. (Ps 31)
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth (Job 19:25)
In the tender compassion of our God *
the dawn from on high shall break upon us (Benedictus Dominus Deus)
in you we live and move and have our being (A Collect for Guidance)
Mother Melanie Rowell, SCP wrote, “Praying the office has revolutionized my spiritual life. The repetition of Canticles such as the Magnificat remind me of God’s faithfulness. Reading the various appointed Scriptures gives me an opportunity to read a wide swath of the Bible. This is exceedingly valuable when I have to preach: it reminds me of verses I might have forgotten about and gives me context for Scripture as a whole. Praying the office is not always exciting—I’ll be honest, some days, I don’t want to do it! But it has been my rock, a constant source of encouragement, inspiration, and hope during the times when things haven’t been going so well. I cling to it, and the words of these Canticles, Psalms, prayers, Scriptures, etc., stay with me throughout the day.” (The Daily Office)
Our Sunday Eucharist and daily office are another type of lens through which we can see life. “Worship lifts the soul out of its preoccupation with itself and its activities and centres its aspirations entirely on God.” (The Vision of God, K.E. Kirk)
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA