Tuesday 12 January 2021

Discouragement, Hope and Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx

Covid-19 came home ‘to roost’ for us as a family last week. It’s not that Covid has not impacted our lives up to now - of course it has. My husband is working from home full time, my daughter, who should be at university, is still with us, and my particular role as Pioneer and Community Priest in Stanway has had to change and evolve beyond all expectation. Nevertheless, Covid, the virus, has always been an unseen, pervasive enemy ‘out there’. Now, it’s ‘in here’ - in our home, with our daughter developing symptoms and testing positive a week ago: self-isolation for Emily in her room and for us as well. She is fine, having experienced only mild symptoms, and Robin and I have tested negative, so we have been through nothing like the journey of some of you who ‘walk through the valley of the shadow of death’ (Ps 23:4).

I recognise that this dark and difficult Covid time brings with it the most challenging of circumstances, internationally, this century. The impact of this virus plus Brexit plus international political news, such as the behaviour of Donald Trump and his followers in Congress last week resulting in the death of four people, does not bring us hope for 2021. With Covid-19, all people and nations are impacted, regardless of race, religion or nationality, especially the poor and vulnerable. Where do we find hope?

On the wall of my office, I have a beautifully crafted picture painted by Hannah Dunnett, of a house in the hills, with the scripture of Psalm 121 inscribed into the fabric of the landscape (image below): 

‘I lift up my eyes to the hills—     from where will my help come?  My help comes from the Lord,     who made heaven and earth.

The pattern of daily prayer, for lifting our eyes to the beauty of nature (real or in our mind’s eye), the coming before the Lord in prayer – whether silently lifting our situation and our loved ones to God, or the loud ranting anguished cries for help – these bring us hope. Jesus, our Emmanuel – God with us – is not just with us as a babe in a crib at Christmas but is with us daily in our joy and sorrow hopes and disappointments. By his Holy Spirit, he brings comfort and hope, together with new vision and vocation for the future. 

Today in the church calendar we celebrate the festival of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx (1133-1167). I stayed at the retreat house near the remains of the Rievaulx monastery about five years ago. It could have been the place where Psalm 121 was written such is the beauty of the countryside and the many troubled times those hills and the generations of people have lived through. But the thing that struck me today was Aeldred’s faithfulness to the Lord who had called him to Rievaulx. He was there for about 34 years, until his death in 1167. It was a heathen place with no visible presence of the Kingdom of God when he arrived. By the time he died, there was a thriving church and monastery and missional community who were making a huge difference in bringing hope and justice and flourishing to the people and the communities all around them. What made the difference? His gift of loving and friendship with all around him, showing them by who he was and what he did, that he loved God and his neighbour. And his tenacity; the never giving up, no matter the circumstances. Eugene Peterson wrote of the spiritual discipline of faithfulness in his book ‘A Long Obedience in the Same Direction’. Keep your eyes on the way of God through this storm. Don’t give up. Love God and one another in attitude and action. 

Almighty God,
who endowed Aelred the abbot
with the gift of Christian friendship
and the wisdom to lead others in the way of holiness:
grant to your people that same spirit of mutual affection,
so that, in loving one another,
we may know the love of Christ
and rejoice in the eternal possession
     of your supreme goodness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen