Pete Greig's Blog: Scrambled Greig, page 2

The Space Between Lives

85% of my time as a pastor (maybe more) is invisible. It’s spent behind the scenes building teams. Not preaching. Not counselling. Not studying. Nothing worth sharing on social media. Not even praying.

Most of my waking, working day is spent quietly choreographing the space between lives, noticing, listening & over-communicating, trying to preempt problems. I’m aware that this is not the public perception of leadership (Note to self: if my profile pic ever shows me holding a mic what does this actually say?)

In the natural world we know that seeds germinate & fruit forms whenever the soil is healthy. As in nature so in super-nature: whenever teams are healthy, culture thrives, life reproduces life, fruit forms in season.

But when relationships go wrong everything swerves to rot. It’s exhausting & demoralizing. Businesses, charities & churches alike quickly become driven & machine-like whenever their leaders start prioritising productivity above people, results above relationships. They are held together internally only by an outward display of results.

I wish they spent longer on these soft skills in seminaries & business schools. I wish we looked for EQ as much as IQ in those who aspire to be our executives, our politicians and our pastors. I long for leaders who understand that being relational & nurturing healthy relationships is not just a desirable part of the job. It is the job.

In the famous words of the late, great Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

And in the even more famous words of the greatest leader of all time (addressed to his own disconcertingly unimpressive senior team): “I have called you friends.” (Jn.15:15)

Dawn Chorus

“ Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”~ Rabindranath Tagore

Most mornings these days I leave the window open at night to welcome the wild, ecstatic hallelujah at the start of each new day. The song thrush first - actually a while before any light at all appears, and then the full orchestra: blackbird crescendoing with wren, robin riffing with chaffinch.

Birds sing before sunrise, I’m told, not because they are happy but because they have been woken by the cold and it is not yet light enough to hunt for food or a mate. They sing when they are constrained, cold and desperate - in anticipation rather than celebration. Once satiated they fall silent.

We are communicants in this mystery. Participants in this moment when the sweetest, most startling hallelujah arises - contrary to anything we ever expected - in the darkness preceding the dawn, in the shivers that yearn for a sunrise, the hunger before the feast.

““Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.”‬”

— Psalm 57:8

The unnecessary beauty of God

The first verb in the entire Bible is the Hebrew word בָּרָא (bārā') which means to shape, form, fashion or create. This is a word used exclusively in the Old Testament with God as its subject.

In fact, the first thing we’re ever told about God is that He is a creative force: ‘In the beginning God created…’ (Gen. 1:1)

Before we know anything else about God, we discover that he is a maker of matter. At the heart of the universe there is an aesthetic entity, a Being whose very nature is extravagantly imaginative, unnecessarily beautiful, lavishly innovative.

A sort of holy loneliness

Surveying the hysteria of contemporary culture and particularly the crisis of leadership in the church, I am convinced that the quiet, remote disciplines of prayer and pilgrimage, silence and solitude far from being extraneous to modern life are urgently, startlingly essential for anyone aspiring to live prophetically and consistently within such turbulent times.

Nothing but our hidden lives in Christ can lend our public witness for Christ the necessary credibility of dissonance and depth.

Our loveliness amidst the ugliness flowers only from a sort of holy loneliness.

Somehow the simple, time-worn practice of private prayer - merely the maintenance of a personal devotional life - has become an act of outright defiance against the contemporary cult of narcissistic expediency.

Shouldn’t we sometimes arise from our knees a little taller? What if we walked out of the wilderness into the world eyes afire, fists swinging, senses sharpened, saying: ‘Watch out world, I am here with questions for your answers, I have breathed immortal air, alone with All That Matters!’?

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“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.” ~ Luke 4:14

“But this kind goeth not out save by prayer and fasting.” ~ Matthew 17:21

“But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you.”

— St. John of the Cross

Day 21: Holy Isle of Lindisfarne

- sadly our final episode of #thepilgrimpodcast, in which we explore Holy Island, and try to process all that happened over the past three weeks walking from Iona to Lindisfarne in the footsteps of Saint Aidan.

Day 20: Crossing to Lindisfarne

- after almost 3 weeks walking I’m crossing the sands to Lindisfarne at low tide on the old pilgrim trail. It’s an exhilarating moment, captured in a final, powerful song by Rich Dawson

Day 19: St Cuthbert's Cave (Cuthbert's Way)

- in which we shelter from the rain in St Cuthbert’s Cave, discuss unfulfilled prophecy and, um, Elton John, while Rich Dawson knocks out another stunning song inspired by #AidansWay written and released on the road. #ThePilgrimPodcast #lectio365

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*[errata - Cuthbert’s gospel, found in his coffin, was that of John not Mark. The number of monks who carried his coffin has been variously depicted as six, seven, or twelve.)

Day 18: Yeavering Bell (Cuthbert's Way)

- in which we cross from Scotland into England , Rich Dawson gets a bit too Celtic, and we stumble upon a little-known place where a baptism service once lasted all day, dawn to dusk, and didn’t stop for more than a month.

Day 17: Scottish Borders (Cuthbert's Way)

- in which we attempt to burn a cowpat, acknowledge rogue emotions and discuss the power of contemplative prayer while Rich Dawson tries to play a song without breathing.

Day 16: Maxton (Cuthbert's Way)

… in which Rich makes a shocking confession as we sit around in a graveyard discussing death as the ultimate pilgrimage - and other cheery subjects.