From tim at saint-uriels.org Fri Nov 7 05:49:17 2008 From: tim at saint-uriels.org (Fr Tim Mansfield) Date: Fri Nov 7 05:49:36 2008 Subject: [st uriel's] St Uriel's events Nov-Dec 2008 Message-ID: <35565cab0811070349l6da69465i8e93b66a33b0082d@mail.gmail.com> Hi Folks, A couple of weeks ago a group of St Uriel's parish regulars gathered to discuss what they wanted in a church. We talked for an hour or two, shared some thoughts and came to some decisions. I wanted to let you know a little of what we talked about. As you know, for most of the last year, we have been meeting each week for a service. Initially, a lay service and since my ordination a Eucharist service (known in some communities as Mass or Holy Communion). In the last few months, because my mother's illness meant that it was hard for me to predict when I would be in Sydney, services have been intermittent (and not terribly well announced). Rather than simply return to what we have been doing, I thought it might be sensible to take advantage of the hiatus to pause for a moment and ask if what we were doing actually served the needs of the people who were coming along. I asked the group to consider what they might be expecting from a church that they weren't getting from what we've been doing. The answers were quite coherent across the group. Everyone wanted to do more to build a sense of social connection in the parish ? to get to know each other better, to feel a sense of solace in coming to church. Everyone also wanted a chance to study texts ? especially Gnostic texts ? and discuss them together in a fairly structured way. Several people present also wanted to engage in spiritual practice together in addition to the current liturgy ? meditation and prayer in which we practice as a group. After we'd talked about all that, I made a proposal that we shift our emphasis towards more reading, discussion and spiritual practice and hence celebrate the Eucharist a little less frequently. The plan for the moment is to celebrate the Holy Eucharist once a month and in the other weeks gather for a less formal meeting with a short meditation or contemplative prayer and discussion of a text we'd all read in the week before. We'll start this new programme this Sunday (9 Nov) at 6pm at our usual venue of 15 Francis St, Darlinghurst (just half a block from Hyde Park). This week will be a basic introduction to the simple practice of centering prayer and an introductory discussion of Gnosticism. >From next week, we'll start a more structure discussion of the book "Living Gnosticism" by Father Jordan Stratford. We hope this shift will serve the needs of our parish community a little more effectively. As we try something new, it's a great time to come and join in and help make St Uriel's the spiritual community you've always wanted. Here's the weekly schedule for the weeks up to the end of the year. 9 Nov - Practice+Discussion 16 Nov - Practice+Discussion *23 Nov - Eucharist - All Gnostic Saints* 30 Nov - Practice+Discussion (Tim in NZ) 7 Dec - Practice+Discussion 14 Dec - Practice+Discussion *21 Dec - Xmas Eucharist (also St Thomas, St Raphael, John the Beloved)* 28 Dec, 4 Jan - Break Your in Love and Light, Father Tim+ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://laika.gnusto.com/pipermail/announce/attachments/20081107/477896fa/attachment.htm From tim at saint-uriels.org Sun Nov 9 19:44:34 2008 From: tim at saint-uriels.org (Fr Tim Mansfield) Date: Sun Nov 9 19:44:41 2008 Subject: [st uriel's] Prayer Message-ID: <35565cab0811091744o54117ba3q75c40a7acea9b72c@mail.gmail.com> Hi folks, Last night was our first new-format gathering. We talked about some basics of a Gnostic approach to spiritual practice and tried a new approach to the Jesus Prayer. I thought I'd share some of what came up. The basics of spiritual practice in our tradition it seems to me are, loosely, awareness training and prayer. Awareness training shows up in most spiritual traditions because without it, you find yourself subject to your mind and emotions and unable to bring much attention to the what you're trying to do, whether that's sharing in liturgy, prayer, transformative practices or whatever. The basics of awareness training are simple: pick something to focus on, compassionately return your attention to that point of focus when it drifts, repeat; try to improve your ability to focus for longer periods and with greater quality and depth. Favourite objects of concentration are: the breath, images (statues, ikons, crucifixes, iconic shapes like hexagrams and so on) and words (centering prayer, for instance, is based on using significant words like "Abba" - which means Daddy or "Maranatha" - which means Come Lord! - Aramaic has a lovely open, sonorous tone for the job). Many things may happen in awareness training, but one way to explain the point of it is to improve your ability to be present with what's happening. Prayer, by contrast, as I see it, is an activity in which we adjust our patterns of thinking and feeling to align with the beneficial presence of the Divine in which we are constantly bathed. The Jesus Prayer is a nice example of the ways this can work. The prayer is old and simple. The words are: Lord, have mercy or in Greek: Kyrie, eleison I like the Greek because it makes it clearer that the sense of "mercy" (eleison) is less Bohemian Rhapsody and more Florence Nightingale. The prayer is voicing a longing for healing. One form of the classical instructions for the prayer are to pray is from the heart, with a devoted yearning for the beloved Lord (Kyrie). So the way the prayer is to be approached internally is to begin with cultivating a sense of devoted yearning and to offer that with the word "Kyrie" and then open oneself to received the grace and peace of the Divine with the word "eleison". Simple to say, but as one gets more practiced in cultivating the kind of thinking and feeling the prayer describes, I would say that two things happen: First, in the praying of the prayer the sense of division from the object of prayer become softer and begin to dissolve and the prayer naturally becomes softer and then silent. It becomes hard to stay so attached to you the subject, praying to an imagined Divine object and the pray-er, the pray-ing and the prayed-to are One. Second, that we achieve at least briefly what is called in Greek "metanoia" - a change in mind or in thought. We understand that in loving we are loved and that that is a fundamental condition of our existence. As we persist with the prayer, that change becomes more certain, less something we hope and more something we know. And we Gnostics are, after all, all about the knowing. I love that very simple prayer and it's a treasure for me that in every Eucharist service we say it, linking the liturgy to our own private spiritual practice and to the practice of countless lay folk, monk and nuns since the first century, right back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Saint Uriel's meets next Sunday for prayer and discussion at 6pm at 15 Francis St. I pray that you can join us. My blessings on you and your week ahead, Reverend Father Tim Mansfield Rector, Parish of Saint Uriel the Archangel , Sydney, Australia Apostolic Johannite Church -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://laika.gnusto.com/pipermail/announce/attachments/20081110/67155bb8/attachment.htm From tim at saint-uriels.org Fri Nov 14 07:16:04 2008 From: tim at saint-uriels.org (Fr Tim Mansfield) Date: Fri Nov 14 07:16:12 2008 Subject: [st uriel's] Narthex meeting Sunday at 6pm, 15 Francis St - "What is the soul?" Message-ID: <35565cab0811140516m66fd46a0rb31a9d0f297811bb@mail.gmail.com> Hi folks, Sunday sees the second meeting of our new "Narthex" group. The narthex of a church at the door before you enter into the main area of the church. It's where you gather for a cup of tea after a service, it's often where discussion groups are held and where you can gather helpful literature. For all those reasons, we use the term as an metaphor for a group gathering to study the mysteries of our Tradition. Come along on Sunday to the Unitarian Centre at 15 Francis St and join us. Here's what's on the menu: - some basic breath meditation - some readings from "The Exegesis on the Soul" and "The Hymn of the Pearl", two of the key Gnostic texts about the Soul. - a discussion on the concept of soul in different traditions - open discussion about our own understanding of our souls If you'd like to take a look at the two texts, you can find versions of them here: http://www.gnosis.org/library/hymnpearl.htm http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/exe.html If you've always wondered where your soul was, you might find it's been waiting for you with a cup of tea at St Uriel's. Come join us and find out! Father Tim+ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://laika.gnusto.com/pipermail/announce/attachments/20081114/0ea5a532/attachment.htm From tim at saint-uriels.org Tue Nov 18 01:29:52 2008 From: tim at saint-uriels.org (Fr Tim Mansfield) Date: Tue Nov 18 01:30:10 2008 Subject: [st uriel's] On the Soul Message-ID: <35565cab0811172329hf06f3d5y9bf5dfe5d15e9200@mail.gmail.com> On Sunday a half-dozen of us gathered at the Unitarian Centre to talk about the Soul led by the beautiful, troubling Gnostic text "The Exegesis on the Soul". http://www.piney.com/GnosExegesisSoul.html The text uses the allegory of a woman who leaves her family to go into the world and becomes beguiled by wily men who take her to their beds, promising her love, fidelity and riches but leaving her penniless, forlorn and alone. She is taken in again and again and always left abandoned. Finally she cries out to her father for aid and undergoes a transformation, turning in on herself she enters the peace of her bed chamber and tingling with expectation begins to await, not yet another lover, but her Bridegroom. He eventually arrives and they are united, become one and return to the house of the father. My fairytale summary leaves out a great deal of bizarre detail which I'll leave you to discover yourself when you read the text. The story is old, it's taught in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities and it points, I think, to a simple aspect of our experience. Before we begin to set our feet upon the path, many of us find it hard to even notice what is referred to in this story as the Soul. Our attention and awareness is so drawn by the phenomena of the material world, by other people, by television and relationships, McDonald's and birdsong that it's hard to even be aware that there's an interior experience to be attending to. It took me a long time to begin to really notice my interior, my judgements, my meaning-making, my thoughts, my feelings and to tease out those interior experiences from what and who I was looking at and hearing. At some point, for some reason, some of us resolve to make a change, to change how we're thinking and experiencing our lives. The traditional term for this is "metanoia" - to transform the mind, a word that gets translated as "repentance". The first step is to turn the attention inward and to start noticing our Soul. "Soul" means many things for different people, but in the terms of the text we can take it to mean the aggregate of those interior experiences - feelings, thoughts, judgements, intentions and so on. In modern terms, perhaps we could use the shorthand that the Ego is the confused Soul, unaware of herself and turned outward. As we begin to attend to all that interior activity, a spaciousness can start to open around the Soul and an older, wiser aspect begins to be evident. My Spirit - that wider, wiser me-but-not-me - takes my Soul by her hand and leads her to the bridal chamber and to Union, rendering whole that which has been broken. Our Tradition suggests that our Spirit is ever-present with us, acting as our connection to the majestic grace and love we crave. I am so often so caught in my Ego's bluff and bluster, his pretended certainty that he can make it on his own, that he needs no help, that opening myself to anything else seems foolish and impossible. The Exegesis suggests that when we truly realise how badly we have been used and how "penniless" we are and simply cry out for help - for Mercy - then the bedchamber of our heart opens to admit the Bridegroom. It's a beautiful story and so clearly mirrored in so many personal experiences I've heard. Next week we meet to share the Divine Liturgy of the Eucharist in order to give thanks for the lives of All Gnostic Saints - all those blessed teachers who have gone before us and shared their sight with us. I hope you can join us. Divine Liturgy 6pm Sunday 23 Nov Unitarian Centre 15 Francis St Darlinghurst Father Tim+ http://www.saint-uriels.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://laika.gnusto.com/pipermail/announce/attachments/20081118/8d296df7/attachment.htm From tim at saint-uriels.org Wed Nov 19 19:07:34 2008 From: tim at saint-uriels.org (Fr Tim Mansfield) Date: Wed Nov 19 19:07:46 2008 Subject: [st uriel's] Reading programme to end of 2008 Message-ID: <35565cab0811191707m269be6ay6aa4906da2b5a1b6@mail.gmail.com> Hi folks, As you know we've recently agreed to gather more regularly to read together and share our perspectives on Gnosticism as way of being spiritual. As a way to begin, I've suggested that we essentially work our way through Father Jordan Stratford's book, "Living Gnosticism". The book is a light but thoughtful attempt to bring the basics of a church-based Gnostic approach to a modern audience without getting bogged down in specifics and excessive detail. I think it's a great primer on the key ideas and principles that forms a sound basis for reading some of the more difficult texts like the Gospel of Phillip. So the Sunday programme from here until Christmas is as follows: 23 Nov ? Eucharist service, no reading group 30 Nov ? Discussion of "The Hymn of the Pearl" (following on from "The Exegesis on the Soul" on Sun 16 Nov) 7 Dec ? Chapter I of "Living Gnosticism": Know Thyself 14 Dec ? more "Living Gnosticism" 21 Dec ? Christmas Service 28 Dec-4 Jan ? no meetings My plan is to restart meetings on 11 Jan. I'm excited to have a group interested in studying this approach together in more depth. I'd be honoured if some new people chose this moment to join us, so if you subscribed to the newsletter out of curiousity about Gnosticism and the AJC, please consider if this is your opportunity to satisfy your curiousity in a way that will be fulfilling. I've ordered 10 copies of the book and they've just arrived this week. They'll be $25 each; please email me to reserve a copy if you'd like to join us. The book is available from online bookstores at a somewhat higher price, if you'd prefer to source your own. Yours in Love and Light, Father Tim+ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://laika.gnusto.com/pipermail/announce/attachments/20081120/6573bc44/attachment.htm From tim at saint-uriels.org Wed Nov 26 16:17:40 2008 From: tim at saint-uriels.org (Fr Tim Mansfield) Date: Wed Nov 26 16:17:47 2008 Subject: [st uriel's] Next Sunday: The Hymn of the Pearl Message-ID: <35565cab0811261417n6eaf80d6kd45527f968ddc4f@mail.gmail.com> Sisters and brothers, Our narthex meeting on Sunday (30 Nov) is at our usual venue, 15 Francis St, Darlinghurst at 6pm. Next week (7 Dec), we begin the "Living Gnosticism" study group and there'll be copies on-hand this Sunday to pick up. They're $25 each. Once you've got your own copy, you can get started on reading and get ready to discuss Chapter 1. But first, this Sunday offers an opportunity to meet with one of the most beloved tales in the Western tradition, "The Hymn of the Pearl". The story of a young prince who travels from his home country to Egypt in search of a pearl guarded by a serpent is told in all western wisdom traditions, there are Jewish, Sufi and Christian versions. The story is such a great example of the archetypal Hero's Journey that it seems like you've heard it before even when you read it for the first time. During the discussion of the "Exegesis of the Soul" last time, we talked a lot about the Soul and how to interpret it in our own experience. Both the Exegesis and the Hymn pair a character representing the Soul with a character representing the Spirit. To prepare a little for the discussion on Sunday, I thought it might be useful to say a few things about the Spirit. The word "spirit" in English is derived from the Latin "spiritus", which means "breath". The same root gives us "respiration". In Greek the word for spirit is "pneuma" which also means breath (you might recall we use "Pneuma Hagion" for Holy Spirit in the Eucharist service) and which gives us "pneumatic". In Hebrew, spirit is "Ruach" also breath or air. I've always thought all this spirit=air thing was a kind of poetic analogy. Spirit is light like air, it's invisible, and so on. As I've pondered it a little more and especially looked at how the world seemed to people in the first century of the Common Era, a few things jump out. The first is that they had no concept of vacuum or space, no real concept of multiple gases. Air or atmosphere was everything between you and me. It is the space containing the mysterious force of wind, the vehicle for weather and it extends up to the Moon, the other planets and as far as the fixed stars and presumably beyond. When we breathe in, we are taking some of that empty space into ourselves, the same space that extends all the way from me, to you, to the planets and stars - all the way to God. Looked at from within that kind of lifeworld, the metaphor of spirit as breath seems more common-sense, more obvious and more clear than from mine. Entering that simpler way of seeing that our ancestors inhabited, especially when we engage in a practice like breath meditation, connects us to them, their thoughtworld and earlier aspects of ourselves while bringing to life the simple act of breathing. Every breath connects me to God. Try living with that thought today and bring your insights with you on Sunday to discuss the Hymn of the Pearl. Reverend Father Tim+ Mansfield Rector, Parish of Saint Uriel the Archangel , Sydney, Australia Apostolic Johannite Church -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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