Silence is Golden

Forum on Silence from St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow on Vimeo.

Somehow I managed to forget to publish this video on the blog but it is worth taking a look. It came from a forum conversation that I had with the Vice Provost, Cedric Blakey the other week.

The point of this was to have a public chat about the way Cedric prays. One of the odd things about church is that individuals very rarely talk about their own personal spirituality and I was grateful to Cedric for being so open to having this discussion.

We talk about this and also about:

  • whether God dictates answers to us
  • how breathing is integral to prayer
  • how to teach someone to pray
  • if you fall asleep whilst doing breathing exercises is that a sign of it working?
  • do single people need to spend time in silence?
  • how silence is golden.

The video is a fairly short forum conversation – just 20 minutes.

It is a justice issue, isn’t it?

The question is this – is LGBT inclusion a justice issue or isn’t it?

If we think it is a justice issue then we pray about it in church, right?

Those two questions feel to me a little uncomfortable.

We pray readily in churches up and down the land about justice issues – we pray about poverty, we pray for those who are down on their luck, we pray about homelessness. Increasingly (though still not that often) we pray about climate change.

If we believe LGBT inclusion is a justice issue (rather than a tricky and embarrassing disagreement) then we’ll pray about it, won’t we? In intercessions. In church. At the mass.

Won’t we?

Here’s a notice announcing a special service which has been organised by Changing Attitude Scotland to do just that.

lightbulb

The celebrant will be the Rev Kirstin Freeman. Others are very welcome to copy this idea. Anyone can have a Eucharist for Change.

But my question is really about regular weekly services.

We will pray. Won’t we?