Progressing the Journey

Forthcoming March 2022

As I write and you read, Progressing the Journey is at the printers! Here’s what Colin Gibson, NZ hymnwriter and composer, says about the book.

Lively congregations and alert leaders will welcome this collection of new hymns and original liturgies by a confident and experienced writer. The songs have a quiet eloquence, their language is simple and direct and they deal with many of the real life issues which confront us in the ‘new normal’ world.  That they are set to well-known tunes will make it easy to absorb them into a singing congregation’s vocabulary of praise. The liturgies are fresh and vital in thought and language: a useful alternative to the sleepy long-established formulas which still clog our much-changed  religious world. I strongly recommend Susan Jones’ Progressing on the Journey and her deeply contemplated and whole-hearted expression of distinctive New Zealand themes and images; this is a very rich new spiritual resource for troubled times.

I hope the lyrics and liturgies in this book will progress your own journey as you use them.

The title also refers to progressing our collective journey towards a more conscious faith. I believe a transformed Christianity will happen more effectively and overtly as we word it, name it and describe it. Speaking and singing the new approach out loud, means our faith journey is further assisted to move on from being just wistful thinking in our heads and hearts or a yearning within the soul. Putting words (however inadequate) to the new concepts which fit a post secular faith provide some answers to disenchanted questions. This means we begin to piece together a new language – not just one which proceeds from our heads through our mouths but springs from the depths of our psyche.

I don’t know how long ago it was that I had the thought “Christianity doesn’t help people to mature into more conscious beings because it is continually pointing us outside ourselves for our religious ideas and revelations.” Instead of being encouraged to look within, our spiritual attention has mostly been directed outwards by the Christendom theologies of the modern church. Of course, if we deal in externalities, our thoughts are able to be heard by others and checked and discussed by others. This can be seen as exerting power and control, or, more positively, as a natural wish to help the seeker understand the faith they’re searching for. An unintended consequence of this, however, is that we ourselves begin to disbelieve the value of our own spiritual instincts, our own internal epiphanies, our own spiritual generativity.

Photo by Ayman Nouas on Pexels.com

It’s like boarding up a well that once provided fresh uncontaminated springwater, and creating a tap ‘over there’ which provides chlorinated water. If you’ve read Wherever you are, You are on the Journey, you will know that those wells contain the living water of the Spirit and this should never be blocked or impeded.

Available from jones.rs@xtra.co.nz. Cost $20 plus $5.60 p & p. Or from Amazon, kindle kobo, etc.

Progressing the Journey (PTJ) aims to provide and resource those living-water moments. First, through providing new words to familiar tunes. Some of these tunes, I find I can no longer sing with their traditional words, because too much translation is needed from restricting theological ideas (those well-blocking concepts). 42 hymns form the first section of Progressing the Journey. What I am doing here resonates with Gaudi’s approach to the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, some of whose beautiful stained glass windows form the cover of the book. Gaudi was working with a traditional concept – a cathedral – but interpreted it in new ways with resulting absolute beauty and stunning colour. Progressing the Journey takes a traditional form of worship – hymn singing and spoken responses – and seeks to transform that activity with new words and ideas.

for example, instead of ‘Onwards Christian soldiers’, then, we can sing

1. Onward sacred pilgrims, seeking to engage
   with our mentor Jesus on his pilgrimage.
   He, the trusted leader, leads against the flow;
   forward to engagement, onward let us go.
   Onward sacred pilgrims! Seeking to engage,
   With our mentor, Jesus, Write a brand new page.

2. If we are authentic, darkness will retreat.
   Walk then, sacred pilgrims, walk with high intent.
   False foundations quiver at this sign of strength;
   Pilgrims, lift your voices, assent and dissent! Onward sacred pilgrims!… and so on to verses 3 & 4.
   

The title of PTJ also describes itself as :Lyrics and Liturgies for a conscious church. We become more and more conscious of our inner motivations and repressions when we look deep within. There we find the Self/the psyche/the soul, that part of us which generates revelations that bring us to greater maturity, greater wholeness. There we find out more about ourselves and how we react with others; we find there that inner spark of divinity which illumines our whole being. We learn through this rediscovery of both our inner selves and our church tradition that the puzzling parable of the foolish and wise virgins is a metaphor for growing in consciousness, (or not). Using the well known tune to “Be Thou my vision…” we can sing…

1. Now comes the bridegroom, the kingdom is near,
   for deep down inside us, it’s always been here.
   Keep lamps always trimmed and the flame burning bright,
   seize life in the daytime and walk to the light.
2. Consciousness slowly develops in us,
   we learn as we grow in both stillness and fuss.
   The oil we are burning brings light to this place,
   we grow self-aware more as we give Spirit space. … and so on to verses 3 & 4.

All the new words to familiar tunes are printed without music around them. An index directs musicians to where they can find the older tunes in conventional hymnbooks. One original tune is provided for ‘In our World we find Delight’, a ‘kitset’ hymn for the Season of Creation. The creation aspects of the whole book will need a whole future post to themselves!

The liturgy in the second section of PTJ is an eclectic mix of traditional seasonal responses with also new words for contemporary events such as Transgender Day of Remembrance, Pride Week and reflections on Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion. This is not a complete lectionary of liturgical pieces, but pieces harvested from one working minister’s responses Sunday by Sunday to the demands of the context in which she found herself that week.

The book concludes with some poems written for different seasonal Sundays of the year and three biblical reflections written from the point of view of looking for our own inner moments that resonate with biblical events on the page before us.

Not every element will suit you and/or your congregation or audience. There are however, continuous references to our own time and place in these lyrics and liturgies. This means many, if not all, of them will help people know this journey of the heart is not only for biblical ancients, faraway saints or northern hemisphere Christians, but for contemporary people walking the spiritual journey right here, in real time and space.

Lent is approaching fast – Ash Wednesday on March 2 and the first Sunday in Lent on March 6. Some of these resources were written for Lent in Year C of the lectionary. If you wish to pre-order and pre-pay, I will email you separately the Lenten resources which you might find useful before the book can physically get to you. (These include a Communion hymn, Affirmations for Lent 1 and 3, and one Gathering statement)

If no delays due to Covid affect printing and distribution, Progressing the Journey should be available to me to post to you in about 3 weeks, making the best time it would get to you being a month (i.e. around 20th March, though this is dependent on all going smoothly in this Omicron world). While e-book versions may be available earlier, buying a print copy from me is the method which helps me best as the author! An additional treat is that a package of two different versions of powerpoint slides for each hymn is planned. Watch this space for more details.

The RRP of Progressing the Journey is $25, with $5.60 p & p for up to 3 copies.

Pre-ordered, pre-paid copies of PTJ will be $25 plus free delivery in Dunedin, NZ, and $29 posted until the 3rd Sunday in Lent, March 20th.

The best way for New Zealanders to order is to email me at jones.rs@xtra.co.nz, giving me your shipping address. I can send you the bank account details and information about how to pay. Overseas readers will be better to use online suppliers – see below my signature.

Hope you enjoy singing and saying these words as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Journey well,

Susan

Buy Print and eBook copies at these online stores
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Amazon United Kingdom:
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Why protests are so feral these days

The protest outside the NZ parliament is getting a lot of attention and bears close scrutiny/analysis.

The original convoy idea to protest vaccination mandates was fair enough protest. The original organizers seemed set on peaceful, though disruptive, protest. Of course, as the above slogan indicates, everyone is free to join a protest too, whether their motivations are consistent or not with the original protest’s agenda. Any protest can attract others who are ‘off script’ and never were on it!

It’s notable that the convoy which reached Picton and camped there (maybe because the people inside the vehicles could not produce a vaccine pass to board the ferry), is peaceful. They have responded to complaints about public urination, dog poo and hooting cars and fixed these issues. Members of the protest went away peacefully when asked to by the publican who was not going to let them in without a vaccine bass. A member of my family was caught up in this convoy when they drove north and it was not a big deal.

But the quality and quantity of protest in Wellington has taken a different turn. The news agency Stuff reports the original official organizer left the site on Thursday. Their megaphone messages were urging peaceful protest and care of children. This leaves police in a difficult position with no one with whom to liaise.

This is NZ’s turn to experience this over the top kind of protest and disruption. Why is it happening?

In his book Ego and Archetype Edward Edinger has two diagrams which I used in Wherever you are, You are on the Journey. (p 38 and p 44) The first shows the relatively calm, stable situation under Christendom (and this would apply to a similar period in any faith’s development). There was a general societal acceptance of the mores and custom and ‘rules’ which religion promulgated in society. Not perfect, of course, and many people suffered on the underside of that system. Some would claim that system was even built on the sufferings of those who were oppressed. Another blog for another day! But, that stable-state religious/societal intersection brought two benefits:

1. A general agreement on certain mores and an ethical code to be followed, which the majority of Western society pretty much agreed and complied with.
2. A place (within religion/spirituality) to exercise the deeper part of ourselves, the psyche, on matters of meaning and value. In this space people sought to answer questions such as “How?” and “What?” and “Where?” and “Why?” and “What is the meaning of life?”

The latter point is important because as a writer described on National Radio today (talking with Jim Mora), our pre frontal cortex is getting overloaded with all the changing information with which we are bombarded. So much information and change…from changing cell phones to changing traffic lights systems to changing relationship customs to technological advances. The PFC, the expert told Jim, is the place to where our five senses deliver our impressions of the world. The PFC organizes these to inform the rest of our body. Also, the PFC gets a lot of information from within ourselves and translates that into speech and other actions and reactions. It’s a busy and vital part of our brain. These days it is seriously overloaded. (Forgotten someone’s name recently? It’s your PFC shutting down, not dementia.)

But, he said, the PFC is not designed to solve problems. That, however is what we are trying to do with it to cope with the overload. One of the big changes, as we know, is the rate of change (which we have been warned about for years). Our grandparents sowed seed the same way every year, for example, while our cell phone might be updated every week.

I thought about all this and about the protest and about David Tacey’s The Darkening Spirit which describes this scary underbelly of emotions and anger belching out it seems, all over the world. This is all exacerbated of course by the pandemic but not entirely caused by it. He writes of the ability of religion to help us contain and face the demons and monsters we fear unconsciously. In the absence of widespread involvement in religion, these unconscious forces find more freedom for their expression without the analysis and reflection which a good religion would bring to them.

But I am thinking too, that we respond to all this change by skimming more over the surface of life. I think that’s connected to the fact that we now as a secular nation are no longer in church being encouraged (hopefully) to think on a deeper level. We then lose the ability to troubleshoot at a deep enough level. As Edinger in his diagrams predicted, people turn to other ideologies (conspiracy theories etc) or can turn to other ideologies/activities such as capitalism which offers to satisfy our yearnings and restlessness, but in fact only fills a physical need (“Oreal – because you are worth it”, does not bring self worth when we colour our hair).

We operate for all these functions – shopping, social media, conspiracy theorising – out of our PFC, exhausting it and us.

I noticed, when he was asked for a remedy, (though it was said the damage was unstoppable), the expert suggested mindfulness and breathing techniques. Sounds a lot like the calmness which can be generated by prayer/meditation, eh!

During Christendom, I don’t think religion itself quite realized how psychologically as well as spiritually valuable it was in our world. Instead, as the technological advances doubled and tripled and exponentially rose (like viral infection numbers), we all got distracted by the exciting new toys and activities they brought. We didn’t respond by deepening the way we did religion nor did we encourage spirituality to be more and more useful to us in this new ever-changing world of ours. Instead, religion seemed to stall and stagnate and became less and less useful to us. Changes in theology became just another change to accommodate in an already confusing world, so we didn’t bother. In fact, in some parts of the religious endeavour, clinging to the tried and true became even more important. What we needed instead, however, was more practice in looking within and going deeper into the cool, dark, calm depths of the psyche. We needed our religious leaders to reassure us that was not a silly thing to do, but in fact, most wise.

If we were thinking deeply and calmly, in this way, we could converse carefully and thoroughly with others about what freedom to choose actually means in a society of people not all of whom you know very well., unlike in the primitive villages which began urbanisation. When does my freedom impact on yours and vice versa? Who gives way when? I saw published in a Canadian newspaper of one of the NZ protesters ‘apologising’ for disrupting business around parliament but pointing out that she had lost both job and home.

You can understand her point of view. The grim reality of a viral pandemic is that some people lose out massively while others actually double their profits when they were already the richest people in the world.

The scary question to ask ourselves is – is this the way Nazism and other repressive regimes started? The regular people, overloaded with their own genuine concerns, are unsettled and frightened by the bogies which others (who have a definite agenda) suggest to them. Whether those are true things to fear or not, when you’re using an overloaded surface part of your brain, you will react rather than reflect. This results in an increasing number in an unsettled, frightened, cynical, reactionary part of society who are convinced the usual routes to restoration are broken. And if that is true, it is an easy step to believe violence, intimidation and disruption are all the weapons you have left. When you have enough people in that state of mind, if you then have an extreme political agenda introduced – on either side of the political fence – those same people are more likely to grab at it to save them from their woes, real or imagined.

Fancy that, a saviour of the world is still needed!! It needs to be a human and compassionate saviour, however.

Marcus Borg listed 6 or so different metaphors for salvation in his book Convictions. One was based on the Exodus myth and offers freedom from bondage. That is what all people are looking for, but there is no point being freed from one bondage to fall immediately into another kind of bondage. Or, maybe people would respond to the concept of salvation offered through the myth of the Exile into Babylon. Perhaps many of us are feeling we are exiles in a strange land. We do not know our own country -geographical or spiritual – anymore. We want desperately to find our way home. We want desperately to not be estranged anymore. Good news! We can go home. There is always a welcome waiting us there as is illustrated by the loving one running to meet the lost child in all of us, even when we have wasted all our resources.

Indeed, Love surrounds us all every moment of every day

Susan

P.S. Book progress report: Progressing the Journey: Lyrics and Liturgies for a conscious church is in the final editing stage. It has a new cover from that advertised. Watch this space for launch and publishing information.

An Addendum

Last post I used a picture of the young woman Russian ice skater who apparently did the first quad jumps in women’s figure skating at an Olympics (and won gold with her ROC team). Since then, news has broken that the medal ceremony has been delayed because of drug investigations connected with her.

She is under 16 and so is seen as a ‘protected person’, meaning the sole responsibility is not seen as hers. Also because of her age, her name should not be known publicly.

The official word will come out in time. I’d like to say however, that the thought of Russian coaches etc., breaking drug banns when Russia has been allowed to send a non-national team, despite intentionally dodgy past behaviour, defeats my powers of understanding. Watch this space.

There is forgiveness and mercy which may be called for in some sense given the age of the athlete, but there is also the question of taking responsibility and of accountability and of fairness to other athletes. There is also the question of how very young athletes are treated in the effort to bolster national pride and glory.

Going from stage to stage

Photo by Tobi on Pexels.com

Reactions to Wherever you are.. are bringing insights into people’s journeys. One thing I’ve noticed, (which I could have worked out before), is that those who have stopped church involvement are finding the book affirming and helpful. Others maybe not so much.

It’s made me think about what makes the difference for a person between one stage of the journey and the next. While Fowler and others might present the stages as discrete from each other, they do, of course, blur into each other at the edges. I’ve also experienced a kind of cyclical movement for myself where I can revisit former stages depending on the topic. For example, my theological ideas might become quite radical, but I can be fundamentalist about church customs and traditions. It may be that I cling on to those traditions exactly because I feel less secure in other areas of my spirituality. Sometimes in the darkness you need to hang on to what comfort you can find!

Photo by Mitja Juraja on Pexels.com

This reminds me a little of flying in to Wellington airport (bear with me, all will become clear). There is often turbulence as we approach the land from the sea and the plane is wobbling around up and down and sideways. I comfort myself in those moments that the pilots can choose an average of all those positions and are checking all the time that we are maintaining the appropriate height for each stage of our approach.

It’s kind of like that with faith stages. We may seem to be wobbling around, but somewhere inside, something has clicked which drew us more into the questioning stage, than remaining in the conventional stage – or more into disenchantment than remaining wholly enchanted. (Get the book if you don’t understand these references, see below).

It can be that a shocking event moves us decisively, with no mistake, into the next stage of faith. More often, I suspect, we move more slowly. A series of events, comments, books, people, combine to move us out of conventional faith, out of the enchantment we had felt and into the next phase. What I am working out is that until that has happened, we remain mostly enchanted or mostly conventional.

There is nothing wrong with that, as we all move or don’t move at our own pace and in our own idiosyncratic fashion. There are no prizes for speed in this ‘sport’, there are no technical skill points or artistic impression points (yes I’ve been watching Winter Olympics figure skating and snowboarding). If you can’t do a quadruple jump, you haven’t failed!

15 year old Russian skater does first quad jumps in women’s Olympic figure skating.

So why am I teasing this idea out? It has occurred to me, through recent emails and conversations, that it’s important on our own journeys to find like-minded people to walk with. So, whatever the one event or the conclusion from several events which has moved you into the next stage, seek out others who have experienced that same shift in consciousness. They will know what you are talking about, even if your journey is qualitatively different from theirs. They will ‘get it’. It will help both your journeys to talk with each other. (If there is no one you can find in your neighbourhood, drop me an email and we can chat.)

On the other hand, that very dear friend of yours, with whom you have always talked a lot and shared many deep experiences? They might not have made the same shift as you have. You will not of course, now cut them dead, but you may find that it is best to confide a little less of your new discoveries to them. Those conversations may be saved for the people who have made the shift. Your long term friend? Still good fun, still a stimulating companion, but let the ground of the conversation move to other topics.

You will know what I mean when I say that to move ahead, you sometimes need to employ a sharp knife’s edge to ideas you formerly held dear. The phrase ‘cutting edge’ is not an accident. To get somewhere new we need to slice through some long held knots and ties. Continuing to talk a lot with those long term friends still in the same old place, can dull your faith-knife’s cutting edge. Someone who has not made the same shifts as you will not understand this ruthless-seeming approach to cutting old ties. It’s not ruthless but it is conscious. It seems ruthless to people still unaware of how ideas and assumptions can twine about us like the tendrils on a sweet pea plant, holding us. That holding firm seems like a good idea at first as we struggle to get a foothold in the faith, but it can also hold us back as time goes by.

Even delicate seeming tendrils can hold us back and fence us in

I know that more conventional believers think that a questioning, seeking person might be in danger of losing their faith. But it takes more trust, I believe, to step out on a journey where you do not know the final destination. Faithfulness is required on the seeking journey, but it is a faithful determination to keep putting one step in front of the other, trusting our Companion and our companions. What an adventure!

In other news…. It was a thrill yesterday to be shown an order of service which had used an affirmation which is in Wherever you are, You are on the Journey. That minister (whom I don’t know personally) had obviously ‘made the shift’ and recognized words they and their congregation needed. It was particularly timely as Progressing the Journey is in the final edits stage. It has not only new words to familiar tunes like the one I posted last week, but also liturgical fragments for different times of the church year, including affirmations. I remember the thrill of discovery I felt finding Dorothy McRae McMahon’s books of liturgy. it would be wonderful if Progressing the Journey provided the same sense of discovery for others. That’s a dream to be made real, I hope. Here’s a taster:

Affirmation and Recognition of Faith Found in Epiphany
Epiphany Year C
We recognise those moments of epiphany
– we’ve all had them –
when we have suddenly realised
everything has changed.

When we have seen deep down inside us
and found there what we did not expect.
Instead of the dark, greedy, grasping selfishness
we have been warned of all our lives,
we have discovered within, instead, light.
Light which children’s drawings sketch around angels
light which softly glows with compassion and welcome,
beckoning us to own our inner rich resource
which is so like God
as to be no different from that we call divine.

We recognise, in those moments of discovery,
in those glimpses of the truth,
we can never be the same again,
even if the waters are deep and dark
we will be led through them
by a loving guide
who is, sometimes, us.

And thankfulness rises deep within.

Go well everyone, befriend intentionally and live courageously,

Susan

Wherever you are, You are on the Journey still available from me at jones.rs@xtra.co.nz.  $20 per book and $5.60 for P & P up to 3 copies.  I’ll send the bank account number and you send me your street address. Easy-peasy! Loving the emails I’m getting about how people have found it a book which gets them thinking about their own journeys. Let me know how you’re finding it!