Christ our Bield

‘You might find it helpful yourself,’ my friend Iain said. He’d been telling me about a few days he’d spent at the Bield at Blackruthven, near Perth.

‘Bield’ is a Scots word, meaning shelter and refuge, nurture and encouragement. The Bield at Blackruthven is a Christian-based retreat centre situated in the extensive grounds of a Georgian house, offering a calming space to reflect and pray: counselling and a range of therapies are available.

Intrigued by Iain’s description, I visited the Bield last week. I guess if I had a specific purpose in going, it was to reflect on the way ahead. I’m 61. Should I be thinking about changing my priorities or branching out in new directions to have the best chance of fulfilling the potential of whatever years are left to me?

At Blackruthven, you can spend time with a trained listener who will absorb your words as you share thoughts on any issues which concern you, and then suggest a poem or a passage from the Bible which you might find helpful.

And so last Wednesday, I spent an hour with Melitta Bosworth. I outlined the story of my faith and personal ‘becoming.’ Looking back, I said it seems that most of my life I’ve been gradually uncovering the person I actually am, the unique John who had lost himself through making other people’s expectations for him his own expectations for himself.

But more recently I have recognised, joyfully, that it’s more than simply OK to be the John I am, the real John, loving God and responding to God in ways which are entirely appropriate for me. And no longer trying to bury the dark stuff in me, but acknowledging and owning it, and seeing its power diminished the more it is acknowledged and owned.

Retelling this story to Melitta – and having it affirmed by her – simply confirmed my joy in accepting myself and in knowing myself accepted by the Father in heaven. I realised how far I have travelled since those days a quarter of a century ago when I would tell my story with much less self-knowledge and self-acceptance, a story heavy with pain and issues not fully understood and feel, regardless of my listener’s concern, beyond the reach of love, unbielded.

But what of the way ahead? Are there changes to make, new paths to follow? Melitta thought for a while, before suggesting that I reflect on some words from St John’s Gospel. Two men, intrigued by Jesus, want to get to know him. Their lips ask him where he lives; he discerns that their hearts ask far more. ‘Come and see,’ Jesus responds. ‘Those words might give you something,’ said Melitta.

I realised that Jesus didn’t simply tell the men all they needed and wanted to know. He did something greater, committing to reveal what they wanted to know as for their part they committed to accompany him.

The lesson for me is that just as there has been no road-map for the journey to this point, simply a gradual disclosure of the next horizon, a gradual shedding of the next layer of false self, so for the future there is no route-plan, simply an invitation from God to accompany God with open eyes. And that, I can honestly say, is more than enough for me.

‘While you’re here at the Bield,’ Melitta said, ‘look out for any insights coming to you which seem they may be God-given.’ Some words I came across from a writer called Howard Thurman particularly resonated: ‘Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and do that. What the world needs is people who have come alive.’

There is so much truth in this – God is prompting me, as he prompts us all, through the inner impulses which energise us both to display and to promote virtues such as love, goodness, justice, truth and creativity and to build community in which these values are seen in our everyday lives.

‘Come and see!’ should be among the words our lives as Christians speak. Preaching has its place, but everything we do should be an encouragement to people to reach out to God. And through our time-bound bodies - our words, our concern, our love, our self-giving -  that God whispers reassurance to those who walk with us as together we ‘come and see.’

I loved the twice-daily times of worship in the Carpenter’s Chapel at Blackruthven when you felt enveloped in the love both of the Bield community and of that community’s God. I watch an older woman stoop to light a candle, her wrinkled face tender with devotion. In our shared lives as Christians we offer sanctuary through the presence of the come-and-see Christ, our Bield.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 11th July 2013)