Czech Republic
6 April 2008
IBTS
Nad Habrovkou 3
Jeneralka, CZ – 16400 Prague 6
Dear Friends and Family,
This has been a most unusual week both for the seminary and for us, as we have been visited by a mission team from the Northumbria Community, a group who celebrate a sort of new monasticism in England. Actually, there are Americans and Canadians who are also a part of the community. They have a headquarters (they call it the “motherhouse”) in Northumberland that serves as a retreat center and as a meeting place for the scattered community. And they consider their “holy” place, the Island called Innisfarme or Holy Island. Actually, there is an accessible roadway at low tide, but the road disappears two times a day under several feet of water at high tide and the island becomes a true island. The community is reminded of the need to communicate on a regular basis, but it is also very important to experience periods of solitude for prayer and contemplation. For the Celtic brothers, the tides regulated their times of activity and solitude. This part of Northeast England very close to the Scottish border is the area of England where Christianity first took root in the 5th century.
So these people of today who form the rather scattered community are trying to understand the concept of living a life of work, worship and service in their ordinary existence. It makes sense, of course. The Christian life must be lived out everyday with an understanding that we are following our Lord into the daily hubbub caring for people, witnessing to people, working our ordinary work – and doing it all in the spirit of God’s love and grace.
Like the ancient Celtic monks, the Northumbrians follow a “Rule of Life” which involves generosity, hospitality and mission. And they observe a three-times-a-day period of prayer and contemplation. Here on campus during the week we observed morning prayers (9 a.m.), midday prayers (12 noon), and evening prayers (9:30 p.m.) In every case the prayer time involved some reading and prayer, and in no case did the prayer time last longer than 15 minutes. We Baptists are not accustomed to very much structured liturgy, especially the reading of prayers and the reciting of scripture or poetry all together. On the other hand, we are not totally unfamiliar with it. Many of us grew up reciting the Lord’s prayer together, reading our church covenant and responsive readings. For us here at the seminary this week there was just a little amplification of that, with emphasis on the things that bring us together rather than on things that divide us. I have to say that I appreciate the stress on life as worship – no divide between the sacred and secular. We find it important to be listening to one another, transformed in our down to earth daily lives, and seeing Christ at work as we entrust ourselves to Him. In the Northumbria community there is also an emphatic Trinitarian emphasis, and most of the people in the community are strong on care for the earth, the natural and created order. The students enjoyed the music, and some of the girls really got into what they called “liturgical dance,” group work rather like sign language.
One of the speakers compared the typical Sunday worship in any of our churches as a kind of “billiard ball” Christianity. In this case we come together on Sunday and smack against one another for good or ill, and then we go back to our separate pockets for the rest of the week. I’ll say one thing for this team; they understand community. They are from different parts of England, but they are always connected whatever kind of work they do (pastors, teachers, engineers, grandparents, workmen) because of the spiritual discipline of their prayer life, their quest, their anchor points, and the well of spirituality from which they draw. One of them said to us, “We are here to give away what is not ours.” Some of the thinking reminded me of “Companions in Christ.” On the Saturday night, they did a service called the “Celtic Fire” which involved singing, story telling, scripture reading and prayer. I suppose it is a service that should be held outside around a bonfire, but last night there were just candles.
I only met Christina in the afternoons last week because of all these sessions. She had some good listening sessions, but I don’t really know how much she gained from the experience. She surprises me sometimes with how much she “catches on.”
Then this week we have welcomed Billie Boette from Beaufort for a visit. Billie enjoyed the “Celtic Fire” and the “Agape” meal of our Sharka Valley Community Baptist church today. She was warmly welcomed. But like us in the beginning she found the British tunes with our words and the British words to our tunes a bit confusing. Now we’ve pretty well become accustomed to it and will be re-confused when we return to our home church.
Although Billie arrived a bit sleep-deprived, we gave her only time for a short nap before taking her out to explore the tramways and busways of our life in Prague. In actual fact, we even walked a good bit. Billie only later confessed that she is still recovering from January foot surgery. I told her we were taking her out on our BMW (bus, metro, walking) tour. We added tram to that too because we had to go back and forth on the tram to get where we were going which was the Royal Gardens. They only opened on April 1st , and many of the blooms are just budding out. But we did see some beautiful tulip trees, Rhododendron, and the Forsythia. The bushes are just holding on to those beautiful yellow blooms. I’ve never seen it last so long as it’s lasting here – three weeks at least – and still going strong. By accident, on one of our tram rides we saw the giant metronome on the top of Letensky Sady, a hill overlooking the old town. The metronome represents the heartbeat of Prague, the city known as the “heart” of Europe. The metronome was built in 1991 on the pedestal formerly occupied by the gigantic stone statue of Stalin leading the people. Stalin’s statue was blown up after his disgrace in 1962. Roger and I had not seen the metronome before, so, thanks to Billie’s visit, we got to see it, but only she took the picture, so that’ll have to wait until she e-mails us one.
We did get some lovely shots at the Royal Gardens, however, and I’ve included a couple on this letter.
I hope we can be free to show Billie around some more. Tonight we have been invited to an Indian meal, so there will be more walking. Billie needs her “stick,” and we may have to find one somewhere, but to visit Prague without walking very much (very, very much) is impossible. Even this campus has lots of steps and plenty of cobblestones.
It’s lovely having a visit from home. We wish you all could come!
With love and joy,
Janice and Roger
