The Reverend Philip Banks writes:

Finding God
“You don’t have to be peculiar to find God”
– Evelyn Underhill

Earlier this month in the Calendar of Saints was Evelyn Underhill – the hugely influential spiritual writer of the early twentieth century. She was the most prolific female religious writer in the English language in her time; the first woman to lecture at Oxford; a Fellow of King's College, London; the first woman to give retreats within Anglicanism; and a widely acclaimed writer, whose major books, Mysticism and Worship, have been recognized as pioneering works, and have remained in print ever since. If we are to believe Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Underhill did more than anyone else in Anglicanism to keep the spiritual life alive in the period between the wars. 

We can lay a special claim to her here in Essex, for she spent some of her years writing and living in Pleshey, near Chelmsford, at (what is now) the Diocesan House of Retreat there. Underhill knew that the only way to understand the “spiritual life” was to “participate in it”. Consequently, she wrote as a fellow participant, someone engaged, as we all are, in a relationship with the God who can transform us at the very core of our being. She once wrote that ‘to go up alone into the mountains and come back as an ambassador to the world, has ever been the method of humanity's best friends’. 

Paying attention – to God’s voice in us and to ourselves – is hugely important if our life’s journey is to be at all real. But giving our attention to God, although it should be easy, so often defeats us. Judy Hirst, in her wonderful book Struggling to be Holy, writes that an old Taizé priest she knew once said that, very often, all he could offer was his willingness to take himself into church, sit down and just be there – sometimes he was capable of nothing more. Perhaps that is the key – we should just have a willingness to put ourselves into a place where at least we can attempt to give God attention. For it seems to me that, in order to pay attention to God, we first need to ‘stop’. Unless we do, we will never hear God or grow in holiness. Neither do we really stand a chance of living lives that honour the God who we trust: surely, as people trying to be Godly, giving God attention is central to our call. 

There are lots of opportunities at St Peter’s to find that space to ‘put ourselves into a place where at least we can attempt to give God attention’. The quiet Communion services on Tuesdays and Thursdays; the Prayer Breakfast once a month on a Saturday morning; the Wednesday home group. And - do think about coming to Pleshey in November, for our Parish Quiet Day, which will provide time for fun, getting to know each other better, as well as opportunities for space apart and quiet: we will be using the new rooms there named after Evelyn Underhill. 

My prayer is that, like Evelyn Underhill and the mystics and saints before her, we may each be better at making time to stop for God. 

With prayers and best wishes, 

Fr Philip Banks