Thirteenth Sunday [+audio]

On Tuesday, I had a meeting with the two young men who want to start a prayer group for the youth of the parish.  A Philip and a James. Both of them are students, so they wanted to meet later on in the morning.  We agreed, in the end, to hold it at 11 o clock. I graciously allowed them to choose the venue so that we would be meeting in a place that would make them feel most at ease and they chose a coffee shop on London Road.  I had to drive up and down a large section of it three or four times before I finally saw the place and then I had difficulty finding somewhere to park.  When I eventually entered the coffee shop it was five minutes past eleven.  I do not like being late for meetings.

The two young men were seated at a table towards the rear of the cafe.
“I’m sorry for having kept you waiting,” I said, taking a seat myself.
Then “Thank you for coming,” I added, shaking both their hands.
I looked around for a member of staff.
“You have to make your order at the counter,” Philip said apologetically.
“Oh, I see,” I said.
So I stood up again and went over to the counter and ordered tea.
“You do do tea, do you?” I asked the woman who was serving. “I know this is a coffee shop.”
She said she’d bring it over and I returned to the table.
“So,” I said to them, “lets begin!”.
“I’ve taken the liberty of producing an agenda,” I went on, and handed them both a copy.
I said to James “Would you mind taking the minutes?”
He gave me a blank look.
“Have you taken minutes before?” I asked him
He continued looking at me with a blank expression on his face.
“Do you know what minutes are?  Oh. Okay. They are a record of the decisions we make during the meeting so that we have a document that can be referred back to in the future as a reminder of what we all agreed.  Would you like me to take the minutes for you on this occasion?”
“Yes please,” he said.
Philip was staring at the agenda.
“Is everything alright?”  I asked him. “I think I’ve included everything on there.”
His face reddened slightly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Right, then,” I said. “ I declare this meeting open!”
“Can we say a quick prayer?” asked James.
“Certainly. If you want to. Of course you can.  Why not?” I said.
We bowed our heads and James provided a spontaneous, and I have to concede, eloquent, though slightly over-long prayer thanking God for the opportunity for us to be together, and asking he direct our wills towards his own and hoping the outcome of the meeting would be for His greater good.  Then I got on with the meeting.
“In order to set up this proposed prayer group of yours,” I told them, “we need to address the following areas: location; personnel; resources; session structure; and long term goals.  As you can see from the agenda, I have given each area an item of its own.  Shall we start from the top?  You’re both looking at me blankly again.”
“Well,” said James, looking at Philip and then looking at me, “we … we really just wanted to start off by talking about the poster.”
“I see,” I said. “To be honest with you, we really need to iron out these other issues before we get onto things like ‘the poster’.  I would be happy, though, to add a discussion about the poster as an agenda item for a future meeting.”
They fell silent.
“Is that alright with you both?” I asked them.
James looked at his copy of the agenda.
“What does AOB mean?” he asked.
“It stands for ‘Any Other Business’,” I said.
“Could we discuss the poster under that?”
“I suppose we could,” I said reluctantly.
I made a note of it on my copy of the agenda with my pencil.
“Location then,” I said.
“The church hall.”
“That was easy!” I said and wrote down the words ‘CHURCH HALL’.
“On which night will it be held?” I asked them.
“Monday night.”
“Have you booked it up?  Do you know if it’s available? No? I action you, then, James, to organise that.”
My pot of tea arrived.
“Personnel,” I continued.
“What’s that?” asked Philip.
“It’s the people who help you to organise it.  What would your name be for that?  Your ministry team.”
“It was just going to be us, to start with, really,” said James.
“You’ll need more than that.  Can you think of no one in the parish who could help you?  What about Desmond Geoffreys?  He would be good.  He’s been successfully running prayer groups in the parish for the last twenty five years.”
They looked at each other.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Philip. “He’s not really …”
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
“Well … he talks the talk, and I suppose you could say he just about walks the walk, but he doesn’t be the be, if you know what I mean. He isn’t the is.  I don’t rate him.”
“Yeah,” said James.  “He’s a bit fake.”
There was silence.
“Let’s go onto the next item, then.” I said, but Philip interrupted me.
“I’ll be honest with you, Bernard,” he said.  “You’re making this all rather more complicated than it needs to be.  Our resources, I guess, will just be a guitar, some transparencies with lyrics on and an overhead projector.  Our long term goal is the furtherance of the Kingdom of God and as for a session structure, our plan, really, is just to let ourselves be led by the spirit.”
I paused for a moment to carefully consider my response.
“It’s a bit woolly,” I said at length.
The two young men were silent.
“You need a formal structure each time you gather for your prayer.  Otherwise it all falls to pieces.” I told them.
Neither of them spoke.
Then James asked quietly, “Bernard?  Have you been baptised in the Holy Spirit?”
“Of course I have!” I answered curtly. “And in the Father.  And in the Son as well. As has every other Catholic.”
“But have you received him?”
“Yes.  At confirmation.  I think we’re actually starting to digress from the point of the meeting.  Can we leave this discussion until the end?”
“Have you accepted him?”  Philip asked. “Is he active in you life?”
“Look,” I said, starting to get quite irritated, “Don’t imply that I’m a second class Christian just because I can’t speak in tongues.”
They were both clearly taken aback.
“The spirit manifests itself in us in a multitude of ways,” I said to them. “For example, I have a gift for bringing order out of chaos.  Do you know where its recorded that the spirit first does that?  It’s Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, when he hovered over the turbulent waters.  That’s right at the start of the Bible.  Its the first characteristic of the spirit that’s mentioned, so therefore, yes, I would say that the spirit is definitely very active in my life.”
Philip and James looked very uncomfortable.
“I wasn’t meaning to imply anything,” said Philip simply.
We sat there silently again.  I poured myself a cup of tea.  It was lukewarm.
“Shall we have a discussion about your poster?” I suggested.
Philip brightened a little.
“I want to work out what words to put on it, really,” he said.
“Do you have any ideas?” I asked him.
“Well … I dunno … something along the lines of  …” he looked at us both, “Come To Saint Joseph’s Youth Prayer Group and hang with Christ.”
I looked at James to see what he thought but he was shaking his head.
“Better not,” he said.  “They might think you mean crucifixion.”
Philip thought for a moment.
“Alright, then,” he said.  “How about:  St Joseph’s Youth Prayer Group – Not Crucifixion, Cruci-FACT!”
“Erm,” said James.
James thought for a moment.
“Why not just go for something honest, like: Broken? Yearn To Be Healed? Come To St Joseph’s Youth Prayer group and be prayed on.  God, that could really be misinterpreted.”
“Something for the weakened?” suggested Philip.
“Absolutely not!” I said. ”What about: Come To St Joseph’s Youth Prayer Group And Prepare To Meet Thy Maker!”
“No, look,” said James. “What we want is a sentence or a phrase that when someone looks at it they think to themselves ‘Now that’s something I could get involved in.’  You know?  Something that … if it was a girl,  you’d say ‘fwoar! I’d really like to woo her!’ You know? Something that would stir you to action.  Something that would activate you, liberate you from this … this inertia, this sedentary, this motionlessness, this lethargy, this … disinterest, God, you know, this listlessness, this tedium.”
“This torpor.”  I said.
“This torpor,” he agreed,  “This paralysis.  This sludge. I don’t know,” he said.  “Something will come to us.  Let’s leave it for now.”
Philip said “Put Your Hands Together For God?”
“Shall I put this as an item for next time?” I said.
Everybody agreed and I closed the meeting.
“I’ll get copies of the minutes to you by next Monday.” I told them.
We arranged a date for the next meeting, I thanked them again and we went our separate ways.