Sunday 10th August
Holiday Reading & Listening: Tarry Awhile - Selina Stone
During the recent heatwave, I was awake at 2am and decided to stick my head out of the bedroom window in search of fresh air. I caught a moment where Penge was absolutely still and quiet: no wind, no motor vehicles, no human activity, no foxes, no birds... Annoyed though I was to be awake at 2am, it felt like a brief moment of connection, of simply being in the presence of God. Then a motorbike roared past, and the moment was gone.
We live in a busy culture. We rush from one thing to another, seeking to be productive, to achieve, to complete our to-do list. Too often, God just becomes another item on that to-do list, to be fitted in, if possible, between activities. Too often, our human relationships, especially relationships with those overlooked by a busy culture, become the casualty of our pressured lives. When did I last simply "tarry" - with God or with another human being?
Tarrying is a practice which has shaped Black spirituality in many different ways and in many different contexts. It is a collective time of waiting on God, a time which includes people of all ages, class, ethnicities, genders, a time which may include noisy worship and silent contemplation, praise and lament, intercession and confession. At heart, tarrying is about desiring to spend time with God and expresses "the yoking of divine and human agency, with the primacy of divine initiative being recognised" (David Daniels III - quoted on p20).
In this book, which was the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent book for 2024, Selina Stone reflects on the practice of tarrying as a practice which helps us acknowledge who we are as creatures in the presence of a Creator. In the particularity of this Black spiritual practice, she offers the possibility of encounter to all of us - of "stumbling across what is common to all of us as human beings".
This book gave me much to reflect on - not least by demonstrating how people from a culture and background different from my own interpret passages from the Bible which are part of our shared inheritance. This offered me new insights into familiar texts, which have begun to shape my reading of other texts. It also offered a challenge: this is a practice which has enabled communities bound by oppression and deep suffering to find God and find one another within that space. What riches are we missing, simply because we rush on to the next thing?
