These cold, cold days have provided ample time for curling up under a blanket and making my way through the stacks of books in the ‘to be read’ pile. These are the books that are not as urgent as those that are cycling through the monthly book club sessions. They are also not the ones that must be read for the information needed for a meeting, sermon or class I have some responsibility for. Instead, these are the books whose presence seems to grow at certain times of the year, those that have a scrap of paper stuck in a particular page that houses something I want to ‘get to later’. A thought. A quote. Something to enlighten, to argue with. Something to remember or to inspire.

Over the last year I have read a daily devotional that I believe I have mentioned in these pages. It was given to me by a friend for my birthday and I have so enjoyed its daily thoughts and the way it keeps me honest in daily scripture reading. But I had never spent much time looking at the book’s introduction which outlines the devotional’s contents and intention. The enforced hibernation of these days has allowed me to get to this kind of reading.

The devotional book was put together by the Northumbrian Community, a faith community that finds its home in the northeastern most part of England and along the Scottish Borders. They find their inspiration and grounding in the stark terrain of this landscape and the frigid waters of the North Sea. It finds its theological heart in Celtic Christianity and the wisdom of St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert. Not a community in the traditional sense of folks who live near one another, it is a dispersed community of people who are held together by following a rule of life that is present in monastic communities across the globe. I have heard of a small gathering of faithful people following this rule who live in and around the Twin Cities.

In my under-the-blanket reading, I learned that the central precept that guides the community, its Rule, is one of availability and vulnerability as their way of living. This really captured my imagination! What might it mean to follow a daily practice of availability and vulnerability? Can you imagine it? To awake every day and to walk into the world wearing an openness to being available to others, to oneself, to the needs, the joys, the sorrows, the hopes that come our way. What might that mean for embracing the world, for seeing the Holy in the midst of every encounter?

Of course, it seems to me that this rule of availability would be impossible without its other half, vulnerability. Mostly, we have been trained from an early age against vulnerability. We equate it with weakness. But they are not the same. At least to me, to be vulnerable implies a heart that welcomes, without judging, whomever and whatever crosses my path, to see myself as the small, yet significant, part of Creation which I am. Vulnerability and humility are dance partners and we might all do well to join in the music.

If a life lived with availability and vulnerability weren’t enough, these faithful folks are also called to a life of “embracing the heretical imperative”. Big church-speak alert! Basically what this means is they are called to live a life that challenges assumed truth. For some people, we have just stepped into some dangerous territory. But for these folks who are working every day to make sense of their 21st century lives and the ancient wisdom that has guided the communities that birthed them, they are available and vulnerable enough to challenge doctrines and rules that provided structure and form in the past but may no longer do so. In walking the path with a God who is ever-creating, ever-imagining, they are willing to be available and vulnerable to a God who encourages letting go, change and a new way of being in and seeing the world. They are willing to see the doctrines created by their faithful ancestors for the wisdom they were for their time but not be bound by them for living a life that is still being shaped by the Holy.

These are all thoughts that are warming my spirit and giving me hope in this new year. I am praying for a faith, for a community, for a church that has the courage to live by a rule of availability and vulnerability and that challenges. For those of us in the Christian household, it seems we have a pretty good model for this rule of living.