The first day of January
may mark the official beginning of the yearly cycle but
for many of us the real start of the calendar year is in
September, as the summer evenings darken, the temperature
drops and the leaves on the trees start to turn from green
to brown. It all goes back to our schooldays, when each
autumn marked the move to new classrooms, new subjects,
new teachers and a fresh academic start. For those of us
who are parents, that September watershed is once again
relived, as we watch our children don school uniforms after
the long and lazy summer break.
Ecclesiastical life also
seems to manifest that kind of transition. The last of the
summer holidaymakers come homewards, students prepare to
head off for another year at university and the lull in
regular events throughout July and August is replaced by
the weekly schedule of church activities. The place of worship
that I attend is not untypical in having a number of 'home
groups' which meet on a fortnightly basis for Bible study,
prayer and fellowship. Mid-September marks the start of
my home group's 'winter season' and it is always good to
meet with friends last talked to back in June, when plans
were being made for holidays, as we stood around a barbeque
in a secluded garden. Each summer, all kinds of changes
happen and this year three new babies have arrived on our
home group scene.
One of the innovations that
we have made in recent years is to conduct most of our prayer
sessions in single-sex groupings, even though the Bible
study itself is undertaken as a whole group. At first, this
seemed to me like a bad idea. I have always hated the idea
of ritualised 'bonding' with other men ever since I resolutely
refused to participate in schoolboy rugby with its macho
camaraderie and laddish humour. And I have always steered
clear of special Christian events for men, wary of being
offered some 'lowest common denominator' generalisations
about a spirituality that is, supposedly, appropriate for
my male gender. However, over the last two years I have
been forced to change my mind.
I think that my male colleagues
and I in our fellowship group have actually found the single-sex
prayer sessions to be valuable because of the things that
we major in on as men. I notice in particular that we talk
quite a lot about work - about its deep significance in
our lives, its debateable role as a measure of personal
worth, the pressures of combining workplace values with
our Christian commitment and the difficulty of letting go
of work at the end of the day in order to focus on family
relationships instead. I think that we also talk quite freely
about issues of personal health and wellbeing, both physical
and psychological, and gain benefit from sharing similar
problems. There is also great benefit to be gained from
experiencing the wide range of ages in the group as we come
to understand the journey that each of us is making through
life as a man. Perhaps most significantly of all, it feels
good for men to be empathising with one another, sustaining
one another at the emotional level and engaging in prayer
for each other. In that regard we are maybe catching up
with women, who, within our culture, have been so much more
able and willing to 'share and care.'
And so, as the new season
of church life for 2007/08 gets under way in countless communities
across the land, I salute all those men who have decided
- without turning their backs monastically on the female
gender - to use Christian fellowship with their fellow-males
as a chance to grow and develop during the winter that lies
ahead. I will continue to look out for just one men's group,
which has taken the task to its ultimate conclusion and
left the confines of Bible study behind them - in order
to hug some trees in the nearest park!
Philip Orr
