Vade Mecum: July

A new monthly look ahead to the invitations - seasonal and liturgical - to embrace the sacred in the ordinary.

Hi friends,

Marking the natural and liturgical seasons of the year is a life-giving practice for me. I’ve often offered ways to connect with those ordinary-holy days in my emails, but I’m bringing a new intentionality to this practice. I’m going to begin offering an overview of the month ahead, considering the liturgical and natural seasons, and the particular saints feast days and other significant days.

I’m calling it Vade Mecum, which means “go with me” in Latin. It’s the name given to a small guidebook that pilgrims in the golden age of pilgrimage would carry that contained all the maps, information and permits they needed to travel, as well as prayers and scriptures to take with them.

Here, each month, I hope you will find an invitation to “go with me” as I seek the sacred in the ordinary by marking the seasons and remembering the cloud of witnesses who went before us. 

I plan to share it on or just before the first of every month, gathering inspiration, ideas and suggestions to help you journey with intentionality and delight through your days. I’ll pick out one day in particular to explore in more detail - this month it is the feast day of St Thomas. Let me know what you would like to see here to help you engage the month ahead!

//

Painting: Go On, Thomas, by Jack Baumgartner

3rd July: Feast day of St Thomas, disciple of Jesus

Nevertheless, she doubted.

It’s not a secret that Thomas is my favourite of Jesus’ male disciples. This patron saint is known for his doubt, so much that it usually becomes his new first name: Doubting Thomas. I used to try and defend him from that title, pointing out his faith that led him to stay with the disciples despite his uncertainty about their claims.

These days though, I do less defending. I tend to think that if Thomas is somehow watching our unfolding lives, he would be proud of his moniker. 

Doubt is simply “(a feeling of) not being certain about something” (that’s the Cambridge dictionary definition). In itself then, it has no moral weight. To not be certain about something is not a moral wrong, and it can be wise, especially when the whole situation is not seen or understood. 

“If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that serious doubt - the kind that leads to despair - begins not when we start asking God questions but when, out of fear, we stop.” - Rachel Held Evans. 

As my husband and I attempt to be good parents, one of the key values we try to both model and teach our children is curiosity.

It backfires sometimes, like when my son won’t stop asking “why” about every single request I make of him, and when I ask him to maybe just do what he’s told, he retorts, “but mum, you always say I have to ask more questions!” Nicely played, my son. 

Curiosity is important to us for so many reasons. For my husband, who works in the world of strategic design and innovation, it is one of the cornerstones of growth and transformation. And the same is true for my work as a spiritual companion - I bring curiosity to my conversations and I invite my directees to be curious about themselves and about the Divine. 

Curiosity is incredible in the way that it disarms a conversation. Things that suddenly felt despairing or terrifying are suddenly less dangerous because we are invited to simply explore them, to wonder about them, to be curious about what we’re not seeing, not yet understanding. The more questions we ask, the more possibility of uncovering and answer that might unlock something profound.

Doubt then, rather than being its opposite, seems essential to faith.

So in the spirit of St Thomas, the Doubter, what might it look like to cultivate that transformative uncertainty? One way of nurturing a healthy doubt is to practise “what if” questions. What if this bible story can be interpreted differently? What if I changed the pronouns in this passage to female or gender-neutral? What if this activity counts as prayer? What if God doesn’t care that I skipped church this week? What if that thing that stood out to me on my walk this morning was an invitation to a divine conversation?

You don’t need to have all the answers. You have permission to be theologically “unsound” (yikes, how I dislike that word!). You can risk being heretical even.

Just don’t stop asking more questions. 

---

Liturgical Season: Ordinary Time

We are in the second season of Ordinary Time (the first comes between Epiphany and Lent) and it is the longest, taking us all the way from Pentecost in May to the start of Advent in late November. 

Ordinary simply means that we’re not marking one of those “high” seasons like Easter. And so there’s an invitation to this “great, green, growing season” where we focus on what faithfulness in the ordinary everyday of our lives looks like. 

Maybe consider this question in your prayer and as you go through your days: Where or how am I seeing the sacred in my ordinary time?

The liturgical colour for Ordinary Time is green! If you have a practice of using a home altar, finding a green cloth or bringing green objects and elements to decorate it could remind you of this season.

Key dates in July:

3rd July: Thomas the disciple; also July’s Full Moon (in some communities called the Buck Moon or Thunder Moon).

• To honour Thomas, spend some time today journaling your “what if” questions and allowing them to become your prayer as you move through your day with them.

• Books about doubt: Let’s Talk About Doubt by Kat Wordsworth; and Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey. 

11th July: feast day of St Benedict of Nursia, 480-547, founder of a vast monastic community.

• My favourite phrase of St Benedict from his rule of life: “Always, we begin again”.

• Practice: consider your own Rule of Life. There are many new resources in the past few years about how to create your own rule of life, but I would caution to choose a resource that is spacious in its approach, rather than defining for you what the focus should be. Sacred Ordinary Days is a good place to begin.

“A good rule can set us free to be our true and best selves. It is a working document, a kind of spiritual budget, not carved in stone but subject to regular review and revision. It should support us, but never constrict us.” - Margaret Guenther, Spiritual Director and Anglican Priest

13th July: feast day of St Anthony of Padua - proclaimed a Doctor of the church, patron saint, amongst other things, of finding lost items!

• Take a moment to consider what you have lost recently - maybe a loved one through death or moving, maybe there are losses connected with a faith shift or personal change. Honour those losses in whatever way is helpful today, and consider if there may be the hope of something new being found or restored.

17th: July’s New Moon

• The new moon is the beginning of the lunar cycle and so is embraced as a time to reflect on the past cycle and set intentions for the cycle ahead. You might like to practise a simple Examen of the past month today (I love Jen Wilhoite at Cobblework’s creative and soulful examen resources).

18th July: Birthday of Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa and resistor of Apartheid

• Take some time today to consider how you are working towards racial justice in your own life. What steps might you take today to learn from leaders and teachers of colour, to give up some of your own power to empower the historically marginalised, and how might you redistribute some of your own resources (financial and other) to make a more just society for all?

“To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” ― Nelson Mandela

28th July: Birthday of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit poet.

Read this Victorian priest's poetry which is infused with a love of the natural world, a deep trust in Christ in it all, and a willingness to ask the hard questions. 

• Start here - As Kingfishers Catch Fire - and delight in the way he sees the Divine mystery everywhere he looks. 

• Read Binsey Poplars and let his grief for the lost trees ignite your own grief for our natural world in deep crisis.

• And his most famous, of course: God’s Grandeur, which is well worth its praise.

31st July: feast day of St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

Having just finished the Ignatian Exercises that I began back in October last year - a prayer journey that Ignatius authored for those seeking a deeper encounter with God - I have so much more I could say about this saint, but those thoughts feel as yet unready for sharing.

• Today, try praying the Examen, which Ignatius believed was the most important prayer practice for beginning to notice the movements of Spirit in a person’s life. I will repeat my love for the Cobbleworks resources as an expansive and creative approach to the examen (I own and use her examen cards). Or for a very simple and traditional approach, I love the Pray as You Go app, which has multiple guided examen prayers to listen to.

---

Thank you for reading this far!

I hope all of these ideas have provided prompts and ideas to follow the trail of through the month ahead. Chose to follow your curiosity - what particularly speaks to you from these dates and invitations? And may that create possibilities for new and deeper connection with yourself, with others, and with God.

P.S. Tradition tells that St Thomas took the Way of Jesus to India, and established seven churches there in the first century. There are pilgrim routes linking some of the key places he is known to have travelled, preached, baptised, and died. Now I am daydreaming about a pilgrimage of doubters to India one day… who’s with me?!