parachuting into the whirlwind

[N.B. This entry was actually written on Sunday, 7th October, but wasn't posted then due to computer problems. I hope better service will resume here soon.]

On Friday I had a night off. A night which I didn't have to go out, that is. I had had things on in the evenings for the previous eight nights running. Yesterday, after my night off, I embarked on a further six-night run. These events have been mostly very enjoyable, many of them connected with meeting new students - new graduate students in college, new international students in Cambridge, new residents of Link House. The pace has sometimes seemed relentness and somewhat gruelling, though it's been mostly in the daytimes that I've struggled to get things done due to tiredness and occasional panickiness. The evenings have been great.

At the beginning of September I went away for nearly two weeks. I was grateful at the time for the break, but am increasingly grateful that it provided the slowing of pace which is enabling me to endure the wonderful craziness these few weeks hold. I went away to Switzerland, to a Christian community called L'Abri. Wade Bradshaw, who was until recently director of the English branch of L'Abri, writes in his book By Demonstration: God: Fifty Years and a Week at L'Abri, that any answer to the question "What is L'Abri?" which is short enough to hold the listener's attention is liable to be misleading. I concur.


L’Abri translates as “the shelter” and is a place where people can go and stay for a time living in community with each other as they work through issues, whether ‘intellectual’, ‘spiritual’ or ‘personal’ (though any time at L’Abri will teach you how much these aspects of our lives we often keep apart are really intertwined with each other). Most days you will be assigned to study one half of the day (morning or afternoon) and some kind of practical work the other half, such as cleaning, gardening or cooking for up to 30 people. There are also some lectures, film screenings, church services, cookie-eating sessions, volleyball matches etc which find their way into or around the programme.

L’Abri was started just over 50 years by Francis and Edith Schaeffer, American missionaries in Europe, though in many ways it was started by God to the surprise of the Schaeffers. Their daughter invited a few university friends home and their dinner table conversation about big issues has now blossomed into a worldwide community, which has had an enormous influence through the people who have passed through as well as through books and things like that. Switzerland is the mother branch, as it were, but L’Abri now operates in several countries, though remaining a community-based work without extensive organisational machinery.

I got to know a variety of people of several nationalities and this was one of the factors that led to me feeling that I was there for much longer than I was. Here are some of them: Chris, Renea, Jasie. The setting is pretty spectacular in the village of Huémoz where we were. New experiences included trying to push a lawnmower up the side of a mountain to mow the lawn, visiting the vineyards for a wine festival and being arm-twisted into rapping for a talent show. One of the things which was good for me was that as well as designated times for working, you have designated times for resting, when I didn’t feel guilty about relaxing because that’s what the timetable said I should be doing.


The question I was investigating was to do with how we handle the Bible (hermeneutics, if you want the technical term). My basic question is how we can handle the Bible responsibly, e.g. reading in context, taking the relevant historical, linguistic and theological factors into account, while not losing the sense of the immediacy of God’s word being addressed to us in our own situation. I got a few useful pointers, particularly from Greg Laughery (with a blog here), Swiss L’Abri’s director, but I think the main thing that came across to me was the realisation that God doesn’t require us to be perfect in our understanding any more than in any other area of our lives before he can use us, and that sometimes we have to act on the basis of what seems to us at present, with our less than certain knowledge, to be right, knowing that God is big enough to cope with our mistakes, whether in our thinking, our decisions or our behaviour. In a funny kind of way, this actually gives me more confidence in using and developing the ideas that I have, in that I don’t have to be paranoid about saying/doing/thinking/deciding the wrong thing as long as I’m headed in the right basic direction.

My time at L’Abri was a time to stop and reconfigure, in preparation for the rush of exciting things which I will be involved in this academic year. I’m learning to surf the wave rather than be drowned by it; to parachute calmly down into the whirlwind.

Speaking of which, I’m logging off now to go downstairs for another international meal – my ‘national’ contribution is flapjack.