Hear Our Silence

I have just come across Johannes Kelpius for the first time and as I began to read his A Short, Easy and Comprehensive Method of Prayer my admiration grew.

‘Now where the Spirit of God is, there is Freedom, and none may be so insolent, or bestow unnecessary Labours, to prescribe Rules and Limits for such an one. Therefore there must be no compelling to any particular Degree of Prayer, but to open the Heart to the Holy Spirit, and resign it wholly to him, that so he may according the the Strength and Power of his gracious Drawings, incline the Heart in all Freedom, either to speak or to be silent, either to call upon God, or to hearken to him, either to pray for some particular Grace, or to pray for nothing; but to do nothing more than to admire and love, to discover something, or to partake of some sensible Evidence of Grace, or to perceive nothing: either to be in Fervency, or in Dryness: either in Strength, or in weakness; either in Light or in Darkness…’

Born in Transylvania in 1673, Johann Kelp attended the Bavarian University of Altdorf where, as was the custom for scholars so to be signalled, his name was Latinized to Johannes Kelpius. He soon came under the influence Pietism, a reaction to Lutheran formalism, and meeting the astronomer Johann Jacob Zimmerman, joined his brotherhood of young men known as The Chapter of Perfection. Determining clear portents in the heavens of the approaching Millenium being the occasion of the Second Coming, Zimmerman gladly accepted an offer of free land in Pennsylvania with free passage thrown in: America was deemed to be untainted by the sins of Europe. But before he and his enlightened band could set sail, he died in 1693.

Although Kelpius was just twenty, he was elected to succeed as leader. Arriving at their favoured destination, he led his band of forty pious seekers to some wild heights above Philadelphia and there on the fortieth parallel, he erected a 40 foot square tabernacle. The magic 40 struck a chord with them, yet they never wished to become a rule ridden sect. Their group skills in both music and medecine were much appreciated by the settlers living nearby. But because the newcomers had set themselves apart, their activities were regarded with some suspicion and they became known as ‘The Woman in the Wilderness’. With so little structure, they were doomed to wither. Yet salvage there is.

The Millenium of 1700 came and went without untoward disturbance. And slowly members drifted away to join the thriving Germantown below. Kelpius died of tuberculosis aged only 35. He left behind a collection of devotional hymns and his little book on prayer. It is well worth perusal:

http://www.passtheword.org/DIALOGS-FROM-THE-PAST/kelpiusinwardprayer.htm

We gathered to pray and bid our farewells yesterday to Eileen Fear, founder member of Hear our Silence. Eileen would never miss a workshop within striking distance of her home in Wells. And she was delighted when a Taste and See group was started in the cathedral last year - run on similar lines to Hear our Silence.

As we laid her in the ground in the pretty churchyard of St Leonard’s Watlington, a red kite came circling overhead, it great wingspan held in a stiff but delicate cruciform.

Funeral parties are occasions when somehow small talk soon evaporates and true encounters happen. I met Kingsley, aged 102, whom Eileen read to every Wednesday morning since his priestly eyes are fairly worn out. I asked him about his long life: he went to school at Berkhamstead with Graham Greene. ‘But I was lazy and hardly passed any exams; so my father told me to go into a bank.’ This he suffered for three years and then joined the Colonial Police Force. Thirty years later, aged fifty, he came back to England and was accepted for the priesthood. Ordained at Salisbury he served as a curate in a Dorset country parish.

Peter came next. He wore a Gunners’ tie so that gave me my cue. In 1947, he had fired the salute as the Indian army marched through Delhi to celebrate their nation’s independence. I lunched with Gladys who told me she had buried her brother in Brighton last week. ‘A happy and interesting funeral - many of his artist friends were there…’ Her brother was Barry Wilkinson, illustrator of Paddington Bear. I confessed that I had founded The Red House and she produced a pile of children’s books, souvenirs from her brother’s studio.

We may bury the dead with sorrow but then comes consolation as we share our myriad memories.