Simon Parke wrote about

being haunted by ‘The Stature of Waiting’ by W H Vanstone…it compared the active and challenging life of Jesus before his arrest in Gethsemane and his passive acceptance of circumstances afterwards…Implicit, if not explicit, was a theology of uselessness; an acceptance of holy futility as circumstances changed. If we ever link our value and place in the world with being useful, I suspect we become a danger to ourselves and others.

He followed this on 4 May with a piece about a nonagenarian correspondent who

had settled for Being not Doing in the time given to me…to reflect on things, prepare to meet my maker and enjoy myself. I sometimes comfort myself when I think I might be being self-indulgent with a verse written in protest at a hymn which began ‘Rise up, men of God, have done with lesser things.’:
‘Sit down O men of God
Ye cannot do a thing
The kingdom is the Lord’s
And he will bring it in.’

On the other hand, there is the quote attributed to St Teresa of Avila, so popular you can buy it on T-shirts and tote bags, mugs and calendars:

“Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world, ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good, ours are the hands with which he blesses his people.”

In St Teresa’s corner are St Matthew (‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father’:5.16) and numberless hymn lyrics, from ‘A work hath Christ for thee to do’ to ‘Who would true valour see’*

What’s a poor Christian pilgrim to do?

This is not an abstract question for me. I have recently started a website with the aim of bringing Anglican laity together in discussion, joined the band of the ‘No Anglican Covenant Coalition’ and begun to blog here – all partly for the joy of it, but also in the hope of nudging people and events in what seems to me to be ‘a Godward direction’. I am not alone. Like my blogging colleagues, I had hoped I was a molecule (all right, then, an atom) of the hands or feet.

Is contemplation really superior to action? For what it’s worth, I think that God hopes we will we do whatever we can to make good our daily prayer, ‘Thy Kingdom come’. The way that we try and do this will of course vary from person to person (that is why we talk about spiritual gifts) and it will also vary according to our physical well-being, as Milton famously pointed out in his sonnet about his blindness:

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

What do you think? Are we here to do or to be?

*Thank-you, Sally Barnes and Mary Judkins, for the nudges!