Making Space for Love with heart, mind, and soul.
Following the arrival of a new Dean in December 2023, the Chapter of Southwark Cathedral along with the new Dean and Cathedral staff have spent time clarifying its vision for the next five to ten years. As a result, we are committing ourselves to 'making space for love with heart mind and soul'.
This vision resonates with us because:
- It is based on the Gospel. When Jesus is asked (Matthew 22: 34-40) which is the greatest commandment, he answers that it is to love God with all the heart, soul and mind.
- There is a conscious and continuous agency about it. We are actively wanting to ‘make space’.
- There is a generosity and implicit humility to this vision. We are wanting to allow space for other people – for all the animals to find space in the ark – but we are also willing to be changed by such inclusion, allowing new friends to challenge our thinking, organisation, and praying.
- At a time when many are feeling excluded from the church because of its continued discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, it continues our belief that God is love, and that love in all its diversity should always have space made for it, so that all can flourish in their faith and lead lives of integrity.
- By identifying ‘heart, mind, and soul’ we are committing ourselves to three clear pathways for our mission as a cathedral.
- It connects well to the Diocesan call to be ‘Christ centred and outward focused’. To love with heart, mind, and soul, is Christ’s primary invitation to us. To do this by making space is to keep our focus beyond ourselves.
- We shouldn’t lose our commitment to be ‘inclusive, faithful and radical’. This refreshed vision is simply another way of saying it, and in our communications we can still refer to these 4 important words as defining markers for who we are as a Cathedral.
- The pathways opened up by focusing on ‘heart, mind, and soul’, take up the priorities identified in the Congregational Consultation as a new Dean was being sought.
Heart – ‘to encourage a commitment to social justice and to the inclusive nature of the Cathedral’ and ‘good pastoral care’.
Mind – ‘to be involved in education and to the “thinking life” of the Cathedral’.
Soul – ‘a commitment to high quality of liturgy’, ‘development of the inner life and spirituality’ and ‘commitment to the choral tradition and support of the arts’.
Pathways for realising our vision
‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God’ (1 John 4,7)
The word ‘love’ is used in many superficial and saccharine flavoured ways today. This might mean we are reluctant to use it, in case we look like we are buying into these. Instead, we should reclaim the word, and show how it is central to Christian belief and practice. What Christ meant by the word is so urgently needed in our society. To focus on love, when the Church is too often known for division and disagreement, and discrimination, is instead a positive articulation of what we believe about God, the life of faith, and the dignity of all. The three pathways in which we agree to make space for love of God and neighbour in this vision, focus on:
THE HEART Southwark Cathedral will work to keep the heart healthy in London.
THE MIND Southwark Cathedral will help people to live faithfully and think critically.
THE SOUL Southwark Cathedral will be a school for the soul.
Our full vision for the future can be read on pages 3, 4 and 5 of the 2024 Dean's Report.