Episode 12: Jill Weber
Interview Date: 7 September 2020. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.
Jill Weber and her husband Kirk helped found the Greater Ontario House of Prayer in Canada, and she served as its Abbess for 17 years. Jill is the Global Convenor of the Order of the Mustard Seed, a lay ecumenical religious order, and currently serves on the international leadership team of 24-7, their Director of Houses of Prayer. She and Kirk moved to England in 2018, and Jill is currently establishing a new residential monastic community at Waverley Abbey House in Surrey. A trained spiritual director, Jill published her memoir "a life lived from a place of loving encounter with God" in 2019. It is called Even the Sparrow.
Jill Weber – Timed Interview Summary
0:00 - 11:46
Birth in Vancouver of Australian and Canadian ancestry and now living in the UK. Grandparents are chalk and cheese, on Jill’s mother’s side, Australian ambassadors who mix with royalty and on her father’s side, salt of the earth naval types. Parents, both professional managers, also temperamentally different, her mother an activist, her father more contemplative.
11:47 - 16:38
Childhood in Canada. Lived in several of the major population centres of Canada early on before settling in Winnipeg, which was scorching hot in summer and freezing in winter. Became very hardy. Outdoor life, exposed to the natural but also wildness of the Canadian landscape.
16:39 - 23:25
No exposure to Christianity until her father embarks on a spiritual quest when she was a teenager. He converts to Christianity after reading C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Family attends an excellent Canadian Presbyterian church simply because it is closest to their home. It has an excellent team of youth workers.
23:26 - 44:11
First look at memoir, Even the Sparrow, at the point at which, at a summer youth group camp, she finds a place to pray and introduces herself to God, “Hi, I’m Jill”, and experiences a presence under a tree at night. In response, becoming a Christian is “the polite thing to do.” Not a super-emotional experience. Ponders on this experience for many years. Has been a beautiful unfolding of a life with Jesus. Reflecting back from current role as prayer missionary, a realization that “God is looking for friends”. People have different “heart languages” – Jill is a “feeler” but others might be “thinkers”.
After thirty years’ training in prayer, now a leader of the lay, ecumenical Order of the Mustard Seed, made up of people in regular employment across the church denominations. Now establishing a residential prayer community, called the Seed Community, at Waverley Abbey House with appropriate support from the Archbishop’s Office in the United Kingdom. New monasticism developed after the Second World War as a different form from the traditional Benedictine and Franciscan orders, and its members are formed from a dispersed community centred around shared commitments and practices. Prayer is at its heart. Importance of being a prayer archaeologist (since there is a history of prayer at Waverley from the sixth century), desiring God and cultivating a loving presence.
44:12 - 49:06
Looking back an important marker for the growth in her desire for God develops through experiencing the Toronto Blessing in 1994, which reorients her understanding of the fatherhood of God; and that desire has not diminished.
49:07 - 52:00
First career choice before conversion is to be a vet, then finds her capacity for public speaking increases, as the result of what Jill describes as “a communication grace”. Decides to be a minister and becomes youth pastor.
52:01 - 58:34
Memoir describes a detour: “I met a guy”. Marriage and domestic abuse. Gives birth to daughter, then leaves and starts a new life. Church unsupportive. Moves to another church which understands, and is supportive of, those who have suffered domestic abuse.
58:35 - 1:06:17
Supports herself as Crazy Daisy, a clown alter ego doing children’s parties. Learns how to handle nine-year-old boy hecklers. Crazy Daisy is retired, but lives on surreptitiously. Clowning expresses the monastic vocation of joy.
1:06:18 - 1:10:56
Christian life is an adventure with Jesus. We have the tendency to domesticate the Gospel, and there is an opportunity to live with more risk and reward than modern culture allows. Has learned Ignatian “Holy Indifference”, a sense of being willing to release outcomes to God, even if it means hardship. There is a way to “live light”, with Jesus being the Companion on the Way, and everything else being secondary.
1:10:57 - 1:25:35
Had read Brené Brown about vulnerability when writing Even the Sparrow and this influenced the level of openness and honesty in her book. Quotes Ruth Haley Barton: ”Can you walk all the way into your sadness”. Jesus walks his way into our deepest sadness. Has observed friends and colleagues in whom suffering has created a deep luminosity which means that they positively influence the atmosphere of a room when entering it. Transformation comes from going into the depths, moving beyond mere sin-avoidance or being the best version of oneself, into change from the inside out.
1:25:36 - 1:31:40
Advice for people facing lockdown in Covid-19. The importance of self-care, knowing when to “power down and reboot up”. Embodied prayer practices help deal with emotions which are hidden or trapped within the body. Meditation on the Psalms is life-giving and changes emotional chemistry. More Psalms deal with suffering than with joy. The Church has lost the capacity to lament.
1:31:41 - 1:41:19
Memoir describes Jill as an archaeologist unearthing buried dreams of leadership. Becomes engaged to Kirk, a long-term friend and drummer. Has to learn to trust in a human relationship and a relationship with a male God. Has vision of God as a consuming fire, protecting her.
1:41:20 - 1:53:50
Distinction between prayer and intercession. Importance of praying Scripture. Becomes student of New Testament prayers. Praying as “the bride” not “the persistent widow”. Wordless prayer. Prayer as conversation or communion.
1: 53:51 - 2:08:44
In 2001 starts house of prayer in Ontario. A big experiment. Explores ordering of lives around rhythms of prayer, rather than just tacking it on to the fringes of one’s life. Also entails moving into a poor area of the city and practicing radical domestic hospitality. A lot of heart work involved as one has to let go of preferred outcomes. It involves an invitation into suffering, as prayer co-exists with suffering. Influence of Benedictine Oblate, Brother David Peter. Monastic practice of chanting the Psalms, seven times a day.
2: 08:45 - 2:17:01
Moves to England in 2018. Invited by Pete Greig of the 24/7 Prayer movement to set up a modern monastery at Waverley Abbey House. Jill was happy where she was, as she was only a decade and a half in to setting up the house of prayer in Ontario, Canada, but it became clear that it was a divine invitation. Is negotiating aspects of English culture. Southern English difficulty with boldness in women. Lack of emotional directness. Learning how to say things sideways.
2: 17:02 - 2:22:47
The whys and wherefores of writing Even the Sparrow. The importance of leaving a legacy and she is writing for young leaders, particularly women. It is a way of imparting the spirit that she carries to other people, and Even the Sparrow is the way she has chosen to do it. Wrote the book in a coffee shop with a strict regime, an hour and a half a day. She is specializing in spiritual memoir, and her next book will concentrate on the experience of being pregnant and a new mother, as she is aware that a lot of young Christian mother welcome insights on a subject that has not been covered much.