Jan Waterson writes:
FURTHER to your obituary of Jim Cotter (Gazette, 25
April), his ministry of "quiet prayer, simple hospitality, and
thoughtful conversation, and deepening solitude and simplicity" had
a particular focus in his later years, which is still growing.
In 1997, Jim visited a little and rarely open church at
Llandecwyn, high above the estuary of the Afon Dwyryd, near
Harlech, accessed by a single track, with no through road into the
hills. He sensed that here was a place with roots deep in Welsh
Christianity, as well as in the primal religion of the centuries
before, which, in its simplicity, could invite the stranger to be
at home, and could be a place where people of different churches
and faiths, and all people of good will, might find an atmosphere
in which they could breathe freely, without feeling pressured into
a pattern of belief that no longer connected with their lives.
For the following two summers, he experimented with opening the
church. Convinced of its value, he spent the next seven summers
keeping St Tecwyn's open seven days a week, offering hospitality
and prayer.
A few years later, Jim started to explore whether the insights
and practices developed at Llandecwyn might be transferable. He was
the instigator of a supportive network, the Small Pilgrim Places
Network (www.smallpilgrimplaces.org). This promotes the vision and
development of Small Pilgrim Places. Each, of the current 33 Places
is unique. But all aim to be simple, quiet, and unpretentious,
offering a welcoming and inclusive space for pondering, breathing,
meditating, praying, and "being". Indeed, Jim was later able to
transfer some of the lessons of Llandecwyn to a very different
context in Aberdaron, where St Hywen's continues as a member of the
Small Pilgrim Places Network.
The Revd Andrew Hunt adds: I forget how many times I
have recommended or given to people Prayer at Night,
especially the latter part of the book, "Cairns for a journey; that
Day and Night should be a single whole" - a brilliant exposition of
the apophatic way of the Cross, with countless psychological and
spiritual insights, couched in the form of an extended pictorial
prayer, a Christian work, yet open to all. It is a classic.
Others have found succour in his reworking of the Psalms, or in
Healing, More or Less. These works provided an opportunity
for the Church to bring itself up to date with contemporary
society, using the traditional terms of reference of Christianity,
but expressed in a way to which those seeking God today could
relate.
I was fortunate to have trained under Jim on the St Albans MTS
course, a course so radical that it was swiftly dumbed down after
his departure in 1986. His intelligence, alertness, and spiritual,
academic, and theological brilliance were like an electric shock to
the system; the God that I had previously met through the Church
had to be greatly enlarged. Invited speakers such as Ken Leech,
Keith Ward, Angela Tilby, Donald Reeves, and others produced a
similar effect. I was half thrilled, half mortified, to discover,
through Jim, that gay people were generally more intelligent,
sensitive, caring, and insightful, and sharper and wittier, than
straight emotional dumbclucks such as I.