A prayer for an "Open the Book" team.

A long time ago (well, I think it was in 2001 to be precise) a small group of women involved in children's work in this diocese met for coffee and conversation with the then Children's Officer. We didn't have any specific agenda, beyond getting to know one another better, and mutual support. 

I was about to go to my selection conference, so didn't pay that much attention to a conversation that was happening on the other side of the room in the ancient gatehouse that is the Cathedral's Education Centre....but 2 of my colleagues were sharing a dream they had had.....and getting very excited.

From that conversation and the dreaming of dreams, Open the Book was rolled out in this diocese and those two women found a new vocation and ministry -which has touched hundreds of adults and children.

Fast forward to 2012, and I've been asked to commission the new team that is taking "Open the Book" into one of our community schools here in the valley. Over the past 3 months as the team has developed, they have grown in so many ways - in faith, in confidence, in friendship - it would have been worth launching the team for the benefits to its members alone, without the impact that their ministry will have on the children of our schools. 

It is a real delight to be commissioning them - I'm thankful for Open the Book as a project, and for the way it has inspired so many to connect with local schools, to enable them to experience the Bible, not as something sterile or irrelevant, but as something dynamic, exciting and immediate...

So tomorrow I will anoint the team, and pray for them by name......then wait and see what happens next through their gift of time and talents.

Lord God,
you invite each of us to be part of your great story

and weave our lives into your perfect happy ending.

Bless your servants N & M as they share the story of your love

and open the book in which we learn more of you.

Give them gentle patience,

Creativity and insight

and all those gifts that they most need

as they share good news with the children of Cashes Green.

May the children, drawn by these stories

Begin to find their place in your kingdom

and so claim your story as their own

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Blogging through Narnia 2 - The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe

When I was growing up, Christmas was a much simpler affair than it is today.

I usually received one main present from my parents, and the Christmas I was 5, that present was "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".

If you think that sounds a little grown-up for a 5 year old, all I can say is that my parents knew their daughter very well.

I'll always remember sitting on the floor beside our once-a-year, Christmas-time-special fire, leaning against my father's legs as he read the first chapter.

I remember even more clearly using the Ladybird torch that had appeared in my stocking that morning to read on, under the bedclothes, far into that night.

THIS was the book that turned me into a reader - no longer a passive recipient, dependent on my parents but one who was quickly reading every book in the house, suitable or no. My parents NEVER suggested that any text was inappropriate - they just left me free to graze...and I did, with joy.

My Puffin paperback copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe fell apart when my children were of primary-school age, because I had read it again and again...It was the friend I returned to whenever I needed comfort or delight.

Not all of it, though.

After a couple of readings, I simply could not bear to read of the death of Aslan on the Stone Table. A leaden feeling would overtake me as I walked, like Susan and Lucy, beside the great lion. When he went on alone towards the table, my reading stopped. Eventually I committed the cardinal sin of trying to stick those pages together so that the sadness simply did not happen.

It didn't work. Even when I was no longer reading the words, I knew they were there and would weep anyway - until the dawn broke and resurrection came.

Years later, as a Reader for Children's Ministry in a group of Cotswold villages, I chose that resurrection passage as a reading at our Easter Sunday Eucharist. The first year, Hatti Gandhi read it rather beautifully, and it then became a tradition at the All Age Eucharist for Easter. My children still tend to feel that there's something missing if they don't hear it every year and I wonder if there are others, that whole generation of Great Rissington children now grown whose first thought when they sing

"Ye choirs of new Jerusalem" is of Aslan leaping over the Stone Table - "whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind..."

To be honest, I'm not sure how I'd feel if this were the case. For many a long year my adult relationship with Jesus suffered because, truly, I so wanted him to be a lion...As we make our way through the Narnia books, we've a way to go before we reach the point in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Aslan says to the children

"This is the very reason why you were brought into Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little you may know me better in your own world. There I have a another name..."

In the (very) long run, I guess you could say it worked for me!

Blogging through Narnia

Last weekend, my good friend Spidey announced in another place (and, for UK readers, I don't mean the House of Lords!) that she was planning to start the year by reading through the C.S.Lewis Narnia books, one per week - and invited others to join her. I do seem to read most of them at least annually, but haven't done so as a project, and feeling full of new year cheer I signed up. You all know the books backwards, but I'm thinking I'll blog as I go, anyway, even if I've nothing original to say.

Of course, the first decision to be made was in what order to read them...as written or in their correct chronology. Chronology won, which suits me beautifully, so this week I've been reading The Magician's Nephew.
As an only child, I was specially fond of the book, because I could identify so much with the children. Like Polly, I spent long afternoons reading in the den in our boxroom, like Diggory I had an invalid mother, and like every child since the world began I dreamed of adventures in another world. I always loved that the book opens by referring to some other good friends of mine, E.Nesbit's Bastable children, using their adventures to set the time frame for Polly and Diggory's adventures.
"When Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road"
was for my child-self every bit as much of a root in reality as 
"When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King..."

So much of my theology was shaped by Narnia, and as I grew older I loved picking up and recognising the origins of some of the Narnian loveliness.Reading this time I was specially delighted by the way in which Lewis rewrote Genesis so that it is Diggory who yields to temptation and rings the bell that wakens the evil in Charn and, instead of handing on the blame in whatever direction presents itself, dares both to admit his own responsibilty and to make it clear the Polly did all she could to prevent him.
It's not often that Lewis allows womankind a positive role - his writing is very uncomfortable once you read it through an adult feminist lens - so this made me cheer!
Favourite moment - Aslan singing the world into being and the creatures of Narnia bursting from the earth....LIVING creation, rather than the image of moulded clay that I carry from Genesis.

Now on to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - while the snow lasts!

Time for some good books.

Back in January I recall making some rather extravagant promises relating to my distressing tendency to buy books by the hundred and read them only by the dozen.
To my shame I must report that not one of the waiting "work" books has yet been read - perhaps sorting them into some sort of sensible order would be a useful task for the week. However, once the drug-induced dappyness of early days with The Arm had passed, I did rather better in the "just for fun" category, enjoying all the Phil Rickmans I had amassed, plus a clutch of mindless who-dunnits and, at long last, Gilead (which the puppy are as soon as I'd finished it!).
There was also The Shack, of course - though I remain ambivalent about this, at least it was a very quick read!
I loved Alexander Frater's tale of India "Chasing the Monsoon". which is every bit as exciting in its portraits of people along the way as evocative of the great weather system Frater sets out to follow, but I was much less excited by Jasmine & Arnica
I wanted rather more of India and (heartlessly, I know) less of the author's own struggles to work out her new identity as a blind woman. I really wanted to love this book - such mad courage travelling India as a blind white woman alone - but I couldn't get past the character of the author.


The great excitement, though, has been Michael Arditti's Easter.
I began it as Passiontide approached and finished it, exhausted but delighted, just before Palm Sunday...It contains some of the best writing I've encountered in a modern novel, and its setting in an Anglo-Catholic parish in North London was always going to please me...but it challenged too. The vicar who wonders if liturgy has become, for him, a substitute for faith, the gay curate who confronts the an HIV positive diagnosis at the beginning of a turbulent Holy Week, and the beautifully drawn cast that journeys with them through the week present a re-worked passion narrative, complete, praise be, with both death and resurrection. There are some disturbingly graphic accounts of gay sex on Hampstead Heath, which made for very uncomfortable reading (it was the clarity of writing and not the gay context I struggled with) so that, having initially recommended the book to my clergy reading group I lost my nerve and back pedalled wildly, but despite this it's a wonderful read, if not for the faint-hearted.

Having barely opened anything but Common Worship and the NRSV last week, I'm now back in India with Shantaram. Love it so far, with its vivid writing about Bombay, warts and all...it's a huge book, but this week is holiday. I'll try to keep you posted.

Small graces on Lady Day

This was always going to be a busy time, even before The Arm happened.
My invitation to our local schools to follow the "Experience Easter" trail was unexpectedly popular, meaning that I'm needed in church to meet, greet, explore & explain not just for one week but for two. So far, with 5 out of 14 classes gone through, it's going fine. Interesting to notice which stations inspire the most thoughtful responses here - quite different in Ch Kings though the material, & my presentation of it, has not changed noticeably. I'll hope to blog the trail fully later - for now I'm only mentioning it as a clue to why life is a bit pressurised.
Add to that the Minister's Report for the Annual Parochial Church Meeting this coming Sunday at Church in the Valley, special services for Palm Sunday, pretty much every day of Holy Week & the Triduum (and a broken photocopier in the parish office - what stellar timing!) and a sudden run of funerals & tis unsurprising that my diary has looked a little alarming. When I got up this morning, I really wasn't certain that the different bits of the day would dovetail at all - but in the event they did, and there was so much grace in evidence throughout a long long day.

A decidedly ordinary assembly began the day. Theme: courage, but I failed completely to engage the room full of infants, whose attentions were focussed on the imminent excitements of some medieval "time travellers" who were due to arrive any moment. I left pretty certain that we hadn't connected at all, and consoling myself with the thought that I would be back next week - except that as we followed the Easter trail later in the day, a little girl snuck up to me and told me that my ramblings had in fact made a huge and important difference, that she had dared to tell someone about a heavy situation she was facing, that she no longer felt so alone and afraid.
On that basis, this morning's flop was probably the most significant assembly I've taken. Do pray for M and for all children carrying big burdens in silence...

A lovely Eucharist for the Annunciation. We prayed the Angelus together, the first time it has been used in public worship in the valley for quite a while. It's not a reflection of the dominant spirituality of the Sunday congregation, but that close-knit Wednesday group sank into it with comfortable devotion and it was just right for that time and that place.

Despite an emergency dash up to school to copy material for the Lent course (see what I mean re our copier's timing?) I even had the opportunity to ask someone to stand for election to the PCC - and he agreed. Splendid! He will be a real asset :)

Lent Course - the caring church. Startlingly difficult to persuade the group to recognise the examples of Christian service in their midst, even with some real saints of the church there among us. Even the towering figures, the William Booths & Mother Theresas, took a while to surface so that I'm left with the nagging though that we're still a long way from really making connections between faith and life. Even after dredging up examples of Christians who have made difference, it was hard to move on to discover what this might tell us of the fundamentals of our faith. Ah well - still a good conversation and who knows what may have surfaced once I'd departed for a funeral, taking with me, I suspect, the worry that they might not come up with the "right" answers.

Funeral at the crem for B, a man in his 90s whom I had never known, and whose executor was his solicitor. Did your heart sink like mine when you read that? Usually such funerals are bleak occasions when it can be hard to thank God for a life of whose course you know nothing. Not so B's service. His appointment o the solicitor reflected his lifelong determination not to burden those who loved him, and in fact B had an affectionate niece and a loyal friend who shared memories with me for the address, and suggested just the right readings for this quietly contented man. There were just a handful of us there in the chapel, and as we listened to Ecclesiastes "there is a time for every purpose..." I think we all knew we were on holy ground.
I rarely post funeral addresses, as I feel that they are too personal, not really mine to share, but I'm going to make an exception for B., because I learned so much in that half hour about the value of life, and really felt the words I spoke.

Experience Easter with another class, then book group looking (along with most of the world) at The Shack. We are divided: I hate the "style" but love some touches of the content and others were more enthusiastic. I have at least one parishioner who needs the reminders the book offers that God is not a vengeful ogre - but I fear she would be put off by the transatlantic context and not hear the truth through the background noise.
The real grace here, though, was the grace of sharing with friends in ministry. We trained together and over delicious scones that J had made we told our stories, mourned, grumped and celebrated ogether - and it was very good.

Thanks be to God for Wednesday - now to engage with Thursday's busyness, praying to notice God's presence along the way.

Talk to yourself

This week at last I'm able to concentrate reasonably (hooray for life sans co-codamol) so have moved on from reading PD James & Phil Rickman to the more reflective pleasures of Gilead.
I realise that I must be the only person I know who didn't read this two years ago at least - but I'm glad to have got to it now, as it is perfect to drift in and out of, & contemplate gently.
With a less than perfect temporary cast (that was the short-lived#4 - I'm intent on getting full value from the NHS) I found myself awake & readin at 3.00 the other morning. Even at that uninspiring hour this struck me with some force

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way There are three parties to it of course but so there are to even the most private thought the self that yields the thought the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought and the Lord

That sounds both wise & admirable, until you find yourself preaching into an almost entirely unresponsive context...here you are not at all sure whether nyone has in fact heard you at all. On Sunday, for example, I felt that from my side I was truly trying to initiate a passionate conversation. After all, there is not much about which a priest might feel more passionate than the prayer life of her church but, without indulging in a full-scale pity-party, it doesn't seem as if that passion is being passed on...I suspect that neither congregation (and I preached the same sermon in both churches) is used to providing any sort of sermon feedback - and I appreciate that this isnt always easy to give or to receive. The sermon feedback forms which were part of training were rarely occasions of deep joy - but they did at least furnish a few clues that the sermon was heard, that maybe just once in a while it might even have been useful -if only as an irritant.
I have an ambivalent relationship with preaching. I rarely give it the time I'd really like to, and too often there is a period in which sermon writing feels very close to getting blood out of a stone...but nearly always by the time I actually find myself in the pulpit there is a sense that at least some of these are the words that need to be heard. It would be reassuring to know that this was happening, and if anyone felt moved to join in a passionate conversation -well, that really would be rather wonderful.

Hay Harvest

I'm very aware that the books in my side bar have remained unchanged for months...In some cases this is a sad reflection on the fact that I've not actually read them even now (actually, looking at them, this seems to be the case with most of them, dammit). However, I'm proposing to pretend I have a clean slate and tell you about all the delights, work based and otherwise, that are now waiting for me. If I start having a panic attack half way through, you'll know that with the written word I have fallen prey to what my parents saw as a cardinal sin, the syndrome of "eyes bigger than tummy".
In last month's Third Way Martyn Joseph began a book review (of one of the titles I bought yesterday, as it happens) with the words
"When we buy a book, we think we are buying the time to read it too"
Sadly I am all too aware that this isn't the case...but at the moment the pile of books awaiting fills me with joy and not terror or guilt. I'm hoping this is because I know at some subliminal level that I really will read them all in the weeks ahead.
So...here we go (There are too many for me to feel that chasing links is a worthwhile exercise.When I finish them I'll try and blog and include links then - and no, I didn't buy them all yesterday - these are the accumulations of a good year of failure to resist temptation)
"Work" books
Church on the Edge - John B Thompson
Creative Communion - Margaret Withers & Tim Sledge
Sex God - Rob Bell
Tokens of Trust - Rowan Williams
The Kindness of God - Janet Martin Soskice
Space for Grace - Giles Goddard
Mission Shaped Spirituality - Susan Hope
Dostoevsky - Rowan Williams
The Contemplative Pastor - Eugene Peterson
The Bible Makes Sense - Walter Brueggemann
Mothers, Mystics & Merrymakers:Medieval Women Pilgrims - Sarah Hopper
The Unnecessary Pastor - Marva Dawn & Eugene Peterson
Why there is almost certainly a God - Keith Ward (currently reading this...more later)



Just for fun
Easter - Michael Arditti
Jasmine & Arnica - Nicola Naylor (feeding my craving for India)
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (India again)
Chasing the Monsoon - Alexander Frater (and again)
The Summer of the Danes - Ellis Peters (this must be the only Brother Cadfael novel that Hattie Gandhi and I don't remember reading)
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
A Sleep & a Forgetting - Gregory Hall
The Cure of Souls - Phil Rickman
The Wine of Angels - Phil Rickman
The Fabric of Sin - Phil Rickman
(If you enjoy Rickman's Merrily Watkins books I can also recommend
The Remains of an Altar (read it just before Advent hit!),- which combines the pleasures of a little light deliverance ministry on the Welsh borders with the pleasures of the Elgar trail as well...I suspect that part of the pleasure of these is their local as well as clerical associations...Not great literature, but definitely in the category of "a good read")
A Certain Justice - P.D. James (how did I miss this when it was first published?)
While on the subject of P D James, I read The Private Patient over Christmas - most excellent, if you enjoy thinking detective fiction, as I most emphatically do.
Having loved her Travelling Mercies, and Grace, Eventually I'm currently immersed in Ann Lamott's Crooked Little Heart (I know I'm light years behind my US friends here, but hadn't met Lamott at all till I started blogging...so allow me some latitude - amazon uk only lists Bird by Bird, so I'm not alone in being a slow starter here!)

So there you have it. An accurate and up-to-date account of my reading plans between now and Easter, or maybe even a little beyond. I'm tired of being imprisoned by towers of unread books, so in the same way that my knitting friends periodically announce that they are only allowed to use wool from their stash, I'm telling myself that I am not allowed to buy ANY new books for myself until more than half of these, from both lists, have actually been read.
There's a new book by Timothy Radcliffe on the Eucharist that I'm dying to get my mits on, so that might drive me forward if I show signs of flagging.
I'll try to say something about all of them on the blog too, but that may not work out (specially with those in the "amiable trash" category)...
No time to sit around here writing, though. There's lots of reading to be done. Here and now!

Heaven on earth

for people like me is very probably Hay on Wye. Even the sign-posts announce it as "The Town of Books" and to be somewhere where every other shop is a second-hand bookshop (and those in between sell mostly Fairly Traded or vintage clothes) is so close to my idea of perfect bliss that it's just a little alarming. Hay is clearly the place where good books go to die - the concept of a 30p "honesty bookshop" is so delightful that just remembering it makes me want to dance in the same way as Hattie Gandhi did this morning...Since my best beloved daughter struggles with (or maybe she doesn't struggle, but surrenders gracefully to) the same slightly scary book addiction as her mother, this border town was the perfect place for a birthday outing...and we had SO much fun.
Wonderful drive through the Brecon Beacons...
Yummy lunch (featuring goats cheese, tapenade and roasted peppers...)...and lots and lots and
lots of time in truly heavenly bookshops, from the frankly criminal "Murder and Mayhem" to the optimistic "Sensible Bookshop" with all sorts of other delights in between. There is even a fudge shop, to comfort you as you depart the town.
For the record, leaving aside the free books that we also brought home, our combined shopping total was a paltry 19 titles. Clearly we weren't trying and need to return to do the job a bit more thoroughly before we are too much older.


Earth hath not anything to show more fair - or so, at least, say both of us!

My dear friend Songbird has produced a Friday Five very dear to my heart...I'd even been to the library this afternoon, clearly in preparation for thinking about just this topic. She writes...

Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.
This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.

1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?
Not sure I understand the question! Reading isn't a seasonal activity. It's a 24 hour a day, utterly essential, read as you breathe as you read way of life. Of course it's a summer activity. Why else would there be long grass under trees in the garden, if not to sit and read? What other purpose has that pool of sunlight on the terrace but to lure you into taking out a chair and a coffee and that book you were trying to put down after breakfast?.... But reading by the fire in winter....or while listening to birdsong in spring...or while waiting for autumn mists to clear....all equally delightful, nay essential.

2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach? Often in my youth, when the beach was part of every day life...Lying on my front in the sun, even the bumpiest shingle of Hastings beach couldn't always keep me awake.

3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime? When I was about 6 I read through all the Swallows and Amazons books one summer, while camping in the tent my parents had given me for my birthday...pitched at the bottom of the garden. I read curled up in my sleeping bag by the light of a ladybird torch, way after they believed me to be fast asleep.

4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading? I love detective fiction...Very taken at the moment with Susan Hill's entry into the genre, with her rather attractive policeman Simon Serallier. And good old Phil Rickman 's Merrily Watkins series too.

5) What is the next book on your reading list? Just started The Book Thief, as recommended by the World's Best Spir Dir....but also have a pile of amiable rubbish from the library in case I need variety. It includes a couple of Mavis Cheek novels, which are bound to be entertaining...

Whatever happened to the Reading Challenge? (reprise)

Anyone reading this blog would be easily forgiven for assuming that I gave up reading sometime in Lent, and haven't so much as opened a book since.
Perhaps it was never realistic for anyone as personally chaotic as me to even attempt to keep track of my reading during the past months...A huge selection of library books has come and gone without my recording the fact, and the process of packing and unpacking boxed led to many happy reunions with old friends that just had to be read then and there.
I guess I've not been reading so many books of the "Must blog" variety recently as the bit of my brain that wants to do serious reflection has mostly been working on the direct experience of real life in Hill and Valley - but there have been some Really (and Fairly) Good Reads, both serious and less so, - and even though I read at an alarming speed I must surely be able to remember some of them...
Not necessarily highlights (though the fact that I can't remember any of the books I whizzed cheerfully through while on Polyphony during half term may just be significant) I'll see what I can do (in no particular order, and quite without links or reviews) from the most recent consumption...


Susan Hill: The Various Haunts of Men
The Pure in Heart
The Risk of Darkness

Ann Lamott: Travelling Mercies
Plan B

Donald Simpson: Blue like Jazz

Catherine Ryan Hyde: Pay it Forward

Susan Hope:Mission Shaped Spirituality

William Dalrymple: City of Djinns
: White Moghuls

David Jones: In Parenthesis

Rob Bell: Velvet Elvis
: Sex God


Tonight I'm heading off to bed to read Rebecca Tope: Death in the Cotswolds - which looks like unutterable tripe, but distinctly entertaining. Tomorrow being Friday ALL DAY I think I'm allowed it. The other book on my bedside table (Yvonne Warren's The Cracked Pot - the state of today's Anglican Parish Clergy) is not just work, but depressing work at that, so I'm definitely delaying that till after the weekend.

Tired now, and I've an early start to collect Hattie Gandhi from Bristol airport (lucky child has spent the last week in Crete with a uni friend) so I'll call it a day ...but there's another booky post on its way, inspired, of all things, by the highbrow sounding "Dean's Theology Group" - which is a much friendlier beast than its title might suggest.
More of that later.

(Partial and orange) view of the bookshelves

for those who might be interested!

At the moment I'm allowed about another 12 books before my shelving is exhausted in the study - BUT we've managed to clear 2 smaller bookshelves which are currently sitting in the hall looking vacant - so it's clearly high time I spent my lovely "new job" booktokens. Wheee!

Just so you know, my shopping list looks like this right now
Blue like Jazz - Donald Miller
Travelling Mercies - Anne Lamott
Plan B - Anne Lamott
Messy Church - Lucy Moore
Creative Communion - Margaret Withers & (the ever wonderful) Tim Sledge

For no good reason, Amazon are being bolshy about the combination of gift certificates and credit card - but we will overcome and it will be delightful and exciting to get the parcel, whenever it arrives - even if it does mean I need to begin the overspill process.

Timely reminder

As I leapt out of bed this morning (not a pretty sight) I reflected ruefully that my intent to read at least one worthwhile book every week seems to have fallen well and truly by the wayside in recent weeks...and what's worse, I can't currently see how I'm going to structure life to allow time for serious reading at an hour when I'm not too wiped out to absorb it. Then Cal listed her books so far for the Reading Challenge over at What's for Afters, and so reminded me that I was supposed to be blogging my way through my reading this year....and I was shamed all over again.
Now even Henri Nouwen is getting at me.Listen to this, today's Daily Meditation

Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead us to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual lives. We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming truly spiritual people.

As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words.

All confirmation of something I know very well - that God reaches me through the written word again and again...so I really do need to get on with making space for this, or I'll hit a wall soon and be no use to anyone.

***********

Meanwhile, what have I been reading at all recently? The only thing of note was the happy sighting of Anne Lamott's Grace (Eventually) on the bookstall at New Orleans airport on my way home from the Big Event. I'd finished it before I landed at Birmingham, and loved it...well written and though provoking in equal measure but so easy to read that I could imagine reading more Lamott for relaxation as much as nutrition. Lovely.
I have this vague feeling that it might be coming up as a RevGals book club special, but I can't persuade the site to show me what's planned, just those titles that have already been discussed. Because most of them are published in the US I've not really keyed into the book group thus far, but maybe I should make reading the monthly book a priority from now on. It scares me to think that incumbency might seriously limit my reading.

Reading Challenge update

Alas and alack, my habit of reading too many volumes at once and finishing none of them has been allowed free rein of late as I hurtle through any and everything I can find that might give me some helpful insights into the next phase of life and ministry. This means that it has been almost impossible to decide what I've actually read enough to include in the challenge...but I'm sure of these two at least

The Future of the Parish System -Shaping the Church of England for the 21st century
This is a collection of essays by a wide range of writers - helpful insights and no assumption that the parish system is de facto dead on its feet, which is rather a comfort given that I find myself embedded in it for the foreseeable future. There's a chapter (by Robin Gamble) on "Doing traditional church really well" which has had me saying "Yes!"an awful lot...

The Parish - by Malcolm Torry et al
I've had this for a while (I think I actually bought it at SPCK in Durham while Hattie Gandhi was uni shopping, 3 years ago...) and dipped into it on an off. Again it's a collection of essays, some more helpful than others, but this time round I was stopped in my tracks by a piece of writing about really seeing.
Just listen to this (from a chapter by Mike Harrison entitled Spiritual Seduction and Spiritual Sustenance)
"The philosopher Brian Magee suggested that the difference between what the blind miss and what the sighted miss is almost as nothing compared to what we all miss...The day you teach a child the name of a bird, the child will never see that bird again...Initially a child sees a strange object which is feathery, alive and moving, a source of fascination and interest. If the chlld learns to label the bird as a sparrow, then the next say when they see another such object we may find that they have been educated to say
"Sparrow. I've got that. Seen that. I'm bored with sparrows."
Surely this is pertinent for Christians, whose faith challenges us to see in surprising ways.
Must we not attend to the way in which we are seeing.
For what we see is anything but a neutral, objective act..."

I was intrigued by the suggestion that giving something a name so familiarises it that it loses its wonder and indeed its unique identity (since it becomes just one of a category)...It's counter-intuitive, in that you'd imagine naming to be a process of giving identity - but I can so see how it happens. Perhaps the task of priesthood is simply to help people to see...not by doing the seeing for them (though sometimes that seems to be what they expect) by constant re-telling of the story so that they can recognise and celebrate its patterns in their own lives. Does that work for you?

Whatever happened to the...

Reading Challenge?

Well, - clearly I’m incapable of posting weekly on the theme but equally clearly, it’s not that I’ve refrained from reading throughout January. Here’s an approximate list

Worthwhile
City of Djinns – William Dalrymple :the story of his year in Delhi, and a wonderful interweaving of history and present reality which evokes India in a way this addict found entirely heart warming

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard : I would never have discovered Dillard were it not for my US friends and I’m so glad that I did. Oh to see with those eyes – the precious minutae entered into with such excitement

The Vicar’s Guide –ed David Ison : does what it says on the tin…I’ve borrowed this from WonderfulVicar but suspect I will need to keep a copy to hand (though it omits any mention of how to please all of the people, all of the time. What do you mean, that’s not in the job description?)

Amiable Trash - treat with caution (so I've not given you links)
The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler (light and fun)

Digging to America - Anne Tyler (read in under an hour...which gives you an idea of the substance!)

The Damascened Blade - Barbara Cleverly (Indian Raj whodunnit - I did enjoy this one)

The Vendetta - Jenny Pitman (cheerful tripe in the vein of Dick Francis but without his skill in characterisation)

As lists go, that’s pretty pathetic, really.
I think I must be spending too long online when I could curl up on a real sofa with a cat and read. Iceland ought to have been good for book consumption, but the contrast between bitter cold outside and cosy room meant that whenever we got in each evening, Hugger Steward and I fell asleep almost immediately…thus confirming my belief that we are really designed to hibernate all winter.
I try to limit my fiction during Lent, so maybe February will look a bit healthier.

It being Tuesday

what else would you expect but a FRIDAY FIVE

1.What book have you read in the last six months that has really stayed with you? Why?
Timothy Radcliffe "What is the point of being a Christian?"
Truly splendid. I really want everyone I know to go and read it, - for far too many good reasons to cite. It's the sort of book that rekindles your faith in the Church- how about these as a random examples of sheer brilliance?
"God liberates us from small ambitions so that we may learn to hope more extravagantly"
"Thanking is thinking truly and prayer helps us to think well."
"The smile of Jesus summons me to an identity that is not constructed but given"

What is one of your favorite childhood books?
Oh my goodness - I was such a constant bookworm. As an only child I read, re-read and then read some more and to choose just one book feels deeply disloyal to so many other friends.
But because it has been very much at the forefront of my thoughts around Hattie Gandhi's 21st Birthday, I'll plump for Elizabeth Goudge's "Henrietta's House". I've just looked on amazon and it seems to be not only out of print, but collectably rare. How sad! I'd love to send it to several special people.
Why?
As an only child I made a habit of adopting dear people to augment my rather limited familial resources, and like the eponymous Henrietta I dreamed of living somewhere where I could have them all under one roof, close at hand. There are still traces of those yearnings - it matters hugely to me that the people I love should at least know each other...so if I ever make a big deal of your spending time with my children, trust me, it's a compliment.

Do you have a favorite book of the Bible? Do tell!
John....and Psalms. Couldn't do without either. Please don't ask me to try.

What is one book you could read again and again?
Oh - so many. All the C S Lewis Narnia books AND the "Out of the Silent Planet" trilogy.
Bleak House - imho the best of all Dickens
Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising. - which I re-read every winter, around Christmas time if I can (assuming that I can wrest one of our multiple copies away from the offspring)
Any Jane Austen...

Is there a book you would suggest for Lenten reading? What is it and why?
Most of my own current reading is very much geared to preparing for the realities of a "first responsibility post" - but I'm hoping during Lent to spend some time with Marva Dawn & Eugene Peterson's "The Unnecessary Pastor" - in order to shift my focus away from the nuts and bolts of churchyard regulations and the like and help me focus on the foundations of my calling. I guess that would be quite a goodie for many of us.


And because we all love bonus questions, if you were going to publish a book what would it be? Who would you want to write the jacket cover blurb expounding on your talent?
It might just be "the book of the blog" -
"Good in Parts - the struggles of a jobbing curate"...and thanks to your encouragement, I'd love any one of you to write a blurb for me. You really do make me feel good about writing, and about being me!

Last Saturday's book post

just didn't happen - as you may have noticed. No surprise there, then!
However, this doesn't mean I'm not busy reading...

Sillies for the week, thanks to my ever-wonderful public library were

• The Frost Fair - Edward Marston

(an amiable historical whodunnit, with good period detail and well drawn characters)

• Ragtime in Simla - Barbara Cleverly

(set in India AND a detective story: how could it fail?)

But I'm doing some proper reading too -

John Pritchard's The Life and Work of a Priest

is so wonderful that I'm re-reading and taking notes as I go and will give it a post of its very own shortly. Highly, highly recommended - one of those books that makes you want to cheer every few sentences. Thank you, LMC, who produced it for Christmas.

Books do furnish a room

On New Year's day, a friend sent me the link to an article in praise of books...good, solid books printed on real paper...the sort of books that teeter in piles beside my bed, that spill over from my shelves in the study, that I hoard as the most zealous dragon guards its jewels.
It's a good article - one I'm sure you'll enjoy - and with a happy heap of Christmas books still awaiting my attention, it connected instantly with me. After all, we've a house move only 3 months away - and our last move involved a very painful pruning process, from which I've only slowly recovered. This time, though, I'm happy to report that the 80feet of shelving dictated by the C of E for clergy studies is already fixed to the wall in the new vicarage (it couldn't actually be fitted into the study here at Privet Drive) and I'm not planning to leave anything behind...except maybe that volume I picked up when allowed free rein to plunder the shelves of a retiring priest.
Who could resist a paperback entitled
"Courtesans and Fishbones"? Sheer bliss - though the book itself turns out to be a scholarly work in an area right off my map...

Anyway - I digress (surely not!)...Several bloggers have decided to join Alex in her Reading Challenge to list every book consumed this year. I'm hoping that if I sign up too, it might encourage me to finish those I start. I think I'll aim to post once a week on a Saturday...Cathy has a clever little ticker widget too, QG is reviewing hers, while St Casserole, bless her heart, voices an anxiety I share, about admitting to some of the trash I read by way of relaxation.
Apparently all is grist to Alex's mill -
so, herewith my books for the first week of January in this year of our Lord 2008
(I'll only link the the worthwhile ones, I think....I'm sure you're more than capable of indulging your own fictional vices in the "amiable trash" category ;-) )

• Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between) - Maggi Dawn

(I was privileged to read this before publication, so didn't follow it through Advent as assiduously as I would have otherwise...but it's a joy, truly - and something I'd warmly recommend for another year)

• The Cat who went bananas - Lilian Jackson Baum

• What Came before he shot her - Elizabeth George

Next week you can expect a marked decrease in fiction consumption, balanced, I trust, by something approaching to Serious Reading (though of course, given my customary "follow through" rate, you are equally likely never to hear anything about this again!)

ETA I ought to make it clear, perhaps, that the 80feet are the shelves actually provided by the church in every stipendiary clergy study (in theory at least)....our aggregate total of shelving is probably at least 3 times that...not to mention the window cills, piles on floors, stacks in corners...

A point of information

Happy wanted to know the source of the Henri Nouwen extract on waiting...
It came to me as a Daily Reflection from the Nouwen Society but each reflection is originally from "Bread for the Journey; a daybook of Wisdom and Faith" which does just exactly what it says on the tin.
It works much better for me having each day's readings delivered to my in box, but the hard copy is a comforting presence on the bookshelf too.
Cannot recommend it too highly - a book of gold.

.
When I was growing up, one of my very favourite people was Renate.
The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was married to an antiquarian bookseller, had 4 bright and articulate children close to me in age, of whom I was somewhat in awe, and understood better than anyone else my constant, consuming need to read.
Whenever she visited (and this was an era when mothers at home dropped in on each other at least once a week) she brought something for me to borrow and her Christmas and birthday presents were always a joy and a delight.
But I wasn't sure about the cover of the book that she gave me when I turned eight.
It looked a bit strange - that child's face with the rings was just plain weird.
And the background, the everyday context of the opening chapter, needed a bit of translating..This was America and there were unfamiliar words and situations. Just what was liverwurst? And why did Charles Wallace have a surname as part of his Christian name? I'd never met that anywhere else before?
But Meg I recognised. Meg struggled. Meg didn't fit in. She loved and cared and got things wrong - but in the end her gifts were enough. I loved her straight away....
And I read the book again and again and again till the (still scary) paperback cover began to wear out.
To my surprise, I met some words from that book in church...and it began to dawn on me that there were other things going on, other themes interwoven into the fabric of what I had embraced as just a wonderful tale (and something quite unlike what I'd previously encountered as "Science fiction")
When I was sad or frightened, I would try to join in the song of those wonderful winged creatures...or imagine myelf rocked in the arms of Aunt Beast.
For a year or two, I must have re-read A Wrinkle in Time at least once each term....and I always emerged feeling safer, more at home in my own world.
But I had no idea that this writer whose name I couldn't pronounce had other books to her credit...It wasn't until a book warehouse sale when my own children were at primary school that I discovered that there was so much more to be read.
Today, in common with so many others, I'm mourning the death of Madeleine L'Engle - but more than that, I'm so grateful for her life and her writing.

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good

Given the choice of getting on with a sermon on the Good Samaritan (oh dear...why is it so hard to preach familiar texts?) or indulging in a little happy silliness of the Harry Potter variety, how could I resist?
I don't join in with the Friday Five very often, partly at least because my Fridays seem to be a tad frantic...but the idea of a regular game to enjoy before the madness of a clerical weekend is a delight. And the fact that some of my RevGalBlogPals are willing to find time to be creative and entertaining week after week, devising them, is just one of the reasons why I'm so fond of the group. Random acts of sensless kindness don't have to come with a high purpose attached to be hugely appreciated.

So, just for fun (and with but miminal apologies to those who hoped I might be in reflective vein) here comes the Hogwarts Express
Accio Friday Five!

1. Which Harry Potter book is your favorite and why?
Ooh...tricky, that. The sheer pleasure of discovering The Philosopher's Stone, and the laughing out loud that accompanied our family read-in make me really fond of that...The only one I struggled to read was The Order of the Phoenix - in fact, I gave up for a long while, and only finished it when the next volume (which I loved) was in the offing. Do you know, I've not yet sorted out my order for The Deathly Hallows? Perhaps I'd better do something about that, or I'll feel a little left out in the next few weeks!

2. Which character do you most resemble? Which character would you most like to get to know?
Well, there's a distinct element of Mrs Weasley, of course...but yes, I think I'm really Hermione, bright, over-achiever, always terrified of not being good enough. In the interests of serious procrastination, I've just done a test that claims I'm Dumbledore, with Hermione coming in a very close second. "In my dreams", say I,-but I'd love to meet him. Can't choose one person to get to know, though. I want to spend time with all of them (seems like a re-read is in order). Hermione and I could be good friends, I'm sure.

3. How careful are you about spoilers?
a) bring 'em on--even if I know the destination, the journey's still good
b) eh, I'd rather not know what happens, but I'm not going to commit Avada Kedavra if someone makes a slip
c) I will sequester myself in a geodesic dome to avoid finding anything out
Oh, b, pretty much...though if something truly awful is going to happen, I guess I'd rather know...but generally, I'd prefer to find out as I go along.

4. Make one prediction/share one hope about book 7.
There will be some reconciliation of Harry with Voldemort as his shadow, by which both are somehow removed from the wizarding world - or have I done too much Jung this year?
I don't want Harry to die...but I think it would be even worse to lose a Weasley (poor Mrs W, how could she bear it?)...I'm rather sold on the happy ever after approach, honestly, though I don't think I've a hope of getting it.


5. Rowling has said she's not planning any prequels or sequels, but are there characters or storylines (past or future) that you would like to see pursued?
I'm happy to stop here I think, provided the ending satisfies. It's been fun, but probably not worthy of all the hype. And with my offspring scattered during the summer holidays these days, I don't need nice fat fiction for all the family as we once did. The books have grown up with my children, and while volumes 1-3 were essential corporate family reads, accompanying us on our holidays, latterly it has been every Fleming for him/herself and not enough copies to go round - so time to call it a day.