God of surprises

If you've been reading here for a while, you'll know that I've always been rather wary of the charismatic movement.
As a teenager, I was, it seemed, the one member of the school's CU who did NOT receive any perceptible gifts of the Spirit at a period when to speak in tongues seemed to be the only acceptable criterion by which faith was judged.
At the time, after a long and anxious conversation with God on the bus home from school I accepted that for me "Blessed are those who have not seen but yet believe" was to be the motto and continued on my journey of faith with only a faint twinge of envy.
It did mean, though, that I tended to avoid experiences of charismatic renewal through the years. As a singer absolutely at home in the Anglican choral tradition, and with strongly catholic leanings in both theology and practice this wasn't too difficult. I heard rumours occasionally of charismatic happenings at places like Walsingham, (but certainly not at All Saints, Margaret Street!) but when I left university and embarked on the "real world" my opportunities for pilgrimage there were increasingly limited, and as I began exploring my own priestly vocation it seemed that the door to the Shrine there was now firmly closed to me.
I decided that while charismatic renewal was obviously a wonderful thing, there must be some good reason why God didn't want me to experience it - and mostly kept well away from situations in which I might have encountered it because, quite honestly, it would have hurt too much if nothing had happened.


That, of course, didn't mean that I didn't have some very powerful experiences of God's presence at various points along the way....but I used different language to describe them. I tended to talk more of my relationship with God, and less about the work of the Holy Spirit - though every year at Pentecost I would find myself praying with all that was in me for something amazing to happen, NOW, this INSTANT, to transform me and my churches.


It didn't seem as if anything much changed - but I've been praying for long enough on so many different topics that I've gradually accepted that prayer really isn't a slot machine.
Nonetheless, it did hurt a bit.
Maybe God didn't love me QUITE as much as he loved some of those others?
In my heart of hearts I knew that was nonsense, but nonetheless....


So I plugged on, working as hard as I possibly could to be a good priest, loving my people and praying for them as best I could, but recognising that there wasn't going to be a miraculous turn-around in the life of my parishes if it depended on me.


Then last year came my episcopal review - something that happens every three years, and which involves both looking back and exploring visions for the future.Mine was in early February, when the memory of a particularly discouraging Christmas was still fresh in my mind, and I told my reviewer that I suspected nothing I could do would have a real impact on the life of my churches...that we were growing infinitesimally,that though new initiatives were emerging, most of them seemed to be quite dependent on my energy....that actually, only 3 years in, I was pretty weary and I couldn't see how things would change. 
Clutching at straws, it seemed, I wondered if going to one of the Holy Spirit days offered by HTB might be something to consider - but instead my reviewer said firmly
"If I were you, I'd try "On Fire".


On Fire? Never heard of it...so rushed home to google and found this
Hmnn
Not convinced, I asked on twitter, where a friend was able to tell me quite alot more and was warmly encouraging about my attendance, promising that she'd go again if I booked.
When my "objectives" from the review turned up a couple of weeks later, attending "On Fire" seemed to be written in - so I really had no option - and was glad when another dear friend announced that he was willing to give it a try this year.


So there we were on Monday, arriving at High Leigh - which I'd last visited for a diocesan conference some 12 years ago, I'd guess. The personnel were pretty typical of most Christian gatherings. 
Lots of grey hair, lots of kind faces...
Did we REALLY want to be here?
Even to hear Philip Yancey?
I wasn't convinced....though glad to have 3 days to spend "irl" with online friends.
As the music group gathered for the opening worship I was even LESS convinced (remember that bit about English choral tradition? it's still the music that most feeds my soul) but once the Mass started I realised I might have to adjust my ideas a little.


And that, really, is what happened this week.


Amid a most wonderful blend of deeply familiar, utterly essential, sacramental worship I found myself encountering God in new ways...
Despite my huge resistance to the music in particular, but to other elements as well.
Could I really trust this community, run the risk that once again I might not be "chosen" to be blessed?
Despite all this, God acted.
Very gently at first - with a reminder that I HAD indeed received the Holy Spirit before, - most specifically at my ordination. I found that my hands remembered very well the cross that was traced on their palms as I was anointed at my priesting - and that that tangible reminder stayed with me, positively zinging with life for the rest of that day...that suddenly EVERYTHING was more alive...
What are the sacraments, if not charismatic in themselves?
Don't I call down the Holy Spirit whenever I baptise, or preside at the Eucharist?
Perhaps I've always been a "charismatic catholic" without knowing it....
Before I left home, another twitter friend had suggested that I might find On Fire a place to meet an old friend in a new context - and that was so much my experience, as God reassured me that, actually, this wasn't new and foreign ground.


But, you know, as people around me were being prayed for and falling over, I was praying rather urgently something like this:
"You know... I really NEED something to happen...but PLEASE not falling over. I'm scared enough as it is. PLEASE......."
So at that time, in that place, I did indeed remain on my feet - full of warmth and joy, unable for a few minutes to open my eyes, but decisively upright.


Later it was a different matter.


This was after another wonderful Eucharist - and the whole room was chock full of love and prayerfulness...so I dared to go forward for prayer again.
This time God reminded me of something I need to hear pretty much every minute of every day.
I DON'T HAVE TO PROVE ANYTHING.
If I did counted cross-stitch, that might be the text of my next sampler as it's a message I'm peculiarly bad at hearing or believing - but the other message, that God really can be trusted, I found myself learning without any effort at all as after some rather beautiful prayer, I woke up to find myself gazing at the ceiling - and more full of love and joy than my being really had room for.


No, I don't understand any of it.
I don't understand why the Spirit moves so powerfully in some contexts when at other times, despite fervent prayer, nothing much seems to happen.
I don't understand WHAT happened, except in terms of realising that I could trust God to catch me however I might happen to fall, and that letting go completely can be gift rather than loss.
I don't know how my experience of joy and blessing may impact on how I minister from now on.
I just know that I've found a new place and a new way in which to be loved by God...a way in which the precious Sacrament that is at the heart of my faith and my priesthood ministers to me in ways of grace and beauty that I hadn't imagined.


But (because, you know, Aslan is not a tame lion) I still don't speak in tongues - but I rather think my conversation with God has changed gear anyway.

More about bread

Many years ago, in my first year of Reader training, there was an end of term Eucharist. The President used this as the prayer over the gifts - and I loved it, but never wrote it down, so lost track of it almost at once.
 Tonight I found it while thinking about grains, wheat and harvest....It's by David Adam. Isn't it lovely?


Be careful when you touch bread.


Let it not lie uncared for – unwanted.


So often bread is taken for granted.


There is so much beauty in bread;


Beauty of sun and soil, Beauty of patient toil.


Winds and rain have caressed it,


Christ often blessed it.


Be gentle when you touch bread.

Small Epiphanies - an occasional series

Last Sunday, being the 1st in the month, featured its usual pattern of extremes in ministry. Thanks to my splendid curates I wasn't involved in the BCP "bookends" that usuall frame the day (an early Communion and a mid-afternoon Evensong up the hill) but this didn't mean I avoided the contrasts. You see, the morning featured the happy mayhem of an All Age Eucharist while the afternoon saw our monthly visit to the nursing home housed in the old vicarage, where we offer a Communion service in the day room for the mildly confused.

Since my splendid Reader started to join me, this has felt a far more comfortable experience. Though I've tried to make the liturgy both short and majoring on prayers and responses that are likely to have been familiar once, I very rarely feel that the congregation are in any way on board, and there was something very disconcerting about the schizophrenic dialogue that had me responding to my

"The Lord be with you" with the expected "And also with you"!

Now, though there may be just one voice answering me, we are at least in conversation once more - and it's also good to have someone else to encourage the congregation to actually consume the wafer and wine that we offer them. It's always a little hazardous and I find myself re-evaluating my theology of Eucharist very rapidly from time to time, as one especially absent lady has been known to remove the host from her mouth for a closer look and then leave it sitting on her knee - a definite challenge for conventional catholic theology!

Nearly every month as M and I embark on our lonely voyage through the liturgy I wonder what on earth we are doing...whether it would be better to bring a CD player and have a hymn sandwich...whether we are imposing Communion on those too frail and confused to stay away.

But last week, during a supervision with the curates, the Herring of Christ (TM) said something that has stayed with me. Since his priesting he has found that when giving people the host, he cannot help doing so with a little extra pressure, so that his hands emphasise the amazing words "The Body of Christ".

This...THIS fragment of unleavened bread...this morsel of holiness...is the gift that I bring you. Know the full weight and wonder of it.

I've been thinking of this as I've communicated through the week and at the nursing home on Sunday, as I read the Post Communion prayer, it all made glorious sense.

Where minds fail, sight, touch, taste can do their work

"God of truth, we have seen with our eyes
And touched with our hands the bread of life.
Strengthen our faith that we may grow in love for you
And for each other
Through Jesus Christ our Lord"

Corpus Christi

yesterday...and, as every Thursday, the day began with a 1662 Communion service at Church on the Hill. It seemed quite strange to be using this liturgy as we thanked God for the gift that is Holy Communion.
It's not hard to imagine what Cranmer would have made of the more exuberant celebrations of catholic devotion to the sacrament, the processions with rose petals, the High Mass with Benediction...

In the evening we celebrated again, down in the valley - but though the congregation here is usually willing to indulge their vicar in pretty much any kind of liturgical experiment (though I had promised that I wouldn't smoke them out two years running) we were a tiny congregation and I'd planned the service to be as straightforward as possible, as after it the Herring and I were going to walk through the liturgy in preparation for his imminent First Mass.

It was Eucharist, so of course it was special, but I did feel rather wistful for a moment as I imagined all the liturgical wonders going on in other places...I hankered for incense and the Byrd Ave Verum until I reached the homily and heard myself say

"Here God trusts us with God's self, in a fragment of bread and a sip of wine".
Then, once again, the wonder of the sacrament all but silenced me.


Lord Jesus Christ We thank you that in this wonderful sacramentYou have given us the memorial of your passion:grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries of your body and bloodthat we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

A small parable

On Thursday, the Feast of Hilda of Whitby, FabBishop invited the clergywomen of the diocese to meet together, to worship and to talk through some of the burning issues of the day, to hear what he understands the current position to be with regard to the ordination of women as bishops, and to share any other concerns that we wanted him to hear. It was a good evening, though I was slightly surprised at the numerous absences - I don't think that many bishops offer this sort of opportunity to their clergy and though I know it's not easy to clear an evening, it really was worthwhile.

However, the small parable I wanted to share was nothing to do with the discussion session, but took place during the Eucharist that preceded it. We were worshipping in the quire at Tewkesbury Abbey, a lovely space but one which somewhat dwarfed us. It made sense, therefore, when FabBishop invited us to move to stand around the altar after the Offertory hymn,thus creating an intimacy and immediacy that we might otherwise have missed. However, I had been asked to sing during the Communion, and had arranged with the organist to stand at the screen...so while the others waited to receive, I trekked back down the length of the quire. It seemed a very long way indeed, though standing by the screen was a great help, actually...The rest of the congregation was so distant that I could pretend that I was just indulging myself by singing something beautiful in a stunning acoustic, which calmed twitchy nerves considerably.

And afterwards, as my friends and colleagues returned to their seats, I began once again the long journey up towards the high altar to receive the sacrament. 
Except that this time I didn't have to go all the way.
FabBishop, in a gesture that was both pastorally and theologically stunning in its impact, came to meet me bearing host and chalice.


"When we were still far off..."

Two days later, remembering this still makes me smile inside.

Children - for a change!

This past weekend was busy, exciting, challenging - and other things too....and as I reflected wearily last night I realised that almost every aspect had something to do with children.

It started with Saturday's Children for a Change festival at Gloucester Cathedral. Once upon a time, these festivals were an almost annual event, an eagerly anticipated date on the calendar, which was worth organising holidays around. I have very vivid memories of my own children engaging in a huge variety of wonderful activities to which they could never have had access in our small Cotswold village, of the excitement for all of us as we realised that we were involved in such a huge and creative diocesan family, of the sheer delight of watching the Cathedral turned upside down by invasions of under 11s...For a long time after one such festival, family visits to the Cathedral included a trip to one particular corner of the north aisle that, we swore, still sparkled quietly, thanks to a liberal application of glitter glue after I was let loose with a craft station of my own.

That was in the early to mid 90s, rather a long time ago now.I don't know why there was such a hiatus in the festivals (though I'd be willing to guess it might have something to do with funding) but Children for a Change was well worth waiting for. As we gathered by the statue of Robert Raikes in Gloucester Park, it didn't feel as if the turnout was particularly splendid, but once we began marching through the streets of Gloucester we realised just how many churches were represented..a long line that spanned a couple of blocks. Once we reached the Cathedral, it took ages to get us all through the doors...and I began to realise just how many were actually there. To see the nave cleared of chairs but packed with people was quite stunning. Such a fabulous space...so well used.
The Psalm drummers launched us into a really great day (do you think there's a market for "praise aerobics"?I'm sure I must have burned at least enough calories to balance the fabulous ice cream I enjoyed later)...A small but enthusiastic contingent from the valley church school explored everything from martial arts to climbing-walls, from handling snakes to poker work, with story telling, circus skills, wood turning (to produce fantastic spinning tops) and macrame along the way....We explored corners we would never normally have noticed...bumped into old friends around every corner and generally had a fantastic time. I was sad that it hadn't been possible to encourage more families to come along - those who feel that the church is remote and inaccessible might have been wonderfully surprised...but I'd tried, really I had, and those who did come clearly enjoyed themselves.

In time honoured fashion, Sunday followed Saturday, and this being the 1st Sunday in the month we offered All Age worship at Church in the Valley. As we were also welcoming the new curate I thought it would be good to talk a little about the distinctive calling of the diaconate, and we looked at different bits of the ordinal and tired to work out what that might mean for M, and for all of us in our own ministries too. At the end of the talk, he and I washed the feet of a gaggle of willing children, an exercise which I found incredibly moving and powerful.Those tiny pink toes...I wondered where those feet might travel, prayed that as a church we might do all in our power to welcome and to serve these little ones, and prayed with all my heart that they might always feel as happy and loved within the church as they do now. It was earlier in the talk, though, that things very nearly went off the rails. I'd been trying to get the children to explore what being a herald might mean and one in particular was heading cheerfully in the right direction, when a lady of a certain age, whose enthusiastic participation makes her a great ally on All Age Sundays, announced with great firmness
"No...a herring isn't a messenger. It's a kind of fish!"

So now you know. The curate will, from henceforth (until an alternative suggests itself) rejoice in the bloggy pseudonym
"The Herring of Christ".
What else are deacons for...?

The Herring of Christ (TM)is thoroughly good news for all sorts of reasons, - including the family he brings with him. Youngest herring (small fry?) is a very charming baby who all but undid me yesterday at Communion. I'd given the Sacrament to his mum, who was holding him to face me for a blessing. Youngest herring gave me his habitual beaming smile and reached out both hands to take a host from the patten.
Yes I know he didn't know what he was doing...(just as he didn't know what was being done on his behalf at baptism a month ago)...but still, he was reaching out towards Christ and I, a minister of Christ's Church, was constrained to gently push him away. It won't have hurt him, I'm sure - but it didn't do much for me.
My committment to inclusive church is total - and my sacramental theology has no problem with offering our Lord to the children who long for Him (not that I could stand it their way if I tried, really...)So why do I insist on toeing lines that pretty much nobody else present would even have noticed were there?
"Children for a Change", the theme of the diocesan festival, carries with it a dual message...that our focus should be on children for once, and that children can of themselves bring about change. Small Fry has certainly made me reflect once again on our attitude to the Sacrament...and pray and dream and long for change there.
"For everyone born a place at the table..."

Remember me

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuges of fugitives in caves and the dens of the earth.

Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetish because the yams have failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the think June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundred part of them.

And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.

Dom Gregory Dix: The Shape of the Liturgy (London 1945)

So this is what I shall do in a couple of hours...Oh the privilege of this calling!

Wise and helpful words

The splendid Fr Simon of Blessed fame wrote about an All Saints celebration that will surely have had the cloud of witnesses singing in excited fortissimo
Unsurprisingly, reading about all this creativity made me long for the St M's youth group and an environment in which it felt possible to try multi media worship...I think it may be a while before I can offer that sort of thing here, even if I persuade the Dufflepud that he wants to dabble in techie pleasures as his brother has done before. The Peace Mass we offered for Remembrance Sunday evening last year feels very remote in some ways, as the demands of British Legion services, colour parties and all loom large.

But what made me really really excited was his brief summary of reactions to the Mass for All Saints that he had offered
Listen to this
"“As usual, Blesséd invokes the usual response - outrage and offense from some, enthusiasm and encouragement for others, inspiration to continue and for the majority - complete confusion and mystery. Such is what the Mass should be about”

Isn't that great? And liberating too....
Outrage, confusion and mystery are fine.
We don't have to hope or expect to please everyone all the time, nor do we have to offer neatly packaged, cling-filmed answers.
For various reasons, that was something I needed to hear today - so I thought I would share it in case I'm not alone.
Thank you, Fr Simon.

Three years ago

St M's was crowded with friends and family.
Three years ago I was so nervous that I could barely speak until I found myself on the chancel steps where the President stands and heard a woman's voice saying clearly "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and ...."
Three years ago I realised that in offering absolution to God's people I felt myself more fully absolved than ever before
Three years ago I suddenly understood the reality that we do most truly "grasp the heel of heaven" during the Eucharist, as I became aware of my own personal cloud of witnesses, parents, teachers, writers, musicians who had been part of my journey to the point at which I could pray the Great Thanksgiving with and on behalf of them all.
Three years ago I presided at the Eucharist for the first time, a new priest, less than 24 hours old in my Orders, and realised what I am for.
How amazing and mysterious that something which is now the non negotiable core of my being is something that was new, that happened for the first time, just three years ago.
Thanks be to God!

Corpus Christi

I love this feast.
As someone for whom the Eucharist has made sense even at times when nothing else in life or faith hung together, the idea of a whole day dedicated to thanking God for this amazing gift was bound to delight me.
I do, though, tend to struggle with the more florid externals of traditional catholic devotion - the processions with rose-petals, and the priest only permitted to lift high the sacrament during Benediction if he (I think it would probably tend to be "he" in this context) is swathed in the humeral veil.
I know of some churches where this is so intrinsic to devotion to the Sacrament that what should be gift, grace, welcome becomes "Keep out...this is too rarefied, too holy for the likes of you" - or, for the casual visitor, "Whatever is happening here is far too esoteric to connect with my reality".
That makes me sad.
Surely the point of Christ's presence in the sacrament of bread and wine is that he makes himself accessible to us, that he can be touched and held by our ordinary, grubby hands - that he blesses us in our humanity.
That is what I most love about the Eucharist...
That we are invited to come and eat regardless of our condition, that God trusts us with himself, makes us an incalculable gift through his presence in that fragment of wafer, that sip of wine.
Last night, FabBishop presided and preached at a lovely service here
where the emphasis was very much on
"come as you are,- but see what, through God's grace, you will become".

Though we didn't use it in the liturgy, this was the prayer that resounded for me throughout the service, and indeed all day long.
It's just about the best expression of what the Eucharist means to me, and why I will always hope to celebrate Corpus Christi

Most merciful Lord, your love compels us to come in.
Our hands were unclean, our hearts were unprepared;
we were not fit even to eat the crumbs from under your table.
But you, Lord, are the God of our salvation,
and share your bread with sinners.
So cleanse and feed us with the precious body and blood of your Son,
that he may live in us and we in him;
and that we, with the whole company of Christ,
may sit and eat in your kingdom. Amen.

blah blah blah

I found Last Saturday’s Blah day as refreshing and encouraging as I’d found the earlier one disquieting and alienating.
The theme?
Catholic/Contemplative Fresh Expressions of church…
We began with truly excellent input from Simon Rundell – whose wonderful wonderful resources, first used at blessed in Gosport, are available as a gift to the church here.
He was followed by my friend and near neighbour, Michael, who told the story of feig the emerging congregation that he is nurturing.
feig is both fresh and rooted in tradition, as it lives under the wings of that apotheosis of traditional church, Gloucester Cathedral (to which Michael is licensed as curate).
Later there was a chance to hear about moot's own particular take on community another group that has intrigued me for a good while, Contemplative Fire (and to hear the wonderful instrument that is a hang drum)
Lovely too to see Mary (late of “a raid on the inarticulate), whose departure from blogging means that I was seriously out of touch with how her first months of ordained ministry have gone…(Very well, is the happy answer)

There were many gems during the day, but the thing that I have carried away with me to treasure during the week was Simon's eloquent celebration of the Eucharist as the skeleton of a new creation, the vehicle for our ever-changing encounter with God...of the value of comforting familiarity transformed by fresh ways of seeing, which are appropriate to the context of your own community...and his refusal to indulge in the unhappy compromise that is too often presented under the heading of "All Age Worship".
"We have All Age Worship every week", he said, "It's called The Mass."
If we cannot make the multi-sensory excitement of the Eucharist accessible and enthralling, then it may just be time to hang up our cassocks and head for the hills...

But even better than all that was the feeling that all us of there were in this together…That there are many many others who share my commitment to a both/and church, my longing to explore and join in when God does a new thing and my calling to nurture and sustain those for whom traditional church is the best expression of all. During group discussion I asked the alarming question “Are we looking at the death of the parish system” and was heartened that few around the table were ready to give up on it just yet, though agreeing that it was unlikely to continue looking much like its current incarnation.


Oh, and the journey up to London via the Oxford Tube was excellent too. In talking to Hugger Steward I somehow managed to plan our Lent series of talks and sermons. Just wish I felt as inspired about Advent – I rather think that comes first!

Fencing the table

Thanks to this month's book choice, there's been quite a discussion over in RevGal-land around questions of hospitality versus church identity. I didn't even try to read the book (somewhere in the curate's brain, a glimmer of realism stirred) but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents worth on the topic. The springboard for discussion was a scenario in which visiting Buddhist monks (iirc) were welcome and communicated at the altar...and there was much to-ing and fro-ing around the implications this has for baptism as a rite of entry and identity.

Back in the spring, I heard Bishop Lindsay Urwin speak on these very issues (and blogged it, here).At the time I was (and remain) deeply taken with his suggestion of porous boundaries, and a "lively doctrine of exceptions" which would allow for the Eucharist to become a sacrament of evangelism. If, as he argued, an encounter with Christ in the sacrament of bread and wine might inspire someone to seek baptism, can you imagine the incalculable damage that might be done by sending a longing communicant away empty-handed?
And, as Bishop Lindsay pointed out, we rarely, if ever, enquire about the baptismal status of visiting adults who appear at the altar rail on a Sunday morning...we rely on the implicit belief "The Lord knows his own, and what he's done to them".

For me, the invitation that the Iona community offers (Holy Communion Liturgy B in the Wee Worship Book) puts it best (though I recognise that, as ever, cowardice combined with denominational accountability might not allow me to proclaim this explicitly as often as I'd like)

This is the table not of the Church but of the Lord.
It is to be made ready for those who love him,
and who want to love him more.

So, come,
you who have much faith
and you who have little,
you who have been here often
and you who have not been for a very long time,
you who have tried to follow
and you who have failed.

Come, not because it is I who invite you:
it is our Lord.
It is his will that those who want him
should meet him here.

Seperated Brethren?

In the wake of the latest papal pronouncement there have been many words written about the church of Rome and how she connects with the rest of us. (As an aside, it does seem sad that one whose very title as "pontiff" establishes him as a bridge- person, uniting the disparate, seems currently intent on making his bridge a lifted draw-bridge, separating the chosen from the rest- but that's by the way...) I’ve neither the inclination nor the qualifications to say much about it in terms of ecclesiology (using the word is the closest I propose to get) but reading a post by Kate started me off on my own trail of memories…

From the age of 7, I was one of a handful of Anglicans in an RC Convent school, kept very aware of my second-class faith status. Like all the other girls, I was slightly afraid of the older nuns, who had strange names (Sister St Edmund, Sister Dominic) and wore traditional habits. Clearly they had no hair, but did they even have legs…or did they actually move on casters? I was seriously curious.
On the other hand, I adored the younger sisters, - specially Sister Stephanie, who was always laughing, and who shared my passion for animals. Her charges included Billy the Convent Cat (whose markings echoed the nuns’ habits, right down to a wimple under his chin), Jason the dog, an ever increasing family of guinea pigs (whose offspring were popular purchases at the annual Mission Sale) and any number of damaged birds. Together with my friends, I’d ask special permission to visit the higgledy-piggledy encampment of hutches and hen-runs behind the hedge near Our Lady’s grotto, certain that to be a nun would be the passport to a limitless family of pets and sisters (both equally attractive to an only child). I think, too, I was attracted by the genuine joy that seemed to surround Sister Stephanie. When she sang and played her guitar in chapel, her whole being was there in the music, and I recognised that she was focussed on something wonderful beyond my imaginings.

But, though I was fascinated by statues and holy pictures, and carried around my rosary like all my RC friends, looking on wistfully as they made their First Communions in full bridal splendour, I wasn’t really ripe for conversion. Aunty A, the Belfast Catholic who lived next door to us would tease my mother by referring to us as “Separated brethren” but I knew that, like Sister Theresa my form teacher and Sister St Francis who taught me French, she prayed regularly that we might recognise our errors and join the True Church.
Even then, I found that vaguely disturbing.
Of course, I didn’t want to go to hell….and there were enough stories of souls in torment to give me a very clear picture of what that might entail….but I liked my own church, where the incense and vestments were far more awe-inspiring than the guitars and Kum-bay-ah of the Convent chapel. If I’d been 10 years older, and grown up before Vatican 2, I might have seen things differently, but the reformed liturgy of the late 60s just didn’t hit the spot for me. I needed full liturgical drama, Mozart and mystery.

But one thing I’ve never forgotten from those First Friday Masses, squashed uncomfortably into the lower school pews, to the south of the altar.
“The Mass is ended. Go in peace” the priest would direct us, before departing himself, an imposing figure flanked by servers.
But the nuns sang on, so for a few minutes at least we went nowhere. Instead I would watch, week after week, as the vestry door opened and Father X, stripped of his gorgeous vestments, and now a pedestrian figure in clerical black, came quietly back into the chapel to kneel in a back pew.
Nobody ever told me what was happening, but I somehow knew that he was thanking God for the miracle he had just been a part of, and praying for grace and strength before he left that place…

At the end of the Eucharist now, I say a quick prayer with choristers and servers, and then head straight to the west door for the weekly ritual of handshakes, hugs and greetings which seems integral to maintaining our community. As an extrovert I love that, of course, but I know I miss out on something. The danger of plunging immediately into relationships at the porch is that I might just be seduced into thinking it’s all about me, and the wonder of the Eucharist is too easily overlaid by the joys and concerns I encounter straight afterwards. Of course, they too are part of the worship...but so is the pause, the recognition that something amazing has happened, the time aside to say thank you.

So the drama of St David's Chapel continues, now focussed on the movable altar rail which is put in place on Sundays so that those who wish to kneel to receive Communion can do so, but is generally out of the way during the week.
Having arranged the chairs in a welcoming circle and carpetted the tiled floor, the Chapel feels a very different place,- one in which, for me at least, prayer is easy and comfortable even on days when I'm struggling. But, because the altar rail is still there (albeit in truncated form) a silent running-battle has developed between those who wish to retain it for every service, and those who would cheerfully see it vanish without trace. So it's uncertain when you emerge from the vestry quite what you'll find...faintly ludicrous, but very St M's.

Last time I attended the Mothers' Union corporate Communion, I was assured that the ladies much preferred to have the rail in place- but they then confounded my informant by (all bar one) electing to stand to receive. Today was my turn to preside for this service, and I semi-deliberately kept out the way before the service so that I could not be drawn into impassioned debates on the subject.
And, when it came to the distribution they all stood in a semi circle and the sense of a gathered community of the people of God was overwhelming...My one regret is that I didn't invite them to communicate each other. I know it would have been right today.
During the intercessions, the impact of the shootings in American schools was very much on my heart.
To come home to these words from the Henri Nouwen Society was simply wonderful; they articulated some of the connections I'd been experiencing this morning.

When we gather around the table and eat from the same loaf and drink from the same cup, we are most vulnerable to one another. We cannot have a meal together in peace with guns hanging over our shoulders and pistols attached to our belts. When we break bread together we leave our arms - whether they are physical or mental - at the door and enter into a place of mutual vulnerability and trust.

The beauty of the Eucharist is precisely that it is the place where a vulnerable God invites vulnerable people to come together in a peaceful meal. When we break bread and give it to each other, fear vanishes and God becomes very close

Eucharist now and then

It was very strange to find myself at a diocesan clergy day at the racecourse on Wednesday…so soon after Greenbelt, really, that it felt as if the Festival must surely be carrying on somewhere, just out of sight, if I could only catch up with it.

Strange to be in the Gold Cup lounge, with several dozen tidy clergy, all showing signs of recent bathing. Stranger to look out of the window and see an empty concourse, in place of the busy crowds which surge past during the Festival, and the racecourse itself clear of the rainbowed acres of tents that lend it life and excitement for a short time each August.
Strangest of all to realise that this group, no less than the Greenbelt community, provides much my sense of connection, of “home”.
So many friends who’ve offered love, laughter and incalculable support along the way.

Once the initial disappointment (it really wasn’t Greenbelt) was past it was a good day, with some excellent talks on the Eucharist from my favourite Canon, from Fab Bish and from someone with arguably one of the best jobs in the C of E…
Much of it was stuff that I’ve heard before, that is very close to my vision of what we are about during worship…that sense of sharing in something so much greater, that stretches through space and time…the experience that Fab Bish refers to in his book as “grasping the heel of heaven”.
David Hoyle shared a pre-Reformation perspective, as he spoke of the power of an “articulate symbolism” which filled the churches on the eve of the Reformation. The painted saints that decorated the screen cutting off nave and chancel in a pre Ref church were community saints, part of the family…sharing not only the same concerns but even the same names. (the paintings of St John and St Cecilia in Ranworth Church were the gift of a long dead John and Cecily…how must they have felt when the reformers arrived and literally defaced their gifts, so that the saints now stand faceless in their place on the doorstep of heaven)
As Eamon Duffy has pointed out, there was a much greater sense of ownership in the pre Reformation church than we might expect. David observed that, whereas sixteenth century worshippers were likely to be deeply engaged in the sheer spectacle of the Mass (even if they were occasionally bewildered by the Latin), - the screen serving not as we'd assume as a fence to exclude, but as a frame to emphasise the events taking place on the altar,- our congregations are typically engaging above all with the printed text in their hand, or above their heads. They might look around them, to engage with the community , but that focussed engagement with the transforming passion of Christ played out in the Eucharistic action is something different, which it seems hard for us to recapture.

Back to the sense of our minimal expectations, perhaps? We’re too wedded to the commonplace, without looking beyond it even as we approach the miracle of the altar…Diarmid McCulloch in contrast describes the way in which the medieval and pre-Reformation Church, "had a genius for building on the capacity of Christianity to invest the everyday with sacred significance. Worship might involve the distant, all powerful God, but God could be reached little by little through the familiar, the approachable….bread, wine and candles”. (I guess that brings us back to Greenbelt, with next year's theme of "heaven in ordinary", then? )

Thinking that through, it feels as if so little has changed. We assume that we need to pare worship down to its bare essentials in order to woo the unchurched…but perhaps it’s the very banality of so much that we offer that provides the greater barrier? Wesley’s description of the Eucharist as a “converting ordinance” was much to the fore in conversation, with an underlying implication that the church has somehow lost confidence in its power. As I posted earlier, my own experience supports this. Nothing, for me, creates sacred space in quite the same way, time after time, as the gathering of God's people around God's table..To find ourselves once again brought to place of total concentration on the death and resurrection of Christ is to find ourselves on holy ground, at the foot of the cross in the company of saints and angels.

Sunday ALL day!

Today began with an 8.00 Eucharist at a neighbouring church which is currently in an interregnum...a church whose traditions are very different from St M's, but where I'm given the warmest welcome imaginable. A real treat to be with them, and a lovely way to start the day.
One of the ways in which St L's is different is in expecting a "Word" even at 8.00. This is fine if you are preaching on the Eucharistic Lectionary at 10.00, as it simply involves distilling essence-of-sermon and offering it to them in a kind of homeopathic quantity. This week, though,I celebrated at 10.00 and preached at Evensong...different readings so 2 sermons (or rather 1 sermon, 1 sermonette*).Rather a shame, to be honest, as I'd have loved to say something along these lines to my home congregation, some of whom have been rather inclined to write off the entire youth of Charlton Kings on the basis of a few rather sad and silly incidents. However, it was not to be. The lovely thing was that simply telling the St L's people about the Greenbelt Eucharist gave me another opportunity to relive it and I came home feeling all warm and smiley. I said it was a good start to the day!

I spent last weekend in company with around 20,000 other people at the Greenbelt Festival on the racecourse. This year one of the Festival tee shirts bore the words
“One Festival, many faces” and there is indeed a huge range of worship, music, art, theatre, dance, and of course theology on offer so that nobody’s Greenbelt is ever quite the same as that of their neighbour.
However, I want to think for a moment a little more explicitly about the actual human faces I saw there…Faces young and old, faces framed by dreadlocks or looking out from shaven heads, or bald ones, faces adorned with piercings of lips, nose, eyebrows as often as ears.
I have to say that if the group of young people with whom I found myself breaking bread at last Sunday’s Communion had gathered in the precinct in Charlton Kings, most of my home congregation would probably have wondered why the police weren’t immediately acting on the infamous “dispersal order” which is in force there. Those kids looked different….Definitely not mainstream Anglicans! Of course, I don’t have any idea what their denominational allegiance actually is, or indeed if they have one at all- but I can certainly vouch for their commitment to Christ and their shining love of God and of neighbour. When it comes to walking the talk, they really knew what they were doing. But in my own church they would have looked like outsiders, and might well have been regarded with suspicion….

When we hear Jesus berating the Pharisees, we tend automatically to put ourselves on the other side of the line, to count ourselves among the good guys…but most of the Pharisees were good, observant, God-loving Jews…the sort of people who took their faith very seriously and did all that they could to live godly lives. People whom we might well aspire to be, in fact.
But, for all their good intentions, they had totally missed the point.
“These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”.
They’d used their zeal for the law to inculcate a “them” and “us” culture of exclusion…. Jesus, though, operates from a very different perspective. He’s in the business of building an inclusive community. He rejects those categories that we too often enforce: class, “race”, wealth, and religious purity. He reminds us that for God such divisions are meaningless, that we will be judged on how we live our lives, not how clean our hands are.
Jesus will not allow us to draw lines of our own, and then attribute them to God…Nothing is to exclude His children from relationship with Him. Archbishop Desmond Tutu always used to say that the tragedy of Apartheid was its ability to persuade [black] children of God that they were not, in fact, children of God! We may not have to look terribly far in the church today to see other examples of a similar mindset…indeed, we probably need to acknowledge some traces of it within ourselves, and repent.
Meanwhile, Mark presents us with a Jesus who is alive to the deep-seated human tendency to exclude people who are “different”. The most effective way to do so is to declare them “unclean” – beyond the pale. But these are precisely the people whom Jesus turns to welcome first into the Kingdom…the second-class citizens, the outsiders, the excluded. He turns to them because this is the way of our God, God whose nature is compassion and love, and whose “holiness” is expressed not in disapproval but in loving welcome.
Last week at Greenbelt we sang words by Shirley Erena Murray
"For everyone born, a place at the table
For everyone born, clean water and bread.
For everyone born, a safe place for growing.
For everyone born, a star overhead.
And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy
Yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy.”
Amen.

*And I'm grateful to Lawrence for the providing a direction for my thoughts and the Desmond Tutu story...excellent stuff. I love Lectionary blogs :-)

With angels and archangels

One way and another, it’s been a good week to experience a huge variety of worship. To start with, WonderfulVicar AND both retired associate priests have been away on holiday so, for the very first time in two years I’ve been able to lead the full gamut of worship offered at St M’s. In the course of a week, that’s quite a lot, though sadly we no longer offer a daily Eucharist. This week that didn't matter, as I found myself receiving the Sacrament every single day anyway,- something that hasn't been possible for me since the days when I was working in London, just a stone's throw from St James' Piccadilly, and later All Saints, Margaret Street. I'd forgotten how that daily encounter shapes and impacts on every aspect of life, and I'd love to be part of a church that enabled that once again.
I admit to struggling to actually pray the Book of Common Prayer Eucharist on Thursday morning though. I’m just not sufficiently familiar with presiding at this service, and there are one of two bits of local custom that nearly threw me completely. I also find it odd to spend almost the whole service with my back to the congregation, though there’s little I can do about that given the logistics of the chapel. (Plans to reorder there are progressing, and might be realised before the next millennium, given God’s grace and a following wind!!)
To add to the St M’s mix, there was of course the Ordination of Priests in Gloucester last Saturday, and yesterday I was invited by our Baptist neighbours to participate in the ordination of their new Associate Pastor, a woman from their own congregation who had received a call to minister in her own church and community. That was a very relaxed and friendly occasion, and it’s lovely that our ecumenical friendships are so strong that an Anglican priest could find herself taking part in the laying on of hands at the time of ordination. I did miss the powerful invocation of the Holy Spirit that had been part of the service last week, and for me last year, but the service was very much a reflection of S’s call and ministry, and planned on that basis.

Even more than the Ordinations, though, this week has been shaped by my attendance at the 1st Eucharists of two friends made priest last weekend. Both were experiences of the deepest possible joy, both in different ways flung open windows onto heaven, both filled me with a real sense of the Church Universal, stretching through time and space. It was wonderful to come hot and dishevelled from a busy week and be totally swept up in the experience, to know myself surrounded by friends with whom I could exchange hugs and smiles, and no less by friends who now rejoice to see God face to face. When I wrote about my own 1st Mass last year, I said
Nothing had prepared me for the weight of the words, nor for their absolute reality. What’s more, those wonderful Sacramental things that I did for the first time on Sunday are now in a mysterious way, part of what I am for. At the end of the service we sang “And can it be?” and I thought the whole church might take off. So many friends, living and departed were involved in that singing….and in the whole journey to this weekend.
The preacher at T’s 1st Mass on Wednesday, focussing on angels (since the service was a Votive of the Holy Angels) made the same point as she spoke about angels as "musicians of the soul", whose song enables our faltering worship to become fit for God’s majesty. At that service the offertory hymn was How shall I sing that majesty,- and this week’s worship has made its last verse in particular very real for me.

How great a being, Lord, is Thine,
Which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
To sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
A sun without a sphere;
Thy time is now and evermore,
Thy place is everywhere.

Thanks be to God.

A Tale of Two Services

This morning, I joined several hundred others at a service to celebrate the life of Peter, the priest whose death from cancer had such an impact on the Quiet Day last week. It was utterly wonderful. The cover of the order of service carried the words of Dag Hammarskjold
“For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be YES”
and that positive note sounded loud and clear through every element of the service.
Not for the first time I found myself longing for a church without walls, for what was happening in the church of St Philp and St James Leckhampton simply shouted resurrection faith from every pore. There’s little I can say that will capture the atmosphere, but somehow I can’t NOT blog about it. Peter was an inspiration to so many people, and that shone through the whole service, but even stronger than that was the light of God’s love that bathed each and every one of us there.
There were many wonderful words said, great hymns sung with colossal conviction (Thine be the Glory! And Can it Be? Hark, hark my soul) and a kind of suppressed joy that kept bursting out in unexpected places. When all that could be had been said, sung and prayed, Splendid Bishop gave us his blessing, and the bearers moved forward in the intense silence that followed, to take up their load and carry it away……and then the choir burst out with that epitome of celebration the Hallelujah chorus.
I can’t imagine that anyone there will ever forget the impact of that music, those words, as the brilliant gold and white of the flowers on the coffin passed between the lines of loving people. For a brief moment we felt ourselves involved in the welcome that Peter himself is enjoying, as his voice joins with the multitude that no man can number.
In contrast, our parish celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi tonight was at the depressing end of low-key! There were 7 in the congregation, 20 on the other side of the rood screen…..and this in a parish that talks up its catholic heritage at the slightest provocation. The choir sang beautifully, and actually the liturgy was rather lovely, but I did come home wondering quite what was going on. By “popular demand”, we use the Book of Common Prayer for Corpus Christi, and the choir sing Merbecke. No problem with that, if those who have demanded it appear to enjoy the fruits of their campaigning. But tonight just felt rather sad. We were there to celebrate that most amazing gift, the Eucharist…Do we really so take it for granted that we can’t spare an hour on a Thursday evening (after the whistle had blown in Germany) to express our joy? Corpus Christi is such a lovely feast…I hope we can work out a way of celebrating it properly..
Our final hymn tonight was All for Jesus, which might well have featured earlier in the day as well….but tonight I was profoundly relieved that the church was well and truly hidden behind thick medieval walls. I can't imagine that any casual passer-by would have been inspired by the experience to find out more.

Lord Jesus Christ We thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
You have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.