Peace at any price?

A good friend whose integrity and conscience I hold in high esteem has been distinctly "off" God lately and blogged recently on the impossibility of offering the Peace honestly while struggling with a particular relationship at work..For her this had become such a huge issue that it dominated the entire service in a thoroughly unhelpful way. It struck me as distinctly ironic that she, while claiming no Christian allegiance at present, is so much more scrupulous about the need to be "in love and charity with her neighbour" than too many who approach Communion with no qualms (though I guess if we waited to be ready to receive...yes, well, let's not go there....)
On her blog, this sparked the sort of "Peace or not discussion" which seems inevitable in most churches from time to time...so I thought, why not? Let's give it another airing.

So here are a few reasons why I am largely in favour of the Peace...

1) because it CAN and SHOULD be an opportunity to heal broken relationships before receiving Communion...and is good theology, obedient to Jesus's command (Matt 5 22-25) (...make the most of that, it's not often you'll catch me actually quoting Scripture ;-) )

2)because it can break down barriers between groups and individuals in the church family...when we first moved to our previous house, we knew nobody in the village, but the children adopted 2 quite excellent honorary grandparents by dint of moving in on them during the Peace and somehow never quite leaving.

3)because (to repeat my comments on that blog) it can provide a bit of human contact for otherwise lonely and untouched souls

All of this only holds good if you are actually attempting to match deeds with thoughts...to go through the motions while harbouring murderous intentions is clearly never a good idea. I do recognise as well how the Peace can also work against community, isolating those who are not "in the know" still further...it is so awful when you visit a church and find yourself politely shaking the hands nearest to you while all around others are flinging their arms around their dearest friends whom they've clearly not seen since...ooh...at least last Sunday!
By nature a touchy feely type, I'm mindful too of those for whom such contact is deeply uncomfortable..the sheer embarassment factor can be huge, I'm certain.

But, despite all this, to remove the rite from the liturgy would seem to me to imply that it is possible for the Body of Christ to operate as though were simply a group of disparate individuals, as if our worship as community did not in fact matter. I think we need the discomfort, the long hard looks at our relationships, even perhaps the occasional embarassment along the way. Sorry Mrs Beamish, but your day is not yet!

The ideal godparent...

We've recently begun an overhaul of Baptism preparation here. Nothing too radical, as we're not even considering an obstacle course for prospective families,- more a gentle tweaking to ensure that we, the church community, are doing everything we can to make Baptism as signficant as it ought to be. As part of the process last week we began a short course for our Baptism visitors, which gave plenty of food for thought. Clearly, it is not going to be easy to help families prepare for baptism if the majority of our visitors have almost no idea what they think that sacrament is achieving...
Methinks I spy a sermon series looming on the horizon.
Meanwhile, the reading/thinking for next week included an article by Clare Rayner (a humanist) on "non godparents", which included the depressing paragraph
"Who should be your child's extra parent. This is where the church's model is (or should be) left far behind. In the majority of cases, being invited to stand as godparent at a baby's christening is regarded as a sort of lollipop for a family friend...or a form of investment....more of an honour for the godparent than of real value to the child"
Leaving aside the many assumptions Rayner makes, this was a good jumping off point for general discussion on the role of godparents, those we've chosen for our own children and why...but the best bit of homework goes like this
"If you could have chosen your own godparent, contemporary or historical, who would you have chosen and why? Jesus is not allowed!"
Actually, my own parents chose some wonderful godparents for me, all of whom have shown endless loving, prayerful interest through the years, carrying an unexpected burden when my parents died when I was 18. I wouldn't want to displace any of them, but if I were allowed another, then who??
Maybe J, my inspirational former spiritual director...because she is so creatively aware of God in everything, and the joy of that knowledge keeps breaking through and transforming the most mundane situations? also, she does have the world's best tree house in her garden, which must be a consideration...and loves my children too.
Or maybe I could claim beloved George Herbert? I suspect he might have found a small child difficult to deal with, even one who shared his love of words, but his little rectory at Bemerton was surely full of books, and I might have joined him on his walk into Salisbury every week to make music with his friends there. I know I would have been certain of his prayers, and might have benefitted from his clear vision of God's loving relationship with us...He would have been a calming presence in my harum scarum life....and just think, if I'd been the first to hear one of his poems!
If I'd had C. S. Lewis, I might have found myself visiting Narnia with Lucy...now that was quite a legacy from a godfather...but I'm not sure he really liked many women, so it might have been uncomfortable sometimes.
Perhaps it's fortunate the choice doesn't lie with us.
That said, my own children are thoroughly blessed in their godparents . While I would hate to leave them yet, I do feel confident that they each have good, strong relationships with adults who love them generously and would do everything possible to help them find their way through life. I'm all too aware of my own shortcomings as a godmother; saying "yes" to too many friends makes it so much harder to really know all my godchildren, but they do each have one day of the week when I make sure I pray for them. Now I need to think of some other realistic ways of making our bond real for us both, despite the constraints of geography and time.

U2 Brutus?

When I posted here that I hoped to try some new things this year, among the thoughts I'd had was to finally go to a non-classical concert, - a gig, in fact. The teens were sure that this should be u2 and I was quite happy to go along with this...even I know and enjoy some of their music. So, when the booking opened for the Vertigo tour at 9.00 a.m. I was poised by the computer...only to discover that it took about 30 mins to get the ticketmaster site to work..by which stage the affordable tickets for London had all sold out. What to do? Typically, Luci wasn't answering her phone (maybe she really does turn it off when she's working) and G's phone was beside me on the desk, so not much point calling him for advice. Brainwave. I phone school and ask if they can get a message through to one of the kids to phone me, stressing that it's not a family crisis but a "simple" matter of U2 tickets.
"Oooh..booking opens today doesn't it....but the lines are really busy" says the school secretary, rather surprisingly. I get a mad image of hoardes of middle aged mums like us spending the morning intent on defeating the demons of the bookings system, none of us suspecting that the others are there....School secretary shows signs of wanting to engage in a full scale Bono appreciation conversation, and to talk about the Make Poverty History campaign,- which is great, except that I'm worried that all the tickets will sell out while we chat. I ring off, and about an hour later G phones and agrees that the prices are impossible unless we can get standing tickets. At this point, Ticketmaster suddenly claim that they might after all have some for the extra Twickenham date....so I go through the whole procedure, complete with overloaded website messages, computer crashing etc for another half hour or so, before being told that this too is sold out. Grrr. Back to the drawing board, then. The kids, whose exams will be safely behind them, will go to the Cardiff gig but my ordination retreat starts that day, so clearly it's not going to work for me. Bother. While this is the first time I've spent a whole morning trying to get tickets for something I wasn't totally sure I would enjoy, the fact that I now know I can't go has lent the whole thing an allure it wouldn't otherwise have, and the blogosphere seems to be full of people describing their own success or failure in booking. Just as well I'll be locked up with the bishop, really, or I might be the only person I know not going ....
Alternative suggestions for a good first gig for a 40 something who is still not sure what she really likes beyond the strictly classical, anyone?I really would be glad to know.

By way of an elegy....

Heard on classic fm this afternoon that today would have been Jacqueline du Pre's 60th birthday. Her recording of the Haydn Cello concerto was the first LP (does anyone remember those?) I ever bought and she was a huge inspiration to me as a very young and rather dreadful cellist. On my 13th birthday, my parents bought us tickets to hear her play the Elgar Concerto at the Brighton Festival,- but when we got there, a notice announced that she was "indisposed" and Menuhin played for us instead. There was no hint as to the real problem, and my mother consoled me by saying "She's young...you'll have many more opportunities to hear her, while Menuhin might retire any time now".
In fact she was never to perform in public again, though I did hear her give a masterclass a couple of years later, and treasured through my teens a dictated response to one of very few fan letters I've ever written. But her music has gone with me through every phase of life since, and has often been the first thing to go on the stereo when trying to make a new place feel like home....She seemed to touch deep reserves of joy which few other musicians could reach, and to share that joy with her listeners with an exuberance that has kept her legend alive 18 years after her death.

Buildings: blessings or millstones?

Lunched yesterday with a gaggle of local clergy, who are part of an ongoing discussion about the shape of the Anglican church here, and how we can more effectively collaborate across parish boundaries, while remaining true to the great ideal of "every blade of grass in the country being within the care of some (horticultural?) Anglican vicar". There is a pretty wide range of views within the group, as those near retirement lament the lost church of yesteryear, while others contribute frustration, depression or, occasionally, just the smallest glimmers of hope. Having focussed on all the positive potential of collaboration yesterday, our conversation turned to the question of church closures,- not an immediate issue, but probably lurking at the back of most minds at Church House.
Realistically, it seems clear that there is no way the number of buildings we have can possibly be kept open...they are a dead weight impeding so much of what we try to do and be. In a room full of clergy, it's easy to accept this and agree that it's a nonsense the way we spend so much time worrying about our "plant", even to reach for the phone to summon the diocesan arsonist! But actually, I'm not quite sure.
In the months since I came here, I've heard so many people talk about what their parish church means to them but have also been startled that talking about this seems to be far more pressing for the majority than any conversation about faith or...dare I say it?...about God.
I've wondered which relationship is really the more important for them...and whether the faithful in the pews are actually as confused about this as it sometimes seems. More evidence there to avoid misunderstanding by dispensing with even beloved, medieval shrines? Maybe...
But , more positively, our building is open every day and I'm encouraged by how often I find someone there at odd times. People pop in after tending a grave, or en route to collect from school, and sit in the dim quiet. Sometimes, these are people I never see otherwise...some are regular visitors, some come only once...but if that once is at an important time in their lives, they will remember it, just as they would remember if they had come seeking peace and an encounter with God, and found the door locked.

An experience from the past supports this, and makes me think there is still a case for a visible, recognisable church presence in each community. About 10 years ago, a toddler was killed by a car in the new village that had been created out of a former airforce base in my old benefice...I went up there the following morning to see his mum, and found a scene which reminded me of black and white film versions of the aftermath of pit disasters in Welsh mining villages. At almost every gate down the street, women were standing....not talking...not doing anything really, just standing. They needed to be together, to express somehow their feelings of grief and shock as a community....and there was nowhere for them to go. That village has no church...we met for worship in the village hall, but that's not the place to go for a quiet prayer. Those women needed to go somewhere where prayer happens, is part of the fabric, where they could feel safe and welcomed by a hug from God. To get into the car and drive the 3 miles down to church in the old village somehow didn't feel like an option ( not everyone would have access to a car in any case). I didn't know most of those women. None of them were part of the congregation that met on Sundays and I remember very few of them openly saying that they needed somewhere to pray, but it seemed obvious to me that day. They needed a sacred space in their midst, but it had been decreed that they weren't to have one. At the time it was made, that diocesan decision had made sense to me, but I'm no longer convinced.
I accept that a known and identifiable prayer room in the village hall would have met the need, and I'm not campaigning with the Victorian Society or English heritage (well, maybe sometimes) to ensure that no gothic stone, however unlovely, is ever shifted a centimetre. Rather, I'm putting in a bid for recognisable sacred space in each community....maybe above a cafe, maybe part of a community centre...I dont mind what it looks like, provided it is known about, prayed in, and open.

Post - Script to the Church from Scratch

Talked about this on the school run and, as had been predicted, the kids were considerably more conservative than we had been last night. Though "worship" had been one of our essential words, all 3 were outraged that we might, even for a moment, consider a church without music.
Needless to say, none of the things that tend to dominate the home church,- choreography, furniture, even preaching,- were core values. So...how do we get to there from here?

Refreshment from the Fountain

Yesterday was not a good day in the life of the home church. A sad little feud that has bubbled away beneath the surface for much too long now, threatens to erupt in a welter of hurts and resignations that say little for the health of the Body of Christ here. Whatever happened to the need to be "in love and charity with your neighbour" before receiving Communion, I wonder?
More feathers were ruffled through a misunderstanding of what the morning's preacher (not me, praise God!) had actually said about ecumenism, and anyone who wasn't already upset about one of these issues decided that today was a good day to take the clergy to task for either a) absence or
b)presence of change.
The impact of all that was such that I came home feeling that, rather than encountering the God who loves us, I'd had a run in with someone very very different.
All the more reason, therefore, to be grateful to Mark who had alerted me to a gathering at "The Fountain" tonight. I skipped the post service coffee (so much for my public committment to ecumenism,- it was "churches together" coffee that I skipped: bad curate... ;-( ) and arrived in the pub in time to hear Justin set the scene by reading from Church Invisible as a prelude to exploring our thoughts on church from scratch. It wasn't easy to strip away the layers of assumptions that we brought with us, and to produce one-word essential ingredients for a new-born church. Words such as "prayer" "fellowship" "inclusiveness" and "food" led us into lots of helpful discussion, but 3 thoughts in particular stayed with me as I drove home.

- that Judas was included among those who shared the Last Supper (so what do we think we're doing, ring-fencing access to the Eucharist?)

-that clergy too often assume that our own experience in ministering is matched by those we minister to. Several of us were anxious about the "conveyor belt" feeling of distributing Communion to a large congregation, but this doesn't seem to be how it feels from the other side of the rail

-that it is very easy to objectify and offload problems and frustrations onto "the Church", when all too often it is we, as individual Christians, who are at fault. This put me in mind of a wonderful prayer by Jeffrey John

Lord, do something about your Church.
It is so awful; it is hard not to feel ashamed of belonging to it.
Most of the time it seems to be all the things you condemned:
hierarchical, conventional, judgemental, hypocritical,
respectable, comfortable, moralising, compromising,
clinging to its privileges and worldy securities,
and when not positively objectionable, merely absurd.

Lord, we need your whip of cords.
Judge us and cleanse us,
break and remake us,
challenge and change us,
break and remake us.

Help us to be what you called us to be.
Help us to embody you on earth.
Help us to make you real down here, and to feed your people bread instead of stones.

And start with me.

Reflections on A. A. Milne

The guy doing the talk at this morning's Prams and Pushchairs session tried to tie in Winnie the Pooh with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and our ecumenical links here. He did a good job, imo, in comparing the local independent Anglican fellowship with Tigger (bags of energy and enthusiasm) and I could see why he compared the Baptists with Winnie the Pooh himself, in that they are pivotal to all our joint enterprises here, (and host the ecumenical coffee shop in their premsises,-"time for a little something"). I could even, at a pinch, see why the large and active RC church might be rabbit (and his friends and relations). But he rather charitably decidedthat we at the parish church were Wol, venerable and wise...whereas I'm rather afraid we 're really more Eeyore, looking sadly down at the ground beneath our hooves and lamenting
"I don't seem to have felt very how for a long time".
Fortunately the children were too young and the mothers too polite to comment ;-)

Reprieved!!

Part of the deal as a newly ordained curate is attendance at "Continuing Ministerial Training", a programme of assorted workshops, study days etc spread out across the year. Ever since the timetable arrived last autumn, the dates 24-26th January have been tinged with dread...We were scheduled to spend the time with the armed forces chaplaincy department, learning all about how chaplaincy works in a military context. As a paid-up pacifist, this was not something I could muster any enthusiasm for...and there was the additional fear that there might be awful assualt courses involving high ropes and fast flowing water. Not to mince words, I was scared stiff, but a feeble "Please sir, do we have to..." had fallen on deaf ears when I tried it on the then-CME officer.
Having not received any details of the programme, I reluctantly phoned up this morning...only to discover that,- hallelujah-, my name had somehow erased itself from the lists. Further phonecalls to Church House confirmed that I DON'T HAVE TO GO
It's ridiculous how happy this makes me feel....I've been singing around the house all day as a result and the time restored in the diary has the flavour of a holiday, even though it means I can do Monday's funeral and a meeting or two as well.
Now, of course, if mark is going he'll probably tell me that it was a wonderful and wholly life-enhancing experience...but my life feels hugely enhanced by this escape.

Self indulgent wonderings.

Maggi has been blogging about trying some new things, while steve was musing about some things he used to do, which are no longer part of his life. Between them, they got me thinking (which is no mean achievement on a Monday morning) about how I too have abandoned various things that were once very important parts of me. I had kind of assumed that this was mostly because motherhood is such an overwhelming occupation that it squeezes out almost anything that you don't need to do to stay sane...but clearly this is not the whole story, since maggi is a mum and steve (yes you've guessed...) isn't!

It might be worth rediscovering these lost loves I guess, before I wake up one morning to find the children have left home and I've lost track of any identity beyond my involvement with them, or my equally engaging work. So...what about all those things that used to be an essential part of me?

Singing...for many years this was the most important thing in my life, and I came within a whisker of earning a living through it. A wise singing teacher at Cambridge advised me "If you can imagine yourself doing anything else at all with your life, don't even contemplate a career as a pro musician"...and subsequent events would suggest that he was right,- but nonetheless, I do miss it. Perhaps this should be the year in which I make a real effort to find a regular opportunity for good music making (assuming, of course, that I'm still capable of making good music)

I used to play the cello rather badly but with immense enthusiasm...and having 3 musical children about the place, have often regretted the cavalier way in which I sold my cello at 25 to pay for a wedding. However, a recent visit to the Aladdin's cave which is Vintage Strings to buy a viola for Lucinda's 18th turned into a very exciting shopping spree indeed, as the owner decided that I would be the ideal home for an abandoned and damaged cello he had in stock. Emerging with 2 instruments for approximately the price of 1 had not been part of the plan, but it will be so lovely to have a cello about the place again.

I used to write all the time...but on reflection, I still do. It just takes a different form, but is no less rewarding. Perhaps, then, not all is lost,- though I am less convinced about the wisdom of the current plan that, after a 25 year gap, I should take up riding again, simply to keep the family pony happily exercised until the smallest Fleming has grown into him. Falling off a horse at this stage in life is rather more uncomfortable than it was in my teens...and if I damage myself enough, the other abandoned pursuits may become irrelevant after all.

However, assuming that I survive all these revivals, I wonder what new things I should try this year. There's one very big New Thing due to happen to me in July, but that's in a different league really,- so that still leaves the field open for some other "firsts". Suggestions (of a not too hazardous nature) welcome, though I don't promise to try them all.

Another outing

This afternoon I went to the induction of a new priest at a parish not far from here. The service was just the kind of joyful celebration you might expect but it also opened my eyes to an aspect of the Church of England that I might otherwise have forgotten about.
You see, the parish in question belongs to Forward in Faith and the service featured not only our own diocesan bishop but also a Provincial Episcopal Visitor...a flying bishop to the world at large. Both bishops and the new incumbent were gracious and charming, but I was brought up short by one visiting cleric who decided that the only safe policy when confronted by a woman in choir dress, was to pretend you hadn't seen her, even if she was directly in front of you and attempting to share the Peace.
My own parish is well "up the candle" and I know that not everyone in the congregation felt able to welcome my advent, but even those who have the biggest issues with my sex and calling have been uniformly polite and friendly to me personally. There will be some who find that my priesting this summer brings their anxieties to a head, and some who feel that they cannot in conscience remain in a church where a clergywoman ministers, but I feel sure that none of them would ever be less than kind as they wrestle with their consciences. The whole "feel" of the afternoon reminded me very strongly of the Anglo Catholic churches in which I worshipped 20 years ago, and also made me aware of how much my own attitudes have changed....I came back from the service feeling very raw and bruised, but on reflection I'm glad I was there and even glad of that negative experience...I'm also very very glad of our bishop, who was hugely affirming in a climate where I felt unwelcome simply because I was myself, Kathryn.

The right name...

[I feel perhaps I should apologise in advance for all these naked feelings, but hey, this is a milestone in our family life and just for once British reserve seems unnecessary.]

18 years ago my much-loved, beautiful daughter arrived in the world.
Nothing had prepared me for the sheer force of the love which I felt as I cradled her in the darkness of a snowy morning in South London.
I was still less prepared for all the many many gifts that she has brought into our lives; the friendship and laughter, the songs and poetry, the windows onto God which she has opened.
I'd not been prepared either for the mutuality of the relationship...the way she looks after me, at times carrying burdens far beyond her years, and the way we can understand each other's unspoken thoughts ("That's because you only have the one brain between you" her father observed on one occasion, feeling rather excluded from all this feminine empathy...."The Brain" has become a shared joke, a further bond in itself)
When I was 10, reading "Roller Skates" for the first time, I'd promised myself that if I ever had a daughter, she would be Lucinda. Today I am so very proud of the lovely young woman she has become and very grateful that she has so wonderfully lived up to her name as "bearer of the light".
Birthday blessings and great happiness always, my firstborn. Go well, wherever life takes you.

An outing to London...

Taking advantage of a bargain "fun fare" (£1 there, £4 back..which only confirms that it's trickier to escape London life than to get into it in the first place) I felt like the archetypal provincial lady as I departed from Cheltenham on Wednesday. I remember my mother having "little outings to Town" when I was a child, but I'm very sure that none of her trips was ever remotely like this. After a very happy evening with my good friend Humble Secretary, the following day saw me joining several hundred other clergybirds at St Martin in the Fields for "the march of the Dibleys"...or, more correctly, another stage in the campaign to Make Poverty History
I'd been uncertain about whether this march was really likely to be a good thing, and it did feel a little odd, even sad, that the most famous ordained woman the media could come up with wasn't in fact anything of the sort....but it was really good to be there.The weather was perfect...winter at its best, crisp, clear, with Nelson silhouetted against a startling blue sky. The atmosphere was even better..being part of a gathering of so many women, only just over 10 years since it became possible for the Anglicans among us to live out our callings. Best of all, of course, was our reason for gathering. The video "Toddlers", which we saw before we set off, provided more than sufficient reason for all and any efforts to change things...Street children..a tiny scrap being lovingly tucked up, as though she were a doll, by a sister who might have been as old as 5, on the bit of pavement they call home. The toddler would be a wee while learning to walk, as rats had nibbled her toes off.

We can't let these things continue.

Apart from the real purpose of the day, there were some wonderful moments...standing in a queue of dog-collared women in the gents at St Martin's...The way we all helped each other clamber, with varying degrees of dignity, onto the plinth at the base of Nelson's column for photos (so glad I didn't wear a cassock;-) )...The small baby who occasionally made herself heard during the service...Wouldn't it be wonderful if the world she grows up in could be different and better because 2005 was the year things changed.

Change or decay?

Rather later than most of the world, I've been reading Richard Giles's "Repitching the Tent". It's excellent stuff, especially when you are confronted by a church like ours. He has a very accessible style, and it all makes sense both practically and theologically....though I fear it may be a while before we can persuade our congregation to attend a course based on his outlines.
However, one chapter did give me the opportunity to experience something of the feelings of those who sense that their most cherished aspects of church life are under threat,- be they pitch-pine pews or processions for Corpus Christi. Giles does not have alot of time for the "English Choral tradition", feeling that it has little to offer to the 21st century world...but this happens to be the context in which my own faith grew, the route that led me through the deaths of my parents and the tortuous process of growing up. Quite simply, I love it, so reading his words, my hackles rose.
This doesn't mean that I cannot understand that Byrd, Tallis, Howells et al may have little to say to a casual post-modern enquirer....but nonetheless, the prospect of a church without their contributions saddens me. So, I find myself briefly on the other side of the tracks. Instead of frustration at the conservative outlook of my congregation, I feel the anxiety and grief of those who see the things they love swept away in a tidal wave which threatens all that they've considered essential to their faith.
I'm fortunate.
I'm among those who have some say in the way worship is expressed in a local context, but others, with different loves, will feel every bit as distressed at the changes that I embrace with enthusiasm. I pray that God will allow me to hang on to these feelings, so that I can hear their lament clearly.

Blessed are the Cheese-makers

or, to rephrase this in terms which I learned after this morning's Eucharist
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be shouted at by both parties in any argument".
I know I've only been here for 6 months, but I'm wondering if I ought to start compiling a list of attributes to avoid at all costs when looking at parishes in the future. Possible contenders include

• no organist
• no bell ringers
• no open churchyard
• no possible architectural or historic merit.

I'm very willing to consider other suggestions....so do please let me know

On reflection...

Tom and Mark
have been discussing the way in which their own reactions to the tsunami seemed to be out of step with those of other Christians about the place,- and, without wanting to simply agree with whoever I've spoken to last, I think I'm coming round to their point of view. I guess early on I felt the need to come up with a coherent intellectual explanation, which squared the circle of God's omnipotence and his omnibenevolence, in case anyone asked me,- and my failure to do this felt rather huge and uncomfortable...but when it comes down to it, very little of my faith is expressible in coherent intellectual terms and it's not usually an enormous problem.
Maggi had already pointed me in the direction of the age-old voice of lamentation, which makes it clear that though monstrous things do happen, and we are right to rage against them, God is still God, and the truths we've experienced remain true.
I'd agree that there's plenty of evidence of God around in the aftermath of awful events, and this speaks to me of Resurrection hope, of transformation and restoration. With regard to the appalling here and how, though, co-incidentally, my training vicar gave me a copy of the Praxis book Using CW Funerals, and I found, flicking through it over lunch, some words of John Robinson's, from his final sermon "Learning from Cancer", written 22 years ago. They seemed at least as relevant and helpful to me now as they did when I first heard them in Trinity Chapel
"God is in the cancer as much as in the sunset...."
and
"Christians above all are those who should be able to bear reality and show others how to bear it."
So...the reality is that unbearably messy things happen...and we are called to hold them in tension with our belief that God is love and cares beyond all our imagingings. That feels more manageable, somehow, because it builds on a real experience. Rock bottom, I've found, is often the best place to meet him.

More on Virtual bands,- and how to find them

For Dylan, and anyone else interested, the mysterious details have now reappeared on the Make Poverty History website...
For some reason blogger won't let me cut and paste them here, but if you hurry to the page above, they are lurking at the bottom of it at the moment....

There has been a amazingly mixed reaction to the Vicar of Dibley programme I mentioned here
but a friend who works for Christian Aid says there is a plan afoot to send a posse of female clergy, led by Dawn French, to call on Tony Blair as part of the campaign. Would it be shameless exploitation of my calling to volunteer to join them, do you think?

Make Poverty History

I must confess to having, as a general rule, a love/hate relationship with
The Vicar of Dibley. Being female, clerical and inclined to chocoholism, people somehow feel the need to mention Dibley to me on a fairly regular basis...so the stick-on clerical smile has been rather necessary at times. Good comedy, though,- if at times disturbingly akin to my past life in a Cotswold village.
Last night, however, was something different.Sitting amid the debris of New Year's Day chez Fleming I was suddenly on the verge of tears as Jim read his letter to Tony Blair
"No...no...no...no more children dying..."
The whole family froze amid the torpor of the evening and when the programme ended there was silence for a good two minutes, before the inevitable question
"Do you have any white ribbon anywhere? I think we should wear armbands to church tomorrow"
I've just visited the BBC messageboards, where reaction was mixed, but for me this was the most amazing use of comedy to make a point that needs making more now than ever.
Could we maybe, possibly make poverty history this year?
Please God. Please.

29th December

Well, that's it, then. First ordained Christmas done and dusted. You imagine all sorts of things beforehand, though I have to confess that losing my voice completely half way through Midnight Mass was one contingency that I'd not forseen. Mercifully, said voice recovered sufficiently to get me through the remaining 3 services; indeed, it was a positive advantage during the Family Service, where a husky whisper lent - well, to be honest I'm not sure what- to the Legend of the Glow worm...but the congregation definitely had to listen intently, even with the mic.
I'd been told that Midnight was "huge" and indeed it was....between the Crib Service at 3.00 on Christmas Eve and the final service on Christmas Day well over 500 people must have come through the doors of the church, a high proportion of whom were totally unknown to me.
Spent much of Boxing Day asleep (having failed to wind down enough after Midnight to achieve much the night before, what with the advent of children for stockings at 6.45 am) so woke rather later than the rest of the world to the appalling news from the Indian ocean. Everything else seems incredibly trivial now, doesn't it. Glad I'm on holiday...I'm having enough problems of my own along the lines of "how does a loving God allow this?" without having to come up with coherent answers for other people. I just know he is weeping too.

Oh Rejoice with me...

with exceeding great joy for this my penguin which was lost is found....and the totally wonderful St Valentine's Liquorice Company , having despatched my order weeks ago nonetheless responded to my panic stricken email about empty stockings (the order never got here) by sending out another by special delivery at no charge. I therefore sit here surrounded by signs that Christmas may actually be happening here in the Curate's House as well as, rather less chaotically, up at the church. I've a Bishop to babysit later and still haven't iced the cake, so had best log off now.
It only remains for me to send you all (any?) my love for a Happy Christmas, my thanks for for your virtual companionship in recent months and my hopes that you will find the Christmas Reality amid everything else that is happening for you.

Talk soon xKx

Grimble

You know how it is just before Christmas....there are never enough hours, and the study/spare room/kitchen table all disappear beneath piles of shopping which you cant really afford to have bought,but seem to have amassed anyway (note to self: a daughter is the sort of luxury that you really ought not to have indulged in without a large annuity in place)....and then, just when you are confident that you have everything sorted you realise
a)that your husband's nephews, both in their 2os and apparently uninterested in anything you might think of buying for them (specially when sister in law limits spending to about £2.50 per head) are both going to be around on The Day and
b)that assorted small and insignificant presents which were going to make all the difference to offspring's stockings, and which you purchased with glee months ago have vanished as if they had never been. My youngest collects penguins, and I snapped up a good example of the genus months ago...but, despite being flightless, the bird has apparently flown.....together with sundry other small but desirable objects. Humph.
Of course, there is so much chaos in the study that they might well be there somewhere under 200 crib services and it is almost certain that come 27th December they will emerge to taunt me...but right now...nothing.
Washing socks suddenly looks like quite an attractive option.

Deck the halls

I took Saturday off from being a G. L. C.* to concentrate on being part of my family for a change, and it was lovely. This time last year there had been a fair bit of emotion about the place as we prepared for the last Christmas in our old house...which being old and pretty, with huge fireplace and flagged floors, lent itself rather well to the season. Even as we have settled down here, "How will Christmas work?" has been a recurring question and anxiety for all of us, I think. So it seemed only fair to halt the mad scramble through Christmas services and carol outings to focus on this for a while. It was, I have to say, a huge success. We found a supply of Christmas trees on a small-holding just outside the town, where we had to wade through the obligatory mud carrying the tree in the time honoured fashion...The spot we chose for it at home worked as well as we'd hoped....We even managed to find the essential recordings of carols from Kings to play while decorating it...and the fairy lights worked after only 2 return trips to HomeBase (yes, that's traditional too ;-) )
Now, suddenly, our rather neglected sitting room feels like the centre of a home again. I realised how much I'd been missing us just spending time together...it's too easy to lose that, in this job where there are so many other human contacts all day long that you barely notice failure to engage properly with your nearest and dearests. Recently the teenagers have spent most of their time crammed into G's small bedroom, where computer and tv both reside, while I'm largely in my study and A. and the youngest have the sitting room to themselves.I don't think this has been symbolic of more alarming disintegration, though it does show how these things could happen all too easily....but now it feels as if we are back together.
Yesterday, all the singers of the household did the obligatory visit to old people's homes in the parish...musically unremarkable, but very satisfying to be doing together...and last night we walked home from the 9 lessons and carols under the clearest of frosty skies,- together.
I think it might be time to thank that family of mine again for all they do to make the rest of my life manageable...

*Good Little Curate

Family only, by request

Today's funeral, the last of our current run, was rather a strain for all concerned. This was because the deceased had decreed that she wanted a "quiet service" with only her closest family involved....
Because she also wanted burial in the local cemetery, their only option for the service itself was our church.
"Why should that be a strain?" the innocent reader wonders.....
Well, our church is on the large and ornate side, and is so crammed with pews and other bits of apparently loved ecclesiastical jumble that there is no alternative to the nave large enough for a coffin to be turned....so, widower, 2 adult children and 2 of the 7 grandchildren duly occupied the front pew...and the vast empty acres of the church pressed close upon us as I tried to say something meaningful, consoling and appropriate about a lady whom I had never met, and whose family were less than eloquent in their reminiscences.
Thanks be to God, it all went reasonably well...though it was hard to get the balance between reassuring and intrusive eye contact during the address (which was, I promise, nothing like as forml as its official label might suggest)....but it was hugely demanding not only of me but, far more to the point,of the family. Even the partners of the children were excluded from attending, so everyone seemed very much alone with their grief, unable to articulate it and feeling that they had to carry the whole things without a wobble, because there was nobody there to help cover the cracks.
I'm sure that Mrs X had only wanted to make things easier for her nearest and dearest when she laid down such a prescriptive funeral plan...but in the event, a "quiet funeral, close family only" was far harder work for them than a larger scale service would have been. Moreover, so that nobody turned up uninvited, the family elected to keep news of the death under wraps till after Christmas, which deprives them of the messages of love and support which are startlingly helpful in the wake of a death.
I came home resolved that my only request for my own funeral should be that my family do whatever feels easiest for them.........though there are certain pieces of music which, if chosen, would cause me to rise from my grave there and then!

God rest you, merry gentlemen...?

Sorry, Caroline...and anyone else who has been wondering. Too busy being a whirling dervish to blog till now.
This week has been a bizarre and exhausting mixture of carol services and funerals. We have 2 junior schools, an infants and a secondary school in the parish (not to mention 2 independent RC schools) and it has been a lovely experience to have the church full to bursting with enthusiastic children and their parents.
It has, though, been rather confusing when I've had to switch abruptly from one mode to the other...in one case, the funeral (for a member of staff from the infants) was almost a carol service in its own right...and then there was the funeral at the crem where I realised that, having sat on some moulting tinsel (long story...not worth repeating) my cassock was covered in red sparkly bits..too late to do anything much about it. Finally hopefulamphibian
whose son has obviously been an undercover observor in this parish, summed up the whole week beautifully
"I weeded out the card my younger son had made, which contained the wonderful words 'Rest in peace this Christmas' -"

Discerning lad, he said it all :-)

Now, all I have to do is devise 2 child friendly services by Monday (please, somebody, remind me in future not to say what I think about previous models, unless I have time to really improve on them) ..........oh........and do a couple of funerals then too.
Meanwhile, on Sunday we have............yup........the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Are you sure it's only nine??

Another gem from today. Edwin Muir on "The Annunciation"

'I remember stopping for a long time one day to look at a little plaque on the wall of a house in the Via degli Artisti [Rome], representing the Annunciation. An angel and a young girl, their bodies inclined towards each other, their knees bent as if they were overcome by love, 'tutto tremante', gazed upon each other like Dante's pair; and that representation of a human love so intense that it could not reach farther seemed the perfect earthly symbol of the love that passes understanding.'

The angel and the girl are met,
Earth was the only meeting place,
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other's face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He's come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way
That was ordained in eternity.
Sound's perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.

But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

The Handmaid of the Lord

Stunning Quiet Day at the diocesan retreat house, led by the man who conducted our ordination retreat. Despite the catholic ethos of my current church, I've tended to suspicion of the cult of the BVM and only D's unnerving knack of hitting whole rows of nails on the head where I'm concerned had encouraged me to attend the day. Typically, I spend the first part of any retreat experience agonising about my spiritual shortcomings and becoming increasingly panicky. D's earlier broadside on sacrificial self-discipline had left me rather raw and uncertain about what I was actually for in ministry, and I found myself journalling these feelings madly through the quiet times of the morning, feeling progressively less adequate and more anxious. Then, after lunch, we looked at Raphael’s
Madonna of the Pinks
Not only is this stunning in itself, when you have time to look at it properly, but it’s good theology too.
The longer you look at the picture, the more aware you become that all the initiative lies with the child. He is offering his mother those pinks…(dianthus apparently a sign of betrothal,evoking the Song of Solomon) turning Mary into bride as well as mother, and looking forward to the crucifixion when as she is given into the care of John, a new family the church is created. So…Mary is the symbol of the church. But she is more.
All she has to do is to be loved….and this is where she becomes a role model for us.
We don’t need to try harder.
We don’t have to work on holiness.
We just have to accept the stupendous reality that, with all our complexes and contradictions, our messes and failures, we are nonetheless loveable and loved.
We love, because he first loved us. Simple!

So where has it gone?

Maybe I'm becoming paranoid, what with assorted people either abandoning or considering migrating from blogger, but I would love to know why the post I wrote earlier today, which appears in my blog index has yet to materialise on the blog itself....Everything is taking forever with my puter right now, - whether or not as a result of changing to firefox is another question,- but I would love to know if the problem lies here or with blogger. Can't imagine changing to a paying blog, though...it's too much something I do for my own amusement...not seriously helpful writing to anyone.
Oh, a little learning is a dangerous thing, sure enough!

More Light?

I think it was Einstein who called on his deathbed for "More light" but it seems to be something the church could be doing with, as we wend our way through Advent to celebrate the coming of that Light into the world. It's only just over a month since I rejoiced at the number of "unchurched" who had come to our "Journey On" remembrance service....where one of the central parts of the evening was the lighting of candles to commemorate those loved but seen no longer.
This weekend they were back...not the bereaved, this time, but around 200 children and their parents, some part of our church groups, Brownies, Guides etc but a huge majority those with whom we have no regular contact at all. What drew them out on a winter evening? Not, surely, the knowledge that they would go home with a free orange and a handful of jelly tots....Ive no idea what was going on inside them as we stood there in the candlelight of our Christingle service but at least they were being given an invitation and an opportunity to engage for a few moments with the God-story that lies at the heart of history.
There was lots of good will as we said "Good night" at the door, and more than the usual crop of children greeted me as our paths crossed en route to school next day, but my fear is that we are wasting these windows of opportunity. Our church desperately needs those young families....but the families need God so very much more. It's good that there is a penitential flavour to our liturgy now, as it seems to me that we are failing on too many fronts,- and it is not just a question of the survival beyond the next 30 years of the ancient church at the heart of the village.
I'm told they will be back for more candles on Christmas Eve: that's great, but how do we bring them more Light?

Proud Mother alert...

Last night I was at the launch of a new CD.
That looks deceptively commonplace, as I type it….but it’s not the sort of thing our household does on a regular basis, and even in more high flying families I suspect that this might be a wee bit special. For the past 8 years my children have been privileged to sing with a wonderful group, The Cotswold Children's Choir
L was a founder member, and has grown up with the choir, moving from “Going on a Bear Hunt” to singing Mrs Sem in a millennium production of Noye’s Fludde in Burford Church, and last summer takng part in the national Festival of Music for Youth at RFH. Now on the brink of leaving school and home, choir is the one bit of her childhood she says she cannot imagine growing out of….so it was lovely that she had the opportunity to say some of this as one of two choristers speaking at the launch.
She was very emotional (she’s my daughter…she IS very emotional) but very natural….and I was loaded with of compliments after her speech. What sent her home with a Cheshire Cat grin, though, was some words of Brian Kay's.He told her that one reason that he loves his periodic “guest conductor” slots with the choir is because of the way that L. so takes the music into herself that they seem to become one, something, he said, that many pro’s never manage.
Bless him. What a lovely thing to say to an anxious teenager on the eve of important interviews.
I spared him the grateful mother hug,- so blog readers have to put up with the verbal equivalent….
And do, please, go to the choir’s site and listen to the clip from the CD…I don’ think I’m totally biased…but you won't know if you don't listen, will you?

A little light word-eating.

Sorry folks....I'll have to climb down a bit on the subject of Alpha. Firstly, because last week's session "What about the church, then?" worked really well as a topic for our small group, thanks to very skillful leadership (emphatically not mine). We recognised that as a congregation we are really NOT good at making friendships and welcoming strangers...heck, it's quite common for me to witness the introduction of 2 people, both of whom have worshipped at St M's for years, but on opposite sides of the church."I'm a North Aisle person myself". From this revelation of self evident truth came a wish, in that group at least, for more small groups to redress the balance. We do have a couple of house groups in the parish, but they are very well-established and would find it extremely hard to reshape to include new-comers, so something more is called for. It's very heartening that this need is being recognised in the congregation, and isn't something that the clergy are imposing to meet our perceptions of what we should be about. I'm not sure we would have got to this point without the space provided by Alpha.
Also, everyone involved has so appreciated the opportunity to talk, over excellent food and we are exploring the possibility of running our Lent groups on this basis. For me, this has been the chance to engage with parishioners without any preordained agenda. Hugely valuable, as I'm still finding my way and getting to know people here.
Finally, on Sunday I spoke to one of the group who had been able to attend the "Holy Spirit Away Day" this Saturday. He was bereaved in June and has been finding the journey tougher than many. A lifelong church member, he said that he felt a reality in the worship on Sunday morning that he had never experienced before, and which he could only attribute to something having been "unblocked" the previous day. In itself, he said, the day had seemed unremarkable, but now......
So, what was I saying earlier?? Alpha may not be my preferred approach...but I have to be glad that we were involved. A learning curve in all sorts of unexpected ways,- but then, God's like that.

I look from afar......

Just back from our Advent Service. Very traditional…indeed almost indentical to the services I remember from my chorister days in teens and twenties, …..but nonethless rather beautiful. Anything starting with the Palestrina Matin Responsary was likely to score highly for me, I’ll admit, but there were other joys too. Our rather cluttered church is at its best in candle-light, and I was totally unprepared for the emotional impact of our youth group arriving to light the huge Catherine- wheel type candle stands in the three aisles. Month in, month out, the congregation indulge in the ( equally traditional?) mutterings that "the young people don’t come to church in the way they used to" , but tonight there we stood, a motley group of adults of a certain age, waiting in the darkness…and those young people brought us the light.
Then I got to read one of the most perfect of all
Collects .Not too bad really.

What, me?

In recent months, some of you may have picked up that I tend to get anxious if I'm not sure exactly how I am supposed to be using my time on any given day. Part of this is the legacy of constantly having at least 3 times as much to do as I could reasonably hope to achieve, for far too long, and all within a fairly rigid timetable. Since ordination, this has changed...There is undoubtedly even more that I could/should be doing, but the timetable element has largely vanished and so it is scarily possible for me to reach the end of a day quite convinced that I have left undone those things which I ought to have done (and, no doubt, done those things which I ought not to have done as well) and completely failed to justify my stipend.
It was therefore less than comforting to be told today by someone I respect hugely that one hallmark of clergy professionalism, as it is presented in the Guidelines for Professional Conduct, is sacrificial self discipline.
I find it hard to envisage a more terrifying concept for one such as I....I know I have some virtues but I really don't think self discipline is even an outside contender for the list.
At the same meeting, our Deanery Chapter were also told of the rapid move towards two models of ordained ministry...one predominantly a ministry of oversight (for those aspiring to incumbent status) and one, largely non stipendiary, for everyone else....Alot was said about extraordinary skills and gifts needed to exercise the former ministry...and there was huge affirmation for the locally based, pastoral holiness which seemed implicit in the latter. Feeling short on gifts and having moved out of my nurturing congregation, I'm now wondering what on earth I'm doing....Is there still room for the likes of me,- or does sacrificial self-discipline begin with recognising that I'm mismatched with the vision of ministry that is currently abroad?

Is this the right queue for Hogwarts?

Just back from our graduation ceremony, - a strange way to spend a snowy Saturday.It was great to catch up with some very special people, but the general feeling seemed to be that today was totally irrelevant to where we now were and what we were doing. Seeing us all togged up in academic finery and wandering through the cloisters of our Cathedral, I felt mainly that I'd been co-opted as an extra in the next Harry Potter film. It was specially odd to be back in the same Cathedral where we were ordained only 5 months ago...many of the same people...another collection of outre outfits...but an unbelievably different atmosphere. Thinking about the debate on theological training which is currently looming large in the blogosphere
here and here I don't think anyone there this morning was under the illusin that they had emerged from the course "trained" by virtue of their academic qualifications....The former Principal, who moved on just before we did, said once that his main task was simply to give us the tools to reflect theologically. I guess we did learn that...but for us, certainly, the journey together was the important thing.
Arrival?? That's something I can't imagine happening for a long long time...

Do I really....

dare to say any more about Alpha? I've emailed Jennifer direct, as I'm rather hesitant about posting more on a public board, since I know that my knowledge of the course remains partial..I've only been to half the sessions, nor have I read all the material from cover to cover.
However, I don't think I'll lodge a precautionary apolgy with HTB just in case, as I suspect that they are every bit as prone to make assumptions about "liberals"...
To quickly pick up Humble Secretary's point, though there may be no direct teaching on homosexuality in the course, the high view of Scripture which is held means that there is a latent tendency to add two and two and make "an abhomination". That's horrid in itself, but my greatest problem with the course is that it purports to provide answers to all questions and a pill for every ill. Those who buy into this approach and are then presented with life experiences which conflict with the Alpha version of The Christian Life often find it almost impossible to hang on to faith at all...I've had too many anguished conversations over the past few years with Alpha refugees, many on the verge of abandoning Christianity altogether, unable to believe that they could possibly be acceptable to God....Honestly, I would much prefer to leave the judgement to him. He knows alot more about love than we do!

Redeem my foul-ups

I'm now into the third week of minding the shop for my vicar, as he relaxes in sunnier Antipodean climes, and thus far all is going startlingly well. I'm beginning to appreciate that being the curate of a good incumbent is one of the best jobs in the C of E...to be given so many opportunities and protected from so much hideous admin is a truly blessed state. This was brought home to me forcibly by last night's Standing Committee which lasted from 7.30 till almost 11.00...as it was largely setting the agenda for PCC in a fortnight, at which the same issues will be trawled through by an even larger and chattier cast the whole thing felt remarkably pointless...but the good news is that when M is at home, I don't actually have to be there.
It is alarming how easy it is to be occupied with this sort of stuff, though...and I so nearly mucked up hugely last week. The vicar had suggested that I might usefully visit S, a great stalwart of the church, who had been ill for ages and was currently hospitalised...her condition had been deteriorating in October, but she seemed now to be improving gradually, and I knew she was being visited by a huge army of Mothers' Union ladies, retired bell ringers et al, as well as her devoted husband. So, though I planned to go, she didn't feel like a top priority.
However a phonecall from her frightened husband last week galvanised me into action and saw me visiting the following day...S was feeling better again by then, and it was a good visit..our conversation ranged far and wide and I looked forward to spending more time with her soon.
Yesterday morning the phone rang...she had taken a sudden turn for the worse and died on Sunday night...BUT she had had a happy afternoon in being pushed around the hospital grounds by her husband, the chaplain had responded to my email and taken her Communion that morning and now her husband wants me to do her funeral, despite the fact that his son is married to the daughter of a former (Forward in Faith) incumbent of this parish. I feel as if I've been rescued from the very brink of disaster...I so nearly got it all wrong...so nearly didn't make time for the right things...so nearly let S, D and most of all God down...but now, having spent time yesterday and this morning with the whole family, it all seems to be gloriously all right. During our ordination training, a hospital chaplain came to talk to us and I'll not forget him saying that his regular prayer, as he went onto the wards was "Lord, redeem my foul-ups"
Today, I'm so very very grateful that he has.

This is Ridiculous!

It's the 11th November, for heaven's sake, and here I am sitting in a chilly study trying to write a Christmas letter for the Parish Mag. Never mind that it is actually Armistice Day. Never mind that the magazine will appear on 1st December, so an Advent letter might be more helpful...
This is it....the first page of the Christmas magazine is mine, all mine and I've no idea what to do with it.
Challenge? Don't think that's exactly what they are hoping for.
Reassure? Somehow, that doesn't feel like quite the right note to strike either.
Resort to vacuous humour or greeting card morality? Please God, Noooo.
The deadline is tonight, so whatever else, I'll have to get on and do it.
Right now I'm inclined to hope that the Second Coming intervenes, and nobody has to read the thing....

Taking Faith Seriously?

I spent this morning at an excellent CME event on preaching from St Matthew...two good speakers and lots to take home and ponder. What struck me most, though, was not directly related to the subject, but an incidental observation which was offered. As one who comes firmly from the Catholic end of the spectrum, and has in any case far more confidence in my ability to ask questions than to furnish answers, I've never been a great one for stressing the importance of the sermon. However, it really did hit me when someone said that to rely on 10 to 15 minutes each week as a sufficient input to allow faith to grow, and to resource congregations to share that faith in the world, was clearly absurd.
Put like that, of course they are right.
.
Someone else compared the C of E unfavourably with ECUSA, where "Sunday School" for all is an expected pattern, with an hour of study of age appropriate material preceding the main act of worship each week...
Yes, that does sound thoroughly demanding, but exciting too....Somehow, though, I suspect that lead balloons would positively soar in comparison with the likely reception of such a proposal here...so, how to persuade our people that to be serious about their faith means to engage with it with minds as well as hearts and souls? I'm sure that someone will remind me that simply because there are few parish initiatives promoting study, this doesn't mean that nobody is doing any, and clearly we should neither hope nor expect to corner the market....but it is so much more rewarding to explore together.At the moment, I'm left wondering how much of a priority faith really is for a high proportion of my congregation, and in the gloom of a damp November evening, I'm tempted to answer myself with a negative.

My hero!

Though I'm not as careful as I should be, I do usually try to do something to disguise individuals and issues when I blog. Tonight, though, I want to tell the world how hugely and utterly grateful I am to our utterly wonderful Church Warden....If this blog had a sound track, there would now be the sound of tumultuous applause.
You see, he found the lost Communicant!! :-)
Let me explain.
Before the vicar departed for foreign climes on Monday, he drove me round at speed to the house of an elderly man, D, who wanted to receive Home Communion in M's absence. D was very charming and welcoming, we chatted for a few moments and I promised to contact him in a week or two to arrange a convenient time for me to call. M had already handed over a pile of papers, with details of everything he hoped I could attend to during his absence, and I confidently assumed that the essential surname/phonenumber would be included in the lists...I then went home and succumbed to the incipient migraine which had clouded my vision as we drove to the house. It was only after M was well on his way that I realised that the list of visits included no hint of a D anywhere...and I had no clue as to his surname, still less his phone number.
No problem, I thought. The Parish Administrator will have a list of everyone who receives Home Communion.
Only she didn't.
Nor did anyone else know anyone who sounded remotely like my gentleman.
As the week wore on, my panic mounted...
I drove round the general area we had visited, but none of the houses looked familiar.
It felt way too early for a major mess-up, and from my perspective losing a communicant felt fairly major.
Would I have to place an advert in the Gloucestershire Echo
"Would D, who is hoping to receive Communion, please contact..."?
or worse still, would I have to email the absentee vicar and disrupt his holiday with details of my stupidity...??
Today, thanks to Antony, we have a happy ending :-) Seeing a curate teetering on the edge of hysteria, he braved the study at the vicarage, opened the parish diary, and there it was. The name and address I had been pining for. Full details are now engraved on my heart as well as the psion..and I'll be in touch with David very soon.
Things I have learned:-
1)never try to memorise a journey when in the grip of a migraine....my grasp of lefts and rights just isn't up to it
2)never assume that a vicar with a phenomenal memory will think of everything that those with more limited capacity might need to know
3)when in doubt, thank God for a good Church Warden

If you see any fireworks tonight, that'll be me, celebrating...

Was I foolish enough to describe myself as irrepressibly upbeat?? Oh well…….asking for it, I guess.
Today I’m anything but, having just returned from our monthly ecumenical lunch with the leaders of the other Christian churches here. We meet for prayer and brief discussion before repairing to the excellent Fair Trade Coffee Shop attached to the Baptist Church…nothing too awful there, you might think. I arrived late, to find them in mid discussion of the US election results in the light of Micah
"Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly…" you know the one. Initially, they expressed disquiet about Iraq and about Kyoto, and about the apparent assumption that "God bless America" equals a divine mandate in favour of global dominance. That’s alright, then…
Suddenly, the mood changed as first one and then another commented that, despite all this, Bush’s re-election was a Good Thing. Why?? For the very reasons that so many people on the boards are expressing hurt and rejection…his representation of "Christian values" as expressed in his stance on abortion and on gay rights. Usually, when the evangelical churches are waving a particular flag, the RC priest is a real ally, but this time he toed the party line and applauded Bush’s pro-life policies.I felt completely alone, and, still more depressing, I failed in the courage of my convictions, and challenged nothing. When we moved into prayer, I did ask that God would give us all, leaders and voters alike, the grace of humility, to recognise when we were wrong and to repent, to turn in a new direction. It's not good to realise that my colleagues in ministry here would dismiss me as unChristian if they understood my views on these issues. Worse still, however,is the feeling that by saying nothing I have betrayed myself and my friends for the sake of a comfortable life
Not Good News, in any sense of the world.

Dover Beach? Maybe, maybe not...

Liz's comment on my earlier post here was so startlingly reminiscent of
Matthew Arnold's poem that I couldn't resist putting the two together. OK, Liz is talking about a tide of secularism sweeping in, while Arnold considers one of faith withdrawing, but nonetheless...
I do have one optimistic friend (and a great comfort that is, given the prevailing mood today, with even the children sunk in misery at the thought of another 4 years of Bush) who says that this poem, lovely though it is, is in fact a load of b******s. The point about the sea, of course, is that while nothing can halt the outward ebb of the tide, nothing, equally, can prevent it from coming in again.
Not sure, therefore, whether this is a sustainable analogy for the state of the Church, but, being generally incorrigibly upbeat, I do believe that we won't be allowed to destroy the whole thing completely. I agree that we're appallingly slow to learn the lessons that are being presented to us (certainly my current congregation would put Canute to shame). I know too that I suffer from that awful Anglican tendency to hope that if I'm only kind enough to a large enough number of people, they will somehow get the message...despite all evidence to the contrary. However, I'm still bouyed up by Sunday night as another example of the way that people are still prepared to allow the church into their lives when they come up against the non negotiable realities. Moreoever, I visited one of the non-regulars yesterday, who'd come to the service following the death of her husband last month, and she said that the atmosphere was so full of love and care that she wanted to try to believe...
The trouble is, of course, that if she does come along on a Sunday, she'll find more anxiety about the wherabouts of the Gospel servers than focus on the reality of the Love on offer,- so maybe the church deserves to be allowed to ebb away to nowt. I do love it, though, despite the huge frustrations...so I guess all I can do is work to try to bring about a fractional change in one tiny corner.

They CAME!!!!

Stoical regular readers will remember my agonies of indecision over a suitable title for a service of remembrance and thanksgiving
last month. Tonight, being 31st October, was the service itself, and I am in a state of completely gobsmacked euphoria. One day, when I am feeling very brave and very honest, I will sit down and ponder why I am so consistently amazed when God does actually respond to the many requests for intervention I hurl his way, but for now I am simply and profoundly grateful.
We had sent out around 80 letters to those with whom we had contact via funerals during the year, and 70 of them turned up. 94 candles were lit, to mark not only the obvious bereavements that were on their hearts tonight but other more hidden losses, broken relationships, miscarriages, disappointments with self or with other people, and the silence at the end of this section of the service was so full of holiness it was almost visible....
Afterwards, people who had no regular connection with the church were saying that "they felt that they belonged here"....and were talking to and supporting each other, sharing watery smiles, a few tears and lots of memories over a glass of wine. The most unlikely members of the regular congregation appeared too, and seemed to be entirely complimentary...which is nothing short of miraculous in a church where a minor variation in the Gloria this morning was labelled a "shameful travesty". Tomorrow, I know reality will bite again, as the Great Row of the Servers, the thorny question of the Churches Together Christmas Card and all the warp and woof of parish life take centre stage, but for tonight I simply wanted to share my joy and awe at being involved in a little part of God's process of healing and restoration for his hurting people. Deo Gracias.

Life in the slow lane...

You really don't know what "slow" means unless you have spent a week on a narrowboat. They have names like "Andante" "Festina Lente" and "Meander"which give you the flavour before you start. During our holiday we took the best part of 3 days to cover a journey that we could probably have done by car in under an hour...and loved every minute of it. We had at least two days of golden autumn sun, which transformed even the most humble stretches of the Trent/Mersey canal. We also had two nights of rain so heavy that the sound of it drumming on the roof of the cabin made conversation almost impossible, but there was a tiny wood-burning stove on board, so even that was pleasurable. We read piles of deeply frivolous (is that an oxymoron?) fiction, played silly games of the sort that usually emerge only at Christmas, and generally remembered how to be a family again. Ironically, this might well be our last family holiday, since Luci came home to offers from two of her chosen universities and is spreading her wings almost visibly as each day passes...but if it was, at least it was a good one.
I left the boat 24 hours early to go on retreat with my cell group from WEMTC at probably the most perfect retreat house in the world
here . Relaxed completely in the company of those with whom I've shared so much, laughed myself silly, was moved almost to tears during the Eucharist, in the simple chapel looking over the Shropshire hills and left the mountain top only with great reluctance. Just for once, I think my holiday lived up to the name.

There will now be a short intermission

in this rivetting blog, so that you can all give your magnolia emulsion the attention it deserves, while the curate's family (which is also good in parts) flees to a narrow-boat. Have just realised that both Maggi and I will have spent our holidays close to canals...but somehow the industrial heritage of the greater Birmingham area seems a little less alluring than that of the Doges .Never mind! The first installment of family departed this morning, and report that the boat is fine but there is so much water in the system that we will only be allowed to venture in one direction...the weirs cannot apparently cope. After a truly hideous journey to and from Bristol today, which featured a kamikaze deer and a wrecked front indicator, I'm not sure said weirs are the only ones not coping. However, young Giles is safely back from his Duke of Edinburgh expedition to Exmoor, my saintly Vicar is dog and cat sitting, the wonderful public library has lent me 20 assorted volumes for light reading and we packed a case of red wine into the volvo this morning...so it can just get on and rain if it has to. I'm on HOLIDAY :-)

I nearly forgot...

to tell you all about the real high point of our Baptism evening. The parents of the youngest sibling, who had clearly not engaged hugely with the church in the past, asked just before they left whether there was any church mechanism for adding a godparent....
I must have looked a bit bemused, but they went on to explain that one of their daughter's godmothers had died of cancer two years ago, leaving H bereft of a special adult, and, formally, of a godparent. I explained that while the church didn't have any formal service, it would be quite possible to create some sort of rite to recognise and bless a new relationship of care, and suggested that H. might like to be involved in doing this. They were completely over the moon...I think they had expected the whole evening to be a coded reprimand for not bringing their older children to church more....perhaps, if this all goes happily, they may actually want to come now. :-)
It is so sad that people expect the church to say "No" all the time..I keep meeting this. People who are pathetically grateful that I will conduct a funeral given that they are not part of the regular congregation. People who don't expect us to "bother" because we don't know them.It's tragic. If the Church is supposed to be a Sacrament of the Kingdom, how on earth did we travel so far down the road away from our inclusive loving God??

The world, the flesh and the devil

Last night we had our pilot Baptism Preparation Evening...Those who read of my earlier agonies over the whole question here may be relieved,if unsurprised, to hear that the whole thing was very gentle, very Anglican, really...
3 sets of parents, the comfier room in the parish centre, a decent quantity of FT wine,the vicar and me...We watched the slightly less awful video, had some general chat then began to consider the Baptism service in depth. All going very smoothly, despite anxieties that it would seem that we were victimising the parents who were asking for baptism for babe no3, having shown no interest in the Christian nurture of no's 1 and 2, once the Baptismal candle had been blown out...then came the familiar words "fight valiantly against sin, the world and the devil" and a silent father was roused from his torpor.
"Why do you want them to fight against the world? There's alot of good stuff in the world...that video (the CPAS "First Steps") painted a very bleak picture, but its just not like that"
For all our protestations that this was a kind of churchy shorthand for all that was wrong in our lives on earth, he refused to stop celebrating all that is good...and it made me think. Are we, as a Church, guilty of dualism even now? Do we get so hung up on the things that are evil that we fail to note and rejoice in the good? Should I just stop fretting and do a little more praising?
Whatever else, it pays to watch your language!

Good day at the Office, dear?

Today is my day off, so instead of cyling against the flow of morning school children to say the Office in church, I said it in my study here. I have found this a struggle since we moved . Though I spend quite a bit of time at my desk, this room still doesn't feel really mine in the way that my study at Lower Farmhouse did, and part of the problem is that my prayer space is less defined and alot less attractive. A vicious circle looms, then...since it is harder to pray here, I do it less, which means that I am slower to claim the room as truly mine.
I'm not sure I'm getting that much out of saying the Office, either...somehow I rarely manage to engage with the readings, and there are some weeks when I just feel as if I'm drowning in the words, and neither learning from them nor reflecting on them in any meaningful way. However, maybe that's not the point really....Trawling blogland this morning, I found
this
"I don't know how to pray, so I throw myself into the stream of those who do."
I love that. It suggests that just when I'm finding the Office most of a struggle, it is actually helping me most of all, carrying me on a tide of prayer from the worldwide Church. Maggi said something about the value of the repetition of the Office during a panel discussion at Greenbelt this year which resonated at the time, and still more today. Her gist, as it struck me, was that, come rain or shine, fair mood or foul, to find oneself saying "My soul magnifies the Lord" or "In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us" over a period of time actually effected change in oneself...the words become real and true.
My splendid boss is away for most of November, so I'll be saying the Office on my own every day,but with greater enthusiasm as a result of this morning's reading...though if anyone did happen to find themselves in Charlton Kings at 8.30 or 5.30, Monday to Friday, I'd love visible company as well as the constant cloud of witnesses.

I've just decided...

that democracy is an over-rated concept.This comes at the end of a day which started (though only after I had locked myself out of the house first thing, and had to scale the back gate via a wheelie bin...I should really have known what sort of day it was going to be after this :-( ) with a meeting with the CME officer, followed by a staff meeting, followed by the funeral of my former vicar's mother, followed by a youth work committee meeting, followed by a worship committee meeting. The two last were gruelling beyond all.I truly had lost the will to do anything except gibber in a corner with a large glass of almost anything alcoholic by the time we finished. Over an hour of discussion on whether or not the 10.00 Eucharist should revert to 9.30, a heated debate about whether we should celebrate Epiphany on the day itself or the appropriate Sunday, and the piece de resistance, which was so splendid that I feel I should protect my readers by obliterating it from the blog.
We started the meeting at 7.30. By 9.45 all hope had been abandoned, and I was seriously wondering whether to stow away when the vicar heads off to Australia next month.And of course, he and I had very clear ideas of what we hoped to achieve in the course of the evening, but we didn't really stand a chance tonight.Made me positively nostalgic for a "father knows best" culture, it did. Bearing in mind that this is one very ordinary parish, with only one church to worry about, it also made me wonder why anyone in their right minds might want to be a bishop of the Anglican Church....perhaps after all the Windsor report is protecting the gay community rather than oppressing it?

Turkeys vote for Christmas....

I'm just in from my first Deanery Synod since arriving here,- and a surprisingly passionate one it was too. Under the current diocesan pastoral strategy, something like 20 stipendiary posts have to be shed over the next 1o years, and there is a growing realisation that rural benefices cant actually expand much further:there are several in these parts uniting 6-12 parishes. Logically,therefore, there is now a need to consider seriously when vacancies occurr in the towns, and each deanery is asked to have mission action plans, pastoral strategies etc in place in readiness for the next vancancy. In our deanery there are currently two unfilled vacancies, and another which has been advertised, though so far without success...so this is a very real issue. Tonight, we heard one practical suggestion that our views be co-ordinated and positive recommendations be logged...one passionate plea for a church without buildings, freed to engage with people where they are....and a no less passionate reminder of the value of the building as a visible sign of God's presence with his people. Nobody liked the idea of the church pulling out of the disadvanted areas which currently have the lowest Sunday attendance figures...but then, nobody much liked the idea of voting themselves out of a job or an accessible worship centre whose churchmanship matched their own. The Rural Dean asked "What would Jesus do?" and there was a moment of tangible calm as we tried to focus on that, to hear what He was actually saying to us. Then we got into the dreaded small groups to discuss....certainly nobody in my group had heard anything clear...we were united in our conviction that it was all very difficult and I have to say that, having only entered stipendiary ministry 3 months ago, it feels a bit soon to be arguing myself out of a job. Certainly I am generally quite busy enough to justify my existence, but as to whether I could be more usefully deployed in another context, I truly don't know.

What have we done??

Just been watching the BBC News, which was full of Liverpool mourning the death of Ken Bigley.. I in no way wish to belittle the horror of this whole experience, the terror he must have suffered, the agony inflicted upon his family...but I do wonder slightly about the reaction it has aroused here. Yes, he was a decent, innocent man, attempting to help in an impossible situation. Yes, we deplore any attempt to use human life as a political bargaining counter. Yes, his family need our love, prayers and support tonight....but the news footage showed the same queues of sombre citizens, lighting candles, writing in remembrance books, that we first encountered when Diana died. We watch hundreds of individuals, facing something beyond their control, deprived of a language with which to explain or contain it..........and does the Church know how to connect? Are we there, offering the only hope of transformation? Sadly, I suspect the answer is generally "No" and so we have to sit here and watch the world look elsewhere, while we believe that we have something to offer which will transform all this agony. Kyrie Eleison.

Is it legal?

Just home from a CME day entitled "An Ordered Church".We were instructed in advance to bring with us the Canons of the C of E, which confirmed my fears that this would not be the most fascinating day ever, though the hypothetical cases we were given to look at cheered me a little. In the event, our speaker, a self-supporting minister who just happens to be a QC, Chancellor of a diocese or two and one of the most entertaining educators I've encounterd for ages, kept us engaged right through from 10.00 till 4.00...though some of that, I guess, was a result of sheer terror as we recognised that we probably breach Canon Law (and hence, thanks to the joys of being C of E, the law of the land to boot) on a regular basis. I'm still wondering whether in fact I recently buried the wrong person, whether our occasional non-authorised liturgies are sufficiently occasional to be covered by the Bishop's encouragement of creativity where there is no authorised liturgical provision and whether I need to fall on my sword for my failure to take it all truly seriously. One part of me feels that it is a huge red herring, designed to ensure that we spend more of our time worrying about churchyard regulations than about living the Gospel...but then, as a non-confessional Church, the C of E identity is inextricably bound up in its liturgy...to change the one could be to inadvertently alter doctrine....assuming, of course, that anyone pays attention to what one small curate in one corner of the church is up to. Perhaps its back to remembering that if other people take me seriously, by virtue of my calling, I sometimes need to take myself a bit seriously too....

We ask alot...

........ of our nearest and dearest when we enter full time ministry. We expect them to rejoice with us when we are "recommended for training" and when we secure our first curacy, though we all realise that this will involve both physical absence, whether at college or in front of a computer screen, and an increasing emotional absence as perspectives shift and priorities change. My long-suffering husband once compared the whole thing to encouraging me in an extra-marital affair…with the added complication that the "Other Man", being God, cannot be argued with. To crown it all, having changed radically from the person they thought they knew, we then expect them to decamp and follow us wherever the Church decrees, knowing this will be the first move of many, if all goes well. I hope the inadequate "thank you" I’ve offered periodically was at least heard and believed in…

I’m writing this now, though, not because one of my tribe has finally told me what they think of me but because J died yesterday. She was a great lady, mother of my previous vicar, who found herself undertaking a new life as a clergy housekeeper when she was already well on in her retirement. In no way a church-lover, she recalled nostalgically the days when her daughter had a "proper" job, but despite this she welcomed assorted oddballs into the vicarage, hosted countless coffee mornings and produced endless hot drinks (pushed laboriously on a trolley as her balance and mobility decreased). Bless her dear heart, she was a huge encouragement to me on my erratic progress towards ministry, despite her conviction that I was out of my tiny mind to even consider pursuing this calling. She had a wonderful, dry sense of humour, which kept breaking out on even her bad days. We’ve missed her a lot since moving from the parish, and can only guess the impact that her loss will have on S. The plan had been for her to retire this autumn, once a suitable house had been found, so that mother and daughter could have some quality time together, and J take a turn at receiving rather than giving care. Now, though, J is suddenly gone and S faces loss of parent, work and home in just a few short weeks. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?

Just to reassure you...

in case you were wondering if this was the same Kathryn that you thought you knew,given Caroline's astute observation that I had been listening to The Verve the other day. It's only because Steve, when he had slightly fewer ways of spending histime, kindly undertook to expand my musical horizons...the track concerned entered my consciousness about this time last year, as part of a wonderful mixture which I've listened to again and again. Steve, in case you read this, my favourite is still "If these walls could speak"....Can you recommend an Amy Grant album? ;-)
Otherwise, it's back to the reassuring realms of the Naxos label and Anthems from Kings.

Dedication....to what?

Maggi
got me thinking, as she so often does, this time about how we do, or should do, church....In the light of yesterday's highly entertaining extravaganza this gave me pause. I guess that the intentions of all those present were entirely honourable, but it's also undeniable that anyone straying in from outside would have been at best bemused, and more probably hopelessly alienated. Worse still, I'm pretty certain that any member of the congregation, asked to justify the whole thing, would have come up with something along familiar lines "It's just the way we do it here". Mind you, our official mission statement includes the rather dubious aim "To nourish our spiritual growth through worship". Funny. I always thought worship was more about what we did for God than about what we might hope to derive from it....I wonder if I dare ask anyone what they think they're doing...and whether I've the courage to do anything with the answers, if I get any.
Don't hold your breath.

.......and a very little man was he.

Oh what an extraordinary day....From the normal reclusive 8.00 congregation, who would really far prefer to worship in their individual private chapels, to the excesses of the 10.00 Dedication Festival, to a gentle Evensong with two dozen souls present, it's been good. I was dreading the 10.00, specially when I was told firmly that "we cope, here, for processions..." (the verb "to cope" in this context refers to the wearing of heavy and ornate ecclesiastical cloaks, rather than to managing in adverse circumstances...though there were moments...)
I was allocated the cope originally presented by the congregation to a much loved vicar who had gone on to be a bishop..best moment of the day was when I said, lightly, that I hoped the Great Man (who casts a long shadow over this parish, even 25 years on) would not be turning in his grave to see a lowly curate, and a woman at that, wearing his cope...and was assured by a rather silent and undemonstrative verger that "he'd be delighted".That felt like a bunch of roses :-) The procession, with the sort of banners I associate with a great AngloCatholic slum parish in the early years of the last century, turned out to be really rather wonderful, because everyone was just so happy. They are proud of their church. They are glad it has stood for 814 years. They wanted to thank God...
Suddenly, all the posturings and anxieties about who did what, in which order, seemed irrelevant (the same verger had described a previous Dedication Festival as like "nothing so much as an ecclesiastical protest march)...These were, and are, God's people and we smiled and celebrated.
After the excitements of the morning, Evensong was very low key...it was a foul night and most people had wisely decided that once was enough for today...however, Zacchaeus went down very well...I talked about different sorts of dedication, how he changed his dedication from his own interests to those of the Kingdom, picked up an idea from Rhys about the fact that he had to stay put as a symbol of transformation in his own community and linked that with the changed landscape that had arisen when the church was built, and our calling to change the landscape of our community by our dedication to God's work in this place. Our Senior Citizen informed me, on her way out, that it was the first sermon she had heard on Zacchaeus in 80 years....so at least she listened enough to hear the topic....Grateful thanks to all of you who gave me starting points....where would I be without my friends?

Struggling...

right now to come up with a sermon for Sunday evening. We are the sort of church that celebrates not only its patronal festival, but its dedication to boot, and this coming Sunday is the day. The real excitements are in the morning, with solemn procession, guest preacher et al, and I've no idea what to expect at evensong, except that I've got to do something with Luke 19, our old friend Zacchaeus. Somehow I don't think that my rather successful All Age talk which involved a child climbing a stepladder, and alot of discussion about ways that we might make Jesus inaccessible to others , will quite fit the bill. Blowed if I can get past it, though...I do hate the way that sometimes a familiar interpretation effectively blocks the light as I try to read things afresh. And what, in any case, does Zacchaeus have to do with dedications, founding fathers and the like? There it is in the Lectionary, set for just such an occasion...but why?? I've tried prayer, I've even tried the commentaries....but all in vain. This may be the shortest sermon in all our 814 years, which would I suppose be something to celebrate in itself.Hmmnnn