Travelling hopefully - remembering gratefully

A year ago today I was in Kanyakumari, where three oceans meet at India's southernmost tip...the furthest I have ever been away from home and family. It was extraordinary for a northerner like me to realise that I was nearer to Australia than to Europe.
The journey there was one of the most memorable parts of my whole memorable sojourn in India. We gathered in the compound of St Mark's Cathedral in Bangalore, - a motley crowd of hard-working clergy of the Church of S India, , and the little band of English visitors, - then boarded 2 "luxury" coaches. The atmosphere had more in common with a junior-school trip than a clergy conference as people jostled for a seat with friends, worried that they might get hungry and rushed off for iron rations just in case. It was late on a Sunday evening, and night fell rapidly as we left the city behind and headed south.

Three weeks into our stay, we thought we had come to terms with the Indian approach to driving, where the only rule of the road is "honk and hope"....but this trip was something else again! Our driver was the most horn-happy man I've ever encountered. He hooted to tell the world he was there, to announce a planned manoeuvre, to celebrate its completion or to lament its failure.
He hooted as other vehicles passed us, and as we passed groups of pedestrians in the country that never seems to sleep.
Come what may, he hooted.
Moreover, remember that my companions were all in parish ministry in CSI - and that means being available 24/7 regardless. No mobile is ever switched off (even during worship) and for the most part clergy ring-tones were set to familiar hymns. Never again will I be able to sing "Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us" or "The Lord's my Shepherd" without a faint electronic resonance somewhere at the back of my mind.
Temperatures plummetted once the sun had gone to bed - by the small hours I was wearing everything I could lay my hands on (including my towel - Douglas Adams would have been proud of me) - even my sun hat in a desperate attempt to retain some heat somewhere...
We stopped every few hours, and a line of clergy stood beside the road, doing what comes naturally with no reserve at all, or crowded around a tea stall, seeming convinced in the face of all the evidence that if they didn't take advantage of this opportunity for food and drink there might never be another one.
It seemed at times as if we'd never get there as the rutted road ran out and for a hundred yards or so the bus lurched over baked earth, jolting as it crossed the pot holes until, suddenly, we were back on tarmac.
When the sun rose, our landscape had changed as we passed the huge paddy fields and flood waters of Tamil Nadu.
Finally, when we were beyond tired, we reached the Peace Centre in Kanyakumari...and understood why we had come.


At the water's edge I was adopted by a beggar woman, who had hoped I might be a source of rich pickings. Even when she realised I was determined to disappoint, she followed us as we explored the tourist sites , posing for a photo that remains one of my definitive faces of India. When we parted, she rumaged beneath her sari and brought out a grubby purse, from which she produced 2 tiny shells. I gave one of them to Hattie Gandhi, her very own piece of the furthest shore. The other remains in my own purse, where I find it whenver I rootle for change. It makes her seem very near, even a year on.
Encounters like that were worth every mile - and as for my first swim in the Indian Ocean, in Kerala 2 days later. With every apology to my native Sussex coast, that was simply an impossible act to follow.

A thankful post

A couple of years ago, wonderful Bishop Stephen Cotterell came to lead our Shrove Tuesday Quiet Day in the Cathedral…It was a good good day (though bitterly cold) and towards the end of it he sent us away to ponder the things that God gives us as extra treats just "because [to Him] I’m worth it”…because he loves us completely, wholly, unswervingly – with an everlasting love.

This was my list then – those things that brought (and bring) me most joy…the things in which I see the un-mistakeable evidence that I’m loved

“Because I’m worth it God gives me
Bach cello suites, Mozart Arias and a children’s choir singing folksongs
The dogs playing rough and tumble
The smell of new-mown grass
Candle-light on Christmas Eve
The nestling stillness of a new born child
The warmth of holding and being held in love by children taller now than me
Springy turf beneath bare feet
Hot water welcoming me at the end of a long day
Words falling in the perfect wholeness of a Herbert poem
Family music-making
A cat curled purring on my feet
Watching waves dance in sunlight or assault and bruise the shingle shore
Pools of coloured light falling on ancient stone
The half glimpsed pattern of stained-glass
More and more people to love – a web of friends stretched right across the world
Little Fishes and their parents, who allow me a space to play"

This morning, at Little Fishes we passed around a light and each adult in turn shared one thing for which they are thankful. The children gave their carers a Thank you sticker (you try buying affordable bouquets in November) and we were thankful together, for all these things and so many many more.

Waiting on God

Yesterday my "thought for the day" from Henri Nouwen was entitled "Active Waiting"

Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God's footsteps.

Waiting for God is an active, alert - yes, joyful - waiting. As we wait we remember him for whom we are waiting, and as we remember him we create a community ready to welcome him when he comes.


I’ve been reflecting alot on the process of waiting…of being wholly in the present moment because at the moment there’s nowhere else I can possibly look to…
I don’t know where I’ll be living, who I’ll be working with, what new frienships, delights and frustrations lie in wait for me in the next few months.
I can’t spend my time constantly teetering on the brink of farewell…that way madness lies.
So, for the moment my calling is to be fully here without worrying or wondering about what comes next.
Easy to write.
Doing it? Hmmn…not quite so good.

One of the liturgies in the first edition of the Iona Wee Worship Group included a response
“So thank you for the waiting time” – and in this thanksgiving week I’d love to be able to pray that with conviction.
But I’m a doer. I want to get on with the next thing (usually well before I’ve finished the one before – I have a zero score as “completer/finisher” on the Belbin tests) . Though I promise I don’t see the world, or even the C of E, as something to subdue, I can sympathise with Alexander the Great who reputedly wept when he discovered that there were “no worlds left to conquer” because I like the thought of new horizons, fresh outlooks…

Just too bad, really.
I’m not called to be adventurous.
I’m called to be faithful.
To live in the here and now because actually, here and now is all that I have.
This is where I must look for God and expect to find him.

"The meaning is in the waiting".

Where prayer has been valid

As you might expect, since I've lived and worked in Gloucester diocese for 17 years now, Gloucester Cathedral has featured largely in some significant events in my faith journey.
It was here that we came with the Dufflepud aged 14 days. a tiny snuffling bundle in a sling to launch that apparently damp squib,the Decade of Evangelism with a wonderful service with a huge orchestra and lots of excitement.
It was here that we travelled through the wardrobe door into Narnia, and joined Captain Beaky and his Band at some wonderful Children's Festivals. There is even one pillar on the north side of the nave that, I think, still bears traces of some purple glitter glue, after a careless gesture the year I ran a workshop at the Children's Festival.
More seriously, of course, it was in the Cathedral that I knelt before the Bishop and received the grace of Holy Orders, it was here that I took solemn oaths which felt as ancient and as weighty as the stones themselves, and it is here that each year I come to renew them during the Chrism Mass.

But this last year, I've had new and no less wonderful experiences here, thanks to feig.
I blogged about one back in Holy Week, and last night once again this small emerging community was given the run of the building and created worship stations nestling in pools of light. I don't know how many of us were there in the course of the evening. After my welcome from Michael I was conscious of a just few others intent on soaking up God as they made their way around the building - but the impact was overwhelming...as if all that space, all that beauty, all that tangible prayer was there simply for me. At the beginning of a challenging time for me, and on the brink of the Advent madness, I can't think of a better way to meet and feel myself loved by God and enfolded in his peace.

Hilda and ecumenism

Today the church remembers with gratitude Hilda of Whitby. When I set out to write about her during ordination training, I was disappointed that there was relatively little material to draw on, beyond the pages of Bede.
After all, as Abbess of a “Double monastery” of monks and nuns living together she is a real inspiration for women called to leadership in today’s church, today’s world, and it was heartening to read that in the Celtic church the belief was
"there resides in women an element of holiness and prophecy, so that men do not scorn to ask their advice nor lightly disregard their replies”’

[Aside:I love the idea of a double monastery…of a group of women living, 2 or 3 to a hut, in one part of the foundation with men in another and all uniting in daily worship. It seems to be a kind of ecclesiastical version of my dream existence for couples, each living in a tower of a gate house, with living rooms over the arch, to be visited when company is welcome!]

However, back to Hilda. Though her leadership of the community at Whitby brought her respect and renown in her day, she might now be almost forgotten were it not for the Synod that she hosted, to decide the course of English Christianity. The decision to follow the Roman calendar, and Roman practice generally was not without some cost – Aidan and his monks withdrew to Lindisfarne and their influence waned – but it seems to have been brought about with remarkably little resentment. Oswiu, the Northumbrian king who had ordered the synod, produced a succinct rationale for clarifying the situation of the English church
“it behooved those who serve one God to observe the same rule of life, and as they all expect the same kingdom in heaven, so they ought not to differ in the celebration of the Divine mysteries”
Having spent yesterday evening at our annual Charlton Kings Churches Songs of Praise, I can only agree.
Perhaps Hilda and all those who through the ages have been prepared to make some painful concessions for the sake of the gospel will pray for us as we continue to tie ourselves in knots and hurt one another both within and across denominations.

Meanwhile, Bede has a lovely legend of the time before Hilda's birth when her mother
[Breguswith] fancied in a dream that she was seeking [her husband] most carefully, and could find no sign of him anywhere; but after having used all her industry to seek him, she found a most precious jewel under her garment, which……..cast such a light as spread itself throughout all Britain; which dream was brought to pass in her daughter…whose life was a bright example to all who desired to live well.”

The legend is reflected in the Common Worship Collect for today

Eternal God
Who made the abbess Hilda to shine like a jewel in our land
and through her holiness and leadership blessed your Church with new life and unity:
Help us, like her, to yearn for the gospel of Christ
and to reconcile those who are divided;
through him who is alive and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit
one God, now and forever.

Not my will...

Another gem from that training day

Vocation is going from one place to another
In the direction God wants.

Vocation is responding to so many demands
Even if they demand a lot from you.

Vocation is knowing to be still in your inmost being
And listen to the voice in the depth of your hert.

Vocation is living the life of Him
Who is God’s Son, the Living Word.

Vocation is always wanting to choose Christ
So as never to lose Him.

Vocation is meeting Christ in your life
And letting Him speak through you.

Vocation is the strength of God in your life
Which never lets go of you,
Even if for a time
You see his light no more
You no longer understand his voice
And have to walk the road alone because of Him.

Vocation is giving sharing and breaking for distribution.

Vocation is giving love for love.

Vocation is dying, but dying in order to live.

Vocation is kneeling, praying and bowing down

Vocation is always being a witness to the Lord.

Vocation is walking the Lord’s way to the end of the road,
Through desert and death
Till we reach the eternal.

Put your life then in God’s hands
And know the He in Whom you trust
Loves you with an eternal love. Fr Gerard van der Ven

What to look for …part 3

One thing that has fascinated me as I’ve scanned the small ads in the Church Times week by week is how very little they actually say about the parish in real terms.
They probably give you a hint about the churchmanship of the place ("Bible based preacher" or "Parish Mass" )…and of course, about its geography, both physical and social.
They are keen to outline the qualities they are seeking in a new priest – a paragon that would put each and every member of the heavenly host to shame, if you believe all that you read.
(Interesting aside: I learned recently that when they scan the job ads, most women will only consider applying if they can tick 9 out of 10 boxes on the parish’s wish list, while men are contented with a more pragmatic 5 or 6).

Anyway, let it be known that all parishes want an archangel who is good with children and the elderly, and everyone in between, at ease with both traditional and modern worship, a gifted teacher and preacher with a huge pastoral heart, a capable organiser, a visionary, a born leader who is expert in change management…..and so it goes on. In the light of that, it is remarkable that any church ever finds a new priest at all.

So, you find yourself circling ads because you think that you might be able to work there…sending for further details for all sorts of jobs, both realistic and completely off the radar…hoping and praying that God will make it clear when the right job comes up.
I thought I might have found it when I read this ad – though the reality, after talking to friends in the know, is that I lacked the experience to undertake such a challenging role in a diocese where I have no contacts, where every single aspect of our lives would have changed.

But all the same, here’s a vision statement I would so love to run with. Just listen to this....

• People grow here because they are loved into believing all things are possible in them

• Because we live in a broken community we value each other because of who we are, not what we can do

• We want to reflect the light of Christ who embraces the poor, the destitute and the lonely

• We want the undesirables to come back to the place where they know they are wanted.

Perhaps God has put it on the heart of another church somewhere, the church that is waiting for me.

More about children

A long time ago, I posted a set of 10 Commandments for Church-going adults, which I'd purloined from my former vicar in Small Church in the Cotswolds...But over my desk for a couple of years now I've had a postcard produced by the URC with a Charter for Children in the Church. As I continue asking myself how best to provide for children in my ideal church (no point in even attempting to lead if I don't have some vision of where I might hope to go) they positively leapt off the page, so I share them with you

1.Children are equal partners with adults in the life of the church
2.The full diet of Christian worship is is for children as well as adults
3.Learning is for the whole church, adults as well as children
4.Fellowship is for all - each belonging meaningfully to the rest
5.Service is for children to give, as well as adults.
6.The call to evangelism comes to all God's people of whatever age.
7.The Holy Spirit speaks powerfully through children as well as adults
8.The discovery and development of gifts in children and adults is a key function of the church
9. As a church community we must learn to do only those things in separate age groups which we cannot in all conscience do together.
10. The concept of the Priesthood of all believers includes children.

I'm not sure whether I'm most excited about number 9 or number 10 - The others are pretty well part of my mental furniture, but I love the uncompromising directness "we must learn to do only things in separate age groups that we cannot in all conscience do together". Just beautiful.
I want to be part of a church like that.
Please

Look away now

if you are likely to read the December edition of St M's Parish Magazine! It's my month to write the clergy letter, and fresh from my considerations about ways to foster a truly inclusive, all-age church, I'm writing about the role of children.
First, a little background, that might be useful.
This year for the first time we're combining services on Christmas morning, so that those who habitually worship at 10.00 in an atmosphere of adult restraint and those who gather at 11.30 to worship in reckless informal abandon will meet in the middle, with a Family Eucharist at 10.30 which we hope will enable all constituencies to encounter and celebrate the love of Christ.
We'll use robes, incense, processions - essentials of any major celebration at St M's - but we will invite children to join us in our journey around the church, will make our teaching interactive and multi sensory, and do everything in our power to help them to participate in the festivities and to bring their own worship to the newborn King.
So, my letter is in part an attempt to prepare the ground for this whole-church celebration (the main preparation will be some very intense and focussed prayer - it seems to me that quite alot rides on this service).

Anyway - here's what I said

Somehow we seem to be here again – on the edge of Advent. Bracing ourselves with varying degrees of enthusiasm for some weeks of frenzied shopping, of reconnecting with people we'd all but lost track of, of consuming indecent quantities of almost anything you might care to mention.
And each year, in the churches we try desperately to restrain this headlong rush, to suggest to people that Advent is a time of spiritual as much as material preparation. We try to issue an invitation to step aside from the tide of determined shoppers, to take time out to simply be, and to know ourselves beloved whether or not we’ve assembled all the proper ingredients for the “perfect Christmas”. But this year, I’m going to leave Advent to take care of itself, for you’ll all make your own decisions about how you want to spend it, which elements are truly essential.

Instead, I’m going to head straight for the festival that beckons…straight for Christmas Day itself. “Christmas is really for the children” is a well-worn saying -and of course there’s much to delight any child, from the candle-lit wonder of Christmas Eve to the feverish unwrapping of stocking gifts far too early on Christmas morning - and so much more besides…
But beyond all that is the Child at the heart of Christmas, the Child whose birth we celebrate, the Child who was not just the most amazing Gift of all time, but a real flesh-and-blood baby arriving in the most difficult of situations. A refugee born out of wedlock, crying in the cold of an outbuilding in an occupied town.The Child born to challenge and to subvert the easy comfort of the world. The Child who turned history upside down.

We tend to lose sight of just how much disruption Christ’s birth caused, and continues to cause in our world. We try to assimilate it, to make it part of the prettiness of our celebrations. We sing about an idealised “infant holy, infant lowly” “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”
and this sort of unreality makes us strangely impatient with real live children behaving as real live children do, when they come into range of our adult celebrations.
Clearly, that’s not good for us. When we come together as God’s family, we need each other…If we’re divided in worship, our worship is incomplete, so much less than it could be. We need the excitement of our children, their clarity of vision that can cut straight through the inessentials, and offer us fresh insights into the reality of God…We need their spontaneity, their enthusiasm…Sometimes, perhaps, we need to be disturbed by them, jolted out of our familiar comfort. Of course, it’s not a one-way process. We need to learn new ways of worship from our children, but sometimes we have treasures to share with them ; the awe and wonder that can silence even the most hardened cynic at Midnight Mass, the moments of mystery when we grasp once again that the Child in the manger is one and the same with the Man on the cross.
We need to be together as we celebrate the Christmas mysteries…for the church is a family where all belong, all are welcome – whether noisy toddler or homeless adult, befuddled by drink, or those friends and neighbours whose presence in Christ’s family we take for granted week by week.
Christmas is not “really for the children”. Christmas is for each and every one of us to celebrate together. May it be a blessing to you when it comes.

Not unduly surprised....

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What to look for in the parish part 2

"A church for children" was the one comment I treasured from the visitors' book at our former church in small Cotswold village.
I'm not sure how exactly that guest, who had apparently simply dropped in to the building during the week, had reached that conclusion.
Perhaps it was the displays of children's work all round the building and the child-sized tables and chairs set out in the north transept, where the children met each Thursday after school.
Perhaps it was the notice board, which proclaimed that the only "Prime Time" Sunday service in that parish (part of a multi-parish benefice with one priest and one Reader...so all the churches had made sacrifices over their patterns of worship) was an All Age Communion.
Whatever made them pick up that impression, it really was the right one.

This didn't mean that Little Church in the Cotswolds was crammed with young families - there were many weeks when my 3 children were 50% of the young congregation.
It didn't mean that we had an amazing Sunday school programme.
But all the same, that unknown visitor was spot on.

Little Church in the Cotswolds had grasped something important about the nature of an inclusive church, and though we were neither culturally or socially a diverse community, we did understand that adults and children belong together in the church...that when children are excluded (either because they are not welcomed at all, or through well-intentioned programmes designed to keep them busy while adults get on with the "serious business" of worship) the community's offering of lives and selves to God is incomplete.

So children were part of everything we did in that place.
They received Communion, of course - but they also administered it from time to time...One of my most precious memories is of standing around the altar on Maundy Thursday and watching the Dufflepud, aged perhaps 5, give Communion to Arthur, a retired Colonel, retired Church Warden, on-going saint, aged perhaps 80.
Children served at the altar, they read lessons, they welcomed, they took the collection. Often they helped with the teaching, either by their insights that fed into my sermon prep and that of the vicar, or by writing and offering an interpretation of the lection for the day.

Their parents were never left feeling that they alone were responsible for keeping unexploded bombs under control so that the other adults could get on with "real church"...Rather, other adults (many of them grandparents) shared in the responsibility of helping children to belong, to contribute, to worship.

I'd not really thought about it much then - it was just the way it was....and now, of course, I'm in danger of buying into a church-culture that seeks to provide ways of keeping children gainfully employed during worship.
But, since every advert in the Church Times is anxious to appoint someone gifted at working with young families, I need to think through how my vision of an inclusive church could actually be played out. Ironic if that tiny, "failing" church held the key to this one...

What to look for in the parish

When I was a small child, I had a series of Ladybird books which set out to be gently educational, and had wonderful illustrations by an artist called Tunnicliffe, whom I later discovered to have quite a serious reputation, beyond the world of children’s books.
They covered what to look for at each season of the year, at the seaside, in the country and even, if I remember rightly, in a country church.
I loved all the titles, and would always take them when my father and I set off to explore the countryside (a regular feature of my early years)
Right now, though I’m wishing they’d update the series to include a volume
“What to look for in your first parish”

As I try to prepare for the applications and interviews that lie ahead I’m trying really hard to determine not only what I might be able to bring to a church community, but what I need from a community if I’m to flourish there. I really want to remember the wisdom of the wonderful Claire that it’s very very easy for anyone applying for their first “responsibility post” to be so blown away when they are actually offered a job that they’ll say “Yes” to anything.
Sometimes, of course, this is fine – at others, the match is less happy – so it’s really essential to have your own "bottom lines" clear.
So in a bid to clarify my ideas, I thought a mini series of my own might help…

Nobody who reads here regularly will doubt that creative worship really matters to me. I value doing traditional liturgy as well as possible, but I also need room to dream and look sideways, to re-shape and dream some more. Sometimes, if things are particularly hectic, it’s only when preparing this sort of worship for others that I really manage to engage with God myself.
So, I want to be somewhere where this can happen.
I need to be somewhere where this can happen.
The question is,
Does worship create community or community create worship?
We may be fed by the alternative worship movement and long to engage with people beyond the borders of traditional church, but creative worship takes oceans of time and resources...which is kind of tough if there's only one person doing this. And it seems to me that one hallmark of emerging church is that it is a grass-roots phenomenon...aspiring to be a church without leadership, a community church. So if we're the only ones who get the vision, where does that leave us?
Specifically, where does this leave me, as Hugger Steward, my main alt worship ally in the past 3 years, will be off to uni in the autumn? And what questions should I ask to determine how far a church that claims to be interested in exploring “creative worship” actually wants to go?

And down to earth again

Just back from a happy hour spent ironing the church floor! I'm not sure quite how some static tea-lights (sitting peacefully in dear little Ikea glasses creating a path to the chapel) managed to spread themselves about quite so liberally without help, but let us not dwell on that. The thing is that there was wax to be dealt with as best I could before the builders covered the church with plastic sheeting for another week's work.

As if ironing floors was not in itself bizarre enough, I am now sitting in the study while a pair of builders give our roof a shower, in an attempt to discover the leak that caused such havoc a few weeks ago.
I'm not sure where I go from here, but if this is anything to go by, it could be an interesting week!

Remembrance Sunday Evening

After the struggles of the morning, it was with even less confidence than usual that I climbed the pulpit steps at Evensong.
I knew that the sermon I'd prepared was something I could preach with intergrity but I've seldom felt as vulnerable as when I began the process of actually preaching it.
Though I don't think my struggles with Remembrance Sunday are actually a result of being too young to have direct experience of life in war-time (after all, my feelings are hugely shaped by my father's feelings and opinions, as I understood them) I was fearful that some people would simply hear my words as a careless response from a younger generation who benefitted from the peace that was won, but had no sense of the cost...
It felt very lonely in that pulpit...and when I came down, shaking rather, I had no idea how my words might be received.

Hallelujah! Though I had 2 negative "I think you've got that wrong" comments, I also had some very encouraging "Thank you....I needed someone to say that" reactions...It would have been simply stunning, given the popularity of this morning's service, if I hadn't at least irritated someone....but the support, unexpected and unlooked for, was just what I needed.

******************

Once Evensong was over, Hugger Steward and I led an alt Eucharist for Koinonia...
We'd opted to use the chapel, which lends itself to sprawling comfortably on the carpet, and covered the altar with a sheet onto which we projected videos and power point.
There was some wonderful video footage from Blessed, a rite of confession using Coldplay's Fix You, with white poppies as a sign of forgiveness and committment to peace, and then, as we looked at this image of swords turned into ploughshares, we read this wonderful affirmation from South Africa. I read the untruths, and different voices from around the circle responded with the opposing messages of hope.

It is not true that this world and its inhabitants are doomed to die and be lost
THIS IS TRUE – FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON SO THAT EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM SHALL NOT DIE BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction
THIS IS TRUE; I AM COME THAT THEY MAY HAVE LIFE AND HAVE IT ABUNDANTLY

It is not true that violence and hatred shall have the last word, and that war and destruction have come to stay for ever
THIS IS TRUE; FOR TO US A CHILD IS BORN, TO US A SON IS GIVEN, IN WHOM AUTHORITY WILL REST, AND WHOSE NAME WILL BE PRINCE OF PEACE
It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil that seek to rule the world
THIS IS TRUE; TO ME IS GIVEN AUTHORITY IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH, AND LO, I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS, TO THE END OF THE WORLD

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted who are the prophets of the church, before we can do anything
THIS IS TRUE; I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT ON ALL PEOPLE, AND YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY, YOUR YOUNG PEOPLE SHALL SEE VISIONS AND YOUR OLD FOLK SHALL DREAM DREAMS

It is not true that our dreams of liberation of humankind, our dreams of justice, of human dignity, of peace, are not meant for this earth and its history
THIS IS TRUE: THE HOUR COMES AND IT IS NOW THAT THE TRUE WORSHIPPERS SHALL WORSHIP GOD IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH


Later we shared naan bread that we'd made together a few minutes before, and listened to Pierce Pettis assure us
God believes in you




To my delight, when I'd given the blessing (more thanks to Fr Simon and Blessed) there was no immediate rush for the door, even from the dedicated footballers who had come away from their game only on sufferance. Instead, we all sat on in the candlelight, dealing with all the different thoughts and feelings God had put into our heads and hearts...Holy ground.

Lest we forget

This morning I presided at the Eucharist in a packed church. People who don't even come at Christmas chose to be with us this morning as we gathered, first at the War Memorial just across the road from the church and then brought our feelings of grief, of anger, of frustration and offered them to God for redemption and transformation.

I struggled, as I always do on Remembrance Sunday.
Of course I am hugely grateful to those who "for my tomorrow gave their today" and, because my father lived through both world wars and served in one of them, I have a very real sense of the immediacy of those conflicts. They are absolutely not long ago and far away. Boys who vied with Daddy for poll position in maths class, who shared his fascination with the sea and ships, who used to walk their dogs with him....ordinary boys with hopes, fears and dreams went to war and they never came home.
That is real and painful....something we cannot afford to forget.

But we need to remember reality, not to subscribe to a collective delusion of glorious heroism, to "the old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori".
My father taught me that - and surely he had earned the right, along with his DSC "for courage", to challenge our annual act of commemoration.
He never forgot. He never made light of the cost of our freedom....but I know he would have been disturbed and even angry that we stood at the War Memorial today and sang a single verse of "I vow to thee, my country..."

War hurts. Always. There are no winners, no matter what the political outcome.

Lead us from death to life,
from falsehood to truth,
Lead us from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Lead us from hate to love,
from war to peace,
Let peace fill our beings,
our world and our universe.

Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer

blah blah blah

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

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

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


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

Take care - a restorative Friday Five

One way and another I seem to be spending alot of time feeling rather pressurised but achieving remarkably little, so once again the Friday Five is rather too apposite. Today, Sally wrote

I am writing in my official capacity of grump!!! No seriously, with the shops and stores around us filling with Christmas gifts and decorations, the holiday season moving up on us quickly for many the time from Thanksgiving onwards will be spent in a headlong rush towards Christmas with hardly a time to breathe.... I am looking at the possibility of finding little gaps in the day or the week to spend in extravagant unbusyness ( a wonderful phrase coined by fellow revgal Michelle)...

So given those little gaps, name 5 things you would do to;

1.to care for your body
I know that just getting out with the dogs properly every day would make a huge difference both to how I feel and to how badly the Evil Jack Russell behaves....It ought to be possible to carve out 45 minutes, surely...

2. to care for your spirit
Make sure that I sing - it's the surest route to restored perspective and connection with God that I know

3. to care for your mind
Read, read and read some more....Not just my "pending" pile but good fiction, poetry (oh goodness, yes, I badly need to read some poetry), travel (to return me to the wonder that is India)...

4. to bring a sparkle to your eye
Take a bit of time to actually look at the beauty around me...Ch Kings may be suburban, but it is surrounded by so much lovely countryside - going for walks with a camera invariably makes me see and delight in things I'd whizz past without noticing on an ordinary day

5. to place a spring in your step
Spend time with my lovely children or one of my fabulous friends. All of them have the gift of making me laugh, which is worth its weight in gold.

Enjoy the time to indulge and dream.... and then for a bonus which one on the list are you determined to put into action?
Possibly hard to engineer, but a real laugh each day would reduce the stress levels immeasurably I know....

Be thou my vision

I said I'd post a little more about the "boiling down" process by which we were encouraged, during last week's training, to arrive at a personal vision and mission statement - both things I've tended to view with some suspicion as bits of corporate-speak that were best left well alone.
That, however, was before last Tuesday.
As Claire said,
"If you don't fully understand who you are and what you are for, how on earth are you going to help others to meet the real you?".
It's so horribly easy to spend your days racing around like a gerbil on speed...It's easy enough to do that even if you believe that you are in the right place, doing the the things that God has called you to do...but if you've never spent time really considering that calling and whether or not you are being faithful to it, this becomes an even more likely outcome.

So, inspired by the day and knowing I need something to keep me on task with this in the interests of ending up as a round peg in a round hole, I came home with 3D's recommended text The Path and am working my way through some of its exercises en route to arriving at my personal mission statement (with luck, before I actually need it).
I've been invited to consider which of the 4 elements (earth, air, fire, water) I might be and to come up with at least 12 adjectives to describe myself as that element...
I've been asked to consider whose dream, whose life I am living...how much the Kathryn of today matches the dreams of my parents for themselves, or for their daughter...and I've been playing with words.
Playing with words?
Sounds fun for someone as loquacious as I am - but just wait till you are confronted with 10 lists of 30 words, from each of which to choose 3 that most excite you...and then, from your own resulting short-list of 30 just 3 that are your key-words around which your mission statement will be built.

Here are my hard-won 30. It was interesting that there were words on the initial list that left me so cold I was reaching for a jumper - but all of these make me smile inside, produce an "ahhhh, yes" response which proclaims them very close to the heart of my personal calling.

affirm - appreciate - celebrate - connect - counsel - create - enthuse - envision -

foster - dream - embrace - delight - reflect - relate - resonate - yearn - thirst-

write - play - praise - pray - heal- inspire - host - share - smile - serve - love -

open - nurture

The trouble is that all of them do feel very close to my heart...
I want to love and nurture, but also to celebrate. I want to embrace and affirm but also to play. To dream, delight and share. To choose just 3 - three - as pegs on which to hang some sort of expression of my personal vocation leaves me floundering. Which, of course, is precisely what this process is designed to prevent.
Oh dear.
I think I've a bit more work to do here, as the personal discernment rumbles on.

Delight or warning?

Now that we are definitely into autumn around here, and have moved into daylight-saving mode, I find that many of my journeys seem to involve heading east at sunrise and, conversely (if unsurprisingly) west at sunset...and the skies have been completely and mind-blowingly fantastic.
The trouble is that while once I would simply have rejoiced at their beauty and wondered what any shepherds about the place could expect by way of weather, I'm now rather concerned that quite so many clear skies and stunning light shows may be a further sign of the damage we're doing to our environment. After the floods of June and July and an October that closely resembled the Junes of my childhood, even the most sceptical in these parts are beginning to suspect that there may be something amiss. Are these fairytale skies also signs of the times? I've no idea of the science, but I have to say that as they appear day after day I'm becoming distinctly nervous.

Nonetheless, the drive back from Hereford
this evening featured such beauty
in my wing-mirror that I just had to stop
and wonder.


In case it's not familiar, the "shepherd" reference is to a piece of Old Wives' lore that proclaims
"Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.
Red sky at morning, shepherd's warning"

So now you know!

Too good not to share

Perhaps this shouldn't count towards my monthly allocation of bloggage, but I've been thinking alot about community in the wake of a wonderful blah day Catholic/Contemplative Fresh Expressions of church (hope to blog that later too) so this week's reflection from the Henri Nouwen Society was spot on.

On the Journey Towards Universal Solidarity
written by CLARA FRASCHETTI

I recently spent a week in a small rural village called Sega, in Ghana, West Africa. My purpose was to establish a partnership with the local school where my organization, Intercordia Canada, hopes to place student volunteers. One day I met with about 50 parents, some of who would be asked to host our students for three months this summer. Mister Godwin, the head of the school, introduced me and asked me to say a few words about Intercordia. When I was done, Mister Godwin asked if any parents had questions. A small, older gentleman stood up, his back hunched, his skin wrinkled by the hot sun, and he asked in Dambe, "What are your first impressions of our community?" Mister Godwin translated as I described my time in Sega. I told them about my first morning and how the children had immediately taken my hand and led me through the village. As we passed people on the road, they recognized right away that I was new in town and most nodded or said "You are welcome!" Some enthusiastically took my face in their hands and said something in Dambe and then repeated "You are welcome! You are welcome!" I looked at the man standing there amongst the other parents and told him that if a stranger came to my neighbourhood, with different coloured skin, who dressed differently, no one would offer a greeting. In fact people might look at that person with suspicion and turn away. The old man looked at me with concerned eyes and said, "But, that is no way to treat a stranger". I humbly agreed with him. Then he said with conviction, "Then you must send your students, so that we can help to develop your community".


Perhaps that's the answer to building community in our churches - to import catalysts from beyond the parish boundaries. Oh, hang on, perhaps that's part of the role of the clergy...to be catalysts for community. I like that.

Transition time again

What we are to become is both task and gift – Marilyn McCord Adams

The fundamental moral question, therefore, is not “What ought we to do?” but “What kind of persons are we called to become?”
(Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church)

So I’m here in transition.
I’ve been in transition as a mother, and found it hard and uncongenial….but up to a point at least some of the intitiative still lay with me.
Now I’m in transition again, waiting to be born in a new place with a new role…but this time I’m the baby….I know and value the safety of my current environment, its familiar warm darkness, its reliable nurture.
But I’m being slowly squeezed, whatever I may feel, along a passage that is leading to a new reality outside my knowledge.
Staying put seems so comfortable and attractive, but it’s simply not an option that is open to me. The unborn child cannot stay put – she will die if she lingers too long, because the very environment that has nurtured her so far will gradually begin to starve and stifle.
So she has to submit to the wave upon wave that engulfs her and pushes her onwards to something she can’t yet imagine.
The waiting and the journey are both hard work – but to be born is to come one step closer to knowing oneself as an independent being….

Laborare est orare

In the mornings recently as we’ve gathered in St David’s Chapel for morning prayer, it has been to the background rumble of a small cement mixer, and the sound of hammering,purposeful conversation and even, this morning, a small forklift truck. Our builders have been splendid to work with, showing great sensitivity and understanding of the purpose of a church and going well beyond the call of duty to enable us to continue worship with minimal disruption while their work progresses. The Office, though, is too regular an occurrence to allow them to down tools, -so as they have mixed concrete, grouted tiles and laid the new floor where some vanished pews once stood, we too have pressed on with our work... Both labours are foundational. The words of prayer that we offer, in company with Christians across the world, provide the stability and structure that my ministry depends on…Morning and Evening Prayer are the book-ends that support everything else that happens in my day, and I know that they are no less essential to the life of the whole church, though on the whole we make less noise about them than the builders are bound to. I’ve loved the fact that pray-ers and builders have worked side by side, looking towards a church that is more truly fit for purpose, more fully an expression of our calling to be God’s people in this place, to worship with creativity and to welcome all comers in God’s name.

Thoughts for All Saints

Busy busy day, which began with the 8.00 Eucharist...not a congregation that expects (or indeed welcomes) a sermon as a general rule, but as I stood there looking at that faithful group (just 27 this morning) it seemed that I couldn't not say something about the feast we were celebrating - so I did the unthinkable for me. I just spoke to them. No notes. No clear sense of quite where I might go...but a thought for the day, which I hope might remind them of something important.

"A saint is someone that the light shines through"
That’s my favourite definition, - attributed to a small boy who was stuck for an answer to the question
“What is a saint” as he sat in a church of many stained glass windows.
I love it because, like so much that children say about God, it summarises in one short phrase a most important truth.
Saint ARE people whom the light shines through…people whose lives radiate God’s love so clearly that they point the way to others.
We have, of course, the church’s canon of saints, people whose lives and witness we celebrate year on year, - but we have too those unsung, unknown saints who’ve inspired those who knew them – those who know them. The saints of our community are, in a way, represented by the gallery of pictures of your former clergy who look down on me as I robe in the vestry...men who lived and worked among you, trying with all their strength to be signs of God's Kingdom. But you'll have others too, ladies who taught you, or taught your children at Sunday school...a grandparent or an elderly aunt who spoke to you about Jesus or simply loved you in such a way that you knew yourself loveable always...
Those beatitudes we’ve just heard as our gospel reading say nothing about being blessed when you convert thousands at a great rally at Wembley Stadium…they fail to mention the need to write a life changing book that all the world will read…
Mostly they speak about things to which we could all aspire – to be pure in heart, to long for righteousness, to be merciful…
Added together, those aspirations make up a very powerful witness…Added together, they transform ordinary people, people like us, into saints that the light shines through.
This is our calling.

Later on at OpenHouse we explored our calling to be "lights that shine" a little more, looking at pictures of some stereotypical saints and then at some unsung saints from our ow community...We lit sparklers and enjoyed their effect in a dark church, but realised that they burned out very quickly - not the best metaphor for our calling....so we handed out glow sticks, which are still shining softly 5 hours on.

Finally at Koinonia we simply enjoyed the light from our sparklers, drawing wild patterns in the air and pretending that we were none of us grown up enough to worry about exams, jobs or the fact that tomorrow is Monday again.

The Way Ahead

was the name of my first piano book when I emerged triumphant from John Thompson Book 1...No more pictures of cute gnomes and instead pieces by "real" composers. Oh, I was so excited!
I guess there might be a similiar feel when I actually land that "first responsibility post" , towards which so much of my energies are currently geared. At the moment, though, I'm very grateful for any kindly helpers who cross my path (none of whom, oddly enough, have looked even remotely like gnomes).

On Tuesday, therefore, I was up at dawn for the drive to Guildford for training from Claire Pedrick of 3D Coaching on the gentle art of moving on. To my relief, the group was not just a collection of anxious curates (who could see their successors removal vans approaching the door) but clergy at all stages of ministry, who were trying to discern if now is the time for a change. The day was completely excellent - I'm delighted to have done it, though I wish even more that I'd been able to do it a year ago. Right now, the view from here is rather like this (actually part of the cloistered area outside Guildford Cathedral) - with lots of shadowy openings and
vague possibilities and one or two that look as if they might actually be a door-way to something.
Part of Tuesday's task was to begin to recognise our own gifts so that we have more hope of communicating them to interview panels...We were invited to mind-map our whole life's experience, drawing out the key skills that each chapter represented. I'd never, for example, recognised that opting to run a B&B when the last recession left us in a large Cotswold farmhouse with no money could be seen as adaptability as much as deperation! But actually, it can....and right the way down the line for everyone there are unrecognised talents to be spotted and drawn out.
From this, the next step was to "boil ourselves down" to the essence of ourselves in ministry...a process that was both hard-work and thoroughly rewarding (I'll tell more later) before we considered what might be the absolute essentials (and desirables) for a job to "fit". We were invited to consider those things that made us smile or cringe in any parish profile, and reflect on what that might say about the place and the people. One golden nugget that I'll have to keep at the forefront of my mind was Claire's reminder
"Those of you who are looking for your first parish need to be aware that you'll be so pathetically grateful if offered a job that you're likely to jump at anything. Just don't..."

I came home energised and keen to explore what it is that really makes me sing in my current ministry...and what that might say as I try to make clear how the way ahead might look for me.

Do you have any questions?

If ever there was a timely Friday Five, this one must be it. In a week in which I’ve spent one day learning about preparations for moving on (I’ll blog that tomorrow – one unexpected side effect of the NaBloPoMo is that I really can’t afford to just post whenever I think of it – I’ll surely run out of ideas far too soon that way) Mother Laura has produced questions on that terrifying event, The Interview.

1. What was the most memorable interview you ever had?
I’ve had quite a startling lack of interviews in my life, actually and none particularly stand out…When we first moved out of London and funds were almost non-existent, I tried to find any sort of un-demanding part time job to help…and again and again I fell over my Cambridge degree, which was suddenly not an asset but a huge liability. Oddly, it never occurred to me to leave it off the CV, even after the MD of a local quarrying firm, who had wanted some clerical help in the office told me categorically
“I couldn’t employ you. You’re friends with some of the people I work for”.
OK, there probably was a bit of a mismatch of my abilities and their needs – but at that moment what I needed most was an extra £100 per week and I really couldn’t see why over-qualification might be a problem. "But that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead…"


2. Have you ever been the interviewer rather than the interviewee? If so, are you a tiger, a creampuff, or somewhere in between?
I’ve never been part of the sort of career world that put me in the interviewer’s seat, but I have been part of a panel appointing a new teacher at the village school. On that occasion, I was so bowled over by the wonderfulness of one of the short-listed candidates that I was desperate for her to teach my children – so my approach was definitely along the “cream puff” lines. I so wanted her to show her best self, which she did, praise be – and got the job, and was every bit as much of an inspiration for Hugger Steward as I'd hoped. I don't think I do "tiger" actually...

3. Do phone interviews make you more or less nervous than in-person ones?
I’ve never had one as such, - but the story that follows concerns a phone conversation to advise me of the result of an interview.
Imagine the scene. Idyllic summer’s evening somewhere in the Cotswolds.
I’m attempting to lead a small pony with a large appetite along the grassy track to his field, without hesitation, deviation or pauses for snacking en route.
Suddenly the calm of the evening is broken by an electronic version of a Bach Brandenburg concerto…
Tis the mobile.
Frantic rifling in many pockets ensues (all horsy clothes must be well pocketed, as you always need innumerable bits and pieces about your person, just in case). Finally the phone is located, dropped (missing a cow pat by inches) retrieved – miraculously all before the ringing stops.
So far, so good, though I’m dimly aware that Todd the Pony, who had been intent on nothing more interesting than the grass immediately in front of him, has spotted something more exciting….He is beginning to be restless.
“Kathryn, this is Bishop J” says a voice…”I have some news regarding your Selection Conference”
Oh. The world stops. Last time this bishop phoned and began with these words, road blocks and disappointment followed. With an effort, I reconnect with the here and now, just in time to to receive the words
“Warmly recommend you for training…”
Suddenly the evening sun glows with a new gold. It’s Yes….I can go forward. This wasn’t all a mad and unliveable dream…but just as I begin to take my part in the conversation, the lure of the wheel-barrow of hay only yards away becomes too strong. Instead of the polite and grateful responses to be expected from a brand new ordinand, what the Bishop actually hears is
“No…(Excuse me, Bishop….Yes, I am still here…) No. You wretched animal (Not you, of course, Bishop….I’m sorry. You were sayi------. COME BACK HERE"
Bishop (resignedly, knowing that distraction and Kathryn are constant companions) “I sense perhaps this isn’t the best moment to talk…”

4. What was the best advice you ever got to prepare for an interview? How about the worst?
At the training day this week, the thing that struck me right between the eyes was the need to really know who you are yourself, as fully as possible before you try to present that self to a stranger at interview. It may sound obvious, but it’s only too easy to go into an interview focussing on the obvious things that you imagine the interviewers are looking for - while what really matters is that the job should be a good fit for the whole of you, not just the bits that can “do” whatever it is.
Worst advice….before my first selection conference “Be yourself”.
There’s quite a lot of this particular self, and I think I drowned the selectors in Kathryn that time round. I wasn’t less honest at the re-match, just less keen to share everything, no matter what!

5. Do you have any pre-interview rituals that give you confidence?
No – if I can only manage to leave the house in Good Time that is more than enough for me.

I must be dotty

With everything else that is currently going on in my life, I've signed up for a whole month of blogging every day...
Let it be known that my thinking aloud will have at least regularity,if not substance, for the next 30 days.
My daughter may write novels, but me, I'm a humble blogger.
Let the posting commence
Happy NaBloPoMo everybody.