Models for the Kingdom

You don't have to be in this game for long before you realise that the people who will teach you most are likely to be under 10s...
I'm still bitterly home-sick for the Little Fishes toddler church in my training parish, who constrained me to organise my theology into the sort of nugget that can be delivered in 2 minutes to a restless assemblage of babies, toddlers and caffeine-deprived mothers, but I'm blessed in having two schools here that welcome me with open arms, not to mention the splendid Valley Church Playgroup...so my education isn't suffering too much.

Yesterday was very much dedicated to Valley Church School. First thing this morn came a KS1 assembly on planets, which was startlingly successful, despite woeful lack of preparation.Later on I found myself in Reception, conducting a wedding...The bride was given away, reclaimed,then given away again before her father fell over the best man's feet and collapsed into infectious giggles...The groom decided the only comfortable place for his ring was on his right thumb...The bride and her bridesmaids concentrated above all on getting their hair perfect...All in all, it was startlingly convincing, except that I'm not used to guests giving me hugs afer the service and asking me to their birthday party. Clearly I need to spend more time on people skills :-)



Finally, after lunch, I landed in Y3, where they had been considering Committment. We started by talking about the committments they make - to Beavers, Cubs and Brownies, to their pets (if you let me have a rabbit I promise I'll look after it every single day), and to their school. We talked about the sort of committment that needs to be reinforced by reward or punishment and decided that less real than those committments that we kept to "just because".
The children had done some work already, and had some starter questions on vicaring, whose answers had me basically rephrasing the ordinal in terms suitable for 8 year olds! We decided that the committment I had made when I came to the benefice was something like this

•  to love everyone in the valley AND on the hill and do all I could to help them

• to offer worship to God and help them to do so

• to try and learn more about God and help others to do so

• to pray for everyone every day (that last one made me feel particularly breathless, - but fundamentally, that's what saying the Office is, I think...)

We agreed that because I don't have a boss keeping an eye on me every day (except for God - they were very clear about that too) it was as well that I was asked to make a committment - otherwise, said one, 
"If we're silly in Assembly, you might never want to come back again and then you'd not be doing what you said!".They were very perceptive about the ways in which I might learn more about God so that I could help others to learn as well (I was specially keen on the idea that if I didn't "get" something, I should ask FabBishop. - it's only sensible, after all)..They were clear about the need to listen more than to talk in prayer (If we talk more, Kathryn, God might think we don't believe He's worth listening to - like in circle time...") and about the committment of love that a priest makes to the parish, and they teased me delightfully about how they might like that love to be demonstrated (and maybe I WILL have a birthday party with a bouncy castle for the whole school next year - it would be one way of getting over the alarming prospect of turning 50!) .

Then it started to get a bit exciting.

THEY made the connection between the rain or shine committment of a priest to the local community and the "Better or worse" committment of marriage. They asked me to tell them EXACTLY what the bride and groom say to one another and then, one after another, quite calmly, they shared their stories of the times when it hadn't worked out. Probably half the class no longer live with both their parents, or have half-siblings from other relationships. We talked about how committments are made in good faith, about how sometimes the loving thing is not to stay with someone no matter what, and the possibilities of wonderful new starts bringing all sorts of joy. We even touched on forgiveness...But the children insisted that a broken committment is never a good thing, and the overwhelming decision at the end of the session was that you should always think long and hard even before the smallest committment, because, said the children

"If you promise to do something, then it hurts you if you can't manage it".

Ouch. I said I learned alot from children

In search of clarity

Last week's diocesan clergy day was designed to tell us those things we really HAVE to know about Terms of Service, Common Tenure and the like - and as a result, it looked anything but promising in advance. Despite the new and pleasing venue, the yummy lunch, and the welcome opportunity to catch up with all sorts of lovely people, on the whole not much happened to change my opinion. It's profoundly depressing that large chunks of CME budget are likely to be spent mostly on process, rather than on some of the life giving, brain enhancing theology that has been available in the past...Cheesey though it be, I would prefer to aspire to life as a human being not simply a human doing, but I'm not certain that this is where Terms of Service will leave me....Certainly I won't be able to trust to diocesan serendipity to offer an unlikely course or training day on just the thing to fire my brain and my soul. Clearly I will have to learn to be more intentional in pursuing things that open windows onto wide and wonderful horizons.

HOWEVER I guess it may be good to find ourselves constrained to reflect more deliberately on the value of our activity...It's just possible that if our aims and objectives include things like "helping to build the Kingdom" or "loving and cherishing this community in God's name and for his sake" then some of my more draining and depressing admin may be ruled out of court. You never know...

A larger God...

Although some parts of last week were decidedly difficult, overall it was good - and as I look back from the perspective of Sunday evening calm, I think this is because I actually had time to pause and to feed my brain along the way.

Monday, you see, had been proclaimed a "reading day" and despite a quick foray to take assembly at the lovely school up the road (a county school, that has no need to welcome me, but makes me feel so very much at home whenever I visit), I did actually manage to do some reading! My little clergy reading group meets tomorrow to discuss Velvet Elvis, which I read and enjoyed a couple of years ago, so it was good to be forced to revisit it and I found myself noting down some gems that I really must hang onto. If that weren't enough cause for celebration, on Thursday came a trip to the Big City of Birmingham, for the National Estates Churches Network Conference, and more space and time for serious thinking.


What pleased me particularly was that the two roads converged....It seems unlikely, perhaps, that Rob Bell (cool, American, post-modern...) and Sister Margaret Walsh (RC nun, Irish, committed to living alongside and befriending the most needy in society - also intrinsically cool because of who she is, but not in the iPod way at all at all...) should have much in common...but one of the "stand on a chair and cheer loudly" moments of Thursday was when Sr Margaret talked about the delight of recognising Christ among Muslim and Sikh neighbours, of learning and relearning that her God had been too small...What thrilled me, above and beyond this, was its echoes with words I'd jotted down on Monday
"When Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth..." he confirmed that when we come across truth in any form it is not outside Christian faith....Your faith just got bigger. To be a Christian is to claim truth wherever you find it...."


Good, eh?

"Who cares about estates?"

was the title of yesterday's Estate Churches Network conference...and certainly in a predominantly rural and affluent diocese like this one, it's a question you might be forgiven for asking.

Happily the evidence at Carrs Lane Church yesterday is that rather alot of people care deeply, and that the church remains committed to loving and serving the areas  that other agencies treat as problems to be addressed. It was a good day, during which I learned a good deal.


Valley parish, you see, includes two estates, with very different atmospheres...One was built in the 1970s, pleasant houses for owner-occupiers, with lots of green spaces in between. The other is altogether greyer, older, mainly social housing (though some, of course, became owner/occupied under dear Mrs T's right to buy scheme 30 years ago).Between them, they qualify us as an "estate parish" and I'm very aware that on the whole we don't connect with those living on either estate - and that the whole estate culture is outside my own experience, so I was really hoping for insights and ways forward...


I was in no way disappointed. 

Lynsey Hanley spoke of "The Wall in the Head" and certainly broke down several walls in mine as she shared her experience of growing up on an outer city estate, and then moving far beyond it. High on her list of results was the sense that many estates dwellers have that certain things are only for others to enjoy...that the world outside cannot be trusted, so should be kept out at all costs. Education may be a route out of estates life, but it can also be seen almost as an act of betrayal of your origins...Wider horizons are dangerous, and few return to share the fruits of their education or experience (in contrast to the pattern on estates where the majority of the population is Asian; there an individual's academic or professional success is likely to be accepted as a community achievement, and estate "escapees" return to share what they have gained). Though the population as a whole enjoys ever wider experiences, broader horizons, on the estates life can become ever narrower, more constrained by poverty and depression.

Negative publicity (when did you last hear of a "pleasant" or "mellow" estate? to read the press, they are always and inevitably "tough") contributes to anxiety that you are to blame for your low social status as an estate dweller...
Immediate,cheap comfort via unhealthy options in diet, alcohol or substance abuse compounds the situation...(I heard someone say of the Co-op in my parish "It's full of overweight mothers buying unsuitable food to malnourish their children" a remark of such breathtaking judgementalism that I was left speechless).
In 21st century Britain, extremes of wealth and poverty are increasingly the norm...ours it the 3rd most unequal society in terms of wealth distribution (only the USA and Portugal outstrip us in this regard)...Whereas in Sweden the maximum income is about four times the average, in this country it is a hundred times, or more - so economic inequality is vast and perpetuated.



So - were we given any answers, any glimmers of hope?
Education may be part of the solution, but only if it is seen as the means to enrich life, and not simply to boost income...but the fundamental changes have to come in the hearts, minds and status of those who do NOT live on estates.
The problems that are manifested on the estates are problems that beset upper and middle classes too, -for institutional snobbery and inbuilt class distinction is responsible for many of the issues that bedevil estate life. This is not THEIR problem, created by THOSE people, out THERE.
It is, rather, OUR problem...created by our greed, our determination to safeguard status, to turn our backs on the assumption that we are all equal before God. 


Solutions in the past have mostly consisted of well intentioned attempts to impose a different way of being from outside...Funds are spent on project workers in problem areas, but little is done to address the fundamental causes of those problems.

The problem of miserable estates is a moral problem for all of us...a problem rooted in the sin that refuses to believe that there IS enough to go round, that in God's economy nobody need go short, that we need not protect our own at the expense of neighbours across the road, where life seems greyer and harsher.

Who cares about estates? God does, for sure.

Heaven shall not wait for the poor to lose their patience,
the scorned to smile,
the despised to find a friend:
Jesus is Lord; he has championed the unwanted;
in him injustice confronts its timely end.

Heaven shall not wait for the rich to share their fortunes,
the proud to fall, the elite to tend the least;
Jesus is Lord; he has shown the master's privilege -
to kneel and wash servants' feet before they feast.

Heaven shall not wait for the dawn of great ideas
thoughts of compassion divorced from cries of pain:
Jesus is Lord; he has married word and action;
his cross and company make his purpose plain.

Heaven shall not wait for triumphant Hallelujahs,
when earth has passed and we reach another shore
Jesus is Lord; in our present imperfection;
his power and love are for now and then for evermore.

John L. Bell and Graham Maule, from Heaven shall not wait, Wild Goose Publications, Glasgow

Homily for 8.00, 2nd Sunday before Advent Yr B, St Matthew's.

Do you remember the millennium bug?

It was going to strike us all down on the 1st of January 2000, as all the technology on which our society depends ground to a halt…
Some people decamped to the outer Hebrides, to adopt a life of self sufficiency on a croft…some others (and I have to admit that included me) made sure that we had a few extra supplies of essential stashed away, just in case….no more than I tended to lay in anyway, as part of living in a Cotswold village reached only by a very minor road which was often blocked in winter….but all the same…

And we waited with a mixture of fear and bravado and suddenly we were well into January and nothing had happened.
It could have been a major anticlimax – but on the whole, we were pretty relieved.
For all the significance of a nice round 2000, it didn’t seem that the world was going to end yet awhile…and because it’s a beautiful world, filled with people we love, that seemed like a cause for rejoicing.
So we went back to trusting that life as we know it would continue, if not for ever, then at least long enough to see us out.
We went back to cherishing the various security blankets we have fashioned…including, of course, our buildings…beautiful churches, breathtaking Cathedrals….
“What large stones and what large buildings…”

At least we know we are part of a long, if not specially honourable, tradition.
The disciples were similarly preoccupied – and maybe they too were inclined to notice the immediate (the splendour of the Temple) without remembering it’s purpose as a sign of God in their midst.
The Temple was at the heart of their visible identity as Jews – the focus of worship and pilgrimage, the centre of sacrifice. It was something to marvel at, something to be proud of…but was never intended as an end in itself. Perhaps they had got stuck..
Whatever was going on for them, Jesus undoubtedly shook them up as he warned them to expect all kinds of trouble – demolition of all that seemed solid and secure…confused messages about whom they should follow…wars and rumours of wars.

This week we’ve celebrate the anniversary of a wall falling down – but we’ve heard too of decisions on the trial of the 9/11 terrorists and that image of the twin towers falling is an icon of our time…a symbol of wealth and security, reduced to dust.
Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down
It doesn’t sound good, does it?
And that’s just the prelude…
War and civil war, famine and earthquake – no it definitely doesn’t sound good, but it might just sound rather familiar.
At this point, of course, many turn to a kind of internal “end of the world” checklist and start totting up the score and expecting something huge and dramatic any day now…but I think that in doing that they might just be missing the point.

Jesus tells his disciples that all these awful things will happen…but I somehow don’t imagine his purpose is to scare them, or indeed to give them a kind of “Last days countdown”.
In fact, he makes it very clear that his purpose is NOT to frighten them as he says in as many words
“DO NOT BE ALARMED. This must take place”

It would be easy to see those words and assume that all the miserable and frightening things that happen are just “Part of God’s plan”
But for me that attitude is no help at all.
It either suggests a cruelly remote God, who doesn’t care what happens, but rides rough-shod over his creation intent on ensuring his purposes are fulfilled, Or  it allows us to abdicate responsibility for our collective actions.
Wars come about through human decisions, and so are avoidable.
Some of the famines could be bypassed if only we learned to love.
I’m convinced that God’s plan is not to subject any part of creation to pain and suffering – though I’ve no answer to the great question “O God, why?” which we ask again and again as we experience the brokenness of life.
Perhaps that’s a question for another time…

So I’d prefer to suggest that though wars, famines, earthquakes are frightening, hurtful, we are invited to see beyond them. Do not be alarmed…
Destructive and unhappy things are not to be part of God’s plan, but we can trust that that plan for ultimate flourishing holds good no matter what seems to be lying in its way.
Do not be alarmed.

Jesus uses striking language for a man…for he compares all the struggles of creation to birth pangs at the start of labour
As contractions come thick and fast, there’s often a point at which many women just want to say
“Forget it…I don’t want a baby THAT much. Let’s just halt the process here and now and go back to normality”
But of course that’s not an option.
The pangs of labour are the essential prelude to the birth of a child, the pain and fear and danger a precursor to something wonderful, the coming of a new life into the world. In using this image Jesus is trying to reassure us that God’s love will not be deflected in the face of cataclysm…
Do not be alarmed.

This whole passage is, in fact, an exercise in hope – the hope that fills the prophecy of Daniel that we heard earlier, the hope voiced in our Collect, that through Christ we are heirs of life everlasting

Gracious Lord,

in this holy sacrament

you give substance to our hope:

bring us at the last

to that fulness of life for which we long

through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

November

As I contemplated digging myself out from under a heap of purring feline to engage with the world (and specifically with two dogs in dire need of a bracing walk) I found myself remembering this..

November

by Thomas Hood

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--

No road--no street--
No "t'other side the way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--

No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!

No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

So many gifts

are given, unlooked for, in ministry.

Over the past few weeks, I've been ministered to again and again by V., as she and her husband together looked honestly at her cancer, shared longings, griefs, hopes and fears...Bless them, they included me unconditionally on this journey, and whenever I visited I came away refreshed, encouraged. They trusted me with so much, affirmed my priesthood in countless ways, blessed me whenever I encountered them.

I visited with Communion yesterday, but V didn't feel up to receiving, so instead I left her a holding cross I'd bought for her in Bath last week, and that lovely prayer of Augustine's that gets me through even the most anxious nights. We agreed that we'd pray it together sometime around 10.00 most evenings, but tonight it wasn't even 9.30 when I answered the phone to hear that V had gone quietly home to God two hours ago. I wish I had been able to pray with her one more time. In her dying, as in her life, she gave a great deal and I thank God that I knew her.

These words by the ever wonderful Stewart Henderson are not mine to post, but I hope I'll be forgiven as they say so much of what I'm feeling tonight.

Go well, V....to eternal rest and light perpetual.

this day in paradise
new feet are treading through
high halls of gold

this day in paradise
new legs are striding over jewelled fields in which
the diamond
is considered ordinary

this day in paradise
new eyes have glimpsed the deep fire ready
to flame the stale earth pure

this day in paradise
new blood, the rose red juice that gushed at golgotha
now ripples and races down the pure veins
of a recently arrived beloved

this day in paradise
a new heart pounds in praise
a new body shaped by sacrifice

this day in paradise
the daunting dart of death
has no point
no place
and no meaning

and whilst we mourn and weep
through these human hours
this day in paradise
the blazing embrace
between saviour and son goes on and on and on...

(by stewart henderson)

Here goes!

I'm never much good at Remembrance Sunday. Born in 1960, WW2 seemed very close as for my parents it was their first adult reality...My father had served in the Royal Navy, my mother in the WRNS, and neither of them had any romantic illusions about the ways of war. Remembrance Sunday was sad and dark, for all the ranks of old comrades who turned out at church wearing their medals. It frightened me then, and it still does in some ways, as we get swept up in a process of remembering that can never breathe life into dry bones.
This year a series of glitsches and communications failures compounded the problem for me, so it is only to ensure that I don't spend all night sitting editing that I'm posting this here. I'll preach it, if my courage holds, at Remembrance services in both churches. I don't think it's much good, but I know it's all I have in me to say tonight...
I think it's in Perelandra that C.S. Lewis has his protagonist, Ransome, begin an act of courage  thus
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit - here goes!"
I think that may well be my approach tomorrow morning.


IN July the media was full of comments, thoughts and reflections on the death of the last British soldier who served in the First World War…Harry Patch.
He had reached a remarkable age – 111 years, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day but what he represented was something still more remarkable.

He was, if you like, one of our living war memorials…someone whose own life experience summed up the truth that we still struggle to learn, that though heroism is wonderful, though desperate situations often call forth amazing acts of sacrifice and generosity, in the end it’s hard to find anything positive to say about war.

Here Harry speaks for himself –  voicing an opinion to which he’d surely earned the right. He delivers without hesitation the lesson of the trenches
You used to look between the fire and apertures and all you could see was a couple of stray dogs out there, fighting over a biscuit that they’d found. They were fighting for their lives. And the thought came to me – well, there they are, two animals out there fighting over dog biscuit, the same as we get to live.
I said, ‘We are two civilised nations - British and German - and what were we doing? We were in a lousy, dirty trench fighting for our lives? For what

It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it.

The night we caught it, we were in the front line and we were going back. We had to cross what was the old No Man’s Land. It was crossing there that a rocket burst amongst us. It killed my three mates, it wounded me.
September 22nd, half-past ten at night. That’s when I lost them. That’s my Remembrance Day. Armistice Day, you remember the thousands of others who died. For what?

My own father, who saw action with the Royal Navy in Burma, took a similar approach. It wasn’t til after his death that I discovered that he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross…I never knew because he fiercely resisted any attempts to persuade him to talk about “his” war. If pressed he would say that the reason he and his friends fought was so that my generation and those that came after would not HAVE to remember. He wanted us to be free of the shadows that had darkened his childhood, adolescence and then his twenties as well…
But the news today tells a sadly familiar story of young men dying violently in a conflict they did not initiate.

This doesn’t in any way reduce the importance of what we are about today.
It has been truly said that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them and we need to stop and think, with humble gratitude, of all those who gave their lives and those who are still giving their lives today, because they believe that there are things worth fighting for.

So, though I don’t like to do so, I think I’d disagree with my father.
I believe that remembering matters, because we can’t afford to miss the lessons of the past. But I think we’ll learn more from them if  we look at them in the light of the gospel reading that we’ve just heard
It doesn’t make comfortable reading, but that’s not unusual with Jesus.
He tends to stand back from our human predicaments and speak of another way, and when we’re up to our necks in the current situation, that’s not easy to deal with.
If he’d preached these words standing in No Man’s Land, in the Flanders mud…If he’d offered them to the troops in Helmund province earlier this week…I can’t think it would have ended well. They might even have crucified him.

But for all that, we need to hear him, even if he seems to make no sense.
He says, after all, that people are blessed (that means happy) in the most unlikely situations
Blessed when they mourn…Happy in their grief…
How about that as a contradiction in terms – and not something I would ever dare say to a war widow, as she confronts the pain of her loss
Blessed again when they are persecuted for the sake of what is right.
But it can be so hard to define right in this sort of situation…when it seems to be more a case of “least wrong”
Blessed as the victims of lies and slander, of bullying and persecution…in war, we are told, the truth is often the first victim because it matters that stories are told in the most politically helpful way.
Blessed as the unsung heroes who do all in their power to bring about peace….but who might find themselves ostracised as conscientious objectors, or mocked for promoting compromise at a time when the popular approach is to literally stick to your guns.

Actually experience suggests that these people might not feel very blessed at all…but perhaps that’s the point. Jesus is celebrating the fact that those who dare to step outside our everyday expectations, to look at life in a radically different way are already living with one foot in heaven, and stand as signs of hope to us.
After all, the greatest victory that has ever been won in the world was that moment of complete abandonment that looked very like defeat when Jesus was executed as a political prisoner, a troublemaker who needed to be silenced.
That’s the way to ultimate peace and happiness…but it is not, as Jesus makes clear, a way that the world will easily understand.

So we need to carry on remembering..To wear our scarlet poppies with pride and gratitude but perhaps, also, to consider the message of the white poppy that speaks of peace.
For today pride and pain walk hand in hand.  We would not be human if we did not, like Harry Patch, remember with pain.  We would be sadly ungrateful we did not remember with pride.  
But as we gather, we need another ingredient too…and it’s one that we can recognise in our gospel reading – for here, in that string of blessings, Jesus offers us hope
Those who live according to the unpopular principles that he preaches are already living with one foot in heaven, even as they make their way through life on earth.

So we began with a living war memorial but let’s end with living sign posts..
Sign posts created in the lives of those whom Jesus calls blessed.
Living sign posts to show us a different way, and so offer us hope that one day we will be free of the shadows of war, as we strive to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.