Whitehill Chase, which describes itself as ‘a safe place for healing’, is home to a resource centre and meeting place near Alton in Hampshire which runs courses on ‘listening, healing and reconciliation’. Its chaplain is the Revd Christine Knifton, whose original background was in medicine. After ordination, she spent four years as a chaplain in the National Health Service and then came to the centre in 2005.

Although one can see the overlap between listening, healing and reconciliation (in order to reconcile one obviously needs to listen and heal), they are three separate strands in the foundation’s work and many people come here following one particular strand.

It is difficult to write this, because I do not want to embarrass either you or me by being too personal. Let me just explain a little of how I came to spend the day here. There is a small prayer group which crosses two benefices in different deaneries  in order to pray for the needs of those in our valley, a more primeval form of community than the modern divisions of the Church of England, as well as the wider needs of the Church and the world. I was invited to join the group a year or so ago and was told that it was the group’s custom to make an annual visit to Whitehill. The appointed day duly arrived, and with little idea of what was in store, I joined my fellow pray-ers (not sure that we quite see ourselves as warriors).
The first thing about the day is that it was very unstructured. I thought perhaps there would be lectures, but instead we were greeted with some excellent strong coffee, and left to explore the grounds, sit around and chat or visit the bookshop. The only fixed point of the day was the service in the chapel (see illustration).  There was space, the luxury of allowing for serendipity, as a secular world would say, or the operation of the Holy Spirit, as others might describe it. Time and space were allowed for something – or nothing – to happen. Most days here are more packed with content than this, as a glance at their busy programme shows. But I really appreciated this flexibility.

Again, I have to be personal and say that the service itself was something  of a shock to the system. In my youth, I  -like many others- explored Hindu mysticism, Ouspensky and Sufism (well, it was the 1960s). But I never explored other Christian denominations or, indeed, any other way of being Anglican other than the middle-of-the-candle churchmanship of my upbringing. This was the first eucharist I had ever attended led by a Charismatic Evangelical (the Revd Christine Knifton). I found the service disturbing. (That is not necessarily a criticism, of course – I am sure Saul would have described his experience on the road to Tarsus as profoundly disturbing). I am still trying to work out several days later what I found difficult about it and why I am unable simply to dismiss it as just ‘another way of doing God’. One of the aspects which I do need to absorb is how different not just the practices, but the ramifications of the faith, are from my own, and yet we are all members of the Church of England.  The most striking example of this was the wording: ‘the body of Christ, broken just for you‘ (in my tradition, Christ died for us all, not individually).

This is what the foundation says about itself:

Invitation to Healing

This is an invitation to go on a journey into wholeness with God. Approximately 5000 people a year come to the safe surroundings of Whitehill Chase, the HQ of the Acorn Christian Healing Foundation to find the healing that they have been searching for. We have seen lives changed and healed and set free as a result.

Healing is an invitation to go on a journey into wholeness with God. People from all walks of life have come to the safe surroundings of Acorn Christian Healing Foundation to find the healing that they have been searching for.

Safe Place

We offer a safe place to just be and we have seen lives change as a result of participation in our services, retreats, training and quiet days.

Trained Ministry Team

We have a trained Ministry Team from all denominations who are there to listen to you and to pray with you if that’s something you would like.

Acorn is a safe place to be. All of the team are CRB-checked and have a wide experience within the healing ministry. We’re very proud of our team and the valuable contribution they make to our Healing Ministry.

If you would like to request specific prayer ministry, please contact us to make an appointment.

Providing Spiritual Care

Our Chaplaincy Project mission is about supporting the NHS mandate to provide spiritual care. We are already working with organisations like Whole Care and Christian hospitals such as Burrswood to establish chaplaincy within professional health care.

We provide the tools for chaplaincy through development and active listening training, given by our 1000+ Tutors and Listeners throughout the UK.

We have demonstrated that listening support helps people recover faster and better from their trauma. Now we want the whole of the NHS to benefit from this care resource.

I am particularly struck by the expression ‘safe’ in this connection. Though I imagine it is meant in the context of CRB checks etc, as I was brought up on the works of C S Lewis, I cannot resist quoting from ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’:

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver.”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

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You can find out more from the website

The Rt Revd James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, has written a heartfelt and heartening book about the psalms. The word play is catching, as both title and text play on the literal and metaphorical meaning of the word ‘heart’. Bishop James may perhaps be forgiven for this as he was inspired to write the book during his preparation for, and recuperation from, a heart operation in June 2011. Turning for spiritual sustenance to the psalms in the Book of Common Prayer, he found references to the heart in 71 of the 150 psalms. This book contains his ‘musings’ on these psalms.

He writes well, mostly in simple prose but at times his language soars. He had me hooked in his fifth paragraph, with

‘the Book of Common Prayer, whose poetry adds fathoms to their theological depth’.

That ‘adds fathoms’ is masterly: I knew I was in for a treat.

 Not a book about the psalms

This is not, however a book about the psalms. Its scope is much more wide-ranging than that. It is a book for anyone who asks: ‘Tell me, how should I live?’ The author offers his own ten reasons for belief in God (pp xi-xiii), all beginning with the letter ‘c’. He then goes on to suggest ideas for living a Christian life, our relationship with God, and our worship.  In some ways, it is simply a book about prayer. I am tempted to say that the book is ‘deceptively simple’. It must be difficult to write such a book, if you are a bishop, without sounding preachy or patronising. That he succeeds in this is, I think, partly due to his honesty and humility in describing his fears around the heart operation. It reads like a letter from a friend. You will not need to look any words up in a dictionary, but nor do you feel he is talking down to you. It is full of  (to me) new insights. One example (p.6):

The character of God feels to me at times as if it were kept under a soundproof blanket. Just as well! He shudders in indignation at the unjust desecration of his creation and at the wanton destruction of any of his creatures. Yet we do not hear it. For if God did not contain his pain and remain silent, which of us could bear to hear the roar of outrage that would deafen our universe? We often bemoan the silence of God, but perhaps it is the necessary and merciful condition of our survival in a world traumatized by evil and flawed by sin.

I think Bishop James’s undoubted gifts as a communicator, both oral and written, probably explain his early career as a teacher. Schoolboys are notoriously less polite than congregations as an audience, and this experience must have honed these skills. Here is a short extract from something he said which will give you a flavour of what I mean:

Enigmas and Riddles

Like all good teachers, Bishop James raises more questions than he gives answers. The book cover itself, designed by Sarah Smith, is an enigma. Does it depict this book, which we are recommended for holiday reading on a beach? Or does it hint at that bourne from which no traveller returns, starting point and inspiration for the author’s meditation on the psalms? Perhaps both, perhaps neither. You decide.

Cor ad Cor Loquitur

In 2010 the Pope took as the theme for his visit to Britain Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur (Heart shall speak unto heart). The phrase was said in the Catholic Herald to be a description of the personal relationship between God and man achieved through prayer. This is what Bishop James Jones offers us in his new book, which I highly recommend.

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To be published by SPCK on 17 May. The publisher says:

The heart is mentioned over seventy times in the psalms. It is the focus for the whole range of human emotion, from praise to lament, wisdom to wickedness. As they speak to the heart and of the heart, the psalms reveal to us the heights and depths possible in our relationship with God. 

When he had major heart surgery, the Bishop of Liverpool turned to the psalms in the Book of  Common Prayer as he wrestled with his fears and struggled through his convalescence. In this beautiful book, each mention of the heart in the psalms is quoted and followed by a reflection arising out of the Bishop’s daily meditations and a suggestion for prayer. These reflections are for all who at any time have found themselves reaching out for faith.

My grandmother never actually said this to me. But it was the leitmotiv of her life, thanks to which she lived to be 99 years old. I know half a dozen other nonagenarians, and they all have this in common: they do not dwell on the global economic downturn, global warming, or why that Mrs Jones down the road is such a bitch has a less than sunny disposition. They pour themselves another gin, play another rubber of bridge or go for a walk. They live without passion of any sort (well, they are in their nineties) but this includes love and hate. They are not passionately for or passionately against anything. They do not discuss politics, religion or sex, or indeed any other topic about which anyone might feel strongly. They do not show feelings in public (the mantra of this class is ‘No PDA’ – no Public Display of Affection).  To do so would be bad form. They do not weep in public, or ever evince any pain or self-pity. They offer no sympathy (beyond the most formal expression), and they shudder at the thought of sympathy being shown to them. By definition, they are not needy.

Of course, by the time my grandmother and her kind are in their nineties, they probably are needy, if only physically. For them this is the hardest part of old age, that they have to accept help from others and allow chinks to appear in their armour.

I sometimes think my kind of Anglican is like this. I have just learned that I am technically a liberal Anglo-Catholic – I have always thought of myself as plain old CofE but now see that there are many strands of worshippers who all self-identify as Church of England but whose worshipping style – and beliefs- are very different. Yesterday I attended (and will post about separately) a communion service led by a Charismatic Evangelical. My knee-jerk reaction was to wince at the emotional incontinence, but a part of me – normally severely repressed- also responded.

I think I could happily make the transition to The Episcopal Church (TEC) and feel at home. I was brought up to think that good manners are all-important, and TEC is above all the home of good manners: ‘After you’; ‘No, after you’. ‘No cake until you have had the bread and butter’. And so on.

But word reaches me that these good manners may stand in the way of common sense at the TEC General Convention to be held from July 5-12 in Indianapolis: agreeing with me that the current ‘sorry state of things entire’ of the Anglican Covenant is such that it definitely counts as unpleasant, and being unwilling to intrude on private grief,  some say it might be best not to discuss it all, and simply sweep it under the carpet.

Siren voices! Please, fellow Anglicans, do not listen to them! We have managed in the Church of England, diocesan synod by painful diocesan synod, to reject it. But the Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion regards this as merely a little local difficulty. Is he burying his head in the sand like the man in the YouTube video which illustrates this post? That is a matter of opinion.

But my fellow members of the Church of England and I are looking for a lead on this from The Episcopal Church. Please do not let us down!

Last week we knew where we were: sheep and shepherds again. This week the lectionary is all over the place – first a story about Philip being sent by an angel of the Lord off to Gaza to baptise a eunuch and then being whisked off by the Spirit of the Lord to Azotus for the next task. (An apostle’s work is never done). Then the first epistle of John (he who loves God should love his brother also).  The psalm is about worshipping God and John’s gospel is about us bearing much fruit if we are the branches of the vine that is Christ.

“Background

Anglican Communion:

• Lay Anglicana respectfully suggests that, since during the next Archbishop of Canterbury’s term of office, there will almost certainly  be a demand from Provinces throughout the Communion for the role of ‘primus inter pares’ (not head) to rotate amongs the various Primates, which should in our view be welcomed by the Church of England, the elusive ability to unite the various factions within the Communion (which we doubt any human being possesses) should not be a criterion.

The Church of England:

• Traditionally, Cantuar has been chosen alternately from the ranks of the Evangelical wing and the Anglo-Catholics. We urge a departure from this tradition, with the choosing of a candidate who, whatever his personal traditions, sees himself first of all as a follower of Jesus whose role is to harness the various groups within the Church into a more effective proclamation of the Gospel through Mission and Ministry.

Beliefs and Qualities

• As the number of paid clergy declines, Lay Anglicana hopes very much for the appointment of an Archbishop of Canterbury who sees the need for the empowerment  and further training of the laity, with a view to increasing their role in the leadership of the Church, and rejects the alternative of closing churches for lack of ordained priests.
• As the Church has voted overwhelmingly in diocesan synods and General Synod for the raising of women priests to the episcopate, and also against the Anglican Communion Covenant, the next Cantuar, in our view,  needs to be drawn from the ranks of those bishops who are not opposed to women bishops, but who are opposed to the Covenant.
• In this media age, it is desirable that the next Archbishop of Canterbury should be a skilled communicator, reaching out beyond our congregations to all the people of this land with political sensitivity, being prepared also to listen. He also needs the presence and clerical skills to officiate at great state occasions, in fulfilment of his role as Primate of the established Church of the nation.
• In line with this, the candidate needs to be open to Indaba amongst his own people, fostering peaceful – and loving- coexistence amongst the disparate groups, while remaining open to constructive change. He needs the philosophy of Hooker’s [three-legged stool]  ‘scripture, reason and tradition’ as well as the  Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral as his guides. We would hope that his aim would be to lead an inclusive Church, pastorally and culturally sensitive to all.
• He will need a spiritual and mental robustness to deal with all that he is likely to face. “

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The icon is of Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine - seemed a kinder role model than Thomas a Becket or Cranmer!

The expression ‘three-legged stool’ was removed on advice (see comments) and the phrase in red type was substituted.

This is not a post about candidates: Lay Anglicana has a mental short list but does not wish to jinx their chances by mentioning their names. This is a post about the ‘person specification’ of the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

The present archbishop, Rowan Williams, is very clear on the qualities needed: “the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros.” We can perhaps all agree that the constitution of an ox is needed to fulfil the present job specification, which we examined earlier and considered how it might be simplified in order to lighten the burden on the incumbent. If the job description cannot be fulfilled by one human being, then the appointee is being set up for failure, an appalling prospect both for the individual concerned but also for the Church of England. I suggest the first task for Archbishop Rowan’s successor is the rationalisation of his ‘To Do’ list.

As you will know, the Crown Nominations Commission, responsible for choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury, is asking for submissions from all and sundry (my paraphrase, but it is clear that the laity are included). Anyone who does not respond to this invitation loses, I suggest, the right to criticise subsequently. I urge you to submit your own thoughts to the CNC but, if you would rather, Lay Anglicana is proposing to put in a joint submission in the next few days (we only have until the end of the month).

I suggested in a previous post that the CNC should begin by asking candidates this question (Who is the Church of England for?) before proceeding any further with the interview. As well as their answers, the reactions of the candidates may reveal more than they intend. For me the answer is that the Church exists in order to encourage and enable people to worship God. At times the Church appears to believe (like many an ossified bureaucracy before it) that the Church exists in order to serve itself.

In no particular order – this can be sorted out at the drafting stage – I suggest the following qualities are needed:

• NOT the skin of a rhinoceros. The problem with the present regime is that, feeling beleaguered , it has responded by battening down the hatches and trying to ride out the storm by ignoring it. Whatever happened to Indaba at Lambeth Palace? I suggest a series of ‘vicarage tea parties’ at which problems could be aired and discussed – ad infinitum. The right response from the occupant of Lambeth is a Clintonesque ‘I hear you and I feel your pain’, while repeating the provisions of the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral to himself daily, along with his morning prayers: the different wings of the Church of England, like the Anglican Communion, cannot be magically united – the aim must be peaceful (and if possible loving) co-existence.
• NOT alternating Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical. We need a candidate who embraces both (they do exist).
• NOT a bishop who is personally wedded to the Anglican Covenant. Since the Covenant has been defeated in diocesan synods, we need someone who has not spoken resolutely in favour of the Covenant.
• NOT a bishop who is resolutely against the raising of women to the episcopate (which was overwhelmingly supported in diocesan synods)

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The State of the Church

Lay Presidency

‘Only priests can do this’

Harnessing the energies of our laity

To baptize is incomparably greater than to consecrate bread and wine, for it is the greatest office in the church — the proclamation of the Word of God. So when women baptize, they exercise the function of priesthood legitimately, and do it not as a private act, but as a part of the public ministry of the church which belongs only to the priesthood. (‘Concerning the Ministry’, LW 40:23)

What holds me back

The need to empower the whole people of God

“Whatever happens, we have got

the Maxim gun — and they have not.’

The system is surely in need of renewal

There have been several ‘macro-projects’ in recent years to allow the perpetrator and the victim the chance to meet, offer and accept repentance, offer and accept forgiveness and to heal. At a national level, probably the best known is South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. At a local level, arrangements are often made for the criminal and victim to meet under a system of restorative justice, first tried in the US   in the 1970s.

But now it’s personal. A friend of mine from Empire Avenue, Shawne Duperon, had two friends. In one of those appalling twists of fate, there was a car crash involving the two in which one killed the wife and two children of the other. In that situation, what can a true friend possibly say or do? Well, Shawne is an Emmy award-winning television producer, so she decided to make a film about forgiveness, so touched was she by the degree of forgiveness shown by the victim to the perpetrator.

This is of course not the film. This is to whet your appetite and perhaps solicit your help in order for the film to be made. Project Forgive is seeking funding for the film through Kickstarter, and has until 8:33 a.m., Monday, April 23, 2012, to raise $100,000. Maybe you can help them raise the last few dollars? As I write, they need a further thirteen thousand dollars by Monday. But, irrespective of that, I urge you to visit the Project Forgive site and explore this heart-warming idea, which has every chance of being put into practice.

Finally, this is an example of the redemptive power of social media. People may join Empire Avenue, Twitter and Facebook out of what they perceive to be pure self-interest, and to market their widgets. But, although a tiny minority stick resolutely to this egocentric attitude, the vast majority learn to share their toys, look out for each other, and say please and thank-you in a way they should have known how to do since going into a school playground. But somehow, getting and spending, it is all too easy to forget how good it feels to work together on a common goal,  help someone up when they stumble, share a joke, and in short think of the world outside oneself as the focus, think altruistically.

Here Facebook, Empire Avenue, Twitter and You Tube (or rather their users) have set up a virtuous circle  in which people are sharing their ideas, energy, enthusiasm and prayers. And of course their money as well (the Good Samaritan wouldn’t have been able to do much without his two coins). My heart lifts to be the most minor of cogs in this wonderful network.

Shawne, Kimberly, Teresa and all the team, I salute you!

Chick-Theology?

The Revd Rosemary Lain-Priestly has written a very clever book. Clever because it hides its erudition, and draws its readers in by an appealing cover and blurb which are surely aimed at women, not specifically Christian, but seekers after the truth. Not Chick-Lit, but Chick-Theology perhaps, or Seeker Theology?

This is understandable, since the author is Dean of Women’s Ministry for the Two Cities Area in the Diocese of London. She talks about some of her concerns here:

 Psychotherapy suffused by God?

But I am not sure whether this book should primarily be categorised as theology at all. It is almost a self-help book on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and reminds me very much of Jung’s ‘Modern Man in Search of a Soul‘ (1933), the book which has influenced me most in this area. And there are elements of Gail Sheehy’s ‘Passages’ (1976). Of course, as there is nothing new under the sun these echoes are not really surprising. The main thing Rosemary Lain-Priestly brings to the discussion is that her work is suffused with the presence of God. The reason I say it is not primarily theology is because the focus is on us as human beings rather than on God. But the way she thinks and writes is God-inspired because God is clearly central to the way she lives and breathes, and hence the way she describes the  life issues that we face.

How Big is your Soul?

I had not previously considered this question and I suppose, if asked, would have said that I thought the size of my soul was fixed, probably at birth, like the rest of me. But the author makes us see this differently:

…in all of our projects and dreams there is the potential to discover the life of God under the skin of the world, pointing to the significance, meaning and purpose of our own lives. When we try to do this consistently throughout the days, months and years, we are increasing in ourselves the capacity to feel and experience God in our bodies, our relationships and in the opportunities of our lives…Mark Oakley has suggested that ‘God is in the world as poetry is in the poem’. (p.53)

A New Friend?

Another reason I describe this as a clever book is that she makes me feel I have found a new friend. She thinks the way I think, rather like a magpie who finds treasure after treasure in poetry and prose, brings them back to the nest, cleans and polishes them, and then re-presents them to her audience. Quotations from the bible bubble up inside her as naturally do quotations from other sources, and she uses them all to make sense of the universe in which she finds herself. As we share the same universe – in all essentials – I don’t think you would have any difficulty in reading her book at one sitting, although various events at home have meant I have been unable to do this.

In reading this, I felt that I was having a conversation over a glass of wine at the kitchen table, with the children safely in bed and a husband away. With no need to hurry, we talked late into the night.

I recommend this book whole-heartedly to all women, of any age, with enquiring minds and a sense of wonder.
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What the publisher says:

There are big questions in life that most of us come up against at some stage or other. They may look something like this:

• Does my life have a point?
• Do things really have to change?
• Am I happy enough?
• Will I ever be ‘in’ with the ‘in crowd’?
• Where on earth is home?

It’s up to us to choose how we deal with these issues. We can push them away by letting ourselves become so busy and distracted that we drown them out. Or we can face them full on, and start exploring the deepest possibilities of our lives. The latter is what Does My Soul Look Big in This? aims to help us do. Warm and accessible, it’s a book for a generation unafraid to be vulnerable; for people longing for a spirituality that is relevant and real.

In February I wrote a post called ‘House Group for the Global Village (Join Lay Anglicana for Lent)’: this is the follow-up.

At the bridge table, after a hand there is often a post-mortem, but it is understandable that after every military exercise the similar process is instead called ‘a wash-up’. For some reason, the Americans prefer the expression ‘hotwash’ (perhaps they have been at too many British cold water versions?). At any rate, the military version traditionally begins with: ‘What Went Well’*.

So what went well with our online house group, that is to say the discussion in the Lay Anglicana forum of Mark’s gospel, using Tom Wright’s Lent for Everyone?

• It happened. Every day, the extract from Tom Wright’s book appeared in a forum post, together with his version of the text. This was thanks to 12 Baskets and SPCK, who had exceptionally given permission for the text to be made available in this way (in the interests of copyright, we will retroactively condense these extracts once the discussions are over). Ernie Feasey, a joint organiser of  Lay Anglicana who is studying for the priesthood (and a fellow Digidisciple) wrote his own commentary every day, in which he teased out the words of the gospel and Wright’s commentary, and offered a few insights of his own. He also posed a question every day for us to answer.
• It was useful to be able to supplement our own comments with input from the Big Read 12 Facebook page, which we in turn contributed to, and from the Big Bible Project – Big Read website.
• The ‘usual suspects’ who were already regular contributors to the forum took part: lay Anglicans like Ernie, Joyce, Charlie Farns-Barns and me. But we also had contributions from priests, in particular fellow Digidisciple Dr George Morley whose latest post was cross-referred in the forum: she also became a regular and provided a useful trained eye, if she won’t mind the description. And we had contributions from several new people, including one from New York City and one from an American living in China. We had no trolls or other vexatious persons.
• There have been 413 posts so far – Tom Wright’s commentary extends throughout Easter Week, so we are not through yet.
• It has been a good bonding exercise for those taking part, and a good Lenten discipline having to read (and where possible comment) every day.

What Went Wrong?

• Nothing really went wrong! But one or two unforeseen things happened…
• We ran into difficulties when one of the contributors objected that Mark’s description of the Pharisees was anti-Semitic. This was an unexpected point, and the contributor was not just making an intellectual point, (s)he seemed genuinely indignant. I put out a plea on twitter for help from someone more versed in biblical knowledge and one person, thank goodness, replied  in the forum. Unfortunately, the original complainant did not return. Two of my priestly friends offered help and advice on twitter, but did not put their comments on the forum. I was better informed as a result, but would have felt uneasy about lifting their twitter comments (which are ephemeral) and copying them to the forum, where they are likely to have a considerably longer cyber-life. I think that the default netiquette position is probably that it is wrong to do this, certainly without permission? What do you think?
• The other slight hurdle we faced was a distinct flagging of energy around the fourth Sunday of Lent. This must be a general problem, because the Church has already come up with a solution: it is called Rose Sunday or Refreshment Sunday or Laetare Sunday. But we rallied, recovered our energy and continued.

Would I do it again?

Yes, absolutely. Would others join me? I hope so!

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The illustration, called ‘Journey of Faith in God’ is by David Perry via 12 Baskets and he asks that this text accompany it: ”Imagining the Lectionary: Impassable, impossible or imperative – the improbable pathway to Easter and beyond”

* The leader of our Lent group offers this explanation of military exercises in general and the house group exercise as a whole:

Yes, flagging at the fourth Sunday, is correct. It’s interesting that at the start, I was excited to wake and to go to the forum, to read the latest episode (a bit like following a good serial drama on TV). I’ve found it easy to follow my instinct in what I draw from the verses and text, rather than try to seek some deep theological things to say.  Perhaps writing from the heart best describes it.

I’ve found the feedback useful and helpful and while not trying to be provocative, I have sometimes stretched my posts in slightly  different directions, from Tom Wright’s guidance.  It’s been empowering to draw on life experiences to illustrate some of my points.

I would definitely do it again.

And, just a trivial observation, we ex-military types after an exercise have a ‘Hot-Debrief’ followed by a thought through ‘post-exercise (or ‘post-operational’) report (PXR) (POR) where we do a detailed study of what went right and what went wrong and what we can do to get it right next time.  I wouldn’t decry the American experience as a hot wash after a long exercise or operation seems a most neighbourly thing to do, as BO can be a factor in all of it.

Those whose mother tongue is Arabic sometimes say rather smugly that no one else can truly understand the Koran, for they have to read it in translation. Those who say that the Bible is the literal word of God need perhaps also to take this into consideration: unless they can read and understand the Bible in its original Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, they are having to rely on the translations and interpretations of others. The Italians say ‘traduttore=traditore‘, in other words ‘a translator is a traitor‘. This is perhaps an overly dramatic way of expressing the problem, but problem there is.

Choosing a Bible

Just in my lifetime there have been an enormous number of new translations of the bible. Arguably the main Protestant ones have been:

• RSV Revised Standard Version (1952)
• NEB New English Bible (1961-NT)
• GNT Good News Bible (1976)
• NIV New International Version (1978)
• NRSV New Revised Standard Version (1989)
• CEV Contemporary English Version (1995)
• MSG The Message (2002)

Why do you read the bible? When do you read the bible? And when do you hear the bible?

Depending on how you answer these questions, there will be a bible version to suit you.  To take my choices as an example – (though others will obviously choose differently): why do I read the bible? Well, why did Popeye eat his spinach? I don’t mean to be facetious, but for me the bible is meat, drink and spiritual sustenance.

Whether I am listening to the bible being read in church, or whether I am alone reading it for the inspiration of its message and beauty of its language, I very much prefer the Revised Standard Version or, for the best-loved passages, the King James version itself.

Study Bibles

However, many of us also read the bible together in a house group, or study it on our own, teasing out the meaning. This is when some of the newer versions come into their own. Particularly in the Old Testament, but also occasionally in the New, it is all too easy to get hung up on a particular phrase whose meaning is obscure and spend a long time pondering its meaning. Instead, I suggest you take a leap. A leap of faith, if you like, in the translators who have laboured long to bring you the meaning of the text.

There is always ‘The Message‘, by Eugene Peterson. A previous reviewer of ‘The Voice’ compares the two:

It makes me think a little of The Message, and I like The Message… The Message was never intended to be read as The Word of God but as something to get people excited about God’s word and help them to think about it in today’s language. Eugene Peterson was quoted as saying, “When I’m in a congregation where somebody uses [The Message] in the Scripture reading, it makes me a little uneasy. I would never recommend it be used as saying, “Hear the Word of God from The Message.” But it surprises me how many do!” On the cover of The Voice it says, STEP INTO THE STORY OF SCRIPTURE. See it as just that, and I like it, see it as the STORY of Scripture. Use it to inspire you to dig deeper into The Word, but don’t use it as your only source for God’s Word.

What ‘The Voice’ translation of the New Testament offers, and the reason I am now adopting it as my own study bible, is that it is so readable. Although there is a reading plan at the beginning, allowing you to complete it in a set period, you could just as easily settle down to read it like any other book. The reason for its readability is that, whereas most translations attempt to even out the styles of the different authors in sentence structure and vocabulary, The Voice leaves the individual ‘voice’ to come through. And its narrative carries you on.

The editorial team included established writers, as well as biblical scholars, and together they have achieved a fluent whole. Where a dialogue is being described, the text appears as a playlet (allowing study groups easily to replicate the events as they must have occurred in real life, rather than as part of the narrative of a story.)

I recommend strongly that you try it.

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The publishers, Thomas Nelson and the Ecclesia Bible Society, say:

Description

The Voice™  Bible translation is a faithful dynamic translation of the Scriptures done as a collage of compelling narratives, poetry, song, truth, and wisdom. The Voice calls the reader to step into the whole story of Scripture and experience the joy and wonder of God’s revelation. Created for and by a church in great transition, The Voice uniquely represents collaboration among scholars, pastors, writers, musicians, poets, and other artists, giving great attention to the beauty of the narrative. The heart of The Voice is retelling the story of the Bible in a form as fluid as modern literary works yet remaining painstakingly true to the original manuscripts. This translation promotes the public reading of longer sections of Scripture—followed by thoughtful engagement with the biblical narrative in its richness and fullness and dramatic flow…

Features include:

• Italicized information added to help contemporary readers understand what the original readers would have known intuitively
• In-text commentary notes include cultural, historical, theological, or devotional thoughts
• Screenplay format, ideal for public readings and group studies
• Book introductions

Have you, like me, been meaning to get around to signing the petition on the imposition of VAT on building work on listed buildings, particularly churches?

In the 2012 budget, the Chancellor proposed removing the zero rating of VAT on alterations to listed buildings. This will add up to 20% extra cost on every listed building that wants to upgrade, and so will threaten the future of our nation’s heritage.

For Wakefield Cathedral at an early stage of work in a restoration project of national significance, it is a disaster. It imposes a cost we cannot meet and work will have to end.

This is a small-minded change from a Big Society Government and must be stopped. Please join us to help preserve our heritage and sign this petition now.

Wait no longer – you would have to have a heart of stone to resist Wakefield Cathedral’s secret weapon in this campaign – and you don’t have hearts of stone, do you?  Although admittedly not the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Pamela Greener, wife of the Dean of Wakefield, has the advantage (a) of being real flesh and blood and (b) an unstoppable force in full attack on the usually immoveable object of Her Majesty’s Treasury. On this occasion, my money is on the unstoppable force.

She has combined with two other, probably equally formidable, women to form ‘Greener Gals’:

Working with your church …
GREENER GALS are helping to raise funds for the development project at Wakefield Cathedral. One way we are doing this is by putting on concerts in churches around the diocese. We ask you to provide a venue and an audience – and perhaps puddings for the interval or wine and cheese. We print posters, tickets, and programmes, and come and perform (bringing with us all the necessary keyboards, amplification, etc.)
And we agree in advance how we are going to split the takings. It’s worked well as a formula so far – it’s a really good way for parishes to support the Cathedral and raise funds for their own good causes. And people have a great evening out. If this idea might work in your church, please get in touch.

PAMELA GREENER was born and brought up in Cornwall, and started playing the piano by ear at the age of two. She read music at Oxford, where she had a brief encounter with the organ, winning a bet by playing Widor’s Toccata. A career in accountancy and tax followed, but she has always loved playing the flute and piano, and writing light music. She is delighted to have teamed up with Carole and Sue to form GREENER GALS.

At a GREENER GALS concert, there will always be a piano solo of some kind, and some of Pamela’s own compositions and songs. Recent favourites include her take on the present political situation (The Ballad of the British Bulldog) and the more intimate song written for her husband on Valentine’s Day (Wind in the Pillows).

You have to feel sorry for George Osborne – he doesn’t stand a chance!

Save our heritage: say no to VAT on work on listed buildings

As the lady says, she doesn’t give up easily. Here is a second part to this ditty, uploaded on 24 April:

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I have never met, not had any contact with, Pamela Greener. The Church of England tweeted in a very understated way this afternoon:

CofE YouTube song calls on Government to bring back #zero rate introduction of VAT on alterations to listed buildings 

Intrigued by the Church of England promoting a ‘YouTube song’ I followed the link, and was enchanted by what I found. I hope you will be too.

Today’s gospel reading from Mark tells us about a woman who anointed the head of Christ with balm made from the essence of spikenard, a plant illustrated  above (Nardostachys grandiflora). The version in Matthew’s gospel, like Mark’s, emphasises that this ointment was very expensive, but for Luke, the gesture was also physically extravagant as the woman first wet the feet of Jesus  with her tears and then dried them with her hair.  And John tells us that the woman was Mary Magdalen and that the scent filled the whole house. ¹

So, what is the message here? Well, it has been said that:

This sounds heartfelt: Emily Dickinson sounded equally heartfelt when she focused on the physical and emotional cost of producing essential oils such as the spikenard:

Essential Oils are wrung:
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns alone
It is the gift of Screws.

The same can be said of much great art. As Bill Nighy’s character said of Vincent Van Gogh in an episode of Dr. Who:

He transformed the pain of his life into ecstatic beauty.

Vincent himself said:

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion, then I go out and paint the stars.

If there are sermons in stones, there are many more in plants:

Hildegaard of Bingen was a twelfth-century mystic, composer, and author of a theology that knitted together nature and spirit, cosmos and soul. She described the Holy Spirit as the Greening Power of God. Just as plants are greened, so we are as well. As we grow up, our spark of life continually shines forth. If we ignore this spark, this greening power, we become thirsty and shrivelled. And if we respond to the spark, we flower. Our task is to flower, to come into full blossom before our time comes to an end.
Lauren Artress,‘Walking a Sacred Path’

So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Let every Christian be a gardener so that he and she and the whole of creation, which groans in expectation of the Spirit’s final harvest, may inherit Paradise. If we Christians truly treasure the hope that one day we, like Adam and the penitent thief, will walk alongside the One who caused even the dead wood of the Cross to blossom with flowers, then we must also imitate the Master’s art and make the desolate earth grow green. Vigen Guroian, ‘Inheriting Paradise’

God and Man together produce all that is in nature – God provides the seed, the earth, the light & warmth, and the rain. Man provides the cultivation – weeding and pruning, harvesting and -here- distilling into essential oil. It is a symbiotic relationship which forms a virtuous circle:

What does it all mean? Well, for Julian of Norwich it was all about God’s love:

And in this He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.

And so we return to the story we began with, of the extravagance of Mary Magdalen’s gesture. Her response to the love of God was not to measure out her balm in careful teaspoonfuls but to pour out the whole contents , echoing the words of Isaac Watts in one of his best-known hymns: ’When I survey the wondrous cross’:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an off’ring far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

¹ Matthew 26.6-13, Mark 14.3-11, Luke 7:36-8:3 and John 12.1-11

2. Esmeralda in ‘The Ship of Fools’

I have just noticed something very odd. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York,  the bishops and others who supported the introduction of the Anglican Covenant all protested undying love for the Anglican Communion. The Communion, they said, is so important to us, the Church of England, that it is worth any petty sacrifice that may be necessary in order to maintain it as a united body.

Really? Then why is there no commemoration of the Anglican Communion in the Church of England Calendar? Let us look at the shortest month, February. As the rubric explains:

In the printing of the Calendar, Principal Feasts and other Principal Holy Days are printed in bold; Festivals are printed in roman typeface; other Sundays and Lesser Festivals are printed in ordinary roman typeface, in black. Commemorations are printed in italics.

This follows the pattern of the rest of the year. Out of 27 events celebrated by the Church, there are seven commemorations and five festivals. I know you have heard of George Herbert and St Valentine, but are Cyril and Methodius household names? I think not. What about Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg? Unknown, I would suggest, to the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus. And yet they merit a place in our calendar. Please do not misunderstand. I do not begrudge these worthies their annual 24 hours of fame. I merely think it odd that the Anglican Communion is not similarly commemorated.

After all the unhappiness of the last few years, wrangling over successive drafts of the Covenant, let us now move on as swiftly as possible to strengthening ties around and among the Communion.

I suggest that we do this by identifying a day in the calendar on which we could celebrate the Anglican Communion, preferably as a festival. For a date, we could do worse than combine it with the festival of Richard Hooker, described as ‘Anglican Apologist, Teacher of the Faith’, and essentially the first person to give shape and identity to Anglicanism as a comprehensive and tolerant theology. This would be 3rd November, which this year falls on a Saturday.

And secondly, we need a liturgy for a commemorative service on the day. Anticipating a lengthy argument if the Covenant is anything to go by, I suggest a form of readings, prayers and hymns somewhat like an ordinary memorial service. Prayers from the prayer books used by all the Churches in the Communion could form an anthology from which people could devise their own services, using their reason and local tradition of course.

One hymn we surely must include is:

The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,

The darkness falls at Thy behest;

To Thee our morning hymns ascended,

Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

 

We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping,

While earth rolls onward into light,

Through all the world her watch is keeping,

And rests not now by day or night.

 

As o’er each continent and island

The dawn leads on another day,

The voice of prayer is never silent,

Nor dies the strain of praise away.

 

The sun that bids us rest is waking

Our brethren ’neath the western sky,

And hour by hour fresh lips are making

Thy wondrous doings heard on high.

 

So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,

Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:

Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,

Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.

But if you would rather have something by Graham Kendrick, please go ahead!

Benny Hazlehurst has laid the Covenant to rest (without adding the now customary ‘And rise in glory’:)

There are those who are still trying to pretend that the Covenant is still alive, desperately trying to breathe life into its limp body, while claiming still to feel the faintest pulse.  They are mistaken. What is needed now is to recognise the will of the Synodical process, and express deep and sincere thanks to those who genuinely tried to find a way forward for the Anglican Communion in the form of a Covenant – and to let it now Rest in Peace. Having led hundreds of funerals since my ordination over 20 years ago, I know that the best funerals are those where the mourners gather to say a loving good bye – and the worst are those where the grievers meet in a kind of desperate denial. For the good intentions of those who tried to square this circle, the Anglican Covenant deserves a good funeral which will enable us all to move on and find new ways of living together as the living Anglican Body of Christ.

Bishop Alan has poured scorn on attempts to resuscitate the corpse (the Covenant – not the Church as a whole, which may actually be rejuvenated by events).

The Fulcrum website appears to recognise that the game is over, at least for now. First Andrew Goddard,

  It is also the case that General Synod cannot reconsider the Act during this Synod. It would be open to the new Synod, elected in 2015, to again request the dioceses to approve a draft Act of Synod adopting the covenant or consider an alternative way of the Church of England adopting it.  However, unless there are significant changes in the text of the covenant or strong evidence of a serious change of mind within the wider church (perhaps if most provinces do adopt it and we are a small minority refusing), both of these paths would appear unwise.

and then Bishop Graham Kings

…The Covenant was designed as a ‘web of mutuality’ across the Anglican Communion: a balance of provincial autonomy with world-wide interdependence and accountability. The Covenant sets out an orderly process towards the resolutions of conflicts to replace the chaotic, hastily arranged meetings of the past, which too often have led to a barrage of curses and contested statements. Tragically, last Saturday, the Covenant was voted down in three dioceses of the Church of England and now cannot be debated and voted on in General Synod next July. It needed over half of the 44 dioceses to vote for it positively. So far 23 dioceses have voted no, and 15 yes. Interestingly, the total number of votes, so far, is slightly over half in favour and, amongst the bishops, nearly 80% were in favour.

However, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Office, Canon Kenneth Kearon, put out a statement sounding remarkably like Michael Palin as the unfortunate salesman in the Monty Python dead parrot sketch:

In short, it is dead, but it won’t lie down!

People of Synod! Arise!

Vote For the Covenant!

Vote Against the Covenant!

Vote out of conviction

Vote with your best judgement

Vote for what’s best for the Church

But don’t be rail-roaded!

Don’t be bounced into a vote on the future of the Communion!

You were elected to bring your best judgement to the issues.

Anyone who follows Paul Bagshaw’s ‘Not The Same Stream’ blog knows that he is normally the most restrained and sober of men. But this is an extract from his blog of yesterday, a clarion call in glorious technicolour to the people in the six dioceses who are to vote today and the remaining six who are to vote before the end of April.

Today is the turn of:

Blackburn
Exeter
Guildford
Lincoln
Oxford
Peterborough

Because the voting tally so far is 20 against the Covenant, with only 12 for, it is tempting to project that the outcome of today will be in a similar proportion. Sadly, however, the laws of probability do not work like that.  The reason for this is that, pace the Bishop of Sherborne, the people of the Church of England are much more like marbles than they are like grapes: they do not live, move and have their being in neat, predictable ways.

In situations like this, people have always consulted oracles. The most famous one of ancient times was the one at Delphi, of which Heraclitus said ’it neither reveals nor conceals but gives a sign’. Teenagers since Victorian times have consulted The Ladies’ Oracle, which has now been turned into an Android game. Between the two, many people who were looking for a sign from God to help them come to a decision used to open the Bible at random and light on a verse, equally randomly. This verse would then be read and re-read, looking for illumination.

I had thought these days that I was no longer susceptible to that sort of fatalistic approach to messages from God. Well, life (and God) still have the capacity to surprise. Have you seen the lectionary for tomorrow, the fifth Sunday of Lent? The first reading at the principal service, according to Visual Liturgy, is Jeremiah 31.31-34

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt – a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

The bold emphasis is of course mine, and you may read the passage completely differently. But to me, the message from God could hardly be clearer:

There is no need for a written Covenant, because I will write it in your hearts.

Nor is there any need for you to teach your neighbour how to know me.

 Selecting the next Archbishop of Canterbury

I suggest that the Crown Nominations Commission, responsible for choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury, ask the candidates this question  (Who is the Church of England for?) before proceeding any further with the interview. As well as their answers, the reactions of the candidates may reveal more than they intend. What is your answer? I doubt if it would cause a lay person any problem, but if you ask many clergy this question, they will pause (lost in thought) for a while before responding that the Church exists to serve God.

Classic Pyramidal Structure

An expert on organisational development would take this answer and come up with a proposed structure very like the papacy: a tier of management with God at the top, his vicar on earth (the Pope) next, then the cardinals, bishops and clergy. At the bottom are the lay Catholics in an amorphous mass. The laity, of course, are here represented by the pawns – their function is to support the clergy (and the buildings) and bear their weight.  The structure exists, it would seem, in order to support the Pope and his entourage, who in turn serve God.

The Protestant Management Revolution (The Reformation)

The sixteenth century Protestant movement of northern Europe,  arguably including the Church of England, came about in part because some could no longer accept a human authority figure as the voice of God on earth.

Plenty of Church of England bishops, however, agree with the former Bishop of Durham, Professor N T Wright, that:

A new Archbishop must be allowed to lead. ..Who, after all, is running the Church of England? We have Lambeth Palace, the House of Bishops, General Synod, the Archbishops’ Council, the Anglican Communion Office, and (don’t get me started) the Church Commissioners. How does it all work? In an episcopal church, the bishops should be the leaders. Rowan hasn’t bothered much about structures, but with six hands grabbing at the steering wheel someone now needs to take charge.

A Structure to Serve the ‘People of God’?

I propose a different model, where the Church of England in particular, and the Anglican Communion in general, exist to serve the people of this planet in general, and its adherents in particular. This is based on the ideal put forward by Lord Baden-Powell in the Scouting movement.

The Scoutmaster is the base of a pyramid of shared responsibility and service to the apex of the pyramid; the Scouts. This responsibility (and the attendant authority) flows upward to serve the goal of advancing the aim of scouting.

• Scouts and the youth of the world are the only reason the world Scouting movement exists – and they sit on top of the organization. They are ultimately the most important people in Scouting.

• The volunteers in each National Scout Organization have the greatest influence over the quality of the Scouting programme in their country. These volunteers are responsible for the “care and feeding” of their Scouts and the growth of the Movement.

• The regional volunteers and professional staff are there to provide training, inspiration, and resources that the National Scout Organizations (NSO) need to be effective and successful in their mission.

• And the World Scout Committee, at the bottom of the organization chart, is responsible to provide the resources, vision and global coordination of Scouting around the world, so that the regional leadership and the NSOs can be successful.

I think the job description of the World Scout Committee as being responsible for resources and vision is a good description of the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury. As the Anglican Communion is not a Church, however, it is not appropriate for him to attempt global co-ordination.

The lectionary for today includes Mark 10.42-45:

“And Jesus called them to him and said to them, ‘You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercised authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve”

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The explanation of the Scouting pyramid is by the Chairman of the World Scout Committee at their 39th World Conference in Brazil in 2011.

I am indebted to Charlie Farns-Barns, a member of the Lay Anglicana Forum and subscriber to this blog, for telling me about the pyramid model

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

Not just the Heart’s Desire, but nearer to common sense? Weighed down by the job description demands of doing six different impossible things  before breakfast, the Archbishop of Canterbury is seeking refuge in the presumed sunlit uplands of being a Master in an Oxbridge college. Lay Anglicana wish him well, but suggest he read the works of C P Snow (particularly ‘The Masters‘) before getting up his hopes of a serene retirement.

The next nine months are to be spent by the great and the good in finding a replacement. Is it at all possible before they embark on this gestationary period to re-consider the job description:

Here is my draft description of what the scope of the job should be (always easier to work on someone else’s draft – go to it, chaps!)

1. The Archbishop of Lambeth is also a Metropolitan, having metropolitical jurisdiction throughout the 30 dioceses of the Province of Lambeth. As such, he can conduct formal visitations of those dioceses when necessary. Establishing close links with bishops in his Province is an important part of his work and he visits three dioceses each year. It is a Metropolitan’s responsibility to act as chief consecrator at the consecration of new bishops, grant various permissions, licences and faculties, appoint to parishes where the patron has failed to do so within the prescribed time limits, act as Visitor of various institutions and release, where appropriate, those who have taken religious vows.  He and the Archbishop of York are joint Presidents of the General Synod. The Archbishop of Lambeth is Chairman and the Archbishop of York Vice-Chairman of the House of Bishops and the Crown Nominations Commission.Two Provincial Episcopal Visitors report to the Archbishop in relation to the 163 parishes in the southern province which have petitioned for extended episcopal care under the Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod.

2. As leader of the ‘Church by Law Established’ the Archbishop, in his capacity as Primate of All England, is ‘chaplain to the nation’, classically exemplified at a coronation. More routinely he has regular audiences with the Queen and the Prime Minister, and is frequently in touch with senior Ministers of State and with the Leaders of Opposition Parties. In addition, both Archbishops and 24 other senior bishops have seats in the House of Lords.

3. The Archbishop has a national and international ecumenical role; nationally he is one of the Presidents of Churches Together in England, who provide strategic guidance to ecumenical endeavours.

4. The Archbishop takes the lead in relationships with members of other faith communities both in this country and overseas, reflecting the increasing significance of those communities for the context in which the Church’s mission and ministry take place.

You will notice that I have created (what fun!) a new Archbishopric (of Lambeth). This would operate along the lines of the Vatican, and should not overly interfere with the Bishopric of London, which would completely surround it. This would get rid of one of the many confusions in the Church of England – if the Archbishop of Canterbury is Primate of All England, why is it the Lambeth and not the Canterbury Conference? It would also mean that the incumbent of Dover would become Bishop of Canterbury (which he already, in effect, is). If the Archbishop of ‘Lambeth’ needs his own cathedral, perhaps +London would graciously let him have Westminster Abbey (and make do with St Paul’s). Any other problems you, dear readers, can visualise?

I have also, at a stroke, removed his role as, in effect, head of the Anglican Communion. I suggest that the pattern followed by the Commonwealth is a perfect exemplar and we could do no better than appoint a Canadian to start with, as they did. Any Canadian would do (I would suggest the Ven. Alan Perry, but doubt that he would thank me). It had perhaps better therefore be The Most Revd Frederick James Hilz, commonly known as Fred, if he would accept the post.

That’s it for now – any other ideas to make the task of running the Church of England a feasible one?

””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

Post script:

Writing on the Fulcrum website, Professor N T Wright says:

Rowan’s style has been private and unstrategic. Once, questioned about strategy, he responded crossly ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit!’, seemingly oblivious to the possibility that the Spirit might work through long-term planning. Maybe that’s what we needed then. Certainly nobody doubts that he leads by example in his life of prayer and self-discipline. But we now need consultation, collaboration, and, yes, strategy. Despite routine pessimism, the Church of England isn’t finished. In a sense, it’s just getting going. We need someone with vision and energy to pick up from where Rowan’s charismatic style has led us and to develop and deepen things from there.

A new Archbishop must be allowed to lead. Yes, there are deep divisions. Part of the next Archbishop’s task will be to discern and clarify the difference between the things that really do divide and the things that people believe will do so but which need not. But, at the same time, there are problems of structure and organization that slow things down and soak up energy, problems that can and should be fixed so that the church and its leaders can be released for their mission, and to tackle properly the problems we face.

Who, after all, is running the Church of England? We have Lambeth Palace, the House of Bishops, General Synod, the Archbishops’ Council, the Anglican Communion Office, and (don’t get me started) the Church Commissioners. How does it all work? In an episcopal church, the bishops should be the leaders. Rowan hasn’t bothered much about structures, but with six hands grabbing at the steering wheel someone now needs to take charge. I wouldn’t bet on the Crown Nominations Commission proposing someone with the right combination of spirituality, wisdom and strategic thinking, plus boundless, multi-tasking energy. But that’s what I shall be praying for.

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The illustration is of a list on Archbishops of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral. It was taken by Odeja in 2005 and is from the wikimedia website.

It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

I hope I have remembered that remark by Winston Churchill correctly (no doubt you will let me know otherwise), but it is one of those that is engraved on the memories of the English people, even though I was not alive when he said it.

After tomorrow’s votes on the Anglican Covenant in five more dioceses, we are likely to be able to feel they we have reached the end of the beginning. These are the five: if you are from any of these, and get any news of the vote, the rest of us would be extremely grateful if you would tweet, facebook or similarly broadcast it via carrier pigeon as the rest of us will be on tenterhooks.

Chester: time not known

Ely: time not known

Liverpool: 9.30-12.45

Norwich: time not known

St Albans: 9.30

It is interesting to speculate what effect the resignation of  the Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to have on the outcome. On the one hand, people might feel that they owe him a ‘yes’ vote as evidence of their loyalty. On the other hand, they may feel that if he is not to remain in office during the period when it will need to be implemented, it is not necessary to follow his lead and they will be free to vote according to their own views.

Meanwhile, we are all of us, the Archbishop included, climbing Jacob’s ladder:

Simon Martin is the Training & Resources Officer at the Arthur Rank Centre – the national ecumenical resourcing & network hub for the rural church. He kindly agreed to write a piece for Lay Anglicana on their recent discussions on rural ministry.

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Very recently I’ve attended the latest meeting of the Fresh Expressions Rural Round Table. The theme we returned to yet again is the developing of lay leaders within rural fresh expressions of church. This time we had quality input from James Lawrence from CPAS, and during both his presentation and our subsequent discussions we needed to be drawn back repeatedly to discuss the needs of Fresh Expressions … the implications for developing rural fresh expressions of church.

While this was necessary for the purpose that the group was created, I’m not sure I feel entirely happy about it! The reason is very simple: what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander; if it is good & relevant for rural fresh expressions of church, then it is almost certainly also good for the multitude of traditional rural churches.

This is best illustrated by: (a) thinking about some of the rural case studies we gathered together, and (b) reflecting on some of James Lawrence’s key points.

Rural Case Studies

Actually, we didn’t all come up with case studies that were genuine Fresh Expressions, but represented rural churches across a wide spectrum. And they had a remarkable set of commonalities related to encouraging & developing lay leaders – none of which are exclusively ‘fresh’:

• The significant role of small groups at some stage in the process.
• Small opportunities being provided for new lay leaders – i.e. responsibility being offered & accepted.
• Provision of both space & support (with the implicit possibility of ‘failure’).
• Existing mature & willing leaders – prepared to take a risk with new lay leaders.

Some of James Lawrence’s key points

Again, very few of these actually required a Fresh Expressions context, although the overarching missional ethos of Fresh Expressions does major on some of the elements identified:

• Don’t start with leadership, start with discipleship. But the general level of discipleship in most (rural) congregations is scarily low.
• Focus on character (not the same as personality) rather than just competences. Yet many of our current lay development programmes do focus on competence – and often of a knowledge-based rather than pragmatic bent.
• Recognise a heart for those outside the church – not just those who are comfortable with or in it. Alongside the discipleship gap this is a real issue for many rural churches – converting neighbourliness into the shared life of Christ.
• Think young people, not just adults. To be frank, this is problematic in many rural situations with communities and congregations that are predominantly elderly. We cannot simply magic up young(er) people.

Life-on-life learning

And there are other potential problem areas, since the reality of most effective church leadership development (whether ordained or lay) seems to be life-on-life, relational learning – following the rabbinic model employed by Jesus in the Gospels. This has a number of tough consequences:

• It downplays the emphasis on a recognised educational component to lay leadership development – at most about 20% of the requirement, and this not necessarily through a formal educational programme.
• It is hugely demanding of time for both parties – the mentor and the mentee.
• It means moving away from a model of current leadership which promises equal access for all (in congregation or community). If the current leader is to mentor a new leader effectively, it means doing less with and for others: “for the sake of the many, invest in the few”.
• The wider congregation needs to both understand and accept what is being done. This is hard as there will always be the possibility of feelings of neglect, accusations of favouritism, factionalism, and jealousy – especially where multiple churches are concerned.

None of these things are exclusive to fresh expressions of church, and all of them are relevant to the encouragement, development & support of new lay leadership in rural churches. Fortunately the members of the Fresh Expressions Rural Round Table are actually committed to a ‘mixed economy’ model of mission – not Fresh Expressions instead of the traditional church, but both together. And in the context of lay leadership development, the overlap is enormous!

The need for local lay leadership

A final reflection here is that the development of effective lay leadership in rural churches should not be seen as the “solution to a problem” – as if this is exclusively an answer to reducing clergy numbers, or to the grouping of churches together in ever-larger numbers, or to increasing budgetary constraints. These conditions are the reality in which we minister and engage in mission, but they highlight a much deeper issue, which is the fundamental theological & ecclesiological rationale that demands local lay leadership. And maybe it is here that “being fresh” is vital because – God knows – there has been very little impact to this point without “being fresh”.

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Simon Martin is blogging in an entirely personal capacity, and is not representing the views of any other organisation or individual.

The illustration is Corton Denham Somerset by David Crosbie via Shutterstock

In moments of stress, all humans look to help from outside themselves. The pagan looks around for some wood to touch. Alfie, in ‘My Fair Lady’, says: With a little bit o’ luck, with a little bit o’ luck…

Mindful that Man proposes, but God disposes, devout Christians used to pepper their speech with DV (Deo volente) or D G (Deo Gratias), recognising God as the ultimate arbiter of events.

The Islamic equivalent is obligatory at moments that seem odd to a Westerner. Gulf Air announces ‘thanks God we have landed at Abu Dhabi airport‘, which rather begs the question of whether the pilot is due any share of the credit as well.

I prefer another Arab saying: Trust in God, but tie your camel first..
Islamic fatalism nearly led to the deaths of our family in the 1950s when we were being driven in the foothills of the Himalayas. The brakes failed, the driver threw up his hands and recited the Qu’ranic prayer before death, committing us into the hands of Allah.  Luckily for us, my father (a true Anglican) preferred to take his fate into his own hands. He grabbed the wheel and swerved into the hillside, thus postponing for us all the no doubt interesting moment when we meet our Maker. You will understand why, in the circumstances, I am glad to be an Anglican.

What is the grace of God? There are hundreds of pages on the internet attempting a definition. ‘Unmerited pardon’, as in the case of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:18-24) is a favourite but the grace of God is wider than this and the Greek word charis cannot always be used in the sense of forgiveness. Perhaps the essential thing is that we can all recognise it when we see it.

One aspect of grace is strength given to us by God. This is the basis of many fables – think of the ring in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Popeye’s spinach, and the greeting in Star Wars, May the Force be with you!: I return, as so often, to the Christian allegory of Narnia:

Lucy buried her head in Aslan’s mane to hide from his face. But there must have been magic in his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her. Quite suddenly she sat up. “I’m sorry, Aslan,” she said. “I’m ready now.”“Now you are a lioness,” said Aslan. “And now all Narnia will be renewed. But come. We have no time to lose.”

During Joan of Arc’s trial, she was asked if she knew herself to be in God’s grace. By asking her this, her inquisitors hoped to draw out an answer that they could use against her. The Catholic Church teaches that because God’s grace is a gift from God, and because humans cannot know the mind of God, then we cannot know if we are in a state of grace. Joan’s accusers thought that, because she was an uneducated peasant, she would reply yes or no, thereby falling into their trap. But Joan’s answer was this:

If I am not, God put me there, and if I am, God keep me there!

Expressing only the desire to be closer to God, this was essentially a perfect answer.

Today, the fourth Sunday of Lent, is traditionally celebrated as Mothering Sunday, with its accompanying readings. If you look at the second reading for Lent 4, however, you will find Ephesians 2.1-10

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Two other sages:

For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them. St Augustine of Hippo

Evelyn Underhill summed up:
Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.

In ‘The Shell’, Amy Carmichael has a vivid metaphor:

Upon the sandy shore an empty shell, beyond the shell infinity of sea;
O Saviour, I am like that empty shell, thou art the Sea to me.
A sweeping wave rides up the shore, and lo, each dim recess the coiled shell within
Is searched, is filled, is filled to overflow by water crystalline.
Not to the shell is any glory then: all glory give we to the glorious sea.
And not to me is any glory when thou overflowest me.
Sweep over me thy shell, as low I lie. I yield me to the purpose of thy will,
Sweep up, O conquering waves, and purify and with thy fullness fill.

The poem ‘Grace’ by George Herbert is one of his deceptively simple ones that repays reading several times to get all the nuances of meaning:

My stock lies dead and no increase doth my dull husbandry improve:
O let thy graces without cease drop from above!
If still the sun should hide his face, thy house would but a dungeon prove,
Thy works, night’s captives: O let grace drop from above!
The dew doth ev’ry morning fall; and shall the dew outstrip thy dove?
The dew for which grass cannot call, drop from above…
O come! for thou dost know the way. Or if to me thou wilt not move,
Remove me, where I need not say, ‘Drop from above.’

The author of ‘Out of Africa’, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), wrote in ‘Anecdotes of Destiny’:

We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!

Finally, Laurence Housman, from ‘Brother Sun’:

‘O hearken, for this is wonder!
Light looked down and beheld Darkness.
‘Thither will I go’, said Light.
Peace looked down and beheld War.
‘Thither will I go’, said Peace.
Love looked down and beheld Hatred.
‘Thither will I go’, said Love.
So came Light and shone.
So came Peace and gave rest.
So came Love and brought Life.
And the Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us.’

   
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The illustration of the sky is by Audrey Hogan via 12Baskets and of the shell is by Elena Moiseeva, via Shutterstock.

A new voice has joined in the debate on the Anglican Covenant, the ‘yes to the covenant‘ website. They have a page giving reasons why people should support the Covenant, among which is:

 ”The Covenant is ‘the only game in town’ if the Church of England is to remain in any meaningful sense apart [sic] of the third largest world church. There is no alternative.  So the Church of England’s choices are to adopt the Covenant, or to disappear from the world’s radar as a significant voice in the world.”

Do you know the feeling when some thought or memory is bubbling away in your subconscious but  refuses to surface? It niggles away, sometimes for weeks or months.I have finally had that ‘Eureka!’ moment of remembering what all the statements by the Pro-Covenanters remind me of.

John Knox , a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil, sought to destroy what he felt was idolatry and to purify Scotland’s religion in a relentless campaign of fiery oratory :

“The sword of justice is God’s, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may.”

John Lloyd writes: There’s an old saying, which Scots still exchange with each other, usually humorously: “Aweel, ye ken noo” – well, you know now. It harks back to when Scots life was dominated by the stern Presbyterianism engrained into it by Calvin’s disciple, John Knox: when…’the Kirk’ policed the morals of society with enthusiastic rigour. “Well ye ken noo” was the generic cry of the godly to the un-godly, faced with the prospect of the fires of hell, having ignored the warnings of the faithful in a life of dissipation. On the left is a portrayal of John Knox admonishing Mary Queen of Scots, who looks suitably chastened and uncharacteristically subdued.

We have had a spate of attempts recently to crank up the guilt amongst those who would oppose the Covenant, partly at least because we do not believe it would have the beneficial effect that its proponents believe. Here is Bishop Gregory Cameron:

“The Bottom Line: Do we value the Communion?  Do we care enough to work together with our sister Churches?  Do we think that it is possible to describe what holds us together as Anglicans?  A “yes” to these questions is surely a “yes” to the Covenant.  A “No” to the Covenant says:  We can’t say what it means to be an Anglican, we want to be able to ignore our sister Churches when it suits us, and we won’t mind if up to half the Communion walks away.”

All three statements, the yes-to-the-covenant’s ‘only game in town’, John Knox’s ‘sword of justice’ and Bishop Gregory’s ‘ bottom line’ have one thing in common. They are examples of  False Dichotomy:

Definition: In false dichotomy, the arguer sets up the situation so it looks like there are only two choices. The arguer then eliminates one of the choices, so it seems that we are left with only one option: the one the arguer wanted us to pick in the first place. But often there are really many different options, not just two—and if we thought about them all, we might not be so quick to pick the one the arguer recommends.

Example: “Caldwell Hall is in bad shape. Either we tear it down and put up a new building, or we continue to risk students’ safety. Obviously we shouldn’t risk anyone’s safety, so we must tear the building down.” The argument neglects to mention the possibility that we might repair the building or find some way to protect students from the risks in question—for example, if only a few rooms are in bad shape, perhaps we shouldn’t hold classes in those rooms.

The first time I came across this alarming form of reasoning, which is difficult to answer because it is so sweeping, was in the novel of existential angst by Albert Camus, La Peste (The Plague), which was perhaps the equivalent for British teenagers of J D Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ in the 1960s. The priest, Father Paneloux, gives two sermons. The first is very much in John Knox Calvinist mode. The second asks the following:

“My brothers, a time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who among you, I ask, would dare to deny everything?”

What happened to ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief’?

So what does the Covenant really say, should you vote yes or should you vote no? Alan Perry (a Canadian archdeacon with a background in canon law, in case you do not already know his blog) has written tirelessly about every conceivable aspect of all four sections of the Covenant. Here he writes on ‘A Tale of Two Covenants’. And here he writes about the frequent problem that those who are in favour of the Covenant often seem to read into its text provisions which sound attractive but are not actually in the printed text.

The Revd Tobias Haller, an American priest, has also blogged at length about the Covenant, here on possible alternatives. He concludes: ‘the proposed Anglican Covenant is not the way forward for the Anglican Communion, either as a Communion, or for the sake of its members, or for our ecumenical relationships.’

Finally, in the words of Kelvin Holdsworth of the diocese of Glasgow and Galloway:

‘We don’t want the Covenant. We do want the Communion.’

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The main illustration is of course the logo of the Anglican Communion. The stained glass portrayal of John Knox comes from the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Long Beach, California. And the photograph of Albert Camus was taken in 1957 and made available through a CCL.

What are your plans for this Saturday? If you like to follow sport, you have a choice of watching  football (Coventry v Birmingham), golf (Florida), rugby union (Wales v Italy), swimming (Olympic trials) or tennis (Mexico). And I believe there are several games of quidditch around our universities.

But I have another suggestion. The most exciting spectator sport on offer this Saturday, 10 March 2012, is the Pro Anglican Covenant v Anti Anglican Covenant encounter being played out in another six diocesan synods across the land. These are exceptional times we live in – it has been said (rather rudely) that a deanery synod is a collection of people waiting to go home, and I have not heard that diocesan synods are any more gripping. But, if you have any imagination at all, this contest should have you on the edge of your seats with excitement.

Let us recap the current state of play (since we seem to be stuck in sporting metaphors). Voting on whether the Church of England should or should not adopt the Anglican Covenant has been rolling out in the dioceses since 12 March 2011 when (we hope prophetically) Wakefield rejected it. Since then, a further 20 dioceses have voted. The tally is currently 13 against the Covenant, 8 in favour.

I think it is probably fair to say that the results so far have been a great surprise to everyone. The Church of England hierarchy has certainly been taken aback by the strength of feeling in the country against it. The Archbishop of Canterbury saw fit to upload a video on 5 March in which his usual charm is nowhere to be seen. This feels like being reprimanded in the headmaster’s study:

In contrast, on 6 March Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch offered the following succinct summary of the arguments:

If I didn’t know better, I would say that the tone of Archbishop Rowan’s video indicates that he is running scared. I am reminded of  Mrs Thatcher’s taunt in 1983:

The Right Hon. Gentleman is afraid of an election is he?… Afraid? Frightened? Frit? Couldn’t take it? Couldn’t stand it?  *

The significance is that if a simple majority of dioceses reject the Covenant, it will not be returned to York General Synod in July, as had been intended. There are 44 dioceses, which means that 23 dioceses must therefore vote in favour for it to continue. It cannot be brought forward again until July 2015, the end of the present quinquennium. Benny Hazlehurst has just blogged  about the voting so far throughout the Communion (as well as highlighting some of the arguments so far in England).

The dioceses voting on Saturday, then, are:

Ripon and Leeds 9.00 – 1.00

Bath and Wells 9.30 a.m.

Southwark  10.00 all day

Carlisle  10.30 a.m.

Coventry (not known)

Worcester (not known)

Results will be posted on Facebook at the No Anglican Covenant page, on Thinking Anglicans, and will be tweeted by Lesley Crawley (@RevdLesley) and me (@layanglicana). And then we go through it all over again on Saturday 17th with Norwich, Liverpool, St Albans, Chester and Ely.

This has been a David and Goliath struggle. The whole weight of the Church of England has been brought to bear on influencing the result, resorting to such tactics as ensuring that the only briefing material sent to dioceses was, so far as the hierarchy was able to do so, in favour of the Covenant. If David does indeed succeed in defeating Goliath, it will be thanks to the bravery of the clergy who stood firm for what they knew to be right despite jeopardising their positions. The story of the struggle needs one of the romantic poets of the nineteenth century to do it justice, Macaulay perhaps?

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods

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*”Prime Minister’s Question Time, House of Commons (19 April, 1983). The use of ‘frit’, an unusual Lincolnshire dialect abbreviation of ‘frightened’ which Mrs Thatcher evidently recalled from childhood, was missed by MPs in a noisy chamber but heard very distinctly on the audio feed from the chamber” (Wikipedia)

The illustration is by iQoncept  via Shutterstock.

Cally Hammond attempts the very difficult task in this book, as her publishers’ blurb says, of helping the reader ‘to make sense of the stresses of human living and dying, to explore what it means to believe in the hidden glories of heaven and to live more positively by faith in the life to come’

The extraordinary thing, in my case, is that she has come close to succeeding. Others of you further on the path will not need to make this qualification, but I was pleasantly surprised at the extent to which I was drawn in to her theology and understanding. She writes from a ‘top of the candle’ perspective (usual Anglican inference from her use of the rosary and interest in Mary) which I do not share, though I do agree with her on the Revised Standard Version of the bible. By the time I finished her book, I was wondering whether I should try to use a rosary as an aid to prayer, something I had never imagined myself doing, but I can see it as an aid to concentration and – useful for a failing memory- a reminder of where you have got to!

The structure of the book is based around the ‘glorious mysteries‘: the resurrection, the Ascension, the coming of the Holy Spirit, falling asleep and crowning (pxiv).  I was speaking with someone recently from another tradition: for him Christianity begins with the crucifixion, hence the ubiquitous symbol of the cross. But for Dr Hammond (and me):

we have to go backwards to where it all began: to the belief in which all Christian beliefs, even atonement and Incarnation, are rooted – namely the resurrection. It is usually imagined as a scene of blazing glory – light bursting forth…but it should not be. Not yet, anyway. The mystery of the resurrection does not begin with the splendour of revelation but within the utter darkness of the sealed tomb

Her English is not at all abstruse – occasionally it is delightfully schoolgirlish, such as the description of death as ‘always unsettling and can be dreadfully upsetting’ (p.9)- but do not be lulled into thinking this is Goldilocks theology – it is not. The intellect behind this book is razor sharp and will challenge you at every step of the way. The book is only 77 pages long, but it is not an easy read because it is not a text which you can simply skim and get the drift.

It is full of insight, some by Dr Hammond herself, but she is also not afraid to show her sources of inspiration. Two which inspired me in particular are St Augustine and Rabbi Lionel Blue. First St Augustine on how to judge whether we have understood the biblical text aright:

Whatever is not consistent with love of God and neighbour cannot be a right interpretation of Scripture (p44)

What an intelligent chap he was – in these days of nitpicking over the minutiae of Leviticus to hurl accusations at different sections of the Anglican Communion with wearying self-righteousness, it would do no harm to remember these wise words.

And secondly, Lionel Blue:

Righteous people are those who look after their own souls and other people’s bodies, while hypocrites are those who look after their own body and other people’s souls.

Dr Hammond envisages this book being used for a post-Easter discussion or prayer goup. As she says:

Perhaps you are thinking it’s a bit late to start wondering now what a Christian is. But it is exactly now, in the immediate aftermath of the resurrection, that the friends and followers of the man Jesus began to see themselves as new, different, set apart, called and chosen. They began to explore a new way of relating to God, and to discover God’s universal message of love for all the peoples of the world.

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You may also like to read Richard Littledale’s review of Dr Hammonds book, which he calls ‘Glorious Surprises’; in particular, he says that despite his non-conformist background: The thing is, this little book draws the reader in.

Published by SPCK on 16 February 2012, it is available from amazon , where it has already attracted a 5-star review.

What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God? ^{Micah 6:8}

You cannot bargain with God. So says the Revd Dr. Alan Garrow in a commentary on today’s readings.¹ He is a vicar theologian, and once wrote a learned treatise on the religious significance of the teletubbies, so he should know. But on this occasion I am not sure he is right. The bible is full of bargains made between God and his people. In today’s first reading, God makes a bargain, or a covenant, with Abraham. And there were also the covenants with Noah,^{Genesis 8:9} Jacob, ^{Genesis 28:12-15} Moses,^{Exodus 19:24} Lot^{Lot 2:9-19} and the Children of Israel.

In today’s lesson, as in most of these examples, it is God who initiates the covenant. But, by the next chapter of Genesis, it is Abraham who starts off the round of bargaining, trying to get God to change his mind about destroying Sodom because of its wickedness:

You all know what happened next: God agreed not to annihilate Sodom if 50 righteous people could be found, then 45, then 30, then 20, and finally ten righteous people. But when his angels could find only four righteous people living there, God went ahead and destroyed the city.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, ^{Genesis 18:20-23} like AIDS and the tsunami in our time, offend against our innate sense of natural justice, since codified in law but first articulated here by Abraham. With all our being, we echo with him:
‘shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?’ ^{Genesis 18:25}
During the Holocaust, a group of Auschwitz prisoners decided to put God in the dock. You may have seen ‘God on Trial’, the  television play about this – here is the dramatist on his experiences:

Frank Cottrell Boyce ² 

Public covenants that we, as Christians, have made with God include our ceremonies of baptism, confirmation and marriage. But every time we pray we also acknowledge a symbiotic relationship with Him, whereby each side plays a part. Bargaining with God, however, is never going to be a negotiation between equals – remember the adage Man proposes, but God disposes.

Anon, attributed to an American Confederate soldier

Thinking it must be possible to renegotiate the contract in altered circumstances, John Milton asked: ‘Doth God exact day labour, light denied? ’ In a shift of time and mood, one can imagine God answering:

As Paul Claudel said: Jesus did not come to explain suffering, but to fill it with his presence.

Billy Graham, ‘Mission England’, 1984

But to return to the story of Abraham and Sarah where we began:

Charles Cameron ³

St Henry Suso

 The collect for today is:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Temptation, like the teenage term of approval ‘wicked’, gets rather a good press these days – if you put the word in your internet search engine, you will get page after page offering you the delights of assorted temptations. The process of overcoming your misgivings to yield to the seven deadly sins of anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, and pride is presented as at least as enjoyable as the ‘sinful’ (term of approval again) pleasure itself. Advertisers capitalise on this trend to market everything from fast cars to chocolate.

All of the deadly sins (with the notable exception of envy) give at least momentary pleasure when merely sipped, as it were, and in homeopathic quantities could scarcely be described as sinful (no doubt the Archbishop of Canterbury himself is occasionally tempted by a teeny- weeny glass of sherry or a spoonful of chocolate mousse and he is obviously neither a drunk nor a glutton). And without a modicum of lust, the human race would be extinct.

The risk is the one taken by the young lady in the limerick:

There was a young lady of Riga
Who went for a ride on a tiger.
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And a smile on the face of the tiger.

Mick Jagger summed it up:
It’s all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.
In other words, who is in control: the temptee or the tempter?

In the words of Thomas Jefferson: Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Or, as we read in the first letter of St Peter: Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

Not that the Devil has it all his own way, as Hilaire Belloc tells us. Sometimes he too is in the position of the lady from Riga:

‘The Devil, having nothing else to do,
Went off to tempt My Lady Poltagrue.
My Lady, tempted by a private whim,
To his extreme annoyance, tempted him’.

The Bible repeatedly warns us of the dangers:

Let no one say when he is tempted ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death. ^{James 1:13-15}

The problem is the relative strength of the temptation concerned versus our consciences. As La Rochefoucauld said:

If we resist our passions, it is more because of their weakness than because of our strength.

Edmund Cooke warns us:

So you tell yourself you are pretty fine clay,
To have tricked temptation and turned it away.
But wait, my friend, for a different day;
Wait till you want to want to!

If we repeatedly overrule our conscience when it pricks, it will eventually wither away, like a muscle that is never used. Books of quotations are full of one-liners on this subject. Some recommend giving in at the first hurdle:

I can resist anything except temptation : Oscar Wilde;

or

I deal with temptation by yielding to it.  Mark Twain

Or you can regard all attempts as doomed in advance:

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a moveable body : H L Mencken.

Just saying ‘no’ may be difficult, but it is not impossible:

I count he who overcomes his desires braver than he who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self : Aristotle.

Or this, by C S Lewis:

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is….A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

Mere Christianity Book 3 Chapter 21

The corollary is that each successful attempt at overcoming temptation strengthens the sinews:

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
William Butler Yeats

John Bunyan makes a similar point:

Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.

Of course, what makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don’t want to discourage it completely. As St Augustine of Hippo famously said:

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Franklin P Jones suggests: 

Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper up-bringing, a sound set of values – and witnesses

But, joking apart, being in the grip of temptation, unable to resist, is no laughing matter, as Danzae Pace knew:

Being out of control is one of the worst feelings in the world, sometimes even worse than pain. It is its own kind of pain.

Clarissa Dickson Wright describes the searing pain of the alcoholic, trying to climb back to the light after having descended into the pit:

After my father’s retirement from hospital, there was a huge upsurge of violence. From then onwards my mother and I… were bashed about on a weekly basis, sometimes just bruises, sometimes broken or cracked ribs, and always verbal abuse…when my father had gone it was as if a gale had stopped blowing or a great black cloud had passed away…sometimes people for various reasons, particularly grief, will drink heavily for a while, but then come to their senses and stop. This is not the way for us alcoholics: once the illness has kicked in there is no way we can go back to controlling our drinking. …there is a saying that religion is for those who don’t want to go to hell, spirituality is for those who have been there. The (AA) steps are all designed to focus on a power greater than yourself, whether it is God or the power of the group…just so long as it isn’t you.
‘Spilling the Beans’

But the most tempting temptation of all must be the one that appears to Christ: to do something that is in the interests of those he came to save:

After forty days in the desert, Christ is first tempted with bread. To use his divine power to satisfy extreme hunger seems reasonable enough. What use will he be in God’s service if he is physically weak? The second temptation sees the tempter…turning the words of scripture back upon him. ‘It is written…’ so surely it must carry divine approval if he demonstrates his confidence in God’s protection? The third temptation is also carefully angled. Surely it is in the interests of those he came to save that he should control the world as soon as possible? Each temptation seeks to justify the means by the end. Jesus’ rejection of these temptations commits him to a life of hardship and self-denial, to patient trust in his heavenly Father’s care and to achieving God’s mission by God’s means. 
‘The Ministry of the Word’, by the Rt Revd David Stancliffe

O Lord, we have no strength against those multitudes of temptations that daily assault us: be thou pleased either to restrain them or to assist us, and in thy faithfulness suffer us not to be tempted above that we are able to overcome. Amen.
Prayer of Richard Allestree

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The illustration is a photograph taken by masyras and downloaded from wikimedia under CCL of ‘Temptation of Christ and Satan in the desert’ at Chora Church in Istanbul.

This is the question posed by Dr Graham Kings, Bishop of Sherborne, in his address yesterday, 18 February, to Salisbury Diocesan Synod proposing the adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant:

Do we wish to continue to have an organic Communion, like a bunch of grapes, or a disconnected Federation, like a bag of marbles?

Bishop Graham appears to think that the answer to this question is self-evident. But I’m not so sure. Even the use of the magic advertising slogan word ‘organic’ does not persuade me, nor would it persuade any other red-blooded Englishman or Englishwoman, to want to be part of a bunch of grapes. What would a human being that was part of such an ‘organic’ group look like? Well, the North Koreans are probably the best people to answer that one:

Would I rather be a marble? Infinitely! What would a  group of human beings that were part of a ‘disconnected Federation, like a bag of marbles’ look like? Luckily I don’t have to find a picture to explain that one. Look out of your window, walk down your street, go into a shop or, yes, a church. And what you will see are marbles. Tall ones, short ones, fat ones, thin ones, patterned ones, plain ones – do I need to go on?

Surely, if Anglicanism offers the world anything, it is the opportunity to be part of a group of people which does NOT impose a homogeneous way of life, but welcomes all parts of God’s creation to work together for the coming of the kingdom of heaven.

Marbles of the world, let us unite!

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The photographs of the grapes are by peresanz,  the marbles are by Olga Popova, both via Shutterstock

…and the greatest of these is love.^{Corinthians 13.13}

Although there are plenty of loving relationships between men and women described in the Bible, you could also say the first ‘battles of the sexes’ are vividly portrayed in the Old Testament. When King David danced in the street before the Lord,  the only reaction of Michal (or ‘Michelle’ as I like to think of her) was to “despise him in her heart” ( 2 Samuel 6). Delilah was very unkind to Samson and, when Herodias was offered anything she liked by Herod, ‘even unto half my kingdom’, she chose the head of John the Baptist on a platter. What lesson are we meant to draw from this? – well, perhaps that when relations between the sexes turn sour, they can turn very sour indeed, with women being notoriously vindictive.

But, while bearing that in mind, Valentine’s Day may be a moment to concentrate instead on when these relationships go well. Without human love, great art is scarcely imaginable: with it, our souls reach the greatest imaginable heights, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes in Sonnets from the Portuguese:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach…

Of course, reaching these heights depends on having a soul in the first place as A E Housman described:

The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.
Oh grant me the ease that is granted so free,
The birthright of multitudes, give it to me,
That relish their victuals and rest on their bed
With flint in the bosom and guts in the head!

Or, as Walter De La Mare put it:

Most wounds can Time repair;
But some are mortal — these:
For a broken heart there is no balm
No cure for a heart at ease –
At ease, but cold as stone
Though the intellect spin on
And the feat and practised face may show
Naught of the life that is gone;
But smiles, as by habit taught;
And sighs, as by custom led.
And the soul within in safe from damnation
Since it is dead.

Unrequited love is no fun for the sufferer but, as W H Auden said:

Let the more loving one be me

Possibly the nation’s favourite definition of true love is Shakespeare’s sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

So, what is love?

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. We can only learn to love by loving.

Iris Murdoch

Love comes surging from the power of God,
Its source, its mountain spring, the human heart.

William Langland, ‘Piers Plowman‘
Poets down the ages, but particularly in England, have explored the parallels between love of men and women for each other, and their love for God – John Donne and Christina Rossetti to great effect, for example.

And here is George Herbert :

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here’;
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’‘Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
So I did sit and eat.

A medieval poet makes the comparison explicit:

All other love is like the moon
That waxeth or waneth as flower in plain;
As flower that blooms and fadeth soon,
As day that showereth and ends in rain.
All other love begins with bliss,
In weeping and woe makes its ending;
No love there is that’s our whole bliss
But that which rests on heaven’s king.
His love is fresh and ever green
And ever full without waning;
His love makes sweet and gives no pain,
His love is endless, enduring.

[Anon], c. 1350

Almost all the above examples are in verse, but here is a modern one in prose:

Brian thought of the day when they had gone walking in Winchelsea marshes. The hawthorn was in bloom…overhead, the sky was alive with white clouds gliding in the wind. Unspeakably beautiful! And suddenly it seemed to him that they were walking through the image of their love. The world was their love, and their love was the world; and the world was significant, charged with depth beyond depth of mysterious meaning. The proof of God’s goodness floated in those clouds, crept in those grazing sheep, shone from every bush of incandescent blossom – and, in himself and Joan, walked hand in hand across the grass and was manifest in their happiness. His love, it seemed to him, in that apocalyptic moment, was more than merely his; it was in some mysterious way the equivalent of the wind and sunshine…His feeling for Joan was somehow implicit in the world, had a divine and universal significance. He loved her infinitely, and for that reason was able to love everything in the world as much as he loved her.

Aldous Huxley, ‘Eyeless in Gaza’

We are social animals

It is a truism to say that we live in a global village - my twitterverse and blogosphere (and I  imagine yours as well) include residents of Australia, Canada, Guatemala, New Zealand and the USA. These ‘groups’ are permeable, transitory and fluid.  Because my major interest is in Christianity, and I am guessing that if you read this website yours is too, it seems likely that many of the people in our separate groups overlap. This is truly a ‘Big Society’!

‘Genesis…tells us of the provenance of human society in a world in which it is not good to be alone. Adam and Eve’s togetherness is fundamental to who they are; it is the state in which they exist, not chosen but given…our social state is just as real and …there is no way of escaping it; we are social creatures whether we like it or not…Hooker…reasoned that…rich forms of being together were necessary if people were to be true to their human nature. ..Four centuries later William Temple said much the same thing…[they] contend that alone none of us can live the life we aspire to: we need other people to make up for what we lack. A life lived in profound relationship with others is a successful life.’

So say Malcolm Turnbull and Donald McFadyen in ‘The state of the Church and the Church of the State‘.

A house group for Lent

If you accept this, it is understandable that when we study the Bible, many of us like to exchange ideas with others about the interpretation of texts that are nearly two thousand years old, and almost no one is reading in the original language. Hence, in part, the Big Bible Project and the Big Read 2012.

This year, we at Lay Anglicana thought that we would try to form a permeable, transitory and fluid house group on our forum to join the Big Read 2012 in studying Mark’s gospel and Tom Wright’s book. There is something rather special about joining in with people from all over the world to discuss the same gospel extract on the same day: we will really set the ether buzzing!

The idea is to use the existing Lay Anglicana Forum. One or two people have suggested possibly more exciting ideas such as Skype, MSN and Google+. It is true that forums (OK, fora!) are “so five years ago” as someone said, but they have the advantage of offering the time for considered assessment and still seem to work well for the Ship of Fools, who have been discussing John’s gospel since 2006 and have only just reached Chapter 6 they have so much to say to each other! Their discussion is on the Kerygmania  board, and is extremely erudite. I hope that we will take our ‘Goldilocks theology’ line from Tom Wright so that any erudite theologians amongst us will temper their exegetic wind to the shorn lambs in the group!

Please join us

If you would like to join us, I am afraid you will need to register as a member of the forum here. I am sorry that it is necessary to ask you to do this, but spam members and comments have made it necessary. (This is not an ulterior way of recruiting you as permanent members – I will cheerfully cancel your membership after Lent if you would like me to do so!). You may find it helpful to get a copy of Tom Wright’s book on Mark, but it is not essential as we will be putting up the relevant extract for each day, together with Professor Wright’s translation of the relevant verses.

How it works

I am hoping the mechanics need not be too complicated. We will ask you to begin by reading the chosen extract from Mark each day, either from your own Bibles or from Professor Wright’s translation.  The relevant Wright text for the day will be posted on the forum (in maroon typeface to distinguish it from our comments) There will be podcasts. We will then discuss. Let’s hope it works!

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The illustration is ‘The Word’ by Tim Coleman via 12Baskets. He says:

The image is about the Bible. It rests on the earth; Scroll = old testament; pages = new testament; dove = inspiration of the Holy Spirit; Tree = root of Jesse; Pathway = Highway of holiness; Signpost = John the Baptist; path way leads to the cross the tomb and the Heavenly city; God the creator speaks (top RH corner)

This post was originally written for the Big Bible Project, for whom I write as a digidisciple.

I wish to record our thanks to SPCK, the publishers, and 12Baskets for enabling us to post the extracts from Tom Wright’s book on the forum.

Many of those in the pews share my perception (until now) of the Church of England as a monolith not unlike Kafka’s castle:

The narrator, K, arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy that resides in a nearby castle.  An official named Klamm tells K he will inform the Council Chairman of K’s arrival. This Council Chairman then tells K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, his presence was requested by mistake, but offers K instead the position of caretaker. Meanwhile, K, unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach Klamm, which the villagers regard as strongly taboo. The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying their actions even though they appear not to know what the officials do.  Assumptions and justifications concerning the officials and their dealings are set out in lengthy monologues by the villagers. Everyone has their own explanation for the actions of any particular official, but these are all founded on assumptions and gossip. Actions by the officials are often impenetrable and contradictory, but the villagers continue to praise the officials who, in their eyes, can do no wrong. The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious amounts of paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is “flawless”. This flawlessness is, of course, an illusion; it was a flaw in the paperwork that erroneously brought K to the village… The castle’s occupants appear to be all adult men…

In the case of the Church, it is the chancel steps which divide ‘castle’ and ‘village’. The castle-dwellers, with all the advantages of possessing the hill-top known to combatants of old, let loose well-aimed arrows at those in favour of women bishops, the autistic,  members of the LGBT community and others in unproductive marriages (presumably including the childless).

But this may all be about to change? Like a butterfly beating its wings in the Amazonian jungle,  scattered and puny efforts by  hundreds and thousands of individuals seeking a rainbow Church, in which all of God’s creation is welcomed into a loving, inclusive Body of  Christ may, just may, be about to bear fruit. As we look back in years to come, I think Bishop Nick Holtam’s interview will stand out as the moment that the tide finally turned. Also important, however, in the same week (just before General Synod) was  a group of clergy in the Diocese of London signing a letter calling for the Church of England to reverse its ban on civil partnership ceremonies being held in churches.

I won’t quote Arthur Hugh Clough’s poem ‘say not the struggle naught availeth‘ yet again (though it may tempt you to follow the link if I tell you the lines are spoken by Paul Scofield with ‘Nimrod’ in the background). Instead, I offer a short extract from the lyrical description of the end of winter and the reign of the White Witch  in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’:

Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller…soon, wherever you looked, instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs…then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down on to the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree-tops. Soon there were more wonderful things happening…he noticed a dozen crocuses growing round the foot of an old tree – gold and purple and white. Then came a sound even more delicious than the sound of the water. Close beside the path they were following a bird suddenly chirped from the branch of a tree…’This is no thaw’, said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. This is Spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan‘s doing.’

If we are to have a Spring in the Anglican Church, it will not be like the October Revolution of 1917: I foresee no storming of Lambeth Palace, its residents may be relieved to hear. The nature of the revolution (and, if it comes, it will be a revolution, not a mere revolt) is more akin to the wisdom of the Eastern book, the I Ching: The overlapping hexagrams 39 and 55 read:

“An obstruction that lasts only for a time is useful for self-development. That is the value of adversity…the obstruction is overcome not by pressing forward into danger, nor by idly keeping still, but by retreating, yielding…water on the top of a mountain cannot flow down in accordance with its nature, because rocks hinder it. It must stand still. This causes it to increase, and the inner accumulation finally becomes so great that it overflows the barriers. The way of overcoming obstacles lies in turning inward and raising one’s own being to a higher level.”

I pay tribute to my fellow-campaigners, who have almost universally had the spiritual strength not to storm the barricades, but to retreat and yield until the water should reach a higher level. But has that moment finally come? Is it premature to dream of singing in unison Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy‘ (which needs liberating from its EU national anthem status to an expression of heavenly ecstasy as intended)? Will Hyde Park be big enough to contain us all for a big sing, do you think?

‘Re-imagining the Church of England for our world today’

This book deserves to be the key book for the Church of England in this generation, as ‘Faith in the City‘ and ‘Honest to God‘ were in theirs. There is so much that I would like to quote to you from the book, but I urge you to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest your own copy!

Michael Turnbull and Donald McFadyen have a vision of a New Jerusalem in which, as they conclude:

…there is much within England which renders it capable of becoming a society, even a Big Society, where people can flourish. We believe that this will only happen if the Church of England has the confidence in its own vocation to continue to play the role of proclaiming the Jesus imperatives from within the mesh of the nation’s institutions. We hope that in turn we will regain confidence in our national identity, a confidence without jingoism but with a realistic assessment of our place with the global community and a strong desire to see people thrive within their local community. That community will be where learning, morality, art, politics and economics come together to be the harmonious symphony, marked by joy and peace, the signs of the coming Kingdom of God.

How are we to get there from here? Well the authors are under no illusion that the road is anything other than uphill, to the very end. They begin by analysing the current influences and stresses  on our ‘turbulent’ church, which is ‘deeply embedded in the psyche and culture of the English people’. They offer an analytical history of the Church, clearing up on the way the odd popular misconception, such as that Christianity did not arrive on these shores until 597 with Augustine (it did) and that the presence of bishops in the House of Lords was part of the Elizabethan Settlement (it wasn’t). There are useful explanations of Hooker and Anglo-Catholicism, for example.

It is a cleverly constructed book. The essential message is that the character of the Church of England reflects the character, history, language, monarchy and government of the English people, and that these (and other quintessentially English) institutions reflect the Church of England. The relationship is a symbiotic one which goes back through history, before the Reformation, to the dawn of Christianity itself. The various strands have become tightly interwoven over two millennia into a mesh, and a petit point mesh at that. This basic motif runs throughout the book, rather as in a symphony, as the authors explore ‘the state of the Church and the Church of the State’.

The authors talk of Church and nation being ‘enmeshed’ and discuss at one point how the relationship might be unravelled, as one might unravel a knitted garment. Doing this, however,  is quite an easy proposition and, unless you are very clumsy, you will  end up with the same number of pieces of wool used to knit the garment in the first place.  Trying to unravel the relationship between Church and State in England (particularly with the added complication that England is not a state, simply part of the United Kingdom) would be more akin to taking apart a piece of needlepoint, in which the canvas and the thread can no longer be distinguished.  And the whole has become greater than the sum of its parts.

The book continues with a look at the future. They discuss whether lessons should be learnt from models of management, and draw some interesting parallels with Apple Inc and Steve Jobs.

History matters…history and vision are closely linked…the church itself is not primary…what matters is the Kingdom for whose coming it works…structure matters…vision matters.

Only one omission strikes me as odd in this book – and that is the Anglican Covenant. At the beginning, the authors say that the Church of England

accepts responsibility for the wider Anglican Communion but safeguards its autonomy within that. So long as England, as part of Britain under the Crown, remains a sovereign state, it will have a unique role in the spectrum of Christian witness.

Unfortunately, the Church may have safeguarded its autonomy within the Communion in the past, but if General Synod acquiesces ,the Church is about to give away its ‘unique role in the spectrum of Christian witness’.  It seems fitting to offer the last word, as quoted by the authors (p.103), to Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, who has just become a patron of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition, in an open letter to Archbishop Rowan Williams:

As the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish withdraw into their search for national identities, please tell the English, whoever they are, to cherish this ecclesiastical symbol of a rainbow nation.

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Michael Turnbull, former Bishop of Rochester and of Durham, was chairman of the Archbishops’ Commission on the Structures of the Church of England which produced Working as One Body (the Turnbull Report).  Donald McFadyen, a Church of England priest, is the first Director of Church Study and Practice at Ridley Hall Theological College, Cambridge.

The photograph of the Rt Revd Michael Turnbull is courtesy of Swan Hellenic, and the photograph of the Revd Donald McFadyen is from a Daily Mail article about his church.

This is what the publishers, Darton, Longman and Todd, say about the book:

Does the Church of England have anything to say in our ‘Big Society’? What is the real England and what do we want it to be? In this provocative book, two leading clergymen share their vision for a new society, and a radical reshaping of the Church of England. Despite the rise of secularism, the Church still has an important role in discussions on the ethics of technological and scientific developments, gender issues and sexual ethics, education, Establishment and economics. The tents on the steps of St Paul’s show that the Church is still a vital player in the political life of the country. Michael Turnbull and Donald McFadyen claim that the Church of England can become the nation’s heartbeat once again, but significant changes to its vision and organisation are needed. In looking at the position that the church once held, and what its role might be in the future, they explain to a new generation the potential of the Church of England in English society, and show that, in revitalising its purpose, it can create a godly ‘Big Society’ where people can flourish as part of a global and local community.

Price: £14.99 ISBN: 9780232528817 Pages: 208; Publication date 6 February 2012

The photograph of the needlepoint Austrian evening bag is by ‘Petit Point Kovacec’

Maybe it takes a child to make us all pull together.
One, two, three: ‘All for one, one for all…’
That’s all.

Tomorrow, January 27th, has been held as Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK since 2001. This is a message recorded by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, to mark the day. You can read it in full, together with some background here. For once, I am in complete agreement with ++Rowan about the message, ‘Speak Up and Speak Out’, but we differ in our interpretations.

Although I am neither a woman priest who is called to be a Bishop, nor a member of the LGBT community seeking acceptance in an Inclusive Church, I will, in the words attributed to Voltaire, defend to the death the rights of women priests and the LGBT community to be fully accepted into a loving and inclusive Anglican Church.

In 1933, Martin Niemoeller, a leader of the Confessing Church, voted for the Nazi party. By 1938, he was in a concentration camp. After the war, he is believed to have said:

“In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”

A similar point is made by Maurice Ogden in his poem, “The Hangman.” Though it may be doggerel, this is a chilling poem, made all the more thought-provoking  by the memorable accompanying film. If you can spare it, this is well worth ten minutes of your time, though I do not guarantee you an unclouded night’s sleep afterwards.

Into our town the Hangman came, Smelling of gold and blood and flame–
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air And built his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side, Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time, Who the criminal, what the crime,
That Hangman judged with the yellow twist of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread We passed those eyes of buckshot lead;
Till one cried: “Hangman, who is he For whom you raise the gallows-tree?”
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye, And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
“He who serves me best,” said he,“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”
And he stepped down, and laid his hand On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another’s grief At the Hangman’s hand was our relief.
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn By tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,Out of respect for his hangman’s cloak.
The next day’s sun looked mildly down On roof and street in our quiet town
And, stark and black in the morning air,The gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike And his air so knowing and businesslike.
And we cried: “Hangman, have you not done,Yesterday, with the alien one?”
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed:“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised…”
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:“…Did you think I’d gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That’s a thing I do To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”
Then one cried “Murderer!” One cried “Shame!”And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man’s place. “Do you hold,” said he,“With him that’s meant for the gallows-tree?”
And he laid his hand on that one’s arm,And we shrank back in quick alarm,
And we gave him way, and no one spoke Out of fear of his hangman’s cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise The Hangman’s scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took – and we had all heard tell –Was a usurer and infidel, And:
“What,” said the Hangman, “have you to do With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?”
And we cried out: “Is this one he Who has served you well and faithfully?”
The Hangman smiled: “It’s a clever scheme To try the strength of the gallows-beam.”
The fourth man’s dark, accusing song Had scratched out comfort hard and long;
And “What concern,“ he gave us back,“Have you for the doomed – the doomed and black?”
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again:“Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?”
“It’s a trick,” he said, “that we hangmen know For easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”
And so we ceased and asked no more,As the Hangman tallied his bloody score;
And sun by sun, and night by night,The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came And called in the empty streets my name.
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall And thought: “There is no left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me To help him pull down the gallows-tree.”
And I went out with right good hope To the Hangman’s tree and the Hangman’s rope.
He smiled at me as I came down To the courthouse square through the silent town,
And supple and stretched in his busy hand Was the yellow twist of them hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap And it sprang down with a ready snap –
And then with a smile of awful command He laid his hand upon my hand.
“You tricked me, Hangman!” I shouted then,“That your scaffold was built for other men….
And I no henchman of yours,” I cried.“You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!”
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye:“Lied to you? Tricked you?” he said, “Not I
For I answered straight and I told you true:The scaffold was raised for none but you.
“For who has served me more faithfully Than you with your coward’s hope?” said he,
“And where are the others that might have stood Side by your side in the common good?”
“Dead,” I whispered; and amiably “Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me;
“First the alien, then the Jew…I did no more than you let me do.”
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,None had stood so alone as I –
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there Cried “Stay!” for me in the empty square.

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Do visit Emma Major’s blog of today called ‘Speak Up, Speak Out’ on Holocaust Memorial Day. You may also like to visit the Holocaust Memorial Day website, whose theme this year is ‘Speak Up, Speak Out.

Lambeth Palace

Picture the scene. It is late summer 2012, the NACC have lost the battle and the General Synod of the Church of England has voted to sign up to the Anglican Covenant.

This news, as you can imagine, was greeted with jubilation by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. They celebrated by carousing  late into the night with the meister spinners of Lambeth as they downed shandy after shandy until the small hours, basking in a warm glow of mutual congratulation.  But now it was the cold grey dawn of the morning after. Nursing an only slightly sore head, Archbishop Rowan presented himself at the breakfast table.  What a relief it was going to be not to have to worry about that infernal (sorry, tiresome) document ever again! He tucked into his bacon and eggs before striding out to the red carpet and dais, which had been set out in front of Lambeth Palace so that he could announce this triumph to his assembled people and wave the Covenant at them.

An Anglican Subject Writes

At this point, dear reader, I invite you to explore with me a tangential thought. Recall, if you will, the two recent Gulf Wars, each with a President George Bush at the helm. The first had limited but defined aims; when these had been achieved the allied troops left Iraq. In 2003, however, GWB’s premature announcement of ‘victory’ was followed by a further eight years of military occupation. Do you share my suspicion that this was, at least in part, because no one had made any plans for what was to happen after the fall of Baghdad?  Do you go on to share my suspicion that no one at Lambeth Palace has made any plans for what is to happen as a result of the signing of the so-called Anglican Covenant, which is no gentlemen’s agreement sealed by a handshake as you might infer from the use of this word, but a legally binding international treaty? In the Church of England, Canon Law will have to be re-written to incorporate the provisions we have now committed ourselves to.

‘Those Who Do Not Remember History Are Condemned to Repeat It’

I apologise if you think the following parallel is melodramatic, not to say histrionic. But consider:

• Belligerent forces apparently intent on world domination assert their demands
• Attempts to deflect warfare by talks and international enquiries do not succeed in silencing the belligerents
• Finally, in a last desperate attempt at appeasement, the leader offers a piece of paper giving in to almost all the demands in the hope that this will secure ‘peace in our time’.

Winston Churchill, denouncing the Agreement in the House of Commons:

“We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat… you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude…we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road…we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting”. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

 

Personal Entreaty

Archbishop Rowan, I appeal to you on behalf of  the Anglican Communion as a whole: in the name of God, please reconsider. Today Chamberlain is remembered in disgrace, Churchill as a national hero. Let it not be said of you: ‘Thou wast weighed in the balance and found wanting’.

The No Anglican Covenant Brigade, in an attempt to halt the Covenant juggernaut, has tried reasoned analysis, expostulation, satire and mockery.  This blog alone has invoked, inter alia, Cassandra, Elizabeth I, Trollope and inter-galactic law. Though some members have been tempted, the group has not yet resorted to sabotage or blackmail. Although the time may yet come for the dreadful final option of the Charge of the NAC Brigade, there remains another possibility.

It is time to send in a Great British Battleaxe. Surely even Archbishop Rowan would quake in his shoes if faced with one of these in full sail? Margaret Thatcher in her prime perhaps? But no real woman can truly match the great battleaxes of fiction: Mrs Proudie, Lady Bracknell, Lady Catherine de Bourgh or, her latest triumphant incarnation, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, the real star of Julian Fellowes’ latest entertainment, Downton Abbey.

From this impressive list, let us choose the Dowager Countess for this important role. She is so clearly a woman of unshakeable self-confidence, at her prime in the Edwardian era when her class was at its most supremely confident.  After many years of practice in  bending the local clergy to her will, (as is apparent from this scene requiring her to persuade the vicar to perform what he regards a dubious marriage), she is surely as ready as anyone to take on the Archbishop.

[Spoiler warning for American viewers - this clip is ahead of you]

Let us imagine the meeting. Holding court at Highclere Castle, Lady Grantham invites the Archbishop to break his journey to the ancient diocese of Winchester, where he is visiting the new bishop. While perched on an uncomfortably spindly French antique chair, the Archbishop is obliged to balance his teacup, saucer, teaspoon, side plate, cucumber sandwich and starched organdie table napkin. (Gamesmanship was not the invention of Stephen Potter, he merely named an ancient social ruse for discomfiting one’s opponent).

Lady G: So do explain to me, Archbishop, what is this Covenant that one hears so much about in Church circles?

Archbishop: [embarks on long-winded explanation]

Lady G: [interrupting] So in future, we shall have to find our vicars from amongst those of whom you personally approve, not just those who have been ordained?

Archbishop: Well no, it won’t really work quite like that,…

Lady G: But you don’t know how it’s going to work out, do you? You produce pages and pages of small print, which you expect us all to sign up to, and you throw in everything but the kitchen sink without explaining how you can put two mutually exclusive provisions in the same document. Did you think we wouldn’t notice, just because the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral comes at the beginning and this unspeakably unChristian section four comes at the end? The Highclere Women’s Institute discussed the whole thing at our meeting here last week, and we are all agreed that it is the most appalling document. For goodness sake, Archbishop, you really must do something to extricate us from this quagmire you have dragged us all into!

Archbishop: [chastened] Well I don’t see how we can get out of it now. I keep asking ‘what is the alternative’!

Lady G: Really Archbishop! Yes, we hear you asking, but why aren’t you listening to the replies? There are plenty of alternatives. Gracious me, I can’t think why you don’t simply say God has told you to go back to the first principles of Hooker and the Quadrilateral. Everyone is free to interpret Anglicanism for their own time and place, using scripture, reason and tradition. What’s wrong with that? Nice, simple and clear.

Archbishop: Yes, but you see many of the Provinces will simply not accept the way other Provinces interpret Anglicanism.

Lady G: So?

Archbishop: So they are threatening to leave.

Lady G: Well, let them do so. What a fuss, all because you seem so determined to let the tail wag the dog. Extraordinary!

Archbishop: But the Anglican Communion will break up! And while I am the Archbishop of Canterbury!

Lady G: If they leave, they leave. At least what remains will still be a communion of Anglicans. And most will rejoin in time, you’ll see. For goodness sake, man, pull yourself together!

Some books of theology manage to fit hermeneutics, exegesis, praxis and soteriology all into one sentence. Very impressive.  Others make suitable texts for Children’s Church. But this is the Goldilocks of theological works, pitched at  just the right level of brow for the vast majority of the reading public.

As multi-layered as an onion, Professor N T Wright‘s new book on Mark draws you in at once with its matter-of-fact, chatty, deceptively simple prose.  Each ‘chapter’ covers one day between Ash Wednesday and Easter Saturday. Using the prescribed lectionary for the day, Professor Wright focuses on a few verses and offers us his translation, and his exegesis. If, like me, you prefer a more traditional version of the bible, I suggest you begin by reading the passage in that version before plunging into the Wright text. Like all the best teachers, he makes some of the expected points about each passage, so that you are to some extent lulled into thinking you are keeping up well (if not actually ahead of him), but he then slips in an explanation, a twist or a new perspective, which sends you back to the beginning of the chapter to start again. I do not mean to suggest that the text is difficult, far from it, but there is a good deal more meat on the bones that you might anticipate at first glance.

Consciously or unconsciously, Professor Wright echoes the style of Mark’s gospel itself. Alec McCowan memorably did a one-man show in which he simply spoke Mark’s gospel, having first learnt it by heart. Here he describes how he became gripped by the text. Although he did ‘not regard himself as a religious man’,

Certainly, when I was working on St Mark and performing St Mark, there were signs. On several occasions, when I least expected it and when I most needed it, there would be a sign.   I became aware that the sun, the moon, or even the glow from a burning candle, assumed a new significance.  Whenever I needed it, I was blessed; and blessed specifically with light and warmth.

Reading Morna Hooker’s book on Mark (as our house group did for the last Year B Lent), I was thrilled to learn that some scholars think that Mark finished his gospel at 16.8, as it were mid-stream. To me, that fits beautifully with the idea that Mark was writing all the time with dramatic effect in mind. Ending by begging the question of what happens next, he leads us straight on to Acts. Now, this was probably not deliberate (and Professor Wright, though he agrees that Mark’s words probably end at 16.8, does not think that this was his intended conclusion.) Nevertheless:

It reads like a shocking new beginning – which of course is what Mark intends. The story is not over. In fact, it’s just starting: the new story…the new way of living, a new way of being human, has been launched upon the world, a way that people thought impossible then and think impossible still today, but a way that has caught up millions and transformed their lives beyond recognition. (p.174)

If you are looking for a wise godfather to hold you by the hand as you find or continue your journey of transformation, I can recommend no one more sincerely than Professor N T Wright, or Tom, as he may let you call him.

He ends on Easter Saturday with a prayer:

Lord Jesus, King and Master; overcome our fears with your love, and our doubts with your life, so that we may take that love and life to the ends of the world.

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Notes

Lent for Everyone: Mark: Year B by Tom Wright, published January 2012 by SPCK Publishing, 144 pages, £6.99 ISBN 9780281062225 The illustration is taken from the SPCK website. The quotation is from Double Bill by Alec McCowan, first published by Elm Tree Books in 1980.

What the publisher says about the book:

The third in the massively successful Lent for Everyone series focuses on the Gospel of Mark, taking the reader through the designated Lectionary readings for every day of Lent and Easter. The New Testament passages are Tom Wright’s own lively and accessible translations from The New Testament for Everyone (SPCK, 2011). Each extract is followed by a freshly written reflection and a prayer that will encourage readers to ponder the relevance of Mark’s Gospel for their own lives. Lent for Everyone: Mark,Year B is an ideal study companion that will help to make Lent a period of rich discovery and growth for both individuals and groups.

 

The Big Read, Big Bible Project, is now in its third year, having begun with Luke and then moved on to Matthew. The idea is for as many people as possible to share the same text, which they can either then meditate on alone or, preferably, discuss in an online or offline house group. Lay Anglicana will be hosting an online house group to discuss the texts in our discussion forum, beginning on Ash Wednesday. Do please join us!
Here Professor Wright explains The Big Read and welcomes all participants:

‘England hath need of thee,’ added Wordsworth in his plea, originally addressed to Milton. Oh, Anthony Trollope, if only we could turn to you now to champion the cause of the laity and common sense in the Church of England!

If youth is too valuable to be squandered by the young, perhaps the Church is too valuable to be entrusted to the priests as its sole guardians. Without seeking to go as far as the cartoon suggests in turning the priesthood into marionettes, operating only according to strings pulled by the laity, the present situation where the positions are reversed is not a happy solution either.  Keep the beard, but change the face into that of the present Archbishop of Canterbury. Forget the rest of the Anglican Communion for a moment, if the Church of England signs up to the Covenant, this will be the future governance of our Church, with the laity dancing to the Archbishop’s tune for eternity.

The present plan, according to information reaching me, is to tack discussion of the Covenant onto the end of the agenda for the General Synod in July, where it will be presented once again as a minor piece of ‘housekeeping’, almost an afterthought. What else comes before our lords and masters in July? Why, the issue of women bishops. Despite an overwhelming vote in favour throughout the country, approval of women bishops is by no means a foregone conclusion. Picture the scene. July may be hot and sticky. The delegates will doubtless drone on. Eventually (we hope) the appointment of women to the episcopate will be agreed. Tired, with falling blood sugar levels, and desperate to return to their hotels and a stiff gin, those present will sign almost any document put in front of them. However, before the meister spinners of Lambeth congratulate themselves too hard on the success of their prestidigitation, may I remind them of an earlier political genius from the other side of the Atlantic:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

You do remember who said that, don’t you? Abraham Lincoln.

But, to return to our hero of the day. Why do I pick on Trollope rather than, say, Dickens? Well,  Trollope’s cast of characters comes from a much narrower range than does Dickens’. His body of work epitomises the relationship between the English people, their government, and their church. Of course, much has changed since Trollope’s day but the more things change, the more they stay the same. Trollope is said to have remarked:

The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion.

I have been unable so far to identify the source, but even if it is a case of se non è vero, è ben trovato, it does indeed capture the essence of Trollopianism.

The biographer of Anthony’s mother Fanny, Pamela Neville-Sington, wrote:

‘When he wrote his Barchester novels, Trollope did not look up at the sky but down at the earth.   He did not write about men’s spirituality but about their consciences.   He did not explore the clergy’s theological doctrines but their very human institutions.   This is why Trollope was so popular in his own day and why he remains so today.   His characters and their dilemmas are universal and still seem very real to us’.

 Trollopiana, Issue 75, 2006

But I have saved the best until last. I came across the following extract yesterday, which confirmed my thoughts about Trollope’s possible stand on the Covenant. It is one of those passages in which the author speaks as himself, the narrator makes his own position clear:

And yet it was from such a one that Mr Arabin in his extremest need received that aid which he so much required. It was from a poor curate of a small Cornish parish that he first learnt to know that the highest laws for the governance of a Christian’s duty must act from within and not from without; that no man can become a serviceable servant solely by obedience to written edicts;

Barchester Towers

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Notes

The cartoon of Trollope dated 1872 is by Frederick Waddy (1848-1901), from wikimedia.com made available under creative commons licence.

So Ronald Searle is no more.  Described by Harry Mount today as ‘Britain’s greatest graphic artist’, Searle is summed up by Gerald Scarfe as reported by  The Press Association:

 ’Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe paid tribute to Searle, whom he described as his “hero”. He said: “He was clever and he was funny and he could draw. A lot of cartoonists come up with an idea first but Ronald could really draw. He was an extraordinary man.”

The wikipedia entry is here and the best, because most personal, tribute is here.

Reader, I met him. He had been one of the active circle around the actor-manager Bernard Miles and his wife, Josephine Wilson, when they first opened the Mermaid Theatre in their St John’s Wood garden in 1951. My grandmother happened to live in the same street and was happily roped in as a general dogsbody. Ronald Searle illustrated many of the programmes, although not this one by C Walter Hodges, which I found amongst my grandmother’s possessions when she died.

When the new Mermaid Theatre opened at Blackfriars in 1959, my grandmother was invited to a pre-opening lunch of perhaps a dozen people, including Bernard Miles, Josephine Wilson and Ronald Searle. It must have been the Easter school holidays. I was ten years old, my parents were living in India, so I was shuffled around relations. Happening to be with my grandmother, I was brought along for the ride.

It was like no social gathering I had ever been to. Their conversations were reminiscences of people, places and events they knew and I didn’t. I think Ronald Searle must have felt sorry for me so that, when my grandmother egged me on to ask for his autograph (said autograph book having been specially bought for the occasion) he drew ‘Laura the Mermaid’ as you see above.

It’s a competitive world – unasked, Bernard Miles took the book and began to draw. ‘To prove Ronald Searle isn’t the only one’!

I must admit that, at the time, I thought Bernard Miles’s drawing much more flattering and therefore, of course, a much better likeness. It is only as I have got older that I now truly appreciate the Ronald Searle version.

And although we all know the top half of the drawing, the classic St Trinian’s schoolgirl, I think I can claim to be the only St Trinian’s girl who was also a Mermaid.

Sadly, the Mermaid did not survive as a theatre beyond the deaths of Bernard Miles and his wife. However, the building is now used by

 ChristChurch London, a church committed to making London a great place to live. We love this city and are working for its spiritual, social and cultural renewal. We meet every Sunday at the Mermaid Theatre at 11.00 and 16.00.

I think Sir Bernard would have been greatly pleased by this evidence of new life: his original intention had been to work for the social and cultural renewal of the area.  Let us hope the phoenix rises from its ashes.

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Note

The Bloghorn, the rather good title of the blog of the professional cartoonists organisation, included a reference to this little story in its post of today.

Boring but Important

Perhaps you read the magazine ‘The Week‘? There is an occasional column with this heading, and I am sincerely sorry to tell you that if you live in the United Kingdom, or are an Anglican or expatriate Briton elsewhere in the world, the Anglican Covenant comes into the category of ‘boring but important’. Why focus on the Church of England? Well, because it is likely to be discussed in General Synod in 2012, whereas most other Provinces will be making a final decision in later years.

Not even the proponents of the Covenant claim it is gripping reading material- we are a far cry here from Magna Carta or the Gettysburg Address. But please make no mistake. The Church that produced the King James Version of the bible, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and some of the finer parts of Common Worship is perfectly capable of producing a vivid and memorable text if it chose. Beatrix Potter told the world about the soporific effects of lettuce, but if your insomnia is acute, I know of no better remedy than the 5,123 words of the Covenant in its final form. This is their secret weapon, which we must fight (with caffeine if necessary!)

That said, I am going to ask you to make it your new year’s resolution to read the actual text in January. Mark it, certainly. Asking you to learn it would, I think, be unreasonable. And suggesting that you inwardly digest it would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Lay Anglicana’s Contribution to the Debate

So far, this blog has limited its actions to banging on about the threat from the Covenant. It has been suggested to me that what is now needed is a series of posts attempting a digest of the various elements of the Covenant so that what is proposed is better understood. I will be drawing shamelessly on other people’s blog posts to do so (Archeacon Alan Perry of Edmonton and Father Tobias Haller of the US in particular have already done some detailed analysis, as have: The No Anglican Covenant website and blog; the Revd Jonathan Clatworthy and the Revd Lesley Crawley amongst many others). Before the summer General Synod, our aim is to reach as many as possible ‘thinking Anglicans’ certainly, but also thinking people in general. Do you really want this document signed in your name?

A Little Light Relief

I don’t think I could stand it – and I’m perfectly sure you couldn’t – if I offered a diet of unrelieved Anglican Covenant between now and July. So I hope to review some more books, finally get up our magnum opus (at present 60 pages of A4) on intercessions, and react to ‘events, dear boy, events‘.

Sunlit Uplands?

I hope I am not the only person who thinks that, if we can only bury the Anglican Covenant, we can return to a degree of ‘live and let live’ in this Communion of ours and that Peace Time really does lie ‘Just Ahead’. Please join me in praying that this may be so.

Related Articles:

Poor old David Cameron got into trouble in the twittersphere and elsewhere for saying that he was a ‘vaguely practising’ Church of England Christian. And I suggested in his defence that his position was shared by many others who consider themselves members of the Church of England (and very probably other Anglican churches throughout the Communion). Attendance at events in our village church over Advent and Christmas would seem to support that theory. Though I don’t have the exact figures, a rough headcount indicates:

• Advent study course (3 sessions):     15 participants
• Advent Sundays:     25-35  participants
• Christmas Eve Midnight Mass:     80 participants
• Christmas Day Family Communion:    130 participants

It would be interesting to know whether other churches saw congregations in roughly the same ratio. If so, how would you describe the people who swell the ranks on major festivals? ‘Vaguely practising Anglicans’ perhaps? Is the Church of England now so exclusive  that it would ban these people from its ‘hallowed’ portals? I do hope it has not come to that. As C S Lewis exclaimed:

“If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could then be saved?”

Although it was a Frenchman (Talleyrand), who advised against too much zeal (‘Surtout, pas trop de zèle‘), this is a very English, indeed traditionally Anglican, attitude. It is at least arguable that it was an overdose of zeal which led to the Crusades, Irish ‘troubles’ and other religious wars. You will have seen reports of yesterday’s scuffle between Greek and Armenian priests at the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem (dubbed ‘Affray in a Manger ‘) over ‘ territory’ in the church.

Do you know (or remember – it dates from the 1960s) Tom Lehrer’s song ‘National Brotherhood Week’ in which he ‘is grateful that it doesn’t last all year’. Too true to be funny? In that context, it may be understandable that a politician, above all, with responsibilities for the community as a whole, would be careful to describe his faith in terms which would not lead people to describe him as a zealot. Lest you think I am making a party political point here, I suggest that this was also what was in Alastair Campbell’s mind when he said, of New Labour, ‘we don’t do religion’. I doubt he was presuming to tell Tony Blair what he might or might not believe as a private individual: he was surely simply nervous of creating division.

If you are a committed Christian, you may think ‘vaguely practising’ is an insulting cop-out to the rest of us. But I am not so sure. I would like to belong to a church which contains everyone from potential saints about to be beatified down to everyday sinners and backsliders. With the churches in crisis, it is no time to be making enemies of those who admit they are not perfect. Or would you rather be the one to cast the first stone?

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Notes

‘Vic the Vicar’ has also posted today on the proportions of the congregation who are full ‘members’ of the Church:

“I find the 40-40-20 representation of the population quite helpful:

 

40% being ‘unchurched’, that is having no understanding or experience of Church.

 

20% being ‘dechurched’ (which means may have had churchgoing in the family, usually Grandparents, been to wedding, baptism, funeral or Christmas/Easter and not warm towards the Church to the point of being negative and antagonistic towards it.

 

20% being ‘dechurched’ (like thise above) but are generally warm (or at least not negative) towards the Church.

 

10% attend but are perhaps not committed or understanding what Church is (come because they have always come perhaps?).

 

10% attend and have an understanding and are engaged with Church (also known as ‘members’ and are the troops in this campaign of making Christ known).”

 

The illustration is by Abramova Kseniya, via Shutterstock

The most beautiful Christmas decorations I have ever seen are at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  where their Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche have been the highlight of the display since 1957, when Loretta Hines Howard, who had the idea of presenting the elaborate Nativity scene within a Christmas tree, angels swirling upwards to the crowning star, gave her collection to the museum. Mrs Howard’s daughter and grand-daughter have continued the tradition and more than two hundred 18th-century Neapolitan crèche figures have been added.

This display, which you can see here in close-up on you tube  (2.52 minutes), mingles three basic elements that are traditional to 18th-century Naples: the Nativity, with adoring shepherds and their flocks; the procession of the three Magi and their exotically dressed retinue; and a crowd of  townspeople and peasants. The theatrical scene is enhanced by sheep, goats, horses, a camel, and an elephant—and by background pieces that create a dramatic setting for the Nativity, including the ruins of a Roman temple, several Italianate houses, and a typical fountain with a lion’s-mask waterspout.

We saw in the previous post, A Christmas Miscellany, that creation of the Nativity scene is attributed to St Francis. The custom reached its height in 18th-century Naples, where local families, often assisted by professional stage directors, vied to outdo each other in presenting elaborate displays, using the finest sculptors of the period (including Giuseppe Sammartino and his pupils Salvatore di Franco, Giuseppe Gori, and Angelo Viva) to model the terracotta heads and shoulders of the figures.

If you are as entranced by these figures as I was when I first saw them in December 1968, you would perhaps rather not know that the museum also has, in my opinion, the best musum shop in the world. I began collecting one item a year from here in the 1970s, and still

have the pair of baubles which I decorated myself from one of their kits, as well as the beautiful standing angel. These days I try to limit myself just to their angel of the year. Here is their angel for 2011: as seems to be the fashion these days, their sale has just started.

But why do we decorate our homes at all? There is a fascinating blog post of 19 December 2011 on ‘the Psychology of Christmas’, which I recommend to you in its entirety. Probably most encouraging from the point of view of the readers of Lay Anglicana is this finding:

More happiness was reported when family and religious experiences were especially salient, and lower well-being occurred when spending money and receiving gifts predominated. Engaging in environmentally conscious consumption practices also predicted a happier holiday, as did being older and male. In sum, the materialistic aspects of modern Christmas celebrations may undermine well-being, while family and spiritual activities may help people to feel more satisfied.

So, what you have always known in your heart to be true is now confirmed by Tim Kasser and Kennon Sheldon in their article: ‘What makes for a merry Christmas?’

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Notes

The image of the Christmas tree is reproduced from the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from where I also obtained the background information.

 

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory

  (John 1:14 )

Lay Anglicana would like to offer its readers a little prose-and-poetry Christmas stocking which we hope you might enjoy in the remaining part of Advent and over the twelve days of Christmas. Thank-you for all your support and encouragement over the last year. I hope you will all know some of the pieces, and none of you will know them all!

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First of all, a description of the celebration of Christmas which is a trap for the unwary:

Christmas Presents

by Anon

Every year Grandma gets a tin of talcum powder.
She always says, ‘Ah my favourite!’
Even before she opens the wrapping
Grandpa always says, ‘Well, I know what’s in here.
Its two pairs of socks. Just what I wanted!’
As for Mum and Dad, they just sat there and said,
‘We’ve given each other a joint present this year
It’s a digital clock radio for our bedroom.’
Do you know, they didn’t even bother to wrap it up!
At the end, when everything had been given out,
Mum said, ‘We mustn’t forget the gift-vouchers from Debbie and Jim.
We sent them a cheque for the same amount. We always do.’
I call that a bit un-i-Magi-native, don’t you?
Maybe, when you come to think about it,
Grown-ups need Father Christmas far more than children do.

 How the Grinch stole Christmas

by Dr. Seuss

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,

stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?

It came without ribbons. It came without tags.

It came without packages, boxes or bags.

And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store?

What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

‘A little bit more’?  U.A. Fanthorpe has the answer for us all in ‘B C : A D’:

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.    

In the last few days there has been much discussion as to whether Britain is still a Christian country. Here is an editorial in ‘Country Life’ dated 13 December 2007 which seems worth re-reading:

Britain’s roots are deeply embedded in Christianity

‘Deck the Halls’. ‘Jingle Bells’. ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Up and down the country, carollers are singing the familiar seasonal refrains. But hark! What are those faint notes we hear? ‘O Come all ye Faithful’? ‘Away in a Manger’? Sssshhhhh. Who would be caught acknowledging the Christian narrative that underpins this holiday? For ‘tis the season to be jolly and merry, but not Christian. The symbols and figures of the Nativity have given way to Santa and his little helpers. Advent calendars boast chocolates and biscuits, but finding a Magus or three on the High Street is near-impossible. Christ has been dropped from Christmas….Secularists are bent on re-writing the country’s history, in order to quash any claim that Britain’s roots are deeply embedded in Christianity. Yet they need only walk through the countryside, with its stone churches, or in town, where the cathedral cloister is still the quiet heart of the bustling landscape, to see how flimsy their theory is. They’ll find Christianity in texts from the Venerable Bede to Shakespeare; when they listen to Handel’s Messiah or Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius; when they read of the charitable works inspired by Wilberforce and Rowntree’s faith. For two millennia, Christianity has inspired what’s best about this country. For two millennia, it has been the custodian of our cultural life. Surely, it can continue to be the custodian of the all-too brief forthcoming holiday of Christmas?

The origin of the crib scene

by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor

Saint Francis made his mark not only in Assisi but also throughout Umbria and beyond. The village of Greccio, about ten miles northwest of Rieti, is a particularly significant Franciscan site, because what happened there in 1223 has a great deal to do with the images we have of the birth of Jesus at the first Christmas. According to one of Francis’s earliest biographers, Friar Thomas of Celano, about two weeks before Christmas Francis asked his dear friend Giovanni from Greccio to set up a scene of the birth of Christ in a manger. He told Giovanni it would be good and edifying ‘to have set before our bodily eyes in some way the inconveniences of his infant needs, how he lay in a manger, how, with an ox and an ass standing by, he lay upon the hay where he had been placed.’

Giovanni was enthralled by the poetic vision Francis had described. Many people set to work and Francis was delighted with what they achieved, because now he had a way of showing people how small, poor and humble God had appeared on that first Christmas night in Bethlehem. It snowed on Christmas Eve, which meant the valley was unusually silent. Franciscan brothers from nearby communities came to Greccio, as did many of the country people; the candles and torches they brought really brightened the ‘night that has lighted up all the days and years with its gleaming star’. Francis himself was the deacon for the midnight Mass; the way he read the Gospel and preached about Christ’s birth in Bethlehem evidently had a remarkable effect on many of those who heard him.

He wanted to show people that the crib scene is not just about shepherds and wise men from the East, but also about a child born among the cobwebs and hay, surrounded by the heavy breath of animals. And he did this with the first ‘live crib’, in which the population of a rural valley in Italy brought the Gospel to life. There is no mention of an ox or an ass in any of the Gospels. The only animals mentioned are the sheep the shepherds tended in the fields, and none of the Gospels says that the shepherds brought their sheep with them. What Francis and his friend the nobleman Giovanni of Greccio staged on Christmas Eve in 1223 has been portrayed ever since in paintings and carvings, on calendars and Christmas cards, even in the carols we sing.

The Spectator, 15-29 December 2007

Let us put up a Christmas tree in our hearts

Anon, taken from a Christmas card

This advent, let us put up a Christmas tree in our hearts and, instead of hanging presents, let us put instead the names of all our friends. Our close friends, and the not so close. The old friends, the new friends. Those that we see every day and those that we rarely see. The ones we always remember and the ones we sometimes forget. The friends of difficult times and the ones of happy times. Friends who, without meaning to, we have hurt – as well as those who, without meaning to, have hurt us. Those that owe us little and those to whom we owe much. All those that have passed through our lives, no matter how fleetingly. A tree with very deep roots and very long and strong branches, so that their names may never be plucked from our hearts.

And is it true…?

‘Christmas’, by John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,

The Tortoise stove is lit again…

The holly in the windy hedge

And round the Manor House the yew

Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,

The altar, font and arch and pew,

So that villagers can say

‘The Church looks nice’ on Christmas Day…

Loving fingers tying strings

Around those tissued fripperies,

The sweet and silly Christmas things,

Bath salts and inexpensive scent

And hideous tie so kindly meant…

And is it true?

For if it is

No love that in a family dwells,

no carolling in frosty air,

nor all the steeple shaking bells

can with this single truth compare –

that God was man in Palestine

and lives today in Bread and Wine.

The Grace:

May Christ the sun of righteousness shine upon us, scatter the darkness from before our path, and make us ready to meet him when he comes in glory; and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen.

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Notes

The illustration is from the Metropolitan Museum Neapolitan Baroque nativity scene.

Can we for the moment put aside criticism of the present government’s social policies and ask, instead, why David Cameron used the occasion of an event to mark the end of a year’s celebration of the King James version of the bible to celebrate the role of the KJV in our national life? Context is all.

Cameron’s Christianity

He has been mocked for describing himself as:

…a committed – but I have to say vaguely practising – Church of England Christian, who will stand up for the values and principles of my faith…but who is full of doubts and, like many, constantly grappling with the difficult questions when it comes to some of the big theological issues.

Does this not remind you of:

Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief (Mark 9:23-25)

Of course, I have no inside information about David Cameron’s faith, but his statement reads to me like someone who wants to believe, who does at heart believe, but perhaps struggles with the problem of pain and evil, having suffered the death of his young son. Canon Brian Mountford offers this reflection in a recently broadcast service:

In English literature, too, we find evidence of religious doubt which is protesting but loyal. Philip Davis, Professor of English at Liverpool University, observes that in ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’…when Evangelist points the Man, the potential Christian, to the way of salvation, he asks, ‘Do you see yonder Wicket-gate?’ Bunyan simply writes, ‘The Man said, No’. But it is not an angry, anti-religion ‘no’. He knows the right answer would be yes, but reluctantly he has to be truthful and say no. Then he is given a second chance by Evangelist who asks, ‘Do you see yonder shining light?’ Of course, a St Paul or a Billy Graham might say, ‘Hallelujah, yes, I see the light,’ but the Man manages a less than certain, ‘I think I do’. However underwhelming that may feel, it’s nevertheless a form of belief and perhaps the very essence of belief. It’s positive and has the same ring as ‘help thou mine unbelief’. Davis cites other examples, including the mighty Luther who declares, ‘Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.’

 The Church of England and English Political Life

Professor Owen Chadwick described in 1960 the historic relationship that grew up between landowner and parson – the world of Anthony Trollope:

‘Until yesterday, as it seems, the squire and the country parson were with us, the rulers of the parish in their different spheres. The manor-house would stand near the church, and sometimes the villagers, living outside the park, needed to pass through the park to their Sunday services. In its dim origins the country church had often been a chapel which the lord had founded and of which he was proprietor. In the earliest days the distinction between the landlord’s private chaplain and the vicar of the landlord’s parish had been blurred. But then the lawyers recognised the parson to have such a free-hold of his benefice that he could not be ejected without a court of law; and once the parson could not be dismissed, even by his landlord, there were two independent powers in the parish, and we have the relationship between squire and parson familiar to English history and the English novel.’

This is partly what we mean when we say the Church of England is the established, national Church. Individual parsons and squires would manage rural affairs between them. Of course, life is no longer like that but it is part of our history.

The Church of England would perhaps no longer welcome this arrangement as altogether too cosy, but to me the idea that the government of the day should sit down with the Church to discuss how to handle some of the problems that face us has definite appeal.

The Digital Nun recently signalled the increasing use of the phrase ‘the right thing to do’ by our politicians. She points out that moral decisions are rarely as simple as the phrase suggests. However, at least they are trying – rather like Queen Victoria promising to be good.

Muslim Appreciation of this view

The BBC quotes reactions to David Cameron’s speech, including this one by Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, a member of the Muslim Council of Britain and an imam in Leicester (the bolding is mine).

“It’s very seldom I get excited by what our prime minister has to say and this is one of those times. As Muslims we also believe in the Bible. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. Not only that, but in the teachings of all the biblical prophets, including Moses in the Torah. So this is something that we feel is absolutely in tune with the Muslim thinking. We have to base our behaviour according to scripture, God’s revealed message. “For a long time Muslims have been trying to express this idea, that for us as Muslims Islam is not just a religion but a way of life. To divorce politics from religion is not something we are able to do, we cannot leave our religion at home or in the mosques, it comes with us wherever we go. So it’s refreshing to hear the prime minister say Christians should do the same. I agree Britain is the best country for Muslims to live in, at least in Europe.“

Please also ‘contrast and compare’ Will Cookson’s excellent blog on this subject at: http://willcookson.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/david-cameron-and-the-failure-of-christian-vision/

Also Bishop Nick Baines of Bradford, who writes at:http://nickbaines.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/words-about-word/#comment-13565

And Edward Green at http://www.future-shape-of-church.org/?e=93#

Elizaphanian writes: David Cameron’s Christianity, or: why conservatives can support the Occupy movement

Phil Ritchie tells us of Screwtape’s reaction: http://philipstreehouse.blogspot.com/2011/12/screwtape-email.html

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Notes

The view of St Martin’s in the Fields from Trafalgar Square is by Anibal Trejo via Shutterstock. The intention is not to suggest that our Prime Minister is to be compared to the king of the jungle, but rather that he represents the religious stance of many Englishmen.

I hope you enjoyed reading, as did I, Unheard Melodies‘ post of 7 December on Kensal Rise Cemetery, The Decent Inn of Death. Anyone who was anyone in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries was buried in great style. In Britain we have Kensal Rise, Highgate and Glasgow; in Paris they have Père Lachaise, all destinations in their own right to those who value ‘The Pleasures of Melancholy‘, as Thomas Warton Jr wrote in 1745:

O, lead me, queen sublime, to solemn glooms
Congenial with my soul; to cheerless shades,
To ruin´d seats, to twilight cells and bowers,
Where thoughtful Melancholy loves to muse…

He was only 17, so he can perhaps be forgiven for finding ‘cheerless shades’ so congenial, but in fact any resident of the British Isles needs to develop the ability to feel pleasure in melancholy if only because of our weather, especially in November and February.

But the most atmospheric necropolis, or city of the dead, of them all is surely Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta. This cemetery, which by the 1980s was in the middle of ‘downtown’ Calcutta, is a warning to city planners everywhere – when it was built in the 1700s it was sited at the far southern end of town, and called Burial Ground Road, but the city centre moved inexorably south, turning the cemetery into a landmark of midtown Calcutta (on a street now renamed Mother Teresa Sarani), which has been allowed to remain a peaceful oasis in the middle of the city.

At least it seems peaceful in relation to the surrounding traffic. But I invite you to listen to the sounds as you follow this 53 second video of Park Street Cemetery. Apart from the ubiquitous crows, and a distant peacock, at 0.13 seconds you can hear the koel, or brain-fever bird, said to have driven generations of English women mad as they listened to the rising crescendo in the pre-monsoon heat, waiting for a climax to the song and a downpour that seemed as if it would never arrive. (And yes, I do speak from personal experience, though I seem to have more or less recovered my sanity!)

I spent a good deal of time in the cemetery in the late 1980s, photographing the graves to form part of the record being compiled by Maurice Shellim for BACSA (the British Association for the Preservation of Cemeteries in South Asia), of which Robert and I are life members. As any photographer knows, in the tropics the best time for photography is in the early morning or just before dusk. It is also the time favoured by the formidable mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects of the region, as I can attest (One must suffer for one’s art of course, this I knew). Luckily for me, this only resulted in two bouts of dengue fever: the residents of the cemetery were not so lucky, in fact their life expectancy once arriving in Calcutta was said to be ‘two monsoons’

The two best known occupants are probably Sir William Jones and Rose Aylmer. Sir William Jones, the founder of the Asiatic Society, was a man of great distinction – a fact of which few were more aware than he himself. His obelisk tomb is the tallest in Calcutta, now unfortunately painted white. But the epitaph waxes lyrical about his great humility, summing up:

He thought none beneath him but the base and ignoble.

Hmm. Not quite sure whether this will be humble enough to get him past St Peter at the pearly gates.

Rose Aylmer, the object of Walter Savage Landor‘s elegaic poem, was said rather tartly by locals to have died from a surfeit of pineapples:

Ah, what avails the sceptred race,
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

In Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy‘, Amit and Lata walk around the cemetery and particularly like Rose Aylmer’s tomb, which Amit says ‘looks like an upside-down ice-cream cone’. Amit explains that Landor had met Rose in the Swansea Circulating Library and then again when she, like many unmarried girls just beginning to be past it, arrived in Calcutta on ‘the fishing fleet’. She died before knowing whether she would have to join the sad troupe of the ‘returning empties’.

I strongly recommend the post by ‘Chris’ of Taiwan dated 1 May 2011 on ‘Graving Blog’, devoted to Park Street Cemetery. He has many more photographs and a well-written background piece.

The Revd Richard Coles recommends Birmingham’s Key Hill Cemetery. What’s your favourite resting place?

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The photograph of Rose Aylmer’s tomb is by Sean Chadwell; the general view of the main illustration and the thumbnail of Sir William Jones are made available by wikimedia. All are released under a creative commons licence.

The passage in ‘A Suitable Boy’ is in section 7.30, pages 451-3 in my copy. Although my name does not appear in the acknowledgements, I did the background research on Landor for Vikram, and he has annotated the contents page ‘A cemetery affords a pleasing walk’ with ‘(which it wouldn’t have, without your help, Laura. Thanks!)

I know that Calcutta is now called Kolkata, but there was no city here at all until Job Charnock of the East India Company set up his trading post on the highest possible navigable point on the Hooghly River in 1690. He called it Calcutta, it was Calcutta while the cemetery was open, and while we lived there in the 1980s so, for me, it remains Calcutta.

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I wrote a book called ‘Calcutta Through British Eyes 1690-1990‘. It was published by Oxford University Press in 1991 but is now out of print. It was an anthology of published diaries and letters written by English people living in Calcutta since its foundation.

In Barcelona’s Plaça de Sant Jaume, there is always a group of people dancing the Sardana. According to wikipedia, this dance was banned during the Franco régime as a Catalan nationalist symbol, but in this at least they are wrong, for in 1965  I was among a group of students who went to the square and joined in the dance for a few minutes. It is not as easy as it looks, and we soon dropped out in favour of watching instead. I am tempted to say, looking at the age of the participants in this youtube video, that some of them look as if they have themselves been dancing continuously since 1965 but, generally speaking, the dance goes on while the dancers come and go to the music of time.

The River that is Twitter

This is how I think about social media, twitter in particular. You can decide to while away the afternoon in the twittersphere but you cannot predict what turn the conversation will take. Beyond the rule about 140 characters, every twitter session is different. Sometimes it is like watching one of those complicated opera arias, with perhaps four different people singing their hearts out about completely different topics simultaneously. It is exhilarating -and sometimes surreal- to try and participate in four conversations at once, with subjects ranging from the sublime to the mundane. Sometimes there are a dozen or more taking part in or looking in on the same conversation. But there are also conversations which take place in different time zones. If someone in the USA tells a joke at tea time, you may be asleep and unable to LOL or even ROFL until the following morning, perhaps ten hours later, by which time any repartee you can offer has rather lost its point. My twitter stream may be more homogenous than some people’s, because I choose to follow chiefly those involved in the Church or politics. I like the fact that most of the people I follow are also followed by the people who follow me (still with me?), in other words I enjoy being part of a network, which others in the network also seem to enjoy.

You Cannot Step into the Same River Twice

But, as Heraclitus  almost pointed out, you cannot step into the same twitter session twice. If you have a conversation over breakfast with a group of congenial people, you cannot pick up the conversation over dinner. This is partly because the twittersphere, like the river, has moved on. But it is also because you have moved on. You are a different person at dinner from the one you were at breakfast, albeit infinitesimally so. The cells in your body have changed and the world has changed with you. Wait a week, a month or a year and the differences are more marked.

What Has All This to do with the Christian Life?

In case you are wondering whether I am ever going to get to the point – whether indeed there is a point to this post -  here it is: we have just begun what is for me my 63^rd church year. On the face of it, when it is the sixty-third time you have been told a story, you might think it is difficult to pay attention, let alone get excited. BUT I am not the same person – I have been a different person every year for the last sixty-three years. And it is not the same story. The story changes every year because I see different things in it.

Brother Charles, an American Franciscan priest, expresses this better than I possibly can, and will I hope not mind my quoting him:

…we exist in time, but God is eternal. So there is no before or after with God; there is nothing that God is doing tomorrow that he is not doing now. With God there is only a Now, a nunc stans¸ as the scholastic theologians liked to say… This is why the presence of God  always seems new and fresh, and is refreshing for the soul, because God is always Now. This arriving presence in our hearts is the real desire of our souls—a desire we so often squander on things that are less than God and will not satisfy…   Let’s begin again, for the first time, to wait for the God who wants to speak the Word of his own self from within each of us.

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Notes

This post was written for The Big Bible Project as a Digidisciple on 5 December 2011.

The photograph of a Sardana was taken at La Verema in September 2010 by  Natursports / Shutterstock.com

The picture is by Nicolas Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time, which formed the title and  backdrop to the Anthony Powell series of the same name about a group of people over a period of years, and is made available by wikimedia under a creative commons licence.

King Canute is not to be confused with the real King Cnut, the much-misunderstood 11th century Viking leader and King of England. Many attempts have been made to correct the legend which has grown up around him, for example here, here and here. But legends about historical figures (compare the unlikely story about King Alfred burning the woman’s cakes) are sometimes more interesting than the real thing. According to the version of the legend I need for this post,

“Canute is famous for the tale of the incoming tide. According to legend, Canute’s courtiers flattered him into believing that his word was so powerful that even the tide would recede at his command. Canute is said to have taken this compliment literally and had his throne placed by the shore and vainly attempted to command the waves to recede until he almost drowned.”

The reality in which King Canute lived, and the reality experienced by all others in his realm, bore little relation to each other. I expect you can see where I am going with this – I am inescapably reminded of the present Archbishop of Canterbury, about whom I have recently been accused  of being ‘waspish‘.  (I think this is fair comment, but can only plead that his plans to introduce central command and control into my beloved Church of England make me very cross indeed. His Ninja Nuns form such a tight circle around him that I would have no chance of punching him on the nose, and it is not really my style. Waspishness is the weapon of the weak and I have no other tools at my disposal).

The comparison to King Canute has been occasioned by Archbishop Rowan’s Advent letter to the other Primates of the Anglican Communion. Paragraph 7 reads as follows (the bolding is mine):

This of course relates also to the continuing discussion of the Anglican Covenant. How it is discussed, the timescale of discussion and the means by which decisions are reached will vary a lot from Province to Province. We hope to see a full report of progress at next year’s Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting. In spite of many assurances, some Anglicans evidently still think that the Covenant changes the structure of our Communion or that it gives some sort of absolute power of ‘excommunication’ to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body. With all respect to those who have raised these concerns, I must repeat that I do not see the Covenant in this light at all. It sets out an understanding of our common life and common faith and in the light of that proposes making a mutual promise to consult and attend to each other, freely undertaken. It recognizes that not doing this damages our relations profoundly. It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled. It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function. I continue to ask what alternatives there are if we want to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity. In the absence of such alternatives, I must continue to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can to all who are considering its future.

I have highlighted the sentence which makes me think that Archbishop Rowan and I are living on different planets. Both Canon Alan Perry and the Revd Malcolm have already written in detail and with conviction about the oddities of this letter and I urge you to read their blog posts. But the sentence in bold type represents a view of reality which I find incomprehensible. How can 5,123 words possibly change the longstanding differences in the way we (each Province in the Communion) hold our forks, say tomayto or tomahto, elect or appoint our bishops and believe that there should be three or four orders of priesthood?  We should not even be trying to make ourselves all identical. We should instead be reminding each other that, while our Anglican neighbours may have motes in their eyes, we very probably have beams in our own.

Can it be that Archbishop Rowan is suffering from ‘courtier-itis’? It happened to Margaret Thatcher after she had been in office for a while, and it happened to Indira Gandhi. It has certainly happened to any number of tinpot dictators around the world. The version of reality that reaches rulers is sifted by courtiers and lacks the salty tang of the world encountered by the rest of us. Sometimes the ruler views life from another planet as a result, and at the very least he or she may develop astigmatism.

To paraphrase Edward Fitzgerald‘s paraphrase of Omar Khayyam:

‘A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou, and thou and thou
Just add some brie, and we shall have a paradise enow’

In the 1970s I, like many others, lived a relatively bohemian life (it was, after all, the decade after we went to San Francisco, being sure to wear some flowers in our hair – see bch1_Ep5M1s – even if only in our imagination). One of the best aspects of life in that period is that hospitality was much simpler. People would drop in after work for a drink, perhaps bringing friends (and a bottle if you were lucky), and stay for a pot luck supper, sitting on floor cushions. Not that there was a pot. I used to buy a whole Brie, which looked impressive and fed an elastic number of people, and a couple of sticks of French bread. I don’t recall having plates or table napkins (probably we had paper ones) – certainly I don’t remember having to do any washing-up except glasses.

Fast-forward forty years. A few days ago, Robert and I had lunch with old friends, just the four of us. She is an excellent cook, and had prepared a delicious and elaborate meal, exquisitely served. However, it meant that she spent most of the meal in the kitchen ensuring that the food met her very high standards. Her husband spilt a glass of red wine, which meant that he spent most of the meal on his hands and knees under the table trying to mop it up and applying various home remedies to avoid a stain. My husband and I perforce made small talk to each other across the table. Everyone gritted their teeth not to show the irritation or discomfiture they felt, and we all kept smiling through. But we had gone to their house in the hope of enjoying a relaxed and convivial interlude – and we presume they had invited us for the same reason.

Social norms dictate that, after a short interval, we will return the invitation and we will all go through a similar exercise, the main difference being that it is in our house and not theirs. And so on and so on ad infinitum and ad , well not nauseam but perhaps to the point of exhaustion. It was even worse in the 1980s, when there was magazine after magazine urging people on to ever greater efforts to produce food that looked almost too beautiful to eat. In retrospect, it was all ‘wasteful and ridiculous excess’:

To gild refinèd gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Now, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the next couple of years/decade/foreseeable future are going to be years of austerity in the West. While I of course feel for those who will genuinely suffer as a result, I have spent much of my life living in countries and cities, notably Calcutta, where many people lived a life of extreme simplicity, forced on them by circumstance. You might think that they were miserable? Well, I have good news for you. If you compared their facial expressions en masse with those of a rush-hour queue at a London bus-stop, it was the Londoners who looked miserable.

‘Faites simple!’, cried Escoffier.

Simplicity is relative – he was trying only to get away from the excesses of Carème, and would no doubt be horrified by what I am proposing. But, for at least some of the time, let us use the more austere times that apparently lie ahead to simplify the way we entertain each other.  If you want to recapture the simple joy of fellowship as you break bread with your friends, may I suggest a return to a jug of wine, a loaf of bread (and a crumb or two of cheese) as the only necessary fuel?

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Note

The illustration is a still life by Vincent Van Gogh, made available under a creative commons licence by Wikimedia.

Against Darth Vader and the Anglican Covenant we need to put on all the armour of light.

^{cf Romans 13.12}

Oscar Hammerstein II was a better role model:

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn’t write anything without hope in it.

Hope doesn’t get a very good press, if you scan anthologies of poetry or quotations as I have been doing. While the Bible of course stresses the hope that our Christian faith brings us, the secular view seems to be that hopes often do not materialise and then all that is left is despair. Lord Byron warned in ‘Growing Old‘:

 What are the hopes of Man? Old Egypt’s King Cheops erected the first Pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing to keep his memory whole and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging burglariously broke his coffin’s lid.
Let not a monument give you or me hopes, since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.

In ‘Answers to questions of Christianity’,  C S Lewis explained why he thought a Pollyanna-like optimism was dangerous:

 If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place for correction and it’s not so bad. Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.

One approach is to whistle in the dark like Queen Victoria, who famously said:

Please understand there is no pessimism in this house and we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.

Or you can hope, like Micawber, that something will turn up , as Bernard Baruch‘s story illustrates:

 A man sentenced to death obtained a reprieve by assuring the king that he would teach his majesty’s horse to fly within the year—on condition that if he didn’t succeed, he would be put to death at the end of the year. ‘Within a year,’ the man explained later, ‘the king may die, or I may die, or the horse may die. And, in a year, who knows? Maybe the horse will learn to fly.’

I think the problem may lie in what you are hoping for, as Charles Shulz had Snoopy reflect:

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement.

Hopes are more likely to be realised if they are realistic, thought Isaac Newton:

 Do as well as you can today, and perhaps tomorrow you may be able to do better.

 

Emily Dickinson found it a reliable, if fragile, companion:

Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
And sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes likens hope to an anchor, a helmet and – my favourite– a cork. The idea that we need fear to keep us grounded – and hope to keep us afloat – is irresistible:

The use of hope is twofold: that we rest in hope in this life; that we rest not here, but look for a better. As our life is a sea, hope is compared to an anchor whereby we hold fast; as it is a warfare, our hope is a helmet to save our heads from hurt. As the body liveth spirando, so the soul sperando *…[St] Basil compareth the gospel to a net, and Fear to be the lead which maketh it sink and keepeth it steady, and Hope the cork which keepeth always above; without the lead of Fear it would be carried hither and thither, and without the cork of Hope it would sink down.

The best inspirational poets were the Victorians – and, despite the bad press of ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays‘, the best two of these went to Rugby.  A H Clough‘s poem begins with dashed expectations, but as a whole is an energising hymn to hope:

Say not the struggle naught availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth, and as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; it may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers, and, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making, comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only, when daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright!

Hope is a strong emotion, not a casual whim. In the sense that we have been looking at, it is not the hope of ‘I hope you are well?’, muttered to an acquaintance. It is like Emily Dickinson’s essential oils:

The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns — alone –
It is the gift of Screws –

 

When  Dame Julian of Norwich famously said

And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,

it is not the smug, not to say glib, reassurance that it can sometimes seem. Hope is strongly linked to faith and love, as we know ^{1 Corinthians 13.13} . It is best explained by the strapline in Grandmere Mimi’s ‘Wounded Bird’ blog:

Faith is not certainty so much as it is acting-as-if in great hope.

 

 

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*Bishop Lancelot is echoing the motto ‘Dum spiro, spero’ (while I breathe, I hope): ‘As the body liveth spirando, so the soul sperando’, ie ‘as the body lives by breathing, so does the soul by hoping’

The two illustrations are ‘Sunshine on cloud’ by Sky Studio, and ‘Message in a bottle’ by Kutlayev Dmitry,  both via Shutterstock

If you do not already know him, may I introduce you to

Anglican Covenant

@AngCovenant

Out to take over the world, one province at a time. Sign up!

Things have come to such a pass that it seemed necessary to invite him to offer a guest post. Prepare to shiver your timbers!

Silence!

Greetings from the many corners and folds of the world where I am being debated and weighed. Greetings from the few places where I have been enthusiastically embraced as a way forward out of the mire. Greetings from the recycling bins of councils that have passed me along (but only in principle, with some great reservation or other, noting as they have done so that I do not ultimately change those churches’ sense of autonomy – a concept beyond my orbit).

Does my tone make me seem like someone who feels guilty over all the stomach acid people have expended on his behalf? It might, but I don’t. I’m not guilty any more than the sky is green or the grass is blue.

For I am the Anglican Covenant. I am an inanimate piece of paper with words written upon it. My creators did not intend for me to feel anything, so I don’t. In fact, I’m a perfectly rational substitute for the bonds of mutual affection some of you lot have come to treasure so.

Even so, one day you will all bow down to me. I am sure of this, even as I totter on the edge of non-adoption, because I was made to be sure of it.

Some say I am a futile project borne of yesterday’s clerics, and that said clerics were desperate to lock down some sort of position, some kind of certitude, while their ship tottered and sank. Some say I am the impulses of a West-fearing Southern Cone wary of the importation of sexualized culture. Some say I was simply present at the creation but it took a crisis, a rift, to see my necessity and to breathe my articulation into life.

I like this last bit because it makes me feel especially important. I like feeling important. I will not be thought of as irrelevant, and neither will I tolerate your thinking that I am. For as I mentioned, I will be reverenced someday soon.

Some say, too, that I’m about power, and that bores me. Everybody always talks about power, and some of your clerics (the less canny among them, I’m afraid) even talk about giving it away to the people, and in turn those people giving their power to the marginalized and disenfranchised. Not me; I’m going to accrete all I can and never expend it – only threaten and pose, strut and cajole. I love being me, for as I have said, that’s how I was made.

Never mind all that rubbish from Jesus about loving everyone equally and treating your brother as you would want to be treated. Never mind about your revelation, or of how God’s Holy Spirit works through localized contexts and in particular persons acting and speaking in particular circumstances.

That’s enough theology. Theology makes me tired. I like games and sports – nothing too deep, mind. Otherwise I have to go to the counselor, who says I have accute narcissistic personality disorder. I don’t know what that means and haven’t the slightest interest in looking it up.

Look, the point is, freedom – your freedom, I mean – is illusory. Eventually we give it all over to someone else. Don’t believe me? Pop round to the old-folks’ home; who do you think’s running the show down there?

So here’s the deal. Give me your power, your freedom, your sense of what makes for justice and right and wrong, and I promise to hold it as one who … well, “cares” is too strong a word. Let’s just say tries to appear to care. That’s it.

Well, I suppose that about covers it for now. See you soon.

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Notes

Since @AngCovenant does not deign to show his face, it seemed best to ask the dark Lord, Darth Vader himself, to do the honours. Wikimedia offers us this version under a creative commons licence.

Guest Post by The Revd Graham Tomlin, Dean of St Mellitus College

On the 23rd September 1647, René Descartes, the father of modern thought and author of the best-known sound-bite in the history of western philosophy, “I think, therefore I am,”  paid a visit to a young, rather sickly twenty-four year old, recently arrived in Paris with his sister. He, like Descartes, was a mathematician, a philosopher of sorts, and a genius. His name was Blaise Pascal. Although at this time they were on fairly good terms, within a few years they were set on almost diametrically opposite paths, Descartes confident that the future lay with human reason, and its ability to explain and understand everything that matters, Pascal convinced that human rationality was fatally flawed by the Fall, and that the truth lay in historic Augustinian Christianity. Much of what they said that day remains unrecorded, but the meeting perhaps symbolises the meeting of an older Christianity with a new modern age, confident in human abilities, thinking it had little need now of those old ways.

Blaise Pascal never saw his 40th birthday. He was an anguished, illness-ridden, often lonely man, who, at the cutting edge of contemporary scientific experimentation, felt keenly the intellectual ferment of his day. One November night in 1654, he experienced a profound encounter with God, which turned a distant and arid faith into a gripping sense of mission and devotion. He died eight years later in voluntary poverty, leaving behind scattered papers which were probably intended as a grand Apology for Christianity, conceived very much with people like Descartes in mind. These were subsequently gathered together and published by his friends as the famous “Pensées”, “Thoughts on Religion and various other subjects.” Throughout these jottings, we can see Pascal countering two opposing attitudes, very familiar to his contemporaries, and also very familiar today, a fact which makes him such a fascinating figure for us.

War on Two Fronts

On the one hand, he was conscious of those who, like Descartes, were supremely and increasingly confident in the power of human reason and its ability to deliver sure, unequivocal certainty. On the other, a vigorous body of opinion in C17th France was distinctly cynical and sceptical about knowing anything for sure. Taking their cue from the great C16th moralist Montaigne, whose great question was “What can I know?”, these “Pyrrhonists” tended to be laid-back and ironic: if we can know nothing, what is there left but to enjoy life while you can? Poised between Descartes’ certainty and Montaigne’s scepticism, Pascal’s self-imposed task was to persuade his contemporaries on both sides that Augustinian Christianity was a better bet than either.

Perhaps all of this has a contemporary ring for us. New Age anti-rationalism, and the laid-back postmodern suspicion of Truth are both heirs of the sceptic Montaigne. On the other hand, there are still old-fashioned rationalists around who believe that science can lead us to infallible knowledge, that human reason and logic can uncover absolute Truth. Neither have much room for the Christian God. Can Pascal help us as we face similar challenges to him?

Some Christians in Pascal’s day bought Descartes’ line. They saw no problem for Christianity if human reason was the ultimate test of Truth, because the Faith could be proved to be reasonable and true. So, a good many works of apologetics appeared in C17th France, all trying to show evidence from nature or miracles which proved the existence of God, or logical arguments designed to demonstrate the rationality of Christianity, so that anyone who read them would be compelled to believe. Pascal thought these a complete waste of time.

For starters, he pointed out that human reason is not actually as reliable as Descartes thought it was. Imagination, for example, is far more persuasive: “Put the world’s greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail!” If we really want something to be true, even if it doesn’t quite seem to fit, or even when an annoying fly is buzzing around our ears, the ability to think rationally & coolly somehow vanishes, and reason is quietly shown the door. Furthermore, Pascal admitted, when you look closely at the world, it doesn’t prove God’s existence at all. God does not show himself at every corner, in fact at times he seems distinctly shy and hard to find. The world does not shout out obvious compelling proofs for God’s existence, and even Christianity itself doesn’t always seem to make good rational sense.

Is this then because it isn’t true? Is it because God isn’t there? Is sceptical agnosticism the only answer? Well, no, says Pascal. There is still enough to make us think again. We do sometimes experience a hunger inside, an “infinite abyss” which can only be filled by God, and until then we remain restless. We do have experiences, and see evidence that suggest there just might be a God, that it may be true after all. Not enough to convince, but not enough to silence the voice of faith either. In fact, if sceptics disbelieve in God, Pascal disbelieves in sceptics: “I maintain that a perfectly genuine sceptic has never existed,” he once memorably wrote. The world is so confusing and ambiguous, that neither the rationalist nor the sceptic can fully explain it all.

The Hidden God

Pascal’s answer to this problem can be summed up in one simple sentence from the “Pensées”: “What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence, nor the manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a Hidden God.” For Pascal, God deliberately hides himself in the world: we see glimpses of him, but then we’re not sure whether we can trust the evidence of our eyes. Why on earth should God do this?

Pascal’s answer is very important. God hides himself because he is not the God who stands at the end of an argument, who can be ticked off as something known and then ignored, and does not want to be. He is an intensely passionate God, who, when he comes into relationship with people, “unites himself with them in the depths of their soul.. and makes them incapable of having any other end but him.” You either have this kind of intimate personal encounter with God, or you don’t have him at all. He hides himself so that those who are idly curious, who don’t really want this kind of relationship with God and are only playing theological games, will not find him. Yet those who hunger for him deep within themselves, who are desperate to know him, they and they alone will find what they are looking for.

So, for Pascal, presenting an unbeliever with a list of proofs for Christianity or evidence for faith is probably a waste of breath. If someone basically doesn’t want to believe, no amount of proof can ever convince her. God will always remain hidden, and she will always find reasons not to believe. The crucial factor in persuading someone to believe, suggests Pascal, is not to present evidence, but first to awaken a desire for God in them. In other words, when commending Christianity to people, ‘make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.’ Such proofs as there are for Christianity can convince those who hope it is true, but will never convince those who don’t…

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 Notes

I am profoundly grateful to The Revd Dr Graham Tomlin for allowing me to use this abbreviated version of an article of his, which originally appeared in The Church Times, as an introduction to Pascal, his life and works.

http://www.stmellitus.org/

http://sptc.htb.org.uk/

http://www.ntmtc.org.uk/

I am hoping to follow this up with my own look at some of Pascal’s sayings.

Illustrations

The sculpture of Pascal, which stands in the Louvre, is by Augustin Pajou. The sculpture and the engraving (nfd) are both from wikimedia and are available under a creative commons licence.

As one of many voices trying to bring the uncomfortable truth about the proposed Anglican Covenant to the people of the world, I know only too well that the bearer of bad news is unlikely to be popular.

For it has to be admitted that facing up to the truth and acting on it is likely to be awkward and uncomfortable. It would be much more pleasant for all concerned simply to go along with what the Archbishop of Canterbury is asking the Anglican Communion in general, and the Church of England in particular, to do.  After all, if you can’t trust the Archbishop of Canterbury to have the interests of his flock as his prime concern, whom can you trust?

It seems unlikely that Archbishop Rowan has ever sought the advice of an image consultant but he has nevertheless – by luck or good management – achieved a degree of cuddliness unimaginable in his predecessors. With his height, his shock of grey hair and, above all, his impressive eyebrows, he could have chosen to play the role of Elijah, thundering from the mountain-top. But instead (almost certainly quite unconsciously), he has used his attractively modulated voice and his obvious delight in the company of children to project a personality which has led to his being impersonated, not just by a knitted doll but also a woolly bear.

In these circumstances, it is difficult to persuade people that any nostrum advanced by ‘Uncle’ Rowan could be anything other than the panacea that he promises.

“Just a spoonful of medicine, come on now, just to please Uncle Rowan.”

He might as well add, ‘Coochy, coochy, coo!”

Or  “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down”.

But where’s the sugar?

Well, I don’t want to shock those of you who have been gently reared, and cannot believe that the General Synod of the Church of England could possibly have anything to do with politics or politicking, but it is rumoured that there will indeed be some sugar on hand to help the medicine go down, and that is the admission of women to the episcopate. If the denizens of General Synod  swallow their Anglican Covenant medicine like good little boys and girls, then Uncle Rowan will let them have women bishops. See what a clever Uncle Rowan we have!

At this point in the story, the spoilsports who arrive to point out that the medicine may have fatal side effects are naturally likely to be hissed like pantomime villains. But their (our) role, which we hope does not turn out to be a tragic one, is to play the part of Cassandra. The daughter of Priam, the King of Troy, she was given the gift of prophecy by the god Apollo: she could see with perfect clarity into the future.  Unfortunately, because she rejected Apollo’s advances, Cassandra was then cursed that her visions, ever more tragic, would never be believed. But her visions were all to come true.

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Acknowledgements

The main illustration is ‘A trumpeting of golden music’ by xtremer via Shutterstock.

The bear is by Madeley Bears; the doll is by Fiona Goble, ‘Knit your own royal wedding’

The painting of Cassandra is by Evelyn de Morgan, via wikipedia

I expect you know from your own experience, as do I, that in the workplace you need input from both men and women to achieve the best results. But this is a subjective statement – how can I prove it to you?

Well, if you watch ‘The Apprentice’, I think you will agree that, year after year, the initial single-sex teams are much less successful at the given tasks than when the sexes are mixed up at a later stage.  Stereotypically, women bring a priori  thinking, commonsense, intuition and imagination to the table, whereas men bring a posteriori   thinking, logic, ‘inside the box’ and clear-headedness.

Christian Complementarianism

This commonsense wisdom has been transmuted by some Christian denominations into ‘complementarianism’ (not, please, ‘complimentarianism’ which, if it were a word, would mean paying each other compliments!). I have no problem with the idea that the sexes are complementary (or complete each other) – this is exactly what I believe. I have always found wisdom in the eastern idea of yin and yang, the two opposing but complementary harmonies, each of which carries the germ of the other: none of us is 100% male or 100% female.

But these denominations then make a huge leap (with no logical justification that I can see, other than selective editing of the Bible) to say that women may only serve the Church in subservient roles.  There is a wealth of material on this in cyberspace: James Prescott blogged on 8 November;  Rachel Held Evans makes a lot of sense to me in ‘Complementarians are selective too‘; Krish Kandiah blogged today on ‘Women, Men, Church and Twitter‘ , summing up the debate. He concludes:

I know there are evangelical Christians on both sides of the debate. I know there are good and bad arguments being used by both sides. I know there are actually a range of egalitarian and complimentarian positions. There are “hard” and “soft” proponents. There are those that are lead more by the scripture than by the culture and those that are lead more by the culture than the scripture – on both sides. I know there are people that have been hurt on both sides of this debate, and I recognise that women who have felt their God given calling have been dismissed have been particularly hurt. My hope is that we can build a centre ground coalition that champions the centrality of the gospel, the authority of scripture and a gracious respect and honouring of women and the recognition of the need for a hermeneutic of humility when it comes to the scriptures and a spirit of generosity when it comes to those we disagree with. I want to start a peace process – not just that we agree to disagree but that we find a way through an issue that is splitting the church right down the middle…I’d love to know why you think this is the issue that is dividing the church at the moment?

The Wisdom of the Ancients

But  is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us (Ecclesiastes 1.10). In this case, it was in 385 BC that Aristophanes’ spoke on the origins of romantic love at Plato’s Symposium, here described by Dr Edward Spence, in ‘A Tale of Two Loves‘:

Aristophanes offers a story dealing with human nature and the human condition. Human beings were once spherical, with eight limbs like an octopus: four arms and four legs, one head with two faces and four ears and two sets of genitals, male or female, or both, so that they were any one of three kinds: male-male, male-female, and female-female. One day they offended the gods and to punish them Zeus cut them in half, scattering the two severed halves in opposite directions. Since that day, we are always searching for our other half. When a half meets its other half, each is overcome by Eros and each delights in being with the other. The reason for this is not, or at least not merely, a desire for sexual intercourse: on the contrary, the soul of each wishes for something it cannot put into words. Lovers desire to live a common life and die a common death, to become One again, in a complete and lasting union. The reason for this is our ancient nature: we were once a unified Whole. ‘Eros’ Aristophanes tells us, ‘Is the desire and pursuit of Wholeness’.

Aristophanes’ Story is the Story of the Fall

Aristophanes’ story is the story of the Fall; not dissimilar to that of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Heaven. We need healing, precisely because, when whole, we were impious and arrogant, prepared in our wholeness to challenge the gods. We find an analogous story of humanity’s fall from grace in Plato’s dialogue the Phaedrus. In that dialogue, Socrates relates to the character Phaedrus, (who also features in the Symposium) how our souls were once winged and circled the heavens with the gods until – getting too close to earth they became enamored with its sights and sounds and lost their wings, crash-landing to earth like Ikaros. But once in a while,upon encountering the face of the beloved, our souls become amorously and strangely agitated, and growing wings again long to take flight to the heavens from which they came.

If you want to understand ‘complementarian’, I suggest you need to look hard at the yin and yang Taoist symbol again:

Yin and Yang illustrated from the Tao Te Ching

 Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficult and easy complement each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low oppose each other.

Fore and aft follow each other.

How did the idea of yin being superior to yang, or yang being superior to yin ever come into it?

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This post is based on ‘Why we need both women and men in the church’ first published on 4 November as a guest post on Anna Blanch’s blog, Goannatree.

Complementarianism is part of the much wider topic of Dualism, which you can read a short introduction to here.

Image Credit: ‘Stained glass in the university’ by Nikita Starichenko licensed from Shuttercock.

Image Credit: The Tao image is downloaded from wikimedia under a creative common licence.

Yesterday, Remembrance Sunday, we remembered them.

And on Friday 11 November, Armistice Day  itself, we remembered them.

We remembered those who died that we might live free.

We remembered those who died in the first World War, ‘the war to end all wars’.

And we remembered all those who have died in all the wars since.

We who remain have a debt of honour to repay. All that the fallen require of us to justify their sacrifice is to fight, fight and fight again to safeguard the liberty that we, and our allies in war, now enjoy.

The phrase ‘Live Free or Die‘ has a history dating back at least to the Enlightenment, but my favourite use of it is on the licence plates for the state of New Hampshire. Other states have innocuous-sounding phrases like ‘the sunshine state’, but you know you have reached New England when you see this admonition on the car in front of you on the motorway (sorry, expressway).

Where now comes the threat to our liberty? You need look no further than Lambeth Palace (see previous post on ‘Countdown to the Chains of the Anglican Covenant’). So what if the intention is not  the enslavement of Anglicans around the world to the ‘Instruments of Communion’? – do you not think that this phrase has chillingly Orwellian tones? – our enslavement is what will be the result. The post-Covenant character of Anglicanism will be a totalitarian régime which seeks, not episcopal oversight, but archiepiscopal and episcopal thought control. If you think I am exaggerating, I invite you to look at the documents produced by the lobby in favour of the Covenant and then re-read the Newspeak of 1984.

Anglicanism has always offered its adherents a faith less concerned with the minutiae of doctrine (holding such debate up to ridicule by characterising it as the discussion of how many angels could fit on the head of a pin) than how to lead a Christian life, informed by the creeds and 39 Articles and inspired by Hooker’s scripture, tradition and reason. The Covenant takes 5,123 words to describe future doctrine, which will be enforced by the Instruments of Communion,  rather than individual conscience which has sufficed in the past.

Now is the time for the silent majority to wake up to the tiger that is at the gates…

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Notes

I know that I have written two consecutive posts about the threat to Anglicanism which I believe is posed by the Anglican Covenant. I realise that I risk losing my readership, but this risk is the least that I am ready to do. For me, the cartoon’s punch-line ‘If you know of a better hole, then go to it’ is not an option – I have no wish to worship anywhere other than the Church of England, as currently constituted, that I love.

If you need to remind yourself of what we tend to call ‘the Dunkirk spirit’, referring to the second world war, I urge you to read, thanks to Project Gutenberg, Fragments From France, by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, which describes the first world war.  The illustration is taken from its cover.

If the (well-intentioned) Archbishop of Canterbury were to have his way, the Anglican Covenant would, over the next few years, encircle the globe in chains.

However, there are unmistakable signs of rebellion, and it is beginning to look as if the select – extremely  select  –  group of signatories to the Covenant would fit on the head of a pin, leaving the great majority of Anglican Communion Provinces outside the inner circle of ‘true believers’.

In these circumstances, you might think the obvious course is to tear up the Covenant, while admitting that any document of 5,123 words and eleven A4 pages is unworkable as a worldwide definition of Anglicanism, quite apart from several unpalatable clauses in the small print. But what may be obvious to you and me appears not to be obvious to the powers that be.

Drinking in the last chance saloon

A nightmare* scenario is unfolding in England, home of the Anglican Communion. Although Provinces are not being asked to decide on the issue until 2015, Lambeth Palace is trying to ensure that General Synod votes on it as soon as possible (probably in 2012). Arms are being twisted to see to it that the Church of England signs on the dotted line, in the forlorn hope that the rest of the Communion will then follow suit.

This means that ordinary members of the Church of England (like me and perhaps you?), who are opposed to the provisions of the Covenant, need to make our voices heard as swiftly and as loudly as possible. You can try doing this through deanery synods, diocesan synods and so on. Or you could look for your diocesan representatives at General Synod for 2010-2015. But there is also another possibility.

Rousing the people of England as a whole

Unlike in other Provinces, the Church of England is the established Church: the Queen is Supreme Governor, some bishops sit in the House of Lords, and marriage by the Church of England is itself valid so far as the state is concerned, with no further licence required. The Church is part of the warp and weft of the fabric of our nation.

The population of England is about 52 million. Of these about 1.7 million attend church services once a month. So about 50 million people are therefore ‘passive’ church members, members of other denominations or faiths, agnostics or atheists.

Our task is to persuade as many as possible of these people that, although the day to day running of the Church of England may be a matter of indifference to them, because of the Church’s unique position its constitution forms part of the constitution of our nation.

What is the ‘British way of life’?

The political commentator, Sir Robin Day, wrote in his memoirs:

“in this country…our reasoning is tempered with humanity, moderated by fairness, based on truth, imbued with the Christian ethic, applied with commonsense, and upheld by law…there can be no place for absolutes, no place for theories which must be rigidly adhered to, no place for dogmas which must be defended to the death…there should be no principle which is too important to be reconsidered for the sake of others, no interest which cannot make some sacrifice for the common good. Equanimity is preferred to hysteria. Experience is a wiser guide than doctrine. Absolutes are alien to us…Such a constitution… can only work with the accompaniment of the conventions, traditions, customs, compromises, voluntary restraints and the national sense of fair play, all of which go to make up the Reasonable Society.”

Whereas Elizabeth I sought ‘not to make windows into men’s souls’, setting a precedent for the last 400 years of Anglicanism, the Church of which Elizabeth II is now supreme governor is seeking to do just that. The Queen is being asked, while monarch of a nation which now bans discrimination against homosexuals, to become supreme governor of a state Church which for the first time codifies such discrimination: she would then embody this dichotomy at the heart of our body politic.

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of ‘the English way’

We are not asking for money but we do very much need your help to:

• Write to as many people as possible to inform them of this threat, particularly
  • Journalists (newspapers, political weeklies)
  • Broadcasters (television and radio)
  • Academics (especially historians)
  • Members of both houses of parliament
  • Other members of ‘the chattering classes’.

  Will you

  • Tell everyone you meet – starting with your friends and relations
  • Give us ideas for campaigning, probably until July 2012
  • Offer IT/Social Media help: setting up and maintaining Facebook page? Twitter?

If you can help, please either respond in the comments section below or contact me at laurasykes{at}layanglicana{dot}org. Many thanks in advance!

Background on the Anglican Covenant

*There is no space here to explain why we describe the adoption of the Anglican Covenant as a nightmare scenario. You may like to explore further at these websites:

• The Text
• A summary of the text
• The No Anglican Covenant Coalition
• The case against the Covenant

For those of you who prefer the visual approach, I strongly recommend the series of videos made by MrCatolick and available on YouTube. For example:

The Anglican Covenant 4 November 2010 2.54 minutes

Anglican Covenant tactics for General Synod 20 November 2010 1.54 minutes

Some thoughts on the Anglican Covenant 4 February 2011 7.08 minutes

He also provides a summary of his view of Anglican Covenant developments over the last year, seen from the point of view of someone who understands General Synod in and out.

Previous posts on this blog are here, here, here, here and here.

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Notes

The photograph is ‘the earth chained and isolated’ by Andresr via Shutterstock.

The  protesters have been criticised for not having solutions to the problems we face, but then no one else has the solutions either. What they do have is a series of questions which society as a whole, and the Church as part of that society, needs to debate. The Bishop of London offered a debate under the dome of St Paul’s, but a better response from the Church might be a ‘Fresh Expression’ of worship and debate, a more informal way of doing things. One can imagine the cry: ‘we asked for bread and you gave us petits fours‘.

The situation has precipitated a crisis at St Paul’s, with the unprecedented resignation (for different reasons) of its Dean, Canon Chancellor and Chaplain. Part of the reason for the resignations is the prospect of forcibly evicting the protesters. Although it is understandable that the reaction of the civil authorities in the City of London is that this ‘eyesore’ should be cleared away as soon as possible, and certainly in time for the Lord Mayor’s Show on 12th November,  those outside this charmed circle of plutocrats can’t help feeling that they still don’t ‘get it’. Tumbrils have been mentioned on Twitter (though admittedly in the context of ‘Downton Abbey’) but the plutocrats’ reaction is unfortunately reminiscent of Marie Antoinette, on being told that the people had no bread to eat, asking why on earth they did not eat brioche instead.

‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ did not work for Marie Antoinette, and I fear it will not work for St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Church as a whole either.

Some leap of the imagination needs to be made. Some way of connecting with the protesters needs to be found. If the cathedral authorities have really decided that the single most important objective is their removal, then let it at least not be by riot police.

What about rigging up some amplification system and then, borrowing from our Catholic friends the system of Canonical Hours, broadcast at full volume the various offices of the day? These begin at 3.00 a.m. with Lauds and finish about 9.00 pm with Compline. Since the volume would need to be quite loud to have the desired effect, the clergy (working to a rota of course) might need to wear ear muffs. I suggest that after a day or two only the deafest and devoutest of the protesters would still be there, the others having decided to seek asylum elsewhere.

For me, the most encouraging photograph was of Bishop Richard Chartres sitting on a camp stool  in the thick of what looked like friendly but lively discussion. The questions that the protesters are asking are existential ones: why should the Christian faith not provide some of the answers? Over the last five centuries, the management of the Church of England has become as baroque as the architecture of St Paul’s. For those of us who appreciate that sort of thing, its baroque – or even rococo – qualities are part of the attraction. We know that underlying it all is ‘the old rugged cross’: perhaps we need to get it down from the belfries of our churches and show outsiders the essential simplicity of Christ’s answer to some of the most difficult questions, such as the rich young man who wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19.16-30).

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Note

The photograph was taken by Kunstlebob on 22 July 2011 and is made available under CCL via wikimedia.

Tawney “bemoaned the division between commerce and social morality brought about by the Protestant Reformation, leading as it did to the subordination of Christian teaching to the pursuit of material wealth”. In keeping with his social radicalism, Tawney came to regard the Church of England as a “class institution, making respectful salaams to property and gentility, and with too little faith in its own creed to call a spade a spade in the vulgar manner of the New Testament”.

Sounds familiar? Some of the comments on the occupation of the area around St Paul’s have regretted that the protest, aimed at the City of London and the unacceptable face of capitalism, should have found itself outside St Paul’s, as it were an innocent bystander, when it should have been round the corner in Paternoster Square, home of the Stock Exchange since 2004 (please enjoy with me the delicious irony of the stock exchange address being the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer). Fate may have lent a hand in the re-positioning of the encampment. Or has it occurred to you that there may have been a divine hand in moving this ‘in your face’ protest  to the very steps of St Paul’s, forcing the ecclesiastical powers that be to re-examine the charges laid by Tawney?

I recommend a piece by Symon Hill of Ekklesia called ‘Would Jesus kick protesters off St Paul’s ground?’ And Gurdur has a good summary at The Heathen Hub: The Church of England, Occupy London Stock Exchange, religion & atheism. Simon Sarmiento of ‘Thinking Anglicans’ has a Saturday round-up of press coverage.

What an opportunity for mission we have been offered! I give thanks for the brave public stand by the Revd Canon Giles Fraser. The Revd Lesley Crawley blogs today about his willingness to stand up for his principles, no matter what the private cost and links to an interview with him.  I give thanks for those who organised the services of Evensong once the doors of St Paul’s had closed to the public. I give thanks for other clerics, including Bishop Alan Wilson, who visited the encampment. I regret that others did not, so far as we know, feel able to engage with the protesters (offering soup and sandwiches would not have implied endorsement of their protest, but would simply have been a Christian gesture).

I end by quoting from Bishop Alan’s piece:

And, as St Paul’s reopens its doors, this tale raises a question for its managers. Can they redeem their initial hysterical over-reaction? Do they want to draw all voices into a vital public debate, or will they clear the site as tactfully and soon as possible, probably in the middle of the night — when Caiaphas and chums used to do their business?
In other words do they have the stomach to engage in the real world at the crest of a tidal race between people, money and power, or are they just overgrown public schoolboys playing indoor games in their own self-important Tourist Disneyland?

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Note

The illustration is ‘St Paul’s Cathedral against £10 notes’ by Stephen Finn via Shutterstock.

I have been travelling for most of my life, and for much of that time, wherever I was, the local church was a featureless concrete block built in the twentieth century. Now, I know the theology: God is everywhere. It should make no difference to one’s ability to worship whether one is surrounded by breeze blocks or stained glass. But over and over again I found myself ruefully muttering the first half of Psalm 137 – ‘As for our harps, we hanged them up…How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’

In the fullness of time, my husband retired; we returned to the Hampshire village that had been the Brigadoon which sustained us through our exile. At the heart of the village is a 12^th century church, built on the ruins of an earlier Saxon one.  And that’s when I dreamed that God chuckled at my foibles and just asked ‘Better now?’ I had to admit that it did make all the difference, even though I knew it shouldn’t have. Not that I’m alone in this failing – far from it. The French describe the love of old buildings as an attraction to ‘les vieilles pierres‘ (old stones). Admirers of antique furniture wax lyrical about patina. A building in which people have been worshipping God for nearly 900 years does have an atmosphere which a new building does not.

I seem to remember a programme by James Burke about the idea that stones retain echoes, which form a sort of  -theoretically readable- patina. I asked my friendly (I wouldn’t say ‘tame’) hippogriff, Tim Skellett (@Gurdur). His reply?

There have been a couple of SF stories on reproducing sound waves recorded into pottery through minute, sound-caused wobbles in the potter’s hand as the potter inscribes decorative lines in a pot on a turnwheel. However, the idea is implausible owing to any such fluctuations being lost in statistical noise and far larger minute tremors in the hand. I would think the program you heard probably picked up from that idea (the original SF story is very old now). As for stones in stone buildings, the physical scale of the stone is simply too immense for sound waves to have any such effect, sorry.

There is more on the Heathen Hub thread at the hyperlink, if you would like to follow this up.

So that’s that, then. And yet…

Walter de la Mare answered the question which forms the title of this post in his strangely compelling poem:

But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.

I have been carrying around with me for nearly thirty years a piece of paper on which is written a poem given to me by a work colleague, Jean Bull, who has since died. We had been having the discussion about sermons trapped in stones, like flies in amber. I have never been able to find the author – do any of you know it?

Eternal Life

There is no death for words.
The loneliest ship probing new seas
Has no real silence.
Voices blow in the wind,
The air is taut with cries, calls, song,
Shouts and lamentations.
Like tired birds in the rigging cling
Words spoken long before.
No mountain top can offer solitude
Rocks echo, and the whispering trees
Shelter more secrets than their own.
Stars live in rocks, and rocks reveal
Themselves in stars.
Each to the other lends a permanence.
And words vibrate there, questioning
Offering another immortality.

Perhaps the sweet words of Jesus
Throng rock and spire
Sending a hurricane that shrieks
And clamours through the uneasy world -
No word that’s spoken ever dies
But, fugitive, lives on.

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Note

The main illustration is ‘Arches in the Bastille at Grenoble’ by Bruce Amos, via Shutterstock.

It began with dinner in the splendid Wren church, St Stephen’s Walbrook, known to me as the London Internet Church whose Compline services I ‘attend’ every night. Superbly lit, the room seemed bathed in the light of an illuminated swimming pool in which we were collectively submerged.  Characters whom I ‘knew’ well came and went, like the Bishop of London (the Duchess, I think); Peter Kerridge (the Caterpillar perhaps?); Krish Kandiah (the Gryphon?); and Maria Toth (as the animatrice she would have to be the White Rabbit, but, unlike him, she remained calm, cool and collected throughout). In these surroundings, I wasn’t at all surprised when it was announced that I had won a prize – it was that sort of dream- and everyone was clapping and laughing at a (not very good) joke I made.

The baroque surroundings contrasted in an arresting and challenging way with the 21st century  trappings  of these awards for bringing British Christianity into the digital age:  the worlds of yesterday, today and tomorrow united to celebrate the newest expression of the good news which is over two thousand years old.

On Saturday the experience continued to feel surreal as we gathered in the contrasting surroundings of City University. In an audience of about 300, I in theory knew no one. But in fact, I must have had twitter conversations with nearly half of those there – and some I felt I knew very well, like Father David Cloake or UkViewer. We kissed each other on the cheek when we met – it would have been extraordinarily false and stand-offish merely to have shaken hands. (David has helped me considerably with the blog, and UKViewer, who frequently comments on these posts, helps me manage the Lay Anglicana Facebook page, as well as the forum here).

Behind the speakers were large screens showing the twitterfall for #cnmac11, the tag for the conference. Many of the contributors were sitting in the auditorium and tweeting because – another surreal touch – before the day began Vicky Beeching, the host, told us all to turn ON our mobile phones, laptops and so on and get tweeting! I had the strange of experience of reading a tweet on the screen by @noahsapprentice saying: ‘@drbexl, @boudledidge and @layanglicana all in front row’. He had obviously identified me from my avatar, but I craned my neck to look all round the room without being able to identify @noahsapprentice – very frustrating, and slightly spooky!

I did manage to make contact with a large number of the people that I am in touch with online. But we all felt, I think, that these very brief contacts were rather unsatisfactory because so brief. It is hard to see a way round this for the organisers (short of reducing the number of presentations and perhaps having a communal picnic lunch which could be protracted enough to allow more time for talking to each other). I felt as if I were still talking in 140 character soundbites (the length we are restricted to on Twitter)!

The presentations themselves I found uniformly interesting and good, though the highlight of my day, as for many people, was Dame Catherine Wybourne, the Digital Nun, who spoke on ‘Ten Rules for Online Engagement’. I put my pencil down, so engrossing was what she had to say. Luckily she has put up a blog post about it (see hyperlink), and perhaps will not mind this short extract:

Before we go online, we need to ask ourselves why we are doing so and what our purpose is. A little reflection will show that the ‘friend’ model of online relationship I’m writing about is not suitable for every situation; and if you are wondering what the ‘friend’ model is based on, I can’t do better than quote St Aelred: ‘You and me, with Christ making a third.’

‘Die, Heretic Scum!’ I expect you know the “joke” that has been doing the rounds on the internet for a while, of which this is the punchline? This is a particularly effective version of it on You Tube. I put the word ‘joke’ in inverted commas because its essential truth is too painful to be really funny: we are all apparently born with a strong desire to keep only the company of people whom we think, as Margaret Thatcher put it, are ‘one of us’. Another equivalent, this one ascribed to Anon, is

‘All the world is queer, save me and thee. And even thee’s a little queer.’

As we saw in the past only too clearly in Northern Ireland, for example, Christians have been strongly identified with this: Catholic children went to school with other Catholic children, grew up next to Catholics and married other Catholics so as to produce Catholic children of their own and continue the cycle. Protestants did the same. In its most extreme form, great care was taken to see that never the twain should meet.

But the tendency of like to associate with like goes much wider than religion. It is human nature to categorise everyone we meet: male/female, young/old, attractive/unattractive, conventional/unconventional, radical/conservative, people like us/not one of us etc etc. Our brains process all this information in a trice and make instant decisions about whether we would like to get to know a particular person any better. All of this is based primarily on our visual sense. But we must not forget the aural input.  Professor Higgins, you may think, slightly overstated his case – but he had a point.

‘Condemned by every syllable she utters!…An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him.
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.’

On the other hand, do you remember poor Cyrano de Bergerac, who successfully wooed Roxane? She discovered he was not the handsome young chap she had thought, but realised it was nevertheless him she had fallen in love with, rather than the Adonis mouthing his words. This literary conceit has now been imposed on all of us by the advent of social media, which strip away all inessentials. If your only contact with someone is on Twitter, you are not making contact with that person’s physical persona, but with their very essence, or -as a Christian might say- their soul. Social media free us from our prejudices and enable us to relate to people purely on whether we enjoy their conversation. This is very liberating! At the moment, I am following about 300 people on Twitter: they include Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists and a former Seventh Day Adventist. And if you just count the Anglicans, they come from the laciest Anglo-Catholic stream to the most arm-waving Evangelical.

It really is true that what unites us is stronger than what divides us, but the best way of finding out the truth of this for yourself is to engage with a wide group on Twitter and find out how much you actually have in common with the most unlikely people.

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Note

This article was first published by the BigBible Digidisciple project on 5 October 2011 under the title ‘The Ecumenical Effect of Social Media’.

The image is via Shutterstock.

Now we have reached October, most of us feel two conflicting moods about this season of mist and mellow fruitfulness. You can be like Jeremiah ^8.20 and say: The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved or you can glory in the beauty of the season and feel re-invigorated by the beginning of the new year – in education, fashion, politics and, from next month, the Christian calendar. First, though, it is out with the old in:  Laurence Binyon, ‘The Burning of the Leaves’ :

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves,
They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke
Wandering slowly into the weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
The last hollyhock´s fallen tower is dust:
All the spices of June are a bitter reek…
All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost.
Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.
Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,…
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there:
Let them go to the fire with never a look behind…
They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour…
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

For Binyon, as for our next writer, autumn is a time for spiritual spring-cleaning. They saw stripping the spirit bare as a necessary part of the cycle of life, but found it impossible to mourn the death of summer without simultaneously exulting in the coming rebirth of spring. Whereas Binyon draws no conclusion about a divine purpose to this cycle, John Masefield in The Everlasting Mercy is exhilarated by his vision of being purified and renewed by Christ:

O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after.
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessèd feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

Edwin Way Teale, in  ‘Autumn Across America’, ponders the cosmic dance of the seasons:

Thinking of autumn and spring in the same breath, as opposite sides of the wheel of creation, we remember that whereas ‘for man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together, for nature it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.’ And sowing and scattering abroad is of course what mankind does in spring. The wheel keeps turning. Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was, is not, and never again will be; what is, is change.

For the Bible tells us so: ^{Genesis 8:22}
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease

As we are brought face to face with our own mortality, I still sing the round we learnt at school to the tune of ‘Frère Jacques’ : Life is but a melancholy flower. This became:

Life is butter, life is butter,
Melon cauliflower, melon cauliflower,
Life is but a melon, life is but a melon,
Cauliflower, cauliflower.

It doesn’t do to take one’s melancholy too seriously!

We see things more vividly at this time of the year, and on a crisp autumn day we can feel an elated pleasure in God’s creation which no other season can match, as Gerard Manley Hopkins describes in ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’ :

…I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;

(I love the wonderful unexpectedness of that phrase ‘glean our Saviour’).

Even when it is raining, however, when autumn has stripped the trees to their skeletal frames, there is the consolation that we can see more clearly than we could in the summer, as Hal Borland reminds us:

October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.

Finally, ‘A Prayer for Autumn’ by Jerome Whittingham

Lord of the crystal blue sky,
Bless us with clarity of vision.

Lord of the lengthening evening,
Lighten our burdens.

Lord of the biting breeze,
Sharpen our response to your Spirit.

Lord of the falling leaf,
Lift our hearts heavenwards.

In our autumn,
May we seek your spring.

Amen.

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Notes

Grateful thanks to Jerome Whittingham, for permission to reproduce his poem of 2008.

The main illustration is ‘sad lonely woman walking alone into the woods’ by dundanim; the second is ‘pile of dried leaves’ by oriontrail. Both are via Shutterstock.

The poor old Book of Common Prayer (not the Episcopalian one of 1979, but the 1662 version, albeit as amended in various parliamentary measures) seems to be under attack, despite the best endeavours of the Prayer Book Society, which says it:

is increasingly endangered by indifference and undermined by neglect. In many churches, it is not used at all, whilst in others it is marginalised to “off-peak” times such as Evensong and 8.00 a.m. Holy Communion. Too often, new clergy emerge from ordination training with little or no knowledge of the Book of Common Prayer, and most younger churchgoers and newcomers to the church have barely even heard of it.

Many clergy – and churchgoers – understandably feel that the 1662 prayer book is one of the outdated shibboleths of the Church of England which has no place in  21^st century worship.

However, although I accept absolutely that the majority of services need to be in modern language, I wonder whether we are missing a trick here? I offer two examples of Anglican liturgy, both from Morning Prayer. The first is:

 As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,
so may the light of your presence, O God,
set our hearts on fire with love for you;
now and for ever….

Merciful God,
purify our hearts in the flame of your Spirit
and transform our toil into an offering of praise,
that we may reject the proud rule of might
and trust in Christ alone,
for he is our Lord for ever and ever.

The second is the third collect from Matins:

O Lord, our heavenly Father,
almighty and everlasting God,
who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day;
defend us in the same with thy mighty power;
and grant that this day we fall into no sin,
neither run into any kind of danger,
but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance,
to do always that is righteous in thy sight;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I have deliberately chosen a passage from the modern liturgy which is highly poetic, with a marvellous image of our hearts being set on fire by the light of God. Admirers of the 1662 book often criticise the prose of modern versions for being banal and lacking in imagery. Although I think this a fair charge to level against the 1980 ASB, I would say that the modern liturgy in Common Worship (2000) does not ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’ in the same way.

The main difference now is the lack of metre in modern liturgy. The 1662 language is not the language of the 17th century man in the street: it is the language of Shakespeare. The secret of the continued popularity of the Book of Common Prayer amongst those who do love its cadences is that, for anyone brought up on it, it is a succession of earworms. I have never set out to learn any passages by heart but I can recite virtually by heart the General Confession, the Collects for Peace and for Grace (quoted above), the General Thanksgiving and several others. To show what I mean, may I suggest you try reading both my examples out loud. The first simply does not flow in the way that the second does.

Church people find no difficulty in understanding that music and singing add an extra dimension to the words and enable a part of us to be touched in a way that the words on their own cannot. As Sir Kenneth Clark put it in ‘Civilisation’:

“What is too silly to be said may be sung” — well, yes; but what is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious — these things can also be sung and can only be sung.

Metre goes some of the way to meet the gap between prose and music. Not the irritating rhythm of Robert Herrick’s ‘Fair daffodils, we weep to see you haste away so soon’, but the metre of any Shakespearean soliloquy (pick your favourite).

An extreme example of this is ‘Jerusalem’, here sung on the last night of the Proms. Marvellous stuff, isn’t it. As you sing it, you believe every word. And yet…

And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green? No, actually.

And was the holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen? Er, no.

And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills? Not really

And was Jerusalem builded here among these dark Satanic mills? Well, not exactly.

Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Do you have a weapons licence?

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! Unfortunately, health and safety regulations forbid the driving of fiery chariots.

George Gershwin understood: he wrote ‘I Got Rhythm’, here sung by Gene Kelly. To paraphrase:

I got rhythm

I got music

I got my Lord

Who could ask for anything more ?

And Sid Caesar wrote a sketch to prove how much more effective an argument could be if performed to the (very rhythmical) accompaniment of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

Argument to Beethoven’s 5th

I rest my case.

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Note

‘Teenager reads old book’ is by Andrey Shadrin via Shutterstock

Love means never having to say you’re sorry. So said Ali McGraw to Ryan O’Neal as she lay dying at the end of ‘Love Story’, coining a catchphrase which summed up attitudes at the end of the flower-power decade of the 1960s.

It’s not true, of course: anyone acting seriously on this relationship advice is going to end up without any relationships, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox knew:

There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
But deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.

‘Repentance Becomes a Trend as Thousands Tweet #SorryJesus’, reported Emma Koonse in the Christian Post on 27 September 2011. However, she did not attempt to analyse any possible reasons for this. The tweets began on Monday 26th/Tuesday 27th, according to where you are in relation to Greenwich Mean Time, and are continuing as I write this post. Well, maybe there is something in the air, to which the collective unconscious has responded via social media, since twitter and facebook are increasingly the outlet for the collective unconscious – always supposing you believe there is any such thing, of course. Some of the tweets are silly, but some are genuinely moving including the heartfelt:

‘Sorry Jesus for nailing you back to the cross for the wrongs I do.’

I think it is no coincidence that October 8^th this year is the Jewish ‘Yom Kippur’ or Day of Atonement, which the Church of England might do well to copy (after all Christmas is linked with Hanukkah, and Easter with Passover) – though perhaps ‘Day of Apology’ would sound more Anglican? – Our own lectionary for the day after Yom Kippur, October 9^th, is all about repentance and forgiveness. Confession and Absolution are already, of course, firmly embedded in the liturgy but: whereas once Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, Christians, says Dom Anthony Sutch:

must recognise their own need for help and ask for forgiveness. St Benedict in his Rule expects the individual to acknowledge his wrongdoing in the presence of the community. St. Benedict thought this the best way for men to repair broken bonds. In the same way, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is initiated by the person seeking forgiveness, who is then forgiven in the name both of God and of the community…this is of enormous importance, since any fault affects everyone else. Sin is not a private zone.

Frank Sinatra has a lot to answer for in what became his theme tune, adopted by several truculent East End gangsters for their funerals:

And now, the end is here, And so I face the final curtain…
Regrets, I’ve had a few – But then again, too few to mention…
I’ve lived a life that’s full; I’ve travelled each and every highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it My Way.

Edith Piaf famously regretted nothing – neither the good anyone has done me, nor the evil, it’s all the same to me – it’s been paid for, swept away and forgotten. I start again from zero. However, although she intends to be every bit as truculent as the gangsters, she in fact crystallises the Christian message: our sins are redeemed (or paid for) by the sacrifice of our Lord’s crucifixion, enabling them to be swept away and forgotten so that we can start again at the beginning, washed in the blood of the Lamb.

And what have you been up to this week? Committed any murders in Middlesbrough? Is Aylesbury awash with adultery? Are you all stealing from each other in Swansea? No, I thought not. When we look back at our sins, they are not the major, headline-grabbers of murder, adultery and theft: what we do all have in common, surely, is ‘something to expiate, a pettiness’. In one of his best-loved poems, D H Lawrence describes beautifully just this feeling of remorse:

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me…
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth…

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness

‘The Snake’ Taormina, 1923

And then, like John Donne, we must be ‘done’ with sinning: John Donne’s ‘Hymn to God the Father‘

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive those sins, through which…..
And do them still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin by which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy sun
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done; I have no more

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Note

The illustration is by Jan Martin Will via Shutterstock and she has entitled it ‘Emperor Penguin gets rejected by another Emperor Penguin.’

When I was 13, I longed to be 30. I pictured myself, the height of witty sophistication, as a guest at Holly Golightly’s New York cocktail parties. Dressed in my little black dress, elegant chignon, stiletto heels, and rivers of pearls, I would exchange witticisms with Dorothy Parker and the other habitués of the Algonquin Round Table (or their latter-day equivalent). My father – who was later to recommend Marcus Aurelius – pointed out that it might be useful, if I really wanted to be part of this set, to have a few witticisms ready which I could drop into the conversation – nothing is more annoying than staircase wit. The educators among you will have spotted the ingenuity of this paternal introduction to the Maximes of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld. I devoured my father’s copy cover to cover, practising my delivery for the day it would be needed. Dorothy Parker knew all about La Rochefoucauld as her insomniac character in ‘The Little Hours’ ponders on his statement that if nobody had learned to read, very few people would be in love:

This is no time to be getting all steamed up about La Rochefoucauld. It’s only a question of minutes before I’m going to be pretty darned good and sick of La Rochefoucauld, once and for all. La Rochefoucauld this and La Rochefoucauld that. Yes, well, let me tell you that if nobody had ever learned to quote, very few people would be in love with La Rochefoucauld. I bet you I don’t know ten souls who read him without a middleman.

In the unlikely event that you, too,  do not already know all about François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680), may I serve as your middleman? He has had a rather bad press from a Christian point of view.  Lord Chesterfield, for example, said:

Till you come to know mankind by your experience, I know no thing nor no man that can in the meantime bring you so well acquainted with them as Le Duc de la Rochefoucauld. His little book of maxims, which I would advise you to look into for some moments at least every day of your life, is, I fear, too like and too exact a picture of human nature. I own it seems to degrade it, but yet my experience does not convince me that it degrades it unjustly.

Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift wrote in similar vein. But I think this is to miss the point. While some of the duke’s sayings are about getting on in worldly society, many others are direct comments on mankind’s failure to behave in a truly moral way. His wit is indeed barbed like a rapier, and niggles away at our consciences. To me La Rochefoucauld has every bit as much claim to be described as a Christian moralist as anyone. If you are guilty of any of the failings he describes, a word to the wise is perhaps sufficient?

 Il ne faut pas s’offenser que les autres nous cachent la vérité, puisque nous nous la cachons si souvent à nous-mêmes.

We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves. Maxim 11.

Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d’autrui.

We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others. Maxim 19.

La philosophie triomphe aisément des maux passés et des maux à venir. Mais les maux présents triomphent d’elle.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. Maxim 22.

Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise.

We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune. Maxim 25.

Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily. Maxim 26.

Si nous n’avions point de défauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres.

If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. Maxim 31.

On n’est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu’on s’imagine.

One is never so happy or so unhappy as one fancies. Maxim 49.

Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis que d’en être trompé.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. Maxim 84.

Tout le monde se plaint de sa mémoire, et personne ne se plaint de son jugement.

Everyone complains about his memory, and no one complains about his judgment. Maxim 89.

Les vieillards aiment à donner de bons préceptes, pour se consoler de n’être plus en état de donner de mauvais exemples.

Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer provide bad examples. Maxim 93.

Dans l’adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas.

In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing. Maxim 99.

On ne donne rien si libéralement que ses conseils.

Nothing is given so profusely as advice. Maxim 110.

Il est plus aisé d’être sage pour les autres que de l’être pour soi-même.

It is easier to be wise for others than for oneself. Maxim 132.

On aime mieux dire du mal de soi-même que de n’en point parler.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all. Maxim 138.

Le refus des louanges est un désir d’être loué deux fois.

The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice. Maxim 149.

Il vaut mieux employer notre esprit à supporter les infortunes qui nous arrivent qu’à prévoir celles qui nous peuvent arriver.

It is better to set one’s mind to bearing the misfortunes that are happening than to think of those that may happen. Maxim 174.

Ce qui nous empêche souvent de nous abandonner à un seul vice est que nous en avons plusieurs.

What often prevents us from abandoning ourselves to one vice is that we have several. Maxim 195.

Le désir de paraître habile empêche souvent de le devenir.

The desire to appear clever often prevents one from being so. Maxim 199.

Qui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croit.

Who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks. Maxim 209.

C’est une grande habileté que de savoir cacher son habileté.

There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one’s skill. Maxim 245.

Le plaisir de l’amour est d’aimer; et l’on est plus heureux par la passion que l’on a que par celle que l’on donne.

The pleasure of love is in loving; we are happier in the passion we feel than in what we inspire. Maxim 259.

Nous pardonnons souvent à ceux qui nous ennuient, mais nous ne pouvons pardonner à ceux que nous ennuyons.

We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore. Maxim 304.

Il y a dans la jalousie plus d’amour-propre que d’amour.

In jealousy there is more of self-love than love. Maxim 324.

Nous n’avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n’en avons pas de grands.

We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones. Maxim 327.

Nous ne trouvons guère de gens de bon sens, que ceux qui sont de notre avis.

We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us. Maxim 347.

Peu de gens savent être vieux.

Few know how to be old. Maxim 423.

Il est plus aisé de connaître l’homme en général que de connaître un homme en particulier.

It is easier to know man in general than to know one man. Maxim 436.

 Les querelles ne dureraient pas longtemps, si le tort n’était que d’un côté.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side. Maxim 496.

Comment prétendons-nous qu’un autre puisse garder notre secret, si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-mêmes?

How can we expect others to keep our secrets if we cannot keep them ourselves? Maxim 64 of the Maximes supprimées.

C’est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime.

Preserving your health by too strict a diet is a tedious illness. Maxim 72 of the Maximes supprimées.

Ce qui fait que si peu de personnes sont agréables dans la conversation, c’est que chacun songe plus à ce qu’il veut dire qu’à ce que les autres disent.

The reason that there are so few good conversationalists is that most people are thinking about what they are going to say and not about what the others are saying.

Réflexions diverses, IV: De la conversation.

Il faut écouter ceux qui parlent, si on veut en être écouté.

One must listen if one wishes to be listened to. Réflexions diverses, IV: De la conversation.

Note

The clip of Audrey Hepburn looking into the window of Tiffany’s is provided by Wikimedia under a creative commons licence, as is the engraving of La Rochefoucauld.

The Bishop of St Asaph, Bishop Gregory Cameron, speaking at ‘The Future(s) of Anglicanism’, offered us the view from Wales.

The following two anecdotes have nothing to do with Wales, but Bishop Gregory is a gifted raconteur and was no doubt hoping to lighten the mood after a serious session on the Anglican Covenant. He began with a personal reflection on the hazards of communicating with children. Dressed in full episcopal kit and surrounded by a group of little dears (my expression, not the good bishop’s), he swung into his routine, playing to the crowd. His jokes went down well and he sensed a real rapport with this next generation of church-goers. Afterwards, the children were asked what they had enjoyed most about the afternoon: ‘the funny man in the party hat’ came the answer…

His second joke is not really a joke at all. A good man died and was met by St Peter at the Pearly Gates. St Peter offered to take him on a tour of Heaven the following Friday (the day reserved for tours). At the first place they came to, a barbecue was in full swing, with steaks, sausages, chops and kebabs. Everyone seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. ‘This is Catholic Heaven’, explained St Peter. ‘On earth, on Fridays they were only allowed to eat fish’. They walked on and came next to a bar, with a group carousing and enjoying pints of real ale or glasses of vintage claret, according to taste. ‘This is Methodist Heaven’, said St Peter. ‘On earth, they denied themselves all forms of alcohol’. Next they passed  a group of people singing, laughing and shouting out of sheer joie de vivre. St Peter explained: ‘This is Quaker Heaven. On earth they learnt to sit quietly, waiting for the Holy Spirit – now the Holy Spirit encourages them to let rip.’ Finally, they came to a group of people looking inconsolably morose and bored. Our puzzled visitor looked at St Peter questioningly. ‘This is Anglican Heaven’, said St Peter. ‘On earth, there wasn’t anything they weren’t allowed to do…’

But to return to our Welsh sheep…

The Christian presence in Wales was already well-established by the time St. Augustine came to England in 597 and, when Augustine attempted to assert his authority as Archbishop of all Britain in 603, he was told by the Welsh bishops that he had no such authority over them. There are six dioceses in the Church In Wales, which was disestablished in 1920. At disestablishment, all patronage was abolished. Bishops are elected by an electoral college. Twice the number of lay representatives to those of clergy are elected to the Provincial synod (The Governing Body), and lay members are constitutionally a majority in all the councils of the Church in Wales, from Parochial Church Councils to The Governing Body. There were 350 members of The Governing Body, which meets twice a year, but this has now been reduced to 150 (still in stark contrast to the Welsh National Assembly, which has only 60 people to run Wales) with a church membership of 60,000 – 80,000. A commission is currently looking at the structures of the Church In Wales, and there is a move (as in England) to devolve more decision-making to deanery level.

The Laity

At present the proportion of stipendiary clergy to church buildings is about one priest for every two churches. If to this are added self-supporting and retired clergy, there is no pressing need purely on grounds of expediency to train the laity to lead worship. However, the Church In Wales does make a concerted effort to include the laity in leading worship, whether as Licensed Readers or Ordained Local Ministers, regarding this as a desirable end in itself. Bishop Gregory endorses this process, which he hopes will accelerate in future.

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Note

The illustration is the coat of arms of the Church in Wales made available under CCL by  Dyfsunctional at en.wikipedia. The photograph of Bishop Gregory is from his consecration and is taken from wikipedia. The illustration of a Welsh church is from Shutterstock.

The question is apparently not as settled as you might think and was raised in a paper for General Synod as recently as February 2009. In ‘The Governance of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion’ (GS Misc 910), Dr Colin Podmore said:

‘Episcopally Led and Synodically Governed’?
3.21 It is often said that the Church of England is ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’.
Working as One Body commented, ‘This useful and convenient phrase may, however,
tend to conceal the fact that the bishops are part of the synod and that the leadership they
give is in and to the whole synodical body’. That is, in fact, only one of a number of
difficulties with the phrase ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’. (For example,
lay people also occupy leadership positions in the Church and its synods.) Both the
Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Durham have criticized this phrase (not least in the
debate on the resolution to which this paper responds), and it is indeed apt to mislead.

3.22 While it is true that the Church of England’s bishops are charged with governing their
dioceses synodically (ie, with the advice of the representatives of the clergy and laity in
the diocesan synod and the bishop’s council), the phrase can be heard as implying that the
Church of England is governed by synods. As Working as One Body pointed out, synods
are parliaments (legislative and deliberative assemblies); they are not governments. At the
diocesan level, bishops not only lead but also govern and that has implications for the role
of the House of Bishops at the national level.

‘Charlotte‘ commented on ‘Thinking Anglicans’ that Dr Podmore’s paper:

takes a very high view of the office of a bishop and the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Though the authority of a bishop is not to be exercised except synodically, and not without consulting priests and lay people, Podmore’s analysis maintains that priests and lay people do not have authority equal to that of the bishops.

I leave this question hanging in the air (perhaps any readers will have something to say on the general topic in the comments?). The point made in discussion was that the Greek episkopos means ‘overseer’, someone who provides oversight. There are two problems of association with this definition: the first is that, curiously, the noun ‘oversight’ means something that has been overlooked in the sense of forgotten. More seriously, ‘overseer’ to anyone with any knowledge of the slave trade means the man on horseback  who spurred the slaves on sugar plantations onto ever greater efforts by the use of a bullwhip.

My dictionary defines ‘scope’ as meaning:
1. opportunity for exercising the faculties or abilities; capacity for action
2. range of view, perception, or grasp; outlook
3. the area covered by an activity, topic, etc.; range, eg the scope of his thesis was vast

I have some other suggestions for the job description of a good bishop, based of course on ancient Greek (what else?) Eschewing the abomination of neologisms with a Latin prefix and a Greek suffix, I suggest the following improvements on ‘Episcope’,  using Greek prefixes:

• Amphiscope: Looking at both sides of a question
• Bathyscope: Being aware of the depths while aspiring to the heights
• Colonoscope: Detecting bullshit
• Cryptoscope: Solving life’s little (and big) mysteries
• Diascope: Making a window into men’s souls
• Endoscope: Looking remorselessly within every file in the cupboard
• Extrascope: Looking at the bits the Archdeacon isn’t telling you
• Gyroscope: Measuring people’s orientation (actually, this is one of the existing job descriptions which could be dropped?)
• Interscope: Reading between the lines
• Kaleidoscope: Rejoicing in the rich diversity of God’s creation
• Megascope: Ensuring the Church does not ignore the obvious
• Metascope: Keeping an eye on the life beyond
• Microscope: Remembering the detail
• Neoscope: Knowing how to introduce the new
• Oscilloscope: Working out which way the wind is blowing
• Paleoscope: Valuing the old
• Periscope: Communicating with the above in order to transmit to those below
• Polyscope: Wearing many hats (and not just mitres)
• Prososcope: Looking onwards, pointing the way
• Stethoscope: Listening out for rumblings in the Body of Christ
• Telescope: Keeping a watch on the horizon
• Ultrascope: Linking congregations throughout the diocese, and diocese with diocese

What do you think? What are the essential attributes of a bishop which are missing from this list? (Or have I included some which have no place in the list of episcopal talents?)

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Postscript. It seems a propitious moment to be thinking about this question. According to The Church Times of today, 23 September, ‘Meeting heralds new era for episcopacy’

Mary Johnston, a lay member of the General Synod, who heads a grouping of liberal Catholics, was also present. She was one of about 60 participants, who included male and female bishops, priests, and lay people. She said that the day had been “worth while and very positive. “It was exciting that Rowan said he wasn’t out to achieve ‘balance’, but he wants something more profound and prophetic. He wants a reappraisal of what it means to be a bishop.

Mmmm. The blog post is dated the 15th, the conference was on the 19th. I can hear some spoil-sport saying ‘Post hoc, maybe. But not necessarily propter hoc?’

 Post postscript

Dave Walker has drawn the perfect Christmas cartoon in answer to the question ‘What are Bishops For?’.

Note: I am indebted to Savi Hensman for the amended definition of ‘Ultrascope’ and to Grandmère Mimi for the inclusion of Colonoscope and Kaleidoscope, with their respective definitions.

Feeling frazzled? Overworked? Caught up in the daily round? In need of a break? In need of space in which to write, read, reflect or simply to be?

Look no further, but book yourself into Gladstone’s Library at Hawarden in North Wales. You may live some distance away (I drove four hours to get there) but, in Michelin terms, it is a vaut le voyage destination in its own right. It is set out like Napoleon’s library at Malmaison, which is a brilliant idea in a large room as it successfully divides it into a series of mini-Malmaison personal libraries for each reader.

There you will find a peculiarly English, nay Anglican, setting in which to do any or all of the above. Some come on a modified retreat, with solitude in their ‘cells’, daily Eucharist in the chapel, and  interspersed with communal meals at which heart speaks unto heart. A gentle nudge in this direction is provided by the deliberate absence of television in any of the bedrooms. Others come to finish their thesis or novel, knowing that someone else will cook and clean for them and supply good food at regular intervals. Others still are simply in search of a base from which to explore the surrounding countryside, interspersed with lively and intelligent conversation at the beginning and end of the day. St. Deiniol’s (its original name) is part club, part Oxbridge college, part cloistered monastery whose constituent parts form the large house and library of a host who asks nothing more of you than to behave as a civilised guest -  and settle the extraordinarily reasonable bill at the end of your stay. (Adding whatever you can afford as a donation seems the least one can offer in addition).

I call it ‘Anglican’ because guests understand that they are expected to obey the ‘golden rule’ of treating others as they themselves would be treated – and they do. The social contract works because both sides understand what is expected of them. An illustration: I needed help with my suitcase and the lovely intern, finishing her PhD on neo-Victorian literature while helping behind the reception desk for a few months, cheerfully and kindly carried it for me.

The tone is set by the Warden of fourteen years, the Revd Peter Francis, who tweaks the injunction at the end of the Eucharist to  “And what does the Lord require of us?  Just this: To act justly, to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God.” The use of the word ‘kindness’ rather than ‘mercy’ (the more usual translation of Micah 6.8) I found very moving, and indicative of the ethos of the whole place.

I was on my own and had thought I might feel lonely, although I was deliberately seeking a period of solitude and quiet away from the telephone and demands of social media. I need not have worried. When I wanted companionship and conversation, there was always someone to talk to, and when I wanted solitude no one thought it strange or unsociable (How many hosts can you say that of?!) I met a very wide range of people, including visiting Canadians and Americans, who all agreed that Gladstone’s Library is a unique haven which deserves to be treasured (as it is) and used to the full (as it needs to be if it is to thrive).

Thank-you, Peter, your visiting chaplain (Methodist, lest I have given the impression it is exclusively Anglican!) and all the staff for a stay that was both recuperative and invigorating. I can’t wait to come back!

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Note: I stayed at Gladstone’s Library for four days, with a two-day course in the middle on ‘The Future(s) of Anglicanism’. This was a fascinating, and I think historically important, session, and I will be blogging about it in the next few weeks.

The illustrations are taken from the website, with the kind permission of the Revd Peter Francis.

One reason for the widespread reluctance to lead intercessions may be the lack of training generally available – with its concomitant risk of falling flat on one’s face. Anecdotes abound – in my own case, I was asked by the ‘Revd Laissez Faire’  to lead the prayers of the people at Matins. When I asked for advice, he told me to ‘ask Deirdre’, an old hand with whom I would be alternating. She told me to cut down on the prayers for the royal family – for example, unless Mrs ‘Loyally Royal’  happened to be in church that morning, I need only offer the prayer for the Queen, which I could bring to a halt about half way through at walk in thy way. There was no need to go on to pray that Her Majesty might be endued with heavenly gifts, health, wealth, strength or everlasting joy and felicity. Though I thought this injunction overly Cromwellian, I did as I was told. A few days later  the Revd Laissez Faire rang me in I thought somewhat unholy glee to say that there had been a complaint about ‘my’ prayers at the PCC meeting for being too hidebound: in future I should model myself on the forms of intercessions used at the other (non-BCP) services. Though he made it sound so, I knew that it was not really my fault: a change of intercessor had simply made people realise that they wanted to move on.

I tried the Church of England website. Even today, though it contains some topical prayers which may be usefully incorporated, it takes a protracted treasure hunt to find any help for the stage before that: what should we pray about, how long for and any prescribed order.The following is offered under Notes:

Intercessions: These should normally be broadly based, expressing a concern for the whole of God’s world and the ministry of the whole Church. Nevertheless, where occasion demands, they may be focused on more particular and local needs. Where another service follows immediately, they may be brief.

Feeling as if I had sought for bread and been offered only stones, I set off for the cathedral bookshop where I found half a dozen books which seemed to deal with the subject.  I read them in mounting despair: although they did offer some general help which was useful, most of the ideas offered seemed outlandish in the context of a small rural parish church with an extremely conservative congregation.  There is a self-help website set up in March 2011 by Hilary Murray, who says: ‘When trying to write some intercessions for a local church service, I was astounded by the lack of help and inspiration found on the internet. I decided that something had to be done’.

Actually, it turns out that there is, after all, balm in Gilead, but it took me many years and the fortuitous purchase of ‘New Patterns for Worship‘ to find it. The patterns followed by four different sorts of churches are described: St Ann’s, St Bartholomew’s, St Christopher’s and (immediately recognisable!) St Dodo’s:

At St Dodo’s, the person leading the intercessions says ‘Let us pray’, but hasn’t found the right text, so we hear the pages of ‘New Patterns for Worship’ turning during the ensuing silence. He begins the responsive intercession for Creation, which unfortunately fits neither the readings nor the mood of the congregation. He forgets to rehearse the response at the start and so has to stop at the first break and say ‘When I say … you should say …’ in a voice which implies that the congregation should have known this all along. He keeps switching between addressing God and addressing the congregation throughout the prayers: ‘We really ought to pray for Ann (‘Who is she?’ half the congregation wonder) especially today because …’ – and more of his views of the circumstances of members of the community follow.

This post is by way of an introduction: next time I will offer some practical advice distilled from an increasingly large library and ten years of experience. This is certainly above the pay grade of a humble lay worship leader and with any luck will attract flak from all sides. We can then try and move to a form of advice acceptable to the Church in general (thesis, antithesis, synthesis anyone?) Of course, it would be even more welcome if you short-circuited this process by offering your advice right now, which we can then incorporate…

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Note

The illustration is ‘Link for All’ in the metaphor series by Slavoljub Pantelic, via Shutterstock

I call him a da Vinci because his interests include politics, travel, science journalism, reading, atheism, religion, humanism, gardening, etc:  and his favourite authors are Karen Armstrong, John Franklin Bardin, John le Carré, G. K. Chesterton, Lindsey Davis, Robert S. Desowitz, Alan Furst, Martin Gardner, Martha Gellhorn, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert van Gulik, John Twelve Hawks, Donald Kingsbury, Harold L. Klawans, Michael Pearce, Terry Pratchett, Jon Ronson, Eric Frank Russell, Martin Cruz Smith, William Tenn, J. R. R. Tolkien, Joseph Wambaugh and Connie Willis.

He has the most lively and enquiring mind of anyone I have ever come across. We invited him to stay for a few days (ie successfully hi-jacked him) en route to Greenbelt 2011. If I had hoped that the narcoleptic effects of the deep Hampshire countryside would slow Tim down sufficiently for me to keep up with him, I was mistaken. An encounter with Tim is less of a cosy fireside chat than an exhilarating ride on a Hippogriff, alternately soaring to the heights before diving down to skim over the water. He challenges your preconceptions, nudges you out of your ruts and re-boots your cerebellum. No wonder it is a breathless experience, but he does it all with the most exquisite courtesy and consideration for other peoples’ points of view.

He also has a wicked sense of humour. Under the heading ‘Throwing the Lion to the Christians’, he explains on his blog at The Heathen Hub, a discussion board he runs ‘because everyone is a heathen to someone else’, why he is going to Greenbelt:

As an atheist, why am I going to Greenbelt? To meet people and to talk with them – meaning originally I planned to go there to meet specific people, but of course it became being very happy to talk with anyone who actually wants to talk with me. On that, I’ve had a couple of bad experiences, of Christians who merely wanted to use me as a depersonalized listening-post to offload their venom on. But I’ve had (these days) many more positive experiences with Christians than bad ones, and quite often even British Christians have never really personally talked with an open atheist before, so I see it as part of my role simply to be there as a human, and to be approachable as a person. I’ll talk with anyone about anything they like, as long as they are genuine with me in return.

Tim was born in Australia, but moved at an early age with his parents to Tanzania. Although the rest of his family picked up Swahili fairly easily, Tim learned only the minimum, though his interest in language must have been kindled as he later studied linguistics. Oh, and is now fluent in German. He returned to Australia and, using it as a base, traveled to Japan, where he studied the poetry of Bashō and Buson. After another stint in Australia to earn enough to finance his next encounter, he set off for an ashram in India. He then moved to Germany for further studies, always with this insatiable curiosity about the human condition, and the ability to see links and connections. He quotes approvingly Umberto Eco’s character, William Baskerville, who was able to predict the name of the Abbot’s horse from the time he had spent learning about how the monks thought. As a friend remarked, Tim couldn’t pass a stone without turning it over to see what lay underneath. Hence his interest in medicine, for he is a natural diagnostician.

It is difficult to find a one-word label for Tim, and I don’t suggest you try. He is a polymath of course, but that is just a one-word cop-out to say the same thing. In answer to my question about what motivates him, he offered ‘the empowerment of others through increasing their free will’. He explained his view of a continuum between automatism at one end and total free will at the other. People may be restricted in their choices by physical or mental illness: sometimes this is out of their control but others use imaginary ‘wooden legs‘ (as described by Eric Berne in ‘Games People Play’) as an excuse for regarding themselves as restricted by external forces when in fact the restrictions are all self-imposed. At this point, I begin to see what I have called ‘nudging you out of your ruts’ as a practical demonstration of ‘empowerment of others through increasing their free will’. Mmm – all I can say is that it is less painful than it sounds and feels more like a gulp of cool spring water after a long, dusty walk.

With apologies to Tim, I am reminded of: ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.‘ (Hebrews 13.2)

I will leave you now to browse the rest of this website or another. Me? I’m going to hold on to my hat and go for another ride on the hippogriff before he moves on to Cheltenham Racecourse!

He is not suggesting that those who have managed to organise their lives to include a set time for daily prayer should change. Many busy people manage to fit a lot into their lives because they are as organised as the hero of Jules Verne’s ‘Around the World in 80 Days’:

[Passepartout] observed…a programme of the daily routine of the house. It comprised all that was required of the servant, from eight in the morning, exactly at which hour Phileas Fogg rose, till half-past eleven, when he left the house for the Reform Club—all the details of service, the tea and toast at twenty-three minutes past eight, the shaving-water at thirty-seven minutes past nine, and the toilet at twenty minutes before ten. Everything was regulated and foreseen that was to be done from half-past eleven a.m. till midnight.

Tim guides us through the different Christian disciplines and approaches which have historically regarded prayer as a time when we move from where we are to where God is (even if we no longer think of him as a man with a white beard on a cloud, most traditions still visualise God as physically apart from us, a very spatial way of thinking about him). Tim now suggests that we, the busy or the merely disorganised, look differently at our relationship with God:

Incarnation – that is the beginning of the Gospel. In the stories of Jesus stilling storms he does not transport the disciples to the safety of the shore; in one account he comes to them from the shore, whilst in the other he is already in the same boat with them, but in neither account does he whisk them away from the storm. He saves us not by removing us from the world, but by being with us, sharing in all that we experience, and by healing and restoring us where we are. Surely this is what we should take to form the basis for a model of Christian spirituality. God is no longer remote, up there, The Furthest, but in Jesus he is Emmanuel, God with you, The Nearest. Now he is nearer to you than the storm. He is in the same boat with you. He is infinitely nearer to you even than a quiet-time.

So now we understand the title of the book: God is as near to us as it is possible to be (‘the nearest’) and we are to try another way of showing our devotion. Of course, those in monastic orders who do pray at set times also aspire with Tim to hold God in their hearts – here beautifully described by Sr Ruth Starman:

As the Holy Spirit dwells in the sanctuary of our heart and is unceasingly praying in us, we ourselves carry within us a constant prayer. But most of us are unconscious of his presence and the prayer which continuously goes on in us. Our heart lies asleep and needs to be awakened to this inner reality. The Jesus Prayer is a powerful means for awakening our heart, enabling us to become aware of the secret indwelling of the Spirit in a conscious way. For too long our heart lies dormant within us like the seed lying beneath the winter snow. Finally spring comes. Snow melts away under the warmth of the sun and the little seed begins to sprout forth with its latent energy. In the same way the name of Jesus, which radiates his power and energy, warms up and awakens our heart from its winter lethargy.

This is a book that has already changed my life. Tim has this to offer the Marthas:

Brother Lawrence, a French lay brother serving in a Carmelite Monastery in the 17th century, discovered the secret of living always in the presence of God. He called it, “The Practice of the Presence.” As a lay brother, he worked in the kitchens and as a cobbler, doing the kind of day-to-day tasks which may have otherwise kept the monks from their prayers and studies. Though he loved God very deeply this meant that he was not able to spend long periods in prayer, as the monks did. Instead he found that, by keeping his love for God awake in his consciousness all the time he was doing his daily duties, he was able to live continually in the presence of God.

And I leave you with his prescription for a life of nearness to God:

It is your uniqueness that God loves and values the most. Far more than any type of service or ministry you may be able to offer him. You mean more to God than the sum of all your actions, spiritual or otherwise. Find God and let yourself be found by him, and let that fulfill your desire for meaning and worth. All that your life entails, from traveling to work in the car, to going to the supermarket or just doing the washing up, is the Garden in which you walk in the presence of God.

Amen to that!

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Note

You can read more about Tim Ross’s ideas for prayer, with some examples here.

The book is published by Circle Books, John Hunt in the USA on 16 September and in the UK on 30 September, but you can order it in advance from amazon.com for $13.57 + postage, The Book Depository for £8.99 including postage or amazon(uk). It is in paperback, with 175 pages.

ISBN

ISBN 13: 9781846945083
ISBN 10: 1846945089

 

Dr Martin Luther King stirred a nation in his famous speech, ‘I have a dream‘.

I too had a dream: mine was about what the Church of England would look like if it was truly the Body of Christ, a shining city upon a hill. This shining city would have no need to plan mission and evangelism: its light alone would be beacon enough to draw all around to it. No need to do: enough simply to be.

In my dream, the Archbishop of Canterbury has Moses as his role model. He tries to lead all Anglicans out of darkness to a land flowing with milk and honey. When sometimes his vision clouds and he can no longer see the way clearly, he goes up Snowdon to talk to the Almighty. When he comes down from the mountain, our latter-day prophet can again plainly see the way forward and the people, re-energised, crowd around to follow him. For there is neither Chancel nor Nave; there is neither Priest nor Lay; there is neither High nor Low; there is neither Male nor Female; there is neither Straight nor Gay; there is neither Black nor White; for they are all one in Christ Jesus.[i]

This Body of Christ is a rainbow in which, as Marx suggested, from each is expected according to his or her abilities, and to each is given according to his or her needs. As blood circulates in a human body, so does the Holy Spirit circulate in the Body of Christ. All the members of the Body work in harmony together for the good of the whole, and each has a part to play. The hand does not look down on the foot, nor does the foot look down on the hand, for each is of value in building the Kingdom of God.

Every Maundy Thursday, the doors of each cathedral in the land are flung open for all those who have committed their lives to the service of Our Lord to renew their vows, whether these be as bishops, priests, deacons or laity, for the Church recognises the ministry of all four orders.

The Church is guided by the three-fold pillars of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Truth is not laid down from on high:

 As a method, Anglicanism invites all people to encounter Jesus Christ in a community, the parish, that is shaped by the common life of its congregants and clergy, in communion with its bishop and diocese. That invitation is wide: “come and see.” And it is conscious of the command that we must love God with all our mind, among other things. Part of the method is therefore to treat people as adults who can and indeed must think for themselves…We are also confident that the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, faithfully administered and faithfully received, are vital to every Christian’s life. And we make available as needed the other sacraments as well. Our method for being church includes therefore a strong emphasis on God’s action in our communal life, celebrated ritually. As all human beings are creatures of ritual, we see this as natural. Furthermore, we are not interested in doctrine as an intellectual exercise so much as shaping a way of life… But our peculiar approach to tradition requires communal reasoning, and we think this must be as widely informed as possible. We have deep respect for our elder brothers and sisters in the Faith, but we also know that bearing forth the Faith into the future requires living it in our own generation. Thus when we sense that reforms are necessary, we cast an eye back to the Tradition for inspiration, but not uncritically. And when change is necessary, we can go forth when we have convinced ourselves that such change is essentially consonant with the Faith as we have received it…Anglicanism is about meeting Christ in everyday life, through a community of prayer, sacrament, study, and service, sharing life together with all the saints who have gone before, and learning to follow Jesus in the way we live and how we love.[ii]

---

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of the Christian Church. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of internal squabbling to the sunlit path of harmony. Now is the time to lift our Church from the quicksands of internecine feudingto the solid rock of brotherhood…

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream…

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith…With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of the Anglican Communion into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together.

Home at last! Home at last!   Thank God Almighty, we will reach home at last!

And later: ‘Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord

If you had a dream about the future of the Anglican church worldwide, what would your Anglican Utopia look like?

I have been thinking about the question posed by the Revd Pam Smith on this site on August 1st: ‘What would Jesus score?’.

She goes on to analyse the dangers for digital disciples (that is to say all Christians using cyberspace in pursuit of their ministry, not just those signed up to this project) of becoming too competitive and falling prey, as I suggested elsewhere, to Bunyan’s snares of  ‘pride, arrogancy, self-conceit and worldly-glory’. She does not attempt to answer her own question, presumably regarding it as rhetorical: the purpose of the question in her post is to make us stop and think, which it certainly does (you see, Pam, I am still thinking about it!)

But, as I suggested on the BigBible site on 4th August,  there may be some merit in treating the question at face value. Suppose Jesus were to start his ministry here and now, let us say in any country of the world so long as it had good WiFi access. He would still need companions for the journey, so I imagine he would again recruit 12 disciples. But, whereas originally they had no access to telephones or postal service, telegrams, emails or websites,  cars, trains or planes, now all of these would be available.

• LinkedIn, Empire Avenue, Four Square etc: You may disagree but these are perhaps too inward-looking to help our Lord in his ministry?
• Facebook: My original article said, somewhat tongue in cheek, that there was no need for our Lord to have his own Facebook page. As I had hoped, this ensured that there were lots of comments! First of all, someone pointed out that He already has a Facebook page (wow! – pretending to be the Queen on twitter is only liable to get you sent to the Tower of London, pretending to be the Son of God is I suppose the archetypal definition of chutzpah.) But the killer argument was of course that I had posted a link to the piece on Facebook, which is how several of my correspondents had found it. There’s not much in the way of riposte that you can offer to this argument, is there.
• Twitter: Too time-consuming, possibly. But more appealing than Facebook as a means to spread the Gospel. Although some use Twitter simply to broadcast their own views, the most interesting tweets are part of a conversation. Some of the phrases that still echo in our heads two thousand years later would fit into the 140 character limit. ‘And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world’, for example, is 61 characters, not including hashtags. Jesus could always follow the example of the Vatican, and ask a disciple to do the actual tweeting on his behalf.
• YouTube: If a picture is worth a thousand words, filmed footage is even more appealing. What we would give now to hear the Sermon on the Mount, for example, spoken by Jesus himself: what a powerful tool to spread the gospel that would be! Let us hope that one of the disciples is good with a camera.
• Blogging: Perhaps because I respond to words, I would love to see Jesus’s blog.

The use of social media would not be enough: as Billy Graham and Rob Bell both know, what Hindus call darshan, or physical presence, is also necessary.

So let us imagine Jesus physically present in our 21st century world. Would he use social media to help get his message across? The answer to this question is vitally important because if it is ‘no’, why are we trying to do so? Although it requires a leap of the imagination, personally I have no difficulty in accepting that he would use the tools available to him. Dr George Morley, one of those who commented on the orginal article, said:  ‘The important thing is that Jesus would be in the pub with his smart phone… ‘

So then we finally come to the question of what the social media metrics sites would make of Our Lord. You need to bear in mind that it is not necessary to sign up to these sites for them to assess you – if you are active on twitter, facebook etc, you will already have a score.

First, Peer Index:

Peer Index measures authority (‘how much you can rely on that person’s recommendations and opinion); topic resonance (‘how your topics resonate with the community); audience (the number of people who listen and are receptive to what you are saying);  and activity (how much of what you do is related to the topic).

Secondly, Klout:

Klout has a matrix: are you broad or focused? casual or consistent? listening or participating? sharing or creating? Based on the site’s assessment of your point in this matrix, plus your audience,  whether it is likely to spread the word further and, if it does, the likelihood that what you say will be acted on, Klout then produces a score.

I find the questions asked by these two sites quite pertinent to the work of spreading the gospel. I imagine Jesus would feel amused rather than threatened by them. I doubt whether he would feel the need to compare himself to others, but as Robert Burns pointed out: ‘Would some power the giftie gi’e us, to see ourselves as others see us’.

…………………………………………………………….

Note:

This post was first published on 4 August 2011 by the BigBible project in the Digidisciple series under the title: ‘What would Social Media Metrics sites make of Jesus?’

I am grateful to Bryony Taylor (@vahva) for suggesting and producing the tag cloud to illustrate the article.

I don’t know the answer, of course I don’t.

But I have an idea for a way of looking at the question which may just help us understand something of what is going on.

It has been an extraordinary couple of days, of lows but also of highs. There is universal wonderment at the fact that ‘pray for London’ and ‘riot clean-up’ were the top subjects on twitter for several hours, now replaced by ‘operation cup of tea’. What does this mean? Well, I think it may be easier to understand the violence and looting if we first look at these extraordinarily positive reactions. It is a very practical solution to turn up at Clapham Junction with gloves and a broom. But if you had been the only person to do so, you would have felt a bit of an idiot. A self-righteous idiot perhaps, but an idiot nonetheless. The people who responded to the #riotcleanup tweets must have wondered at first if  they would be a tiny group who responded. In contrast, can you imagine the life-affirming feeling of being in the crowd below, waving their brooms together in the air? That must have been an exhilarating moment! Heavens, it’s exhilarating  just looking at the photograph. What  might have been regarded as a well-intentioned, but slightly dotty, reaction to the violence if carried out by one person becomes instead a heroic feat if carried out by a multitude, who have universally, if unconsciously, responded to Robert Lowell’s poem:

The Revd Richard Haggis joins the blogosphere

This illustration, chosen because of its dreadful pun on the word ‘Reflections’, is in honour of my friend, the Revd Richard Haggis. Many of you read and enjoyed his guest post on this blog on ‘The Sound of Silence’.  I am very happy indeed to be able to report that his many friends and admirers have finally persuaded him to start his own blog. I think he realised in the end it would be best to give in to force majeure, but he gave a very creditable performance of being dragged to the Speakers’ Chair  with a becomingly modest humility – rather more convincing than that of Speaker Bercow on YouTube.

He also writes like an angel. Original and arresting phrases tumble out of him, one after the other, and it is a real pleasure to read him just for his style and expression. He has had a difficult time in the Church of England, which he tells us a little about on the blog, but the pain has tempered his iron into steel, if I may put it like that. He goes right to the heart of the question, but removes all  histrionics before writing about it. To a fellow Anglo-Saxon, this gives his words all the greater impact.

But if you don’t get the point of puns, prepare to groan now. Although I expect he will mostly reserve them for Facebook, the fecundity of his brain and his delight in language mean that he cannot resist a good pun. Sometimes he cannot resist a bad pun either. The title of his new blog? ‘Winsome, Lose Some’. Whether this counts as a good or a bad pun, you will have to decide. There is plenty of room in the comments section, and I urge you to visit and welcome Richard to the blogosphere. For the competitive ones amongst us, we had better look to our laurels!

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Becoming a Digidisciple

I normally post a couple of times a week, which is a routine I seem to have settled into. But my time clock is slightly out this week as the last piece that I wrote was not for this blog, but for Big Bible. I have become a ‘digidisciple’. Here is what the website says about this venture:

What is a digidisciple?

Whether as a Christian or a digital explorer, you’re a newbie or an old hat, a rookie or a bishop (and in the digital sphere, there will be some who fit in all categories), we all have something to contribute to the digital space. The concept of the digital as ‘space’ or a ‘culture’ is important as we come from a perspective in which:

• As Christians we live 24/7 for God, in whatever spaces we live in or engage with.
• There is no such thing as ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds: only online and offline space/cultures – the connection between the two is different for each individual.
• We need to take seriously our Christian presence both online and offline.  Are we the same person, living by the same values in both ‘spaces’?…

A ‘digital disciple’, or, as we are calling it, a #digidisciple is someone who seeks to live out their Biblically-informed Christian faith in the digital space, whether they are dipping a toe in, or are fully immersed in the digital worlds.

The copyright arrangements are generous, and we are allowed to copy the pieces to our own blogs a week after they have been published on the BigBible site. Digidisciples make whatever commitment they can sustain: I have said I will submit something every other month.

Perhaps we can persuade you to join us?

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Moving House

We’ve made it! I do feel it’s been quite a journey (and Word Press is not as intuitive to use as Blogger was) but, to those of you who told me that it was necessary to move the blog into the main Lay Anglicana website, yes, I can now see you were right.

The effect on the number of page views has been gratifyingly significant. Now, how to put the next bit? It’s another Calcutta story – only slightly of the shaggy dog variety. I was on the committee of the Women’s Friendly Society, whose address was 29 Park Lane, Calcutta. In my role as lady in waiting to the President, Roma Bhagat, I accompanied her on a trip to buy fabric. We chose something which I was sure would be a perfect match and, on our return, found that it did indeed go perfectly. It is notoriously difficult to carry colour in one’s head, and thinking that Roma was rather slow to praise my artistic genius, I said: ‘Do I have an eye, or do I have an eye?’  To this day, twenty-two years later, I can hear her reply, and see her expression: ‘Well, you have a trumpet!’ Ouch. And it’s not as if I haven’t had a recent warning from Pam – though admittedly not personal- to avoid the snare of pride and vainglory.

Right. Now to blow my own trumpet then. The Wikio ratings for August are just out. Whereas last month, the blogspot blog was at #71, this month the rating for the blog in its new home is #39!

What I ought to say instead, of course, is thank-you all very much for visiting. As you know, I couldn’t have done it without you!

Notes

The first photograph, ‘Reflections’ is by Ian Mason via 12 Baskets.

The second is from Shuttercock.

You remember your Bunyan, don’t you? In ‘A Pilgrim’s Progress’, written in 1678, Christian is on a journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.  His path takes him through the Slough of Despond,  the Hill of Difficulty, the House Beautiful, the Valley of Humiliation, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, the Doubting Castle, and the Delectable Mountains. He also meets characters like Evangelist, Faithful, Hopeful, Discretion, Prudence and the Shining Ones, as well as Flatterer, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Formalist, Timorous, Mistrust, Talkative, Giant Despair and of course Atheist, who help or hinder him on his way. Here is a map of his journey.

I have been thinking about pilgrimage in general recently, and my own journey in cyberspace, which I set out on in November 2010 with the launching of the Lay Anglicana website, followed in April by the blog. I am certainly aiming in what I hope is the general direction of the Celestial City, in that I am convinced the Church would be a better place if the powers that be worked in partnership with the laity – would ‘equal but different’ be pushing my luck? But of course I may be wrong. I cannot prove to you, or even to myself, that what I am trying to do is the will of God. Straight away, then, I am in the Doubting Castle, and trying to ignore the cautious but undoubtedly well-meant warnings of Timorous.

Hopeful takes me on one side and  points out that several people (who do look like genuine people of God) have encouraged me along the way. If I am wrong in thinking this is the way to the Celestial City, then they are wrong as well. Just as I am beginning to perk up, however, Mistrust ‘kindly’ points out that they may be Flatterers. But then why would flatterers bother to flatter me – there is absolutely nothing I can do for them. Well, apart from flattering them in return, I suppose. The Slough of Despond and Giant Despair lie in wait for the unwary, like Scylla and Charybdis, and the path that lies between is called Difficult. You’re telling me! First of all, you have to  understand the machinery (and machinations?) of the Church of England. Then you have to push your personality to its most extravert extreme in order to get your message out there.

And then you have to understand the dark arts of Social Media. Although I have met many Shining Ones along the way who have tried to help me, they usually speak like oracles, so that, for those beset by Ignorance, some interpretation is needed : they too are to be found on the Hill of Difficulty.  But I have been lucky, like Christian, to have found many helpful companions and Talkative twitterers along the way: they rally me when my spirits are low, share my jubilation when another obstacle is overcome, laugh with me over some of life’s absurdities, occasionally remind me of the need for Prudence, and teach me much that I need to learn. Even my Atheist is a Christian gentleman, though he might argue with the description.

There is one more problem, though, and it was anticipated by Bunyan. It is tempting to try and measure one’s progress along the way, like every child on a car journey who has whined ‘Are we there yet?’ I can see that we are indeed not there yet, but I would dearly love to know whether I am making any progress. ‘Easily done’, say some of the experts, ‘you need to check your tally on the social media metric sites.’ A month or two ago, I conducted a little experiment, checking the names of some illustrious fellow-pilgrims against these tables of success. The measurements varied considerably from site to site. And now, my Mentor has pointed out that these sites give unwonted encouragement to those un-Christian gentlemen, Pride, Arrogancy, Self-conceit and Worldly-glory, in whose company one will never succeed in walking through the Valley of Humility, as must all Christian pilgrims:

  Christian: He told me indeed that he saw you go by, but I wish you had called at the house, for they would have shewed you so many Rarities, that you would scarce have forgot them to the day of your death. But pray tell me, Did you meet nobody in the Valley of Humility?

Faith: Yes, I met with one Discontent, who would willingly have persuaded me to go back again with him; his reason was, for that the Valley was altogether without honour. He told me moreover, that there to go was the way to disobey all my friends, as Pride, Arrogancy, Self-conceit, Worldly – glory, with others, who he knew, as he said, would be very much offended, if I made such a Fool of myself as to wade through this Valley.

Christian: Well, and how did you answer him?

Faith: I told him, That although all these that he had named might claim kindred of me, and that rightly, (for indeed they were my Relations according to the flesh) yet since I became a Pilgrim they have disowned me, as I also have rejected them; and therefore they were to me now no more than if they had never been of my lineage. I told him moreover, that as to this Valley, he had quite misrepresented the thing; for before Honour is Humility, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Therefore said I, I had rather go through this Valley to the honour that was so accounted by the wisest, than chose the way which he esteemed most worthy our affections.

The story, as we know, ended happily for Christian. Let us hope that it ends equally happily for those who would emulate him in the twenty-first century.

Notes

The conversation between Christian and Faith takes place in the fifth chapter of the first part of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’

 

Rules: you have to have 12 people, including yourself. Of those there need to be at least four men, at least four women, at least four known to you personally and at least four who are “famous”. You’re not allowed anyone who has passed on to the great hereafter – that would be a rather different sort of party. It needs to be one that might plausibly ‘work’ (ie don’t just pile people together). You also need to choose a place/ style of food.

I am transporting my guests to Calcutta for my dinner party. This is because I can only seat seven friendly people at my 2011 dining table, but when we  lived in Calcutta in the 1980s (and were paid by the British taxpayer to give dinner parties – as well as other things, admittedly) I could seat 12. I also had help in the kitchen. The dinner is in 1990, three hundred years since Job Charnock of the East India Company founded the settlement which is now Kolkata, but the dinner is to celebrate the launch of ‘Calcutta Through British Eyes, 1690-1990‘ and, for most of that period, it was called Calcutta.

The menu is:

Smoked Hilsa (Ilich Mach)

Lamb Biryani

Ledikeni and/or Queen of Puddings

The guests (who, thanks to social media, are all famous) are:

The Revd Alan and the Revd Lesley Crawley

Grandmère Mimi of MitCoE

Professor David Starkey

Erika Baker

Lord (Robert) Winston

Sr Catherine Wybourne, Digital Nun

Mark Tully

The Dowager Duchess (Debo) of Devonshire

The Revd Richard Haggis

Host and Hostess (Robert and Laura)

The windows are open, the noise of Calcutta streets can be heard in the distance, and a musician has joined us for the evening to play the pipes of Krishna from the verandah. He can be heard, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, luring us into the Calcutta night after dinner and we move to the horse-drawn carriages which take us for a turn around the maidan or central park. The conversation turns to Tagore and the Bengali Renaissance…

………………………………………………

I wrote a book called ‘Calcutta Through British Eyes, 1690-1990‘, published by Oxford University Press in 1991 but now out of print. It was an anthology of the diaries and letters of British people living in Calcutta since its foundation by the East India Company trader, Job Charnock.

 
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 CE, was good at multi-tasking. He is thought to have written his ‘Meditations’ in his spare time between conducting a military campaign in central Europe (c. 171-175) and holding on to his seat as emperor.

Christians have no difficulty in recognising that the words of someone nearly 2,000 years ago can still have meaning for us today and Marcus Aurelius would be my other nominee for this title. Books on how to keep calm and carry on when surrounded by conflict still become instant bestsellers. Do you know ‘The little book of Calm‘? Marcus Aurelius said it all first, and in the opinion of some, better.

When I went to university at the age of 17, my mother having just died, my father was about to be posted to India. He presented me with a leather-bound copy of the New Testament and three small books which he had acquired when he went up to Balliol thirty years earlier: the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the thoughts of Pascal and the maxims of the Duc de la Rouchefoucauld. These books, which are still with me four continents and forty years later, are one of the reasons why I hope Kindle will not take over the world. I treasure the books not just as paper and print but because of my father’s annotations – he had sidelined many of the ‘thoughts’ which he found particularly fine with a 1-4 grading system. It is always fun seeing where I agree – and disagree – with him.

Gurdur (Tim Skellett) and I were having a conversation, as you do, about life’s minor irritations and debating what one should do about them. I reminded him of my favourite Marcus Aurelius quote:

Is a cucumber bitter? Cast it away. Are there brambles in the path? Turn aside. No more is needed. Do not go on to ask: ‘why was the universe burdened by creations such as these?’ (viii.50)

One of the reasons I know this by heart is because I find it very difficult advice to take, while seeing that my life would be simpler and less fraught if I could. My husband is a constant reminder of this advice, as every time I begin a sentence with ‘Why do they…’ or  ‘Why don’t they…?’ he stops me and reminds me that these expressions of irritation are pointless: people either do or don’t have a reason for their behaviour but are unlikely to change it just because it annoys me. He’s right:

‘Turn aside. No more is needed. Do not go on to ask….’

My penultimate post recommended Maggi Dawn’s ‘Accidental Pilgrim’ as a book to keep by your bedside forever. I now nominate Marcus Aurelius’s ‘Meditations’ to be added to this list (don’t worry, both are quite slim volumes).

Notes
The illustration is a bust of Marcus Aurelius from the Glyptothek, Munich via Wikimedia

Nelson Jones in the New Statesman on 13th July cited this and added:

An ageing congregation is not necessarily a dying one…the established church has always been most popular among an older demographic… women of mature years remain the backbone of the Anglican church…Active people with time and money to spare – exactly the sort of people the church should be trying to attract. Some will find their thoughts turning towards more spiritual matters after a hectic career and family life, and thus far more responsive to the church’s message than the typical teenager, career-focused twenty-something or stressed-out parent. At the upper end of the age-range, people will be preparing for death and will be especially open to the comforts of religion.

Nelson Jones exaggerates his point, and has his tongue firmly in his cheek when he later suggests that in future the Church seek sponsorship from Saga, distressing ‘Red’ in her apples of gold blog on 14th July.

But the Church has in recent years increasingly adopted the language of marketing, as if the Church were selling some kind of soap powder that we claim washes [sins?] whiter! Robb, of the ‘Changing Worship’ blog commented on 13th July:

…there have been some unfortunate soundbytes such as the need for a “recruitment drive”. There has also been the use of business model type language to describe the impending fall or rise of the good old CofE …

Not a million miles from where I live, the new vicar’s first sermon announced to the congregation that his ‘target audience’ was mothers of young children, who would bring their children and their husbands to church. Those not in his dream demographic (85% of the existing congregation, and 95% of those attending e.g. the APCM) would be catered for, eg with occasional services from the Book of Common Prayer, until they died off, hopefully leaving the Church large sums of money.

Hold on a moment! Don’t you think this is all putting the cart before the horse? Even if we admit to caring more about the Body of Christ as a whole than its current individual members, or the hive more than the bee, surely the best way of safeguarding the whole is by considering the needs of its component parts and then trying to meet them?

Many reams have been written about the differing spiritual needs that people have at different stages of their life. In Hinduism, life is believed to comprise four stages, each with its own spiritual dimension. In the first, which lasts until the age of 25, the brahmachari begins seeking enlightenment, with the help of a spiritual director (guru). At the second stage, Grihastha, which lasts until about the age of 50, people get married, have children, earn a living and accumulate wealth and property. It is not regarded as an important period for spirituality. Next comes Vanaprastha, when one’s duty as a householder comes to an end. One should renounce all physical, material and sexual pleasures, retire from social and professional life and spend one’s time in prayers. Finally, the sannyasi, or wandering ascetic, having renounced all desires, fears and hopes, duties and responsibilities, is virtually merged with God as he concentrates on attaining moksha, or release from the circle of birth and death.

Of course, Christians are not Hindus, but people are people and perhaps there is a fundamental truth about human nature here. Carl Jung, in ‘Modern Man in Search of a Soul’, wrote:

Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits.

Gail Sheehy wrote her original book ‘Passages’ in 1977, but in a 2004 interview with Jon Spayde she offers a useful summary and update. She too makes the point about human spiritual development, stressing that the enquiring child, who asks ‘why?’ about everything, turns again in old age to matters eschatological.

We are, perhaps, doomed to disappointment if we concentrate on 25-50 year-olds, just at the point where, as Wordsworth said – admittedly in a different context –

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Colin Coward writes on 15th July about ‘The two halves of life’

Second-half-of-life issues are concerned with the birth of God in the soul, with the need to deepen and grow in “wisdom, age, and grace” (Luke 2.52)

But it is also a period when, as long as physical health allows, people need to be needed. The recently retired are the obvious people to shoulder most of the day to day load of physical management of our churches. Jonathan Hagger (‘Mad Priest’) commented on the apples of gold blog on 15th July:

…it would be common sense to prioritise that age group in respect of our mission. I’m not saying we ignore the youth. I just don’t think they are the answer to the Church’s need for more bums on pews. I think the over 40s are…

To state what is perhaps obvious, just because the ‘sannyasis’ among us are individually nearer to death than the 25-50 year-olds, a congregation predominantly composed of sannyasis does not in itself make the Church close to death. But equally the Church must obviously continue to target the ‘brahmacharis’, offering Christianity as an answer to the questions posed both by the young and the old.

I cannot improve on the conclusions that Will Cookson draws:

I think that we live in one of those tipping points of history where our efforts and care will tip the balance. Carrying on with business as normal will lead us into a cul-de-sac…The Anglican prayer book has as one of its statements in the Declaration of Assent about the Church of England the great phrase: ‘It professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.’ That is the mission of our church. We are called upon to keep looking at how we present the great truths of the Christian faith to each generation anew. it is not enough that these ways worked in the past. For each generation we need to find ways to make the Gospel understandable and relate-able to them.

Note The photograph is courtesy of Shutterstock, and issued under a creative commons licence.

This is a beguiling book. I’m not quite sure what I had expected, but as Maggi Dawn teaches theology and is chaplain at Robinson College, Cambridge (though she is about to move to Yale as Associate Professor), I did anticipate a possible struggle. She quotes from The Revd Dr Dee Dyas‘s Pilgrimage in English Medieval Literature (p45), which is indeed a scholarly work, but I needed a tail wind, several espressos and a towel wrapped round my head to absorb that. Fear not. You are in different territory here. With the lightest of gossamer touches, in her first two sentences, she draws you into the narrative of what is in effect a journal:

‘Standing on the cool, bare tiles in the shade of the wooden shutters at the window, I squinted into the bright light. Directly below was a military checkpoint, and to either side the road was lined with tumbledown buildings. Beyond them the sandy landscape was cobwebbed with olive trees and far away in the distance some new buildings on the upper slopes of the hills shone dazzling white in the late afternoon sun’.

Impossible not to read on.  It moves at a cracking pace and, at only 147 pages of double-spaced type, I would have finished it in one sitting were it not for an annoying person from Porlock who interrupted me. Although I have never met the author, I feel I know her well from our conversations on twitter. But even if I had never had any previous contact, in this book I would have felt her lead me by the hand on her physical journeys, whether to the Holy Land, Spain or nearer to home, answer questions about the meaning of what we were seeing without my needing to voice them, and suggest other questions of her own for me to think about. In short, I would feel I had made a friend.

It is very Anglican – and English – in tone. She is out of tune - as I would have been - with the unseemly histrionics (my phrase) of some of the other pilgrims in the Holy Land, and the religious souvenir shops at Walsingham.

Maggi has some serendipitous narrative surprises, which I do not want to spoil for you, but let me just say that there are one or two nudges along the way which a more evangelical writer might feel obliged to use to  hammer the point home. But there is no hammer in her armoury; reading this book is a two-way process between author and reader in which the meaning is what you make it. I found several important messages for me, even at a first quick reading, but I am still not sure whether the clues were deliberately placed for the reader to draw specific conclusions, or whether even the clues are in the eyes of the beholder. It is very cleverly written, but with an art that conceals art. Perhaps it is like the labyrinth on the book jacket? We travel without being certain that we will ever reach the centre, but different travellers on the same road, and the same travellers at different times, will all find something different.

I will not end by telling you how the book ends, tempting though this is because it is such a good conclusion. But I will tell you that, now I have read it from cover to cover, I am about to start again at the first page. And then I will leave it for a while, perhaps, before reading it all over again. It is a book to keep by your bedside forever.

These two photographs of the launch were taken by Tim Skellett (‘Gurdur’) on Friday 15th July at All Hallows On The Wall, London and are reproduced with his kind permission.

Notes
The two photographs in the text were kindly provided by Maggi Dawn herself. I should make it clear that this review was unsought and was not seen by the author before publication

Introduction
I have made a new friend. In the early hours of this morning, as I was tweaking my posts and twittering on twitter, as you do when you can’t sleep, I started chatting online to the friend of a Facebook friend whom I had befriended (still with me?) because we shared common interests in Flanders and Swann and that marvellous quote by Alice Roosevelt “If you haven’t got a nice word to say about anyone, come and sit next to me.” And though I may not be at exactly the same altitude as him on the church candle, his description of himself as ‘High Church Latitudinarian Anglican’ sounds pretty compelling to me. He writes like an angel, with that gift of establishing an immediate bond of sympathy across the ether which any writer trying to communicate with an audience would envy. He has no blog of his own at the moment, but has kindly allowed me to offer the following as a guest post. We would both appreciate your comments. Over to the Revd Richard Haggis:

The Sound of Silence
“How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given” we sing at Christmas time, and yet Easter time is much the same – there is silence from the tomb as the great and extraordinary event of the Resurrection actually happens. If it actually happened. Of course it did – we’d half of us be out of a job otherwise! Oh wait, I am out of a job! Christian art generally engages with the risen Christ – standing boldly atop the tomb or with Mary Magdalen in the garden or at the barbecue on the beach – but we read nothing of the moment, presumably glimpsed only by angels, when life was restored to death.

On this day sixteen years ago I was ordained a deacon of the Church of God. On this day eleven years ago, I was licensed as a parish priest to Saint Giles-in-the-Fields. Both make me think of silence. Some of the evangelicals on our ordination retreat struggled a lot with the rule of silence. One said she thought it was “rude” to be amongst strangers and not talking to them. Saint Giles had a congregation which appreciated silence in the intercessions, probably, on average, the most mature congregation, spiritually, I ever ministered to. Chequered times since, but I do not for one moment regret the privilege of ordination, nor the greater privilege of serving some very wonderful people. And even the less wonderful were pretty wonderful.

I was talking to a charming young lady at a party lately swapping notes about how much we liked walking alone in the dark, preferably in the rain, and it was the silence we agreed we both enjoyed, a sort of blanket of privacy, making the world and its woes irrelevant, and allowing and encouraging us to think our own thoughts. So many people these days fill up the silence with music, piped straight into their ears – Joyce Grenfell wrote a prescient song about that, when she noticed that piped music was broadcast in the ladies “and into the gents … they tell me”. (Bring Back The Silence And Deserve Our Thanks.)

I’ve known a few priests who are terrified of silence. This seems a shame. How else will they ever hear the “still small voice”?

But silence is a two-edged sword. There’s the mutual silence of calm content between friends or partners, and the silence of unexpressed grudges and sorrows; the warm silence of contemplation in the small of the night, and the silence of terror at real or imagined horrors; the silence of the aquarium and the sleeping cats, and the silence of the empty nursery, the deathbed vacated; and the silence that draws us towards the silence of God, into the transfiguring quiet of that emptying tomb.

Then there’s the silence when the bloody telly is switched off.

So, I’m broadly in favour of silence, but I know there’s a downside.

Notes
The video is attributed to i-church,which you can find online here

The title to this post is a sort of music-hall joke. The answer to the question: ‘what are ++Rowan’s thoughts on lay ministry?’ is
‘but ++Rowan doesn’t have any thoughts on lay ministry, does he? Does he?’ Boom-boom.

You must judge for yourselves. You can read the whole text of his address to Synod of 9 July 2011 here.

The following extracts give a flavour of the speech (but please read it in its entirety before coming to any conclusions).

“Effective ministerial presence is essential if people are to be in touch with the faithfulness of God through the Church.  It is more than just the presence of the worshipping community, vital as that is: this community has to have its presence focused and personalised in a way that makes it accessible.  And that is a central aspect of the role of the ordained, both directly (as the identifiable face of the worshipping community) and indirectly, as the catalyst that prompts worshippers into service by the repetition of the news of the gospel… We are never likely to return to the mythological past beloved of some critics when every small parish had its resident full-time pastor.  But – to pick up ideas and experiments that are being explored at the moment – sometimes what matters is having a person (literally a ‘parson’) in each small community who is genuinely recognisable as the focus of the Church’s presence, ordained or not; so that the ordained minister is there as friend and support for a number of such ‘presences’, and trained to recognise their giftings.  But this is not just a matter of encouraging people to ‘do jobs’ for the Church.  It is also about the way an ordained person can keep alive and impart to others ways of giving thanks, drawing together the prayer and aspiration of a community.  So how far do we currently think about an ordained minister as someone who can as a real priority communicate what the worship of the Church really is and help others to animate it? The ordained minister as co-ordinator, as liturgist and trainer in liturgy, as well as teacher and inspirer in the more usual ways, the ordained person as celebrant of the community in a very full sense, and one who helps others learn how to celebrate in the name of the Church – this is surely one dimension of where we are being led today…”

The speech is 3447 words long. The archbishop uses the word ordained 14 times; ministry 4 times; ministerial twice; and lay and laity not at all. He makes two oblique references to the contribution of lay people to worship: he talks about ‘effective ministry (ordained or otherwise)‘ and this curious idea of identifying people of God, exceptionally holy and well-behaved people presumably, in each parish who are to serve as what the archbishop calls ‘presences‘ and I think I would call ‘teacher’s pets’.

Archbishop Rowan is a gifted orator, and it is clear from the twitter reactions to his speech that it was well-received overall. For the bishops and clergy present, I can see that ‘heart spoke unto heart’.  But what about his listeners from the House of Laity? What about other lay people, looking on? What about the LGBT community, as David Goss reminded us on twitter?

I see nothing here for any of us except a desert and waste land.

Luckily, my experience of God is more or less the opposite of what ++Rowan appears to have in mind as the ‘correct’ way for lay people to experience Him, and that is solely as demonstrated by the ordained. Kindly meant, no doubt, but if, after 60 years of Christian worship, I had to rely on the priesthood  to explain to me what was meant by Christianity, it wouldn’t say much for their effectiveness over a lifetime, now would it?

One priest who has shown, and continues to show me the way is the Revd Lesley Fellows. Here is an extract from a recent post of hers:

The church sometimes draws me towards God and sometimes away from God. Sometimes I wonder whether there is more darkness than light in the church. However, I find myself connected to God through the Eucharist and even if it is that one sacrament alone that the church offers as light, that still leaves me committed to the church for my spiritual refreshment, however infuriated I sometimes get.

Thank-you, Lesley. I couldn’t have put it better myself!

Notes
1. The photograph of Archbishop Rowan is via wikimedia under CCL. The photographer was ‘Brian.jpg’
2. My assertion that the Archbishop has no views on lay ministry, or at least no affirming ones, is based on previous searches of the speeches on his website and the fact that there is no mention of my tier of ministry on the main Church of England website, and scant reference to Licensed Lay Ministers. I would be very pleased to be proved wrong on this inference.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Inspired by MrCatolick’s parallel with Henry VIII (http://wp.me/p1CTyH-7H), I conclude that what the Anglican world needs now is intervention by his daughter, Elizabeth I. It did not take much to summon her ghost – she had been waiting impatiently for just such an invitation. All of what follows in quotation typeface is from the actual words of Good Queen Bess in her lifetime.

Preamble
Princes have big ears which hear far and near, and word has reached me that all is not well in my realm. As the first Defender of the Faith who was a sincere Protestant, with no considerations of personal advantage,  I shall desire you all, my lords…to be assistant to me that I, with my ruling, and you with your service, may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth...
There is one thing higher than Royalty: and that is religion, which causes us to leave the world, and seek God…There is nothing about which I am more anxious than my country,  and the Anglican Communion, and for its sake I am willing to die ten deaths, if that be possible.

The Anglican Covenant
There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith. All else is a dispute over trifles… Where minds differ and opinions swerve there is scant a friend in that company…My mind was never to invade my neighbours… I do consider a multitude doth make rather discord and confusion than good counsel…You lawyers are so nice and precise in shifting and scanning every word and letter that many times you stand more upon form than matter, upon syllables than the sense of the law…

Moving from an Exclusive Church to an Inclusive Church
Know that I wish you from henceforth to follow the example of your monarch, and many monarchs before her, in knowing that each court must have its queanes as well as its Queen for, as ye should surely know, all are equally loved by God…I have no desire to make windows into mens souls, still less their nether regions. I am greatly displeased at the sanctimonious hypocrisy that has recently arisen in my Church in this land of England… Those who appear the most sanctified are the worst… I would rather go to any extreme than suffer anything that is unworthy of my reputation, or of that of my crown..and I wish you to follow the example of the Americas, where… it is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes.. The past cannot be cured…God forgive you, but I never can.

Anglican Mission In England
The stone often recoils on the head of the thrower...You, who were fully strong enough to bear the suffering of our well-beloved American cousins, will shortly endure a similar stone-throwing yourself.
Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested…There is an Italian proverb which saith, From my enemy let me defend myself; but from a pretensed friend Lord deliver me.
We are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts… ourselves; we trust you have a plan?

The Elevation of Women to the Episcopate
I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too …
Is it that you fear to admit the distaff side to your ranks because you know many share my heart and stomach, as well as my learning and my devotion to God? It is a natural virtue incident to our sex to be pitiful of those that are afflicted,
and I am sure that my sisters in Christ will find it in their hearts to pity you for your pettiness, but mindful as I am of the need for gifted bishops, I cannot allow it to continue. Let this my discipline stand you in good stead of sorer strokes, never to tempt too far a Prince’s patience.

The Ministry of the Laity
I regret the unhappiness of princes who are slaves to forms and fettered by caution...
It is as clear as the day to even the meanest intelligence in the land that the hoi polloi are no longer of lesser education than the clerks in the pulpit. Knowing of the scant numbers of clerks, action is needed this day to allow the people to read Morning and Evening Prayer.
One man with a head on his shoulders is worth a dozen without… Verily, I do fear that without such action, the churches themselves are in real danger:… A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.

Envoi
Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to no wind. ... It is true that the world was made in six days, but it was by God, to whose power the infirmity of men is not to be compared.
I will allow you fourteen days in which to accomplish all the tasks I have set you this day.
If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all….. Proud Prelate, you know what you were before I made you what you are. If you do not immediately comply with my request, I will unfrock you, by God!

Notes
The illustration is a portrait of Elizabeth I at the time of the Armada via wikimedia under CCL.

The Golden Rule
‘One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself‘. Its corollary, ‘One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated‘ is sometimes called the Silver Rule. Both were part of the religions and philosophies of ancient Babylon, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Judaea and Persia. There are three well-known passages in which Jesus preaches the rule:
^{Matthew 7.12}In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
^{Luke 6.31}Do to others as you would have them do to you.  

So far, so uncontroversial. But I want to inject a cautionary note at this point, along the lines of:

Before you complain that I am being disrespectful to the bible, consider St Paul’s advice to the Ephesians (4.26), ‘let not the sun go down upon your wrath’. I have already suggested on this blog that you might do better to sleep on it and this view has been endorsed by Penelopepiscopal , and Will Cookson, both priests. We of course agree with the general point that one should not let anger harden in one’s heart, but in practical terms a short ‘cooling off’ period overnight may help the healing process.

The Golden Rule, in my view, comes into this category. The first – and main – problem was identified by George Bernard Shaw:

‘Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.’

In the case of the Good Samaritan, he was presumably pretty sure that his help would be welcome. In Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ (see diagram below), the needs that he was seeking to meet were basic physiological and safety needs.

As you move up the pyramid into psychological and self-fulfilment needs, it is much less certain that outside involvement would be welcome; indeed it may be perceived as unwarranted meddling. As most of us know to our cost, this does not seem to prevent some of our most well-meaning friends from jumping in to give good advice because in our place they would like to receive it.

‘advised on Tanzania’s second five-year plan, during the turbulent years when Julius Nyerere was consolidating his country’s socialist stance to development, and the World Bank was less concerned than today about nationalisation and substantial state expenditure…

From 1984 to 1988, he was chief of the [World] bank’s resident mission in India.
He left the bank to become a partner in the management and economic consulting firm of Coopers and Lybrand in London, specialising in privatisation and public enterprise restructuring work in developing countries…
From 1993 to 1996, Waide was seconded to the government of Tanzania, this time as lead adviser on privatisation… and played a crucial part in unwinding some of the excesses of the earlier socialist period.’

He, more than anyone, relished the irony of being the foreign expert put in charge of nationalisation when it was the fashion in the 1960s, and then privatisation when it became the vogue policy in the 1990s. 

I do not know what the present mood is amongst Tanzanians, but they are entitled to feel a certain cynical world-weariness and perhaps a wish that, however kindly meant, large-scale macro-economic projects be shelved in order to allow the country to find its own salvation (albeit with help at the local, micro-level).

Once upon a time, then, by the chalk streams of a tributary of the River Test in Hampshire, there was born a child called Anthony. He was the illegitimate son of Sarah Purver, and was christened at St Peter’s, St Mary Bourne on 28 December 1702, it being then the local custom to baptise all ‘base born’ children in the days around Christmas. No father is named in the register (or has ever been identified). Although the Purver family had been solid merchants or farmers in the area going back to at least Tudor times, this was a very unpropitious start in life. The baby Anthony was handed over to be brought up by an uncle, Thomas Purver, a farmer from the neighbouring village of Hurstbourne Tarrant. His mother Sarah was married off in 1711 to an Andover merchant, Christopher Treadgell.

Anthony attended the village school for a while, but obviously soon outgrew the local schoolmaster: when he was
…prevented by illness from attending school, he did not suffer the time to remain unimproved, but applied himself with such diligence and success to the study of arithmetic that upon his return to school he was able to explain the process of evolution to his master, whose attainment had not then been great.

A similar account of his childhood says that at the age of ten he ‘taught his master the doctrine of square and cubic roots’.

Although of course, ‘the process of evolution’ meant something else in the 1700s, he must have been a rather un-nerving pupil, and Anthony was soon sent to the Free School in the nearby town of Andover, where he lived with his mother and her husband until the age of 15, at which point he was apprenticed to a shoemaker back in Hurstbourne Tarrant. His task as an apprentice involved looking after the shoemaker’s sheep on the hills above the village. While he tended the sheep, Purver read Rusticos ad academicos by Samuel Fisher, the Quaker from Philadelphia who fulminated against existing translations of the Bible.

Purver decides to re-translate the Bible.
At this point, Anthony Purver decided that the language of the King James Bible was too difficult for ‘the common man’. The fabulous part of the story is what happened next. Having decided that he was called by God not just to simplify the English of the Authorised Version but to re-translate it from the original Hebrew, he was lucky that at that moment there passed through Hurstbourne Tarrant ‘a wandering Jew’ who, even more luckily, was able to stop wandering long enough to teach Purver Hebrew (at that time there were of course no published Hebrew-English dictionaries or grammars). During his apprenticeship to the shoemaker, he also learnt Aramaic, Syriac, Greek and Latin.

What is it about shoemakers?
Thomas Dekker’s play of 1599, ‘The Shoemaker’s Holiday’, tells the story of Simon Eyre, who by virtue of industry and good luck, rises to become lord mayor of London. Several writers have drawn attention to the number of non-fictional shoemakers who have also subsequently achieved eminence, often as preachers or teachers. Is this because a shoemaker works on his own at tasks which occupy the hands but not fully the brain? Professors Hobsbawm and Rudé point out that:

‘Village radicals – as often as not the shoemakers, whose literacy and intellectualism were proverbial – provided a link with the wider world and formulated ideas and programmes which the labourers sometimes made their own’

In an 1883 survey of successful men who had begun life as shoemakers, William Winks points out that they:

‘were generally referred to by men of their own social status for the settlement of disputed points in literature, science, politics or theology. Advocates of political, social or religious reform, local preachers, Methodist class-leaders and Sunday-school teachers, were drafted in larger numbers from the fraternity of shoemakers than from any other craft.’

Purver moves to London and becomes a Quaker
Unsurprisingly, Purver decided he was better suited to teaching than shoemaking, and so in 1722 opened a school at Hurstbourne Tarrant, which occupied him until he moved to London in 1725 or 1727, possibly in order to meet scholars of Hebrew, who could deepen his knowledge of the language. We know he met John Wesley at this time but, instead of becoming a Wesleyan, in 1727 joined the Society of Friends. He made the acquaintance of Dr. John Fothergill, the plant collector, philanthropist and Quaker, who later became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and so impressed him that he eventually gave Purver £1,000 for his translation of the bible, which in 1764 Fothergill published at his own expense.

Purver returned to teaching for ten years, this time in Andover on behalf of the Friends, and became an established member of the local Meeting. It was at this period that he began his translation of the bible. He then set off again as a travelling preacher, supporting himself as a private tutor. On 17th August 1738 he married Rachel Cotterall, although Purver was thirty four and she was thirty nine. She was a fellow Quaker whom he had met at Frenchay, near Bristol. The Cotterall sisters ran a school and as Rachel was – again luckily- a woman of ‘some property’, it may have been through her financial support that Purver was able to devote so much time to his bible translation. No doubt Dr Fothergill’s assistance was also of prime importance. He described Anthony Purver as

‘a man of great simplicity of manners, regular conduct and a moderate reserve; steadily attentive to truth, hating falsehood, and having an unconquerable aversion to vice’.

The Text of Purver’s Translation
It would be nice to be able to relate at this point that his translation was published to rave reviews, but unfortunately this was not the case. Contemporary critics were on the whole unimpressed by the literary style of Purver’s bible but all seem grudgingly to have agreed that he could not be faulted on its closeness to the original Hebrew text. Purver’s own explanation of his approach was:

Axiom I: A translation ought to be true to the original. Axiom II: A translation should be well or grammatically expressed, in the language it is made in. It is well known that those called the living languages do alter, especially ours, who are such a changeable People. Hence it is necessary that new Translations should be made from one Time or Century to another, accommodated to the present use of speaking or writing. Corollary: When a translation is well made, yet some Explanation and Defence of it may be necessary.

Genesis

God created the Heaven and the Earth at the beginning. The Earth, however, was vacant and void, and Darkness overwhelmed the Deep, but the Spirit of God hovered atop of the water…Lastly God looked on all that he had made, and lo it was very good. It had then been Evening and was Morning.

Job, chapter 14

Man who is born of a Woman is of Short time and full of Disquiet. He comes forth, and is cut off, as a Flower; nay, flees away without remaining, like a shadow.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I do not want. He makes me lie down in Pastures of fresh grass: leads me by still waters. He restores my soul, guides me in the Roads of Righteousness, for his Name’s sake. Nay, though I go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no Ill, since thou art with me; whose Rod and Staff comfort me. Thou furnishest a Table for my presence before my Adversaries, makest my Head wet with oil, my cup is quite full. Certainly Goodness and Kindness will follow me all the Days of my life, and I shall rest in the House of the Lord a long time.

Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon there we sate as also wept, when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps on the willows within it…how shall we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign country. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.

Critical reception
A hundred years later Mary Leadbeter writes that:

Aldborough Wrightson…was provoked at Purver’s translation of the Bible. (No wonder. Whatever the claims of Purver’s translation to correctness, it is strangely deficient in the pathos and beauty of the authorised version.) ‘This’, said he, taking an old battered Bible in his hand, and looking with disdain on Purver’s two volumes in folio, ‘this book, which one would think scarce worth taking out of the gutter, is worth a dozen of that.

The poet Robert Southey, writing in 1812, says:

This book is curious for its Hebrew idioms. By adhering to these, Anthony has in some rare instances excelled the common version; but when he alters only for the sake of alteration, he makes miserable work.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge quibbles with Purver’s alteration of
‘I am that I am’ to ‘I am he who am’.

Winks damns Purver with faint praise:

‘in his own way, he completed the Herculean task single-handed; and if his translation was not of any general and practical utility, it none the less deserves mention as a monument of self-acquired learning and honourable industry.’

Crushing though some of these comments are, most writers would be thrilled that their work was still being reviewed nearly 120 years after publication.

Anthony Purver’s achievement, first in translating the bible and then in finding someone prepared to sponsor its publication and pay him £1,000 for the copyright, remains astonishing for someone born with the stigma of illegitimacy, in the depths of rural Hampshire, at the beginning of Queen Anne’s reign, into a family of minor merchants and farmers, where his upbringing was left to an uncle, who apprenticed him to a shoemaker.

He was buried in the Quaker burial ground in Andover. There is no headstone, no statue of him in Andover, or memorial to his name in St Mary Bourne or Hurstbourne Tarrant. There is no permanent trace of him left, except his descendants (some of whom still live in the valley). And, although the massive volumes of his translation never made it into paperback, it is still called ‘the Quaker Bible’.

Notes.
1. This post is written as a story: I have ironed out some nuances for the sake of the narrative, but it remains true in essence. If you would like to see it as a proper academic document with supporting footnotes, it is based on an article called: ‘Anthony Purver 1702-1777: Andover’s Spiritual Dick Whittington’ which I wrote for the September 2009 edition of ‘Lookback at Andover’, the journal of the Andover History and Archaeology Society.
2. The illustrations are kindly provided by the library staff of the Friends House in London
3. Captain Swing by E J Hobsbawm and George Rudé, Lawrence and Wishart 1969
4. Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers; William Edward Winks, London, 1883

Hoping that D H Lawrence is by now out of copyright (he died in 1930), I offer the following poem of his from my trusty commonplace book, which according to Google is not readily available on the web.

Erika Baker and I had begun a conversation in response to my previous post about the quality of Anglicanism and Ivor Stolliday tweeted me about “the delicate melancholia of the educated anglican”.

Here is D H Lawrence’s take on this delicate melancholia:

Fate And The Younger Generation

‘It is strange to think of the Annas, the Vronskys, the Pierres, all the Tolstoyan lot
wiped out.
And the Aloyshas and Dmitris and Myshkins and Stavrogins, the Dostoevsky lot
all wiped out.
And the Tchekov wimbly-wombly wet-legs all wiped out.
Gone! Dead, or wandering in exile with their feathers plucked,
anyhow, gone from what they were, entirely.
Will the Proustian lot go next?And then our English intelligentsia?
Is it the ‘Quos vult perdere Deus’ business?
Anyhow the Tolstoyan lot simply asked for extinction:
‘Eat me up, dear peasant!’ – so the peasant ate him.
 And the Dostoevsky lot wallowed in the thought:
 ’Let me sin my way to Jesus!’ – So they sinned
 themselves off the face of the earth.
 And the Tchekov lot: ‘I’m too weak and lovable to live!’-
 So they went.
Now the Proustian lot: Dear darling death, let me
wriggle my way towards you
like the worm I am! – So he wriggled and got there.
Finally our little lot: ‘I don’t want to die
but by Jingo if I do!’
- Well, it won’t matter so very much either.’

David Herbert Lawrence 1885-1930

If all the words that have been written about the Anglican Covenant were laid end to end, they would surely circle the earth several times over. And we seem no nearer getting the hierarchy to consider whether it is, after all, possible that the Communion is being led down a blind alley, cul de sac, impasse or dead end.

The powers that be refuse absolutely to consider how insanitary it is never to change their minds. Presumably they change their socks and underpants at regular intervals; now we have to find a way of persuading them that their minds need frequent laundering also (particularly considering their obsession with ‘who does what and with which and to whom’).

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition, an international group, was launched on 3 November 2010,
 “the date the commemoration of the sixteenth century theologian Richard Hooker. “Hooker taught us that God’s gifts of scripture, tradition and reason will guide us to new insights in every age,” according to the Canadian priest and canon law expert, the Revd. Canon Alan Perry. “The proposed Anglican Covenant would freeze Anglican theology and Anglican polity at a particular moment. Anglican polity rejected control by foreign bishops nearly 500 years ago. The proposed Anglican Covenant reinstates it.”

The NACC convenor, the Revd Lesley Fellows, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury explaining why the NACC and its supporters are opposed to the Covenant. After a delay of three months, she got the equivalent of ‘the bug letter’ from the Revd Canon Joanna Udal, the Archbishop’s Secretary for Anglican Communion Affairs.

There have been articles in the press, and the Church Times of 18 March 2011 was devoted to it. Many of us have blogged about it, and I’m sure we have all prayed about it. Some are more exasperated than others, but few can match the exquisite courtesy of Tobias Haller. Overall, I am very proud to be associated with such a reasoning, courteous group of people. We have covered every angle, and have put our arguments most persuasively.

But it seems to be of no avail. I sense battle-fatigue setting in, and no wonder. What can we do next?

Well, perhaps we should go for some form of direct action? I did consider modelling myself on the suffragettes, but admit to being too much of a coward to relish the prospect being trampled to death at Ascot or force-fed in Wandsworth gaol. I thought of chaining myself to ‘the railings’ at Lambeth Palace, but unfortunately there are no railings, only a high and solid wall. I could chain myself to the gates, but would have to run backwards and forwards every time they opened or shut, which would be hard work in this heat and rather undignified.

Thanks to our own Church Mouse, we now know that the Archbishop is defended by a team of Ninja nuns, so unfortunately my chances of emulating the girl in the cartoon above must be considered poor to nil.

Another suggestion: we get a ghetto-blaster and put the following song on perpetual repeat outside the walls of Lambeth Palace until we get a change of heart:

My considered solution is as follows. We brainwash both Archbishops with Fortune Cookies. The plan is as follows:

1. We order a large number of fortune cookies, with the mottoes below enclosed.
2. We recruit anti-Covenanteers from amongst the domestic (and possibly office) archiepiscopal retainers.
3. Said retainers hide these at regular intervals in the biscuit tin, sock drawer, bathroom cabinet etc. 

Well, all right, all right. I’m sure you can come up with a better plan. The comment box below would be a good place to offer your ideas for better plans or – failing that – better mottoes for the fortune cookies.

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place. ~Washington Irving

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post

Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864

The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one. ~William H. Seward

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~William Blake

You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish. ~Author Unknown

Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. ~Glen Beaman

We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
~W.H. Auden

Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~Ellen Glasgow

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! ~Andre Gide

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me. ~Author Unknown

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. ~Francis Bacon

Note
1. The headline quote (It is not necessary to change…) is from W. Edwards Demers, the American management guru.
2. The illustration/cartoon is from www.sangrea.net and is covered by a Creative Commons Licence
3. The You-Tube video is ‘Change Your Mind’ (3.38 minutes) by the ‘All-American Rejects’

Those who have been following the discussion about the relationship between organists and ministers may like to see two posts in particular from Dr Huw Clayton’s blog: ‘Organists’, from 23 August 2010, and  ‘Organists and Churches‘ of today, 23 June 2011, which comments on the discussion on these pages:

…Of particular interest is the suggestion that clergy, lay readers and all relevant musicians should actually meet to discuss the liturgy and theme for a service, then try to match the music to it. I’ve been to a number of meetings like that, and they can work.

However, there are snags. They begin when there is no incumbent in the church, or when the incumbent has about six churches (and yes, I do play in a benefice where the incumbent has six churches) and therefore cannot pick the music for all of them except on rare occasions. It then devolves onto whoever is willing and able to do it – that might be the organist, lay reader, choirmaster, even the churchwarden. Moreover, under such circumstances the incumbent doesn’t always have time to decide on a ‘theme’, and you have to second-guess from the lectionary as to what it might be…

It’s rather sad that there is such a clash of egos in so many places that prevents systems like this from working. Perhaps the best way forward is simply to talk more often in a bid to gain mutual trust and respect – with or without full-blown meetings. And if that can’t be arranged, then really, the question should be asked as to whether the organist is right for that church – with or without the desperate shortage of organists at the moment.

(Do follow the hyperlink to read the whole article)

Note
The illustration, which is mine, is by M V Plante, via Flickr and issued under Creative Commons Licence

‘Mad Priest’ is not so mad after all
The Revd Jonathan Hagger may call himself mad, but he knows a hawk from a handsaw and (despite his tease) a tart from a Tartar. Maybe he is ‘but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly’ he seems to me to have the wisdom of Solomon himself.

As I read Kathryn Rose’s beautifully expressed piece on the point of view of the organist, I saw my own problems with ‘Drisella‘ in quite a different light. She may have been a tiresome woman (she was) but I do begin to see the situation from her standpoint.

Our not-so-mad priest identified in the comments on Kathryn Rose’s post that the problem was chiefly one of communication, together with a little good will.

… the ideal way to plan the music of a church is for the worship leader, organist (or whatever) and, if there is one, the leader of the choir, to come together to decide on the hymns. The worship leader is usually word orientated and meeting together allows a greater number of hymn texts to be used because the musicians will be able to suggest tunes that they and the congregation know when the set tune for a hymn is unknown or just plain bad. At these meetings the worship leader can explain the theme he or she wants to dominate the service (which may be different to the recommended theme). Then I believe it to be good manners for the worship leader to allow the musicians to choose any anthems etc…Both worship leaders and musicians must never lose sight of the fact that they are doing it for the congregation which, if they are not pleased, will not bother turning up again.

This dollop of common sense needs to be circulated to every parish church in the land, in my opinion.

Of course, knowing what the answer is is not the same as being able to apply it. But it is a start.

Thank-you, Jonathan.

I am an organist. I think I have a good working relationship with my vicar. For our choir, as well as for my organ-playing skills, it would be inappropriate and unrealistic to choose music on a week-by-week basis depending on what the vicar has decided to preach on. I draw up a music list a month in advance and send it to the vicar, we have a chat about what is required and debate whether there need to be changes. That certainly diminishes any sense of being a human juke-box. I’ve been given a great deal of freedom in some areas, but I remain conscious that the incumbent really does have the last word. I bear in mind that this also means he bears any responsibility for things which turn out to be grossly inappropriate! I’m new to this parish as well as to the instrument and I do value the vicar’s advice as well as acknowledging his legal position as the one with whom the buck must stop. In turn he recognises that I have far more musical training and experience than he has (even if I am relatively new to playing the organ) and does not ask for the impossible or disparage my musical ideas, and that goes a long way toward me being happy to be flexible on some things. I try to be generous, and so does he, and it seems to work out.

I am fortunate in that the vicar does have musical taste that is similar enough to mine that I am not often asked to play something I loathe, and that we understand each other fairly well in theological terms. I am sure that in a parish with a very evangelical worship style I would be deeply unhappy! Context is very important. Similarly, in some contexts it might be appropriate for the minister to choose hymns the day before, based on the sermon — though I suspect that is rare and that in many places where this is routinely done the quality of the liturgy suffers because the musicians have not had adequate preparation time.

I think a lot of friction between ministers and organists is due to unrealistic expectations on either side, not recognising the reality of the resources available or the needs of the congregation.

For me, this is a labour of love, and a ministry. I am doing work that is liturgically important, theologically important, having had no formal theological training. I am responsible, to a degree, for pastoral leadership of the choir though I have no formal pastoral training. My musical training (which started in childhood) was not paid for by the good old C of E the way most ordained ministers’ theological training is, my work as an organist prevents me taking more lucrative work elsewhere, both because of the specific times and because of the ten to twenty hours per week I put into parish work. I am paid on a per service basis for playing, but it is very much an honorarium, and my impression is that this is the case in most parish churches. There are many places where the organist comes in and “makes a fist of it” while working a full-time day job (and in some cases this is appropriate — again, context is everything!), but that doesn’t really change the fact that there are a good number of organists for whom this work is a vocation, not a job, and who apply considerable professional and personal resources to serving God through leading the choir and congregation in musical aspects of worship.

So, being an organist can be a ministry, and it can be a lonely one. I am blessed to have a good working relationship with my vicar, but I know there are ministers who somehow cannot take an organist’s ministry seriously. The congregation I work with is mostly supportive — there will always, always be people who complain about any music they “don’t know”, but I also get positive feedback, which helps a lot. Sadly that is not the case everywhere. The choir are small but mighty and they are absolutely wonderful in terms of trusting my leadership and encouraging one another, which is absolutely crucial as most of them do not read music at all; I have known of choirs which undermine rather than support their organists, or situations where someone in the choir will try to play the vicar and organist off against one another. I can easily see how in a less supportive situation it would be easy for an organist to feel taken for granted, or to feel that the others involved in leading worship simply do not care about the liturgy. That’s a heavy burden for anyone. The church provides little or no support for organists, the RSCM provides some training but without a supportive church it can be unaffordable and it is always fairly technically focused (which is great, but offers little recourse for an organist who feels undervalued). Organists are likely to get frustrated, bitter and controlling in such situations, and though some can be particularly difficult I would encourage anyone with “organist trouble” to take a step back and look at what systemic factors may be contributing to such distress. In the case of an organist who has outlasted several clergy this may be very difficult to determine but I think it is worth an honest effort.

“At the same time, members of both professions normally enjoy being centre-stage and have a flair for performance — and in churches, as in any other theatre, there can generally be only one star.”

Perhaps the reason we manage as well as we do at St Andrew’s is the deeply held conviction that indeed there can be only one star at church, and that is not me, or the vicar, or a visiting priest or preacher, but God. If that is forgotten then I respectfully submit that a parish may have much worse problems than organist trouble.

Kathryn Rose, Organist.

The relationship between the clergy and the organist is laid down in canon law:

B 20 Of the musicians and music of the Church
1. … the functions of appointing… and of terminating the appointment of any organist, choirmaster or director of music, shall be exercisable by the minister with the agreement of the parochial church council…
2. Where there is an organist, choirmaster or director of music the minister shall pay due heed to his advice and assistance in the choosing of chants, hymns, anthems, and other settings, and in the ordering of the music of the church; but at all times the final responsibility and decision in these matters rests with the minister.
3. It is the duty of the minister to ensure that only such chants, hymns, anthems, and other settings are chosen as are appropriate, both the words and the music, to the solemn act of worship and prayer in the House of God as well as to the congregation assembled for that purpose….

In ‘Weary and Ill At Ease‘, Robin L D Rees wrote in 2001:

In recent years, many have written of a breakdown in relations between clergy and organists. While still organist at Exeter Cathedral, Lionel Dakers [later director of the Royal School of Church Music] was already expressing his concern:

There is something in the make-up of clergy and organists which on occasion impels them to behave both irresponsibly and irrationally. Obvious to all are the repercussions of two apparently responsible adults, both in prominent parochial positions, being unable to see eye to eye. Much harm can be done to the cause of the Church by the inevitable tongue wagging which accompanies such incidents.

Ruth Gledhill wrote in The Times on 22 September 2005:

Too many clergy use organists as “human jukeboxes”, demand impossible working hours and refuse to bow to their superior musical knowledge…Now two leading organists have produced a guide…Robert Leach… has written the book with Barry Williams…[they] estimate that two thirds of the country’s organists refuse work in churches because of problems relating to the clergy…

The book, Everything Else an Organist Should Know, gives advice on what to do when relations break down with the vicar…

And they urge organists to be realistic about the abilities of their choirs. “Four old ladies, three children and a grumpy old man cannot sing the Hallelujah Chorus.”

At the same time, members of both professions normally enjoy being centre-stage and have a flair for performance — and in churches, as in any other theatre, there can generally be only one star.

“The minister must not treat the organist as a human jukebox, and the organist must recognise that the minister has final authority in matters of worship,” Mr Leach says.

In our illustration, St Cecilia looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but she also looks as if she were taking her instructions direct from the Almighty: if it takes a brave incumbent to intervene in this cosy conversation, for a lay worship leader to do so is brinkmanship of a very high order.

The first organist I encountered on becoming a Lay Worship Leader was called, shall we say, ‘Drisella’. (The alias is necessary to protect the -possibly litigious- guilty). She had seen off many priests in her time, and presumably anticipated I would present no problem. A month in advance, I emailed Drisella (very politely) with my choice of hymns for the service I was due to take. The reply was instant, and deadly. She would make her choice, based on the theme and hymns suggested in the Royal School of Church Music’s ‘Sunday by Sunday’ booklet.

You will immediately detect the flaw in this arrangement: any theme that I might glean from the lectionary readings might or might not coincide with the RSCM’s interpretation. Although the theme is occasionally obvious, it often isn’t, and there is the added difficulty that, as a lay worship leader, I did not want to fall into the heffalump trap of expounding on doctrine. I appealed to the priest-in-charge, who saw my point and agreed to back me. His sole condition was that it would fall to me, not him, so to inform Drisella. I took a deep breath, and (perhaps rashly) telephoned her. The reaction was electrifying, if ungrammatical:

‘You’re trying to get one over on me with the vicar!’

She then refused to play at any service taken by me. Luckily, at that point my dear husband (and churchwarden) intervened. Although the last time he had played the organ had been in Dacca Cathedral in 1971, he would fill the gap. And so he did, for the next three years, the lovely man. At that point, a new priest-in-charge arrived: to the relief of all, Drisella did not survive the initial conversation about their future relationship.

We moved to a rota system, whereby a series of local organists took on, say, ‘the third Sunday of the month’. There was no ‘Prima Donna’, only a foursome who took it in turns to play in various benefices in the deanery. All that was needed was a little good will, with no jockeying for position. Harmony was restored. All for the greater glory of God. Amen.

Notes
1. The main illustration is ‘Organist und mesner’ by an anonymous Italian painter, 18th c via wikimedia. ‘Mesner’ = sacristan. The two seem to be to be eyeing each other distinctly warily.
2. The second illustration is ‘Saint Cecilia’ by Simon Vouet c. 1626 via wikimedia.
3. You can read Ruth Gledhill’s story in full if you click the hyperlink, as it was written before the pay wall.
4. Kathryn Rose, of the Artsy Honker blog, has been invited to post with her reactions at The Organist’s View.

We have been thinking a lot lately about the trio of Old Age, Illness and Death.  We live in a village of 750 people, and a large proportion of us (who met when we were in our early fifties) are all gradually growing old together. It has been a difficult couple of weeks to watch television: first, the agonising story of sadistic treatment of the elderly by their carers, as reviewed by Bishop Alan in ‘Dickens Lives! Bullies Rule OK!’. Not that this was regarded as exceptional by any of us who had watched elderly relatives die in nursing homes. Then on Monday we had Terry Pratchett’s programme, equally ably reviewed by the Church Mouse in ‘Helping people to die and showing it on the telly‘ and Charlie Peer in ‘Terry Pratchett on dying‘.

We discussed these programmes, and the realities of life behind them, at a parish lunch. In the circumstances, it is natural perhaps to concentrate on honing one’s gallows sense of humour. How would we all cope, when the time came to face that ‘Bourne, from which no Hollingsworth returns‘? To cheer ourselves up, we concocted a parish plan. When that day arrived, we would make a party of it, hire a charabanc and set off for Switzerland.

Naturally, we would need to spend the night somewhere en route. What about Paris? Since it was going to be our last night on earth, no expense need be spared. There was some debate about where to stay, but eventually we fixed on the Belle Époque splendour of the Ritz Hotel.

We would be tired, of course, so there was no need to make an early start the following morning. In fact, if we had enjoyed our dinner the first night, why didn’t we spend a second night in Paris and set off for Switzerland the next day? It would be fun to have one last potter around everyone’s favourite foreign city. There was some talk of shopping, which tailed off. There was a moment of quiet at this point. Then someone piped up, voicing what we had all been wondering:

‘The thing is, if we are enjoying ourselves in Paris, and spinning it out, why are we going on to Switzerland exactly? Maybe we should just come home?’

In the words of the taxi-driver in Terry Pratchett’s programme, who had decided to trust his fate to the hospice, ‘why not try just another roll of the dice?’

Grant us, O Lord, the royalty of inward happiness, and the serenity which comes from living close to thee. Daily renew in us the sense of joy, and let the eternal Spirit dwell in our souls and bodies, filling every corner of our hearts with light and gladness; so that we may be diffusers of life, and meet all that comes with gallant and high-hearted happiness, giving thee thanks always for all things. Amen

Notes
1.The  illustration is ‘Sand Patterns’ by Royce L Bair, taken in Coral Pink Sand Dunes, Utah. Issued under CCL.
2.The jumbled quote is well-known to anyone over the age of 50 who remembers the old department store Bourne and Hollingsworth but is a parody of the lines from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy:
the dread of something after death,
That undiscover’d country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
3. Prayer used at the annual service of the Order of St Michael and St George, adapted from a prayer of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Lay worship leaders are unlikely to be asked to take services on Christmas Day, Good Friday or Easter, but I have twice found myself taking a Matins on Trinity Sunday. In these circumstances, it would be foolhardy to launch into one’s own explanation of the Trinity (although one ‘kind’ suggestion was that I should use a pot plant as a prop to expound on Trinitarian doctrine).

‘Great music,’ said the pianist Artur Schnabel, ‘is music that is better than it can ever be played’…Worship, too, is something that is performed. The words we say and sing this morning are like a musical score: only in the performance, in the doing, do they come alive. And we realise that however good the words, however honest our intentions, our worship always falls short of what it proclaims…On Trinity Sunday, we realise the impossibility of ever doing God justice by talking about him. We ask too much of language when we expect it to carry this profoundest mystery of all…For how can we speak about the God who is both high and deep; beyond us, yet within; encompassing all that has been, and is, and is yet to come? ‘To whom then will you compare God?’ asks Isaiah.^40:18

I can barely comprehend the mystery of another human being, my own self even, let alone the mystery of God.

As the Welsh priest-poet R.S. Thomas writes:

‘For one like me God will never be plain and out there, but dark rather and inexplicable’.

But Trinity Sunday means more than what we can’t say. This ‘more’ is about what we can do, indeed must do, if we are to live as Christians. In the Trinity, we see a pattern of relationship that speaks of how we are to be towards others and towards the world. The threeness of Trinity means community, a society of persons moving constantly out towards one another in self-giving, living and being in that perfect oneness we call by the name of ‘love’.

The Very Revd Michael Sadgrove, Trinity 2005

This icon takes as its subject the mysterious story where Abraham receives three visitors as he camps by the oak of Mamre. He serves them a meal. As the conversation progresses he seems to be talking straight to God, as if these ‘angels’ were in some way a metaphor for the three persons of the Trinity. ^{Genesis 18:1-3}
In Rublev’s representation of the scene, the three gold-winged figures are seated around a white table on which a golden, chalice-like bowl contains a roasted lamb. In the background of the picture, a house can be seen at the top left and a tree in the centre. Less distinctly, a rocky hill lies in the upper right corner. The composition is a great circle around the table, focusing the attention on the chalice-bowl at the centre, which reminds the viewer inescapably of an altar at Communion.
On one level this picture shows three angels seated under Abraham’s tree, but on another it is a visual expression of what the Trinity means, what is the nature of God, and how we approach him. The three angels show a paradoxical equality and dissimilarity, so much so that commentators disagree on which represents the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [but in my view] reading the picture from left to right, we see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
On the right, the Holy Spirit has a garment of the clear blue of the sky, wrapped over with a robe of a fragile green. So the Spirit of creation moves in sky and water, breathes in heaven and earth. All living things owe their freshness to his touch. The Son has the deepest colours; a thick heavy garment of the reddish-brown of earth and a cloak of the blue of heaven. In his person he unites heaven and earth, the two natures are present in him…The Father seems to wear all the colours in a kind of fabric that changes with the light… that cannot be described or confined in words. And this is how it should be. No one has seen the Father, but the vision of him fills the universe.
The wings of the angels or persons are gold. Their seats are gold. The chalice in the centre is gold, and the roof of the house. Whether they sit, whether they fly, all is perfect, precious, and worthy…The light that shines around their heads is white, pure light. Gold is not enough to express the glory of God. Only light will do, and that same white becomes the holy table, the place of offering. God is revealed and disclosed here, at the heart, in the whiteness of untouchable light.
The Father looks forward, raising his hand in blessing to the Son…This is my Son, listen to him… The hand of the Son points on, around the circle, to the Spirit. In this simple array we see the movement of life towards us, The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit. The life flows clockwise around the circle. And we complete the circle: we are invited and sent to complete the circle of the Godhead with our response.
The Spirit touches us, even though we do not know who it is that is touching us. He leads us by ways we may not be aware of, up the hill of prayer. It may be steep and rocky, but the journeying God goes before us along the path. It leads to Jesus, the Son of God, and it leads to a tree. A great tree in the heat of the day spreads its shade. It is a place of security, a place of peace, a place where we begin to find out the possibilities of who we can be. It is no ordinary tree. It stands above the Son in the picture, and stands above the altar-table where the lamb lies within the chalice. Because of the sacrifice this tree grows. The tree of death has been transformed into a tree of life for us.
The tree is on the way to the house. Over the head of the Father is the house of the Father. It is the goal of our journey. It is the beginning and end of our lives. Its roof is golden. Its door is always open for the traveller. It has a tower, and its window is always open so that the Father can incessantly scan the roads for a glimpse of a returning prodigal.

Through the contemplation of this icon we come to see with our inner eyes that all engagements in this world can bear fruit only when they take place within this divine circle. It seems to beckon. It seems to say, ‘Join us. Join us in the circle of true love, where there is joy for evermore.’

Eternal Trinity, you are a deep sea, into which the more we enter the more we find, and the more we find the more we seek. The soul ever hungers in your abyss, longing to see with you with the light of your light and, as the deer yearns for the springs of water, so our souls yearn to see you in truth. Amen.

Archbishop Rowan has been in hot water again, and there has been some questioning of his role in British politics. Serendipitously, this coincided with the publication of Daniel Gover’s report for Theos on the politics of Archbishops of Canterbury:

A recent review of the office, published in 2001 and led by the former Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, identified six distinct roles: Diocesan Bishop of Canterbury; Metropolitan for the Southern Province of the Church of England (giving him authority over 30 dioceses mostly in the south of England); Primate of All England (making him the most senior bishop in the Church of England); leader of the Anglican Communion (a loose affiliation of Anglican churches worldwide with approximately 77 million adherents); an ecumenical figure in relation to other Christian churches; and a Christian leader with interfaith responsibilities. (p14)

Many of the commentaries have defended the ABC’s right, as Primate of All England, to express his views, whether or not they agree with those views, as indeed would I. I would only add that he might consider whether to emulate the monarch in aiming to advise, encourage, and warn in his dealings with government. There is plenty of advice and warning in what ++Rowan says, but a little encouragement also might not come amiss.

But it is in his role as ‘Leader’ of the Anglican Communion in particular where I suggest it might behove him to take our monarch as an example. This is what the website of the Anglican Communion says about the role of the leader:

‘The Archbishops of Canterbury are seen by the Anglican Communion of churches as their spiritual leader. He is primus inter pares, first among equals of the other Primates (Chief Archbishops, Presiding Bishops) of the various provinces…The Archbishop of Canterbury is the Focus for Unity for the three Instruments of Communion of the Anglican Communion, and is therefore a unique focus for Anglican unity. He… chairs the meeting of Primates, and is President of the Anglican Consultative Council…The Primates of the Anglican Communion are the chief Archbishops, Presiding Bishops, Chief Pastors of the various Provinces of the global church. Their churches are autonomous yet inter-dependent in their relationships with each other. The Archbishop of Canterbury chairs their meetings, which are held at varying intervals at various places in the Anglican World. The primates have no authority as a “body” and their own national churches determine how their ministry is carried out in their own context. The customs and responsibilities vary from Province to Province…The Lambeth Conference of bishops meets every 10 years solely at the personal invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1867 Lambeth Palace hosted the first meeting but as the numbers grew the conference moved to Canterbury… ‘Towards an Understanding of the Purpose and Scope of the Primates’ Meeting’ produced by those Primates present in Dublin in January 2011′

It is worth comparing this with the role of the British monarch as ‘head’ of the Commonwealth. According to the official website of the British monarchy:

This is an important symbolic and unifying role. As Head, The Queen personally reinforces the links by which the Commonwealth joins people together from around the world. One of the ways of strengthening these connections is through regular Commonwealth visits..The Queen keeps in touch with Commonwealth developments through regular contact with the Commonwealth Secretary General and his Secretariat. This is the Commonwealth’s central organisation…Her Majesty also has regular meetings with Heads of Government from Commonwealth countries…Modern communications technology allows The Queen to speak to every part of the Commonwealth through her annual Christmas and Commonwealth Day messages… to the peoples of the Commonwealth as a whole. They are unique in that they are delivered on The Queen’s own responsibility, drafted without ministerial advice. Every two years a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) is held, at locations throughout the Commonwealth.The Queen is normally present in the host country, during which she has a series of private meetings with the Commonwealth countries’ leaders…In all these different ways The Queen, though not part of the machinery of government in the Commonwealth, acts as a personal link and human symbol of the Commonwealth as an international organisation.

It wouldn’t take a genius to re-write this as a job description for the leader of the Anglican Communion, with which there are many similarities. One of the differences is the recognition of the significance of what Hindus call ‘darshan‘ or ‘auspicious viewing’. One of the functions of the leader should simply be to show himself, and to try and spread a little sweetness and light.

But I have left the best until last:

The Queen often attends the Commonwealth Games, a major sporting occasion which brings together young people from all over the world in friendly competition.

This is creative genius! Why don’t we have an ‘Anglican Games’, perhaps run along the lines of a school sports day? Instead of spanking the Yanks, why don’t we teach them how to play cricket? In exchange, they can teach us how to play baseball. And we can have indaba after indaba discussing the finer points of football (what shape is the ball? Do you kick it or pick it up?) What about three-legged races with Anglo-Catholics tied at the ankle to Evangelicals? Egg and spoon races for those involved in ‘Children’s Ministry’? High Jump for curates? Sack races for vergers? Obstacle races for Archdeacons? Diocesan Relays? If it is objected that most of the bishops are too old for football or baseball, what about competitive whist or cribbage? The possibilities are limitless.If ‘jaw, jaw is better than ‘war, war‘, what about ‘More, More’!

Let us make God ‘smile, his work to see‘.

I don’t need to go on, do I, I am sure you have got the drift! Anthologies of quotations are full of  similar advice handed down through the ages.

Despite this, many of us who are perfectly capable of cultivating a little amused detachment in the rest of our lives find ourselves obsessively checking and re-checking our listings in  Klout, PeerIndex, Twittergrader and Wikio (listed in alphabetical order to discourage the competitive spirit) as we seek the illusory will o’the wisp of enlightenment. If I have missed out any vitally important social media performance analysis sites, please, please do not tell me about them as I am having a hard enough time as it is trying not to become addicted to the ones I already know about.

You may well ask by what right I, a novice, presume to address my fellow bloggers and tweeters after less than three months’ experience. I will reply by offering you the old saw about foreign writers in India:
New arrivals excitedly tell all who will listen that they intend to write a book about the sub-contintent; after a year of fact-finding, they have decided that an article is all that they feel capable of; and after five years they hesitate to utter even a sentence, knowing that its opposite is likely also to be true.

I casually said on twitter that I thought all this social media needed to be treated as a game; to be any fun games need to be taken quite seriously, of course, but perhaps not as a matter of life and death. I was tempted into four successive tweets on this, to the surprise I think of my recipient, and one of my fellow tweeters suggested (hinting perhaps that I had delighted my audience long enough) that I should turn it into a blog post.

Some strange features of the blog and twitter assessment sites have emerged recently. Klout, for example, says that the Revd Pam Smith is an expert on beards and the Revd Maggi Dawn is an expert on coffee. Both deny these allegations. Unfortunately for Pam, the bearded Pete Phillips has taken the opportunity to give her a ‘K’ for her expertise on beards, saying that she has recently influenced him in this field. (I put it to the jury that I am not the only one who thinks this is a game).

I thought I would take a dozen of my colleagues and subject them to scrutiny by these four analytical websites. It seemed only fair to include myself (but if anyone objects to being included, I will of course remove their name). I began with the top 100 Wikio scores for May in the Religion category, and chose a dozen people whom I knew also to be members of Twitter because I follow them.

Here are the Klout rankings for some people who both blog and are on twitter.

1. Pete Phillips (62)
2. Maggi Dawn (62)
3. Peter Ould (59)
4. Church Mouse (56)
5. Lesley Fellows (55)
6. Stuart James (eChurchBlog) (52)
7. Richard Littledale (49)
8. Bishop Alan Wilson (49)
9. Laura Sykes (48)
10. Charlie Peer (44)
11. Doug Chaplin (39)
12. Lucy Mills (37)

For comparison, here are the respective Peer Index rankings:

1. Church Mouse (58)
2. Pete Phillips (49)
3. Maggi Dawn (47)
4. Peter Ould (47)
5. Bishop Alan Wilson (32)
6. Lesley Fellows (28)
7. Doug Chaplin (22)
8. Stuart James (eChurch Blog) (22)
9. Laura Sykes (14)
10. Charlie Peer (9)
11. Lucy Mills (9)
12. Richard Littledale (8)

Now, the same list according to Twittergrader:

1. Church Mouse (100) 
2. Bishop Alan Wilson (100)
3. Maggi Dawn (98.3)
4. Stuart James (eChurch Blog) (97.3)
5. Peter Ould (97.3)
6. Lesley Fellows (95.4)
7. Pete Phillips (95.4)
8. Richard Littledale (89)
9. Charlie Peer (89)
10. Lucy Mills (87)
11. Doug Chaplin (86)
12. Laura Sykes (77)

 And finally, Wikio:

1. Church Mouse (1)
2. Stuart James (eChurch Blog) (4)
3. Lesley Fellows (5)
4. Doug Chaplin (Clayboy) (8)
5. Maggi Dawn (13)
6. Bishop Alan Wilson (17)
7. Peter Ould (20)
8. Lucy Mills (34)
9. Richard Littledale (39)
10. Pete Phillips (43)
11. Charlie Peer (45)
12. Laura Sykes (still not listed)

As you will see, the rankings vary widely. Let us single out Pete Philips (whom I don’t somehow think will mind). Out of a field of 12 he comes 1st (Klout), 2nd (Peer Index), 7th (Twittergrader) and 10th (Wikio).  Triumph and Disaster, the two imposters? Oh yes, I think so.

So if it is all a game, how should we, the poor punters, treat it? Well, if you can honestly ignore these rankings – as many actors claim never to read their reviews – you are made of sterner moral fibre than I am, but I congratulate you.

If, on the other hand, you are made of the same clay as the majority of your fellow members of the human race, may I suggest that you pick the website which gives you the highest score and check no other.

If that is unacceptable, then you must play the hand that you have been dealt as if you were playing bridge, poker or racing demon, in other words with gusto – while relishing the fact that it really is all a game and while remembering that you want to be able to look your fellow bloggers and tweeters in the eye between games at the next conference of  the blogosphere!

Note
1. The illustration (author unknown, but issued under creative commons licence) is of a hunt for will o’the wisps. School of Henri ‘Douanier’ Rousseau?

The Body of Christ
When I was eight, my father gave me ‘the talk’. Maybe you know the one? He draw a sketch of our house, with pin men for its inhabitants. ‘What does Daddy do’? ‘He goes to work to make money to keep the family’. He went through the house’s inhabitants, one by one, until he got to me. ‘What does Laura do?’ I couldn’t think of anything, except doing my best to enjoy life. Somehow I knew that wasn’t the right answer, so kept quiet. ‘You need to go away and think about what you can do to play your part in family life.’ His tone was loving, but carried a hint of menace, I thought: he definitely meant business.

If the Church is to find volunteers among the adult congregation for all sorts of jobs, we need to have the equivalent of this talk with children at a similar age. We need to explore with them the part they might play in the Body of Christ.

In the Church of England, whether called Children’s Church or Sunday School, Children’s Ministry seems chiefly to mean ministry to children, not ministry by children. In contrast, The Episcopal Church’s webpage on Children’s Ministries says it seeks to engage children in the exploration of their own ministries:

‘Children are innately spiritual. Given the opportunity, their lively and passionate expressions of faith can help transform the church’.

In the words of Booker Washington:

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility on him and to let him know that you trust him.

Many churches already do give children a role in services such as asking them to distribute hymn books and service sheets to the arriving congregation and to take the collection. Booker Washington’s advice is implicit in this allotment of tasks, but maybe it also needs to be stated explicitly. Perhaps we should copy the ‘monitor‘ idea from school? Just a thought!

Are Christians guilty of ‘brainwashing’?
Before going any further, we need to deal with the accusation often levelled at Christians  that we ‘brainwash’ our children. The idea that parents themselves damage their children by raising them as Christians is presented in this video (3.57 mins)  by ‘The Thinking Atheist‘. (The ‘Christianity’ described is of the ‘weird and wonderful’ variety, with a God in the clouds that takes care of everything. Unsurprisingly, when this version of Christianity is spurned as unreal, religion as a whole is also rejected).

Secular advice on parenting
Well, are we guilty? Anyone wanting to be a good parent these days might naturally turn to the web for advice. Here is Dr Stuart Crisp, a paediatrician, on net doctor:

‘Each person’s knowledge of how to bring up a child usually comes from their surroundings and their own upbringing…Parents should express their unconditional love for their children, as well as provide them with the continued support they need to become self-assured and happy…Discipline is crucial when bringing up a child. All children need and want reasonable boundaries. Through discipline your child learns that some kinds of behaviour are acceptable and others are not. Setting boundaries for children’s behaviour helps them to learn how to behave in society…Children like to have special days reserved for special activities…Such rituals and routines build strong families’.

This, although from a non-religious source, sounds very much like a prescription for Christian parenting, doesn’t it? Let us agree to regard the case against Christian upbringing as, at the very least, unproven!

Back to the question of training lay worship leaders
As we have seen in How do you find lay worship leaders from the congregation?, in many cases it is too late to train adults to be Marys, although it is much easier to find Marthas, serried ranks of whom down the centuries have polished the brass, laundered the linen and dusted the pews. Others have read the lesson or served as churchwardens. But finding potential worship leaders among the congregation is an uphill task. Why is this?

Well, partly perhaps because churches have always had steps dividing the chancel from the nave and those in clerical garb from those in ordinary dress: roles have been clearly defined. People have not been brought up with the expectation that they may have to take on liturgical roles as part of their lives as Christians. Is it a case of the herd instinct? If people accept that it is a case of ‘all hands to the pump’ and regard it as a matter of course that they may be called upon to take their turn, they will not stand out by doing so. But if it is seen as an esoteric calling, as it largely is at present, people are perhaps unwilling to look too ‘holy’ by joining this group? If, wherever possible, children are encouraged to take part in worship, they are more likely to take it in their stride as adults.

Education, education, education
‘Doing God in Education’  was the subject of a recent Theos report by Trevor Cooling which I recommend. If the training is reinforced at school, taking even a small part in leading worship is likely to be of great potential benefit to the children. First and foremost, it promotes their spiritual development: having to choose prayers around the readings for the day and even, with help and perhaps in groups, filling the ‘sermon slot’, teaches active participation rather than passive observance. But leading worship is also a great privilege and a great responsibility: fostering the personal growth needed to fill such positions of responsibility is in itself a definition of the ‘leading out’ that is at the root of the word ‘education’.

Notes:
1. The illustration is ‘Little Girls At Church’ by Gwen John, via wiki gallery under creative commons licence.
2. Part of this blog is based on an article by me in ‘Conference and Common Room’ Vol 48 #2, Summer 2011 called ‘Send not to know for whom the bell tolls‘; grateful thanks to Alex Sharratt of John Catt Educational Ltd for copyright permission. 

Pity the poor clergy, going up into the pulpit to preach on a Sunday morning, and looking down at the motley crew that is their congregation. Presumably on a bad day we look to them something like the vision of Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) above or Hogarth (1697-1764) below? Both of these artists fixed on sleeping congregations, but the problem of sleep may be as much metaphorical as actual.

If we accept the argument of the previous two posts in this series, For the Want of a Nail (1) and The Best is the Enemy of the Good (2), it is a matter of urgency to identify potential lay worship leaders from this rather unprepossessing bunch. In case there is any doubt that this is a pressing problem,  ‘Church Ferret’  pointed out on 10 May that 40% of clergy (in England) are retiring in next 10 years. Mind you, our Lord must have faced a  problem in trying to find his 12 apostles. I am grateful to the Revd Pam Smith for her link to the imagined recruitment consultants who produced this report on his candidates:

…most of your nominees are lacking in background, education, and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the “team” concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale.

We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings…

Of course in the biblical accounts, we are not told of anyone refusing to become an apostle. Yet priest after priest has attested to the difficulty of persuading any of the congregation to take on the worship-leading role. What is clearly not comparable is the pent-up demand to become priests by women who, thank God, put themselves forward for ordination once they were allowed to do so. I think the Church must take some responsibility for the lack of impetus by the laity to take on this role: there is scant indication that the Church would welcome them. If the Church agrees that lay worship leaders may help to save the day, there needs to be a central policy. You will search in vain (at least I have) for any mention on the new Church of England website of lay worship leaders (or other local variant). It would help for a start to decide what they should be called!

So, if  congregations were made aware that people were wanted to lead worship (if deemed suitable – a sort of mini-BAP might be necessary, though until now selection has taken the form of recommendation by the clergy and PCC), they might begin to come forward. One of the problems may be that our formation as ‘ho laos’ -from Sunday School upwards- emphasises the story of Christianity, worship and leading a good life. In my life, anyway, there has been absolutely no emphasis in one-to-one situations, such as confirmation classes, on our role as individuals in the Body of Christ. I suspect this is less of a problem in the Episcopal Church, because of its recognition of the ministry of the laity and its practice of congregational repetition of their baptismal vows three or four times a year.

In my case, my recruitment was simple and, in retrospect, an example of the Holy Spirit at His sneakiest! Our benefice had an ‘awayday’ to consider future plans. Afterwards, we were asked to fill out a form saying what we were prepared to do for the church. Top of the list was brass-polishing (my least favourite job). Making the coffee (already plenty of competent people). Holy Dusters (hate housework). Churchyard working party (not my thing). Flowers (existing rota slots jealously guarded).Taking monthly services of Matins (the existing lay worship leader was moving to London, and without a replacement, this service would lapse). Eureka!

I signed up because there was a gap. I signed up because leading worship was the most attractive of the options on offer and I felt I should do something as part of the church community. I signed up pretty casually. I then started attending the ‘evening classes’. The sessions were typically Anglican – 8 different people spoke to us on aspects of worship, all saying something different on, for example, the thorny issue of lay people ‘preaching’ (we were not allowed to, but we still had to fill the sermon slot). But something happened in the course of these evenings, nevertheless. I found myself ‘surprised’ by God and being changed, inexorably. By the time the Bishop commissioned us at a service that was charged with the glory of God, I discovered I had a mission.

There is a saying: When baiting a mouse-trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse! Even if the selection process is as apparently haphazard as it was in my case, surely God can and will work with the material He is presented with, and we must allow Him space to do so. The congregation may appear to be sleeping, but this may be deceptive: perhaps they are just waiting for the call?

Notes:
1. The top illustration is ‘A Sleepy Congregation’, by Thomas Rowlandson
2. The bottom illustration is ‘The Sleeping Congregation’ by William Hogarth.
Both are provided by wiki gallery under a creative commons licence.
3. In the next post, we will look at how the formation of ‘ho laos’ might be modified so people are more aware from childhood of the part they need to play in the Church as part of the Body of Christ.

Recap
In the first part of this ‘essay’, For the Want of a Nail, we looked at the worst possible scenario for the Church of England if nothing were to be done. It is time to look instead at our glass as if it were half full, rather than half empty.

Training the laity to lead worship
As many dioceses, but by no means all, have seen, the answer lies readily at hand but requires a break with tradition and a leap of diocesan imagination. In several places the Church is making efforts to train a new tier of lay people to a level at which they can be asked to lead some services of the word, without the full 3-year training required to become a licensed lay minister (formerly called ‘lay reader’).

The spur is necessity (there is a shortage of licensed lay ministers as well as clergy). However, support for this initiative varies from diocese to diocese, within each diocese and also presumably with the spinning of the weather vane on the cathedral roof. Under the headline ‘With fewer clergy, can lay people get trained to run the church?’,  the Exeter diocesan website included until very recently the splendid statement:

“Lay people are the body of Christ on earth, and what they do is Christ’s ministry to the world. The role of professional clergy now is to support and enable lay people to be the church more deeply, more fully.”

This page has now been removed. Winchester diocese has had ‘lay worship leaders’ in Andover deanery since April 2005, but still declines to mention their existence on the lay ministry website page on the grounds that they were only ‘commissioned’ by the bishop, not ‘licensed’.

The central role of the Lord’s Supper
The central difficulty is that, as Edward Green so compellingly describes on his blog,  ‘Future Shape of Church,’ the  Eucharist is of primordial importance:

‘The Prayerbook had the intention of Holy Communion being the main Sunday service and Matins being a daily office. If a Priest was unavailable on Sunday morning the form used was Ante-Communion – the service of the word from Holy Communion. If we are serious about drawing new people into sacramental faith then this needs to be readopted. Lay Family services should follow the shape of Common Worship Holy Communion up to the Peace.’

Well, is the best the enemy of the good?
I am grateful to Edward for saying that he supports the idea of the ministry of the laity but I am uneasy about his proposal above for lay worship leaders to take services of ‘ante-communion’ on the Sundays when a priest is unavailable.

I apologise for the vulgarity, but this sounds to me like coitus interruptus. I can see the necessity for it when a priest is expected, but does not turn up. But, like all the liturgy, the service of Holy Communion has a beginning, middle and end. To ask the congregation, perhaps on three weeks out of four, to make their way towards the oasis, only to be forbidden to drink is, in my estimation, not likely to draw ‘new people into sacramental faith’.

In this case, it was Voltaire who said it first and best, in La Bégueule: ‘le mieux est l’ennemi du bien’. We know and will always recognise what the best looks like: weekly services of communion taken in every church in the land by a priest.

But if, as we have seen, ‘the best’ can no longer be a weekly reality, we have to ensure that ‘the good’ is as good as we can make it.

I suggest that worship by, with and from the laity can have its own strengths: it makes the congregation feel part of the worship as spiritual equals with their fellow worshippers in a way that is not possible when it is priest-led. If  lay worship leaders involve as many of the congregation as possible in a less formal, non-sacramental service, this in itself can surely lead to the spiritual growth of both led and leader?

If churchgoers are encouraged to see a role for themselves as leaders of worship, the downward spiral of ‘For the want of a nail’ can be re-written as a virtuous circle:

If there are not enough priests to take weekly communion services in each parish church, lay worship leaders can take services of the word in the intervening weeks.
These may include Matins and Evensong, but also modern versions of these, as priests and laity offer differing but complementary services.
Congregations, and hence church income, will be maintained and should be re-vitalised by the variety of worship on offer.
Churches will consolidate their historic role at the centre of each community as congregations play a greater part in services.
And a central part of the fabric of our national life will be strengthened to continue.

Notes:
1. The illustration is ‘The Institution of the Eucharist’ by Fra Angelico c. 1450 under creative commons licence via wiki gallery.
2. The next blog in this series will examine how to turn a motley congregation into leaders of worship.

The – admittedly melodramatic – headline is designed to draw your attention to a problem which seems to be creeping up on us in the Church of England almost un-noticed. (Perhaps there is a Situation Room somewhere in the depths of Lambeth Palace discussing it, but if so, it is a well-kept secret). It may also apply elsewhere in the Anglican Communion? The consequences are readily foreseeable, relentless and reminiscent of a classical tragedy – or pantomime, depending on your viewpoint – the onlooker longs to shout out: ‘look behind you!’

Dramatic decline in clergy numbers
The number of full-time stipendiary priests in the Church of England has declined from over 14,000 in 1959 to 11,076 in 1990, 9,412 in 2000 and 8,346 in 2008. The addition of part-time, self-supporting ministers brings the 2009 figure to 11,691, but (despite strenuous efforts by the Church) the age of ordinands is still steadily rising and now the bishops who have crossed the Tiber are thought likely to take about 50 priests with them. Even were the numbers of applicants to increase in the future, the financial situation means that this steady decline is unlikely to be reversed. These figures are replicated around the world and in most Christian denominations.

Traditionally, in rural areas each church could boast its own ‘Vicar of this Parish’. However,  with every change of incumbent, parishes are now obliged to amalgamate to become benefices; and benefices are remorselessly combined and re-combined to unite up to 10 or even 12 former parishes. Full-time posts become part-time, or held by ‘house-for-duty’ priests. In many places, the incumbent is assisted by self-supporting and retired ministers, but it is a matter of luck whether there happen to be any such in any particular parish. The Revd Mark Bailey wrote to the ‘Church Times’ on 30 July 2010, correctly identifying the problem (too few clergy attempting to cover too many parish churches, which he says is leading to severe mental stress among the clergy) but his solution – ‘draw the line somewhere’- seems hardly a solution on its own.

The Decline in Services of the Word
Fifty years ago, the usual Sunday service was Morning Prayer (Matins), with Holy Communion at an early service (since one was supposed to be fasting) or on high days and holidays. One’s obligation as an Anglican was to take communion three times a year: at Christmas, Easter and one other day. In some places, the shortage of priests now means that the priest-in-charge is obliged to scurry from parish to parish in his or her benefice every Sunday in order to comply with Canon law that there shall be a communion service every Sunday in every parish church. This valiant attempt is unsustainable in a mega-benefice. In the ‘Church Times’ of 30 November 2007  is a letter from Kathleen Kinder headlined by the editors ‘Common Worship and the alienation of the liturgy from the people.‘

The Cost of Doing Nothing
When an irresistible force meets an immoveable object, in the immortal words of Sammy Davis Jr, ‘something’s gotta give’:

C S Lewis expressed it well in ‘That Hideous Strength’:

If you dip into any college or school, or parish – anything you like – at a given point in history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow-room and contrasts weren’t so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there’s even less room for indecision, and choices are more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad getting worse: the possibilities of neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.

If there are not enough priests to take weekly services in each parish church, churches will remain empty in the intervening weeks.
Despite episcopal injunctions to drive to the benefice church chosen for a eucharist service each Sunday, people will mostly not travel to services outside their own parish.
If there are only monthly services in each church, the size of congregations will therefore reduce.
If there are only small congregations once a month, income will fall and there will be pressure to close the churches.
If the churches close, people will have to travel miles to go to services and will not be able to be baptised, married or buried in their local churches, which may have been turned into tea-rooms or left to become ivy-covered ruins.
A central part of the fabric of our national life could simply wither away. And all for the want of a nail?

What is to be done?
What is to be done? Well, in my view there are solutions closer at hand than you may think and I will suggest some in my next blog. But meanwhile, am I seriously over-stating the size of the problem? Is ‘masterly inactivity’, so beloved of generations of Sir Humphrey Applebys, the best proposition?

Notes: 
1. The illustration is ‘Dead Empty Church’ by David Coleman, courtesy 12 Baskets.
2. The statistics up to 2008 were taken from a previous Church of England website page which is no longer there. The 2009 statistics are from the current website page – on hyperlink.
3. This blog is based on an article by me in ‘Conference and Common Room’ Vol 48 #2, Summer 2011 called ‘Send not to know for whom the bell tolls’; grateful thanks to Alex Sharratt of John Catt Educational Ltd for copyright permission.

I must begin this piece with an apology to my several priestly friends (I hope they remain friends after reading it!). There are undoubtedly many places in the Anglican Communion where priest and laity work harmoniously together for the greater glory of God, at all times and in all circumstances. In the early church, such a balance did, one imagines, exist. The Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians and Romans may have moaned a bit from time to time but I can’t remember them actually complaining of being bullied by St Paul.

But there is also a parallel universe in which things do not always go that smoothly. According to a paper on the website of The Episcopal Church called Towards a Theology of Ministry:

In 1999, the Zacchaeus Project pointed to a theological truism in our community: when the trained clergy (bishops, priests, and deacons) and all baptized persons work together in mutually empowering service in mission, then the church experiences significant success in ministry. In a wide range of theological settings—Anglo-Catholic to total ministry, progressive to evangelical—the Zacchaeus findings echoed oddly similar themes of mutuality, servanthood, respect, and shared ministry. The old dichotomy between “lay” and “ordained” is fading. It is being replaced with a vision of American religious history. In the Episcopal Church, the decline stopped in the early 1990s and membership has held steady for a number of years around 2.5 million. It should also be noted that in spite of the numerical decline, the Zacchaeus Project data identified greater vitality in terms of church attendance and giving in the Episcopal Church in the 1990s than anytime since the 1960s….
If mutuality between clergy and lay persons in ministry was identified by the Zacchaeus Project as key for healthy congregations, then two corresponding problems existed in troubled ones: clericalism or laicism. Clericalism is an often discussed problem. An inappropriate sense of clergy authority has led, sadly, to a host of issues regarding abuse and malpractice. The opposite problem, laicism, is less discussed. In the case of an inappropriate sense of lay authority, laity conceive of the church as their “property” and the clergy their “employees.” In such circumstances, lay persons commit abuses as well—undermining clerical ministries, refusing financially to support the church, forcing clergy from positions. In either case, clericalism or laicism, the church becomes a battle ground for power issues and any real sense of the mission of church is lost.

A major difference within the Anglican Communion has been highlighted by the present attempt to introduce the Covenant: whereas the Episcopal Church has since its inception recognised the laity as one of the four orders of ministry by virtue of baptism, the Church of England recognises only bishops, priests and deacons. Other churches in the Communion presumably take one view or the other. On the face of it, one might think that relations between the priesthood and the laity might be more harmonious in those churches which take the same line as TEC, but the above paper suggests this may not necessarily be the case. In a ‘Church Times’ article in the issue of 17 September 2010, the Revd Hugh Valentine argued that ‘Clericalism is the bigger problem for all Churches…ecclesiastical models of power infantilise lay people’.

The UK’s ‘Church Times’ reported on the first residential meeting of the Diocesan Lay Chairmen, which was held in 2008. Under the headline ‘Unease at attitudes to Laity’, Bill Bowder writes: they heard Professor Gordon Stirrat, lay chairman of Bristol diocesan synod, say that “the New Testament pattern of the ‘ministry of the many’ has been turned by the Church of England into ‘the ministry of the few’.” Terms such as “priest-in-charge” and “interregnum” implied clerical supremacy, he said… The co-convener of the meeting, David Hawkins, lay chairman in Worcester diocese, said afterwards that he and some of the others were “very desperate” about the state of the Church. “You only have to go north to see how desperate it is.” There was a problem of dislike. “Some of the bishops don’t like laity, just as some consultants don’t like patients; and the middle ranks of the clergy feel threatened by the laity.” But the laity were “enormously talented”. 

There is a debate going on at the Lay Anglicana discussion forum which gives more detail than I can here, including a successful  relationship in Norwich diocese between the Revd Fiona Newton and her Lay Elders.

There is undoubtedly at present a rising demand by the laity for an increased share in the running of the church, perhaps inspired by the increasing democratisation of other institutions. But it also comes down in the end to numbers. Nature abhors a vacuum and so do Anglican congregations around the world: if there are not enough priests to run each parish church, sharing the responsibility with the laity must be a better alternative than simply abandoning the task.

What do you think?

Note: The illustration ‘reverend2′ is by Lee Pirie, courtesy 12 Baskets.

Today our vicar led the intercessions at Morning Prayer. As you might expect, they resonated with the congregation and we felt our prayers soar collectively heavenward. Normally, as in most churches, the congregation take it in turns to lead intercessionary prayer: some are more gifted in this area than others, to put it as kindly as I can.

Things not to do

Things not to say

A little introspection

Unmerited kindness

On the other hand, my misfortune has evoked extraordinary kindness from my neighbours. Many people offered to drive me to hospital an hour away for the radiotherapy (including one friend in her late eighties and one in her nineties!). Others come unbidden, bearing welcome casseroles.

Being prayed for

In the 21^st century, in a society where very few of us are personally involved in the care of sheep, most of us nevertheless welcome the spring for its associated vision of lambs gambolling on the hillside, though we barely pause for breath before debating whether to eat them with mint sauce or redcurrant jelly. This apparent dichotomy seems to worry most of us not at all, but it does vividly illustrate some of the contradictions inherent in our relationship with the animal kingdom:

The fool said to the animals:
‘You are merely my chattels,
With one lesson to learn –
What happens to you is not your concern
But mine; for God has set
You on earth for my profit.’
The animals answered the fool
Nothing at all,
But for a single moment
Turned on him their wild, true, innocent
Eyes, where an Angel of the Lord
Holds Eden’s flaming sword.

^{Frances Bellerby, ‘The Exile’1}

In ‘The remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world’, Alan Butler argues that:

“the most important step in civilization was when we began capturing wild sheep, domesticating and breeding them. Sheep were the mainstay of ancient cultures, by far the most important of the domesticated animals: they provided not just milk and meat, but warm clothing. This is why so many of the earliest gods and their myths are sheep-related. Sheep-farming also underpinned the growth of international trade and European nation states. In effect, sheep ‘built’ the modern world. The demands of the woollen textile industry both drove and financed the Industrial Revolution. The British Empire was founded on wool (think of the Woolsack). With over a billion sheep in the world today, the humanity-sheep relationship represents the most successful example of mammalian symbiosis on the planet. The story of sheep ‘is’ the story of humanity.

Religious symbolism and ritual involving sheep began very early: Skulls of rams occupied a central place in shrines dating from 8,000 BC, and since then, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Babylonians and Greeks have all accorded sheep a central part in their worship. Pliny the Elder, in his ‘Natural History’, declares:

“Many thanks, too, do we owe to the sheep, both for appeasing the gods, and for giving us the use of its fleece.”

Sheep are the first animals mentioned in the Old Testament and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and King David were all shepherds.

So, Jesus knew that not only were his listeners familiar with sheep as actual pastoral animals, they would also have been aware of their symbolic and religious significance over the centuries as animals of religious sacrifice. Still, it is quite a leap to go from that to describing his followers as sheep, as Chaplain Helen Roenfeldt comments:

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus compares man to sheep, and that’s not a compliment. Sheep are very weak animals. A sheep is not very clever either: you may see a trained elephant, horse, or dog, but not a trained sheep. A sheep is defenceless: a horse can run; a wolf can bite; and a cat can scratch; but a sheep cannot defend itself.2

As our own shepherd and pastor, David Sullivan, ruefully says: Sheep are always thinking of new ways to die.

Tom Fath ponders:

Christianity is a dynamic, challenging, and difficult way of life. It is not a religion for the sheepish. Yet Our Saviour more than once drew parallels between His followers and the four-footed woolly ruminants of the genus ‘Ovis’. Speaking for myself, I am not aware of possessing any particularly sheepish characteristics. I ruminate – but only my thoughts, not my food. I eat greens, but never grass. I feel no need to be dipped or shorn.
‘Lost Shepherds, Vulnerable Sheep’ 3

People who are easily led are often compared to sheep. In fact, perhaps the least flattering aspect of the comparison is the idea that, herded together, all we, like sheep can be bent to our Shepherd’s will in a moment. In fact it is at this point that the metaphor breaks down as, unlike sheep, we know that we have free will. So what should we read into the parallel? First of all, perhaps, a sense of humility as we recognise our place in the scheme of things – the city whizz kids who claim hubristically to be masters of the universe may be in for a shock as they, along with the rest of us, discover we are not required as strategic managers, but vulnerable children needing to be protected and guided. Secondly, although Jesus stresses in this morning’s reading that he knows us all by name, we have value not just as individuals but as part of a community. And thirdly, I think, he wanted to offer us reassurance, a feeling of being protected in a safe haven. After all, Arcadia always included sheep and, as J S Bach’s aria puts it, sheep can safely graze where a good shepherd watches over them. This image retains its ancient power to sustain us through the darkest of times.

The fourth Sunday of Easter is often called Good Shepherd Sunday because the readings for each of the three years in the cycle are parables about sheep. The emphasis this year is on our Shepherd as the Gate, as Tim Owens explains:

The shepherd built a temporary sheep pen. He left an opening where the sheep could come and go. Here they would be safe. All that remained was to close the door, but there was no door. The good shepherd simply lay down across the small opening. The shepherd became the door, and in this way the sheep remained inside and the wild beasts remained outside. Because the shepherd had become the door, there was nothing for the sheep to fear. Their protector and provider had guaranteed their protection. A true shepherd literally lays his life down for his sheep.

Jesus said, I am the gate for the sheep…If you will enter through Me, you can come in and go out and find pasture. Again, not only would the pastoral background have been familiar to his listeners, but in ancient times the gates to settlements were closed at night, even as recently as the 1970s in Oman.

In ‘The Wardrobe as Christian Metaphor’, Dr. Don King looks at the extended exploration of this metaphor by the writer C S Lewis:

References are made to ‘striving to enter [heaven] by the narrow door’, to ‘the door of faith’. Jesus Himself is often associated with a door: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me’.

In Lewis’s Narnia stories:
Literally, the doors function to take the children out of their real world and into a new other world; that is, the doors serve to move them from a mundane, everyday experience to a new world, a new reality, a new life. More importantly, however, the doors inexorably lead to Aslan, Lewis’ Christ figure, who offers the children an additional ‘new life’ experience. In ‘The Silver Chair’ Eustace and Jill only think they are calling Aslan; actually, He has called them. Aslan says: You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you. Lewis is paralleling here the Biblical notion of God calling to Himself all those who are willing to come to Him as outlined in John 10. In ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ Digory is called into Narnia so that he can be the agent of both death and life… Lewis again alludes to the John 10 passage, for when Digory approaches the place where the tree is, he encounters a high wall and door. Above the door is the following inscription:

‘Come in by the gold gate or not at all,
Take of my fruit for others or forbear.
For those who steal or those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.’

In his sermon ‘The Weight of Glory’, Lewis employs this same metaphor:

The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last… Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.4

And finally, this is how the chapter from this morning’s reading from St John ends:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.
^{John 10:27-30}

Almighty God, allow us, the least of all your saints, to keep a door in Paradise; even the smallest door, the furthest, darkest, coldest door, the door that is least used, the stiffest door. If so it be in thine house, O God, if so it be that we can see thy glory even afar, and hear thy voice, and know that we are with thee, O God. Amen.
^{After a prayer by St Columba}

Notes
1 ‘The Exile’ by Frances Bellerby. Taken from the anthology ‘Lion Christian Poetry Collection’ Selected poems, David Higham Associates. Dur: 36&
2 Grateful thanks to Chaplain Helen Roenfeldt, a source of inspiration, for permission to quote from her © article above.
3. This article originally appeared in the May 1999 issue of the New Oxford Review, and is reprinted with permission. Copyright © 1999 New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley CA 94706, U.S.A., www.newoxfordreview.org
4. Grateful thanks to Dr Don King, whose article ‘The Wardrobe as Christian Metaphor’ © first appeared in Mythlove 14, Autumn 1987 for permission to quote him as above.