a raid on the inarticulate

What next?

I have just handed in two of the last three assignments of my ordination training and by Friday, when God willing I will have written 800 words on contemporary mission, it will be over.  The last few months have been some of the most intense I can ever remember, with a series of major pieces of work to complete, an increasing amount of work for the Parole Board (what possessed me to volunteer for extra sittings in May and June I simply can't imagine) and the usual busyness in church.  Not to mention making arrangements to let my flat and move into the curate's house in August.

Now, suddenly, the end of the assignments and the evening teaching sessions and the weekend residentials and the Saturday study days is at the end of the week -- the end of this week.  All the rest will remain, but this whole strand of my life will be cut: a strand which has been running since the days of Mary the Regional Director (Central) of the (late) Greater London Magistrates’ Courts Authority (what a mouthful): the same Mary who alongside this ran a home for two or three adults and two sons and two cats.  So I've never lived anything like the life I have now – carer for one cat, part-time mother of one half-resident son and intermittent contact and resource for the other (not that any of us love each other any the less that), Parole Board member and increasingly full-time church worker -- without that constant sense of guilt and pressure from impending assignment deadlines.

Way back when I first started this blog, in the spring of 2005, I was musing about who I was if I wasn't the Regional Director.  Well there's an easy answer to who I am if I'm not an ordinand any longer, and I have three shirts (although Wippells call them blouses) shoved at the back of my wardrobe in case I forget.  But it isn't the whole answer, and the next few months until ordination on 30 September, always assuming the Bishop approves it which he hasn't yet, are a strange limbo period.  I need to try and remember the things I used to do before training took over.  I need to get fitter and lose some weight now I haven't got quite as good an excuse any more for not doing so.  I need to read some books which have nothing to do with church.  I need to relearn to do nothing occasionally. I need to……

I may even rediscover how to blog with reasonable regularity… but for now I need to stop because the briefing for the final 800 word assignment has just pinged into my inbox and the sooner I get them written the sooner I can get on with the rest of my life. Back soon, possibly.

Getaway report

Back in London late last night after an extraordinarily varied weekend.  Despite my good resolutions here about getting my priorities right, not thinking I'm indispensable, etc etc I managed to get myself into the kind of state where is anybody asked how I was, I would cry, and then drip gently for the rest of the day.  Fortunately, and perhaps not surprisingly, this was noticed and thanks to the determination of Vicar's Wife I was packed off for a two-day retreat at Stanton House near Oxford.  Very comfortable, very peaceful, lovely grounds (perhaps just a tad too evangelical for my taste these days -- the kind of conversation over some meals that makes me feel somehow a fraud... ) but no organised programme so I was able to read and sleep and walk and actually make some progress with the big assignment (a talk on "the spirituality of emerging church", a subject which seemed a good idea when I thought of it) which has so far eluded me.

The progress was enormously aided by the appearance of a couple at lunch on Saturday who are part of hOME, a fresh expression/emerging church in Oxford which has evolved from one of the St Aldate's Church pastorates.  Meeting and talking to them helped to crystallise some of my ideas and they invited me too their Sunday evening service the next day.  Once I had persuaded myself that my role in the Christ Church evening service could easily be filled by someone else (n.b. some evidence of progress on the not being indispensable front) I then had to decide what to do until Sunday evening, having originally planned to go home in the late morning.  It occurred to me that Cheltenham -- Charlton Kings to be specific -- is about an hour's drive from Oxford so I could go and visit Kathryn's morning service, where I was privileged to observe the flower festival you can see in the photograph in the link in real life.  Quite what to say about the apparent outbreak of flowery hats down the central aisle -- or were they toadstools?  -- I haven't yet worked out and although the notice she said that the theme was "let there be light" I've never yet been to a flower festival where I understood the connection.  However, everyone who spoke to me was terribly proud of it and prepared to put up with the difficulties of not being able to use the central aisle to go up for communion, about which there was a good deal of conversation.  I was made really welcome, and when I said I was Kathryn's friend everybody was immediately mine!

I was also made welcome by Kathryn and her family who nobly invited me to lunch, providing K and me with the chance to talk in real life apart from our annual opportunity at Greenbelt.  Not to mention meeting her extraordinarily overexcited dogs and having the chance to contribute to Open House by tying up lots of small scrolls with some red wool apparently discovered by one of the said dogs a few days before.  People have commented before on how well you feel you get to know people through blogging and I did wonder as we sat round the lunch table how odd it might have felt to the family that I clearly knew quite a lot about them whilst they didn't know me at all.

I got back to Oxford in plenty of time to go to hOME and despite a complete contrast between the very traditional parish church in Charlton Kings and the bleak, slightly rundown, white painted brick hall in the Cowley Road there were more similarities than differences between the two services.  I was surprised by how liturgical the hOME eucharist was -- even to the extent that the President, though wearing jeans and an open neck shirt, produced a stole (presumably from his back pocket) and donned it at the start of the eucharistic prayer.  Their music is new, much of its specially written for them by one of their members, and it's projected against video clips and pictures, and instead of the sermon we were invited to consider the stations of the resurrection and write our thoughts on big sheets of paper, and of course we sat in a circle and there were cushions on which a few people reclined -- but all in all it was a service in which anybody used to Common Worship would have felt perfectly at home. It does seem to be a strength of CW that it can be adapted to suit such very different congregations and environments.  Once again, I was made very welcome and would have liked to stay for pizza but the M40 to London called.  However, I did have a talk with someone who is researching into "the importance of the Eucharist in the emerging church" which provided me with some new ideas and some confirmation for ones I already had.

I'm still processing lots of impressions and ideas from a weekend which evolved from a simple escape into something far more -- and far more fun too.  May blog it more in due course 

Waving our ears

Thank you to Miranda for this picture, inspired on Palm Sunday by a splendidly embarrassing Anglican few minutes featuring one vicar, one guitar, several reluctant small children and an extended rendering of a doctored version of " I will wave my hands in praise and adoration" (you can see and hear it here -if you don't know it you really should have a listen).  As far as I know, no one actually sang these words but I can't be sure and the music group did seem to be enjoying itself, behind its music stands and mikes far more than the song merited.....

On not taking myself too seriously

So, after yesterday's earnest post and this morning's intense retelling, in the sermon slot, of the Emmaus story, what do I do at the end of the intercessions but fall backwards over my chair on the dais, making a loud bang and just about managing not to end up with my cassock and surplice around my waist and my legs in the air, to the intense amusement the half of the congregation that could see me.  Sadly, whatever the merits of this morning's sermon, today will be memorable at Christ Church, if at all, as the Sunday Mary fell off her chair.....

However, I must be growing up a bit because if that had happened a few years ago I would have been covered in confusion, mortified, bright red and completely incapable of doing anything else for the duration of the service, with a serious risk of dropping the chalice.  Today I went a bit pink (it was very hot inside my polyester cassock anyway), laughed with the rest of those who'd seen it and just carried on.  That is truly a remarkable transformation and one I wouldn't have recognised without such a heaven sent opportunity (thank you God, probably) to make a fool of myself in front of the whole church.  All the same, I can see a real case for traditional heavy church furniture instead of our modern chairs.

Oh yes, and thank you God too that the vicar wasn't there (well, it's Easter 2: of course he wasn't there).  I just wonder who will be the first person to tell him what happened to his prospective curate......

A few home truths

Every now and then I have a period of wondering whether to send this blog to its rest.  Much of what concerns me most of the moment seems too personal and difficult to blog and so posts have declined into occasional, somewhat self congratulatory, records of "things done in church".  But today I'm going to have a go at being a bit more personal again and record an idea that came to me this week which might be the key to some of the difficulty referred to above.

It's now less than six months until my ordination and we still have "several" assignments to complete including a whole module on " Mission Past and Present" and a major assignment under the heading of "spirituality" which in my case is an hour's talk on the spirituality of alternative worship (?!).  If I were training full-time in a theological college, or even part-time on any of the regional Ministry courses across the UK I wouldn't, by definition, involved already in the strategic and day-to-day running of the church where I will be curate in the autumn.  But because I work for that church, and there are a number of particularly significant things going on there at the moment, I'm having enormous difficulty in getting my priorities right and focusing on finishing my training and preparing for ordination.  It feels as if, since Christmas and certainly since I finished my placement at the hospice, I've been putting the church first, work for the Parole Board second and everything else, especially completing assignments on time, a distant third.

I've realised now that I have to stop seeing myself as indispensable to Christ Church on a daily basis -- I'm sure my amendments to the church hall redevelopment business plan were invaluable but equally they won't make the difference between a lottery grant and no lottery grant (since almost all the lottery money is going to the Olympics projects there probably won't be any for us anyway) -- and the church functioned perfectly well before I was pastoral assistant.  Of course, since I'm paid to be the said pastoral assistant I will go on pastorally assisting but will try to restrict it to the hours in my contract.  There will be plenty of opportunities next year, I fear, for the church to take over large parts of my life, but for now it must be in everyone's interests longer-term, and mine short term as well, if I try to focus more on the various aspects of my own preparation for ordained ministry.

I'm hoping now -- and praying -- that having given me this glimpse of truth God will help me to work out what it means in practice and to discuss honestly with colleagues what I should and shouldn't be doing over the next few months.  And that having done that, I will be able to concentrate on getting the assignments finished -- more than that, on learning through them what I need to learn and allowing the transformation process.

Just the process of thinking out and dictating this post has made me feel quite weepy, a sure sign that Something Is Going On.  Prayers for whatever it is or may turn out to be would be appreciated.

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A bit of ritual hand washing

Our Love Life, Live Lent group has got a bit behind with its bible study and I couldn't put my hand on my heart and say we were keeping up with the actions, but they are certainly provoking a great deal of discussion and even heartsearching.  It emerged this morning that some people in our small Wednesday morning group have changed their habits of leaving lights on and equipment on standby, that the suggestion of leaving a pound in a supermarket trolley or where someone would find it had been surprisingly rewarding -- and that the challenge early on to have a television free day continues to resonate as a very difficult indeed.

Having, as I said, got behind with our meetings, today we were looking at last week's passage (John 13) describing Jesus washing the disciples' feet.  The notes invited us to think about serving each other and I thought that, though foot washing wasn't really a runner (!) for this particular group, we might wash each other's hands.  This suggestion met with some concern from the members, who are more used on a Wednesday morning to closing their eyes and imagining themselves as characters in a Bible story, and they probably weren't helped by the way that my instructions got more and more convoluted as I increasingly lost my nerve.  However we finally got started with the introductory liturgy and finally reached the critical moment when the two washing-up bowls, two towels, one jug and cake of sandalwood soap were brought into the circle and I began to wash my neighbour's hands after reading the words of St Teresa of Avila. 

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ’s compassion to the world,  Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.  Yours are the hands with which he is to bless others now.

As each pair washed each other's hands they said to each other: "Yours are the hands of Christ" and as they finished they said together: "Ours are the hands of Christ".  When the washing was complete we read St Teresa's words again, substituting "ours" for "yours".  As we did all this the mood changed and deepened.  I shut my eyes as Paula poured water over my hands and gently washed them, rinsed them and dried them: there was a wonderful sense of tenderness and closeness which I think we all felt and which continued through the prayer time afterwards.  No one seemed to want to go and we were all amazed, even me with more experience of the power of symbol and action, at what we had shared.  An oasis of peace in the middle of a busy and often troubled week.  Thank you to everyone who was there, although I think only one of you is likely to read this.

Triumph and shame...

Just back from the church quiz night, one of a long series of events raising money for the redevelopment of our church hall, which is accurately described in one of the funding bid documents as "a leaky 60s box with what must have then been a state-of-the-art coffee bar".  To our surprise, our team won by one point (not that I'm competitive or anything but it was particularly good to beat my vicar!).  The sweetness of triumph was somewhat reduced by the shame of doing remarkably well on a round which was completely misnamed "literature" since all its 10 questions were about the works of Enid Blyton, and I had to choose between retaining my reputation but losing the points, or admitting that I knew quite a lot about St Clare's and Mallory Towers, not to mention "The Naughtiest Girl in the School". EB's school stories have a great deal to answer for in my life, since I'm fairly certain that they were responsible for the idealised view of boarding school which made me jump at the chance to go despite my parents not being at all keen on the idea.

Never mind: those misspent hours of my childhood paid off tonight in the church hall!  And boarding school was such a formative experience that, more than most things, I can't imagine what or who I would have been if I hadn't gone.

Top typo of the year, and a good phrase

Sadly I missed this Sunday's service sheet which apparently contained an invitation to come along on Sunday evening to discuss " Ben Her", prompting a riff from the vicar on feminist epic cinema and the role of Sophia Loren......

I was away at a training weekend distinguished, as the spirituality we were studying was Carmelite, by services every three or four hours (including through the night.... I'm afraid I opted out of those) all involving between three and five psalms, chanted antiphonally, with pauses.... I think the prospect of that at 2.30 am explains my decision to stay in bed.....

Because of the Carmelite theme the worship was conducted with all of us in albs - I have a new one, from Wippells, and I'm sorry to say that one of the buttons came off the first time I wore it, but I emulated the woman in the parable and scoured the courtyard until I found it.  The Sunday morning Eucharist included a bowl of charcoal and a teaspoon to sprinkle incense during the intercessions:  this combined with the very thorough approach of the thurifer and the relatively combined space had us all coughing away from the Peace onwards and even the most Anglo Catholic of us had to admit it the two together had perhaps been a tiny bit OTT. 

Putting my alb in the car to come home I realised that it was giving me away to my evangelical church in much the way a teenager's clothes do if/when he/she starts smoking, and I remarked to anyone who would listen: "My alb is impregnated with incense"  Isn't that a wonderful phrase....such a swing to it.... all together now.... My alb is impregnated with incense....

Displacement on an epic scale

Displacement has now reached epic proportions, literally.  Our Sunday evening services during Lent have been replaced by discussion sessions using the films suggested by the Church Times.  Having started, somewhat bizarrely, with the Prince of Egypt and moved on last week to Babette's Feast, this Sunday we reach Ben Hur.... complete with Glorious Technicolour, legions, lepers, long-haired Jesus and endless lingering looks.  In fact,  just as you remember it!  So yes, I have watched it despite the fact that it's not my turn to lead the discussion and my assignment still isn't finished and I have paid work all day tomorrow so it really needs to be done tonight.  I know I always say I work better to tight deadlines, but this is really ridiculous.
We haven't been very impressed with the Church Times' suggested questions, especially last week when they pointed out that in Babette's Feast the dead hand of the pastor had frozen the community, and could we see any parallels in the life of our own church?  This seemed a rather risky subject for discussion but fortunately there were lots of better ones and both weeks have been really interesting and provoked constructive argument and ideas.
Okay, now I really must get on......

A more balanced view

Pursuing my master's degree in displacement activity -- I have an assignment to write -- I found myself going back to another account of coming to faith which I wrote for the DDO (Diocesan Director of Ordinands) getting on for four years ago now.  Quite often when one revisits journals or similar writing some years later it's hard to recognise oneself in them but somehow in what follows I seem to have captured something lasting.  It wouldn't do for the Wednesday morning group (see my last post) but it does convey some of the wonder I was trying to get across.  In "Surprised by Joy" C. S. Lewis talks about the generosity of a God who welcomes us even though we are carried kicking and screaming across the threshold.  I might take that passage along to the group tomorrow.

There is a staple joke, beloved of a past generation of television comedians, about the airline passenger sitting tensely, eyes shut, who snaps at the air hostess with the duty free trolley “Don’t distract me, I’m keeping the plane in the air”.  As a teenager I think my faith must have been like that – a state requiring constant vigilance and care, because if I took my eye off it for a moment it might vanish (as, perhaps inevitably, it did after a few years of tension and guilt).  Or perhaps it was a kind of idol demanding regular sacrifice in the shape of acts of self denial - always letting someone else have the nicer bath cubicle is the one that springs to mind, although what I thought would happen if I allowed myself the one with the windowsill and the radiator is not now at all clear to me.  But what is notable about both these ways of seeing my adolescent brush with Christianity is that neither leaves any space for God:  faith is a process of which I am in control, a matter of placation and of pulling myself up by my own bootstraps. It simply never occurred to me that faith was a two way process, a relationship, or that God could help me to believe in him – or in other words that there was any such thing as grace.

When I came back to the church more than 20 years later, tentatively and not entirely of my own volition, I began to recognise that the God people were worshipping was far more real to them than I had ever thought possible, and that they regarded the Bible as a source of guidance for real life, not as a sacred but essentially historical document.  Even the wilder reaches of the charismatic experience, of which I was briefly a somewhat horrified observer, demonstrated that there was indeed a force to be reckoned with.  I found myself on the fence, wanting to know more about the personal and redeeming God I was dimly beginning to see refracted through the teaching I was hearing and the life of the church, but afraid of returning to the bondage of my teenage experience, and also of the effect on my life of what I realised would have to be a full commitment.  I will always be grateful to the people who helped me to confront my fears of being “taken over”, and to affirm my growing understanding that God was God, and that the Bible was really his Word, qualitatively different from any other of the thousands of books in my life.  And it turned out that this affirmation, made in private on a winter Wednesday afternoon in a Dulwich sitting room, whose significance I entirely failed to recognise as I stammered it out, was all that God needed to begin something new in me.  I remember driving home feeling unaccountably happy and sitting down to read Mark’s gospel straight through. There is an analogy here with the way that Jesus met people where they were and offered them something they did not understand – new life which could make them more fully themselves – and all they had to do (all…..?) was to choose how to respond. The image this time is one of a swimmer discovering suddenly that she is already out of her depth and not drowning – better than that, she can even stop swimming and float - and later that if she looks back the shore is already a long way behind.  This time faith was a two way relationship, in which I was not making the running, and this time God had a human face, and a body of flesh and blood, which I had somehow missed before, possibly through mistaking it for a stained glass window.

The years since then have been years of building that relationship and of coming to understand through study, prayer and the experience of trying to apply my faith day to day, more about the three persons of the Trinity.  The main obstacle to this process has been the tension between head and heart, with my emotions and imagination engaged and held by an intuitive understanding of the infinite beyondness of a God who nevertheless perfectly knows the human condition, but my intellect refusing to accept that something I couldn’t fully comprehend could be the major influence on my life and thinking.  Pride, independence, the fear of making a fool of myself were – and are – at the root of this, and can still lead to frantic thrashing in the water when I forget how to let it hold me up or when the possibility that it might do so seems just too remote.  And at those times I need to depend on God to help me hold on, so that the doubt itself is dealt with by the doubted.  This is the nature of the wilderness experiences described by the saints:  to hold on in darkness in the face of God’s apparent absence, trusting that the dawn will come.  Another analogy is that of God as a parent who is prepared to take the risk of allowing a child to explore in dark and dangerous places because that is the only way to grow.

When I made that early commitment it was in terms of believing what the Bible said about God, as reflected in the Creeds, and I didn’t at that time have any real experience or understanding of what it would mean to have a personal relationship with God.  Over time the head knowledge of the gospel story, of Jesus’ life and above all his death began to transform into a much more powerful recognition of a real person – the dry and very familiar bones took on a life of their own and I began to understand the importance of the incarnation as God reaching out to us – to me – and being alongside us in all we go through, with an experience which is not theoretical but rooted in a particular place and time and so as real as our own.

  Well, you can certainly tell from the last bit that it was written for the DDO, and there's a good deal that follows which makes that even clearer.  But it's good to be reminded, from beneath a heap of pending final assignments, of what it was (and still is) that made me set out on this journey.