Oh Lord! 2

A lot of friends and colleagues think I was being hard on Rowan Williams over the sharia law row. So let’s have another look at it. He is basically a good guy, liberal, intelligent and “one of us”. Agreed. And I don’t begrudge him the opportunity to discuss the law with lawyers, and it’s great that he’s bright enough to do it. I’m glad he’s so clever; better than that prat George Carey, who never misses an opportunity to have a go at him. George had no brain; this guy’s got two. And now that I’ve had more time to look at what he actually said, I might find some common ground, though being in favour of disestablishment I doubt it. I know he wasn’t proposing laws to allow people to chop criminal’s hands off, of course not. But I also fear for what the evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Muslims and all the rest might wish to do with what he seemed to propose. Can anyone think of examples where religious exceptions and opt-outs have been used for liberal progressive purposes? No. All the examples I can think of are occasions for religious institutions to protect their cherished positions of privilege, discrimination or inequality. And is it not in fact one more example of the bony hand of Thatcher reaching forward into our time, when an archbishop can use the words “choice” and “marketplace” when discussing the laws of the land?

What I really have a problem with is people telling me that it’s all because I haven’t understood what Rowan said, or that I should take time to read all the full transcripts, or that I should give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s an archbishop and very very clever. Well I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure what I and others heard live on BBC Radio. If I got it wrong I think that’s his problem in presentation, not mine in reception. And I’m not the only one. The fact that we’re all arguing about it without being terribly sure whether we really understood what he meant means that he has failed to make his case, surely.

I have had to think on my feet when churchwardens, ministry team members and people in the street ask me what the hell’s going on. This is annual parish meetings season. In the past fortnight I’ve had to talk three people out of resigning. One of the men who cut the grass also said he didn’t want to carry on, but perhaps he was just sick of mowing. When this happens I don’t have time to go off and do research and get my head around all the carefully nuanced subtleties in learned articles and websites. I need answers. Quick. And it may well be an orchestrated media campaign but, hey, we have to understand that this is the world in which we operate.

Now that I’ve calmed down again, I think Andrew Brown was writing for me on the first weekend and subsequently. Sensible stuff. Now please, bishops and archbishops, give us a break for a few weeks, eh? Let’s try to get through March without another public relations disaster, shall we? We’ve still got the Lambeth Conference to come. Oh joy.

Publication of the Month 5

One more dip into the February Publication of the Month, “Borsetshire Bride and Groom” with the Bishop of Lincoln (“Are you getting a big enough slice of the wedding market?”) Here’s the editor’s choice of “innovative ideas”, written in his own distinctive style. First, roses, quoted exactly as written:

“our favourite foliage without a doubt is a bouquet entirely composed of roses clumped together and featuring one colour really tightly packed in with just a hint of greenery to embellish can be used to brilliant effect and will guarantee you look positively rosey all day long!”

Or, as if you haven’t spent enough already, what about buying a load of brollies to dish out for free?

“For all the planning in the World, (sic) you still can’t guarantee fine weather on your special day! Never mind, these personalized umbrellas are a super idea!” (Specially printed with No-one’s Gonna Rain on My Parade!)

Enough. Into the recycling bin with you.

Unsettling Picture of the Week

Unsettling asthmatic animal picture of the week.

Ear ear 3

No, I do not plan to have the other one trimmed to match.

Ear ear 2

What a bunch of ghouls. It seems everyone is fascinated by operations stories. In answer to the many enquiries, yes, I'm fine. Here is a perfect ear. Mine used to look a bit like this, only bigger. Now it has less scapha and helix, but still has plenty of navicular fossa. Rather like it's been chewed by a small animal while I was asleep. Okay now?

Ear ear

Then Two; on Monday I went in to hospital for planned day surgery on my ear. A bit of background. Last year they thought I had a “nodule” (for which read “polyp” or even worse “growth”) on my vocal chords. This, they thought, might be the cause of speaking and singing problems. Then the next time they put the camera down – nothing! Gone! A few months after that, a little lump turned up on the outside edge of my left ear. Well, you can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? You think it’s a coincidence that this should turn up so soon after the first one disappeared? I don’t think so! The little bugger has migrated; moving around, so that we can’t zap a moving target!

The Great Man said it had to come off, as there was a slight chance that it could be a rodent ulcer, which is not very good, but not too bad, but more likely it was something a bit better, beginning with c that’s about fifteen letters, which is without a doubt better than Something Worse beginning with C and six letters.

So in I go, with all the stuff to stay the night in the event of Something Going Wrong. It turned out to be the full production; lights, sounds, costumes and quite a big cast. And you get to stay awake and watch everything! I seem to have a strangely detached approach to this sort of thing, and, from what others say, maybe a fairly high tolerance of people operating on me while I’m conscious. The local anesthetic is the most painful part; after that all you feel is discomfort, as if someone is trying to wrench your ear off. “You OK there?” they cheerily ask, to which the expected answer I suppose is “Oh yes, fine!” (that’s what I said, anyway). It’s rather like finding out about trimming a steak from the point of view of the steak. As it’s your ear, you can’t see anything, but you do hear Noises. These include metal noises, as of knives; squishy and squelchy noises, which, you realize, is stuff that is normally inside you, coming out and running down your neck; and small gun type noises, which is the sewing machine, I presume. But it’s all over in fifteen minutes, and they give you tea and toast. And that toast is one of the tastiest meals I’ve had in ages.

There there

I’ve not been posting much for a week or so because two things happened which got in the way. One, I had an asthma attack. This was the full works, exercise-induced, brought on after a little light garden tidying (I like to do a bit every year, whether it needs it or not). I’ve never had asthma before, so this came as a bit of a surprise. While I wheezed and coughed Tigger carried on with the clearing up, and then turned her attention to unblocking the hoover. Eventually she suggested ringing the doctor. I agreed. “My husband’s having a severe asthma attack!” she said, “Shall I bring him in immediately?” They agreed. If it’s that bad, I thought, why didn’t we go twenty minutes ago? I was on a nebuliser for half an hour, and am now kitted out with the inhalers and stuff, and stuck with this for the rest of my days, no doubt. The thing about being married to a nurse is, if you survive the initial emergency and the refusal to pay any attention to my plaintive cries for help, you eventually get superb after-care. We got back home, supper cooked for me and an early night. And that’s it as far as the garden is concerned.

A Canticle for Leibovitz

Anyway, then someone else joined in about the copying, and reminded us, well me, of the great science fiction novel “A Canticle for Leibovitz” (by Walter M. Miller Jr). Anyone know this book? This is the second time I had come across a reference to this book in the past few months; it was mentioned in a letter to the Guardian sometime last year. It is so long since I read it, and I’ve never owned a copy or ever heard of anyone else referring to it, so that I began to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. It’s a clever little novel, written in 1960, which covers a 1000 years of the future and makes some witty points about religious organizations which are of course, not about the future but are comments on the past and present. It has a post nuclear holocaust “New Rome” religious community transcribing the works of “St. Leibovitz” (actually a twentieth century Jewish electrical engineer), without actually understanding all of them (including, as I recall, his laundry lists). It’s central theme is that humanity is unlikely to learn from its mistakes. Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes appeared around the same time (1963) and dealt with some similar concerns. I loved both novels. I read “Leibovitz” when I was 18 or 19. When I went for selection for ministry I remember someone asking me to talk to him about a book I had recently read. Even then, something told me that this was not the book I should talk about ….

Do you copy?

I was in a meeting yesterday and a colleague who I’ve known for years reminded me that we had written something together about seventeen years ago and, as is often the case with the Church of England, they could do with reading it right now, as the issue is still current and has hardly changed, or even gone backwards since then. Where would we find a copy? I don’t have one; neither does he. Anyone else from that time? I almost said what about checking your computer, but, of course, this is the Church and the voluntary sector; we didn’t have computers seventeen years ago. The best chance we have is someone having kept a dog-eared hard copy in their archives. So then we went into this little thing about office equipment; when we put in computers, and when we first used email and stuff. I remember the first time we used a photocopier. Everyone came in to stand around and watch. And then, back further, we all remember the aching arm from turning the Gestetner handle. And the chemicals you had to put on stuff to make it work; you had to use it with the window open or go outside every now and again, otherwise you had hallucinations and got cancer. And if you tell young people today they don’t believe you.

It could only happen here! 3

After a wonderful day out, what better than dropping into the Little Pub to see the Big Brewer and enjoy some of his beer. Retired Architect was on a stool in the corner, and asked be if it was true that I wanted the church bells rung on certain evening a couple of weeks hence because there is a special event. No, I said, my message to the bell-ringers secretary was in fact exactly the opposite; please DON’T ring that night, as I will be trying to hold a meeting in church and don’t want to have to do it against a background of pealing bells. Neither of us understood how the message got so totally mangled in just two transmissions; he assured me he would put it right; I’m not convinced.

Musician with Hat, Mumbling Carpenter and Local Lad were also now present, and we all, discreetly, listened in to the conversation of the three real ale tourists sitting by the fire. The clock ticked and we supped. Eventually the tourists stopped discussing the merits of the beer and of automatic gearboxes as against manual ones. They all stood up and made ready to leave. “We must be getting back to Birmingham!” said one, which produced the chorus response from all the rest of us; “WHY?”

Right of Reply

Tigger has said that she would like to point out that if she had gone out slightly earlier or slightly later and not met me, she would not have had thirty six years of being made to turn up at airports five or six hours before the plane was due to leave, she would not have wasted endless hours trying to find things that I had “tidied up”, and she would be married to someone who could not only add up and look after his money properly, but would actually have earned an awful lot more of it by now. (Ouch! Wives can be very cutting, can’t they?).

We’ve just come back from a fabulous day out at Aberdyfi; glorious early Spring sunshine, a magnificent drive through beautiful mountain scenery, like being in a car advert, a good lunch and a walk by the sea.

Happy Valentine!

Thirty six years ago I got fed up of trying to write an essay for an assignment and went out, heading for the pub. On the way, I bumped into a group of students who took me and my mates off to a disco. Tigger and I have been together ever since. Thirty six years, punctuated by lack of punctuality. Years of remembering to check the tops on bottles and jars, which she never screws up. An increasing obsession with kitchen gadjets, and a re-emerging desire to own a dog. And her putting up with this Eeyore character. Thank you and Happy Valentine!

Here I am back!

A good few days away, and the sun is shining across the whole country, so it’s been walks on the hills and sitting watching the water lap against the boat. Fantastic!

Passed a pub the other day advertising “Breakfast – brunch – lunch”. With twenty four hour opening and extra staff this could be extended: Breakfast, brunch, lunch, linner, dinner, perhaps? Then dupper, supper, suppfast, breakfast, maybe?

The Three Rs

That’s radical revolution and riot, which is what normally placid country mums and dads feel like doing after being messed about by county councils and the government over rural primary schools. Whole swathes of schools in many rural counties are threatened with closure, including the last one in this group of parishes. I’ve spend months on this issue since last October. The email traffic is incredible. I’ve briefed, counter-briefed, leaked and circulated. I’ve talked to the press, radio, anyone who’ll listen. I’ve squared up to bishops and diocesan officials in a failed attempt to get them off the fence. The local campaign was slow to start, but is rolling now. It takes a lot to radicalize people round here, but they’re up for it now. The closure list came out three weeks ago, and a protest of over a thousand people (a large number given the size of these communities) went and marched on county hall. And the county withdrew the list – but only for further “consultation”. In the autumn “consultation”, 97% of respondents objected to any closures, but the county went ahead anyway. So now we’ve organized letter-writing campaigns telling them to close the bloody lot; that should make sure they all stay open! (Just kidding!).

Sometimes life is so extraordinarily unbelievable that the only reaction is to laugh. Two days ago the threatened school was hit with a 48 hour notice OFSTED inspection. It took place today, so I’ve been in and out of that, as well as helping get ready for a classic country funeral (highly respected and popular local farmer; four hundred mourners; speaker relay into the churchyard; whole village gridlocked with cars all day). Oh, and someone else died suddenly in the night. And this morning the village held its annual “Snowdrops and Aconites” Coffee Morning and Bring and Buy. I dashed in and out in half an hour and didn’t hardly notice the beds of flowers under the trees and the daffodils getting going in the garden. It looks like we’ll get a good OFSTED. Whether we’ll still be open will not be settled for some time. The exhausted teachers have staggered off for a well-earned half-term break. Nothing ever happens in the countryside.

“What is our life, if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare…?”

I’m off for a couple of days stopping and staring some place else. Here’s a picture of the snowdrops and aconites from last year to keep you going.

Oh Lord!

Rowan Williams says sharia law in Britain “inevitable”. Websites overflowing. Headlines screaming. “Dreadful error of judgement” says Equality & Human Rights Commission. “British law based on British values for all British people” says Downing Street. Too right. I want to live in a liberal secular democracy under a common law to which we all contribute and all conform. I don’t want religious zealots – Evangelical Christian, Catholic, Muslim, JWs, Jedi Knights – playing pick and mix with the legal system.

I value Rowan’s intellect and his spiritual writing and poetry and all, but what was he thinking of? It was the Cambridge common-room style that staggered me. And the rest of us in the real world of the parishes are once again left to shore up morale. When I’ve asked for leadership to speak out on rural schools we get told we’re being political and we must be “measured” and “balanced” in our response; then we get this nonsense.

I once spoke on the same platform as Rowan Williams. Our career paths diverged after that. I’m sorry he’s ended up in that dead-end job. It was 1983. Cruise missiles were being stationed at Greenham Common and Molesworth. The Church of England General Synod had produced a unilateralist report called “The Church and the Bomb”, and I took on the (unpaid) job of presenting it around the diocese I worked in. We had a CND/Peace Council rally outside the Town Hall in the middle of the city. Rowan was invited to speak, and gave a thoughtful theological reflection on why weapons of mass destruction were immoral, unjust and incompatible with the Christian faith. Everyone listened politely. I didn’t really have a speech. I yelled into the microphone “What do we want?” “NO CRUISE MISSILES!” the crowd yelled back. “When do we want it?” “NOW!” they all shouted. Another bloke led a few choruses of “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie OUT, OUT, OUT!” Everyone went home happy.

Publication of the Month 4

But then, what do I know? I thought that bishop was a vestment model. Turns out it’s John Saxbee, the Bishop of Lincoln, appearing under the slogan “Are you getting a big enough slice of the wedding market?” (Did he know that would be how they’d use his picture?) We had a local clergy meeting and several people came up with the ID. I’d be hard pressed these days to recognize most bishops, except our own, and probably couldn’t pick one out in a police line-up (not that that should be necessary). I hope he’s OK about being associated with a magazine that encourages people to spend a year’s wages on a one day fantasy blow-out. In the low wage economy of this part of the country, young couples are struggling to find and keep a job that pays anything like decent money, struggling to get on the housing ladder, struggling to find village primary schools for their children to go to, post offices and pubs that are still open, a phone box that works when there's no mobile coverage, public transport to get them anywhere they want to go. And the rich folks think they can come up and buy the rural churches along with everything else in the weekend holiday park they are creating. We should not be encouraging this kind of thing.

Publication of the Month 3

Back to “Borsetshire Bride and Groom”. Photography. Some interesting ads in this section of the magazine. Like the one that features a bride in full regalia running away from the camera across a field. What happened there then? And why does the advert for a company called Barry Curl Photography feature a completely bald man? Is he being deliberately cruel? Or is this in fact a picture of Mr Curl himself, taken on his own Happy Day? One of life’s cruel ironies perhaps. And then there’s this blonde with a knowing look, almost wearing a bright red dress. I’m not sure she’s a real bride. With a mobile phone number underneath she’d be a dead ringer for those ladies offering services via those stickers you find in phone boxes.

Dust thou art

..... and to dust thou shalt return. Ash Wednesday today. I should have been prepared for what happened when key members of the congregation asked me if there was a service. Sixteen turned up tonight. Our regular Sunday congregation is around 60. I’m old-fashioned enough to still think of such occasions as “days of obligation”; in other words, you turn up. I can see that contemplating one’s mortality and sinfulness might not be everyone’s idea of a Wednesday night entertainment, particularly when there is competition from England v Switzerland footy on the telly, the youth club and the pantomime rehearsal. The pantomime producer put a three-line whip on which was much more successful than my injunctions, but then he is facing a crisis as the performances are next week, and the leading characters apparently know less of their lines now than they did when they started back in October. There may not have been many of us in church, but we all knew our lines. And at least we didn’t have the usual business where a crowd turn up on Shrove Tuesday and scoff plates and plates of pancakes and then don’t turn up on the Wednesday. No-one thought of organizing pancakes this year, so it didn’t happen. So Lent has started without us.

Bath & Bach time

The bean counters and box tickers continue to nip at our flanks out here in the countryside. Like many parts of the country we have been engaged in an growing campaign to stop wholesale closures of small primary schools. These schools make very little economic sense, but provide high quality education and are at the heart of living villages. We have a school in one village which is the descendant of previous schools dating back to 1668. In a few months it could be gone. And while we fight for its survival, OFSTED inspectors have announced that they will be here on Thursday to inspect the school, so voluntary governors already under pressure fighting for its survival will have to clear their diaries again to support the school and justify its performance.

I have a barometer mercury column to measure the atmospheric pressure, and a spinal column to measure the working pressure. I have a set of scales to measure the culinary balance, and a set of vertebrae to measure my work-life balance. Today I could feel the creaks and groans of a system under some strain. Bach’s Goldberg Variations and a hot bath at 5pm.

We'll See

A young man grows up in a beautiful home in the country and is given a horse for his birthday. “How fortunate I am!” he says to the Zen master, “God has indeed been good to me!” The Zen master says nothing.

The young man falls from his horse, and is paralysed, confined to a wheelchair. He rages against the God who has allowed this to happen to him. The Zen master says nothing.

War breaks out, and all the young men of the district are marched away to fight. “But for my accident, I too would have had to march away. God has saved me from the dangers of the battlefield!” says the young man.

The man studies and becomes a great scientist. He gives thanks to God for giving him these gifts. But the government of the day uses his discoveries to create weapons of terrible power to use against innocent people. “There cannot be a loving God if he allows such things to happen!” says the man.

“We’ll see”, says the master …. And so the story goes on, throughout the life of the man.

………………………

Another story comes from the Shoah, the Jewish Holocaust. A group of Jewish prisoners in one of the death camps decide to put God on trial for allowing the disaster to come upon them and on so many thousands of innocent people. All night long the arguments range back and forth, but eventually the conclusion is reached; God is guilty, God has abandoned his people, God is dead. The rabbi looks out of the window of the hut, and sees that morning is breaking. “Come along”, he says, “It is time for our morning prayers”, and the group go to their devotions as they have done every morning since their arrival.

Is this an example of great wisdom, or great foolishness?

……………………..

A train journey looks different depending on whether we are sitting facing the way we are going, or the way we have been. As we travel forward we do not always have time to see the detail of what is coming towards us, or to interpret its meaning. Facing backwards, we can see much more of where we have come from, and the major milestones along the way, but we have no idea what lies ahead. It is only when the journey has been completed that we, and others, can have any hope of coming to any conclusions about what has taken place in our lives, or assessing the significance others, and ourselves, might want to place upon those events.

Charlie Wilson's War

When I got back from the course, we both went off to see the film Charlie Wilson’s War. Highly recommended, if you haven’t seen it. When American movies do take a dry, wry sideswipe at their own culture and political system the effects are always entertaining and thought-provoking.

A disgraceful, hard-drinking, womanizing congressman, for reasons he himself doesn’t fully understand, decides to use the political system he knows how to manipulate in order to influence the American response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Though not himself good or virtuous, he is able to do good, by devious means. Or so it would appear. The law of unintended consequences is there, lurking throughout, and steps forward into the spotlight as the Taliban and co rush into the vacuum left by the departing Russians, sent packing by the Muslim warriors armed with American-funded weapons. The movie ends with one version of a famous story, about a Zen master (but could be a rabbi or priest) who is asked for his opinion on a series of events in the life of one young man.

Voices in Conversation

More notes from the Jeremiah sessions with Anders Bergquist;

“the swirling of several interpreting voices in conversation” (Brueggemann);

“the Book is the Jupiter of the Biblical planetary system” (Bergquist)

Here we have poetic justice and the law of cause and effect; the recovery of the concept of natural law. The Jews considered themselves to be a people exceptionalised by God – so how could this happen? And who is still saying something similar to this today? Here we can also find the law of unintended consequences, there in the sixth century BCE, waiting to help us in post-2003 Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we have the answer to today’s spin-doctors who spray optimism over our fears and misgivings, telling us not to worry, all will be well, and to the box-tickers, who show us the system to follow if we wish to be saved. It is Jeremiah who points out that it ain’t necessarily so, that there could be a more complex, a darker narrative in store for us, without necessarily denying a loving God behind the story.

Publication of the Month 2

Now back to “Borsetshire Bride and Groom”, our publication of the month, “produced in association with the Church of England” (it says on the cover). I think the idea is that we shove this at couples coming to book weddings, having first taken note of communications from our diocese suggesting we promote marriage in churches by using posters with phrases like “we’ve got four hundred great venues just waiting for you!”. Hmm. One or two slight drawbacks to that, such as Church of England marriage law.

The magazine is full of glossy photos of everything you could possibly think of for a grand wedding, plus an number of other things you would never think of, such as personalized slogans on umbrellas to hand out to all your guests (“No-one Rains on My Parade!”). What it is short on is much mention of prices. There are few pound signs to be seen. You have to go all the way to page 125 before you get a breakdown of costs for a series of possible wedding scenarios; Bronze, Silver and Gold. For the tightwads amongst you, you can do a Bronze wedding for £6,135. Silver comes to £13,145. But if you really want to push the boat out, go for Gold at an eye-watering £31,510. You could buy a house for that not long ago. In very small print in the corner, you can find the cost of a “minimalist” wedding, which is just the cost of legal fees, at around £200. Or just give ’em the train fare and encourage them to run away together.

Judgement and Hope

Two days “continuing ministerial education” (that’s in-service training to everyone else). Six lectures on the Book of Jeremiah. That’s, let me see, yes, that’s six more Old Testament lectures than I have been to in the entire preceding thirty five years since leaving university. Not bad. And, in case you were wondering, it was entirely voluntary. No force was used to get me into the lecture room. I went willingly and enjoyed myself! And the food was good too! In fact, doing a degree in theology seems like a very attractive option. OK, I’ve already got one, but I bunked and flunked my way through it. The pints-of-beer to essays-completed ratio was seriously skewed. University is wasted on the young.

Anyway, Jeremiah. Defined in the dictionary as a “doleful complainer” (and he is listed just above another OT character, Jeroboam, who gives his name to an enormous bottle of champagne).

Jeremiah is seriously brilliant stuff. Completely relevant to today’s world, and to much that I’ve been doing later. Anyone having a ministerial crisis of confidence should read the so-called “Confessions of Jeremiah” (before you all rush, this is not confessions as in “Confessions of a Window-Cleaner”; it’s more thoughts, poetry, personal reflections and musings on matters personal and spiritual). Some of the most honest and challenging personal theology in the entire Bible. Jeremiah is not afraid to tell God EXACTLY what he thinks of him and the mess he has got him into.

Think that no-one listens to what you have to say? Jeremiah knew all about that. Think you can see exactly where society is going wrong, and that you can accurately predict the consequences? Jeremiah too? Yep. Fed up with people telling you to shut up and stop being a miserable bugger; God wouldn’t let it happen? Check.

Jeremiah is a meditation on disaster and aftermath which speaks into the modern world. You can read Jeremiah with profit when considering the Shoah/Holocaust; climate change; Al Qaida and terrorism; and much else besides. Walter Brueggemann has written powerfully on this, setting Jeremiah’s reflections on the destruction of Jerusalem in 587BCE alongside the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001CE. What about this?

“Taken as an act of brutality, the 9/11 event is not overly spectacular because in the end it entailed a relatively modest number of deaths. No doubt, that modest event has gained enormous symbolic importance because of its locus in New York City, a locus that invites perpetual media attention and commentary. Taken as a symbolic event … 9/11 is of enormous significance in US culture, for it has introduced into US awareness a dimension and depth of vulnerability that was heretofore unthinkable…. I submit that the loss of 9/11 is powerfully analogous to the loss of Jerusalem and its temple in 587BCE.”

A Theology of the Book of Jeremiah: Walter Brueggemann 2007