Another Chapter

When a group of local clergy get together, it’s called a chapter meeting. The name conjures up strange images from early Doctor Who episodes, of people in black robes in a candlelit cave going around in circles making incantations. In fact, a chapter meeting is nothing like that. Our chapter enjoy nothing better than having breakfast together. They’ll meet and eat cornflakes and toast and drink lots of coffee and the whole thing will go on for a couple of hours before anyone will call them to order and do any work. This drives me nuts. When I took the chair I suggested that we start at 9am with a eucharist and then coffee and then business from 10 until 12. It didn’t go down well, but they do it reluctantly.

This week’s meeting was slightly worse than recently, which have all been quite bad. The problem, my problem, as I have analysed it, is that I have broken the club rules. Let me explain. Most organizations operate like a club. There’s a constitution, rules, and there’s a way of doing things. And if you belong to the club, the convention is that you don’t bad-mouth the club and its members outside of the meetings. And you probably shouldn’t do it inside either if you want to retain your membership card. Unfortunately, I don’t follow the rules. A lot of my fellows have been through public school and a decent university. They know about clubs. I didn’t have that kind of education. I went to secondary modern school and then the local grammar. My family were steelworkers. When I was ordained, I felt that I was an imposter. The behaviour of some of my colleagues confirmed this impression. Even after all these years, I still can’t shake off the feeling that I don’t really belong, that I shouldn’t be here.

Our guest speaker this week was the diocesan director of education, who is supposed to be looking after our rural schools, someone about whom I have had cause to complain, publicly, in recent months. He set out the rules once again; we do not speak against a colleague to people outside the “club”. I’ve already done this. Many times. All in good causes. I feel there is a higher imperative here. Truth and justice. When he has stuffed up, I have been on to him to tell him so. So it was quite clear as the meeting progressed that I had Broken The Rules. That I had Transgressed Big Time. The members did not like it.

Of course, at the end of the meeting, he spilled the beans about how he really felt, how he had been badly treated, how he couldn’t say what he really felt because he had a family and school age children and lived in a tied house and had ten years more to work. In other words, the system requires us to suppress how we really feel and try to give an impression of peace and harmonious relationships. No public dissent. Very unhealthy.

The diocesan newspaper tries to do the same thing in print. “It’s like bloody Pravda, this thing!” said someone the other day, “Tractor production is up once again, economic targets have all been exceeded and here are pictures of our happy smiling womenfolk working to bring in the harvest as the motherland continues to flourish! Who are they trying to kid? We have to learn to read between the lines to work out what’s really going on.” The average Church of England diocese.