The Last Post: Happy Easter!

I have mud under my feet (a LOT of mud), but the weather has cleared to fine sunshine, though still cold. Our Easter eucharist was last night, with the New Fire lit and the Resurrection proclaimed. I have walked through the woods, with primroses and wild daffodils and the first signs of wild garlic all around me. I have been sitting at the top of Ten Acre Field with skylarks singing overhead. Tomorrow I shall return to the sorting and disposing and packing. Less than 60 days remain now. For the moment, we have Easter celebrations, rib of beef for lunch with eighteen people.

This is my last post on this blog. Thanks for reading. There will be a new blog from the waterways sometime in the future, but for now, this is it.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Holy Saturday

At Sheldon. The rain is pretty well continuous now, but the signs of Spring are more evident than further north. There are daffodils and pink camellias in bloom. There may soon be cherry blossom. But it is still cold. We have greased the field gate latches and hinges; put preservative on the greenhouse shelves; cleaned the mud off the tractor; prepared a mailing of 1400 leaflets to supporters; and done all the Holy Week ceremonies as well. On Good Friday we took the life size cross to the mound in the Barn Field, and three strong men erected it, hammering it into place, while the Passion was read in drizzling rain. Today we rest, as our Lord rested in the tomb.

The End of the Tunnel

It's Palm Sunday. It's a bright Spring morning, with just a few flecks of rain. I've had a lot of dry sunny Palm Sundays, and a lot of cold wet and even snowy Good Fridays and Easters. I walk the dogs over the hill to look at the view of the little town spread out below me. The church bells are ringing. We have a lovely Palm Sunday procession, with a very obliging donkey, processing through the town for the service in church. This is my last Palm Sunday, but I'm not there. The Bishop is taking the service. I shall go off to keep Easter quietly on retreat and then come back and carry out the process of extracting myself from the vicarage. I hope, as always, for a meaningful Holy Week, and a joyful celebration of resurrected life.

The Final Furlong

One does not need to be appalled at the behaviour of paedophile priests, or the alleged covering up of such behaviour by church authorities, to find the Church an increasingly difficult organisation to deal with. Not only does it develop arcane and convoluted systems that people outside don't understand, but it seems that very often the people on the inside who operate the systems don't understand them either.

Nothing is more certain than the fact that on a regular basis clergy will leave parishes and other clergy will arrive. is there any system to make sure this happens smoothly? What do you think? i can't find out how to make sure that the phone number stays the same for my successor (This didn't happen when I came. The phone number, having been the same since Adam was a lad, was suddenly different, and everyone was very lost for the best part of two years).

How does one actually resign?

Before Christmas:

Archdeacon: You'll need to sign a Deed of Resignation, at least two months before you finish, so that the formal processes of finding a successor can begin.
Me: I don't think I do that, as I'm not the incumbent and don't have the Freehold.
Arch: No, you do. it's just the same.

This week:
Me (in phone call to Archdeacon's office): The paperwork for my Deed of Resignation hasn't arrived. What do I do?
Secretary: I'll get back to you.
(Later)
Sec: You don't need a Deed of Resignation, as you are not the incumbent and don't have the Freehold.
Me: I said that before Christmas!
Sec: Have you sent the bishop your licence for him to cancel it?
Me: No.
Sec: Well you'd better do that this week, otherwise things could be held up.
Me (after putting the phone down): Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

The Last Stretch

We have got into the sorting and downsizing big time now. the boxes are piling up in the bedroom formerly occupied by the Dude. Our music collection is digitalised and stored on two iPods. I have a slide scanner copying batches of slides, which go back thirty years to our backpacking days in Greece, turkey and Morocco, so we can look at them all on our new laptops. The study is dismantled, and most of the theology gone to younger clergy or into the diocesan resource library. We hope our old sewing machines might get a new lease of life and be shipped out to Africa by Tools for Self Reliance. Oxfam bookstores and the local hospice shop are swamped. It's an emotional time; releasing and invigorating, but also confusing as our past is spread out on the floor, and packed away or given to others. A needful thing, I'm sure, but hard in some ways.

Flicks in the Sticks 2

What a success the Border;lines Film festival was! We saw eight films in two weeks, including Up in the Air, The Road, Frozen River, In the Loop, Nowhere Boy, and the great Ian Dury film, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll to finish. Films are good for me at the moment, as I can't seem to get back into reading novels, and just browse on newspapers. A two hour film is just right. Unfortunately, i can't really manage to write about the films either, but they were all well worth seeing. And watching films in a cosy venue not too far from home, often with a bar that will let you take a drink in, with people you are on first name terms with, is great. one venue even shows supporting programmes of old newsreels and has an interval with choc ices on sale! Brilliant!

A February Sunday

One advantage of being on light duties or "therapeutic work" as my doctor calls it, is that I can do some of the things I've wanted to do but never got around to. Last Sunday was bright sunshine after overnight snow, so i crunched off across the fields to the small Friends meeting house, to the weekly Quaker meeting for worship. I've always been around Quakers, and have great respect for them, though I did find on peace actions in the eighties that some of the old lady pacifists were in fact some of the fiercest people you are ever likely to meet. I've been to meetings for worship, but mainly in big cities. Here the meeting is held in the upper room of an old building that used to be a barn - i suppose it was a hay loft or some such. The beams are old and low, so it's easy to crack your head. The focus of the room is not an altar, or a candle, or a picture, but a huge woodburning stove, crackling merrily. Chairs around the edge of the simple room accommodate the dozen of us who turn up. Outside we can hear the bleating from the farm mother and baby unit, with new lambs and protective mums not sure whether to approach the gate because we are going to feed them, or stay back because we might do them some harm. An hour of silence, broken by a few well chosen words, and then hot coffee and flapjacks. Then a walk back, the sun still shining, and home at 12.

Flicks in the Sticks

As if guided by an unseen hand, i entered the Little Pub with the Big Brewer, in order to partake of a little refreshment, and my eye was drawn to a pile of leaflets. The Borderlines film festival offers a tempting programme of films, in locations that do not require motorway travel or train journeys. In village halls and local independents, we can see them all - well, lots of them. Come to the Welsh borders and see the films your multiplex won't be showing.

Up In The Air

Oscar nominations announced today, including one for Up In the Air as best picture. Good for them! It richly deserves it, in my opinion. Corporate America is the main course, with a side order on love, romance, commitment and the devastating effects of unemployment upon the individual. So not bad then. George Clooney was great, and the two female leads equally good, in different ways, with Anna Kendrick having the edge as the naive psychologist way out of her depth in the world of big business. No-one would believe the cameo role given to Sam Elliott, but I just love listening to his voice, even for just a couple of lines. Lots of brilliant touches by Reitman, using real life talking-head interviews with unemployed American workers to hammer his points home. Right at the end of the credits is a song sent in to the director by an unemployed man who thought "perhaps you might be able to use it in your film".

We thoroughly enjoyed it, but watched it in an almost empty cinema on a Thursday night. several of those leaving were scratching their heads and muttering. When I read the caption in the listings mag produced by the cinema, I could see why; "a comedy drama about a man who is obsessed with getting ten million air miles". Did the person who wrote this watch the film first?

Moans on TV news about the fact that there are ten films nominated for Best Film, including some that "hardly anyone will have watched". It helps if the film is properly publicised so that people can make informed choices about what they are watching; not everyone soaks up all the radio and newspaper reviews like us. And it helps if the film is on somewhere near where you live; to see Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll I would need to travel to Bath or Leicester (over one hundred miles); to see The Road I face travelling to Birmingham or Cardiff (about eighty miles). Yes, I will see them eventually, in an independent, or in great digital projection in a local village hall in about twelve months time. Is that really 21st century cinema at its best?

January cinema

Going to see the George Clooney film "Up In the Air" tomorrow. I don't think I've seen a film with GC that i didn't enjoy. Especially "O Brother Where Art Thou?" and "Michael Collins". "Perfect Storm" was good. We watched it in Stratford while on a boating cruise of the River Avon. I like Jeff Bridges films too, especiallt "The Fisher King" and the wonderful "The Big Lebowski". Good to see him pick up a gong at the Golden Globes. But "Best Drama" for "Avatar"? Nah!

Avatar 3D

Thanks to Second Son for the freebies to see Avatar. Pity it was, on the whole, a disappointment. 3D is amazing of course, and the glasses are quite cool (We wore them in the pub afterwards too; it was amazing; as if the people opposite were in the SAME ROOM!), but the film is so derivative; what happened to a decent plot and script? Every cowboy film, every space adventure, every eco-warrior movie you've seen is in there somewhere. As with Roger Rabbit and a number of other "firsts", one wishes that the same dazzling creativity that was applied to the special effects had been applied to the story. Did they say this when they first heard Al Jolson sing, I wonder?

Mind you, we did watch it with someone considerably younger than ourselves, who commented that some who would never watch news, documentaries or history just might make some connections with experiences such as Vietnam, Iraq, the rainforests, etc? Let's hope so.

While I've been away

While I've been away from the blog, a number of things have happened. Here is a quick resume.In October the balance of my mind was sufficiently disturbed to be signed off sick. This went on for weeks. I couldn't read. I couldn't write. I missed Christmas. Lots of snow fell, and we were on the boat so we got frozen in, which was fun. I did lots of dog walking, and slept hours and hours on end. I have now been given approval to retire at the end of May. My mind is not quite so disturbed.

While all that was happening the Church of England stumbled on in its inimitable way. Two things in particular convince me that it is time to go. Last summer, while everyone was tripping round the country on staycations and going to each others churches, it was decreed by the archbishops that we should distribute communion in one kind only, ie. no chalice. This is something that has never happened since Henry VIII managed to come up with a sane and wise decree for once, ordering that communion in England should be in both kinds. It has never been suspended since then. The plague, Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, AIDS, none of these led the Church to take such a decision. This was supposed to be our response to swine flu. It was no doubt inspired by the Archbishop of York, always on the look out for a way onto breakfast TV or the One Show. It didn't work. Each diocese interpreted it differently, some strictly, some not at all. Clergy came back from holidays to find chaos in their churches. People got very upset and some blamed their vicar. The whole thing eventually got dropped.

The second thing that happened was that a new marriage application form was introduced to reflect the changes in the Marriage Measure 2008 (Google it if you really want to know). The previous form had been in use for the whole of my thirty six year ministry, and probably longer. One side of a piece of paper, it didn't even acknowledge the invention of the telephone. If you wanted to ring the couple during the preparation period, you had to remember to write their phone number in the box mysteriously marked "For Clergy Use Only". The new form is available to download, of course, and runs to five pages and four sections, with lots of instructions on how to fill it in.

Definitely time to go.

Happy New Year

Yeah, happy new year. I know it's a bit late, but I've been away. I'll tell you about it, perhaps. Sometime. Anyway, I'm not dead and I'm entering 2010 in a spirit of some hope and optimism. I can only do that with your help, gentle reader. Will you do one thing for me straightaway, please? Will you do all you can to explain to those you meet that the decade (or "decayed" as some will pronounce it), the decade still has eleven months to run? Will you do that? I would be most grateful. Thanks. More later, i hope.