Our church and our future, thoughts on what really matters?

My simple hope for the future of our Church is that we embrace our humanity more fully, before we embark on any more striving. I know, first -hand, how hard this is, how painful, what self-revelation can do to us. But we reveal each other to each other, we don't stand in front of a mirror saying 'who are you'? we make complete berks of ourselves and get love in return.
I arrived as a stranger and was warmly welcomed to make myself at home,, even as the quivering wreck I was. I have been so affected by one person's decision to embrace me as a friend he had not yet made, that I have been moved to do the same to all the strangers I have welcomed at the door. His decsion was to accept me as I was. The man in question is our Rector, a flawed human being by his own admission, and all the better for it. I trust his wisdom. He made a wise decision when he accepted me as I was, though it has often, I am sure felt like an idiot's choice.
If all we do as we ponder our future is to prevent each other from trying too hard I will be happy. There is nothing worse than an over-anxious host. We must feel comfortable saying 'you know where the kettle is', help yourself to milk. This is certainly a much harder thing for me than making the perfect cup of Darjeeling and offering it to someone on a tray with a linen cloth. But I have learned that I am not here to impress. None of us are. The more impressive we are, the more alienating we become. I recently discovered a Church with an 'objective' to have 'spirit-filled children'. This saddened me, because we are all Spirit-filled children by definition. This is my greatest discovery and this is all that we need to understand as we consider our mission for the future. Our neighbours, strangers and friends are God's spirit-filled children, and so we don't need to be perfect we need to be embraced through an open door as we are.

I'm not so far removed from my old self to be unaffected by lack of consideration or mean-spiritedness or poor quality. I am keen to stress I don't think of 'not trying too hard' as the same thing as 'not trying', or 'not bothering'. What I point towards is the art of simplicity and authenticity. If we write or paint or sing or play self-consciously, and by that I mean deliberately and with deep regard for how we are being percieved we lack integrity. We become performing seals rather than human beings expressing the beauty of our humanity. My prayer for our Church is that our instincts are good, our responses charitable and warm because we are comfortable in our own skin. We must be in touch with our frailty. We are not, as I had always assumed, another corporate institution. We are corporate only in as much as we consider ourselves one body and responsible for one another. We are not corporate in the 21st century capitalist sense, so overly structured and monitored and protected as to become sterile, performance-based, strategy-led, soulless institutions. We are so entirely not called to this distrustful premise. We do not have to prove anything other than that we are what we say we are, we are what we are, we do practice what we preach. That God is love and that we love because he told us to and because he loved us first. We must understand that not trying too hard is an art in itself. A lavish set for a play is rarely as effective as a pared down set devoid of distraction from its message. Ask any chef they will tell you that simplicity is the key, and quality, ask any designer, any artist, any teacher. The same message will reach you again and again: keep it simple and keep the quality. If it were that easy to do so we would all be doing it and no one would need to tell us. The fact is it is hard and we don't do it. We distract from our own simple message when we strive. Striving in its contemporary sense as concerned with performance is not compatible with our Gospel. St Paul has been interpreted, I have always thought, as someone commanding us to strive. This is fine if we know what we are striving for. Performance-related statistics? I don't think so, I really don't. Striving for simple, authentic, genuine commitment to live a life of love sounds much more likely. I think he would be gutted if he thought we had started striving to have spirit-filled children. He thought it was obvious that striving was for a purpose concerned with our Good News, that we are all spirit-filled children. Striving in itself is not ever good news. I know this, for I have lived it.
So as we consider our Church I pray that we can hold on to the simple truth that God is at work in our lives in ways that we can hardly percieve. The simple truth that we are human and God is God. The simple truth that God is love and that everything we do and say flows from this conviction. It is loving to offer quality of welcome of preaching of training and so on, it is loving to do things well in the service of God and others. It is not loving to try so hard to achieve and alter ourselves and our community so that we forget who we are: Spirit-filled children of a loving God

I should be telling you what happened next, but I can't yet so you'll have to wait...I bet the suspense is more than you can bear

Sparkhill Dreamboat. Next installment

and then I must tell you what happened next...

Creative Process

This post will be delayed due to this navel-gazing woman having important domestic duties to perform.

And so: the boat

The boat motif has returned endlessly. I have visions of me in a boat. I had a very long conversation with God about this. If I write it here you may think me a bit unhinged, but if I've given you this blog address it is doubtless because I know that you know and love my unhinged-ness and embrace it.
Instead of 'vision' I'm going to use the term 'minds eye' because I think 'in my minds eye, I am in the boat with Jesus', sounds marginally less bizarre than 'I had a vision and I was in the boat with Jesus'. Either way I had a moment on the bus where for all of ten minutes, I wasn't on the bus at all, I was in a boat, with Jesus. Coursing through the streets of Sparkhill on the number 1E at 7.23am precisely is not really the time for it. I wasn't overly impressed with his timing, but I rarely am. The 'mind's eye' is one of my Mum's terms which she used particularly for describing deluded individuals. She probably used it about her daughter. 'In his mind's eye' she would say, 'he really sees himself as Royalty dear', and then she would giggle like a child. In this context her deluded daugher uses it to describe her peculiar conversations with God.
In my 'mind's eye', whilst in the boat coursing through the streets of Moseley and Sparkhill I was struck by how lonely I was feeling in the boat, and Jesus, rather predictably said 'I am in the boat'. It might not strike you as momentous even at 7.23am on the number 1E, it just seems quite obvious I think. But for me it was a revelation. Please forgive the religious language, but you know it is 85% of my vocabulary these days.
It does seem like a totally different boat with Jesus in it. Not normally one for conversations at that time in the morning, ask anyone, let alone on the bus, on this occasion I couldn't resist answering back. "So why can't you row me to the shore?" Which isn't unreasonable. He is Jesus, we are in the boat, he rows, we reach the shore. "I am sick to death of this boat and not seeing the shore". I should point out here that I was referring to my vocation to Christian Ministry and not to my life per se. Given my relentless year of journeying to Sparkhill to do a job which left most of my gifts in a wrapped box on a filing cabinet, those of you who know me have shared these frustrations. So the argument with Jesus at 7.23am on the no 1E referred to my endless pestering to find out what this ministry might be and if anyone offical is ever going to do anything about it four years after its unwelcome appearance. To be quite honest, I was beginning to wonder if God was going to do anything about it after his unwelcome appearance. But Jesus was more than welcome in that little boat on this particular and memorable morning. It was a turning point for us. I ranted for as long as the relatively short journey would allow "why can't I even see the shore?", "what on earth is the point in being stuck here in the middle of the sea with no wind for the sails and no directions and no skyline?" "Why, am I here when I should be there?" Given the opportunity God usually takes it. "This" he said bluntly, and it has to be said self-evidently "is where the fish are"

Navel gazing

I have been procrastinating again. Writing is such a luxury and sometimes I deny myself the pleasure. Writing is essentially a self-centred process but unlike other self-absorbing things it is more like art in that the self-absorbed, self-reflective inwardness of it can reach out and touch and transform in turn. Hopefully the process also in turn makes a writer less self-obsessed and not more because of the reflective nature of it. I try to convince myself that this is the case, that being a writer isn't just a clear example of a pathologically self-obsessed individual. I am not sure that it is true.
However, I was not brought up believing that it was alright to be selfish and so maybe this is the key to why I don't write. It is too pleasurable, too much about me, too much fulfilment and fun. I had always thought that it was because I found the thought of it a trial, I have spent much of the time when I could have been writing dithering about why I didn't write. This has been a great excuse to beat myself up and lose motivation.
Today I am starting to think it was quite the opposite, that writing is associated with luxury and leisure and the sign of a woman with too much time on her hands when she could be doing something useful instead. Navel gazing was never encouraged in our family. When you are a navel gazer by nature this is a terrible shame.

too much to say

I have a lot to cover today. It has been storing up all week. There is now way I can get it all out. There are comments about boats and moorings, floating in the sea, about Jesus being in the boat. Then there are thoughts about the creative process and then thoughts about trust and thoughts about what I think about interfaith work and all sorts of other concerns. I will have to go away and calm down and start one at a time.

I am struck by my friend Ann's analysis that where we are now is what matters. She has a saying where she argues that the centre of the egg timer where the sand slips through the hourglass is the real present where everything is lived. The future and the past may have formed us and may drive us, but being here now is what I must embrace and all that this entails and means for me and those I love. In fact in some way indescribable the present holds the past and the future together. So this means letting go of living in the past bringing what is good from the past into the present. The all that we regret is part of the future we choose. By doing this we are allowing the future to be what it is and being hopeful that God will be in it. Knowing this is central for Ann to living in Christ. I find it really hard.

There is a poem which has the line 'the meaning is in the waiting'. Sabina said that she had read that real life is what happens to us while we wait and plan and think we are in control. It is the unplanned, unmanagable, unforseen, sometimes unwanted or unwelcome happenings that come our way and shape us as human beings.

I am persuaded by these arguments, but unmoved by the argument that 'things happen for a reason'. I prefer the thought that things happen for sometimes for no reason at all. I think that God is able to create meaning from those experiences. God can do something creative with any situation. Where there is engagement with God there is learning. We are engaged with God and God is engaged with us and so we are learning. This is not the same as saying that something 'had to happen' in order for us to learn. What it means, for me, is that we learned something specifically because something random or unjust or even lucky happened specifically to us. Our unique experience is naturally unique in what it teaches us to learn. We are uniquely created by our unique experience and so, in one way, for any particular thing to be learned we must have a particular experience. By this argument that particular incident 'had to happen' if we learn a particular lesson or skill, because only that experience would have taught us this particular thing. These things are not the same as God inflicting horrid injustices on us so that we 'learn a lesson'.

This brings me to my next point. I face the ordination of Rebecca and the licensing of Jayne to work in a paid and public ministry with all the things they will be allowed to do that I will not. As I face conversations like the one this morning with Deb's mentor from her placement regarding Deb's brilliant aptitude for ministry and cheering her on to start her training in September. I am as unconvinced by 'things happen for a reason' and more and more persuaded by the thought that this now is where God is at work. God will re-create me and God will use this mess, no doubt unexpectedly. God will find something to say because of the mistakes that have been made and will change us and fill us with yet more hope as an insurmountable and unneccesary injustice is re-designed. It is like sculpture. I am like sculpture. Vocation and Calling and Priesthood and Christian life is like sculpture.

The potter and the clay image, overused as it is, serves us. I do feel like a lump of clay being mucked about with and currently feel that I have been placed in a firing kiln to bake. The Fire and the Clay book about Vocation had warned me about this. I was a cynic then, but as I am being cooked I take it all back. What the pot looks like at the end can't be anything as important as the creative process where material and artist work together and take on a third life.

What happened to me was and remains an injustice. It was not meant to be. What God wants to happen is healing and wholeness and company and laughter and love. This is what God pursues in any given moment in the present and I am resolved to do the same.

Why do people feel the need to make statments and decisions about what other people can cope with? Specifically here I am referring to learning. I have been told that it is percieved wisdom that 'average people in average churches', the first question emerges, would be 'unable to understand Rowan Williams', and the second question emerges. As I continue to think about this another question arises and another and another. What is an average person? and what is an average Church? how do we know these average people cannot manage Rowan William's work? In particular how can we know this if these average people are not given an opportunity to read his work? How are we ever to cease to be average unless we try challenging material and make it accesible to those who struggle to see it as writing for all of us, and not simply for the academic elite?

The most important question of all is 'why would the fact of something being deemed 'heavy' be something we should avoid? Even more frustrating for me is that anyone should consider it their place to decide that someone average is unable to cope with something and should be helped to avoid it. The largest question therefore is my first, 'why do people feel the need to make decsions about what is bearable for others?

Here I am judged an average person in an average church by someone average who has never visited this Church or found out about me in all my averageness. As it happens I am an avid reader of Archbishop Rowan Williams, however 'heavy' some people judge him to be. He is not a 'heavy' writer. He is challenging, but to call him 'heavy' does him an injustice. He is poetic, uses difficult ideas which are not easily broken into neat black and white piles of ready answers. Perhaps this goes some way to answering the question of the motives of those unwilling to engage their 'flock' in his work.

If we average flocks start to think in hazy ways, in grey areas, start to live with ambiguity, look for meaning to emerge, start to read between the lines and to engage critically with Political scenarios we stop being average or a statistic or a person in a particular box and start to be persons in our own right finding our own meanings. Surely this is why it matters so much that we read his work and works like his. Here is a national treasure a widely recognised international scholar with creative flair and ingenious crafted arguments. Perhaps the it is those who accuse the average of being unable to cope with Rowan Williams who really cannot cope with the challenge he poses to their own positions.
Rowan Williams for those of us lucky enough to have read him is pure poetry to those who love him. To hear senior clergy argue against using his material for Lenten study because he is incomprehensible to us mere mortals is something only someone who had never properly engaged with his work would say.

In the brilliant Tokens of Trust Williams writes 'There was nothing bland and obvious about Jesus in his own day' (p 61). Likewise ther is nothing bland or obvious about William's work or God's people in each place and time. Until people who are making decisions about those they have never met and the educational needs they assume we need stop putting us into bland and obvious categories they will impoverish us.

And that...dear reader...is why I am so angry

Doris Lessing

I have just watched Alan Yentob interviewing Doris Lessing. She seems to be an amazing writer, she has won the Nobel Prize for Literature and almost every other award going. She is critically acclaimed in other words. The worst part is that she is one of those whose writing I have never read. Many of the quotes from her novels I have heard and remembered just because they made sense somehow. It is rare to be so inspired by a person that the response is to feel it is futile trying to be impressive or approved of. Since in many ways this has been my life's work it has shaken me. It is odd being someone who seeks to please and impress, we are locked into our own demise, our desperation to be loved, liked, approved of etc leaves us immobile or trapped into uncomfortable spaces draining our creative impulse, the very impulse which impresses and inspires in the first place.
She was so inspiring and I really identified with her. I feel that imperative to write all over again as part of who I am. At the same time, seeing a woman who was published as a young adult reaching around 80 and recieving a Nobel Prize for literature leaves me breathless with panic that it is already too late to write everything that I want to get out. She had about 60 years, I'm 36 already. Not helpful thoughts if they stifle but helpful motivation. What is great about this woman is that she didn't write to please, doesn't apologise for doing and being what and who she was at any given time. Being as old as she is hasn't meant saying 'if', in that she says 'yes, I did and said that', and I was wrong or it was unforgivable or I know longer believe what I once did'. But she doesn't die with embarrasment or shame.
I do. When I read past writings I can't reconcile myself to the differences between the reader and the writer. I often used to destroy my past writings as though I were trying to re-write myself. Doris Lessing was entirely herself. It was what I admired about my Mum. I do not think that I always am. To be entirely ourselves sometimes means being displeasing to others. Invariably and perhaps unavoidably by being entirely ourselves we become problematic. I cannot be me with you in the same room without having to share space and air. I can't stop breathing so that you have all the air you desire.
I am saying that inspiring people for me are people for whom being themselves continues. They are not people who continue unchanged and unchallenged in their behaviour and way of life. They are people who are true to their character and essence and in so being give and enrich life. They respond and behave in ways which are 'of them'. They are certainly not regardless of their capacity to harm and do not evade their responsibility to others or the care of others. They are people who bring what they bring, nothing more or less with which to persuade you to applaud. The people who really inspire are the ones who are able to do this and by so doing inspire, affect, touch and engage other lives. They are people whose decision to be who and what they are without apology brings out the same ability in others. They are people for whom doing this and being unique brings a kind of reconciliation for themselves and for those around them. The flip side to this is that for every person who says 'this is who I am', there is another who says 'I can't help it if this is who I am'. For those people 'being myself' can become an excuse to behave badly. They are not the same thing but they are certainly two sides of the same coin. I think the key difference is that people who inspire good things in people are people who are aware of their human capacity to harm, to cause harm and to create evil. Perhaps people who inspire bad things or use their 'intrinsic character as an exuse are not fully aware of their capacity to injure or more specifically, what it means to injure another. They may be aware that being themselves might involve doing bad things, they may be unaware of what this means for other.
To be inspiring people need to have an ability to be entirely, unapologetically, unavoidably 'as they are'. But this must be coupled with a decision to retain an insight into what this means for others. Really inspiring people know what capacity there is within them as a unique individual to use their being uniquely for harm or for good.
So, Doris managed to get me writing this at least. My little half an hour once a week shown to five people total, who I know won't be cruel or ridicule me. It is better than nothing and it is, after all, true to my need to start somewhere which won't overwhelm me.
Doris Lessing avoided being labelled. I like people like that. I try to avoid it too, but I don't think we ever escape. If we don't label ourselves, others will. Maybe it is better to choose your own.

On Idleness

Was there ever a sin more disgusting to the English than idleness?
I loathe myself more in my idle moments than when I am angry or envious or generally self-obsessed, stressed, exhausted. It is when I am free to do nothing that I really can't forgive myself. When people ask me 'how are you', I never say 'I am not busy'. I wouldn't dare to say, 'I am very relaxed', who ever says: 'I have plenty of time on my hands', 'I'm taking it easy as usual' or 'I never do any work and my job isn't stressful at all?' Who would say 'I am getting plenty of sleep, I'm not overtired, I work part-time and I don't have children so all my free time is my own?' Only a person who didn't care about people's good opinion or was unafraid of their jealousy.
At this point in my life, all of these statements are true about the amount of time and freedom I currently have. I don't normally admit it. I feel ashamed of it. I could justify this with the fact that I have been recently bereaved, and that it hasn't always been like this. Today I don't want to. I don't want to excuse it or explain it away as good fortune. Many of these things have been my choice. If I were living in a country or an area, or came from a background where overtime was survival and hardship normal this wouldn't have been a choice. Maybe this is where my guilt is coming from.
I don't have 10 mouths to feed and a family dying one by one from aids in a country where there is no water or food and warfare is all we know. I don't have to walk for miles for a tap with clean water. I don't know tiredness or hunger. I can't help wondering if there is something criminal about the way I live my life.
Many of the people I know and love don't live frantic lives, some of them do, I used to live a very chaotic and frantic pace of life, but recently decided not to, felt unable to, thought it was no longer what I needed or wanted. But now I only seem to hear the voices of the ones that live at extraordinary extremes of life, those who can never say their lives are comfortably paced and easily balanced between activity and play. People who never have moments entirely to themselves, people with masses of relatives who need money sent to them so that they don't die. People who work all day and all night with no time to spend with family or friends. People who are so stressed they are like balls of fire when they walk past me obsessing about where they will find their next spare minute. All doing such important things, so inspiring and purposeful, people changing the world with their activity and sacrifice, bringing children up with which to usher in a new civilisation. I always read that 'raising children is the most important job in the world' and I've never questioned it, just assumed that I wasn't doing the most important job in the world.
I wonder what I bring to the world with all my inactivity and solitude, my quiet moments, my spare time for writing blogs no one will ever read. I wonder what purpose I fulfil. It is a constant struggle to remind myself that I am created to just 'be' because it seems that 'just being' is a very idle kind of self-indulgence when so many people are 'giving something back to society', being busy planning and fighting and rushing and never having time to sit and be or chat about the weather.
I think God has given me an odd path to tread. Contemplation and being is very unfashionable. We don't all stay in places where we can 'be' and 'contemplate' but when we reach them I wonder why we can't just luxuriate in them, soak them up, revel in it. I may be the only person that feels this overwhelming guilt that I love my life as it is and don't have much to complain about. I doubt it.
It is more likely that we have a collective guilt about the fact that much of what we do is not necessary in the sense that trecking across deserts barefoot is a neccessity of survival for many. Strictly speaking we don't need to rush about looking important, but we mostly at some time in our lives do so. I certainly have done so, and almost certainly will do so again. I may even believe for some time that I am important and rushing for a reason, but it won't really be 'true'. What is undoubtedly true is that I assume that mostly when we are not busy we feel judged, otherwise we wouldn't all be rushing about saying 'I'm so terribly busy' all the time. What is also undoubtedly true is my assumption could be completely wrong and it is only me that feels judged and judges myself the most harshly. Mostly I don't hear people saying 'I'm not busy at all, I have hardly anything to do of great importance, I'm just enjoying my freedom'. Mostly I hear people saying 'I'm afraid I just don't have time, I don't know where the time goes'. I know I don't shout about my leisure times, I keep them as a guilty secret, at least I did...until now!

Poem 15 May 2008

Go on your way

Sail other seas
Swim the tide of freedom
Be loved for eternity
Drink peace and sobriety
Float on equal measures of solitude and company
Be with the God who answers prayer
The God who heard your plea
Took you home
Stroked the tears from your eyes
Be healed of cruelty
Washed free from malice
Be liberated to live eternally in the goodness of God
and loved ones living and dead
I feel you close in strange ways
Perhaps the sun that warms my back
Also warms yours

Thoughts about human kindnesses

When my Mum died, people said 'if there is anything you need, just tell us'. So I did. I asked them if they would weed our front garden. Sure enough on our return there were no weeds in sight. They loved it they said, it reminded them about teamwork, what fun it could be, why it mattered.
When we went away a man I know only from Church, a man of humility and kindness told my friend twice that she must tell me 'tell Jess I love her and I'm so sorry for what has happened and if they are having cheques instead of flowers she must tell me where I should send it because I want to give'. This man never met Mum, he has never had any significant time with me, I am not aware that he earns much money or has much spare.
His gesture and that of my friends who weeded my garden will never stop affecting me. The human capacity for kindness is bewildering, especially when you know their stories as I do.
I met another lady yesterday who had suffered indescribably through loss and injustice. She said she believed that we could become bitter or learn to be healing through our suffering. I think she is right. I have been taught so much by these people. The most important thing being that some people really want to give and we deny each other that opportunity too often. The other being that these voices are often the soft ones drowned out by those who seek to wound us.
I am resolved to listen more carefully for the soft voices of compassion among all the noise of the rest.

Poppies:

A Poem written as a reflection on Remembrance Day and for awareness raising for The Poppy Project working with women caught up in sexual exploitation. It takes the idea the 'we will remember them' should not only refer to the past.

Poppies

Fragile torn membranes
Vivid blood caught between the moving fields
Symbol; flower; drug and memory
Wreathed around graves, painted for mantles

Heavy-headed with broken necks
A murdered flower, fields of murdered flowers
Spiked stalks propping up faint-hearted beauty

Gritty, solid little seeds of hope
Gathered at the centre of tissue thin fabric
A little breeze will lift these tiny, gritty, stubborn nuggets
Fling them far and wide, float in the air, ride on the wind

Chase the deep flood of opiate
Float along the channels of addiction
Sit in dry, sunny warmth waiting for a buyer
A baker of bread
Seeded and sweet
Feeding the appetite of life which remains

Thoughts on Iona 2007

Thoughts on Iona

The Isle of Iona does not allow for pretence, it renders pretending futile. Our pretension amidst the honesty of the landscape, architecture and people becomes absurd.
The idea of ‘Truth’ has been endlessly discussed by philosophers in every age. [1] Truth in this reflection refers to the ‘Spirit of Truth’ in the Gospel attributed to John. She is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God that ‘blows where it will’.

This Spirit of Truth describes the essence and presence of Iona for me. Everything there is most appropriately understood within the spirit of truth, in the spirit in which it is meant.

There is a tangible, booming sense of truth on the island. Resounding clarity slaps us and we are left alarmed and reeling. Stunned into silence, or panicked into laughter. But there is no avoiding this clear, undiluted truthfulness; no arguing with it.

When we are drenched in this peculiar new reality we see clearly. Dishonesty reeks of self-conscious deceit. We feel betrayed by it and we betray ourselves with it. Suddenly pretence is revealed as destructive, pointlessly artificial. In this setting it is no longer purposeful. It is designed only to be revealed as a falsehood.

From time to time in every day life we are aware of a trickling drip of awareness trailing down our spines. Wrong time, wrong place, we just know it. A place like this solid sea-bound island is not always serene. It is possible to be in it and feel wrong about being there. It can appear to be the right place, but feel unaccountably like the wrong place. It can be an ideal time in every way, right month, right weather, but feel unavoidably like the wrong time. At times like this it is pretence to claim otherwise. The miracle is that God can turn it around. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time can become the right thing with God’s involvement. This is not the same as everything ‘being right’ or ‘meant to be’. It means that facing squarely those things that are instinctively ‘not right’, instead of denying them, gives God an opportunity to act. Denying our instincts about feeling wrong about something is not acting in the spirit of truth. Acknowledging the truth of our collective experiences, however exposing this may be allows that ‘sense of being in the wrong place’ to be acted upon. If we pretend that we feel ‘in the right place’ we deny God an opportunity to act upon that fact, we simply continue to feel that we are in the wrong place at the wrong time until we leave that situation.

On Iona this year I was overwhelmed by the conviction that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I left the island knowing the truth of this, but the deeper truth was that God had made it right. It didn’t ‘turn out to be right all along’, a situation honestly confronted was ‘made right’ and there is a distinct difference.

Our newly attuned ears, eyes and hearts, wide open with the stinging slap of Ionian beauty and exposure, ‘saw’ and ‘heard’ and ‘felt’. We saw, we heard and we felt the reality, and we saw, heard and felt the pretences. Many of the stories of our experiences, insights and revelations will remain between us and God. Many will be too complex to reveal or impossible to articulate. There will be an unspoken understanding which will have to be seen, heard and felt in many different ways, most of them alternatives to written or spoken language. But most of it will have been revealed by the Spirit of Truth.

The Spirit of Truth, as I understand it, exposes assumptions and expectations, sometimes it exposes their accuracy and at other times it reveals their falsity. Our assumptions can take us down many dangerous and unnecessary paths, as most of us know to our cost. Our expectations do likewise. My assumptions about the Iona Community and about our own Church Community were is some ways very inaccurate and this meant that my expectations became flawed. I know that some of my expectations of the Macleod Centre were equally awry and expectations followed that were equally unhelpful.

This was one of the first ‘truths’ that I learned on the island this year. Questioning and re-assessing my assumptions must become a habit. It would help communities if they collectively did the same. Assuming is part of our guess-work about life and it cannot be abandoned. It is just that assuming something does not automatically make it true. It must remain an assumption until clarity is sought and the assumption examined. Our assumptions bring with them our own visions of the world. They reflect our judgments and perceptions not only of how we think things are, but of how we think they should be. Our expectations flow out of our core assumptions.

[1] John Chapter 14 v 17

Reflection on Archbishop Rowan Williams following the furore over Shariah Law

Naïve Academic? Rowan Williams unafraid not unaware

Why are we so surprised at our Archbishop’s decision to exercise his right to freedom of speech? Why did he choose to make such a controversial speech so inexcusably public? Far from being unaware of the impact of a politically naïve decision, he has astutely manoeuvred Religious debate and Theological discussion onto the centre stage of Public Affairs. This is exactly where he believes it should be. We have repeatedly heard it said that Dr Rowan Williams is a Theologian and not a Politician. But there is a subtle distinction to be made. He is a Theologian choosing to place himself in a Political arena. This is a deliberate decision to place himself where he believes he should be. We should not underestimate our Archbishop. He is not unaware, but unafraid.

Religion is big news generally, even more surprisingly, Anglicans are big news, big and controversial news. But this week the Church of England and more specifically the Head of our Communion has created a media storm. By coincidence I was in the Inter Faith office at Lambeth Palace on the day that that storm erupted. Archbishop Rowan Williams is still on the home page of the BBC website. At the time of writing, his photograph and his already infamous lecture have been headline news for three days. Every paper from broadsheet to tabloid featured his gentle bearded face. His World at One interview on Radio Four, described as ‘ill-advised’ and as a ‘mistake’, is said to have been the naïve moment at which our leader and his advisors implemented their ‘high risk strategy’. Williams has never claimed to think of Christianity as devoid of risk, but he is not a man prone to strategy. He is embedded in deep contemplation about what it means to be a human being defined by our relationships to God and to one another. This in turn impacts upon public life and the legal system. For him being a Theologian is a high risk endeavour. I agree with him.

There continues to be consternation and incomprehension in every area of Public discourse. Why did he do it? Politicians are bemoaning his persistent straying onto their territory. This is exactly what he calls for. Political life is not the territory of politicians. It is a space we all occupy as human beings. Dr Williams resists the widely held popular view that there is no place for Theologians within it. He believes that public discussion about Religion, the last taboo, is vital to the establishment of peaceful, cohesive communities. His little-read specialist paper discussing the ‘unavoidable’ integration of some aspects of Islamic Law into the British Legal system has sparked outrage. The question on everybody’s lips is ‘why did he do it?’ Could he really have been unaware? If you read his books and papers you will see that Rowan Williams is not a man unaware of very much, unafraid perhaps. Some people are saying, and I agree with them, that ‘He must have known’. He is not unaware, he knows, but he is unafraid of the fact, that talking publicly about Religion makes him and his establishment very vulnerable indeed. Academics are complaining that his intensely intellectual and intelligent arguments should not be let loose for the General Public to misunderstand and abandon in favour of tabloid articles and three minute news shots. But Williams is complaining that we don’t understand the need for making Religion a public matter. In particular he is pursuing a distinctly Christian commitment to being publicly vulnerable and publicly thoughtful. This is a very unfashionable decision.

There is world-wide respect among Theologians for his scholarship. He is applauded for the consistency and relevance of his ideas. He is celebrated for his deep and broad comprehension of centuries of Christian tradition and of Biblical precepts. Even those who despise him and his convictions will never dare to underestimate his searing intelligence and academic rigour. Of relevance here is his very particular understanding of Christian ideas about what it means to be human. He pursues a comprehensive understanding of how people living in the Love of Christ have articulated their ideals concerning the idea of ‘personhood’. We might more readily refer to this as identity. We might be yet more familiar with the concept of the religious identity. He has studied in detail the ways in which contemporary people talk about who they are. This shouldn’t surprise us. This is what Theologians do. The age old questions: ‘Who am I?’; ‘Who am I in relation to God? ‘How does this define me?’; ‘What does this mean for my relationships?’; ‘What does the notion of who I am before God mean for us?’ These are the timeless debates which fascinate theologians. It was considered common knowledge among 20th Century philosophers and theologians that God would be Dead by now. Williams relentlessly pursues ideas about what it means to be a society for whom God is not ‘Dead’ at all.

I cannot accept the apparently convincing argument that he made the simple naïve mistake of an intellectual out of touch. I will never subscribe to the view that this man is naïve. He is a prolific writer. I have read about a dozen of his published books. Any reader of his theology will see that Dr Rowan Williams is a man of intention. His work is entirely in line with his actions. There is an authenticity in his actions this week which is reflected in his writings. He is a man who firmly believes in public dialogue around Religious ideas. He has never been ashamed to claim that Christianity has a historical precedent for involvement in the Political and Social life of any society. He finds it ridiculous that any human being should be defined by what any individual chooses. There is a powerful discourse at the moment that we are defined by our ‘lifestyle choices’. But he insists that we are not called to this as Religious men and women. He has confidence in the argument that our public declaration of our religious identity is a vital part of what it means for a religious person to live a good life. Who God says we are, not who the papers claim that we are is what makes us the people we are. Williams would not be afraid of the vulnerability he encounters as the target of Tabloid journalists or mass media coverage. He would see it as part of what it means to inhabit the space that God has given him to occupy.

To be unafraid and to be defined only by his relationship to God and to his neighbour is what our esteemed Archbishop stands by. His Religious identity is central to all of his ideas about his own humanity and the place he occupies within that humanity. Why would he consider a Muslim’s religious identity as less important to him or her and their place in their Religious community? Williams insists that Religious identities matter, our relationships to God define us and that we should be unafraid to say so publicly, as Jesus did. Many of his contemporaries present Religion as a ‘private matter’. He does not, has not and will not. We should not be ashamed of his being apparently unaware. We should emulate his capacity to be unafraid. Dr Rowan Williams positively asserts that the Christian vocation is to a Public declaration that for us Christ’s public vulnerability is our salvation.

Jess Boulton

Prayers for my Mother's funeral

Prayers of thanks:

Thank you for this woman
For her warm embrace, her smiling face.
She has scented our lives with a welcome fragrance
She has been treasured and precious.
Words will sketch our thanks only as a pencil drawing, and our silences and memories will add colour and shape.
We thank you differently, as we knew her differently
Our Mother
Sister
Grandmother
Wife
Aunt
Cousin
Our neighbour
friend
adopted mum
carer
Our listener
consoler
nurturer
fellow of the war-time
generation
patient.
She was woven into our lives, she shaped us with her presence
She shaped fruitful days with the clay of her life
Thank you for the nourishment she brought to life
Thank you for her joy in the smallest details
Clasped hands in sheer delight, her “Brilliant darling!”
Her brimming with pride
Thank you for her cherishing of human life,
her nurturing of fragile lives,
her quirky humour,
her wry smile,
her laughter
- THAT COOKING!
Thank you for her appetite, her Granny soup, her savouring of the palette of life
Thank you God of Life for her enthusiasm
For living every minute of every hour
Her generosity, hospitality, sheer warmth and vibrant energy
She was your gift to us and we had to give her back with reluctant goodbyes and tortured tearful embraces
Thank you for the gift of her life which we were so privileged to share.
We thank you and pray for those who, for whatever reason, can only be here in spirit.
Those who have died, especially June’s son-in-law Trevor,
those who are ill,
those who have to work,
those who are many miles away,
especially June’s sisters Barbara in Sweden and Jenny in Aberdeen.

Prayers of mourning:

We all had to let go
We urged her not to look back
We waded into the water, pushing her boat towards the light.
Unclasped her hands from ours and ours from hers
Wept our goodbyes, played her out, sang for her release, begged for an ending
Our prayers are answered, and she is at peace.
God of healing fade those scarring images of her traumatic ending
Force their savage cruel shapes into the shade of happier memories of wholeness and beauty
Unite us in our love for her
Hold us until the hurt is no longer heard so loudly and a new melody sings to us of her freedom.

Prayers of readiness:

This was a brave woman, defiant and courageous.
She was never afraid of your light, or of your love because she knew it so well already
Her life was shot through with the shining of your eternal love
Yours will be a familiar face, we have seen it in her own.
God of her life
Please take her home.

Good Friday Reflection: Julia's Story

The Centurion's Wife
“Julia! Julia!” a breathless voice, desperate with panic.

She pauses for a split second, gasps with relief, hands stained red from the blood she was washing from his tunic in the semi-darkness. There is water all over the floor from the earthquake, but there is washing to be done and so she carries on with her life. She must wash his uniform, he has been wounded in a battle, it is the blood of the man she loves, she must wash it away, cannot bear to think of his mortality.

“Julia, Julia!”; urgent now. She pats her daughter Marcia on the head and tells her to carry on washing her father’s uniform. She will be back in a minute.
“Marcus?” she cries out “we are all safe, all alive, the earthquake didn’t kill anyone here”, she runs to him, wraps her body around his familiar hard leather and metal breastplate. His centurion’s medals press hard into her breast and puncture her skin. “We are all safe! All safe! ”Marcus, don’t cry we are all safe, the light is returning”.

But the crying does not cease. He is racked with grief, hoarse with sobbing. “Truly, Julia, truly, he was the Son of God”, incoherent the words tumble from his mouth like water from a spring. He carries on spilling words into the faint light. “Into your hands I commend my spirit” this is what he said, “into your hands I commend my spirit”, Julia, “he was talking to the Jewish God”…”Jesus called his God ‘Father, I was facing him, we all were, me and the lads, when he breathed his last, he was righteous, he was innocent, he was the Son of God after all. We just watched him. We just watched him. Oh Julia what have we done?”

Julia stands and stares, ‘who is this?’ Where is her soldier? Why is he broken? What words are these of ‘hands and spirit’? She knows he is right; nothing has ever broken him before like these words have. It must be true, what he is saying can only be true; nothing breaks her Marcus, her man who she calls to mind in his absence by remembering the familiar smell of fresh human blood. It is his smell, it is his profession, it is to be expected that he would smell of human blood. Here he is, her Marcus crying with remorse simply because he was an onlooker in another man’s demise. Her heart beats in her ears a rhythm so fast she fears it will consume her. Her home is in chaos, cracked jars litter the floor, and this was no ordinary earthquake, the sun’s failure, everything shaken, broken and torn apart but no one dead and rendering her husband speechless with grief.

She is trembling with panic and she wonders what will happen next.

She finds her voice and can hardly bear what she must say. “Hands are for humans” she quivers, “hands are for humans”, they are for touching, they are for everything”. She goes on, gabbling with shock “The hands of the God’s are not like ours, they cannot reach us or touch us or receive from us”. “Marcus what are you saying?”. He could not “give” his breath into anyone’s hands; and not those of a God. It is not possible; it isn’t as if our ‘breath’, our ‘life’; our ‘spirit’ is bread, given into another’s hands. It is wind, it is air, it is only breath and when it stops it is simply death, the end. Death is an ending, it is where breath stops. There is nothing of it to give. How can anyone entrust the end of something?” “Marcus how could he give it, he couldn’t touch it, he has just given his death, what God could hold death in his hands like bread?” she shook now. “Marcus what does it mean?”

Marcus, slowly now, faltering, finding his tongue, parched with thirst from three hours gazing at an ordinary man revealing his divinity. This Jesus had shown his connection with his God, whilst all Jesus felt was agony.

Marcus had seen that Jesus was divine.

He finds his words sticking like coarse grain in his mouth; he can hardly get them out. “It means…”; deeply breathing now “it means…” gasping for survival… he shakes his head, bows it, heaves with sorrow, and pours out the truth like the first pouring of a new jar of wine. “It means I have stood facing a man who was the son of a God with hands like ours…and I have watched him die. That is what it means”

She stands motionless, the tears are coursing down her cheeks, moving into her neck, spreading over her chest and then her hands, in slow motion reach her face and she covers her face, palms of her hands sticky with blood. She is rocking now, the Centurion’s wife, holding her head, covering her face for shame. She stands there, time stops, everything stops, she hears nothing, feels nothing, cannot move or speak or touch or swallow, only the tears flow into her hands. Ages later she removes her hands. He looks up at his wife, his Julia, and takes in a sharp breath. Her hands have left the imprint of his blood. Hand shaped stains, his blood from his life’s work imprinted on her lovely face.

It is too much for him. He is violently sick. She stands and she continues to weep. They are both white with shock. Little Marcia moves silently and un-noticed into the room. She witnesses the scene, the two people who make sense of her life, white with horror, senseless with grief. She picks her way over the broken containers, the cups of wine spilt by the cosmos.

“Mater” she says to her Mother. “Mater, what has happened?”

Silence

Persistent now
“Mater”, “Mater”, “why are you crying?” “What has happened here?

Eternal moments pass, a motionless family caught in time and then slowly the truth crept from the silence of Julia’s mouth

“Our lives have changed forever”

Holy Week Tuesday 2007: A reflection

Holy Week Tuesday

I had been full of sprightly freshness, greening leaves and liquid sap, nourished and full, moving towards the sun and playing with the desert winds. Until that day I had lived a life of freedom and movement.
Until that day
On that day, they came, humanity, and they severed my tendons, carved brutally through the trunk of my existence, I stumbled, I fell. They came with what they later called the Banality of Evil tucked away in their minds, oblivious to the consequences of their savage destruction of this created thing. They had mundane jobs, but it was a living, one with the axe, another with the plane, one dug the hole, a careless way to destroy what I would later become.
I found myself upright once more on Crucifixion Day; I had been created at their hands, shaped to fit the back and the outstretched arms of an innocent. By now I was a desiccated, coarse lump of wood, my sap had drained away, I had been lying parched in the heat, immobilised, devoid of movement. It was good to be upright again; upright, useful, reaching for the sun. I waited, a simple wooden cross, made by people who were simply doing their job. The nails had been made, standard issue, fit for purpose and the hammer also, the skin on the soft palm of perfection driven through with the hot metal. The head crushed with thorns, a crown for a criminal.
The body when it came to me was already destroyed. The weight hung so freely that I swayed in the wind.
There was an atmosphere of impending disaster; the clouds hid the light, clustered together as though even they felt afraid of what inhumanity had done to this weak decrepit piece of human life. There was a sinister wind on That Day.
It took a long time for the life to drain away, even death it seemed, was reluctant this time, death hovered, as though afraid to carry out its task. I held the soft flesh, the angular bone in position, willing on death, sickened to the core of what I was unable to stop. I remember the words ‘forsaken’, the sense of a person cut off from God and disappointed by God. When death arrived, the crucified one did not meet it wordlessly but with words of completion. But the deepest voice which rang out across the hill on that day was one of relief and of triumph. This is what it said; ‘It is finished’, there was a small victory in this carcass, wilting in the hot blood human destruction.
Here I was holding a victor who seemed a pauper; keeping in my wooden arms the tangible presence of an ending which revelled in its finality.
Then, nothing, on to the next. They broke the body, pulled it down, a slab of meat, shredded skin, hanging intestine and then I was alone again.
It was an anticlimax; there had been hesitancy in the crowd, a reluctance to move away and two women who cried as though they had known this pathetic ending with equal intimacy.
Then, more nothing, and then I gave up, what was I waiting for anyway?
It took time, days in fact for me to recover my senses. I had known something which I could never explain. I had known the possibility of being a living tree once more; there was a power in the stillness of the condemned.
Time passed pointlessly and then suddenly it felt to me as though the whole earth had split in two. A tearing sound and a seam appeared pulling me in two straight down my centre. A chasm of hollow wood, I sensed this gaping, grieving gap opening further, split apart. I had been coated in blood, by now dried and flaking, now this wound opened within me, I was wrecked.
But this was the day on which everything changed forever, I sensed a strange calm and a movement within the chasm. I began to develop pale green leaves, they sprang from every corner of my wooden frame, soon I was coated in a vibrant green cloak of leaves. The moved in the breeze, shimmered in the sunlight, covered the deep wounds coated in blood. The blood remained in thick clots a constant memory of the pain, betrayal and agony of rejection, but another thing began. Cool, fresh water began to pour from my sides, forming fountains from the four corners of my structure, cleaning the scars, drenching me in liquid refreshment, soaking the cracked wood, the earth in which I stood, making me glisten, green and vibrant in the sun.

This was my resurrection, a day of freshness, newness and green vulnerable leaves growing tenderly from the deepest wounds of human life. There have been other resurrections since this day of days. There was the Palestinian who gave his dead son’s heart to a Jew, offering a new life which crossed the divide of religious resentment. There have been small kindnesses, which have melted the ice of bitterness; there have been days when in the deepest days of despair chasms of grief have become verdant valleys of hope. There have been days when people have accepted their scars as I did, lived with them in order to remember what they represent. There have been days when people everywhere have been made aware of an inner knowledge; the knowledge of the presence of God in all things and all places.

The power of this resurrection offers hope of an everlasting renewal and the knowledge which I sensed, with the hesitant approach of death, the intimacy of the women who followed Christ on That Day and waited with me. On such an incomparable day, there was something else, knowledge of something else, something endless & unseen. There was the constant sound of singing.

Freedom

I am thinking today about freedom. The nature of it, why we need it, why so many people don't have it.