On Women Bishops

So, the Church of England has voted in favour of the ordination of women to the episcopate, but not by a sufficient margin in all three houses for the vote to carry.  I have expressed that carefully and precisely because even the BBC has talked of the C of E having voted against the ordination of women bishops, which is not quite the case.  Indeed, not at all the case:  it's clear there is a majority, and quite a substantial one, for this to happen - but nonetheless it is true that the motion itself has failed, and we may presume that there will be no women bishops in the C of E within the next five years.

One reason why the House of Laity should be much more conservative on these matters than the Houses of Bishops and Clergy (both very solidly in favour) is that the laity of the Church do tend to be, on the whole, more conservative than the clergy - though for the most part less likely to be signed-up members of one party or another, or necessarily all that well-versed on the theological arguments for or against, in this or any other contentious issue.

But it is also a product of the way in which the House of Laity is elected.  Within a diocese, the clergy are, by and large, well known to each other, and also they are clued up on the issues and fairly highly motivated to vote in the election of General Synod members.  Lay people, even the fairly high profile lay people who might seek election to Synod, tend not to be so well known, and the electorate is by no means as clued up or as interested in voting.  It is easier for the hard liners on both sides to get their candidates through the process, not least because those most interested in participating in the vote are likely to be those with a firm position on one side or the other.

The impact of this depends on where you are looking at it from.  The House of Laity can act as an effective brake on the wilder and more excessively liberal impulses of the bishops and clergy, forcing them to take account of a perspective that is in fact more in tune with the views of the real man or woman in the real pew. That could be a good thing, perhaps.  Or the role of the laity could be that of the backwoodsmen who constantly stymie and cancel out the policies and proposals of those with a leadership vision, with the Gospel imperative at heart, and a real impulse to relevance and mission.  Which would be a bad thing, surely.

There will have been times when the House of Laity has been effective and useful as a brake;  there have been times when it has delayed and frustrated forward-thinking proposals that in some cases (like this, I think - but you may not) were already long overdue. My take on this is quite simple and straightforward, though I won't restate it here, except to say that surely, as the office and order of priest is dependent on that of bishop a Church that ordains women as priests ought to ordain them also as bishops, to be theologically coherent.

Female priests are a fact of Church life now.  I came close to voting against at the time, but I am glad to have been persuaded otherwise.  This, I am told by some, makes me no longer Catholic;  I have become schismatic, albeit as part of a Church that as a whole is schismatic.  I disagree, because I cannot separate catholicity as a concept from 'the mind of Christ', which is a fundamental of the Church.  To live, to decide and to order ourselves according to the mind of Christ is a vital task for his Church, and to do that may well challenge much that is or has been dear to us.

Continuing The Thread

I’ve been thinking further about the concluding couple of paragraphs of my essay on ‘Beauty’ below.  About, I suppose, the way religion, which of course should be a force for good, can so easily become instead  a thing to cramp and imprison its members, and a cause of conflict and division.

I found myself reflecting on this truth: that human pain and heartache, whether inflicted on our own selves or imposed on others, so often has its origin in a dogged insistence on defending or seeking to preserve structures, organisations and modes of thinking that have in fact had their day and served whatever purpose they may once have had.

And might the Church (capital C) be one of those structures? Well, clearly it can be.  The danger of any organisation or institution, however worthy its aims and the vision of its founders, is that it becomes an end in itself.  It is not surprising then that, for many of its members, the most important thing about Church is that it should never change.  I can think of so many small and dwindling congregations whose only approach to the challenges of the modern world is that they should keep going as they always have for as long as they can manage.

Now there is of course an honourable and indeed Biblical role in being ‘the faithful remnant’, and I do feel bound to salute the loyalty and faith of those who do and give so much to keep their local church or chapel going.  I am bound to observe, though, that if the miracle of restoration should happen, it is likely to happen despite them rather than because of them.  The Gospel is an unchanging message, the same yesterday, today and for ever - but the way in which that message is presented, celebrated and proclaimed must change, if it is to be heard and received.

So has the Church had its day, and is organised religion really on the way out, for all its present power and influence?  There are those who, looking from the sceptical and secular West at the noisy impact of religion still within our current affairs, nonetheless would claim that what we are seeing is in fact its death throes.  To be honest, in part I would want to agree;  I’d like to think that those distorted forms of organised religion which preach hate and division might indeed be on the way out (and though I may find myself instinctively looking towards the Islamic world as I write this, let us not be fooled into thinking the same is not true of Christians, Jews, Hindus, even supposedly peaceful Buddhists).  Surely we are capable of building a better world than that?

But I also see how secularist freedom, for all its promise of human fulfilment, can so easily turn into a self-serving libertarianism that is itself hugely destructive of society and community;  and secular political philosophies are every bit as capable of fomenting hatred and conflict as religion has been and is.  The sad truth is that anything we believe in strongly can be used to bad ends, and that exploitation and indoctrination take many forms.  So the answer to my own question - has the Church had its day - must I think be "no". 

For me, the organised Church continues to have power and point in the world, and to be a creative and positive force, often in new and surprising ways, within human society.  But only so long as it consciously frees itself from the shackles of the past,  and is alive to the danger of what I could call the ‘preservationist tendency’, and of becoming something that exists for its own ends.  For in fact a Church which is in tune with its Founder will need to be a community rather than an institution, with its members pilgrims travelling together rather than settlers putting down roots.  A Church that can become careless of its own appearance, and that is capable of understanding its structures (and even its hierarchies and orders of ministry) as essentially provisional, in service to the Gospel, will be able to re-create itself constantly as it seeks to take a servant role in the image of its Lord.

Avens

The flower depicted in my article below ('Beauty') is a cross between the wood and the water avens (Geum urbanum x rivale), blooming even in November right outside my window as I write these words.

Beauty.

We look around us at things - flowers, trees with their cloak of autumn leaves, sunlight on rippled water, a bird soaring above - and see them as beautiful.  They are not.  They are just things we see.  Other things we may find ugly - litter blowing across the footpath, the churned-up mud at a field entrance, the smashed windows, graffiti'd walls and leaning doorframe of an abandoned building.  Again, these are just things;  it's our perception that establishes their beauty or ugliness.

It does not seem to be something we need.  Some ugly things are also dangerous, to health or wellbeing or our personal safety, so perhaps it's as well that their appearance repels us.  Some beautiful things may also be quite good to eat, or may offer a promise of safety and security, so perhaps, again, there is some benefit in their being attractive to us.  But on the whole this beauty versus ugliness thing is just something that is, a fact of our human lives.

But I do find it very interesting and quite instructive that we are moved by the perceived beauty of some things, repelled or nauseated by the perceived ugliness of others.  Of course it's not an exact science.  Some ugly things may be quite beautiful inside, a lesson the fairy tale 'Beauty and the Beast' seeks, I suppose, to teach us.  I remember also the Flanders & Swann song about the warthog.  Some things can be beautiful but also deadly - delphiniums and monkshoods are lovely flowers to look at, but fatal if their beauty were to tempt us to eat them.  And our perceptions of what is or isn't beautiful don't always coincide;  beauty, as we're told, is in the eye of the beholder.  It is also to some extent culturally conditioned.

But for the most part there is a remarkable degree of agreement, as to what is beautiful and what is not.  This is true not only of what we see but also of what we hear.  What is the origin of this sense of beauty?  Why do we have it?  What is it for?  There are those who would describe it as nothing more than an anomaly, a happy accident.  It isn't necessary but it's nice that we have it.  Nevertheless this is what motivates many of our attempts at artistic expression, and encourages us in our search for knowledge and meaning.

It particularly encourages us, I think, in our search for self-understanding.  And perhaps it may also encourage us in our search for something beyond ourselves that may help to explain ourselves, which for some of us at least is the search for God.  Which leaves me with the almost despairing realisation that, if it is the perception of beauty that motivates our search for God, how sad that belief in God has led to so many ugly events and activities, as we trace the history of the world.

In my mind beauty and peace are inextricably linked.  I find it so very sad, therefore, that they seem so often, and so fatally, broken apart in reality, and that, having been tempted by beauty to search for God, we allow him to become small and ugly and crude in the support of our human controversies and lusts after power - or it would perhaps be better to say, we replace the great and true God who must be the source both of peace and of beauty, with a small and mean-minded substitute of our own devising.

Not Voting

I was one of the majority who did not vote for an elected police commissioner yesterday. Had I had the chance, I would have gone to the polling station in order to submit a protest spoiled paper, but in the end I couldn't be bothered to make the time in what was a very busy day. There was no independent candidate in Dyfed/Powys, and I object to the party politicisation of police administration. I'm not happy about centralising so much power in one person, elected or otherwise, anyway, but would I think have been prepared to vote for an independent, as in Gwent and North Wales. What is happening in this process is I think an attempt to increase the reach and power of the party political machine, while hiding this behind the fiction of greater democratic accountability.

Aaargh!

You do get them from time to time, don't you (it surely isn't just me!)?  One of those days when the world just seems to conspire against you, when suddenly you're clumsy, awkward, all but incapable.  Today started like that for me:  everything I tried to carry spilt; everything I tried to catch I dropped;  things caught and snagged, things fell  through my fingers or twisted round them, and when I tried to take one thing off a hanger almost everything else in the wardrobe decided to fall off in sympathy. Grrr! I thought (and posted as much on Facebook) Do NOT get in my way today (I'll probably trip over you)!

Well, in fact the day did get better, and my grip and balance got surer.  That was just as well, I had driving to do, and some delicate things to carry, and a lot to keep control of.  And normally that isn't a problem.  So why did today start so badly?  Well, it was a Monday, I suppose!

Thought For The Week

"Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighbouring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free."

The Dalai Lama

Remembrance

The sermon I shall preach tomorrow afternoon at a little chapel not far from here:

Can I own up to something - a little bit of self-analysis here, really, I suppose?  I have always had a bit of a problem about gifts . . . about accepting gifts.  I’m not talking about the gifts you get at the times when gifts are expected - like Christmas, or on my birthday - so much as those times when someone just gives something to you, it can be just out of the blue, or maybe it’s in appreciation of something you’ve done for them.  When I’m given things like that, I do find that I feel, well, a bit uncomfortable, let’s say.

Now I’m not entirely sure why this should be.  Is it a sense of being thought too much of, that I’m not really worth that many thanks?  Is it perhaps a fear of being tied into a sort of contract, by being paid for something I’d wanted to do or to give for free?  Maybe it’s just that really I’m a fairly quiet and shy person and I’m happiest really when not too much is made of me.

Anyway, I doubt that I’m the only person who feels this way.  When I’ve been the one who’s given the gift, I think I’ve noted a similar sense of discomfort sometimes in those to whom I’ve given.  I don’t mean they’ve not wanted the gift, that they’ve not been delighted by it and moved and touched.  After all, I too am always pleased and touched when people give me presents.  But there’s always that other thing there alongside the delight and the gratitude, where I find myself thinking ‘you really needn’t be doing all this for me.’

Well, the big season of gifts and giving is coming up before long, our TV screens every night are full of gift ideas and suggestions, including one rather alarming one you might have seen that tells you ‘buy all these and you don’t have to pay for it until a year’s time.’  All of it so full of razzamatazz - but before we get into the Christmas gift industry we’ve a chance today to think about gifts and giving in a more honest and sober way.  For today is Remembrance Sunday.

I still vividly remember the Remembrance Sundays of my school days.  Since I went to a boarding school, I would be standing in the dusty school pews at the back of church on Armistice Day, and I was always so afraid that it would be me that broke the two minutes’ silence with a fit of coughing.  To be fair, I think it actually was me only on one occasion - but once you start thinking about a fit of coughing you’re already half gone: every year I was so full of nerves.

For I could see how much it mattered, that silence.  Back in those days, I was part of a small minority of people born after the War had ended.  Now I’m part of the great majority, and the remaining veterans with their caps and medals really are veterans, fewer each year.  For most people now, the two great world wars of the last hundred years are the stuff of history books rather than of recent memory.

But Remembrance Sunday is of no less importance now than it was then.  Not only because we’re very aware of those of our troops (and maybe of our families) serving in Helmand or in other of the world’s trouble spots . . . and of those who don’t return to their families and friends. Help the Heroes and other organisations - the military wives with their hit last Christmas, and those from this area who’ll be singing in the Square in Shrewsbury just before Christmas 2012 - all of them have helped raise the profile of today’s service men and women and of all they do.

But even without that, Remembrance Sunday is vital. It says something about the need we have to understand and appreciate and make good use of what has been given, and given at such cost, in those times when our freedom and that of others in our world has been so much at risk.  Democratic freedoms we can so easily take for granted - even our right this Thursday to go and elect a police commissioner, not that I’m convinced we need one: our freedom costs, and it costs lives.

It cost these lives, the names read at memorials up and down the country at different times today.  At the memorial outside St Agatha’s, Llanymynech, more or less as I speak to you this afternoon.  Young lives with much to offer, people who wanted to return home safely, and to live in peace, and to build a future, but it never happened, not for them.  But because of them, it still happens for us.

So every year I’m reminded that I’m given this gift.  And, yes, it does make me feel uncomfortable;  and yes, I think it should make me feel that way.  Am I worth it?  How do I handle it?  How do I respond?  What should I be giving?  One thing I feel very passionate about is that we shouldn’t take lightly the freedom that cost so much - and not just my freedom, but that of my brother and my sister, whoever and wherever they may be.  Good gifts are those given freely and unselfishly; certainly to respect a gift is to behave with an open and an unselfish heart oneself.  To be as ready to serve in my own way and in my own turn, and as opportunity presents, as these others have been for me.

Every year I’m reminded of the horror and the necessity of war.  The horror and the necessity of war - two opposite things, but they’re both true.  Those of my British Legion friends who served in the Second World War are to a man proud of their service and of their uniform;  but they wouldn’t want to go back there, nor would they wish it on anyone else.  One thing that Remembrance Sunday should never do is to glorify war, however much it may seek to glorify service and comradeship and bravery.  All war fills the heart of God with sadness and pain;  that is what I believe.  Theologians have often debated what would constitute a ‘just war’ - but, myself, I don’t believe such a thing ever could exist.  All war is wrong;  all war has its origin in human sin, in our rejection of God.  All war is horrible - not least because over the past hundred years the distinction between military and civilian has become less and less clear.

The statistics may speak of collateral damage, language like that, but statistics these days come with illustrations: pictures taken on mobile phones and flashed around the world electronically, that show us what collateral damage really means: the woman mowed down while she tried to find food for her hungry children, or the child caught in the crossfire when his playground ceased to be for play any more, or the elderly couple blown up because they lacked the mobility to run from their home.  War is horrible.

But war is also necessary.  Not always, by any means, and surely every human conflict should be constantly up for assessment and scrutiny.  But remember what the Bible has to say about peace;  we heard some of those words as our Old Testament reading - shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, doesn’t mean that gap when the guns stop firing.  That isn’t yet peace.  Peace comes when people recognise each other as brothers and sisters, when people are able to be at ease in their own space, each under his own vine and his own fig tree, as the Bible words describe it.  You don’t find that peace by appeasing tyrants or by turning a blind eye to evil acts.

I’m sure God grieved over every death, every injury, every piece of destruction, that took place between 1939 and 1945.  I feel sure he grieved over Dresden and Hiroshima as much as over Coventry.  But when people act in monstrous ways, as did Hitler and his allies, when evil is let loose in the world in the dehumanising way it was at that dark time, war, however horrible, also becomes necessary;  and ultimately, freedom and peace, shalom, depend upon it.

Many many years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said: ‘To win the war is not enough;  it is more important to organise the peace.’  Each life lost on the field of battle, and each name read out today at the time of silence, each is gift of such value, such magnitude, that, yes, it should challenge me, and all of us.  Peace cost all of this; so what must we do?

What must we do to organise the peace, to live the peace, to share the peace, to treasure the peace and to pass it on?  I don’t know whether you’ve ever counted up just how many wars and battles there are in our Bibles.  I haven’t either, so all I can say is that there’s rather a lot of it, mostly in the Old Testament which in places is chock full of it, but some in the New as well.  As Jesus himself told his disciples, wars and rumours of wars are (sadly) part of the standard currency of human existence.

But even in the warlike Old Testament you have the voices of the great prophets, telling the people again and again that peace requires that we live in harmony, that we look after one another, that we look out for and care about especially those who are weakest, most vulnerable, most easily exploited.  When we are disharmonious, we are at risk of war. What does the Lord require of you, the prophet asks?  Only this: that you do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

And in the New Testament we see in our Lord Jesus Christ that greatest of all gifts, and that all-sufficing sacrifice, in which we are shown up for what we are and shown too how much we are loved despite it all.  The cross both draws us and convicts us.  I suppose that as I look through the Bible as a whole - and some bits of the Old Testament make for rather tough reading - I trace the story of a developing awareness and understanding of God that takes his people on from seeing him as the one who will lead is tribe into battle right on through to the one who will empty himself for love to win peace and freedom not just for some people, not just for once race or tribe as against all the others, but for the whole world.

If I’m discomfited by the sacrifices made on the field of war that preserved our political freedoms - those ‘lesser calvaries’, as the hymn ‘O Valiant Hearts’ describes them - then the one true and eternal sacrifice, that perfect and all-sufficient Calvary, that should really knock me off my feet.

And it does.  How could I be worth as much as that?  Why would you ever, Lord, give that much for me?  What can I do with so great a gift?  Well, for what it’s worth, here’s what I think.  Today forces us to think about war and peace, and it’s helpful I guess to remember that those who marched off to war for the most part did so with dreams and a longing for peace in their hearts.  We do owe it to them to be serious about peace.

And being serious about peace I think means wanting to do more than is humanly possible.  It means not being content to stay safely within the boundaries of our own human sight and understanding.  For the peace we desire isn’t just our own peace, but God’s peace;  it is secured not by our human efforts at treaties and alliances and exchange visits and things like that (all of them vital and good, but even so) - but also in our active seeking out of God’s will.  There’s danger in bringing God’s name into this, I accept;  for it’s a sad truth that for far too many years of human history people have used God as an excuse for war, and yes, it’s still happening today.

But that’s what happens when people, some of them highly unscrupulous, seek to use and exploit God (or in reality their own narrow and nasty little version of God), rather than what should happen, let themselves be used by God, by the God who surprises us by his generosity, by the God who both convicts and challenges us as we stand or as we fall to our knees by the cross.  So much has been given for us;  and peace will happen when and where we are continuing to give, where we take every opportunity to give, where our giving is sacrificial and true. Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.  And only when we are doing this, and thinking and acting in this way, can we truly say, and mean, “We will remember them.”

White Van Parking

I'm not the greatest fan of rear window stickers in cars, but I was rather tickled by one I saw in rather a smart vehicle, which read "Actually, I DO own the road!"

But roads really belong to the White Van Men, surely.  Ask any of them, I'm sure they'll confirm it.  Or at least, they certainly seem to behave as though they do.  It's so annoying: if they're in front of me, they dawdle along, presumably with time to kill before the end of shift;  if they're behind me, they're nudging my rear bumper, eager to get past - perhaps there's a cup of tea getting cold.

But it's in their parking - well, truer to say the places they choose to stop - that the White Van Man demonstrates his ownership of the road.  White Van Parking seems to be a feature of so many of the journeys I make these days, especially at the busiest times of the day.  Now, I'm not an intolerant guy, and I do recognise that these vans may well be delivering parcels or collecting them, picking up co-workers or dropping them off, or sometimes just searching for hard-to-find addresses . . . but really, SOME of the places they stop!

Near me there's a sharp left hand bend after which the road goes very steeply downhill.  It's none too wide at that point and there is a layby on the left (going down) which is always full and from which many of the cars project a little way into the carriageway.  So this morning, a little before nine, there's a white van double-parked at the far end of that line of cars, right on the brow of the hill and also, of course, right on the bend in the road.  If there had been prizes on offer for the most dangerous place to park, no-one else would have had a look in.

Well, I thought, that's surely it for the day, so far as White Van Madness is concerned!  But no - once on the main road I came to a halt, as did traffic in the other direction, while two gentlemen in identical white vans, one going my way and one the opposite way, elected to hold a conversation.  I'm sure it was important;  I accept it was brief (though it didn't feel brief to me at the time).  But this was nine o'clock in the morning, comrades!  A time when every second counts!

I was very restrained in the face of both sets of white van provocation, but I decided to behave in a less temperate fashion toward the next white van that in any way inconvenienced or annoyed me, whatever or wherever it might be.  As it happened, though, the next one to get in my way had a little black camera painted on the back, and discretion overcame any urge to valour.  There are some white vans it's best not to annoy!

Package Rage

It would seem that 'package rage' is a growing phenomenon, particularly among the older age-groups in society - which is of course where I am, like it or not.  It is similar to road rage in origin, being mostly about extreme frustration and provocation.  I think road rage is always inexcusable, I should quickly say at this point.  It can be very frustrating when, as a road user, you are inconvenienced by the poor driving or rude behaviour of another motorist, but to give way to that and lose your cool is always the wrong thing to do.  It raises the temperature in a way that does no-one any good - and, of course, a road vehicle is a very dangerous weapon when used in an angry and uncontrolled way.

So then, where do I stand on package rage?  You've been there, I'm sure.  You are holding in your hand an article, purchased by you and therefore now owned by you, that you can see but can't get at.  It is (I'm thinking of a recent computer peripheral I bought) encased in a double layer of thick plastic, the main purpose of which is to provide protection when stored and transported, while affording maximum visibility and advertising presence when hanging on its hook in the store.  So far, so good - except that it doesn't bloody open!

You try to open it, and find there is no obvious way in.  So you - all right then, I - look for a decent pair of scissors so that I can cut my way in.  And I discover, first off, that the thick plastic is too thick for my heavy duty kitchen scissors;  they just sort of skid off it.  I am beginning to steam.  I fetch a kitchen knife, and proceed to attack said plastic with it.  The knife also glances off, and while it's only a small cut, suddenly there is blood everywhere.  By this time you could boil eggs on my head.  I raise the knife and stab the plastic package, but the red mist has by this time robbed me of any ability to aim in a controlled and careful manner.  I penetrate the plastic, but also go straight through the cardboard container within (oh yes, this item is at least triple wrapped).  Have I also stabbed straight through the item I have paid good money for?

I dab blood off the work surface, my shirt sleeve, and a nearby bowl of apples, then try and prise the split plastic open so that I can check.  I have a remarkable ability to cut myself on things, though to be fair to myself, the sharp edges of the plastic would be lethal in almost every circumstance.  Another cut, needless to say, and more blood.  If I have damaged my new purchase as well as myself, I shall probably have to jump up and down on it in the best Basil Fawlty fashion, while shouting almost incomprehensible swear words.  Fortunately, I haven't, which means I shall not have to explain to Ann why I have spent £35.99 on something I have then destroyed as soon as I got it home.

I suppose the conclusion has to be that package rage is understandable, even excusable . . . but in the end is most likely to end up leaving you looking and feeling very stupid.  In this case, there was a little sub-plot to the main story, as I tried to open with my one available hand the overpackaged plaster I needed to repair the damage caused to my other hand.  I'm pleased to record I didn't completely lose my cool all over again, but it was a close-run thing.

Oh, and before I take my leave, blister packs.  Can I just sound off about them as well?  The capsules I have to take every morning some in blister packs.  They are supposed to "just push out", which sounds easy and foolproof enough.  Why is it that every other one either sticks firmly in place, so that when at last you do provide enough pressure to release the capsule, it comes out flattened, twisted round, and quite often split with a bit of whatever it contains spilling out?  And those that don't behave in that way often come snapping out at the slightest touch, so that the capsule flies across the room and has to be scrabbled for!

Oh, isn't modern life wonderful!

Stolen

Sad, isn't it, how full the world is of people who steal things?  Some of it goes by that name, such as the theft of items off the supermarket shelves, the picking of pockets or stealing of bags on the street, or the car hot wired and driven away.  Some of it gets cloaked behind the idea of 'perks of the job' - from the odd ball-pen or box of paperclips that might walk from an office, to the inventive list of expenses submitted by . . . who knows? perhaps your Member of Parliament.  Some of it is corporate and therefore sort of legal, but it still feels like stealing to me.

And then, of course, there is the theft of identities, which is a growing and invidious problem.  It isn't new, but it is more widespread and more important in this day of electronic identity and commerce.  It can happen so easily;  just click in the box on that worrying email purporting to come from your bank or ISP, and all of a sudden you've either been stolen or cloned.  More traditional and old fashioned methods can also be employed, however.  Paper documents continue to be of interest.

With that in mind, I wonder whether I should be worried.  I've just been done for speeding, and I had to send my driver's documents off to the court (six points, if you're interested).  I made sure I sent them in a secure way, but they came back by ordinary post.  More to the point, they came back in an envelope that had been opened and quite clumsily re-sealed.  Everything inside was still intact, documents included - but that's not to say they've not been copied, I suppose.  Should I be worried?  I don't know.

Truth is, we are who, and what, the documents say we are.  But if someone else has stolen me, I shan't find that out until too late, I suppose.

Miracles

Following on what I wrote the other day about prayer, some thoughts on miracles.  I believe in them;  I insist on them.  Without the miraculous, life can't really be life.  And prayer and miracle are inextricably linked.

But when I speak about miracles, when I speak about the certainty of miracles, I don not insist on the inexplicability (if that's a word) of miracles.  There are miracles that are hard to explain, if not downright impossible.  "How on earth could that have happened?" we may say, on occasion.  But miracles of that sort are not a central part of my belief; far from it, in fact - back in the wilderness, confronted by Satan (or perhaps one might better say, by all the temptations that would be ever-present throughout his ministry and needed to be confronted now, before he even began), Jesus made it very clear that dazzling people into belief by performing impossible tricks was not part of his agenda.

Loving people into belief by "showing them the Father" clearly was, however.  For me miracles happen when love triumphs over hatred and apathy;  when sad situations and hurting people find healing;  when those who are turned aside, banned, turned into refugees find acceptance and welcome;  when peace is built by small caring actions even as the guns are firing down the road;  when water flows in the desert, and beauty lifts and changes hearts.  Miracles happen when our needs and fears and hurts find an answer;  it doesn't matter to me whether I know how it was done, whether I can see the workings-out;  it doesn't have to be one of the impossible things folk like me are supposed to believe every day before breakfast.  Miracle is the dawn breaking after the darkness of night.

And yet of course not every dark night ends with a sunrise, and not every pain is relieved by a healing touch.  The miracles I see don't make the whole world good, they don't clear up all the mess, the world is still often a rotten and hurtful place.  What miracles do is to persuade me that the world doesn't have to be like that - like this.  I am encouraged to believe that I should continue as a pilgrim.  Miracles are purposeful and contain within themselves the possibility of contagion:  one can lead to another, as candles can light other candles.  Whenever my life is brightened by a gracious impact, it's then that I should be asking "Why me?" - rather than, as so often is the case, when I feel downhearted or up against it.  Why me?  What can I do with this blessing, how can I share it and grow it and pass it on?

Thought For The Week

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC” 

Kurt Vonnegut

On Prayer

I found myself, strangely, in a conversation about prayer with someone I know, who, as far as I know, is a non-believer.  "What do you expect to gain from it?" he asked me at one point.

That knocked me back a little bit.  What did I expect to gain?  What do I?  "I don't pray in order to gain things," I started by saying - but then I found myself thinking, "Isn't that a rather faith-deficient approach to prayer, and to God?  Surely I should be expecting rather more than that?"

True, I don't pray in order to gain things;  that is, I try not to come before God with a shopping list, my prayer isn't an attempt to twist his arm in some way, to change his mind, to press my case for special treatment.  I do know the difference between prayers and magic spells.  The witch or wizard who weaves a spell is aiming (or claiming) to control the forces of nature, and to be able to bend them to her or his will.  Sometimes prayer may come close to presenting itself in that light, particularly when organised and co-ordinated prayers are arranged in support of a person or a cause.  I have at times joined such prayer campaigns, though usually I tend to opt out, if only because they can feel like an attempt to twist the arm of the Almighty.

Prayer, for me, is about relationship, and it is at least as much an offering and an opening of self before God as it is a matter of requesting his help and support.  Nonetheless, I should pray with the expectation of receiving, and I do believe that prayer is always answered, and some of my own experiences of prayer being answered have been amazing.  (That, by the way, is inevitably a very subjective statement, that can go no further than saying 'That's how it felt from where I was at the time').

So what do I hope to receive?  Not the miraculous, or at least not that in the sense of the elemental forces being bent and twisted round for my own benefit (or that of those for whom I have prayed, I don't only pray for myself!).  But I certainly pray with the hope and indeed expectation of gaining insight, of being supported or maybe corrected, of seeing things more clearly, of being helped.  I know that I won't always get the answer I want;  I hope I shall find the answer I need.  Sometimes that answer is immediate; at others, it's only in hindsight and at a distance that I see how my prayer has found its answer.  And there are those times when I have closed my ears to any answer;  when I haven't wanted to know.

By tradition, Christians pray 'through Jesus Christ'.  This isn't a magic formula added to guarantee the success of whatever our prayers ask for or demand.  It is a form of words that expresses the basic truth of all genuinely Christian prayer - that we should hope and aim and intend to come to God with the mind of Christ, asking those things that will best serve his will.  The starting point of prayer is that 'I am no more my own, but Christ's'.  So what do I hope to gain?  To grow into Christ, to be a better pilgrim, to be a better disciple.  For our Lord himself, prayer carried him along the road that would lead to Calvary; and it is at the foot of the cross that I make my prayer in his name.

Maurice

Maurice is standing where he can see the road;

Maurice keeps alert, likes to see what may be coming.

He does not want to be taken by surprise.

The day, as ever, is a hot one;  for a while

Maurice studies the shimmering poles that stand in line along the road,

each one topped by the football nest of swallows.

A few of the birds are sitting quietly on the wires,

their long tail feathers twisting and trailing;

and nothing else is moving at all.

Maurice lifts the cigar from the front pocket

of his dusty jacket, sniffs it and taps it,

returns it to its place. 

It is not yet time for cigars.  There is a little shade

where he is standing, but even so

he fans himself briefly with his denim cap

before covering again his thinning hair.

From behind him, a sudden cough: some kind of machine.

Maurice looks round, but there is nothing to see.  He knows that

over on the other side of the hill

Marco’s men will be harvesting the tobacco,

and hanging the yellowing leaves to dry;  while,

stretched out ahead of him into the haze,

the road he has come again to watch remains empty.

Maurice waits a while longer, kicking his boots against a stone.

Most days he comes to stand here and to hope for

that red cloud of dust,

something riding the dirt road towards him. 

Nothing much ever comes out this far,

just now and again a car, a truck, a pick-up; maybe Father Elias

with the minibus from the Parish House.

Each sudden and seldom plume of dust

is a lift and a catch to his heart,

and always he is disappointed, and still, and yet, he waits:

waits for the son to whom, all those years ago,

he waved a good-bye and blessing, waits for

his smiling prodigal boy who left him to tread

the golden streets of the city.

An October Morning

A dark October morning, Tuesday by the riverside, the world

waiting for the clocks to turn;   he stood where once they had stood together,

at the widening of the path near the old bridge.

He contemplated the remains of the last night’s steady rain

still twisting around the dying leaves of the trailing willows

to fall as black drops into the black water below.

On a day of monochrome, as he looked on

the colour was leaching out of the tired docks and nettles

along the path side;  even the abandoned drink cans and chocolate wrappers

were fading to grey. He blew on his hands,

thinking to move on, but no longer sure

where there might be next to go.

This was the two hundredth day:  sadly,

he had kept a careful count of the time,

of the year widening, warming and glowing,

challenging his dismay with its riot of summer colours

and with songs he could not share.  Now,

as the year was closing in on itself again

he considered that real and other world

in which people did and said sensible things, and played their happy games, and

made safe and good decisions. 

Once, he had aspired to that world.

Its promises had attracted and all but ensnared him, along with her;

he had longed to dwell in that perfect sunshine brightness.

But his days had grown darker long before the season turned.

And on this two hundredth day since she had said she had to go,

he was standing there once more, crumpled as the chip papers scattered by the broken bin,

while the river flowed on, black and unregarding.

Why did you demand to live in the real world, he wondered again;

why could there have been no life for you in mine?

He had expected that they would find him there, surprised only

that it had taken two hundred days of looking.  He turned

at the sound of the car door’s slam,

watched as the two men walked towards him, hands in pockets,

raincoat collars turned against the chill.

It would soon be time to go.

Thought For The Week

"Many people tirade against the materialism and unspirituality of our age, but spirituality has been interpreted so narrowly that we do not recognise it when we meet it in ourselves and in others."

Gerard Hughes

Butterfly

I heard today of the death of someone I had come to know quite well and to like.  It had all happened very suddenly, and once again I am reminded of the fragility of human existence - at least as measured in our physical selves, within the passage of time.

At a recent funeral, all those attending were given butterflies cut from crepe paper.  The butterfly is a symbol both of beauty and of fragility, and just for those reasons made a relevant and moving keepsake.  But perhaps, too, the metamorphosis that is a feature of the butterfly life cycle can take us a little further and help us to explore what it may mean to think of our selves as not only physical beings but spiritual.

In early times, the butterfly was a symbol of resurrection, and of the faith that has Easter at its centre.  So for those who believe, or at any rate hope, that the death of our physical body is not the end of us, well, each butterfly we see is living proof that the pupa and chrysalis are not the end of the caterpillar, but just an onward stage of its journey.

The fact that there are butterflies does not prove anything really, of course, about our own life and death.  After all, butterflies, in this physical world, die too.  I suspect, though, that the fact that we find them beautiful and inspiring may be an indication that there is something more about us than can be weighed, assessed and measured in physical terms.  For me the marvel has never been that butterflies, flowers, birdsong are beautiful, but that we have the capacity to find them so (and to celebrate this in poetic words, inspirational music, or paint on canvas).

And while that's not in itself a proof of the existence of the spiritual me, it certainly sows within me the seeds of doubt that I could really be only dust and ashes . . .

Some Thoughts on Preservation

Someone on a film I glanced at on passing our television the other day (I don't watch many films, but others in the household do) spoke about setting up a "preserve for wildlife" - and I immediately fastened upon that somewhat inappropriate word.

Why is the word 'preserve' inappropriate?  Well, I spent a summer once preserving wildlife, as part of my university degree course.  I didn't enjoy it, as I don't much like killing things;  even annoying houseflies get shooed out of a window rather than flattened with a rolled-up newspaper.  I had to collect insects and other invertebrates along a particular stretch of hedge and woodland, and over a particular two month period.  I enjoyed observing them - flies, beetles, moths, whatever - and I enjoyed trying to make some assessment of numbers, and of the balance between species.  But I didn't enjoy catching and killing specimens, watching them die in a jar primed with chopped laurel leaves, and pinning them out on cork boards.

But, to be sure, they got preserved:  well and truly preserved.  I remember a story about a rare plant found in a field where, it was decided, it was very vulnerable to being destroyed by grazing or by the unwary feet of cattle or hikers;  so it had a fence erected around it to keep it safe.  What happened, of course, was that it got completely smothered by all the rank and rampant weeds that sprang up inside the fence.  By the end of the season, it had disappeared without trace.

Naturalists are careful to distinguish between conservation and preservation.  No living thing exists on its own, but always as part of an ecosystem, which may attain a balance but will shift, over a period of time and dependent on weather and other variables, from one balance to another.  Conservation is the management of ecological change;  the aim may be to ensure the survival of a species that might otherwise be at risk, but in the wild environment that can't be done by isolating it, only by managing things in such a way as to give it a better competitive edge.

The word 'preservation' gets used a lot about buildings, too, churches and cathedrals included.  It is a little more appropriate, of course, when used of a building, which is after all constructed of inert materials, stone and brick, glass and wood, which need protecting and at times replacing;  but it is not appropriate, surely, when used about the use to which that building is put.  I'm as quick as the next person to oppose change that is purely for the sake of change, but even so, change there must be - it's only dead things that don't change (though even they, of course, moulder and weather away).  A living church may need some conservation work, so that change is managed and does not cause unnecessary and harmful division, but a church that rejects all thought of change and opts for (self) preservation is destined to become every bit as dead as those little flies and moths I pinned to cork boards all those years ago.

In Praise of Dandelions

A perfect day for autumn gardening today - until the rain came at about five o'clock, anyway.  I've weeded through a large bed of perennials and shrubs, and cleared some smaller beds too.  I'm fascinated by weeds, their adaptability and the speed with which they claim or reclaim any piece of bare ground.  But I have a special place in my heart for dandelions.

It may be because they were flowers we loved to pick and to play with as small children.  Children today still enjoy blowing on dandelion "clocks", much to the despair of anyone trying to keep a clean and tidy garden nearby!  They are splendid flowers of course, especially in the spring season when they line the roadsides and cover many a field, but they are also a bane to the gardener, with their deep taproot, easily broken when pulling so that the plant can sprout again from the remnant, and of course those floaty seeds so quickly released into the wind by children 'telling the time'.

The name dandelion comes from the French dents de lion, lion's teeth, a fanciful description perhaps of the densely packed florets (each one in reality a small adapted flower) that together make up the flower head.  Such a common and pervasive weed has many local names, of course, but one that is quite widespread is "piss-a-bed", for the dandelion has, I gather, a diuretic effect.  Whether the root, dried and roasted and drunk as a sort of coffee substitute, would have that effect, I don't know.  I haven't tried it, though I see you can get dandelion coffee in some health food shops.  Like many weeds, it isn't completely useless, and has been used in medicine and herbalism as well as in place of coffee, over the years:  its botanical name of Taraxacum officinale combines a generic name that I think comes originally from Persian, via Arabic, and would have been used by the pharmacists of long ago who collected it for medical use.  Any plant with the specific name officinale, or officinalis, would have been the type specimen used in medical preparation.

These days I, like all gardeners, do regular battle with dandelions.  But I do so with more than a grudging respect, and I was quite pleased yesterday therefore to hear a harvest festival sermon that was in part at least, in praise of dandelions.  Why in praise?  Well, mostly because dandelions are the great exploiters;  as our preacher reminded us, "they grow anywhere and everywhere."  It's all very well to aim to be like productive wheat, as the parable reminds us we should, bearing "thirty fold, and sixty fold, and an hundred fold".  But let's also aim for something of the dandelion's stickability, its readiness to exploit every opportunity for growth, its ability to do well in quite unpromising soil (and even the cracks between the slabs of my patio, from which I can never dislodge them).  And what about that deep tap root, giving dandelions the ability to come back and rejuvenate themselves, even from quite unpromising situations?

Perhaps we might find more insights and challenges for the Church in mission from a study of the dandelion than from many a more obvious harvest crop.  Nonetheless, I don't expect to see large numbers of dandelions among the harvest decorations in my local church any time soon!

Thought For The Week

"Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."

Billie Holliday 

Printing Error

I have just produced a new collection of my poems ("To Dream of Angels", £3 per book if interested), and this morning, reading through a copy before putting a few books aside for a recital tonight, I noticed a printing error.  Nothing too major, just "the the" instead of "to the" - remarkable, though, how a mistake like that involving unimportant words can survive any number of checks and read-throughs!

And then, of course, it leaps out of the page at you so that it becomes virtually all you can see there!

I've put it right, and, as I print my books as I need them, all future copies will have this line correct.  I'm reminded, though, that we live in an imperfect world, and most of the time we have to make compromises and read around the bits that are untidy, uncomfortable or don't quite make sense.  I like the way that Persian carpet-weavers always include a deliberate mistake, because "only Allah is perfect".

Of course, we should always do our best to get things as right as we can.  It's also true that there are flaws and mistakes that really are important, things we can't overlook or live with, but are bound to do something about, whether they are faults within ourselves or within others - so that people do not get hurt, so that the lives of others are not damaged or spoiled.  At present, we're being made all too aware of a situation in which people who should have known better turned a blind eye to the very damaging and exploitative behaviour of a "celebrity".  Few people will come out of that story smelling all that sweet, I suspect.

None the less I'd want also to caution against a small-minded attitude that looks to find faults everywhere, and that then magnifies things that really don't matter all that much (I find myself thinking again of the way my "the the" suddenly leapt off the page), so that they are given more weight and importance than the achievements and the good things.  It can be tempting to do this, but in fact it is a form of tyranny, the more so as we're more likely to be doing it to shore up and massage our own ego than to give help and advice to the person at whom we point our finger.

Life has to go on, people need to work and play together in useful and creative ways, and for this to happen some sense of "live and let live" is vital (and didn't Jesus tell a story about someone with a dirty great plank in his own eye pointing out the speck of dust in someone else's?). Where fault-finding is about putting down rather than building up, we would be better not doing it, and that is certainly true where the faults in themselves are trivial and harmless.

Car Crash

Driving out to Llanfair Caereinion today to install some sound equipment, I noted two crashed cars within no more than a mile of each other.  This is a twisty road in places, deceptively so I suppose for the young and unwary boy racer.  One car was sat on the grass beside the road on a sharp bend, closely bound in blue police tape, while the other was set in a field which it had not entered via the gate - you could see where the hedge had been extensively remodelled.  Neither car looked too badly damaged, at least so far as the passenger compartment was concerned so I hope the drivers and passengers escaped without serious injury.  Sadly, though, not all do;  the number of families each year plunged into sadness because of road traffic accidents is far too high.  Many of those injured and killed are, of course, the innocent victims of the foolishness or inattention - or, let's face it, the criminal negligence - of others.

To me, the cars I saw today were a reminder not only of how dangerous and all too often deadly our roads are, but also of how suddenly and traumatically accidents of any kind can change our lives.  So far as these particular accidents were concerned, at the very least there were two cars that are out of circulation, two drivers presumably now having to catch the bus;  both cars could very well be written off.  And who knows? maybe there is also the pain and discomfort of living with disability or with injuries that will take time to heal.  I hope there is nothing worse than that.  In the work I now do I am constantly in contact with people whose lives have been traumatically changed.  I've seen how they handle this - with acceptance and resignation, with fortitude and nobility, or perhaps with a real sense of being crushed by events and crippled by sadness and loss.  People are different, and so are the circumstances they face.

And it occurs to me that often, whatever one's actual role in the events, part of what has to be faced when accident or trauma happens is a burden of guilt, of having messed up, of actions or inaction to be regretted.  I shouldn't have done that!  I could have done more!  What the happens can be that we magnify these things up, twisting reality so as, almost, to gratuitously hurt ourselves more than we should be hurt.  Or we may thrash about, throwing blows and blame in every direction as one way of silencing those nagging voices from deep within.  Grief is a profoundly disabling thing, and it is, therefore, something we're not going to handle well on our own.  Sometimes the only role one can play as a friend or adviser is that of the parent whose little hurt child has no words, just pummelling fists against the legs of Mum or Dad to express the frustration of pain.  But that is such a vital role, when we're just there to help soak up the angst, until calmness and acceptance begin to prevail.

So today I was thinking not only of the disabling and disorientating suddenness of traumatic changes, but of how much, and how deeply, we need each other when this happens.  How vital is the work of the Good Samaritan!

Driving to Middleton

My most recent 'Nature Notes' essay, as published locally . . .

If I needed any reminder as to how rich and lovely the countryside around us is in these parts, my Sunday morning journey a few weeks ago to attend church at Middleton-in-Chirbury certainly provided one.  It was a pleasant enough day at the end of September, with the leaves just beginning to catch fire at the tops of some of the overhanging trees.  Just past Marton I saw one red kite, then a second, lift from a tree near the road and then with a sort of lethargic aerial grace skirt the field border nearby.  I seldom fail to see a kite when I’m near Marton, and this beautiful bird is a welcome addition to our local avian fauna.

The rounder wings, stockier shape and wedge tail of a buzzard made a familiar sight over to the right of the lane.  Buzzards too are more common than they used to be, and have spread into many areas in which until recently they were rare - but there have always been plenty in these parts.  This one was hovering just short of some woodland.  Buzzards don’t hover with the ease and skill of a kestrel, but they can do it, though sometimes they have to work pretty hard.  Their keen vision will spot a vole or mouse that we would certainly miss.

There were plenty of pheasants along the lane, birds not known for their sharpness of wit.  They certainly don’t seem to have the nous to get out of the way of cars, and many are killed on our roads.  But then I came across a little group of partridges, two of which flew out of my way immediately, while a third ran along the road in front of me for a little way, before peeling off right and plunging into some bracken.  These were not the common or grey partridge which is our native species, but the red-legged or French partridge, introduced as a game bird and now quite widespread.  This is a neat and strongly marked bird, a sharper and more russet brown than the grey partridge (and, of course, it has red legs).  I’m very fond of them.

I’ve often seen hares along this road, and I did again on this occasion - just a glimpse, really, of this shy and rangy creature.  He dodged quickly into the hedgerow, but previously I’ve followed hares some distance along the lane here before they’ve turned aside.  They tend to follow established paths, and so will run in front of you until they reach one.  Finally, though, I came across a weasel, which quickly scampered across in front of me and into the bushes.  There are more weasels around than you would think, for they’re not too often seen, being quick and furtive.  This one, to my surprise, had been investigating some roadkill;  I had associated weasels entirely with live prey.  So much to see, in just a short journey - magic!

Thought For The Week

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."

Scott Peck