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.