Floods

A visit to our local nature reserve today revealed a very different picture from my previous visit, which was only yesterday.  More or less continuous rain since then has raised water levels to such an extent that all the islands have disappeared (apart from the largest, and even that is looking vulnerable), and many nests will have been swamped or washed away.

I watched a coot whose nest, probably yesterday some way up the bank, was by now on the shoreline and very vulnerable.  The bird eventually left the nest, and began with what looked like a fair degree of desperation to collect branches and twigs from a tangle floating some distance away, dragging them through the water at high speed, and then up onto the shore as though to strengthen the nest and provide some kind of barrier against the rising water.  It was a doomed attempt, clearly - though by the time I left the other bird had joined in.  It's hard to avoid some degree of anthropomorphism when watching two parents in peril such as these.

Sadly, as I write these words the rain is still falling steadily.  However hard they try, there'll be no nest there tomorrow.

Singing

A small group of us met this afternoon just to sing. Some of those who came are living with Parkinson's - and they and the others who joined in are members of the local branch of Parkinson's UK, and supporters of its work. There is some speculation that music, and singing especially, might be of help in turning back and correcting some of the symptom's of Parkinson's; but anyway, it's a good thing to do. You don't have to be good at it, though in fact the very amateur group that gathered today sounded pretty good to my ears (and, more to the point, to those of my wife, seated at the piano). I sing a lot with choirs, and we spend a lot of time and effort patiently striving to sing accurately, harmoniously, and in a way that reproduces what the composer had in mind when he or she set down those notes on paper. I enjoy it, both the challenge of the task and the creative way in which we work together in harmony when we do choral music. But it's also good just to sing, without too much worry about how accurate we are. Folk music in particular is the property of whoever chooses to sing it: songs that sprang from some particular pen, or pipe, or guitar fret, somewhere and sometime, but which have now been given away, and let loose in the world. Thank you to the anonymous singers and players who have given us so much. I was supposed to be leading today's group, but I can take no credit for the fact that were singing so well - music was already flowing in our veins.

Thought For The Week

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment." Ellis Peters

Who Cares?

Ann's and my Bible study this morning took us to look at the cleansing of the temple, as Mark tells the story. Topping and tailing that story is the account of the cursing of the fig-tree; and I've always felt a bit sorry for that poor old fig tree. It was bearing no fruit, granted, but, as Mark tells us, that was because it wasn't the season for figs! Is this the Jesus we know and love, we may ask, this man who curses a fig tree just because there were no figs ready for him when he wanted one? Isn't that more like how we behave - instant gratification being so much the motto of today's world - than what we might expect from the Messiah?

In fact, the story is closely connected in to the account of the cleansing of the temple. The temple was a place where the people might confidently come and expect to be fed, nourished, both in season and out of season. Instead, they got fleeced, forced into buying animals and birds for sacrifice, or to change their secular money into temple money for tribute, all at inflated prices. God's house had been turned into a business venture, a cultic shrine existing principally to support itself, rather than to bring nourishment to God's people. Jesus cleanses the temple, turning over tables, spilling coins, scattering pigeons, both as a deliberate and conscious acting-out of the prophecy of Malachi and as his own very personal and angry response to the gross injustice he found there.

And the next day Peter finds the fig tree shrivelled up and all but gone. Here is a parable of God's judgement acted out: we are reminded that those who know God and pledge to serve him stand under the greatest test of judgement. We are to bear fruit, to nourish those who come searching for God's grace. In short, we're called on to care, and to reflect and convey in our care the care of God for his people. If we are tempted to say, "We'll do that when the time is right, when we've got all our own affairs in order, when we're sure there is an appropriate surplus in our accounts," we are failing to serve as we are called to serve. "May no-one eat of your fruit," said Jesus to the fig-tree; a few short years after his death, the temple itself lay in ruins, not one stone resting on another.

Bang To Rights

I was pulled up for speeding locally by one of the unmarked cars a few weeks back. I was on something of a mercy mission and simply had my eyes off the ball, not thinking about the 30 limit. I can't complain, and am very disappointed in myself. I take speed limits as seriously as any other aspect of the laws of our land and normally keep firmly to them - not least because I've seen what speed does to people - drivers, passengers, pedestrians - when there are accidents. But I would just want to say that there have been several occasions since then when I have observed marked and unmarked police vehicles exceeding speed limits. No problem when the blue light is flashing and there's an emergency to attend - but surely at other times the police should be subject to the same rules of the road as everyone else, and indeed should be setting an example to others?

Thought For The Week

"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain."
Robert Frost

A Little Rant About (Some) Drivers

Just drove back from Stafford to Welshpool; lost count of the number of drivers making all kinds of manoevres without using indicators. Indicators are not optional extras! They are designed to help other road users have some vague idea of what it is you might be thinking of doing next! Mind you, thinking about it, at least half of those I saw today clearly hadn't much of a clue themselves about what they were going to do next.

Haven't Posted Many Pictures Lately . . .

. . . so here's a refreshing scene taken last June, near Bowness, Cumbria.

Swallow

On my way to a meeting today, I had a lot on my mind, decisions to take, thoughts to marshall, ideas to assess (not to mention trying to drive safely on a busy road). But then, unmistakably, flitting across the carriageway, my first swallow of the season! Apologies to those who have been watching them for ages, but this is definitely the first I've seen and I'm going to shout about it!

One swallow does not make a summer, and I suspect this one may well b e thinking better of its foray into the far(ish) north once cold and biting northerly winds strike up over the weekend and into next week. But it cheered me up no end. The message I received is simply this: life goes on, there's always something to hope for and strive towards, there's always a fresh start to make. However old and decrepit I may become in body, I hope that will always be the direction of my spirit: towards summer, and in expectant hope.

Someone To Talk To

I've been reflecting this morning on the story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus, in chapter 10 of St Mark's Gospel. There is so much in this story, which is the very last event before Jesus makes his entry into Jerusalem to the shouts of 'Hosanna' and the waving of palm branches.

And the first thing that strikes me is that this is a man with no name, something Mark makes very clear when he explains the meaning of 'Bartimaeus' for his Greek readers. This is a man with no name of his own, he's just known by those around as "Timaeus' son". Presumably, being blind, he didn't count, had no value or even identity of his own.

That was about to change. Jesus arrives, and crowds line the streets. I don't imagine any of them were being all that quiet, so the fact that Bartimaeus managed to annoy them by shouting only serves to underline with desperation with which he was yelling. But it's what he was shouting that is so important: "Son of David!" Here, at the very moment at which Jesus is about to enter the Holy City, is a man recognising him for who he is, and making the same confession Peter has made earlier - for the Son of David is the Messiah. Not just an interesting and challenging teacher and teller of stories, not just an inspiring preacher, not just a healer of the blind, even - but God's holy one, and the one long expected.

Jesus picks out his voice in the general hubbub, stops, and asks for him to be brought forward. It will be pretty obvious straight away that this man is blind, so, even without any special sensitivity or divine awareness, it should be clear to Jesus what Bartimaeus wants. Nonetheless, he still asks him - "What is it you want?" God knows our needs, and there's nothing we can tell him about ourselves or our world that he does not already know. But he still desires and welcomes our prayers, our imploring prayers as well as our shouts of praise and promises of service. He is someone for us to talk to . . . but he also chooses, himself, to need someone to talk to. Faith is not just about what theories you subscribe to in life, it's what you do about it, and the God who reveals himself to us in Jesus is a God who seeks relationship.

Bartimaeus receives from Jesus affirmation, identity and sight. All things that we need, too. And what does he do with this? He follows Jesus on the road. The essence of the disciple is that immediacy of response we see in Peter and Andrew, James and John and the others. Jesus called them, and they came, straight away. And here, at the close of the ministry of Jesus outside Jerusalem, is Bartimaeus doing the same. Throughout the Gospel of Mark up to this point, Jesus has ordered people to keep quiet, not to talk about what has been done for them, to go home. He does not say this to Bartimaeus. The time has come for the Messiah to be seen, and known, and, inevitably, to die.

An Easter Poem

Each Easter morn’s a new blest tide of love,
A world set free from sin and pain of death,
Silver the dew, clear blue the sky above,
The myriad scents of spring fill every breath:
End of each sorrow, cure for every pain,
Risen and free, my Saviour lives again.

Thought For The Week

"Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time."
Martin Luther

Easter

Sunday in Jerusalem. The sun sparkles on the white stones of the temple, and on the funeral monuments of the Kidron valley below. The Sabbath has been observed as it ought to be.

The people of the city, or a few of them, had watched as three men were crucified on Friday. But there’ll be no-one talking much about that this morning. After all, crucifixions are almost a routine event under this Roman occupation; the occupying forces like to stage a few at the Passover. It reminds the people who’s in charge; it’s a show of strength at this time of tension.

I should think that Pontius Pilate will have been pleased at the reports of his officers around the city. His garrison troops would have been carefully active through the festival, making sure their strength was noticed. Now, before too long the pilgrims would be heading home, and this crazy city could return to what passed for normal here. The tension would subside, and people could breathe easy. Things seem to have passed off without too many hitches.

Gnarled olive trees stand among the spring flowers in a garden outside the city walls. It is here that the man Jesus has been laid. The body was wound around in its grave clothes, before being carefully placed in a new tomb cut out of the cliff face. There he lay now, in a stone coffin in a stone cave, with a great stone rolled into place to close off the entrance. Pilate will have known the place. After all, it was he who had given the order that the body might be released into the care of Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish council no less, to be interred in the tomb he had provided for his own future burial. Pontius Pilate had thought it prudent to place one or two men on guard, though; there’d been some popular support for this one.

Anyway, as this Sunday morning dawns, those who occupied the places of power in Jerusalem had retained their grasp on the means of power. The controllers remained in control. That’s how the world is. Nothing ever really changes. A few days ago, pilgrims coming into town from Galilee had shouted ‘Hosanna’, and thrown coats and palm branches onto the road. They’d found someone different, they’d found a teacher whose words burned like fire in their hearts. Was this man going to change the world? Was this the one God had promised he would send them? But now, nothing - the system has won again, as it always does.

Meanwhile, in the first dawning light of the first day of the week, a mysterious and even an unreal time, there are women making their way into the garden. The gnarled trunks of the olives are hazy and half-glimpsed in the white mist; the air is sharp and cold, and the dew on the branches and leaves soaks through the outer clothes of the women as they push past. Perhaps there’s birdsong, but far away. As they walk along the path through the garden, the women are surrounded by a reverent stillness. And as they walk, Mary and the others anxiously wonder how they can get into the tomb to anoint the body. How are they going to roll away that huge stone without help?

Then, through the mist they see the tomb, but not as they expected to see it – for the stone is already rolled away. That’s not good news, but disaster. It means something awful has happened, one more awful thing to add to the awfulness of their grief.

Yet by the day's end both the women, and the fearful disciples of Jesus, will be beginning to grasp a wonderful new reality. They will be beginning to understand that their Lord, the man whose final breaths they witnessed, is not dead, but alive. He has been dead, and now he is alive. And, knowing that, they now live in a different world. The Easter world.

There is, I would say, a Saturday world, and there’s a Sunday world. Those who entered the garden that morning, and those to whom they ran with the message of what they’d discovered there - they are now Sunday people, Easter people - and so are we; for we follow those first friends of Jesus by choosing to meet on the first day of the week, and as we do so then Sunday by Sunday we affirm and celebrate that on the first day of the week, long ago in Jerusalem, the world changed forever. We affirm that here and now we are citizens of that new world, that world in which the system no longer wins, the world in which death itself has died.

This morning is only the start of it. Easter in the calendars and traditions of the Church is not one but forty days - and all those days would be needed for this great mystery not to be solved or explained, but discerned and rejoiced in and lived with. Over that time the friends of Jesus will be moving on from their initial delight - “our Lord lives!” to understanding what that will mean for themselves, and for the world. Easter is not the miraculous escape of one man from death. We are not here to celebrate Jesus the escapologist; Jesus hasn’t survived anything, Jesus has not returned from anywhere. Resurrection is not the same thing as resuscitation; Jesus does not come back to life on Easter morning, he goes forward into life; something new begins.

Illusionists and escapologists entertain us; and as we marvel at a magic show we can amuse ourselves by trying to work out how the magician has managed to escape from what looks to us to be an impossible situation. But Easter is not an illusion; this is real.

We like to hear stirring tales of survival against the odds - solo yachtsmen, arctic explorers, travellers lost in the jungle. If Easter was that sort of escape, it would be a story worth telling. But that would still be a story still set in the old world, the world in which the system always wins.

In the old world, death still gets you in the end, however many cat's lives you might use up in the meantime. Death is still real and final, however cleverly you may wave the magic wand. But this isn’t that story. Jesus doesn’t escape from death, he enters death, he is dead. But on this golden morning he has broken through - he’s left the Saturday world behind, he’s shaken off the chains of death, and not just as a one-off, not just for himself. Jesus lifts from us the sting of death, he breaks its power once and for all. He takes from us the deadening impact of our sin and our denial of God.

Lazarus emerged from the tomb still dressed in grave clothes, saved from one death to fie another. But Jesus has left the grave clothes behind, and his disciples find them lying in the tomb. And he challenges us to be Sunday people in the Saturday world, and Easter people in the world that is still in thrall to the old system of fear and death.

It may look as though the system still wins, it may seem as we hear the news that the old power games are still up and running. On that first Easter Sunday morning Pontius Pilate will have been a relieved and happy man, happy to be still in charge, happy that nothing much had changed, that the Passover was done with, that things were the same as always. But in the mist of that first Easter morning, as a few people have begun to understand that silently but forever the world has turned upside down, the cross on which a man died has become a royal throne, and the love he proclaimed and lived and shared is revealed as stronger than death.

Some famous words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us.” Here is the truth of the Sunday world.

Holy

The one place in scripture at which we are brought fully face to face with the majesty of God is when we stand - or fall - at the foot of the cross. There are places where glory is presented in more conventional terms, as on the mountains of Sinai and the Transfiguration; but it is in the helpless and shattered body of the crucified Christ that we see, as nowhere else, what that glory truly is. Here we are drawn, challenged, convicted, changed by a love that calls us and claims us, even in the depths of our willfulness and sin.

Jesus says, "Except you come as little children, you shall not enter God's kingdom." Children have a capacity to delight in life, and a playful spirit, and a capacity to give and to receive love, that must rejoice the heart of God; but, more than that, children are dependent, and know they are.

It is the helplessness of the man who hangs on that cross, life draining from him, that - as we see what is really happening there - leads us to recognise and acknowledge our own childlike dependence on what only he can give us. Without him, our best endeavours are wasted; in him, a love divine meets with our own feeble efforts at love and transforms them, even as we are forced to face up to the impact of our own weakness and foolishness and sin.

As we gaze on the cross, what looks to us like a place of degradation, defeat and death is made by this great love into the only true royal throne, against which the finest and grandest of the royal thrones of earth are found wanting. And this man is hanging there both because of me and yet for me, instead of me. Praise the King of Glory.

Good Friday

Words from Psalm 31, a personal favourite :-

In you, O Lord, I find shelter: let me never be put to shame.
In your mercy, set me free: incline your ear to me, and be swift to save me.
Be my rock and my stronghold: a fortress, and a place of rescue.
For you are my crag and my bastion: for your name's sake, lead me and guide me.
Set me free from the net my enemies have laid for me: for you are my stronghold.
Into your hands I commend my spirit: for you have redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth.

Snow

Today's substantial snowfall here came as something of a surprise, despite the forecasts! We had several inches, and, although it won't stay around too long, it's still here, or some of it, tonight, and winter is back with us for what I hope will only be a brief visit.

Snow turns the world around into a sort of dreamscape, I always feel. That's partly because it has its own intrinsic beauty, creating a carpet of white to obscure the normal imperfections of the world and even change the nature and intensity of the light. But at the same time there is the way in which - as one goes out in it and tries to get on with the normal chores of life - a world coated with snow is reality subtly distorted so that it's the same place and yet somehow not the same place, all at once.

Well, today in fact, once I was halfway down the hill into town, I found I was below the snowline and all there was down there was sleet, with nothing much if anything sticking. So, once I'd made it across the first quarter mile or so, my working day was more or less unaffected. It was strange to find the snow (and the dreamscape) still in place here when I got back home!

Moss

Decided to mow the front lawn tonight using the new mower, and set it for the lowest cut. The amount of moss it dragged up out of the lawn horrified me! I'm still trying to work out why front lawns seem more susceptible to moss than back lawns; in our present case, the front lawn is north-facing and often in shade, but that hasn't been true everywhere we've been. Perhaps in recent build houses the soil used under front lawns has been poor, probably the turf poor too - these will have been laid down by the contractors, whereas the back garden has been the responsibility, from the word go, of householders. Probably also the householders themselves have spent more time and effort on the private space of the back garden than the open and more public space at the front of the house.

But anyway, moss is generally a sign of overshading, poor fertility and, more importantly, neglect, when found in a lawn. Because it's green you don't notice too much straight away; the lawn sort of looks all right, especially if all you ever do is walk past it quickly on your way in or out. But in practice, what's happening is that the grass is getting shaded, starved and choked, and the impact is cumulative.

I feel a parable coming on here. For isn't this so true of so much in our lives. We neglect things we ought to tend, we don't notice the steady declines in quality, in ability, in care. And then things start falling apart, and the remedy is probably going to have to be quite a drastic one. Holy Week is for Christians a time for facing up - boldly and honestly - to the truths about ourselves that we spend most of our lives ignoring, just walking past.

Meanwhile, a good chunk of my front lawn is now looking pretty poorly - yellow, sparse and bare. But it's on the way to getting better. Having cleared out the bad stuff, I now need to take the time and trouble to feed and encourage the good.

Thought For The Week

O blessed Jesus, give me stillness of soul in You.
Let Your mighty calmness reign in me.
Rule me, O King of Gentleness, King of Peace.

John of the Cross

Man Of Sorrows

I had the immense privilege of being asked to sing the solo in the version of the hymn 'Man of Sorrows' that is included in Roger Jones' musical 'From Pharaoh to Freedom' last night at our local Methodist Church. It should properly be a soprano solo, not tenor, but we were not doing a full production, instead using the music (rather beautifully) to create the setting for a gentle and moving communion service for the start of Holy Week.

And these are tremendous words with which to begin Holy Week: "Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood: hallelujah! What a Saviour!"

On Saturday I was with another local choir to sing, among other items, the Allegri 'Miserere', that wonderfully inspiring setting of Psalm 51, a Psalm which is from start to finish the anguished cry to God of a penitent. It may well be that, as the Hebrew preface suggests, this is a Psalm written by David himself after his adultery with Bathsheba (and his conspiracy to cause the death of her husband). His are desperate words, with, at their heart, verses 11 and 12: "Turn your face from my offences, and wipe away all my misdeeds. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a form spirit within me."

The good news of this week is that we can know that this prayer is heard and answered; and that all the stuff that so drags us down has been shouldered in our stead by the 'Man of Sorrows', as he walks the road to the cross. The Psalmist writes (verse 17): "Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may tell of your praise." I was both proud and humbled to sing, "Hallelujah! What a Saviour!" May this be my constant refrain through this Holy Week.

By The River

Ann and I had a pleasant walk yesterday which took in a short section of the Offa's Dyke Path along the banks of the Severn. It was a beautiful afternoon, and there was plenty to see - and to hear. We were able to draw quite close to an oystercatcher, prospecting for worms and other invertebrates at the top of the bank. It eventually did fly, calling shrilly as it did so. We followed along the path, and - having paused to search for a drake goosander we'd noticed flying in - were startled by a sudden burst of what one can only describe as oystercatcher swear-words! All was explained as we saw three oystercatchers fly up from a point some distance away on the opposite bank. The one we'd flushed earlier had clearly met up with a pair, and the conversation between them was a fierce one. The three birds flew high over the trees being very noisy, and then, after some aerial jostling, the pair flew together back to "their" place on the bank, while the solo bird disappeared upriver.

Observing probably the same three birds a week or two back, at Llyn Coed y Dinas, I was struck by the behaviour of the pair when the solo bird arrived to join them on an island. They were, again, quite noisy, and moved side by side and in step around the island with heads down so that their long bills were pointing straight downwards. This presumably demonstrated their commitment to each other; certainly, it was an aggressive enough response to unsettle the third bird, which seemed to flinch away from this activity before flying off.

Judas

A poem which may connect into some of my reflections on faith and religion, and which I gladly offer for all to read as Holy Week approaches:

If you ask the folk who knew me
just what kind of man I was,
I wonder now what answers you might get?
I signed up in all good faith, and I hung on his every word,
for he told us things nobody could forget.
I joined a march to freedom, I was ready for the fight,
and I’m sure the others saw it that way too,
but when we reached the holy city,
something happened, I don’t know, and yet
it seemed somehow he wasn’t coming through.

All our people cried ‘Hosanna!’
and they hailed him as their king -
well, they’d seen down by the lake what he could do;
but the people of the city, they looked down on us in scorn -
“A messiah from the north? That can’t be true!”
When he went into the temple,
turned their tables, broke their stalls, I thought
“Well, now we’ll see this city set alight!”
But then he seemed to pause, as though he wasn’t really sure,
as if he didn’t have the stomach for the fight.

I did not sign up for failing, Judas here goes all the way,
I stayed with him, he would not be left alone.
We had come to make him king,
and he could trust me, through and through,
for I’d not rest till he was seated on that throne.
So it was me, I set it up,
I brought the high priests and the guard,
and he knew what I was doing all along;
this is where the fight begins, I thought,
it’s revolution time - so tell,
how could a man like me have got it wrong?

For he talked about the kingdom, told us tales
to make it clear,
and yet somehow I had never understood;
he stirred dreams in me of David,
of a palace and a crown,
but he made his only throne a cross of wood.
As from the shadows by the path
I watched them dragging him away;
there were shadows in my heart - by God above,
as I knot this cord for hanging,
tell me, any who can hear,
just how you’d have better served the King of love?

Faith and Religion (1)

As I begin to consider the relationship between faith and religion, one thing I'd want to say straight away is that it isn't a simple matter of "faith good, religion bad". It's easy - too easy - to make that a default position in these Postmodern times when everyone seems to have the freedom to choose and create their own truth. In fact, for me, there is a necessary relationship between faith and religion that needs to be considered carefully and nurtured well, in order to keep things balanced and focused.

Faith without religion lacks coherence, discipline and purpose; the structures of religion provide the context within which faith may be shared, questioned, debated, enriched, directed, challenged, and find a use and focus in worship, outreach and social action. But religion can very easily become something that is essentially faithless; faith needs the space to breathe, to invent, to experiment, to travel, and where religion requires a fixed and rigid form of faith, it will become what most fixed and rigid things are - dead. And religion then becomes something that is essentially self-serving, rather than God-seeking.

Like any human organisations, religions are able to acquire power, wealth, prestige and all the other trappings of worldly success and status. This is a sickness to which all religions are vulnerable, upon which which faith can act as a disturbing, disruptive but ultimately cleansing and healing agent. Worldly and self-seeking religion has historically decided where it has wanted to go, and then chosen a reading of its holy scriptures to justify this, allowing God to be the uncritical source of blessing for all that was being done in his name. The faith of mystics, reformers and social pioneers has, in ways sometimes gentle, sometimes traumatic, been the necessary antidote, through which a real awareness of God at liberty among us, and no longer safely tucked away in a reliquary or a dusty library, has been restored.

This, at any rate, seems to be a continuing theme throughout Christian history. At present, in the Western Church, we have a religion that remains quite powerful in worldly terms, but which has been steadily losing the influence it has been used to having, and not liking that very much. It has enjoyed the powerful role it has been able to hold as a more or less unquestioned right in what is still a nominally Christian society, and now finds its sense of its own identity challenged as that status and role in society is being bypassed and eroded. The Church has attempted to deal with this by finding new ways of being powerful and holding influence, new areas in which it can carve out a role - when perhaps what we need to be doing as Christ's people is to learn how to be weak, how to live without power, how not to have a place.

I feel sure that as part of this process we shall need to discover how to be Church in a different way, with less emphasis on structure, hierarchy and ceremonial, certainly less sense of our place within society, but more emphasis on what it may mean to be a pilgrim people, and on the nurturing and encouragement of perhaps quite disparate expressions of faith. To those to whom the existing structures are all-important, this may feel rather like ceasing to be Church at all - but what I see here is a necessary rebalancing of the relationship between religion and faith. Anyway, that's a thought to which I'll return in due course. These are very much reflections in real time!

Panic

I've been over to Stafford today, to visit my mother, and I always fill up with diesel when I'm there, as it is anything up to 7p per litre cheaper than it is at home, a difference in price I find it hard to justify. So I refute any allegation that I was "panic-buying" in response to some ill-advised ministerial statements (or, maybe, a bit of political sh*t stirring by a government feeling under pressure from the bad press the budget "granny tax" and the latest "cash for favours" story have brought them); I'd have been there anyway, I insist! But of course all the people queuing up with me will have been panic buying!

How helpless we are without our machines and the fuel to run them! Modern society comes across as so in control, so self-assured, so sorted. We're well and happy, aren't we, and so secure? Or might it all be a house of cards? That urge to panic is never far below the surface. We keep telling ourselves how safe and secure we are, but that worm of disbelief is always gnawing away within us.

We find ourselves thinking, "Surely this is all too good to be true?" Well, I hope we do, at least sometimes, anyway, because it is. I'm told that we need three planet earths to sustain the standard of living expected in Western Europe, five planet earths to support the people of the USA in the style to which they've become accustomed. That's how unsafe we are; that's how unreal the world we're living in is. Well, we have committed ourselves to sorting out the country's finances, or so our politicians assure us. They have a plan, they say, and it's already working. And yet, the sad truth is that for the foreseeable future, however far ahead we look, we'll still be borrowing, just to keep afloat.

And - while we do our best to hold the panic and desperation at bay - where most of us are (me too, if I'm honest) is that we want to see it all sorted out, glad to see some tough decisions and hard line policies, supportive of cuts - just so long as it all happens somewhere else and to someone else and doesn't really hurt me. In other words, not in the real world; someone else can have that.

Monty Don

Another thing Monty Don was quoted as saying (in my 'Times' last weekend) was that though he firmly believed in God, he was not a churchman as he did not feel the need to 'join a gang'. I am growing less and less church-minded, I find, mostly because the sheer weight of the organisation seems to me these days to be demanding so much of the members, using up so much of their energy. I have been reflecting, with the Psalms, as ever, before me, on the distinction between religion and faith. As something like a conclusion forms for me, I'll maybe return to this as a theme and share some of what I've found.

Feeding the Five Thousand

I was reading the story the other day, in the version given in chapter six of St Mark's Gospel, when it suddenly hit me. My apologies to those for whom this isn't a new idea, but it hadn't really broken through into my consciousness before - the direct connection there is between this story and our prayers.

I think that when we say prayers of intercession, whether in church on a Sunday or in our own private daily prayers, very often we're hoping for God to wave a magic wand and to make everything all right. And that's exactly what Jesus seems to be doing in this miraculous event. All these hungry people, out there in the remote place where Jesus had really gone in the hope of escaping from people - all of them were fed, and with food left over besides.

And yes, this is a story that speaks of the divine creative power that rests in Jesus and is at his disposal, and which is here seen expressed in a miracle of provision. But it isn't only that. Jesus doesn't magic the food out of nowhere. And here for me is an important little detail: what he says to his disciples, what he asks of them.

He does not say "What can you spare?" - he says "What have you got?" He does not ask from his disciples a charitable donation, he asks them to hand over all they've got. It isn't much, but that doesn't matter. It is all they've got, and when that is given, a miracle takes place.

If in our prayer we're secretly hoping that God might act so that we don't have to, our prayers will seem to be unanswered, I guess. If in our prayer we're offering a carefully measured and rationed out bit of ourselves to God, then - well, if we're offering something then I suppose something will be given in return, but it's hardly going to change the world, though it might just begin to be the start of changing us. But it's when we take the risk of offering everything that miracles happen. When our prayer for peace adds those wonderful words that we sing but don't always really mean, ". . . and let it begin with me."

Well, as I say, probably not a new thought, but it came fresh to me as I was reflecting on the story. It seems to make sense to my life and to my striving for faith; and perhaps it will add life and fire and a certain rash boldness to my praying. So I gladly share it with you.