Church magazine May 2019

Pastoral encounter 1. Slowly, slowly, the grief becomes evident. Not in any dramatic way—rather a kind of glazed-over face with voice sinking to a monotone. Gentle probing reveals miscarriages decades ago followed by the realization of barrenness. This grief is not just a mother’s experience, for fathers suffer too. It calls into question our expectations of partnership and indeed biological role. No wonder relationships break down after miscarriages.

Pastoral encounter 2. What about women who have elected to have abortions? How does that decision prey on their minds? One hears it said that a woman has the right to decide what happens to her body in such circumstances. The trouble is that in a sense it is no longer just her body. Even before she knows she’s pregnant, embryonic cells invade her tissues and migrate throughout her. We don’t know what happens to them but she is in some way changed as a result of a pregnancy she doesn’t yet know anything about. This has implications for our attitude to induced abortion. As a matter of interest, I don’t like the phrase “termination of pregnancy”. Normal birth is a termination of pregnancy. If people mean induced abortion, they should say so.  .

Pastoral encounter 3. Someone who’s edgy, aggressive, always has to have the last word,. Again, gentle exploration reveals grief from decades ago, shame even, at the way they behaved with or suffered from their then partner.

Everybody is grieving about something. Everybody is tender somewhere. Be easy on others—and yourself.

Easter messages

One of the Easter messages is forgiveness. As Jesus himself might have said when he confronted the terrified disciples after his death, “never mind the denials, the betrayal, the abandonment: we have work to do so let’s get on with it. Peace to you all”. If only we could do that for ourselves.

Possibly my favourite image for resurrection is imagination. Graham Greene said in “The power and the glory” that hatred was failure of imagination. Hatred is the opposite of resurrection whether it be hatred of one’s self or of others. Use your imagination to think how things could be otherwise. Then do it. Life is short. Do it now. Don’t take care, take risks. You’re going to die anyway.

Summer events

Easter coming so late this year means that there are three big events close together.

You probably know that Ascension Day (30 May this year) is my favourite festival—made like him, like him we rise. We can only scale the heights if we chuck out the lumber that tethers us to the earth. We can only ascend to the Divine if we recognize the gravity that pulls us down. 7.45 am at St Modwen’s provides a Book of Common Prayer mass; 7.30 pm at St Paul’s mass with bells and whistles and smoke. The preacher in the evening is Canon David Truby, Rector of Wirksworth and once my training incumbent. Anything I get right is his doing. Anything I get wrong is mine of course. He was, and is, a good training incumbent, not least because he knew when to let me make my own mistakes and learn from them. I am glad that he’s able to come.

Corpus Christi (20 June this year) brings another special event. As some of you may know I’m the accompanist for Rolleston Choral Society and I invited them to provide music. We will hear Byrd’s Four part Mass, Byrd’s Ave verum and Bairstow‘s Let all mortal flesh keep silence. Bairstow was my teacher’s teacher’s teacher and so rightly or wrongly I consider myself part of the Bairstow tradition. He wrote some wonderful music still widely performed in Anglican musical establishments. He was a Yorkshireman through and through, and therefore not known for diplomacy. He said of himself that he had been invited to adjudicate all the major music festivals … but only once. He was never invited back. He viewed this as a badge of honour. So do I. The preacher at Corpus Christi will be Trevor Thurston-Smith, Rector of Wigston and sometime Phillip Jefferies’ curate at Horninglow. Booze and eats will follow the Corpus Christi event. I’ve invited people from the choral society and St John’s to help with serving and I hope that people from “my” parishes will join them. You don’t need XX chromosomes to serve tea and coffee.

Finally this summer comes Robin’s ordination as priest on Saturday 22 June at 4 pm in Stoke Parish Church (I refuse to call it a Minster: it just isn’t one). In one sense it’s the end of a journey for Robin, but in another it’s a beginning. If he does it properly he will find it challenging for all sorts of reasons that he and I have discussed. Please do your best to support him unobtrusively. Do not complain to him about the new Vicar. Do not abuse his good nature and his desire to please. That is one of the quickest ways to breakdown. Instead try and do as much as you can to have as good a time as possible and enable him, and others, to do likewise.

In the words of St Matthew “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven”. In words which might have come from the lips of Dolly Parton—a truly great American—“if you’ve got it, flaunt it.” I prefer the latter.