Category Archives: Pastoralia

Thursday in Holy Week: party – come!

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Foot of a Python

The foot party

The last few days have seen us considering unattractive aspects of human nature: lying, deceit, evasion, denial. Today, thanks be to God, we have a party. The ability to have fun, to play, to party, to celebrate—shared with other mammals—is one of our attractive characteristics. And, what is more, it’s a party where the host honours the guests. Just as it should be. Washing feet nowadays might seem a less than appealing activity. Who knows what you might find under the socks and stout brogues? Bunions, nodules, sores, ulcers, fungi …. (Footwear is bad for feet). But think back to sandal wearing, dusty, car-less and bike-less times. Think that for most people on the planet today, unhealthy feet mean no food. Foot care is important. Washing feet was a real act of welcome and charity. An act of service. You might like to consider how our churches welcome visitors and deal with strangers. It may be inappropriate to tell them to shed shoes and socks for a relaxing foot bath, but there are other ways that we can enhance our hospitality and service to others.

Renewal of the cosmos

Curved space-time

Do this in remembrance of me. These words take us back to Jerusalem two thousand years ago. But they work the other way, too: they bring Jerusalem of two thousand years ago here today, to this place. And not just the words, but all the action and the whole occasion: the meal, the togetherness of the disciples, even those who had something to hide. Do this in remembrance of me brings it all into the present. And all the intervening years as well: all the Christians of the past, all the joys and sadnesses of history. The whole of the past concentrated into the words and action of the consecration prayer: we open the door of Dr Who’s Tardis and find ourselves in the vastness of history. This notion of space-time is a bit at odds with western European linear time, but it is inherent in folk-memory, in community-memory, and is very much a living part of middle-Eastern culture, even today. It is Hebrew zikkaron. It has something in common with modern concepts of space-time. Every time the Lord’s supper is celebrated, the past is gathered up and presented to us. And then in the banquet, past and present are launched into the world transformed. Rebirth. The universe compressed into the infinitely dense black hole of the crucifixion, then dispersed with infinite acceleration into the new universe. This is a magnificent vision. All Christian theology and history concentrated into the moment at every Eucharist. No wonder we should celebrate it with all possible splendour and theatre and solemnity and joy.

Come

Each of us has all our past within us. We are the sum of our memories. All our past is included in our genes – genes from the primeval soup at the moment of creation are in every one of our cells. All this past is received and affirmed tonight. We are cleansed. We are fed. We are, and heaven knows I need this, forgiven. We have the meal set out by the gracious father for the prodigal son. We are accepted, and we are launched for future service. Come to the feast. Everyone is invited. No matter what you think of yourself, come and receive grace. You are welcome.

Lancelot Andrewes: a beautiful mind

Listen to the words of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, written in 1620.

In the old Ritual of the Church we find that on the cover of the canister, wherein was the Sacrament of His Body, there was a star engraven, to shew us that now the star leads us thither, to His body there. And what shall I say now, but according as St. John saith, and the star, and the wise men say, ‘Come.’ And He, Whose the star is, and to Whom the wise men came, saith, ‘Come.’ And let them who are disposed, ‘Come.’ And let whosoever will, take of the ‘Bread of Life, which came down from Heaven’ this day into Bethlehem, the house of bread. Of which Bread the Church is this day the house, the true Bethlehem, and all the Bethlehem we have now left to come to for the Bread of life, – of that His life which we hope for in Heaven. And this our nearest coming that here we can come, till we shall by another venite come, unto Him in His Heavenly Kingdom to which He grant we may come, That this day came to us in earth that we thereby might come to Him and remain with Him for ever, ‘Jesus Christ the Righteous.’

Faces and blood

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Peter Butler: I hope he doesn’t mind

Face transplants are in the news from time to time, and we sometimes hear of the work of Professor Peter Butler in London. This is of some interest to me, not particularly from a medical point of view: transplanting a face I suspect involves craftsmanship similar to that needed by a restorer of ancient documents or paintings. The interest comes from the fact that when I was a Professor of Anatomy in Dublin I taught him, and employed him for a year. That is as near to fame as I’m likely to get. And there’s another source of fascination in this, and it’s to do with faces.

The squeamishness of the public concerning face transplants, and the moral questions that arise, reflect that fact that the face is what defines a person, even a personality for some people. The word person comes from persona, mask, which seems to imply that we all put on a mask to cover up our true selves. Is this also the sin of Adam? The face houses the organs of smell, taste, sight, and the most touch-sensitive parts of the body. The organs of hearing are not far away. The face is in a quadruped (and as apes we are just modified quadrupeds) the first part of the body to go into a new environment. It is the part of the body that confronts, as we heard in Isaiah: ‘I gave my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.’ The muscles of the face are called mimetic muscles because they mimic our emotions, communicating them to the observer. The brain connexions of the nerves that supply these facial muscles are specially protected from disease. I could go on: let’s just say that the face is of peculiar interest to me. And not just to me, it seems, but also to Holy Scripture.

The word face appears 25 times in Genesis alone. The Lord setting his face towards, or against, or hiding his face, or showing his face to someone or other. In the Gospels, Jesus comes down from the transfiguration mountain with a shining face. Think how the face is radiant in people who are doing exactly what they are put on the earth to do: shining with joy. Look at a photograph of the newly ordained (but hurry up before the radiance is wiped off their faces by the realities of ministry). Then a few pages later, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem. Not joy this time, but gritted determination. Indeed, he sets his face like flint—which is the phrase used in tonight’s OT lesson: ‘The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.’

Melt this heart of ice

We see with our eyes and our eyes are watered by tears. The psalmist’s tears wetting his couch in his hours of distress, crying in the daytime. But tears of joy too. Tears that cleanse our faces. Tears in that most beautiful of Andersen’s stories, and one full of religious allegory, that melt the heart of ice that the Snow Queen has wrought in Kay. Tears of love that alone enable the ice blocks to spell the word eternity and allow Kay and Gerda to enter together. Eternity, here and now, out of time. The love that gives its all for me, as will I for my children.

The film Gandhi, when early in the film, Gandhi and Charlie Andrews on a crowded train, and Andrews invited up to the roof. A local says to him ‘I have friends who are Christian: they eat flesh and drink blood every Sunday.’ It’s meant to be a friendly greeting! In today’s culture of flesh-eating zombie films and vampire films and video games, Christianity has a hard time getting through to the unchurched used only to these ghoulish images of flesh and blood. And I have a confession to make: I would be ashamed to tell you how very recently it was that the penny dropped about the real significance of blood in Christian theology, and the reason for this is that I looked on blood from a medical point of view, whereas the key to the issue is in the layman’s point of view.

oxygen and iron

Picture someone attacked in the street, lying bleeding in the gutter. As the blood seeps away, so does the life-force. Lack of blood equals death, so blood equals life. For Jews and Muslims, ritual preparation of meat to eat involves draining all the blood so that they are not guilty of consuming the God-given ‘life force’. The blood that marks the doorposts in the first Passover (Exodus) signifies that the house will be preserved: blood equals life. And so the blood of Jesus, the blood that flows from his crucified side gives life to the world. All the references to blood of Jesus in Holy Scripture and in many rather gruesome hymns refer to the giving of life. The sacrifice on the cross is life giving for exactly this reason.

White (i.e. not red) cells stained purple: warriors

Some parallels can be drawn between the blood that circulates in our vessels and the blood of Jesus.

  • Blood brings nutrient to the cells of the body. What more nutritious than the Sermon on the Mount, the two great commandments, the parables?
  • Blood contains red cells that bring oxygen to the tissues. Jesus brings us the clear air of life. Get rid of the smoke of duty and oughts and shoulds, and instead take up the clear air of freedom from following the crowd. We are in the world, but not of the world.
  • Blood contains white cells that fight disease and maintain health. Isn’t that exactly what the teachings and example of Jesus can do for us.
  • Blood removes rubbish from the tissues of the body, and contains platelets that plug holes in the blood vessels. The resources of the Christian church are there for us when we feel burdened, and life overcomes us. Come unto me all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.

So now when I hear of the ‘blood of the lamb’, I understand it as, quite simply, the will to do the Divine. As St John’s Gospel has it: ‘Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you’ (John 6:53).

Monday in Holy Week: confronting death

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Beauty anointing the spirit

Isaiah 42:1-7. John 12:1-11

The events in tonight’s gospel story take place before the Palm Sunday procession we recalled yesterday. I’m going to take both stories together, in the Biblical order. Here are some themes that strike me.

  • Preparing for death: Mary’s anointing Jesus with oil normally reserved for anointing the dead
  • Jesus facing the future squarely: his cheerfulness, and the crowd’s acclamation.

We live in a society that refuses to look death full in the face. People try and pretend it will not happen. They go to great lengths to try and delay it, even when it’s obviously inevitable. We spend money on seeking a cure for this or that disease as if there is some hope that we can live for ever. We forget that one day, even if we are cured of this or that disease, tomorrow we will die of something else.

This always leads to trouble. If you pretend it won’t happen, you can’t set things straight before you go. You are left with unfinished business. If you can’t set things straight, you are left with regret and guilt. You can’t say that you wished you’d not said so-and-so, and you can’t say, before it’s too late, what you should have said years ago. And all that is the overwhelming cause of grief and weeping and family tensions at funerals. It’s in contrast to the death of a friend of mine recently, who knew she was dying, told the world, and wrote her own funeral address, and characteristically witty it was too. For six months of my life I worked in a north Brixton children’s hospital in south London. I saw babies with incurable conditions having operation after operation, and I was required to insert drips into their tiny veins whilst seeing their eyes looking at me. I was gravely distressed at the inhumanity and cruelty of it. I plucked up the courage to suggest that baby Anthony should be allowed to die with dignity. The reaction was swift: I was reprimanded in no uncertain terms. He died the next week after yet another operation. It is not my intention to start a debate tonight on end-of-life issues—that’s for another time maybe—but I’m using this as an illustration of how many of us refuse to confront one of the realities of animal existence on this planet. Our refusal to be straightforward about death results in grief for ourselves and for those that love us.

This sanitisation of death, this refusal to look it full in the face, is partly a consequence of urbanisation. Rural folk have a more robust attitude to death. They see it day by day. Animals are killed so that we might eat. Many of us think nothing of shoving an arm up a cow’s rear end to pull out a dead calf. Now, I acknowledge that my attitude to death may be more peculiar than most: not only was I brought up in a farming village, but for 25 years I was using human cadavers to teach anatomy: cutting them up, examining them and handling them.

However unusual my attitude to death might be, I’m convinced that our attitude to death needs realigning. Tonight’s Gospel and the Palm Sunday procession seem to say likewise. Our Lord faces death full in the face. Face: earlier in the gospel Jesus came down from a mountain with a shining face. Then he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And now acknowledging to Judas—I’ve more to say about him on Wednesday—that he is being anointed for death, just as many priests have anointed people for death. The Easter message is that death leads to new life. If you want to build on a new site, it is wise to clear it of rubble so that good foundations can be laid. This is new life following death of the old. And so, of course, is the resurrection story.

Death of the old prepares for the new

Biologically speaking, death is part of life. The cells of our bodies are dying all the time, and new life replaces them. Skin cells are constantly being shed and replaced. Blood cells past their sell-by date are replaced all the time. There are lots of other examples, but here is a startling example of the necessity of cell death. When a fetus is developing in the uterus, the hands and feet start off as spade-like things, a bit like fists. You might think that fingers and toes grow out from the spades, but you’d be wrong. What happens is that rather than digits growing out, four strips of cells are programmed to die, leaving digits remaining between them. If not enough cells die, we get webbed fingers and toes. If more strips die we get more fingers than usual. Here is another example. When a bone is fractured and reset, the two ends are rarely aligned properly. The body copes with this by killing off bone cells in the wrong place, and laying down new ones where needed.

Biology has no hesitation in killing off the old in order that the new can flourish. We can’t move on if we try to preserve the past. That is why I oppose the conservationist lobby. We must face death when necessary. We can’t engage with the present if we refuse to accept the inevitability of death, because we will be tempted to put off things that need attention before it’s too late.

I am calling for honesty and clarity of vision. And this, I think, is what Our Lord called for throughout his ministry. Yesterday and today, Our Lord stands up to face the future full on. He stands at the gates of the city, the city of wrong. Facing the future mindfully means killing, letting go of, all that holds us back. It can be very painful. We begin to see ourselves as others saw us. We realise that we are not as good as we thought we were. We realise how we deceived ourselves and the truth was not in us. We need to grieve our lost attitudes, our lost expectations, our lost dreams. We need to let go of what we want, or wanted, and accept the grace of God to resurrect us. We must die in order to live, as Christ Jesus died in order to live. Death of our self-obsession enables us to rise:

As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day Thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

As I grow older, I look back on some of the things I used to be passionate about and wonder what it was about them that so obsessed me. Obsession is the right word, because these passions blinkered my vision and limited my action. I once had a huge collection of books: they were my friends. I came to see that they limited me. Not only did they cost a lot of money, they also dictated the type of house we could move to. And after all, when one has sucked the marrow out of a book, one might as well pass it on. These are not evil things in themselves but they limited me, they narrowed my vision. They stole some of me and prevented me from being fully me, in a similar way to that of any addiction. I am still afflicted by such things—I suspect we all are—but now I’m slightly more aware of the symptoms of the addiction. As we get older we find ourselves attached to fewer and fewer things. Our vision becomes less restricted. We are moving into a wide, unfettered place. This notion of being in a wide place is one of the Hebrew images of salvation, and it is one that Jesus teaches. If we die to earthly attachments, we are in this place, and we can focus on what matters: love of God, and love of neighbour. There is much truth in the Buddhist idea that all disease is caused by attachments.

There is a kind of renewal in this, and the key to it is to live in the present. Our Lord’s teaching again and again emphasizes that we need to do just this. Learn from the past certainly, but don’t live in it. Look to the future, but don’t waste time laying up treasures. Live now, in the moment. This, actually, is what eternal means. When we hear ‘everlasting life’ in church services, we often get the wrong idea, and it would be better, and more accurate a translation of the Greek, to use the word eternal rather than everlasting. It’s not quantity or length of time that matters, but quality. Eternal, timeless, out of time, in the present, Divine. Thy kingdom come on earth, here and now. Trust the teaching of Jesus: live in the present moment, and do your best in that moment. We can do no more, and we need do no more. In one sense this is easy to do, and in another it’s extraordinarily difficult when we are surrounded by the petty irritations that life throws up day by day, when we see the injustice that surrounds us, and when we are governed, as we are, by prejudices and faulty behaviour patterns bred into us by our upbringings. But see all these for what they are, and trust and hope.

Faces of the Divine

If we are to attain eternal life, here and now, we must face death and die to worldly trivia. Having divested ourselves of these burdens we walk off lighter. ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light’ – light in both senses, light because of the light of the world, and light because we are less burdened by impedimenta from the past. Jesus’ last hours complete the incarnation. Our Lord gave up a divine dwelling for human frailty, and now he suffers the stripping away of dependence on self to fall into he arms of the selfless, the divine. ‘It is finished’. It is a renunciation that we are called to join in these five days. And the task for us, sisters and brothers, is to accompany the Lord on this journey of death in order to fall into the arms of the divine.

Working things out

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Thinking Rector

Rational thinking is very much part of the Anglican tradition (scripture, tradition, reasoning) and we need to engage brain as we consider the realities of the present and plan for the immediate future. This is as true for individuals as for churches and organisations. It’s tempting to go from one day to the next simply responding to what happens—and a good deal of our lives is exactly that, but I suggest that it can be helpful to have a plan or an aim for the immediate future. Not something that is inflexible, but a rough idea of where we might like to be as individuals and in community. That is one of the things that Lent is traditionally about: looking ahead to where we might like to be, and ditching what might be slowing down the journey. The Biblical readings for Lent have all had this theme in one form or another.

Unfortunately, it sometimes seems that Churches require people to remove their brains as they enter a church. Furthermore, it sometimes seems that people forget to pick them up again on the way out. Maybe a lenten discipline would be to think about the traditional doctrines of the church, and ask to what extent they are helpful or unhelpful in dealing with the trials and tribulations of daily life in the 21st century. Is the Trinity an outmoded mediaeval concept? Or does its mystery say something worth saying about what we are discovering about the origins of the universe? It gets more mysterious the more we know. Is God – the divine being (a better term IMHO) – just the laws of the cosmos? Is there anything that is not God? What is not God is nothing, said Sergey Bulgakov. What about evil? Is that part of God too?

Cases of parents found guilty of neglecting and abusing their children remind us that we are all products of genetics and upbringing, and not so far under the surface there lurk temptations and urges to do nasty things should the circumstances be different. If you haven’t done it yet, be glad that you’ve never been in situations that have tested you to go beyond the limit. Maybe that is what it means when we say lead us not into temptation and deliver us from (the) evil (part of ourselves).

Look after yourself

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Golden grapes: good on the skin, trouble elsewhere

For many of us, 2012 began with infections that remain difficult to shift. There must be some pretty virulent strains of microbes out there. Maybe our immune systems are depressed by pushing ourselves too hard. There’s a link between stress and disease, and worrying and feeling ground down by intractable circumstances reduce the ability of our immune systems to deal with disease. As we get older, we need to be mindful of ourselves—love your neighbour as yourself, not better than yourself. This is easy advice to give, but oh so difficult to take. And when people are in the midst of losing their jobs, wondering where the next cent will come from, and the general family and neighbourhood concerns that affect us all, it is even more difficult to stop worrying. It’s as well to remember (and I wish I could do this more effectively) that worrying does nothing other than harm the worrier. It doesn’t change future or past, though rational thinking might well lead us to a new way of coping. Remember, we are no good to anyone else if we don’t care for ourselves. Should we take antibiotics? Yes, of course. The more we encourage antibiotic resistant organisms to evolve by overuse of antibiotics, the sooner the human race will be wiped out, and evolution can start again. Perhaps there will be a better result next time round.

Some people forget that microbes are with us all the time. We need them for digestion and healthy surfaces, to name but two things. They cause trouble when they get into the wrong places. E coli are essential in the colon, but cause trouble when they get to other places. Are microbes part of Divine creation? If so, what right have we to kill them with antibiotics. Maybe I am an adherent of Jainism.

What do you make of this image? Lunar landing craft? Child’s toy? No, it’s a virus. It’s a needle with a reservoir on top, and legs to allow landing and positioning on the surface of a cell. And it’s length is a fraction of a millimeter. And we think we’re sophisticated. Here is a video of a similar virus in action. You can be sure of one thing (apart from death): bacteria and viruses will continue to roam the cosmos long after animal life has passed into history.

Healing for foolishness

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Wisdom of the fool

Homily for Septuagesima 2012

Isaiah 40: 21-end. Psalm 147. 1 Corinthians 9: 16-23. Mark 1: 29-39

The Gospel passage is one of the healing stories. You can take the words literally: Jesus performed miracles. Maybe he did. Certainly, inexplicable healings occur. Sometimes they’re ascribed to seventh sons of seventh sons. I have no experience of them, although I have come across ways in which biology has done the unexpected and inexplicable.

The trouble with taking the New Testament literally is that we need to know how the original Greek was used by the writer and by the people he was writing for. For example, in today’s gospel the word translated as fever might not mean fever as caused by infection, but may mean agitated, or in a rage.

If Peter’s mother in law was lying in a rage, then a visit by her son-in-law’s enigmatic friend might have perked her up wonderfully. I’m careful about taking the Bible literally: to do that is itself a form of idolatry. Bibliolatry. Remember that middle-eastern people use much more colourful images than we do. Remember that they dramatize situations much more than we do. The Bible needs interpreting.

So how else might we look at the healing stories? As I’ve said before, I take healing not to mean medical cure. After all, we’re all going to die sooner or later, and there is no medical cure of that. Medical cure of one disease simply means that we’ll die of something else later. Not recognising that is one reason why so much money is poured into the health services and why doctors are so well-funded by the folly of patients who think that they might live for ever.

The way in which I interpret healing is of salving, being made whole, restoring integrity, soothing, being given reassurance much as a child that has fallen over seeks reassurance from a parent. This sort of healing is what we, broken humanity, need. Look at the political situation. Look at the way we suffer from the greed and foolishness of a pampered few and their cronies.

Much of the gospel is written to send messages to its readers. Perhaps the message here is that when we heed Jesus’ example of how to live life and conduct ourselves, it gives us a freedom of the spirit: not freedom to do selfishly what we choose, but freedom from the shackles of greed, avarice, the expectations of others and the fashions of the time.

We all can be healers. We can be agents of salvation, agents of healing: making life better here and now. We’re capable of being agents of reassurance, agents of hope, fighters against injustice—yes, fighting can be a healing act.

My ordination vows oblige me to admonish you – to warn of consequences, to point you away from the wrong road and towards the right road. The church assumes that because I have studied the scriptures and reflected upon their meaning I am better placed to do this. I am not ordained to be nice, or to allow you to do what I know will be bad for you, but to warn. This too is a healing act.

Maybe Jesus told Peter’s mother in law to stop feeling sorry for herself, to get up out of bed and get a grip on herself. Maybe I should be doing more of that. I’ve come across people whose companionship makes me feel happier, and when we feel happier, our immune systems can perk up, so these people are healers.

We needn’t worry that our own faults make us incapable of being healers. It’s these imperfections, when other people see them, that help us to understand one other. When we see someone else’s faults, and that they acknowledge them, we feel more kindly disposed to them. This is the first stage of healing. This is why politicians who never acknowledge their mistakes are so rightly scorned, and why spin doctors are reviled. It is the reason why church people who appear in their pretentious complacency to have all the answers are sneered at. I view it as one of my tasks to make plain my faults for all to see. It was the wounds to Jesus’ human body that did the healing work.

All this calls for us to speak to each other from our hearts. Heart to heart. Let’s put aside any facade of perfection, and acknowledge that we all need healing from our demons within: demons of childhood hurts; or resentments of the past that we refuse to let go; or addictions to attitudes, to chemicals, to ways of behaving. We need healing from all the things that are thieves of our true selves.

The world needs openness and honesty—and I do not see it much in evidence. As we sung earlier, Let all thy converse be sincere … This is prophetic work. People who call for openness and honesty are always crucified one way or another. I know that if I’m not being criticised by someone, I’m not doing my job properly.

In all this, let’s not forget ourselves. We ‘heal’ others better if we pay attention to our own needs first. And recently we have heard some extraordinary insights into how we might go about this. A palliative care nurse has published a book in which she has recorded the most often heard regrets of the dying. Here are some of them:

  • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Most people die knowing that their lives have been limited by their choices.
  • I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. This came from every male patient that the author nursed. It is true for me. I missed a good deal of my children’s youth and Susan’s companionship.
  • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Many people don’t say what they think so as to keep peace with others. As a result, they settle for a mediocrity. Many develop illnesses like heart disease and cancer that are associated with bitterness and resentment.
  • I wish that I had let myself be happier. Happiness is a choice. Misery is a choice. People stay stuck in old patterns and habits. Fear of change makes us pretend to others, and to ourselves, that we are content, when deep within, we long to laugh and be silly. There is not enough innocent silliness in this world.

In today’s gospel, when Simon’s mother-in-law was restored to health, she responds by serving those around her. That’s a great model for us all. It’s what Paul says in the epistle: if we recognize Christ’s healing power—Christ’s salvation—we have a duty to heal others, with the sensitivity that their situation demands, and we do so by using whatever means are at our disposal.

Let go of should and oughts. Let go of things that bind. Stride into the future unencumbered. Live with delight. Bring delight to others. Be foolish. This is the Lord’s work.

Trade and tradition

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Here's to abundant living

Trade implies exchange. This is tradition in its proper sense: adapting the past to plan for the future. To cling to the way things were is not tradition, but rather traditionalism, and the demon of traditionalism is rife. It kills. Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan wrote that tradition ‘is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.’ The living faith of the dead gives life as we take it, mould it and adapt it, whereas the dead faith of the living is simply a charade, a sham, of perpetuating the past in a way that has no meaning at all to the present and future.

This is not an easy time to be a Christian. And that is no bad thing. Our version of Christianity needs to be brought down a peg or six. For too long is has hidden behind the trappings of power and the privileges of state. It is tarnished by association with political corruption. That it is being cleansed is a wonderful thing. Yes, the journey is painful and difficult, but we need constantly to ask ourselves why we come to church. Is it only as a badge of tribal identity? or is there some other message that draws us? For me, it is this: Jesus said, I come that all may have life, and have it in abundance.

To waste our lives squabbling in playground battles is as far removed from abundant living as it is possible to get.

Reading the signs

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Change for new life

Cardinal Newman: In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. Some of us like being stuck in a rut: the security of familiarity. Others seem to need constant new experiences and are easily bored: the boredom of familiarity. Both conditions are examples of greed, even lust: the first is lust for routine, the second is lust for new sensation. They are addictions, cravings that distract us from living in the present and enjoying every moment. Somewhere between these two extremes is the place of poise, of balance, of recognizing the forces that surround us and that influence where we are—that is, of living in the moment, outside ourselves—ex-stasis, ecstasy.

Living in the present is where we need to be in our journeys as individuals, and as churches. We are all the products of place, time and circumstance. I am no longer the person I was in, say, 1970—though I carry him around in me and with me. I have been changed. I think that what Newman was getting at is not that we have to change to become different, but that because the world is changing, we have to change to be the same. We must ensure that we never prevent growth and development by clinging to the fashions and practices of the past, of our upbringing, or indeed of any particular era. We do the world and ourselves no favours by doggedly hanging on to the attitudes of parents. We must not hold the grievances of the past to be signposts for the future. As Jesus said on more than one occasion, we need to read the signs of the here-and-now in order to plan for a healthy future.

We need to be sharp and sassy, rather than dull and dozy.