Rant and remorse

Posted on 09/04/2009 by Rambling Rector

Last month I wrote about the apparent lack of humility in bankers and others, and the outrage caused by their taxpayer-funded bonuses. While I have no great wish to get a reputation for immoderate ranting that’s any greater than the one I already have, I have more to say. It was interesting when we were in San Antonio to listen to US news, and to talk to Texans, and hear of their anger about exactly the same issue. If anything, I think the desolation and outrage are even greater in the US than here, but there seems a greater willingness there for politicians to upbraid the bonus-takers in public and speak on behalf of those they represent. What can we do about this? Now I suppose I’ll have to put these remarks into some theological framework, so here goes. We all make mistakes. We all are greedy. We all want the advantages of investment dividends if we are lucky enough to have money invested, and our pension funds depend on them. In this regard, we are all complicit in the problems that afflict us, and our children and grandchildren will have to bear the burden of the mistakes our generation has made. I accept all that, and I can’t and don’t condemn anyone for faults that also afflict me. However, the arrogance and lack of remorse that we see in public life at the moment is something beyond all this. According to the Gospels, Jesus was censorious about very little, but always, always, always about hypocrisy and complacency. Even Josef Fritzl seems to have acknowledged, eventually, the enormity of his actions after being confronted by his daughter’s account of their effects on her and her children, holed up for 24 years in a damp and mouldy cellar. Even Fritzl.

We’d quite like to apologise

Posted on 09/03/2009 by Rambling Rector

Picture the scene: as you approach St Pancras, there’s a prerecorded announcement apologising for the late arrival of the train. Or perhaps when you, in the phone queue for 20 minutes and ready to slit your throat, hear ‘all our customer consultants [ugh!] are busy; we apologise for the delay.’ The obvious insincerity of it all. How can a prerecorded message apologise for anything? Why do they apologise when they don’t do anything about it? Apology is devalued.

Now we have the bank bosses apologising one day for being substantially responsible for the mess we’re in, and the next announcing their obscene bonuses—in large part now funded, boys and girls, from your taxes and mine. And even if they forgo them this year, poor darlings, is it back to ‘normal’ next? Then we hear that the man who warned them years ago that their ways were likely to bring disaster was gagged as a troublesome whistleblower. What do they think an apology is? Just words to get them off the hook? Apology is more than devalued. It’s no wonder that Monty Don is said to be incandescent with rage. So am I. These people have disgraced themselves—not for what they did (we all do foolish things), but for trying to wriggle out of it and carry on as before. Japanese businessmen in such a position have been known to take their own lives. Apologies are pointless, indeed inappropriate, unless they’re part of a change of heart and behaviour.

There is too much in our daily lives that may be legal, but feels plain wrong. It’s worryingly likely to drive people into the arms of extremist groups. Who listens to us? Do you remember what Gandhi did in order to hasten the end of the British Raj in India? He called for a nationwide day of prayer and fasting, and the country came to a halt. I wonder …

There is another way. I’m talking about repentance, or penitence. It has nothing to do with grovelling, but everything to do with changing direction, and making the effort to do so. Not for the sake of any reward we might or might not get in the future, but because we’re more likely to feel at peace with ourselves here and now. This year, March falls entirely in Lent, and Lent is traditionally about just this. Lent: lengthening days, getting brighter, a time when we take stock and make plans for the coming months. New growth—and growth is change. Biology is doing it as seeds sprout and animals are born.

Some people think it’s necessary, or desirable, to give up treats for Lent. Let them at it, I say. Pretty pointless. If folk want to wear a hair shirt, they’re welcome. My suggestion for Lent is to get rid of stuff you don’t need any more. If you’ve not used it for the last 10 years, you’re not going to need it in the next 10. And when you’ve let it go, start letting go of prejudices and attitudes that restrict your view of the world. This is giving up something for Lent that is worthwhile. It has nothing to do with making yourself miserable, but everything to do with freeing yourself up for delights you never knew were out there. It’s about losing yourself, being transformed, so that the real you shines out, free of the mask of expectation, or the cloak of ‘tribe’ membership, or the facade of pretending to be what you’re not. Let go.

Sacred space

Posted on 09/02/2009 by Rambling Rector

As the minister of the established church (church and state loosely linked together), I have a legal duty to perform the baptism, wedding and funeral of any parish resident. I may not say ‘no’. I’m always honoured to be a part of these events, and welcome people without reservation. Many of the weddings and baptisms are for people who don’t live in the parishes. Some have family connexions, but some choose these churches simply because there’s something about them that attracts. Why do people who’ve no tradition of church attendance, and intend to have none, still want to come to church for these events? The cynic might say that it’s simply that churches make attractive settings for photographs, as is indeed the case. But I think there’s more to it than that.

There’s something about the need for a solemn marking of rites of passage. Something about the need to take yourself away to a special place on a special day; something about using words and rituals that are unlike those used everyday. A setting apart. The words used in church language for this are sacred and consecrate, and the words consecrate is related to secret—secret not in the sense not hidden, but of special.

There’s something deeply human about all this: a setting apart in deed and word of important events. It reaches back to the origins of our evolution. Look at animal behaviour—and we are animals. Look at brain biology: such events become set apart in our memories, carefully tidied away in a part of the brain that is peculiarly resistant to the diseases of memory that afflict many of us as we get older. Memories secreted away.

The wish to have special events marked by sacred rituals in sacred spaces means that some wedding couples are prepared to attend services regularly for at least 6 months in order to fulfil the legal requirements if they have no other connexion to the parish. This is quite a commitment. Some of them must like what they find, because they come again, and sometimes again and again. In our regular church services we do things that are set apart from ordinary life. We move in certain ways, we wear symbolic clothes, we use symbolic gestures and language, we light candles, we make the place smell good (flowers, incense). We aim for beauty and a sense of otherness. Many of us want the things we do in church to be different from what we encounter day by day in order to remind ourselves that there is more to human experience than just what meets the eye. There is ‘what we feel’ as well as ‘what we do’. We are human beings. Many people have a longing for something ‘other’, as shown by the interest in spirits, ghosts and ghoulies.

The availability of the church to all that live in the parish, or have connexions with it, is part of the gracious ministry of the Church. I’m delighted to help people recognise this by providing sacred experiences in sacred spaces for sacred events. I’m delighted to help point people to the divine otherness that envelops us and penetrates us.

Waiting for Christmas

Posted on 10/12/2008 by Rambling Rector

In 2006 and 2007 Susan and I took a five-day break in late November to Germany. Some of the attractions of Germany at this time of year are the Christmas markets, with fairs and stalls laid out in the town square, often in the shadow of a great church. Christmas lights twinkle, and traditional music mingles with the aroma of wine being mulled and meat being grilled as we, sustained by delicious German sausages, wander increasingly waywardly (mulled wine) amongst the stalls displaying handiwork from Central and Eastern Europe. It reminds me just how many of ‘our’ Christmas traditions are, in fact, Central European in origin. One of the customs that we’ve lost is that of waiting until Boxing Day to open our presents. I’m one of the world’s most impatient people, so I say this not as a killjoy, but rather because a bit of waiting, however painful, increases the joy. And it’s waiting that the four weeks before Christmas are all about: the season of Advent, Latin ad venire meaning ‘coming towards’, the period we wait for Christ’s coming to us. We are waiting for a guest, an eagerly expected visitor. Unfortunately, this sense of waiting with mounting excitement has been all but lost to us in what the media call the ‘run up to Christmas’ – planning presents, trees, food, booze, frenetic activity, much of it fuelled by the children’s media. Even the church in so many places is caught up in this as Carol Services are held well before Christmas, as if to get them out of the way. Advent is obliterated.

I encourage you, if possible, to take some time out in December, maybe just a minute or two here and there, for stocktaking and refreshment. For waiting, in fact. For relaxing. At Christmas we celebrate having been shown the way to live as the Divine comes to us: ‘God became what we are, in order that we may become what God is.’ The glory of God is a human life lived to the full, when our deep joy meets the world’s deep need. If, like me, you long for a bit of peace and quiet before Christmas, don’t feel bad about taking time out.

Autumn, Olympics and heroes

Posted on 09/10/2008 by Rambling Rector

Season and mists and mellow fruitfulness. Fruitfulness concerns us at this time of year, and we like it! Mists also feature, and maybe we like them less. Harvest— time is upon us, and in communities like ours, the point of harvest is pretty obvious. Some of us (I suppose I should say ‘some of you’, since I’ve never been a farmer) work very hard indeed to gather the harvest of the earth to give us our food, and food for the animals we depend on one way or another. Fruit of the earth also provide the essentials for much of the stuff we pour down our throats: tea, coffee, beer, lager, gin, whisk(e)y, … even ‘coke’ (don’t get me going on the Coca-Cola industry). So it’s understandable and proper to pause to be thankful for what the God-given earth, and God-given natural processes of the cosmos, do for us.

Imagine, though, for a moment what a city dweller who has never set foot outside the city thinks of Harvest. What about schoolchildren who think milk comes from bottles and are disgusted to find it comes from an animal’s breast? What about people who have no idea that there is a connexion between what they eat in McDonald’s and the stuff they tread in, or drops on them, when they go for walk in the fields, if they do? We can also use this time of year to celebrate the harvest of the hands, eyes, ears and brains. The skill of the craftsman who produces beautiful things; the creativity of the novelist, the painter, the musician; the brain-work of the scientist that improves our quality of life and helps us to know more about the world around us; the work of family providers who ‘harvest’ their families and enable them to make their way in the world. All this is Harvest as well—the harvest of the spirit and mind.

The Olympics have finished. Media gurus already bore us with the next ones in London that we will have to pay for. Olympic medal winners are hailed as heroes. As I go about my daily work in Barlow, Old Brampton, Cutthorpe, Holme Hall, and Linacre Woods, I see a different set of heroes. I see people who bear long-term illness. I see people who care for the long-term sick. I see people who care for family members significantly disabled since birth. I see people who look after churches, churchyards, village halls, community resources and so on—all for no material reward. I see so much generosity of spirit, and beauty of human nature, that I am ashamed at my own cynicism. I was in hospital last month with breathing difficulties, and I saw real heroes in neighbouring beds, much worse off than me, who bore truly and evidently life-threatening conditions with great dignity, calm and forbearance. All these folk are real heroes, folk who bear what has to be borne (that is the true meaning of ‘suffer’), and who’ve not had vast resources lavished on them to help them to be heroes. These real heroes light the way for others, and to these real heroes who display the divine light that is within every one of us, I say thank you.

Trip to Jerusalem

Posted on 09/09/2008 by Rambling Rector

It’s a pub in Nottingham, at the foot of the cliff under the castle. The story is that the pub got its name in 1189 because it was founded at the time Richard I (‘Lionheart’) came to the throne, who was active in the crusades to claim Jerusalem for the Christians. Despite living in Nottingham from 1976 until 1988, it’s not a pub I ever went to so I can’t tell you anything about its facilities, its atmosphere or its beer. But I can tell you that in January this year, Susan and I went with about 30 others from Derbyshire on our own trip to Jerusalem with altogether more peaceable intentions than those of Richard and his mates. The weather was cold and sunny, the company congenial, and the food middle-Eastern—that is to say, healthy and toothsome. All the holy sites have been so built-on over the centuries that its difficult to imagine them as they might have been. There comes a point when an alleged site and an archaeological dig becomes just another a pile of rubble in a field. But we saw the steps that Jesus was dragged up for torturing. ‘Terribly sad story that’, as (Lord) R A Butler said of the St John Passion. The site of Calvary, the church of the Holy Sepulchre, is shared by Catholics, Coptics, Orthodox and Armenians. It’s good to be reminded that English churches are just a minor part of Christianity. Sunday morning at the Anglican Cathedral was lovely: service in Arabic, with hymns, prayers and responses by them in Arabic and by us simultaneously in English: a glorious babble. Why do we so often insist on reverent silence in our churches?

We also had a few days in Galilee. It’s very beautiful. Green and hilly, like round here, but on a bigger scale. Why would an itinerant speaker like Jesus draw such crowds? A prophet? A subversive? A healer— yes, that’s it, surely—people would flock to a healer. We stood in the ruined synagogue in Capernaum, where the paralysed man was healed. We sang in the warm acoustic of the church over St Peter’s house, and celebrated Mass by the sea of Galilee.

There were some disturbing sights. The 9-metre high concrete so-called ‘peace wall’ separating members of the same family, separating Palestinians from their means of earning a livelihood. The new road that Palestinians may not use, but that they can see tunnelling under their city. Unemployment. Water and power only 3 days week in Palestinian settlements like Bethlehem, Bethany and Jericho. The prosperity of the Jewish settlements. Old Testament prophets bewail the plight of the oppressed: well, think about the Palestinians of today. I was reminded of the recent history of South Africa. In the midst of this, I met the holiest woman I have ever seen: Alice Sahar whose family runs homes for abused, tortured and abandoned children in Bethany, the town of the risen Lazarus.

Healing

Posted on 11/08/2008 by Rambling Rector

What is health?

Is it realistic or reasonable to expect that we’ll always feel on top form? Why should we expect the state to look after us when our own deliberate actions have brought illness upon us?

These are difficult questions that society has to grapple with. They are also relevant to Christianity, and by healing I don’t mean medical cure (anyway, cure of what? cure of being human? cure of being alive? we’re all going to die), but salving, relieving, coming to terms with, accepting, feeling at peace, being liberated from guilt, living in the moment. This, surely, is healing—being made whole.

All Christian teaching is, or should be, about healing. Every Christian encounter should be a healing encounter. We’ve lost sight of this, I think, partly because many Christian encounters in the past have been finger-wagging thou-shalt-nots, and so healing was often seen as dependent on obeying man-made rules.

Not so. We can all be channels of God’s healing grace, freely given. The response required from us who are sick is merely to say ‘yes, I accept’. As far as I can see from the Gospels, Jesus’ healings were always and only at the request of the afflicted.

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb has to want to change.

Eternal life and holidays

Posted on 09/07/2008 by Rambling Rector

Compared to life as a medical school teacher, what strikes me about clergy life is its relentlessness (always on call), unpredictability (the phone can go any time with demands that need action now), and the variety of things I’m expected to do. The thing that takes most getting used to is having lots of projects on the go at the same time: it’s not a case of finishing one job before starting another. Indeed, some jobs don’t seem to finish at all, they’re like a sluggish river oozing towards the sea, and it’s often difficult to see if they are completed at all, as they flow in to the sea of daily life. There’s a messiness and unpredictability to clergy life that seems pretty much in tune with day-to-day living for most people on the planet, and it reminds us all that, despite what anyone may tell us, or what we in the privileged, pampered and prosperous West may think, we are not in control. We simply don’t know what’s around the corner. It’s certainly a good idea to ‘live each day as if ‘twere thy last’, and it’s a good idea to make peace now with people who are estranged from us, so that when we come to shuffle off this mortal coil, there are no regrets or feelings of guilt left behind. I know from my funeral ministry that most of the grief in those mourning the loss of a loved one comes from guilt, shame and regrets about unreconciled fallings-out. Acceptance of this uncertainty is a key factor in living in the moment, and living in the moment is the key to eternal life—eternal meaning outside time, not everlasting, which is a misleading translation.

Acceptance of uncertainty means not clinging to the past (very Anglican) or worrying about the future. It means getting rid of unhealthy attachments (to family, to attitudes, to possessions) that Our Lord was always keen to encourage, such attachments being, to the Buddhist mind the causes of all dis-ease of the spirit, of the body, of humanity. This link should cause no surprise: the reverence for which, for example, HH the Dalai Lama holds Jesus’ teachings is well known. Disposing of such attachments is liberation, moving into a wide, unrestricted, unlimited place, and this is a potent image of salvation for the Hebrews: the promised land. It is a potent image for me too. And when we acknowledge our powerlessness, and discard attachments, there is nothing to be proud about, so pride goes to. Think how much better the world would be without pride. We would have no shame or regrets when the pain of parting hits us.

Trying to be on top of things all the time is an attempt to control the future. It’s a disease to which I am very prone, but it is in truth doomed to failure. Maybe I should just relax, and let it wash over me: maybe we should all just relax and let it wash over us. Some things just have to be done, and we can’t escape death or taxes, but others can wait. When I worked in Dublin, I had a ‘long finger’ file where I put stuff I didn’t know what to do with. Occasionally, I’d get out the long finger file and discover that what was in it had either resolved itself, or the deadline was past, and the world had not ended, so the stuff went in the bin. Fantastic!

We need ‘right judgement in all things’ as the prayer for Whitsunday has it. And in the midst of the messiness of life, this is often hard to come by. For right judgement we need proper nutrition with periods of rest, relaxation and reflection. Every cell in our body needs nutrition and waste disposal, and so do our minds and intellects. Nutrition for the intellect comes from stimulation: provocation, new challenges, new experiences. Waste disposal is provided by reflection, thinking about changes we need to make—doing the things that we ought to have done but haven’t, and resolving never again to do those things which we ought not to have done but did. We need to spend time being still and letting thoughts come to us. We are human beings, not human doings. These thoughts can be things of great beauty and delight, and, as eating good food brings pleasure and delight, so the right mental stimulation can lead to the most delightful thoughts and reflection. I call this prayer. Prayer isn’t just sitting or kneeling in church with your eyes shut and hands together, it’s a broad term for hearkening to, listening to and heeding, something bigger than humanity. And all this is why holidays are so important. A short holiday every day, a minute or two here and there. A longer holiday every now and then. Holy-days, properly taken will lead us towards holiness, wholeness, liberation, enlightenment, salvation, eternal life—call it what you like.

Rambling Rector Retired

Category Archives: Pastoralia