Advent letter 2018

Posted on 05/12/2018 by Rambling Rector

Leningrad bookshop as was

Yesterday a friend told us that she hated Christmas letters. This is because, she said (rightly in our experience), she is fed up with hearing how perfect other families are, mum and dad sustaining the world economy with their cottage industry, fighting corruption and reversing global warming, though—hypocrisy alert—this seems to involve a fair bit of travelling on aeroplanes. The children of this perfect family are truly chips off the old block and are already in line for Nobel prizes.

It doesn’t occur to the writers to put a sticker on the envelope advising the ingestion of antiemetic medication before opening.

This may well be the last of the Monkhice “Advent” letters since the Vicar has it on good authority that the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England, in its continuing suicidal quest to be relevant and trendy, will abolish Advent from 2019. It will be replaced by a series of “Sundays after Black Friday”, the liturgical colour to be vermilion red to reflect the resultant bank balances. The season of expectation is thus replaced, in line with the zeitgeist, by that of instant gratification. The residents of Burton vicarage, in their loyalty to all liturgical innovation, have enthusiastically embraced the spirit of the age by consuming the first tin of Celebrations. Actually it’s plastic. Can you have a plastic tin?

Susan and Stanley went to Barcelona in February. It snowed. We liked Barcelona, especially the old part. Stanley was not impressed by Gaudi. Despite, or possibly because of, reading History of Art at Cambridge, he thought a five-year old could have done better. The Sagrada Familia is over-rated and looks as if it’s melting, and Gaudi’s tiles are not as good as the ones in Carlisle station jacksie where there are also some interesting and educational messages on the wall.

Speaking of which, himself got into trouble in Sagrada where he was desperate for a wazz so went to the loo, or tried to. But a Guardian of the Porcelain refused him entry on the ground that it was being cleaned. He was reminded of an episode in Leningrad, as was, in 1987 when in the bookshop on Nevsky Prospekt young Hugh, nine or so, said he needed the loo. Stanley went to the counter and said to the assistant “gdye twalette pazhalusta?” The response was “nyet.” This exchange was repeated. Stanley turned to young Hugh and suggested that he go into the corner of the shop and “piss on the floor”. The assistant then escorted the pair of them to the staff toilet. It just goes to show.

The next outing after Barcelona was to Cumberland in August where the Vicar officiated at the wedding of his grandniece in the parish church of the village where he spent his childhood. It was a lovely occasion marred only by the fact that his left eye, the blind one, was very painful. Examination the next week revealed that it was about rupture as a result of arteries bleeding into the vitreous humour, so he had a little operation. It is still not right, not painful but irritating. He wanted them to take it out so that he could have two glass eyes, one with red sclera so that he could pretend to be Dracula when it suited him. Or rather half Dracula since the good eye does not (yet) have a red sclera. Actually, the good eye isn’t that good. It has glaucoma and a cataract. He won’t drive on dark nights any more. This is wonderful since he can miss meetings. He told his parishioners that there would be no more evening meetings in the winter. They were delighted. Fewer meetings for all: truly a win-win situation.

The trip to Cumberland was combined with the Vicar giving an organ recital in Whitehaven. Surprisingly perhaps, West Cumberland is full of good organs for which there are various reasons, one of which being the profitability in the 19th and early 20th centuries of mining and heavy industry.

Our other jaunt was by train to meet medical school friends in Leeds. Decades since we last saw some of them. Apart from these trips, and occasional visits to Ireland, it’s difficult to prise Monkhice from Burton.

Stanley’s hearing is disimproving too, again not without benefits in meetings. They have mouths, and speak not: eyes have they, and see not. They have ears, and hear not: noses have they, and smell not. Susan’s hearing is not great either but her vision is good. She can still thread needles. She spends a lot of time crocheting and stuffing things—toy animals that she makes along with friends at The Making House which is in posh Burton, that is to say, the other side of the river.

Stanley was reminded yesterday that 2019 marks 50 years since he started third level education. He says education, though he’s inclined to the Alan Bennett view that education is what’s left when you’ve forgotten everything you were taught. This year was 30 years since he became Professor of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Like birthdays and anniversaries such things don’t move him much, but they are reminders that tempus fugits. As it fugits he looks back over his life and he’s reasonably happy given that he doesn’t want to be boring—indeed he thinks boring people should be exterminated—and he would like on his deathbed to say “my God that was a helluva ride”. Or royud as they say in north Dublin.

After having being led a merry dance over the past few decades, Susan has chosen the retirement home. Not Penrith, as previously suggested (that was a crazy idea – she says so herself) but here in Burton. It’s a 2-down 3-up with a long thin garden in the town centre. The question is when? Himself is required to quit his job no later than 6 June 2020 when he’ll be 70. He could go earlier. He could apply from year’s extension in order to see the assistant curate through the first three years. We shall see.

Stanley learnt long ago not to make statements on behalf of other people, so all he’ll say about the rest of family is that Victoria and Edward are well, delightful, quirky, so not boring, in Dublin—as is Shane, Victoria’s husband. Abby and Adriene are well in Texas. We are of course in regular contact with them. Adriene remarried this summer so we hope that they will have stability after a tumultuous time. Abby is coming over next summer and we look forward to that. Hugh is always in our hearts. It is indeed true that he shall not grow old as we that are left grow old. Which reminds me if you want to read my Remembrance Sunday sermon, you’ll find it on my blog. Google Rambling Rector blog.

Happy advent, sorry I mean happy season after Black Friday. May whatever force you believe in light up your life. And remember, sin is life unlived.

Remembrance Sunday 2018

Posted on 03/11/2018 by Rambling Rector

thiepval-memorial-missing-2 Inevitably this year we look back on the First World War.

Thinking about it, even briefly, fills me with sadness: sadness at the events that led to it, sadness at the way it was conducted, and sadness at the loss of life—in round figures, 2 million from the British Empire, 4 million each from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, and approaching 5 million from Russia.

That sadness soon turns to anger. I find it hard to see WW1 as anything other than gangs of arrogant, inbred, white men strutting around, boasting “mine’s bigger than yours”, and demanding the sacrifice of lives they consider expendable for the sake of their pernicious playground politics.

Let’s move on 100 years.

Can those images be applied to contemporary affairs? You bet they can—all of ‘em. We see pettiness, squabbles, lies, evasions, egocentricity, showing off, and a refusal to accept that actions have consequences.

Why do we humans behave like this?

We do so in part because we’re too attached to polarized thinking, right/wrong, either/or. This is rarely healthy. Even in science, where you would think ideas are either right or wrong, it doesn’t always apply, especially for things that are very small or very large. Rather than either/or, thinking both/and can be more helpful: inclusive rather than exclusive.

The problem with right/wrong thinking is that if we are certain we’re right, we feel no need to learn anything new. We stop being curious. We lose the sense of wonder. We stop being open to other viewpoints. We surround ourselves with attitudes, possessions, money. We become addicted to them. We retreat behind metaphorical electric gates that we think protect us, but that in truth constrain us. We become obsessed, like Gollum in Lord of the Rings. In the words of Psalm 17 we become “inclosed in our own fat, and our mouth speaketh proud things.”

We provoke fights to prove who’s top dog. We become fearful of people that are not “one of us”. Demagogues know that fear lasts longer than hope, and is more powerful, and that with fear on their side, they can get people to believe anything and do anything. We start to regard others as less human than we are, and so fair game to be bullied, abused, killed. We become as those for whom might is their god.

In chapter 10 of Mark’s Gospel, there’s a story about Jesus talking to a man who wants to do the right thing. Jesus tells him to sell what he owns, and give the money to the poor—that is, don’t let possessions rule his life. But the man, despite his goodness, can’t let go of wealth, power, status—things that people fight to hang on to. Jesus challenges him to try to liberate him from attitudes that will destroy his personality and his ability to enjoy life to the full.

I ask you to contrast the closed-mindedness and fearfulness of so many adults with the open-mindedness, intellectual vitality and fearlessness of the young. I wonder how things might be different if there were more young decision-makers—people who have a vested interest in the future. I wonder why the church is run by yesterday’s men and women for a future they won’t be alive to see. I wonder why the country is run by yesterday’s men and women.

I’m one of the old men, of course, but these comments are based on experience. I have the honour of being Chaplain to Burton Air Training Corps. For 30 years I taught young adults in medical schools, and although I was born in 1950, I feel as if I‘m six. As always, I’m delighted to see young people here. Let’s applaud them and their commitment to the Services in all sorts of ways.

What’s the solution to the arrogance, fearfulness and closed-mindedness that so easily leads to war?

In the first reading we heard Prophet Micah telling his people that the Lord doesn’t need to be placated by gifts and sacrifices. All he asks is for each individual to work for justice, to be compassionate, and to be humble. Don’t get that word humble wrong. It doesn’t mean grovel. It doesn’t mean being “ever so ‘umble”: that’s merely inverted pride. It means to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses. It means having your feet firmly planted on the ground—to be earthed (humus). It means remembering that we’re all in this together.

If we—each one of us—heeded this advice, the world would be a better place. If we all meant what we said and said only what we mean, if we were honest, if we were compassionate and recognized that not one of us is perfect, if we refused to lord it over others, then the world would be transformed. Yes, we need armour, as the second reading tells us. We need to protect ourselves. We need to be ready to fight—but fight for justice, fight to rid the world of oppression. Fighting for justice is love in action. The trouble is we see injustice and we do nothing, and that nurtures resentment, and resentment breeds extremism.

The answer to pernicious warfare does not lie with someone else. It’s not the responsibility of “them over there”. It’s the responsibility of every single one of us—you and me as well as them.

When we go to war—and the Second World War shows that there are times when we must—let’s be sure that mendacious and malignant swaggering plays no part. If those in power insist that they are right and everyone else is wrong—and recent history tells us that there are such people—then let’s strip them of office: after all, we still live in a democracy.

Our duty is to fight for justice, for without justice there will never be peace.

The Kim code

Posted on 07/10/2018 by Rambling Rector

kim_il_sung North Korea has long fascinated me.

Michael Palin’s Channel 5 programmes (http://www.channel5.com/show/michael-palin-in-north-korea/) helped me to see how, in a country completely flattened by US forces just over half a century ago, people see Kim Il-sung as saviour. The social morality of Confucianism helps me to understand how loyalty and filial piety contribute to the Kim family surviving in power. With US forces perceived as hostile only 100 miles away from Pyongyang, I understand the necessity to run a tight ship. Given the changes that are beginning to occur, I wonder how long it will be before Pyongyang is much like any other city in east Asia.

North Korea has affected my theology too.

Consider some of the stories surrounding the births of the Kim leaders. Heavenly sounds; miraculous changes in flora and fauna; rainbows; stars. Sound familiar?

There is nothing new about such birth narratives. They have always been part of folk mythology. There was nothing new about the Gospel birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and certainly nothing new about virgin births (there’s an interesting story to be told about the history of ideas in embryology, but it can wait).

Why are they written? Quite simply, to embiggen* the subject.

Biblical scholars have known for centuries that the scriptural birth narratives are fiction, fairy tales written for exactly this purpose. There is nothing even remotely new about this proposition. The stories in Matthew and Luke are stuffed with allusions to Hebrew prophecies and how the babe of Bethlehem is their fulfilment—again to ‘big up’ the child in the manger.

So what?

Jesus was a charismatic, integrated human. His effect on those around him was profound. His influence extended far beyond those who met him. He became the example, the prototype of abundant human living. His friends, impressed by him as by no-one else, wrote about him afterwards to ‘big him up’ so that his influence lives on long after his death. There is nothing new here.
Is he the Son of God? Kim Il-sung is a god. John 1 tells us that we all may become ‘children’ of God. Our destination in eastern Christian theology is that we come to share in the attributes of God.
Kim Il-sung, though dead, is risen. He is still head of state. He is worshipped.

Some other parallels

Every official pronouncement and scientific paper in the Soviet Union had to begin with a reference to the works of Lenin, and in North Korea today, official pronouncements must quote one or more of the Kims. In the church, when people are confronted by a knotty problem, medical ethics for example, they first work out what common sense tells them, then they scour the Bible to back it up with a suitable quotation.
Institutional churches are totalitarian states. When the Church of England’s Church Assembly was set up in 1919, taking away some of the power from Parliament, one MP said ‘The fact that the organisation proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury is precisely the same organisation as has been adopted by Lenin is attributable to the desire of both to secure the same end … The real principle at the root of Bolshevism is a desire to combine a democratic form with autocratic effects, and that is what has taken place in this Constitution.’ (see: That Was The Church That Was: Andrew Brown & Linda Woodhead). Recent events in the Catholic Church and the Church of England make it clear that nothing has changed.
As an aside, it is held in North Korea that the digestive systems of the Kim family were so well tuned that they never needed to excrete urine or faeces (a bit like ladies who don’t sweat, I suppose, but much better). We know nothing about Jesus’ excretory processes, so the Kims are one up there. Furthermore, Kim Jong-il was regarded by some as fashion guru. Jesus’ influence in that regard flowered briefly in the hippie 60s, but didn’t survive.

So …

For me, the value of Scripture is in allegory and poetry. Some of it is terrible tripe. I recall my ageing Methodist minister uncle telling me that increasingly he was a Wordsworthian who saw God in all things. Just as platelets are broken off bits of megakaryocytes, so everything in the cosmos is a bit of God. We all have particles in us from the big bang. We may well have within us, in the form of mitochondria, some of the earliest life forms. We are all bits of God. What is not God is nothing (I think that’s from Sergei Bulgakov). What is not God is no thing.

Logos can be translated as ‘the system underlying all things’ (read Heraclitus), so: the laws of the cosmos. In John 1 this gives us: In the beginning was the system underlying all things, and the system underlying all things was with God, and the system underlying all things was God.

I can cling to that, just about, and to the last line of one of the verses of This is the truth sent from above: ‘and if you want to know the way, be pleased to hear what he did say’ [and do].

* embiggen came into use, along with cromulent, after being used in ‘Lisa the Iconoclast’, the sixteenth episode of The Simpsons, seventh series (1995-6).

His Holiness Archimandrite Phillip Jefferies

Posted on 28/09/2018 by Rambling Rector

A good vicar

October 2018 St Paul’s mag

By the time you read this, the Jefferies extravaganza will be over. As someone ordained priest only 11 years ago, I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like having been a priest for 50 years. How has he not been bored, year in year out? How has he managed to keep his patience? How has he managed to cope with the increasingly bureaucratic, meddling and managerial Church of England? I can’t answer for him so I’ll ask him to write something for next month’s magazine on half a century of priesthood.

It’s also half a century of marriage. Ye Gods, how has Rose managed to cope with him? I would be interested to read Rose’s reflections. I shall ask her to dish the dirt too. Behind every successful man is an astonished mother-in-law, but I guess it’s too late to ask her.

There are some terrible gobshites amongst the clergy. Phillip is not one of them. You might expect someone who has had a ministry like his, someone who has been (and is) as respected as he is, to be difficult to work with as a retired colleague. You might imagine that he would be telling me how he did things, and how I’m doing it all wrong, and generally waving it around to try and make me feel inferior.

Phillip does none of that. I hope he won’t disagree with me when I say that we have a great time. We exchange views. He gives advice when I ask for it, which is often. He answers questions honestly. I have no sense that he tells me only what he thinks I want to hear. He encourages me to take more risks than I do because, I sense, he feels he didn’t himself take enough. And thanks be to God, he is eye-twinklingly intelligent—which puts him in a tiny minority of clergy, I can tell you: him and me, in fact.

In short, I couldn’t wish for a better colleague. He had to retire when he was 65 under the terms of his appointment as Team Rector of Stafford, and here he is working with someone who’s 68. But he doesn’t take it out on me.

He will soon be submitting to the surgeon’s knife—if, that is, a heart lurks somewhere in Phillip’s thorax. I hope that his personality and inherent naughtiness will survive surgery intact, or even be enhanced, so that he and I can egg each other on to further heights of mischief.

Thank you Phillip: you’re a darling.

From Iona’s isle

Posted on 02/09/2018 by Rambling Rector

Homily for Patronal Festival Evensong of the Church of St Aidan, Burton upon Trent

What attracted me, a Cumbrian village lad brought up in Chapel Sunday School, to defect to the Church of England when I was about 13? It was serious enough to lead to attempts at emotional blackmail by the Methodist minister about betraying family loyalty.

It was the liturgy and language of the Book of Common Prayer. Although I may by then have developed an ear for words—I was already consuming P G Wodehouse—what really appealed was the sense that these words and this liturgy had been used for over 400 years in this place, week-in, week-out. A matter of tradition.

What makes me begin every Sunday Mass at St Paul’s with the Trinitarian greeting in Latin? It’s not because I think I’m in Rome. It’s the feeling in some small way that those words have been said in similar circumstances for give or take 2,000 years. A matter of tradition.

The root of the word tradition is trade. It implies movement, transaction, development. It is not a static, sterile thing, but active and fluid. I like to know what a tradition is, and why and how it developed. I can use bits of it as suits me. In this morning’s readings we were reminded that tradition is not to be blindly followed, but is there for our sustenance. We live in the present and make plans, drawing on the best of the past as and when.

What, I wonder, did Aidan think of tradition? What would he have regarded as traditions? He is credited with the growth of the church in Northumbria. What would he be doing here in Burton, now? At this festival last year, George, the Diocesan Director for Mission said that we might see growth in the church if we could all tell one person the story of our Christian discipleship, encouraging them to join us and see for themselves.

I didn’t say so at the time, for I had no wish to be discourteous in public, but I didn’t agree with him. I don’t think that cuts the mustard these days.

First, I think many of us would be hard pressed to articulate our Christian formation. We came to church because we were made to. We found something that kept us coming, maybe singing, maybe shared interests, maybe community. We might occasionally have listened to Scripture or even to sermons, and gradually, very gradually we absorbed something of the Christian tradition. It has been, and remains, a slow process. It’s bit like the development of a fetus from one cell to a newborn baby: it’s impossible to point to one particular moment at which something dramatic happens, but over nine months the transformation is miraculous. For many of us, that Christian transformation takes place over decades. I don’t believe that the thing that some people call conversion is an event. It’s a process. Even St Paul’s so-called conversion took place over days, rather than in a moment.

Second, the Christian story is not sufficiently compelling—or maybe is not told in a compelling enough fashion—to get people to change. In western Europe, we are, I think, too prosperous, not desperate enough. Look around the world at where Christianity flourishes—I’m not talking here of the prosperity gospel of the American evangelists: that is a perversion of Christianity.

And then there’s the public image of the church. At the moment it’s grim. Suffice it to say that the institutional church is seen by many as a safe-space for child abusers.

So I think telling people about Jesus, or telling them our personal story is unlikely to be effective. In our world, people are suspicious of institutions, and of anyone who tries to impose their point of view. Such a strategy is seen as manipulative, even abusive.

Sorry George, it’s not the way.

Rather than tell, let’s show. Actions speak louder than words. I’m much more impressed by what people do rather than what they say, and you might remember the gospel story comparing a man who says he won’t do something but then does it, with a man says he’ll do something but then fails to deliver.

We have sung a hymn written by John Bell of the Iona community. If there is something about Iona that infects people, then I like to think that this hymn has the spirit of Aidan in it—not tramping around the countryside yabbering on about Jesus, if he did, but showing Jesus in action.

Whatever else the traditions of the early church in these islands have given us, they have left us with that of confession: heart speaking to heart as we tell a friend our deepest fears. Those fears are so often about the lack of courage to change, being too comfortable, too complacent, too prosperous, as we surround ourselves with metaphorical fig leaves of luxury. Those fears lead us to live, as it were, behind electric gates, inclosed in our own fat, our mouth speaking proud things.

The words of the hymn are prophetic, demanding, shocking.

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same? Are you prepared to be changed?
Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?Are you prepared to acknowledge that what you want is not necessarily the Divine will?
Will you leave yourself behind?Are you prepared to acknowledge that what you want is no more important that what someone else wants? The crucifixion/ascension is the replacement of selfishness with selflessness. Are you prepared to give and not to count the cost?
Will you risk the hostile stare? Are you prepared to be unpopular?
Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name?Are you prepared to delve deep into your psyche to uncover your deepest darkest fears and impulses, and expose them to the light?
Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around?Are you prepared to fight? Fighting for justice is love in action.

If we want to attract people to the Christian message we can’t do better than show them what it is. Working for justice, tending the sick in mind or body, provoking people to leave the ruts they are in, getting people to see things differently. This is Jesus in action. It’s so much more authentic than simply telling people about Jesus. It’s utterly authentic psychology, utterly authentic Christian tradition, utterly authentic Christianity.

Expectations and reality

Posted on 30/08/2018 by Rambling Rector

Church Magazine, September 2018

I’m glad to see the back of August. It seems to have been an awfully long month. From a personal point of view it’s not been without its trials. At the risk of boring you all, I tell you again I don’t like hot and muggy weather, and it has been very hot and muggy. Then there is the continuing saga of the left eye. Earlier in the month, the pain was such that I was sure it must be eye cancer that had already invaded the skull bones, and I was planning my funeral. Like many medics—even though I practised full time for only 12 months 40 years ago—I tend to catastrophize.

I quite enjoyed sitting in the ophthalmology waiting room. It gave me a sense of superiority. I may be older than some of the other punters, but I’m not as obese as most, I’m sprightlier than most, I don’t have a Zimmer frame and I look less miserable than most. Indeed the consultant ophthalmologist said that I looked a lot younger than 68. So there.

The NHS, truly the national religion, is indeed a wonderful thing and we need to protect it from the assaults of the enemy. But let’s keep a sense of proportion. It was not invented to make up for our irresponsible decisions. It was not invented for A and E departments to be a pool of vomit every weekend as a result of leglessness. It was not invented so that people could ask for sterilisations to be reversed just because they’ve changed their minds. It was not invented to keep people alive well beyond what might reasonably be expected. It can not alter the fact that life is a terminal condition, and the longer you live the more likely you are to die. Get used to it.

We have unrealistic expectations of health. We think the doctor’s duty is to make us feel as well at 68 as we did at 28, despite the lifetime of shoving stuff into our gobs that is not good for us, despite choosing to do things that take their toll. If you are going to go running on hard pavements, don’t be surprised when you get knackered knees. And don’t blame someone else. I know this is a favourite theme of mine, but the fact is that actions have consequences, and we have to take responsibility for our actions. It’s no good praying to the sky pixie for healing when the condition results from our own genetics or activities. I know people are afflicted by disease through no “fault” of their own, but I’m not talking about conditions like that.

Anyway, healing doesn’t mean perfection. It means coming to terms with the reality of the situation you’re in. If you’re dying of cancer and accept that it is so, there’s a sense in which you are healed. Think about it. And remember that stress always results from the mismatch between expectations and reality. Ditch expectations and live moment by moment. Yes, I know it’s difficult. I’m not good at it.

Just as we are often unrealistic about things of the body, so we are about things of the spirit. Here are some tips for spiritual refreshment from Niki Hardy, who lives with rectal cancer.

List a few things you’re grateful for: practising gratitude increases wellbeing.
Write down how you’re feeling: tired, angry, worried, resentful, hopeful or whatever. Then think about what you’ve written.
Put on some beautiful music.
Get out into nature: lots of people see more of God in a garden than in a church.
Find somewhere quiet and sit in silence. Remember Elijah encountering God not in storm or noise but in silence. Be still. Be quiet. Stop yabbering on.
Be kind to others. Remember that everyone is fighting battles you know nothing about.
Be kind to yourself.
Stop moaning.

Happy Autumn.

ees crazy Mr Fawlty

Posted on 24/07/2018 by Rambling Rector

parody-of-the-famous-scene-by-a-basil-lookalike_542319 Church magazine, August 2018

Mental health

Several people with mental health issues have come my way recently. It’s quite clear that support for psychiatric patients in this country is woeful. Men suffer more than women, partly because it’s more socially acceptable for women to talk about this.

I was at a party recently during the World Cup when a group of men came in and immediately gathered round the TV, exchanging football banter. I was watching from the side. This meant that they didn’t have to make any effort at conversation. It’s what men do—or don’t do. We’re tender creatures under all the bravado, and have not been brought up to talk about personal issues. Sport talk is displacement activity. We suffer for it.

Staffordshire has the highest rate of young suicides in the country. You’ll know from local news how often the trains are disrupted, or the A38 is blocked, by suicides from overbridges. And they are nearly all young men.

Sunday morning recently at St Paul’s saw a psychotic man demanding help. He was talking non-stop about fighting Satan and listening to and talking to Princess Diana. We rang the police who said they didn’t want to know—we said they should want to know. We rang the ambulance service who after some reluctance eventually turned up, and so, interestingly, did the police. The man was taken to hospital.

When I was a medical student, there were asylums for the psychiatrically incapacitated. Then they were closed, replaced by “care in the community”. This might work for those who are reasonably well adjusted. It doesn’t work for people with severe neuroses and psychoses. If you wonder what these words mean, neurosis in simple terms is exaggerated worrying; psychosis is losing touch with reality. It has been said that neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them, and psychiatrists take the rent.

Asylums were not there to protect society from crazies; they were there to protect ill people from society. We need asylums and better community support. Pressure needs to be brought to bear on local and national representatives and on government. What are you going to do about it?

Mental health issues are common. I make no secret of the fact that I have been on happy pills (SSRIs in my case) for over a decade, and probably should have been before that. When I try reducing the dose or stopping them, I become paranoid. I have a tendency to that anyway, but it’s kept in check by sertraline or similar drugs. I see no reason to hide this. I’m not in the least ashamed of it. There’s obviously something about the production of brain chemicals in me that isn’t ideal. If someone’s insulin production from the pancreas is awry, allowances are made and people bend over backwards to accommodate them. If someone’s brain chemical production is awry, they may well feel ashamed and try to hide it. This is crazy.

Life is complicated. I’m pretty sure our brains weren’t “designed” to cope with the complexities we’ve invented over the last 100 years. We need to simplify our lives. I keep telling you that we are apes. Perhaps we can go back to picking fleas off each other as we sit companionably basking in the sunshine.

Which takes me to a major rant. It’s too hot. I hate this weather. Some of you may be praying for more of it. I’m praying for cold and some rain. I suppose it’s a bit like an arm-wrestling competition. Who’ll win? This leads me to wonder if praying to a sky-pixie is itself a psychosis. I wouldn’t be the first.

The world is in a mess—not just mental health services. We’ve heard some Old Testament prophets recently who wrote at a time when people had become greedy and had stopped following values of decency. The wealthy elite had become rich at the expense of others. Farmers who once served local communities had been forced to farm what was best for foreign trade. And people say Scripture is irrelevant to modern life.

Moving on

The talk at schools recently has been about seniors moving on, and welcoming new pupils in September. Lots of emotions in the air: excitement, apprehension, finding new friends, losing old ones. Likely as not, students move from being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a bigger pond. If this hasn’t happened to them before, it will certainly happen again, because that’s life, and it happens again and again.

We’ve a choice in dealing with this: we can jump into the pool, go with the flow, and take what comes, or else we can retreat into a self-contained box and do the equivalent of living in dark room, never venturing out.

Jesus’ most often heard advice was ‘don’t be afraid’ (or words to that effect), and on several occasions he advised his disciples when out fishing to put out into the deep for the best catch. There’s good advice. Jump in and see what comes. Grab life by the little round things. Young people are usually much better at this than so-called grown-ups.

Here’s some Stanley advice: give to the world what only you can give—you, with your combination of gifts and talents and enthusiasms. Your vocation is, in the words of Frederick Buechner, ‘where your greatest joy meets the world deepest need.’ So go for it, boys and girls. Take risks, jump in.

Taking responsibility and growing up

In all this, there’s more than a whiff of the need for each one of us to take responsibility for ourselves. To grow up, in fact. This process is not helped by the indulgent over-cosseting that people and organisations provide for those who should learn to stand on their own feet. The NHS is culpable IMHO in that it leads people to think that it will pick up the pieces for their irresponsible choices.

So here’s a message to all of us, myself included, who are responsible for the nurturing of young people: we’re doing them no favours by mollycoddling them. We do them no favours if we confuse love with sentimentality.

C S Lewis said (something like) ‘God wants us to get out of the nursery and grow up’, a message that reflects the teachings of Jesus whose healings always included the afflicted coming to terms with the reality of their situation. The laws of nature (‘God made everything, and it was very good’) are inexorable and totally unsentimental. And human behaviour, which could be merciful, often isn’t. We need to deal with the world as it is, not the world as we wish it to be. Then our own healing can begin. Stop moaning.

You’re no good to anyone else if you’re suffering yourself. Which brings me back to where I started. Take care of your own health; seek help when necessary.

Happy summer.

Divine sustenance from a child

Posted on 22/07/2018 by Rambling Rector

Homily for Proper 12, year

2 Kings 4.42-44; Ephesians 3.14-21; John 6.1-21

I’m not bothered whether the feeding of the five thousand is historical or not. Its symbolic power is profound.

Jesus distributes victuals to the hungry. Victuals, fruits of creation, are gathered by the labour of human hands. Crossing the lake to the other, gentile, side tells us that the message is for all, not just respectable club members. It’s for the whole world, represented by the five thousand (5 in Biblical numerology signifying whole). In all this, the allusion to the mass is clear enough: takes loaves, breaks them, distributes, consumes.

Here are several topics for a homily, but today I’m not dealing with any of them. I want to consider something you may think is a minor detail. All the gospel writers tell this story, but only John tells us that the victuals are provided by a paidarion, the Greek for child or young slave. Yes: the bread of life comes from the hands of a child. This is a remarkable detail, and one that hits me all the more forcefully every time I see children in action.

Here are some resonances it conjures up:

A little child shall lead them.
Allow the children to come to me.
If anyone hurts a child, it would be better for that person to be thrown into the water with a stone around his neck.
To enter the kingdom of heaven you must be as a child.
The old man carried the child, but the child governs the old man (Simeon).

What is it about children that is so important?

Straightforward. Trusting. Direct, unhampered by so-called politeness and good manners. Pushing at boundaries. Taking risks. Full of energy. Full of imagination.

The openness and open-mindedness of children reminds me of a favourite Hebrew image of salvation: enlightenment, freedom from ignorance. Buddhist too. Such freedom comes from living in the moment—being fully aware of what exactly is going on in and around us, with open eyes and minds: nonjudgmental mindfulness.

But this is a difficult thing for us adults to aspire to. The ‘freshness’ of the child within us has been obscured by the accretions of ‘adultness’ that gather around the core. Layers that come from pride, wilfulness, selfishness, thoughtlessness, self-deception, pretence, puffed-upness. We are “inclosed in our own fat”. We tell ourselves that some of these things are necessary to get on in life, to crawl up the greasy career pole, to please other people. I know—I’ve been there. All these things that prevent us from living the authentic life that is trying to get out. All these things mar the image of innocence within, and by innocence I mean simply a lack of noxiousness. Our hearts are hardened by life. Scarred. Solidified. Frozen in ice. All encasing that innocence, that child-likeness within.

To give a medical analogy, think what happens when we are wounded. The wound heals by scarring, and scar tissue is thick and ugly. So as we go through life with its hurts – others hurt us and we hurt ourselves, the accumulating scar tissue obscures the inner core. It clouds our view of the world; it prevents others from seeing what we are truly like. We end up like a Russian doll with so many layers covering the core.

The journey towards salvation requires us to let these layers fall away. I suggest, like the Fathers of the Church of the first three centuries (before Augustine) that the core within is divine, part of God implanted within us all. All we have to do is cooperate with it once we recognize it. To recognize it requires that we search for it.

This is not easy. A good place to start is by self-examination, by trying to see ourselves as others see us. You might try imagining yourself on a cloud looking down at you and noting what you see. One of the best ways to go about this task is to open your heart to someone you trust absolutely.

You might say that such self-examination is about letting the light shine into your soul. It may be that you are altogether better than I am, with only pure whiteness within—but looking around at you, I doubt that. In myself I’ve seen pride and selfishness masquerading as necessity or pragmatism. I’ve convinced myself that rearrangement of my prejudices is radical thought.

Later in the liturgy we meet the Lord. He is love, so why be afraid? Maybe we are not so much afraid as ashamed. If God is love, and love is God, we don’t need to be ashamed. Are we afraid that by letting someone into our lives we are in some way diminished? Not so, said Pope Benedict XVI at his inauguration: ‘Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return.’

Let the warmth in. Warmth hatches chicks. We need hatching of our hearts. Or, melting. Strangely warmed, as John Wesley said. Warm the shell of grumpy self-obsession, and we see the world again through child-like eyes. If the eye is healthy, the whole body is full of light. The challenge is to confront our demons inside in the hope that the light will bleach them, to help us to approach the image of God within – that We may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

Consider this:

I think we have lost the ability to balance. Our equilibrium is off. I can’t remember the last time I witnessed somebody making a good balanced unbiased decision. I think the phrase “godly, righteous and sober life” is the thing, sober is the way forward, well–considered, well thought out, and poised. This doesn’t even come close to saying what it was supposed to, but when you get started it’s hard to stay on point which I think was about listening. Inner peace – it is in the listening that I heal. The problem is that the noise inside my head is deafening.

My elder son wrote that in an email from Texas not long before he died

Listening to the quiet, letting the heart be warmed and hatched in the light, is a daily discipline. Listening in silence is prayer. There are other ways of hatching too: journal writing, gardening, walking, acts of compassion, social protest.

Whatever ways you choose, attend to your heart. Listen to others. Be quiet and listen to yourself.

Read Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Again and again—it’s full of pertinent resonances, wholeness restored when Gerda’s tears of love melt Kay’s heart of ice. Through child-like love we attain eternity.