Two spiritual autobiographies

Posted on 31/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

It took me a while to overcome a Kindle aversion. All sorts of reasons: Amazon exploiting the book market, inveigling its way into my mind through cookies, and so on and so forth. And then I thought ‘sod it’ and bought one. So far I haven’t spilt tea on it.

Good for stuffing in your pocket of course. Good for taking on holiday. Good for reading in bed: not as unwieldy as a book. Not good when SWMBO wants the light out and I want to continue reading, for mine is not one of the sexy back lit jobbies. I have a light on a clasp, but that seems to have a life of its own in that the light comes and goes, and so does the whole thing when the spring clasp decides to rearrange itself. Trouble is, though we’ve downloaded a fair number of free books, (for yes, dear reader, Susan acquired one too), most books I’d like to read are not free. So considerable, and where books are concerned rare, self-discipline is called for.

Before I fell asleep on the train yesterday I was reading (kindling?) the second volume of art critic Brian Sewell’s autobiography, Outsider: Always Almost: Never Quite. It covers, amongst other things, the Anthony Blunt saga. Whatever else Sewell may be, and some say snobbish, elitist, offensive, immoral, and much, much more (‘we pee on things and call it art’), he is uncompromisingly honest and without a shred of self-deception. He has the guts to tell it as it is about so-called works of art lauded by the chattering classes. He has taste and discernment, and for that he is pilloried by the luvvies. It’s not the sort of book you’d leave for your 10 year old to read, however. Sewell’s sexual activities are – what’s the word I’m looking for here? – ah yes, educational. He is utterly matter-of-fact about them. As I muse on them, and their significance, I’m reminded that we have no coherent theology of pleasure.

‘Uncompromisingly honest and without a shred of self-deception’ is a phrase that must be used to describe Ruth Burrows. Whether or not you pick up Brian Sewell’s book, I most strongly recommend anything, everything by Ruth Burrows. In her autobiography Before the Living God, this Carmelite nun unflinchingly dissects her human and emotional experiences, the battles that rage in her head, and her responses to them. She shows that prayer is, more than anything else, God’s work, not ours, enabling a journey into self, letting the onion skins fall off as one penetrates ever deeper, in order that the divine within can merge freely with the divine without, no more layers blocking the exchange. (Talk of onion skins puts me in mind of the donkey in Shrek and parfaits. Oh, never mind.) This requires courage and honesty to see ourselves as we really are. More than any other contemporary writer, I think, Ruth Burrows shows that to be holy is to be fully human, hiding nothing, accepting everything about ourselves in order to let the hell be loved out of us. Love your enemies, especially the enemies that live in us.

Eyes that see shall never grow old

So, then, could Brian Sewell be called holy, or fully human? I suppose that depends on what he thinks of the battles that go on in his head, and only he can know that. We all have these battles. Some are more aware of them than others. When I take out my brain to look at the stuff that goes on in my head, I begin to glimpse what Ruth Burrows has known for a long time, that liberation means freedom from, not freedom to. We might ask ourselves: freedom from what?

The Laois sleeper

Posted on 30/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

Ballybrophy station

I took the train to Dublin today to talk to a dear friend about things that were bothering me. We had lunch, I bored the pants off him, he spoke the truth to me and helped to dispel some illusions, we had tea in the august establishment where I used to work, I conversed with former colleagues, then I took a taxi (I’d cut it a bit fine) to Heuston for the 1525 to Limerick, third stop Port Laoise. So far so good.

At Kildare I fell asleep. I must point out that no alcohol had been taken at lunch, and neither had hypnotics been consumed. I was vaguely aware of Portarlington. I woke just as we were pulling out of Port Laoise. Next stop Ballybrophy, where at about 1630 I alighted. The next train back was not until after 7 pm. Ballybrophy—and I mean no disrespect to the worthy inhabitants—is not what you might call a thriving metropolis. A few cars, a few potholes in the road, and a few cow pats. Taxi ranks are conspicuous by their absence. The Irish Rail gentleman was most courteous, and mildly amused at my predicament. He might have charged me for the extra journey, but did not. He assured me obligingly, and helpfully, that I would have been better staying on the train, alighting instead at the stop beyond Ballybrophy, namely Thurles, since more trains stop there for the journey back to Port Laoise. I smiled sweetly. Having consulted the timetable, I see the sense of that, and have noted it for the future.

As luck would have it, Ballybrophy is in the parish of a neighbouring Rector, so I rang him and told him of my situation. After he’d stopped wetting himself, he was able to contact some good Samaritans, who metaphorically fed and clothed me and transported me home.

What do I learn from this? Sleeping on trains is dangerous. Mobile phones are wonderful. Good Samaritans are alive and well in Co Laois, and I thank the Lord for them. Does the parable of the wise and foolish virgins say anything to me? Not really, for had I been a wise virgin, I would not have had the chance to meet these lovely people.

All in all, an interesting afternoon. Could it happen again? It could. It might.

What next?

Posted on 28/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

To be avoided

I’ve been in this post for over one full year. It has been an extraordinary year, with pleasures and problems that I expected, and pleasures and problems that I most certainly did not. I could write a book about it, and maybe one day I will. I could certainly write a piece comparing and contrasting life in the Church of Ireland with that in the Church of England, and maybe I’ll do that too.

I’ve done everything here once. What next? Some people readily adapt to doing the same things over and over again—some of my colleagues have been in the same post since dinosaurs walked the earth. Others are easily bored and relish new challenges from time to time. Some people are good at steady maintenance, others at being agents of change. The Church of Ireland seems to be more concerned with stasis rather than change, maintenance rather than mission. Mission perhaps implies seducing people from another denomination, and for all sorts of historical and cultural reasons, that’s just not on in Ireland. Apparently.

The trouble is that without mission and without change, there will be less and less to maintain. There will come a point when bills will go unpaid and buildings fall into disrepair. In rural England I came to the view that people cared more about the graveyard than the church. After all, the graveyard was somewhere they hoped to end up, and where relatives went to talk to people they perhaps misjudged when they were alive. Graveyards will survive long after churches become roofless.

Pendolino near Penrith

Speaking personally, I would like to be burnt and my ashes scattered by the railway anywhere between Tebay and Carlisle, feeding the earth where the Pendolinos whizz past between London and Glasgow. I want no memorial, no plaque, no headstone. But when push comes to scatter, the family will do what it wants, not what I want. And that’s absolutely right. I’ll be dead, I won’t care.

What priorities should I have for 2013? I’ll ask the parishioners what they would like. I’ll ask them what they think they need, even if they wouldn’t like it. Maybe they want no change. The trouble is that in the blood stream, stasis leads to clotting, clots cause blockage, and blockage often means dysfunction. Or, another medical analogy, in the guts, stasis leads to constipation. Either way, it’s curtains.

‘An Englishman abroad’

Posted on 28/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

West Kensington

Back in 1988, when I’d recently arrived from Nottingham to work in Dublin, an intellectual asked me why I’d come to Ireland to take a job that could have been filled by an Irishman. This raised questions of Irishness, charity, welcome, and his cerebral stenosis. And my sanity. Back then things were not so good economically as they became a decade later, so maybe the inquisitor was mindful of inherited notions of poverty that, if you believe what you hear, only Ireland has suffered. Self-pity is a wondrous thing. At that time we lived in a money-pit in Co Wicklow, and I worked in Dublin with, amongst others, inhabitants of West-Kensington-by-the-Liffey, whose knowledge of poverty, I can only assume, must have been truly profound. Once these people established that I was related to nobody that mattered and nobody they knew, I became invisible. This allowed me space to observe. And observe I did. Fortunately, I found good friends who had a surer grasp of Dublin’s latitude and longitude.

I come from part of England that has been trampled afoot by conquistadores from Scandinavia, Rome, Scotland, Normandy, Scotland (again and again) and Westminster. And now Brussels. The BBC thinks it’s part of the same region as Liverpool and Manchester. Other institutions regard it as part of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. People assume that my accent comes from Yorkshire. They are all wrong. The churches of the region are dedicated to people like Oswald, Ninian, Kentigern (Mungo), Hilda, Columba and—wait for it—Patrick (how that must sting!). Yet my worthy assailant felt that I was an unwelcome interloper.

I’ve been confronted by a similar question recently from someone who resents eastern Europeans taking Irish jobs. His family depended years ago on one of them finding work in London. Geneticists tell us that there is no such thing as pure Irishness, or pure Celticness, or pure anything. The Celts came from way over east. Aran islanders, I’m told, have genes from Cromwellian soldiers. This must be truly shocking. At a recent Remembrance Sunday political speech, I heard about the sufferings in the two world wars of the French, Germans, Belgians, and Irish, but only of oppression by ‘our near neighbour’. I heard nothing about the sufferings of the Russians who suffered more than the rest put together, but that’s for another day maybe. The faux-Irishness that has infected this culture seems to have grown up really as an anything-but-Englishness.

It’s undoubtedly difficult for outsiders to settle in these parts. Everyone is related to everyone else. Nobody will tell it as it is for fear of offending neighbours and relations. Valley of the squinting windows. This is all the more reason why outsiders are needed—to point out what needs to be pointed out, because locals won’t. Yesterday we heard that Jesus was hounded out for daring to tell his folks that they were getting no special favours from him just because they were his kinsmen. Scriptural readings emphasized that we are all in this together. Plus ça change …

The old man carried the child, but the child governs the old man

Posted on 13/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

Easter Eggs in the shops on 1 January. Fortunately, this year Easter is early. Thank the Lord! An early Whit. An early Trinity Sunday so that—I’m being serious here—I can enjoy all those Sundays after Trinity over summer that in 2013, the Lord told me in a dream, will happen on 18 July. Then comes the most important liturgical festival of the year, Harvest, compared to which the crucifixion and resurrection/ascension are mere blips. I know Rectors with six churches who have found their anatomical appendages under grave threat of amputation when they had the nerve to suggest that each church didn’t need its own Harvest.

Anyhoo, I digress. Easter is early so Lent is upon us almost before the last of the Christmas chocolate cherry liqueurs disappear ‘down the little red lane’ (as Anthony Blanche called the oesophagus when he swallowed four Brandy Alexander cocktails in quick succession. Brideshead Revisited, since you ask. Oh, never mind). We turn from crib to cross at the last great feast of Incarnation/Epiphany/childlikeness: Candlemas, or Presentation, or Purification, or whatever you want to call it. Simeon holds the divine child and says ‘this is enough, I need no more’. Ich habe genug—if you have not heard Bach’s Cantata of the same name, it’s not too late. Find the first movement on YouTube here sung by the glorious Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Words can hardly express the satisfied gently swaying longing that Bach conjures up. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

The old man carried the child, but the child governs the old man: you might reflect on how spot-on that is psychologically. The child is the father of the man. We are governed by thought patterns laid down in childhood. Childhood innocence, willingness to explore and ability to have fun are, as we grow up, so easily perverted by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that life throws at us. The supermarket trolley of the psyche becomes more and more wayward, and less and less inclined to head for the target we once thought we were aiming for.

We need the 3Rs: repent, recall and recover the childlikeness we’ve lost. Michael my Ordinary (Peace Be Upon Him) sometimes asks: is the child you once were proud of the adult you have become? Examining that is worth the Lenten discipline of spiritual spring-cleaning. If the answer is no (and I doubt that anyone can truthfully answer otherwise), what are you going to do about it?

* Yesterday I came across this as naval gazing which puts a lovely new perspective on things, for all the nice girls love a sailor.

Church music: reflections

Posted on 12/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

Carlisle Cathedral organ console

A talk in Dublin on 12 January 2013. My notes are here:

Christmas 2012

Posted on 02/01/2013 by Rambling Rector

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God

Imagine the shed. Imagine the cold, the sense of being alone. Let’s assume there were animals there. Imagine the creatures, the smells, the dung. Imagine the placenta, the umbilical cord, the blood. Since neither parent was, as far as we know, a qualified midwife, imagine the fear of getting things wrong and the baby suffering. What a mess!

Life is a mess. Relationships don’t do what you expect. Things don’t work out. Actions, or inactions, have consequences. Like a row of skittles where one knocks over the next, and the next, and the next …. actions and consequences repeating themselves endlessly and uncontrollably. This is the glorious mess of being alive.

If the divine was prepared to jump into this mess of humanity, then we don’t need to worry about it. To begin to know the innermost part of the mess that is yourself is to begin to encounter the Lord. Relax into yourself, as you are—after all, you are made in God’s image. Then you will start to see what you can be. Christ is born in you today. That’s the Christmas message. We are all sons and daughters of the Divine Lord.

Christmas is coming, so get stuck in

Posted on 08/12/2012 by Rambling Rector

Get stuck in

At Christmas we welcome to our churches those who don’t come very often. This bothers some people. It doesn’t bother me. It gladdens my heart. Some so-called Christians mutter about people coming only because they like the sentimentality of candlelight services, or of being reminded of childhood warmth and home. I say, what’s wrong with a bit of sentimentality? Such reminders are part of our longing for something ‘other’ – something that lifts us up from the daily grind. Something, in fact, that gives us a glimpse of heaven (which is not about the afterlife). Bringing heaven to earth. Clouds coming down. ‘Drop down ye heavens from above’. Divinity comes to earth. The exchange when, at the Ascension, humanity ascends to heaven. Charles Wesley’s astonishing hymn: Let earth and heaven combine, Angels and men agree, To praise in songs divine The incarnate Deity, Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made Man.

Christmas is not about camels, stable, shepherds, ox, ass, star. Much of this evocative paraphernalia is not in the Gospels, though it connects the story to Old Testament Messiah prophecies. The real Christmas message is that the world is transformed when we allow new life and childlikeness to grow within us. This transformation takes place not ‘in them, out there’, but ‘in me, in here’. In Advent we heard of John Baptist calling us to complete honesty of self-examination. The unpredictable supermarket trolley of our psyche, for ever veering waywardly, needs realignment so that, as the Christmas hymn says, ‘O holy child … be born in us today’. When we heed Jesus’ call to childlikeness, and live with straightforwardness, guilelessness, honesty, openness, and willingness to explore, we will transform our view of the world, and so transform the world.

This is not easy and will not be popular. John Baptist so irritated Herod that he was put in clink. The message of Christ ‘has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried’ (G K Chesterton). After the end-of-year festivities, we have to gird up our loins for the challenges ahead. There are plenty of them. We have to dredge up endurance and perseverance if we are to hold onto our souls. The New Testament Greek word we translate as endurance does not mean long-suffering patience, taking things lying down and passively, but rather standing up and dealing with the challenges. It means rolling your sleeves up and getting stuck in, using your ‘talents’ to survive, keeping your wits about you. Søren Kierkegaard wrote ‘preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books … but in fuller immersion in existence.’ Which means: get stuck in. Archbishop William Temple wrote: ‘It is a mistake to assume that God is interested only, or even chiefly, in religion.’ Which means: get stuck in.