Kipling for profit and pleasure...

The late great Sir John Harvey-Jones, King of the Kipper Tie, used to remind lily-livered businessmen shivering on the brink of change, “Remember, you can only get shot once.” True, but our elders and betters in the General Synod seem to have devised a way of making getting shot take about thirty years. Fun it ain’t.

As elaborate plans are mooted for somehow simultaneously having female bishops and not having female bishops, I puzzle over about the whole notion of preventing schism by institutionalising it. Really?

Everybody knows it’s coming. The question is “how?” There’s a discussion Tuesday among my colleagues in funny hats, to be developed by the House of Bishops (of which I am not a member) another day, and taken to the General Synod to decide. Justice, operationally, to losers — of course; but it’s kindest and truest to make up our minds. Personally, I’ve been trying to stay my anxiety in the traditional way for frightened males of my father’s generation to calm their nerves: an evening’s anxious Kipling:

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act...

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

Friends, shall we Kipple? probably not. The age of Kipling is over elsewhere. However there is a line that runs from Duck-Rabbit integrative complexity to subtlety to ambiguity to fudge to hypocrisy. Now’s the time to decide where we place ourselves on that line, and the way to decide, after we have listened carefully, is by charity and higher logic, not the purest hobgoblins of small minds.

Gatehangers of Ashendon, unite!

I have sung the praises of John Boughton, of Ashendon before round here. He’s been a churchwarden 55 years, as have members of his family over several generations. John made my pastoral staff, having farmed sheep in these parts a while ago. Therefore I couldn’t refuse the offer of speaking at the annual Ashendon Gate Hangers Dinner. Back in the late fifties the village allotments needed a new gate. John made it, but it took a few years to hang, along the lines of this old story:

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it,
but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that
because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought that Anybody could do it,
but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody
when Nobody did what Anybody could have done...

Anyway, after much discussion in the pub over a few years, by 1962 the gate was hung. A celebration dinner was organised in the Red Lion. There hadn't been that much by way of village feasts since George VI’s coronation in 1937. That night, John made a gate to present to the person who had done the noble deed.

And every year since, a dinner has been held in the Red Lion, and a presentation made to the man who has done something special for the village, practically speaking, during the year. This tradition is now in its 46th year, and in the eighties the name of the pub was changed to the Gate Hangers — the only one in the country; and now you know where it got its unusual name. I was proud and delighted to turn up and tell a few jokes to the 50-ish people at this year’s dinner.

All very English, you may say. People talk about hi-concept ideas like social capital. This story demonstrates how churchwardens can bring people together in a village and, in the process, get a gate fixed for the allotments...

Everybody wants to be a Cat

On my way out the door to the Bishops’ meeting today, I came cross this little piece of fun that seemed slightly relevant. Don’t know quite why...

Ending Discrimination — Amen Brother!

A big sloppy wet enthusiastic “Amen, brother!” to Simon Barrow, from think-tank Ekklesia. Obviously there are jobs (like being a vicar) for which some faith commitment is part of the job. What is wrong is to pretend every role in a Christian organisation carries this occupational requirement, or to resort to abusive process. Reporting a recent employment tribunal judgment, he writes:

This judgement ought to make religious charities sit up and think - not just about their legal responsibilities and the morality of non-discrimination, but about the impact of their behaviour on their image with the public at large.

Leaders and entrepreneurs in many faith organisations seem reluctant to embrace a comprehensive equalities agenda, or to recognise their culpability in issues of discrimination. Yet they are often the first to seek exemptions from legislation accepted by others and to complain that they are being 'attacked' when criticisms are raised.

The Christian message of love and justice is undermined by poor employment and equalities practices in the Christian organisations. This is an opportunity for the churches to get their house in order.

This encapsulates precisely what I was trying to say here last week about raising our game in Church employment practice, to create a safer less abusive working environment. I see this as one key weapon against bullying cultures and practice after appointment. Talking this through with people over the past few days, it seems our diocesan appointment practice is basically sound, but there’s a challenge to prove it. Out in the world of parochial appointments, practice varies from state of the art to completely potty. Time for the tough to get going...

PS — full and detailed account of the original case by Ruth Gledhill here.

Abortion — real choice? real life?

Acting on a tip-off from John Allister’s blog, I found this BBC documentary, following five women through the process of seeking an abortion at a West London clinic. It’s available in the BBC’s Bare Facts series, until next Tuesday on the BBC iPlayer. It’s severely realistic and down to earth, reflective rather than preachy. Ursula MacFarlane’s programme doesn’t take an ideological position, but simply records the voices of the people concerned. If you have feelings for human beings, you’ll probably have to look away at times. Conscience, insecurity, hope, the logic of life itself, desperation to be loved and to be somebody, all bring their own burdens. It is unhelpful to turn these into slogans.

Absolutising “Choice” generalises in an impersonal way and piles a ton of potential intolerables on individuals, whilst stripping them of the context in which to choose. So does abstract moralising. The instinct for “Life” is powerful. People have consciences more than they know. No easy answers, then. The lesser of two evils remains evil.

I've talked about the public debate, but there’s a big personal dimension to this. Perhaps the terminology needs reclaiming from the possession of zealots. Ordinary people need to live and choose in real terms, as much as bang on about “Life” or “Choice.” Christianity is not based on “what you do,” but the infinite value God sets on persons, and the hope of redemption. Christians would do well to maximise their capacity to be there for people (including themselves?), and keep it real — Is that what the Good Samaritan did for the other guy? — and, perhaps, leave the hufflepuff to the zealots...

How to give a Castlemaine Four-X

The Church of England Calendar today commemorates Caroline Chisholm — the original Victorian lady with a brick in her handbag, whose 200th anniversary falls this year. Born in Northampton in 1808 she died in London in 1877. Mrs Chisholm engaged in social work to improve the lives of women in India, where her husband was an army officer, and (principally) Australia. She worked tirelessly for the protection of the poor women who flooded the goldfields, providing hostels and education, confronting human trafficking, working for the welfare of immigrants.

She was actually RC (required to convert on marriage) — one of the few significant Victorian God-botherers not to be a paid-up Evangelical. She robustly took the line “I promise to know neither country nor creed, but to serve all justly and impartially.” It didn’t get her brownie points with the hierarchy, but she walked through all the bitter denominational cowboys and indians of her age, very pronounced in colonial Australia, ignoring the lot. Her integrity and energy won the respect of all, principally Lord Shaftesbury and Florence Nightingale. Mrs Jellyby in Dickens’ Bleak House is said to be a hostile portrait.
The White Hat guide gives a refreshingly honest, characteristically Antipodean view:

Caroline Chisholm is one of those remarkable women that most Australians admire but are probably secretly pleased is no longer with us.

Why do we admire her? Australia is a practical country. We admire people who roll up their sleeves and do things. rather than those who make a big fuss saying "'they ought to do something about it". When Caroline Chisholm arrived in your office or workplace it wasn't to say "You must do something about this!", it was to say "I have already done such and such and if you were to do so and so we could achieve even more."

Why are we a little relieved that she is no longer around? We realise that if we came within her sphere we would probably be bullied or charmed or shamed into doing something for 'the cause'. What excuse could we put up? We could hardly claim lack of time or resources because in front of us was a mother of five (later six) children without a lot of money in a rough and ready colony already doing significant things. Even her husband, who is buried with her, is probably a little relieved. He was a competent army officer, and spent much of his life and energy in the services of the colonies and with Caroline's causes. His name doesn't even appear on their tombstone, and he probably died of exhaustion just trying to keep up with her. He is still possibly resting uneasily in case he hears the words "Archie, what are we going to do about this?"

She has given her name to suburbs of Melbourne and Canberra, and appeared on stamps and five dollar bills. Her life is an inspiration to all good Christian women to stick a brick in their handbags and change the world. If you aren’t doing anything else about it, click here, join up, for Caroline’s sake, do something!

Human Rights begin with us

Everybody should respect human rights... that often means Everybody else. How about us? How aligned are our values with the ways we treat our own people? It’s sometimes suggested Bishops are guardians of orthodoxy, to enforce conformity of doctrine. Actually, in the Acts of the Apostles there’s almost none of that. Right being aligns with right doing, the weeding out of hypocrisy, the discernment of strategic direction, not behaving like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition, least of all about ideology.

So how do we respect human beings habitually in this diocese? On the Day of Pentecost, God could have put the clock back to the Tower of Babel — one language, one simple identity, and lots of neat little bricks all in a row until we reach heaven. But God didn’t do that. In an essentially chaotic act he affirmed the value and identity of every language and culture under heaven. God passionately affirms human diversity — do we?

Martin Luther King said “Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice.” Christians talk a lot about love, and the first claim of love is justice. To lie low playing “Colour blind”, bracketing racial justice along with motherhood and apple pie, is just not enough. We need to get real about this. We need to take positive action. It involves holding ourselves accountable for cherishing the diversity to which God calls us, with as much determination as we pay our bills and taxes.

I've been doing some serious work with our diocesan Committee for Racial Justice, which I chair. We’ve been working hard to develop what we call a Rigorous Diversity agenda, and it begins with us, not “them”. We’re studying the Wood-Shepherd principles, and working out how and when to apply them to our diocese. And I believe finding a way to do that will help with various other objectives. Rigorous, open diversity practice founded on respect and fully accountable will help grow a kingdom culture.

Auditing and enforcing a rigorous diversity agenda will help create a fairer, safer working environment — one in the eye for the bullies. It will give a truer perspective in which to have discussions about authority (male and female), and, perhaps, even help us to discern sexual orientation issues more honestly and truthfully. I can quite understand why intelligent people out there cannot hear the gospel in us, and even hold us in contempt, for as long as our HR practice is less fair and accountable than that of Woolworth’s.

Get our act together on this and who knows, people on the outside may begin to realise that, OK we are a bunch of hypocrites, but a bunch of hypocrites who are being healed... Let’s put some serious work into respect for the human beings closest to us, in basic accountable ways. Then see what kind of love begins to grow among us, and where that enables the wind of the Spirit to take us. It’s a major undertaking, but I believe it’s been neglected, and it’s worth serious effort.

Sons of the Clergy strike again

I don’t do a lot of this sort of thing, but the 354th Festival of the Sons of the clergy in Saint Paul’s Cathedral yesterday was a blast. This charity started in 1655 as a testimonial and fundraiser for poor clergy who had lost everything by staying loyal and losing their jobs whilst the monarchy was abolished during the Commonwealth period.

The original Sons of the Clergy festival is a collaborative venture by the Church and the City of London. No fewer than three Cathedral choirs blast away in St Paul’s, then there’s a slap-up dinner in the Merchant Taylors Hall, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London. Rowan did a brilliantly clear, simple and funny speech to say thank you, among others. These days the charity spends over £1m a year helping clergy and their family members in all kinds of hard places, often caused by illness, marriage breakdown, or debt.

It’s very good to be with the network of people who make all this happen, having often seen the practical value of the things they do to help clergy and their families behind the scenes. There is a great variety of needs and predicaments among working clergy, and I’ve been trying to sharpen up the focus of our own Bucks Clergy charity, so that it can help more effectively. I’m very keen to collect creative ideas, as well reacting to the obvious things. Need and debt, like death and taxes, don’t go away... How can others help?

Linslade — fast forward into St Albans...

Celebration, led by the Bishop of Bedford, to inaugurate the new Ouzel Valley Team Ministry at St Barnabas Linslade. This has involved the parish leaving our diocese and going into St Albans. The County boundary changed in 1966, and it’s plainly been the right way to go. Church Property shootouts are fun, but we don’t really do turf wars over here.
The pre-1966 county boundary had its uses, though. Someone was telling me that the licensing hours were different in Buckinghamshire to Bedfordshire, and people used to nip across the river our way to get another pint in at closing time!

St Barnabas serves what the Victorians used to call an artisan parish. There’s a sad First World War memorial. A lot of “pals” joined up together from the Church, leaving a dirty great long list of names, and two crosses on the wall from the original field graves of a choirman and one of the servers, killed in 1918. On a brighter note I was once preaching there of a Sunday morning and someone said to afterwards, “You know what, bishop? You’d make quite a good vicar!” — which I took as a real compliment.

It was a great joy to thank people for 162 years of faithful life and service in our diocese (it was Lincoln until 1846) with all its ups and downs, and to share the parish’s joy, offering love and prayers as it embraces a new future. During the service +Richard licensed Fr Bernard Minton to the new team ministry. Sadly Bishop Christopher of St Albans was ill and unable to be with us, so it was just +Richard and me. Having paid good money to see the three wise monkeys, all people got was the two stooges!

Saturday Night Fever

Our glorious government’s campaign to pickle the young in cheap 24 hour booze continues apace. All UK town centres now get a weekly dousing in bodily fluids. Why have public toilets? The whole place could be a public toilet! Even legendary zoologist David Attenborough has noticed the phenomenon:

Stowe: alternatives to crass materialism

Great confirmation this morning at Stowe School. This public school, founded in 1926, lives in one of the most remarkable eighteenth century mansions and landscape gardens in England, formerly home to the Dukes of Buckingham & Chandos. Sir Richard Branson went to school there, but the school’s alumnus I think speaks most into where we need to be is Leonard Cheshire, VC, pioneer humanitarian. His bust is the first thing you see when you come out of the chapel. After wartime RAF service which included being there as they dropped the first atom bomb, he devoted his life to humanitarian causes including disaster relief and hospice care.

At the back of the chapel, there’s a small new seated quiet area, for ad hoc use by individuals and groups. It’s been marked out by a massive etched glass door that celebrates four kinds of virtue, as reflected in the stories of Old Testament characters. The artist spent time in school with a sketchbook recording aspects of pupils’ lives and work, and has interpreted the bible stories he was given in terms of life at the school.
His figures represent four excellent virtues:

First up (clockwise from the bottom right) is Esther, who is beautiful and knows it,and how to use the fact, drawing her beauty to the glory of God.
Next up, Samson, whose lurches of brute strength and determination may or may not achieve what he hopes.

Next round is Ruth, who speaks of faithfulness and friendship — what the Victorians would have called constancy. Finally Elisha works away quietly in his study, celebrating intellectual achievement, passion to see into the causes of things.

Default life aims for many posh people in our culture are mindless conformity, crass materialism and the cult of celebrity. Any or all of these four would achieve rather more. In this context, the work’s amazing.

Dwindling Churchgoers Death Plunge

Excellent summary by Thinking Anglicans and analysis by David Keen, here and here, of this week's press puffdoodle about church attendance. A basically serious Christian Research Report has, apparently, been hacked around and hammed up, with an hysterical sauce added about, guess what, Muslims. What a surprise.

All I can add is this yellowing cutting from the Times of 29 July 1971. It solemnly announces, as a matter of mathematical certainty, that as Britain secularises all churchgoing in the UK “will have disappeared completely” by... er... 2011. So, according to the Times of 29 July 1971, in two and half years time there won't be anything left at all. What are you waiting for? Pull your finger out! Get your skates on! Haven’t you got homes to go to?

Gentle Reader, this all goes to show... the fun of statistics. I note that the paid circulation of the Daily Telegraph in 1971 was 1,454,581. In 2005, allowing for giveaways, it was 605,555. At that rate, the Diocese of Oxford Reporter, with its stable circulation of 65,000 will overtake the Daily Telegraph, as a matter of mathematical certainty, by 2035. What a bunch of crap!

It also goes to show how elusive and subtle the phenomena of religious participation are. Despite the efforts of Christian Research and others it could be we simply don't have the reach and depth of figures that would shed light on the detailed position. There’s a really thoughtful reflective trail on the real situation and its implications on Richard Hall’s excellent blog, and, from a Conservative Evangelical perspective, John Richardson’s. See also the Interesting discussion of hammed up news by Simon Barrow here.

Sea Otters get Toronto Blessing

I don’t usually do cutesy animal stuff, but Lucy has pointed out these are irresistible — From Toronto Zoo, two Sea Otters holding hands. In the spirit of “heave-a-brick-at-the-screen” irritating M&S ads, these are not otters. These are Newfoundlnd baby sea otters, with fluffy paws, little bushy tails and Steiff teddy bear noses, synchro-swimming in fresh Ontario Brine. Bless!

The leaders we need

If you really want to know how standards have slipped, look at the bishops you get these days. Among photos of the Nashdom community, I found my predecessor sixty years ago (ringed in red). How are the mighty fallen!

A couple of years ago a lady came up to me after a criminal justice forum and fixed me in the eye like a long lost friend from college and said with utter conviction “you used to have a pony tail, didn’t you.” “Sorry, No” said I. “but did we know each other when I was a student?” “No,” she said, “but you just sound like the sort of person who used to have a pony tail.” At which point the High Court Judge who’d been on the panel with me chipped in “I used to have a pony tail...”

Most appointment processes, I find, boil down to finding someone with leadership gifts to release and support others on the way. The old kind of controlled and controlling Vicar who ran the parish like it was a train set, puttin’ em on and, often as not, puttin’ em off is a dying breed. Directive fantasy can be fun, but it’s only fantasy:

So what kind of leaders do we need, to replace the old patrician model? Psychologist and Anthropologist Michael Maccoby points out fundamental differences in personal formation and expectations since the 1960’s. In every sphere of life collaborative groups have replaced the old hierarchical rational machine. Positional authority is no longer enough to get things done.
He quotes Michael Kagan on Pericles:

The paradox inherent in democracy is that it must create and depend on citizens who are free, autonomous and self reliant. Yet its success — its survival even — requires extraordinary Leadership.

This is his wish-list:

1. people who understand people in their social context, and listen in order to develop a confident level of emotional intelligence — a heart that listens — people who can transcend the narcissism of the age, and stay in touch with themselves as well as others, growing “Personality intelligence.”
   
2. People who grow within themselves something beyond obsession with technique and detail — an interactive mix of analytic, practical and creative systems thinking, “strategic intelligence”
   

I’ll be looking out for these in parish profiles... and in the mirror?

Nashdom — till we dead awaken

Having recently met people in Beaconsfield who had known Dom Gregory Dix, the great Liturgical scholar, it was slightly unnerving to bump into the gentleman’s grave yesterday, whilst working with a colleague in Education who lives in a flat in Nashdom House near Taplow.

Dom Gregory died of cancer, aged only 50, in 1952, and is buried with other members of his community in the grounds of this magnificent Lutyens summer mansion, now split into flats. Nashdom was built 1905-9 for a posh Cotton mill heiress, Frances Wilson, who married a Russian prince and became Princess Dolgorouki,

She wanted a house in the Thames Valley for weekend river parties and it had to provide a luxurious setting suitable for exiled royalty. Lutyens achieved this, not by the expenditure of vast sums of money, but by brilliant manipulation of space and levels. From the garden side, the elevation reflects the division of the house into the prince's and princess's suites, which can be transformed into a series of rooms over 100 feet long. The entrance loggia and court ...lead into a double staircase—one being the main stair, the other leading to The Big Room for grand parties...

Blimey! The parties started up in 1909 only eight years before everything fell apart for Russian Princesses. From 1926 for fifty years Nashdom was a monastery for up to 40 brothers. The ballroom became the chapel. Thirty years ago the community moved to Elmore near Newbury. The house is amazingly evocative of lost worlds — The Tsarist Court, followed by the mid century glory days of triumphalist institutional Anglo-Catholicism. Tightly disciplined monasticism was somehow suffused with the culture of a slightly racy country club, with occasional music around the piano from the London shows in the evenings. This was Barbara Pym’s world of cassocks on the lawn, priests who called people “my dear” with dry sherry in urbane huddles. Women’s ordination was as unthinkable as moon landings. Their defining Chicken Little Big Issue was the Church of South India.

Nashdom was only ever meant to be a summer house, and must have been a pig to live in during the winter. It’s hard to believe it now, but perfectly intelligent members of the English Upper Crust obsessed about Rome and measured their swelling triumph by the number of bishops they could get to wear copes and mitres! Somehow serious intellectual and pastoral work coexisted with the Wodehouse stuff. The community took as its special intention what was quaintly called “Corporate Reunion” — a top table institutional merger with Rome that would reunite the upper echelons of Christendom and, incidentally, dish the Nonconformists along the way. It all seems like a glint in the eye of John Betjeman’s teddy bear now. Like its secular counterpart over the road at Cliveden, the bottom fell out of this world in the 1960’s. Rising bills, the white heat of technology and Vatican II undermined the whole fantasy upon which it was predicated. All things must pass, and all that is left now are ghosts on the lawn.

The singing, of course, was lovely, even in a scratchy old 78 recording from the 1940’s. Here, with pictures from yesterday, is the timeless Lord’s Song, sung by lost voices from the Anglo-Catholic Titanic:

Swinging Sixties bring moral meltdown

Remember the sixties, when the rot set in? The white heat of new technologies began to transform Britain, but brought its own decadence and troubling signs of a moral meltdown. With young royals misbehaving themselves in public, new fashions transformed London into a world capital of chic, but the drug scene bloomed. Dodgy detectives began to swing round the City as a law unto themselves, and the public began, for the first time, to feel real disquiet about police and other public institutions. The Church lurched from crisis to crisis. Attendance slumped, and a quarter of the bishops boycotted the Lambeth Conference. The other side of the pond, the age was defined by an assassinated president. Terrible decade, the Eighteen Sixties.

The decadence started with the Road Hill House Murder, a dark tale of family breakdown, involving a toddler with his throat cut, hidden adultery and psychotic teenagers. The new media feeding frenzy that followed gripped the nation. Tractarianism played an integral part in the person of A. D. Wagner, the priest who made Anglo-Catholicism the London, Brighton and South Coast religion.

Kate Summerscale has now brought the whole sordid affair to life, with a deft hand and clear eye. Using contemporary records and later revelations over the next eighty years, she lifts the stone on the whole frightful business. Real Life makes the Woman in White look like a Sunday School Outing. It’s a rollicking good read, though unsuitable for urchins, lunaticks and domestic servants. Fortunately most of them can’t read anyway.

Christ the Worker - making Slough holy

Glorious Sunday, opening a new community hall at Christ the Worker, Langley, Slough. There’s real closeness and human warmth in a Church with big challenges, and people really know and care about others — I felt much at home. The new hall extends the considerable work the parish does in its community. We’re currently recruiting a vicar to lead the next phase of its mission.

Now that John Mortimer is getting on a bit, Simon Jenkins is becoming the doyen of Britain’s Atheists for Jesus. Last week he attended the reopening of Saint Martin in the Fields in London, and described in the Guardian a simple but important fact of life in Britain today, sometimes overlooked:

Critics of the Church of England should give credit where it is due. Its house journal, the Church Times, may be filled with feuding bishops, gay rights, embryo conflicts and health-and-safety woes. But there are some things the church does well. One is architecture and the other is unofficial welfare.

Across Britain's cities historic neighbourhoods are being demolished and civic institutions fleeing to the suburbs, to be replaced by shopping malls. The police station is gone, the primary school closed, the youth club defunct, the library and post office shut, their staffs unionised into apathy or regulated beyond financial viability. Yet the old church plods on. The sooty spire soars over the wilderness while round its base fusses the exhausted vicar...

As an atheist I might wish it were not so... Against this must be set the example of St Martin's, repeated in microcosm across Britain. Whenever I have visited poor places - such as Salford, St Paul's in Bristol, or London's Poplar - and wondered to whom the desperate turn in time of need, the finger points to the church. Of all voluntary institutions those based on religion are the most present and the most committed. One reason is that the parish priest is the last profession that still rates it essential to live among its clients. All the others have fled...

I am told that the Church of England reckons it saves the taxpayer some £5bn in unpaid social work. The same presumably goes for other denominations. By being parochial and personal, this must also be the most efficiently distributed welfare in the country. The fact that churches are so heavily involved in social work indicates how many people still fall through the net of the welfare state... We may choose to leave the faith out of it, but we can yet marvel at the mission.

I doubt that Christ the Worker is exactly Simon Jenkins’ kind of Church; but its committed personal care and community development over forty years make it one of mine. I'm immensely proud of what people do there day by day, week by week. It defines what the Church of England is about less pictographically but more clearly, in some ways, than many of our fine medieval buildings. A vibrant Gospel heart births a community who do Christ’s work in his name. Praise God!

Suicide and starting again

A privilege to preach at All Saints High Wycombe for Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide. This national movement began in 1991 in Hull and recently in High Wycombe. I was deeply moved to be with some very brave and resourceful people, struggling with one of our last great Taboo subjects. Various people asked me to post the sermon on the blog, so here goes: