The Three Graces?

Brill Parish Church, with Tina Sterling, parish priest & area dean, welcoming her two newly ordained deacons.

Lesley Fellows (left) and Jenny Edmans (right) were both ordained together in Christ Church yesterday, as part of this year's company of 23 Michaelmas deacons in our diocese. Tina pointed out how this deployment pattern was like London buses — nothing for ages, then (twenty) three in a row!

Both are servng in the same rural Bernwode benefice. Jenny has deep local roots. She's farmed in the village most of her life, and has come through the Ordained Local Ministry Pathway — three years of hard labour! Lesley has followed a more classic track towards ordination on the Oxford Ministry Course, after a strong background in Engineering research and teaching.

As well as welcoming Lesley and Jenny, it was good to celebrate publicly the large local mixed ministry team they are joining. Having newly ordained ministers mustn't in any way de-skill, or hold others back in offering ministry, along with all baptized people.

Footnote: there's a striking locally made Bishop's Chair in All Saints’, with a female kneeling figure (prophetic?) and the text "Still small voice of calm" — one people instinctively associate with bishops, of course...

Herne Bay beer-bibber & sinners' friend

Thanks to the delicious & whimsical Heather's Poor Excuse for some painful ordination weekend viewing. Priests, put those pints back in the closet where they belong, and discover one reason, on Back to Church Sunday, “why UK people don't go to Church”.

According to Vivien's website, which is also pretty much a Matthew 7:1/ I Corinthians 4:5 free zone, she is none too crazy about Buses numbered 666.

Heather has written a kind prayer:
Lord, grant that we may see Vivien’s distress as a by-product of her love for you rather than annoying, hubristic or beyond-the-bounds-of-reason-and-good-taste. And grant your fervent servant, Vivien, the peace of knowing that you, in your infinite wisdom and loving kindness, love her and have got everything under control. (And Lord, please do not smite me for wanting to give Vivien a drink.) Amen.

In selva oscura? Lost in the great forest?

Michaelmas Priests’ pre-ordination retreat at Glenfall House, Cheltenham. It’s a tremendous privilege and always great fun to work with Abbot Stuart Burns, OSB. It's tremendously encouraging to share these days before ordination with ten excellent candidates.

I brought a poem to compline. Everything is de-institutionalising, and all the conventional waymarks are changing. Priests easily lose the script and feel lost. They can react to feeling lost by desperately clinging onto reactionary fantasy, buying a ‘how-to’ book, losing any sense of their own worth as priests or people. The contemporary stress on technique is usually self-defeating. People really need God’s grace and realism, not fantasy and guilt. The only way out begins when we live humbly and graciously within the realities of the context He has given for our priestly ministry. Tomorrow’s priests need to learn how to embrace reality, not to pretend they are not lost. Pretending not to be lost only leads to authoritarianism and hypocrisy, breakdown and guilt. Priesthood is about releasing people from that, not inducting them into it!

This poem is by Seattle poet David Waggoner. What do you do if you’re lost in the great redwood forest? If you don't know where to turn because it all looks the same?

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Dry Sermon Displacement activity for the Postmodern

In the good old days, at State Mattins, if the sermon, er, failed to shine, people used to amuse themselves by turning to the back of the Book of Common Prayer and reading the Table of Kindred and Affinity wherein whoseover are related are forbidden by the Church of England to Marry Together. This is where you discovered, among other things they don't teach you at school, that you couldn't marry your great grandmother. Drat!

Of course these days we don't have (much) mattins, and anyway we all use PowerPoint not Prayer Books. Double Drat!

But cheer up! Help is at hand! Here is this autumn's Must-Have, the Hymn Book iPod Case. Whatever makes you look rapt, from Montiverdi to the Clash, you can turn those vales of misery into your own personal well in Church, without looking anything less than the Trendy Geezer you are. Magic!

After the case this year where a lady was done for listening to her iPod whlst wearing a hijab in the jury box during a criminal trial, I don't recommend these for Bishops. But then we don't need it, because we never get bored in Church. So that's OK.

School renewal at Cressex

Cressex Community School in High Wycombe is rebuilding, and I was there yesterday for the architects' presentation. Selective education creates big winners and big losers, and for years Cressex has been down the far end of the food chain. There have also been some racial justice issues in the air. Chronic underfunding meant the buildings were basically falling apart, and have been for years.

Governors, staff and community groups (including churches and Steve Whitmore, the local vicar) have been fighting hard to do something about it, led by Dr Katy Simmonds — it's a tough but inspiring story, with highlights and, frankly, some pretty awful lowlights. But there's a happy ending. Thanks to the government's Building Schools for the Future programme, and great support by Bucks County Council once they were fully on side, a new build was announced about this time last year, now upped to £31m — a completely new school by 2010!

I visited Cressex a few months ago and spent time with students and staff. They're 100% commited to the school and each other, and even with all the limitations of the building things are really turning round. I saw some amazing maths and history work, and perceptive students who really cared about their education. Many of the metrics that drive the UK educational standards debate are academic measurables, and the clever bit will be to enhance the quality of vocational learning along with the academic and social improvements that are obviously happening. But things are well on their way, and Cressex is an inspiring story of a community pulling together.

After all the ups and downs along the way, it's only now, looking at HBG's visualisations for a flexible learning space and community campus (with a zero carbon footprint!) that it all seems real. Yesterday really was Kleenex time for various of us who've been backing this project — Kudos to Katy and her governors, partners in local and national government, and, above all to students and staff.

Someone ought to make a movie about this story!

Love and Death...

Dr Randy Pausch (47) teaches computer science at Carnegie Mellon university, and is a world rated Virtual Reality Guru and Ubergeek. CMU challenges its professors, if you could only give one last lecture about the things that really matter, what would you say? Last Tuesday's “last lecture” was different. Dr Pausch is actually suffering from Pancreatic Cancer, and has only a few more months to live. He talks about his childhood dreams and what happened to them, and what's to live for, and how.
Have you got any “last words” for anyone? What would you say?
OK. If you've got more than six months to live, How are you going to live, and what for?

Above is a very brief extract of the lecture — Here's a higher quality video of the whole lecture, in context — The talk runs for about an hour from 10 minutes or so in — you can scroll through when it's running:

Driving Away

This is the day Lucy drives Stephanie down to begin her illustration course at Portsmouth University. Having her at home this past year on a foundation course has been bonus for us all. Stephanie's always been somewhat magical, with her infectious sense of fun, easy talent at art, zany way with words. I'm sure we aren't the only rather sappy proud parents in England this week.
So here, just for the record, is the original and best poem about this sort of thing, that came vividly to mind when Catherine went to University, and does now — Cecil Day Lewis’ Walking Away — for Sean:

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-

A sunny day with the leaves just turning,

The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play

Your first game of fotball, then, like a satellite

Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see

You walking away from me towards the school

with the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free

Into a wilderness, the gait of one

Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away

Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,

Has something I never quite grasp to convey

About nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorching

Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay.

I had worse partings, but none that so

Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly

Saying what God alone could perfectly show-

How selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go.

Who Dares Wins?

A wise and timely sermon in Great Missenden Church this morning from Rosie, our Vicar, in her series about Neglected Christian Virtues, about Courage.

Courage is a matter of the heart — the ability to see things clearly as they are, not the absence of fear, but rising above it. If we are going to be salt and light in the world, we need to engage with things as they are. This means being real and learning how to embrace conflict, cherishing our freedom to speak without being destructive. If we fail to rise to this challenge, we shrink back from community and cease to connect with anyone outside our own particular churchy bubble. We need faith to believe God's promises, and then courage to act on that faith.

The interesting fact is you don't get God's strength in one great encouraging dollop then, when all the ducks are in a line, the courage to act. It is by acting we actually develop the courage to act. Aristotle says “we become brave by doing brave acts.” Psalm 37 says “Wait on the Lord. be of good courage and (then) he will strengthen your heart.” This isn't a discussion starter (though you could have an interesting discussion about it). It's an invitation to get on with it and start living courageously by grace through faith made real!

Ever-rolling Stream...

Just Time, today, to tear the wrappings off an interesting looking new book, Endings and Beginnings, by Maggi Dawn, priest, poet, musician and theologian. That kind of Time is “Kairos.” But it isn't the only kind of time.

There's another word also for ‘Time’ in NT Greek. It’s Chronos — the stuff by which you set your watch. The second word in my first sentence, Kairos is “time in its human context,” opportunity. Chronos runs smooth and regular, like a vibrating quartz crystal. Kairos is far more subtle and complex. Can you say how long, strictly speaking, was your first Kiss? Labour? Driving Test? wait for a scan result? You can give a figure, without beginning to explain what it really meant or why.

Advent is the time when everything comes full circle — The old year dies, and the whole story begins again. As we follow it through, we are put back in the position of people who had never heard of Christ, so that we can live the whole story from scratch, and capture something of its freshness and vitality, as well as opening up new possibilities we didn't see last time round. Thus we journey onward towards the city of infinite day, one step, one cycle at a time, refreshed and renewed on our way.

Maggi's book takes us through some Bible passages that may help unlock this process. She tracks the story through Christmas itself and right up to twelfth Night; giving a focus for eleven days that often disappear from my life into a kind of Blue Haze. Not this year. I don't want to give this book a flat review as though it were an academic treatise, because that's not the way it was designed to be used. What I will try and do is use it myself through Advent, reporting back occasionally how I'm getting on. I'm looking forward to a good poke around the roots of our faith, and a chance to turn some attention to some of the last things I usually want to think about, all anchored into some classical texts of exile, restoration and hope.

The biblical accounts of beginnings and endings tell us that the Christian faith is a journey that starts somewhere and goes somewhere. It's a journey that develops through time, rather than simply going round and round in an endlessly repeating cycle. the season of Advent, too, reminds us that we come from somewhere and we are going somewhere, and thinking about beginnings and endings helps us to rediscover meaning and purpose as we live in these times that are ‘in between’.

Lure of the Swamp?

O Timely Ancient Wisdom! Yesterday I stumbled across the WikiHow instruction sheet for How to get out of Quicksand. I'm not into giving unasked for advice, but how about this suggestion list for bishops and archbishops looking forward to next year's Lambeth Conference?

1. Avoid quicksand.
   Be on the lookout ... you can't detect quicksand just by looking at it. I Corinthians 10:12
   
2. Walk softly and carry a big stick. Matthew 10:16
   
   
3. Drop everything.
   Because your body is less dense than quicksand, you can't fully sink unless you panic and struggle too much (which will cause the sand to further liquefy) or you're weighed down by something heavy. Mark 6:8
   
4. Relax.
   Quicksand usually isn't more than a couple feet deep. If you panic you can sink further, but if you relax, your body's buoyancy will cause you to float. Matthew 6:27
   
5. Breathe deeply.
   Not only will deep breathing help you remain calm, it will also make you more buoyant. I Timothy 2:8
   
6. Take your time.
   If you're stuck in quicksand, frantic movements will only hurt your cause. Whatever you do, do it slowly. Psalm 37:7
   
7. Get plenty of rest.
   Other than panic, exhaustion is your worst enemy. Psalm 127:2
   
8. Never hike alone.
   Always have a buddy. Hebrews 10:25
   
9. Relax your head
   and keep your head up as much as you can without being Tense. Luke 21:28
   

Eh Voilà!

Remember “In public swimming pools most of the noise comes from the Shallow End” (Robert Runcie)

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Used.

There's an 18th century version of this six word Hemingway short story at Quainton. I was there last Sunday to dedicate a fine new Church upper room and organ rebuild. It's a busy village with a preaching cross and mill, where people eat together in their superb fourteenth century Church, making it a real focal point for the whole community. David Campbell, Churchwarden, chairs Buckinghamshire Community Action which develops and regenerates rural communities all over the county. Phillip Mears is doing a fantastic job as local vicar. Although it's invidious to name names, it's people who move projects like this forward by keeping faith with them and seeing them through — Thanks to David's fellow churchwarden June Hanson, Chris Wilcox (Treasurer), and in the past the Revd Martin Partridge and Philip Goddard.They showed me the small ringing chamber, which you usually only get to see if you're a bellringer, & I felt like I'd stumbled on King Tut's Tomb! It contains two world class Baroque works of art. On the left is an unusual wall memorial from 1638, with Chubby weeping putti, one of which once fell off and bashed a hole in the floor.

On the right, the other tells a story like Hemingway's. It's a huge Roubiliac. Judge Dormer, in his robes of state, and his wife stand weeping over the body of their 12 year old son, who died of ‘consumption’ (TB? Cancer?) in 1731. That's it. Fabulously wealthy, gutted, brought down by the death of their only son. It's a postcard from the past, to remember life is precious and fragile, one of the finest Baroque works of art in the world, a snapshot of a family tragedy, hidden away in a village church's ringing chamber — another day at the office, in a way, but what a fabulous office!

Man in the Coonskin Cap, he say...

Special delivery by a fresh-faced Bob Dylan, no less, for all Bishops & Anglicans everywhere from their brother and colleague Joseph Butler (1692-1752), son of a linen draper, Bishop of Durham, who turned down a job offer to be Archbishop of Canterbury in 1747...

PS — there's a bit of a Tom Wright (present Bishop of Durham) lookalike over on the left. This is spooky stuff!
PPS — Cap this Morning Cappucino with a wonderfully thought-provoking perceptive article on Rowan's position and Dostoyevsky by Andrew Brown in yesterday's Guardian.

Ignorant armies clashing by night or threshold of opportunity?

As Rowan lands in New Orleans, ludicrous disaster movies about apocalyptic schism fill the media and potty right wing websites. They've pretty much written the story already, whatever happens. This, at any rate, saves air fares and environmental damage. Chicken Little stories about the Anglican Communion are a wake-up call, that indicate what this really is — God's way of providing Cast Iron Gold Plated opportunities...

1. To recognise What real Unity is and where it comes from — impossibles bound together by transcendent love — strong as death — not from our process but the Cross — not by politics but as gift by grace. Student Politics, Great White Chief stuff, Post-Colonial turf wars and Imperialism can offer appealing quick fixes, but they are ludicrously poor substitutes for the real thing.
   Read Colossians 1:20...
   
   
2. To listen carefully and to allow generous imagination to birth extravagant forbearance — including listening to the real Bible, not just our pet notions, left wing or right wing, about the Bible. Neither extreme side can change the other without being willing to follow the logic of the incarnation, by stepping into their shoes and thinking different.
   Read James 1:19...
   
   
3. To be the rubber that hits the road for the rest of the Christian Community — Exactly the tension and ambiguity surfacing among Anglicans can be found wherever development and globalization happen in the world; er... everywhere. More authoritarian or imperialistic denominations may be better at covering it up. One of the wisest spiritual teachers in the world, Sister Joan Chittister OSB, makes this point in this week's National Catholic Reporter:
   “The issue is in the air we breathe. The Anglicans simply got there earlier than most. And so they may well become a model to the rest of us of how to handle such questions. If the rate and kinds of social, biological, scientific and global change continue at the present pace, every religious group may well find itself at the breakpoint between "tradition" and "science" sooner rather than later.”
   Lying and pretending won't magic the problem away; so why not just get on and work it out up front, not through lying and pretence?
   Read Ephesians 4:25...
   
   
4. To enact Grace and Mercy, by consciously renouncing factionalism and shallowness. The world has quite enough Walkouts, Boycotts, and Factional Custard Pie Fights already, thank you very much. Why not let's think different? The Cross teaches that niceness is not enough. Every life, every predicament, right or left wing, requires redemption, more or less obviously. Truth > Justice > Reconciliation. Political fallings out and stitch-ups don't come anywhere near it.
   Read I Corinthians 3:3...
   

Finally, NT Christians needed constant forcible reminders about this stuff. The Scriptures were written for our learning. We are no better than them. Being an Anglican is getting to feel very much like it must have felt in the Early Church. So what? Learning how to be real is tough but necessary discipline for any follower of Christ in Community, any family. It's no big deal.

So, friends, are we up for tackling the real issue, in us, among us, within us, in Christ, or do we just play out those silly “Godzilla versus the beast” scripts?

Beelzebub has a devil set aside for me

The Lord of the Flies is sporting a new Dame Edna look this autumn.
These 2mm wide glasses are a striking test piece for ultra precise fast pulse laser nanotechnology. As manufacturing processes follow the exponential development curve described for chips by Moore's Law, computing power grows. Most of us nestle far more raw computing power on our laps than existed in the world when we were born.

(Just) William would say, 'it stands to reason' that this increasing miniaturization can't go on indefinitely... or can it? What new and creative uses can you think of for this kind of nano-technology?

Back to the Future?

Paleo-Future (Palaeo-future?) is for history junkies who wonder how the future looked from the past. Relish thought-transmitting headgear for women, paperless offices and personal hovercraft! here at home I treasure a yellowing cutting from the Times of July 1971 claiming, as a mathematical certainty, that all vestiges of organised religion would have disappeared by 2011.

Our forebears didn't always get it wrong, however. Some 1900 cards from the French Government's national collection certainly ring a few bells...

The UK National Curriculum?










Cable TV Porn channels?










The Iraq War?










Without launching into a great Rumsfeld "unknown unknowns" thing, this proves the Mark Twain principle that what makes a monkey out of you isn't what you don't know. It's what you think you know, but it's wrong!
What false certainties do we cherish about our future, or, for that matter, our present?

Not Quite Dawn French...

On Sunday I did a Francis of Assisi and preached to 100 dogs, in Great Missenden Church to celebrate 25 years of Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, whose headquarters is not far away in a converted stud farm at Saunderton.

Hearing dogs began in a Portakabin, but has now become the second largest assistance dogs charity in the UK, placing about 1,400 specially trained dogs with deaf people. Many of the animals are rescue dogs. The whole operation calls into question patronising and sentimental views of animals. It also challenges the odd habit of defining exceptional people by what they can't do, and putting them in a box. A hearing dog, for many profoundly deaf people, is a good way out of the box.

Not only are recipients able to tackle daily tasks at home and at work more easily, but the dogs have a considerable confidence boosting impact on the whole context of their lives. These are working animals like shepherd dogs. 8 million people used to watch One Man and his Dog — it's fascinating to see working partnerships like this on the streets of Britain as well as the hillsides of Wales and Cumbria.

It's always energizing to be with dedicated people, but seeing this partnership in action, and the way in which it turns round the isolation that deaf people often experience, was a real joy.

Incidence of hearing loss is going up, and present demand indicates a need to double the size of the charity towards a target of 3,000 dogs. That's something of a quantum leap (from £5m to £10m at today's prices) but when you consider that there are 2,000 profoundly deaf people in the Thames Valley alone it seems anything but far-fetched.

Thanks to a fantastic group of people for a positive and happy afternoon, especially deaf recipients I met, and the charity's supporters and workers. Particular thanks to Peter, Ruth and Ann from Hearing Dogs, and Abi for so ably signing words I would have thought were impossible to sign, like "Buckinghamshire" and "Hammarskjold!" It was good to work with Roger Williams, our diocesan chaplain for deaf people. Believe it or not, there were absolutely no K9 noises off during the celebration (not even during the sermon)!

Is this the Truth? Could things really turn around?

Stick with the possibilities of this — There's a twist in it!

Kudos to Eric Bramlett, Creative Arts monkey @ Community Christian Church of Chicago.

Up close and personal with animals at Woburn

A great day out with the family on Saturday at Woburn Safari Park. You really feel up close with the animals, and everybody really enjoyed themselves. A cash machine somewhere round the place would have been useful, though. Anna made friends with a penguin who kept following her finger underwater, as though it were a fish. Amongst other fascinating animal facts she now knows that Penguins do in fact, er, break wind under water. Learning that's worth a day of anybody's wages!