Churchy hedges, Godly walking gear

Senior staff residential meeting at Douai Abbey. In the evening, having cracked open a bottle, we each brought a poem to share. Rosemary Pearce, diocesan secretary, brought one by Nicola Slee. It’s worth reading in an age of structural reconfiguration (GAFCON etc), boundary issues over who does what, and, above all, to counter temptation to take ourselves too seriously, in the wrong way. The grace, or lack of it, is in how we do what we do, not what we do in itself...

Ecclesiastical hedges

Planted in neat, straight lines,
designed to keep divinity in
or the world at bay?
Who can say?
They are thick and intricately tangled,
exquisitely manicured by God's officials
who have had long training
in the finer arts of hedging.

Snipping this way and that,
they mould the bushy green growth
into ever more ingenious designs:
flying fish, glamorous dragons,
motherly pelicans, tender lions,
meek lambs and impressive eagles.

So engrossed are they
in their tending of theological topiary,
they fail to notice God
popping out in her walking gear
and slipping out the back garden gate,
heading for the hills,
quietly whistling.

Peter Buckley: Loser as Winner

I ain’t no fight fan, but a Canadian friend who was once described boxing to me as “like chess at speed” and I can see why people follow the fight game. Yesterday I heard an item on the BBC whilst in the car, which refernced a slightly dotty item in yesterday’s Times: ‘World’s worst boxer throws in the towel on lucrative career as human punchbag:’

Peter Buckley, defeated 256 times, says that his next fight will be his last. He boxes so often that he sometimes turns up with a black eye before a bout. Boxing fans will gather in Birmingham on Friday night to witness the final fight of a man who should be remembered for ever as Britain’s most spectacular sporting loser...

Buckley has lost more fights than any other boxer in the world. Throughout his 256 defeats, he has remained magnificently undeterred. While the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) remained desperately concerned that he would do himself a serious lasting injury, Buckley persisted, losing bout after bout.

In the past five years he has put together a particularly impressive losing streak, failing to win in 88 successive bouts. “I’ve had my eye on the 300 mark for a while, and it’s a little milestone I want to achieve, but I don’t want to fight on,” he said...

One site commenter, obviously knowledgeable in these matters, is very positive:

Peter is a defensive master. He even gave a defense masterclass on Sky Sports a couple of years ago. He simply does not get hit. He has fought so many future champions and yet has been stopped 10 times in 299 fights.

You have to say he stays alive somehow, and must be a very courageous gentleman, with lots of grit and pluck and all those other Boys Own virtues our Edwardian great grandfathers so admired, that rather died in the trenches.

We Brits celebrate the charge of the Light Brigade and Captain Scott’s Polar expedition; so here’s to you, Peter Buckley. It probably couldn’t be asked in the US in such a way as to make sense, but here‘s a question: Every game has winners and losers. Why is “loser” a term of playground abuse? Can you be such a good loser that you become, eventually, an iconic winner? Resilience, courage and stickability are surely admirable qualities. I’m reminded of Cool Runnings and the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team. I’d certainly buy this guy a drink any day, and the article does say that by losing he has been an essential part of many winners’ careers. At that point the whole daft thing begins to sound almost Christian...

Chiltern Hills Freak Early Snowfest

The first snowy October day in Great Missenden since 1935! Lucy and I were up at the crack of dawn to try and capture the weirdness of it all — autumn russets and deep brown, bright reds, some verdant green, and sparkling fresh snow.

All this, and half term, too. We arrived back home in to find a note from Catherine, Tim, Stewart, Nicholas, announcing they had gone off to goof about on sledges in the hills. The result seems to have been some vintage romping loonery, caught on Catherine’s phone:

The rats, sensibly, stayed snugly out of it. Some of us had to go to work — a good hour to get down to Eton College for an afternoon working through plans to invent the country’s first interfaith dialogue residential centre for young people; Worthwhile activity but fractionally less of a riot....

The Compleat (Secret) Dick

After the dark psychotic loonery of No Country for Old Men, the Coen Bros Get Smart in Burn after Reading:

OK, here’s the skinny. The Busted Baldy is John Malkovich. The Blithering Bastard is George Clooney. The Bewildered Bimbo is Frances McDormand. The Bitch is Tilda Swinton, alongside Brad Pitt, the Butch. Playing at the top of their games, in this movie everyone plays the complete bloody fool. The dense fog of secret war surrounds the lot, and all you can make out through the Coen brothers’ stylish and spicy farrago of idiocy are ignorant armies clashing by night, but in broad daylight, like drunken fairground bumper car drivers who wouldn’t stop just because the sun had come up.

This is both a terrrible and a brilliant film. It's a complete and total mess, but somehow the Bros pull it off, and Catherine, Tim and I were vastly entertained. I think we learnt something, too. Although there are laughs aplenty to be had, the most powerful well-equipped outfit in the world is as incapable of working out what the hell’s going on as the rest of us. This is the stuff whereof crises are made, friends. Sleep tight tonight.

Would you adam and eve it?

Limbering up for a John Milton 400th anniversary celebration, I came across an excellent article about Milton and Sex , by Theo Hobson, in Saturday’s Guardian. A mystery commenter calling themselves “FromMe2U,” responded with a total gem that may be worthy of wider reflection:

a friend tells me if Adam and Eve had been Chinese they would have eaten the snake, not the apple, so stayed in Eden forever.

Discuss?

Lay Presidency: 2 heads better than 1

Contradictory signals from down under, driven by gross ecclesiological revisionism about Eucharistic Lay Presidency. I’m confused, anyway, about the news from Sydney. The fatuous notion that “this will make the diaconate a real diaconate” demonstrates simple but complete ignorance of Catholic order. In those terms all the Sydney innovators’ proposals would do is make deacons, functionally, priests. This would obviously tend to obscure distinctively diaconal ministry. The C of E meets pastoral need from within a traditional understanding of Church, by authorizing Extended Communion. Cursing in fluent Kangaroo, as Dr Doolittle called it, is a non-traditional sport.

But has the time really come to trash the reformation formularies like this? The genius of Anglicanism, its missional crown jewels within the whole Kingdom of God, has been its ability to run essentially (but not exclusively) primitive Evangelical software on essentially (but not exclusively) primitive Catholic hardware. When this is done contextually, with real faith and passion, it’s a plenty powerful machine, plenty creative.

Cranmer, Hooker, Whitgift, Parker, Elizabeth I, consciously chose not to be a simple Zwinglian sect. Time may have come (really?) to ditch Hooker’s ecclesiology, reformat, and replace it with that of Travers the Bible Man. Doing this whilst banging on at everyone else about Anglican “orthodoxy” shows, at the least, a catastrophic failure of historical self-awareness.

Back last century, John Shelby Spong led the charge for lay presidency in his book Why Christianity must Change or Die. It looks as though this issue has now reached what one might call the Jensen Spong Vanishing Point. The whole matter was considered very fully by the 1998 Lambeth conference, which decisively rejected it. So 98 Lambeth 1:10 is to die for, and 98 Lambeth 3:22 is to dynamite. Simultaneously. Illogical, Captain?

Like a Puppet on a String

I’m glad to see that Tim Chesterton’s 60’s upbringing included the Very British medium of Gerry Anderson puppet shows. Peter Cook & Dudley Moore scaled the heights of this art form in ways that still induce Shock ’n Awe:

It’s a considerable relief that fallings out between Christians don’t ever involve motivelessly evil puppets or the senseless random destruction of national institutions — there’s always a reason for the behaviours in our fellow Christians that most vex and astound us, if only we can be bothered to look for it from their point of view...

Eton Wick: Fun, phonics & feelings

A rather glorious time yesterday at Eton Wick C of E Primary School, celebrating their 120th anniversary. This school is actually in the Windsor and Maidenhead LEA area, and, to continue the Dickensian theme, is emerging now from some hard times. Schools that are sandwiched between the various education systems around Slough (selective/ non-selective, 2-tier/ 3-tier) tend to experience life as a roller coaster ride, as successive waves of children take different paths going through. Lucy Holt, the local Vicar, has really committed herself to this school as chair of governors, and everybody is working hard in partnership to make it really fly. Yesterday there was plenty to celebrate, looking forwards as well as back over 120 years.

EW had a discouraging Ofsted a few years ago, but have used it constructively and are now doing some really excellent work, especially in reception and KS1, where I noticed the Ruth MiskinRead/Write method — a creative, inclusive “synthetic” phonics-based scheme that really engages childrens’ imagimations around shapes as well as sounds. There’s some fabulous learning going on at Eton Wick, with a bold and imaginative programme of building development, including a new family centre next year on its extensive, but discrete, site.
I was impressed by some great work some of the youngest EW children have been doing on moods, feelings, colours and faces, which shone with fun and emotional intelligence. I’m still thinking through something I was told at Wycombe Abbey about how children really learn — “I’ll probaby forget what you said; I’ll try and remember what you did; but I may remember for the rest of my life how you made me feel...”
This works for Church, too.

Bullying: diagnostics (provisional)

Putting a finger on the problem. Since our discussion earlier this year about clergy bullying (sometimes of, sometimes by), I have been trying to work out how I, as a bishop, can respond operationally. What are I and my colleagues supposed to seek? What defines what’s going on? As a working toolbox, about which I would love further correction and enlightenment, examine four I’s?

1. Information. Most methods for protecting vulnerable people involve secure protocols about communicating information out of the war zone into places it can be processed and acted upon, like Childline. Entirely protected anonymous squawk procedures are necessary but wide open to abuse. The only way to protect against abuse of the reporting system is to make the open protected communication easily available, but have rigorous protocols about weighing information. Assume nothing; believe everything initially, but test it carefully. Check the infromation on which you act is evidence and possible (ultimately) to put in a form which natural justice requires vis-a-vis everyone involved, including (eventually) the alleged perpetrator. The more reporters take responsibility for their feelings, the further we are from the danger that all we are getting is one half of a scenario within which both sides are actually exhibiting traits of bullying behaviour towards each other.
   
   
2. Insecurity. What goes on in bullies? Why do they do it? Fear and personal insecurity have to be in there somewhere, surely. These will probably be evidenced in other areas of life that have nothing to do with the victim, as well as in the bullying behaviour — “probably” not “necessarily,” as the temporary relief provided by victimizing a vulnerable person may act as a lightning conductor and diminish symptoms of fear and insecurity elsewhere.
   
   
3. Insincerity. One personal trait that will pretty much always express itself in bullying behaviour is a (technically) psychopathic personality. The technical term “psychopathic personality” is unhelpful because of its loaded popular associations. All I mean (from prison experience) is a person who would score high on a Hare PCL-R test. Signs include a strong selection of these traits:
   
   a. People who may have many faults, but ever being wrong ain’t one of them: superficial, sometimes grandiose
   
   b. ...with an immense capacity to charm but also to manipulate — deceitful; economical with the truth
   
   c. ...where everything that happens to them is all about them, because they have a weak capacity to empathise with or even accept others are autonomous individuals, let alone feel accountability towards them
   
   d. ...where everything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault, ammo for blame, and everything that goes right is focussed on themselves and used to vindicate themselves in the face of a hostile or uncomprehending world; prone to blame the ref for the goals they let in,
   
   e. ... with a tendency to “them and us” thinking, to demonise perceived opponents and glamorize perceived allies, arising from a low-accountability world view in which I can only ever win if you lose
   
   f. ... bigger about threats and boasting than results and delivery
   
   g. ...with a preference for passive aggression and revenge as a dish taken cold. Watch out for grudges.
   
   I would expect some if not all of these traits to be evidenced in a true bully, pretty much every time.
   
   
4. Intentions. There are two sides to victimizing — victimizing others and victimizing oneself. We can’t play the one off against the other, and everybody remains responsible for their intentnions and actions, but anyone assessing what is going on has to make the distinction in their own mind.
   

London Atheist ads: Shome mishtake?

I’m with Simon Barrow about the new London bus atheist poster ads campaign:

To those without a huge vested interest in promoting or dissing religion, this probably looks a slightly odd initiative. Frankly, the slogan is a bit anodyne. It's the non-believing equivalent of "God may very well exist. Now have a nice day". But it will probably still be enough to upset counter-evangelists of the kind who like to tell everybody they are going to hell for not subscribing to their particular doctrine, and who think atheism is very, very naughty.

I wonder what impact this kind of campaign has, though? It will appeal to those who like that kind of thing, no doubt. And in part it seems to have been born out of resentment towards comparatively prodigious (and extremely well-funded) religious advertising. But apart from raising brand awareness, I suspect that the vast majority of people will be as sceptical about being sold unbelief as they are about being sold belief. Well, unless someone is thinking of throwing in a free set of wine glasses or something.

Perhaps this particular ad is more agnostic than atheist, and we still have to await a genuinely atheist poster ad. The wording puts me in mind of a brilliantly funny song by the world’s first Atheist Gospel Singer, Susan Werner, which I sometimes play in the car for a chuckle.

Actually I suppose, like the ads, the song’s more agnostic than atheist, really. The humerous twist at the end is a refreshing break from the characteristic grinding pig ignorance associated with Dawkins and chums over here. Nothing in the ad isn’t in the Bible anyway — its line is characteristic of some strands in the Wisdom Tradition. And because God is implicit in everything, anything that raises the question actually helps people on their own journey towards him — as the sermon on the mount says, those who seek, find. It happens every day, and whilst these ads may well annoy people of a fundamentalist persuasion, they will raise a big question creatively for some people who might not have prayed Psalm 49 at a Cathedral evensong or read the book of Job recently...

Taliban method, Jesus method

Yesterday Gayle Williams, a British/South African Aid Worker, was gunned down on the streets by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The way they do business pretty much indicates what they really stand for, and the fear, and fantasy and hatred. Christians are subject to fear, fantasy and hatred too — some may recommend fighting fire with fire — an understandable angry reaction, but exactly the opposite of the way Jesus preached and lived.
What’s the Christian way do business?

One of the workshops at Swanwick was led jointly by the Area Dean of Tower Hamlets (Alan Green) and Hussain Ali of the Southwark Islamic Forum. Alan and Hussain led us as brothers and friends through the complexities of life in Tower Hamlets, with its waves of immigration over the past 400 years, and the significant efforts of people of goodwill to discern a way together.

Trying to scope how Christians can help build cohesion in a diverse community, Alan quoted a sermon of Thomas Ken, preached at Little Easton in Essex in 1682:

Not only are we by grace made like to God, but he is also pleased actually to dwell in us, and to consecrate our souls to be his temples... So, when in gracious souls, we discover all the fruits of the Spirit, a kind of glory brightening their conversation, and a sacred amiableness breathed on them from heaven, we are sure that God inhabits there, and cannot but reverence his temples.

In other words our duty isn’t a matter of politics, or being nice to people in the hope of getting something out of them, but an expression of how are called to be in Christ — Christlike.

Catholic reality, locally delivered...

A League of Gentlemen vision from hell:

Tubbs and Edward run the local shop, despite the fact it is far away from the actual centre of the town. However, they believe themselves to be local and will protect their localness by any means...

Have you ever experienced churches like that? Self-obsessed, paranoid, sourly political, dwindling disgracefully. There’s a lot of it about. Here’s to us, who’s like us? And the enemy is Them; everyone else; diocese, deanery, whatever. Visitors sometimes encounter weird attitudes and assumptions in Entirely Local shops — and churches:
Of course the particular local people, congregation, parish, whatever, with whom you do your Christianity is a key part of the delvery system. But it isn’t everything. The National Deaneries Consultation at Swanwick is a biennial opportunity for area deans and lay chairs to raise their sights a bit. I’ve been working there this weekend with Janice Price, missiologist. Area deans and lay chairs from over 20 dioceses have been looking beyond their particular trenches, aided and abetted by resource people and ideas from all over the country.

Ecclesiologically, Christianity is a Universal reality, a new humanity, a global (= “Catholic”) reality, locally delivered. Jesus said his Kngdom was yeast inside, not top down or bottom up. NT Christians necessarily did Church bottom up not top down, mainly because there wasn’t a top, and the whole thing wasn’t institutionalised yet in that way. The Reformation was about recovering this authentic perspectve out of the institutionalism and powergaming of Western Christendom, which Eastern Orthodox Christians had never surrendered to as a total vision anyway. You can see the diocese, not just the congregation, as the local church. Doing so can free up relatonships and attitudes for mission, if only we let it.

So the value of the Deanery is not about structures but relationships; its strength is not geometry, but mission process. We have to work missionally and relationally, refusing to surrender to the boring old Tubbs ’n Edward Blockhouse mentality. Response points from the floor at the final Bible study and reflection Janice and I led together were encouraging:
Unlocking — Building relationships — Running with Change — Sharing faith with confidence — recognising barriers — Investment — keeping Jesus central, who valued his disciples in spite of their failure — Serving — Thinking the unthinkable (Mission Possible) — We are where diksciples were in John 20 (behind locked doors for fear of...?) — Imagination.

They reminded me of Greg Ferguson’s powerful, inspiring summary of Church history, Fast Forward, and his passionate comment on parochialism and narrow denominationalism:

Don’t be foooled by the joyful sound,
Don’t step over the dividing line;
You stick to your kind: I stick to mine.
Tribes of the global population,
races and denominations,
worshipping separately;
Bowing before the same God,
but would rather die than gather under the same roof.

I want to ask you, my Church,
how have you survived?
What mighty engine keeps your cells alive?
What great heartbeat has sustained you,
When pain contorts you and sin stains you?
Through the trough of human sorrow,
Who has lifted you to tomorrow?

There are and always have been
The invisible ones,
who never made a name,
rejected fame,
the brick and pillars, the crossbeams of the Church,
who stood up for justice,
Stooped down to serve,
Reached out to heal,
Who sheltered the defenceless,
Mothered the motherless,
Lifted the depressed,
and loved the despised.
It matters that they lived,
It matters how they died,
It matters that they answered the call.
Without them
the foundations would groan and crack,
and finally fall...

The wisdom of the old; the passion of the young. Can you imagine what could be done?

Joe Sixpack? Schmixpack! Who he?

As US election fever mounts, enter Joe Wurzelbacher, or is that burger? Big Joe is an ornery plumber from OH, who’s going to end up paying Big Tax if Obama gets in and hits on people earning over $250K. Ivana Trump hated turning out her pockets (No she didn’t. See correction below. It was Leona Helmsley. Ed) She used to say “Taxes are for little people.” Joe ain’t little. He’s a rather well paid plumber. Disturbingly plutocratic, actually, especially without being registered. Like most ornery Joe Sixpacks just now, “nobody knows the trouble he’s seein’ Nobody knows but Croesus.” Really? Confused? You will be.

Remember Monty Python? —

“my Parrot’s called Holy Roman Empire.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he isn’t Holy, he isn’t Roman and he isn’t an empire.”

Well apparently, in the cold light of day, Joe ain’t Joe, he ain’t no plumber, and on his income he’d actually profit from Obama's tax plans, if he paid his taxes; but apparenty he’s, er, is a tad behind with the IRS... D’oh!

Users this side of the pond may recall various British politicos’ efforts to pimp their campaign rides with heartrending tales of ornery woe. Remember Neil Kinnock and the “War of Jennifer’s ear?” Remember IDS’ 94 year old lady who never had her nightie changed? Churchgoers, remember former Durham Bishop David Jenkins’ “boy with no shoes?”

Left or Right, UK or US, this whole tactic starts out big, but always seems to phut out into pantomime. Will the real, but strangely elusive, Joe Sixpack ever stand up? Strikes me, however, that if he does, he probably won’t have earned $250,000 of personal income last year.
So it’s back, folks, to brass tacks — time for a real American Joe Sixpack hero:

Change management: A Dog’s Life?

Whilst minding my own business this week comes an urgent call to impersonate m’colleague the Bishop of Stafford, and give a keynote address at this weekend’s National Consultation on the future of the Deanery. Whilst casting around for material, I encountered the story of Tattoo, the Basset Hound:

In 1992, a traffic patrol in Tacoma, Washington State, 
saw a car travelling at 20 with something apparently dangling from the door. 
Close inspection revealed this to be 
a puffing basset hound called Tattoo, 
caught by his lead in the door, 
with tiddly four inch legs, 
‘picking them up and putting them down 
as fast as he could to keep up’

Caught up in changes we don’t want,

padding along faster than is reasonable
towards an uncertain future for which we were never designed?
Do they mean us?