The Rudiments of Wisdom

I was at the toddler service at Buckingham Parish Church this Wednesday. Claire Wood was doing a wonderful storytelling job on the tale behind the famous icon you see everywhere (Left), explaining how Sarah really wanted a baby and couldn't seem to get one. She used this excellent Russian Doll (Right) for Sarah. And when the baby came, asked Claire, what kind of baby do you think it was? (boy? girl?) Quick as a flash young Eva replied, “One a lot less decorated than that one!”

Conflict Transformation, Day Three

Conflict Transformation Course, Day Three (Earlier Day One, here and here, Day Two here.) This bagged up information from the other two, with a chance to rework the medical ethics problem from day 1 in the light of all we'd learnt about Integrative Complexity and Relational Contextual Reasoning. I came to the same conclusion, but was rather surprised by how many extra facets about the problem and its various contexts came into play when I applied the IC/ RCR toolboxes. We were each given a personal profile describing how we react to conflict, based on the work we'd handed in. I wish I’d studied this stuff years ago. I don’t think it would have lessened the amount of conflict in my life, but it would have felt more like White Water rafting, and less like falling over Niagara Falls!

Finally, a lot of the course so far rather assumed rational people acting rationally. Whether it's an angry person somewhere under the ceiling, or a sullen manipulative bully, not everybody is sensible all the time. Some people and groups make a living out of being difficult. What about them?

We were introduced to a bit of Game Theory (Robert Axelrod) called, rather unattractively, “Tit for Tat” indicating tactical options in relation to a variably collaborative or defecting protagonist which might be able to get things back on some sort of negotiable track in the face of person or persons behaving badly.

I think this project offered considerable potential for church conflict at all levels. Here's a classic statistic out of the air — 46% of church conflict is more driven by the personal dynamics than the actual bone of contention. We need to grow greater understanding about how we interact and why, along with some practical skills for alternative strategies and tactics. I’m certainly exploring how we might be able to access this resource better in the diocese and wider church. It will be interesting to walk towards Lambeth with this perspective in mind.

Exclusive Footage! Inside a No-Go Area

Oh Unbelievers! Here’s Exclusive footage of a Telegraph reader in a real urban no-go area not a few miles from here. I did doubt their existence, but this proves everything...

h/t the Catherine Tate Show.
I managed to catch up with the Harvard Business Review yesterday, noting, among other things, how Sharia is “booming” within the financial sector. Beyond these shores, then, adult discussion about this is perfectly possible...

Bishop of Rochester does his job

This week’s Sunday Telegraph carried an interview boldly headlined “Bishop of Rochester reasserts ‘no-go’ claim.” Oh goody, I thought. Now I can find out where some of these places are. We have very significant Muslim populations in Slough, Wycombe and Aylesbury. If one of them’s a no-go area, I can get on down there and find out what it’s really like. Sorry, mate. Turns out the headline bears no relation to anything Bishop Michael actually said. This is the old “Pen an outrageous headline, and they ignore the rest” trick that was played on Archbishop Rowan the other week.

So what was the authentic substance of the piece? Bishop Michael’s personal courage and faith shone through, along with a characteristically sharp, thoughtful and uncomfortable question he’s challenging us all to consider. Christianity has shaped our laws, culture and history in a fundamental way. Do we really want to blow all that? If we don’t, we need to commit to it and nourish it. The positive message I heard was “use it or lose it.”

No no-go areas. In a pathetic attempt to cover up, the journalist lobbed in a random anecdote, nothing to do with anything +Michael said, about the home secretary being heckled by a crazy in the East End last year. Apparently that’s what has to happen for your street to become a “no-go area.” And if that’s all that Fleet Street’s finest can come up with in three weeks of trying, you may safely assume that, whilst there are a small number of nutters out there, the whole “no-go” thing is essentially provocative tosh, designed to prop up dwindling newspaper sales.

Meanwhile the searching question +Michael raised deserves a serious answer from the secular elites who like to think they form our culture. In the present superheated climate, I wouldn’t hold my breath for it, though...

L4/19-22 Housing, Police, Queuing

19. Buy The Big Issue or contribute to a housing charity. Aha! There’s a lady near Missenden Station who sells TBI and I did this one the week before I had to anyway, so I left it at that, assuming timing isn’t critical. At Church we've been supporting the Old Tea Warehouse in High Wycombe — they're now producing a rag, which I gather can be got, among, other places, from a table at the back of All Saints High Wycombe. Next time I'm in, I'll give that a go...

20. Say hello (’ello, ’ello? — sorry) to a Police Officer. I have to confess to not having bumped into one on Friday, and thinking I could end up inside for wasting Police Time if I dialled 999 just to thank them for being themselves. I have, however, always made a point of trying to get to know and work with my local police service. It seems to me police officers end up doing pretty much all the jobs the rest of us would rather not think about, from clearing up after road crashes to managing drunks in our new 24 hour alcohol-sodden town centres. Of course there's good and bad in everyone, but I'm not sure the media and copshow stereotypes help, either. In Thames Valley they've done some really headline work with restorative justice. I don’t think most police officers I know want putting on a pedestal — just some basic respect for what they’re trying to do, and a bit of awareness that there’s a human being inside the uniform. I wouldn't have thought that’s too much to ask, but often, apparently it is. I sometimes look in on the notorious but revealing Coppersblog. It gives down-to-earth view from the other side of the counter, and I find it injects a bit of (alternative) reality into all the media hype and cynicism.


21. Chat to someone in a Queue. Trouble was, the only queues I got in on Saturday were queues of cars. I had a very nice chat with the lady in the fish (as in aquarium) shop, but there wasn’t a queue. Tried to find a queue in Staples, but got served first time (for the first time ever). Even the local Somerfield was a no-queue zone. Grrr! Whatever is happening to the British! No queues! Not when you want one anyway. I’ll see how I do in the next queue I hit...

22. Think about how to make space for stillness in the week ahead. A rather busy week, but I have a cunning plan. As well as injecting fractionally more silence into morning prayer with Lucy, I'm going to try and get out walking or running, away from the phone and everything else. See how that goes.

Unity and Community in Marsh Gibbon

I was really delighted to lead parish communion at Marsh Gibbon this morning. People and attitudes there reflected the meticulous and caring ministry of the Rector, David Hiscock. The epistle was Romans 5, which sometimes ties people in knots, but the reader had obviously bothered to work through it beforehand in a version he understood, and something really powerful came through. The Gospel reader had obviously prepared, too. Sometimes “reading the lesson” is the job people assume any idiot can do without any preparation. It just isn’t, and it was great enrichment to our worship to have lessons read intelligently and feelingly, so that we were all drawn in.

St Mary’s is a fairly straightforward 13th century Church, although I think of tower pinnacles as more West Country than Bucks. What caught my eye were wonderful banners laid up in the Church from the Marsh Gibbon Friendly Society. This was started in 1788 by some bell ringers, and provided sickness and death benefits, along with an annual Oak Apple Day service and feast in the village. It still has over 200 members, and brings all sorts of people together.

The Friendly Society is a great story about ordinary people doing something together to improve life for everybody, 200 years before all the jargon about social capital and capacity build. More worrying is the fact that this village which had 25 farms in 1945, and 11 in 2000. Today it has 4 working farms — a striking sign, whatever Lord Tesco may claim to the contrary, of the way he and his chums have been devastating rural England over the past 8 years. Hmm.

Telemarketers meet their match

Whether it’s Fawlty Towers or the Blitz, true Brits know how to grin and bear it. They dislike their banks intensely but haven’t the gumption to change. After 35 miserable years of Barclays Bank, I was phoned this week by their telemarketers. Last March an undercover BBC Whistleblower programme pictured lies, security abuse, mis-selling and cynicism about customers that seem to be rife there. When the notoriety spread, yea even to Dave Walker's Cartoon Blog, I had to sit up and take notice:

This is the company who made 7 billion pounds profit last year and yet charge people £30 to go overdrawn when the cost to them is about £1.50. The programme showed telephone operatives engaging in all sorts of dubious behaviour, such as pretending they are calling as an ‘advisor’ when in fact it is purely a sales call. Then an advisor in a local branch attempting to sell home insurance to a man who can’t afford a bed in an attempt to meet a target. And many other such horrors.

Of course at the end of the programme there is a management-type person saying that what the programme reveals is not typical and that actually Barclays are respectable and lovely. But the fact is that we know (from experience) that Barclays hassle their customers with sales calls, so I know which side of the story I’m believing.

Here’s one radical solution to the telemarketer problem. If I had the gumption for it, of course, I'd have changed banks years ago. Just let me know how you get on...

Portsmouth

Captain's Log, Half Term. After picking up Stewart and Nicholas from their sleep over with friends (aka 48 hours of Guitar Hero (Left), we all goofed off to Portsmouth, because the smalls wanted to go and have a laugh at Stephanie, and exprience her student house (Right). Rumbustous and wonderful family meal out — Real joy just being together. The star turn was the Spinnaker Tower — the others got Catherine up on the glass floor thing in spite of the fact she’s not too crazy about heights. Even on a misty day it was well worth a look.

Flicks together afterwards — The Water Horse — Cute but slightly limp Free Willy for Plesiosaurs. Stewart and Nicholas were considerably underwhelmed and demanded a trip to Jumper later in the week. Steph’s illustration course seems to be going well, and my eye was caught by this utterly wonderful sketch she did for a children’s book cover. I wish I'd the time to write the book to go with it...

L4/15-18 Bearing up, pressing on...

15. Pray for local health and social services
was a doddle, but I don't do as much of it as would be good. I've been to services in my life where pretty much all the prayers are about Us in Church, and Us in Church being better disciples; and I tend to think one way of Us in Church being better disciples would be to shut up about ourselves and our feelings and our progress, and pray about someone else for a change.

16. Arrange to visit someone else’s Church
One of the strange things about being a bishop is that I'm always in someone else’s Church (or chapel or even, sometimes synagogue or mosque). I have a formal role in the C of E churches I visit in Bucks, but in practice I find it’s far more fruitful practically to think of myself as a guest, not the boss. I also find I get more opportunities to worship with different faith groups of all kinds than was the case before. It means experiencing all conceivable types of worship, from radically unstructured to Vatican 1 high mass, from six people at 8 o’clock to a loud and lively thousand. Every expression, of course, has its highlights and lowlights, but I can honestly say I haven’t ever been anywhere without sensing spiritual value in what was going on. I realise what freshness and vitality there is around the place, and looking back I have to confess my own narrowness and parochialism down the years, and a kind of “here we go again” thing in my own mind. One of the perks of this job is to be a guest in churches where other people, operationally, call the shots. One of the great perks of baptism is to be able to go anywhere within one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. I wish I'd explored this dimension of discipleship more years ago.

17. Walk or cycle a route you would normally drive
Done a few walks up to Church and round the village, and we walked to get a new bulb for the reptiles the other day, but the fact is most of my driving is over many miles without a proper public transport equivalent.

18. Water some plants or a green space using the washing-up water
Job Done. Hope the little darlins like (trace elemnt) Spag Bol. Shows how much I know about plants, but Lucy (who knows a lot more) assures me they’ll be OK... Done the Pampas Grass out the back, which seems to like trace element Spag Bol, because it did a cute little rustle in the wind afterwards. Ahh. Bless.

Spandex Heroes?

Lent began as a training season. Reactions to training, like diets, often focus on “how?” The real question is “what for?” What image do we have of ourselves as the people and disciples we are, and would like to be? Here, to help us tame and train our fantasies about ourselves, are some ordinary wannabe New American Gladiators...

Notice how lack of peripheral vision has prevented the D-cup Toupée gentleman spotting his own need of a bra...

Sharia — Chameleons on the carpet?

Yesterday I slunk away from the kiddies’ sleepover for Jon Moulton’s Dispatches programme on Banks and the Credit Crunch. Mr Moulton is a high powered Private Equity specialist, founder of Alchemy Partnership. He knows a lot about dodgy finance, and he thinks the whole silly thing is a self-inflicted wound, born of greed. Banks bought shedloads of dodgy debt on the back of Collateralized Loan Obligations — World of Warcraft style “alchemy” that transforms dross debt into a golden opportunity for six figure bonuses. Turns out it was fool’s gold, but the suits picked up their bonuses anyway. Make no mistake who’s paying for this lot long term — it isn’t the suits. On the day they nationalised Northern Rock, John McFall (Chair of the UK Treasury Select Committee) reminds us

banks are the only institutions that socialise the losses and privatise the profits

“all because those men in expensive suits got too greedy,’’ concludes Mr Moulton. The FSA is enquiring into its own handling of the Northern Rock Fiasco and will surely conclude (Mystic Meg Voice, please) “It was just One of Those Things.” Meanwhile the UK banks are, I think, £31Bn down the Swanee, and new Fantastickal Alchemy models are lining up on the runway to ensure next year’s bonuses.

One interesting study option in a debt driven crisis is Sharia Finance. Like Traditional (=pre-Capitalist) Christianity, this forbids the Scriptural Sin of Usury. It’s particularly interesting at a time the British government has been making the City of London what it calls “the Key Western Centre for Muslim Finance.” But you can only mention this in company if you play the Sharia Card (below).
You play this to people and see if they explosively fill their pants and start screaming at you. If they don’t, you can have a rational discussion. As a lad I wondered whether chameleons really exploded on Tartan Carpets. Now I can find out, by playing the Sharia Card with the editor of the Daily Mail. The worst Bad Thing in the DM world is being Foreign and Muslim. The highest Good is a prosperous housing market. So Sharia finance must be good. No it’s not, it’s bad. No it’s not, it’s good. No, it’s bad. No, Good. Bad. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. Boooooom!

No Daily Mail. Clean Air at last.

You are so unfair.

Teenagers en masse easily induce fear. Lucy and I are about to become parents of teenagers for the second time in our lives. But what do you make of the Mosquito ?

The Mosquito™ ultrasonic teenage deterrent is the solution to the eternal problem of unwanted gatherings of youths and teenagers in shopping malls, around shops and anywhere else they are causing problems. The presence of these teenagers discourages genuine shoppers and customers’ from coming into your shop, affecting your turnover and profits. Anti social behavior has become the biggest threat to private property over the last decade and there has been no effective deterrent until now.

This device broadcasts an annoying high pitched noise that you can only hear if you're under 25. The more I think about this, the more it sucks.

1. A friend in the police service once described the problem of moving teenagers on as being like “wrestling a blancmange.” Since we haven’t quite started shooting them in the streets just for existing, they move somewhere else. In other words this device doesn’t solve the problem. It just shifts it elsewhere. I'm reminded of Mrs Thatcher’s ecological Cunning Plan to save the North Sea from raw sewage — build longer outfalls.
2. What about, say, babies? Unless they are particularly delinquent babies, why should they be subjected to potentially damaging sound pollution? And, in this nation of animal lovers, what about domestic cats and dogs? Let alone good teenagers.
   
3. What hypocritical loonery thinks that you can teach teenagers respect by treating them disrespectfully? Imagine local authorities were installing, say, electric fences that gave only the over 50's electric shocks to stop them jaywalking, or cattle prods to speed them up in cinema queues? What would we make of that? If some evil teenager developed a sinister device that filled our streets with annoying sounds targeted at old people... Well they have. It’s called disco music, and we ask them to turn it down. They observe how we ask them to turn it down, and that’s how they learn, for good or bad.

Are there alternatives to this device? Well, how about the rest of us behaving like grownups rather than stroppy teenagers? How about treating everyone else like human beings and, perhaps, even actually talking to them? That way we practice what we preach, treating others with the basic respect we expect from them. It’s not rocket science, is it?

Buzz Off (anti Mosquito) campaign here

Advice for teenagers: h/t Charles Overton & Tim Harper

L4/10-14 Good in parts

10. Find out about a local organization or event you could support.

11. Leave a thank-you note for your postie

12. Give a friend a home-made gift

13. Run an errand for someone in your locality

14. Do something practical to make your neighbourhood a brighter place

Hmm. Performance very variable this week, I'm sorry to say. Mostly done, with a few holes, and a bit of help from my friends, but not always on the right days or exactly as intended. Easy ones were the postie, whom I saw and greeted personally. Actually it’s not always the same one. Home made gift was an abject failure. It just involved being too creative and practical (dumb male). I saw Anna’s lovely home-made Valentine’s Day card for Lucy and me, and wept! The errand was a doddle, and for the next few days we’re feeding a rabbit over the road whilst the family’s away on a half term break. Most tendentious was 14, for which I replaced the basking light for Stephanie’s lizards upstairs, and cleaned up the fish in the hall and replaced their weed. It certainly made their environment a brighter place, but I'm not sure it’s exactly what was in mind.

So next week will be more as specified. When you take something on and it doesn't quite work out, the temptation is to jack it in if it wasn’t perfect. But if we really believe in grace, and that “we are wound with mercy round and round as if with air,” we can just pick ourselves up and get on with it. This works for Bible reading notes

Sharia/Archbishop pre-postmortem

Various people this week have told me about the Archbishop and Sharia Law, and the hot emerging truths seem to be...

1. The Archbishop has got Funny Eyebrows and a Beard
   
2. His academic lectures are Academic, and this is a Bad Thing for which he should apologise. Unlike the Welsh, who do poetry and stuff, the English idolise unreflective pragmatism. It’s the only country in the world where “Academic” is generally a withering term of abuse. Everywhere else, stupid is stupid. In roadhouse Telegraph it’s cool.
   
3. I phoned the student loans company the other day, and they wouldn’t talk to me until I gave them my secret answer. I asked them what my secret question was, and they said it was a secret. In that spirit, nobody’s quite sure what exactly the question is, but many people have told me they don’t believe any of our politicians would have had the moral courage to raise it. It's good that it has been raised, but it should certainly never be raised again. England is made of inward facing rings within rings — nobody likes turning outwards.
4. Jesus talked about Pearls ’n Swine. Bishops seeking a quiet life need to remember at all times how new model hi-profit lo-cost media actually work:

This particular revelation is from Mr Show. Bear it in mind also as you enjoy breathless tales about gays ’n schisms — enjoy, but don't inhale.

Jamil’s School dinners

Today our Partnership in World Mission group is beginning to think through developing our relationship with Nandyal, alongside the educational partnership we visited India for last year. With big formal dinners last night and tonight, thoughts wander back to a school kitchen Lucy and I encountered in a village near Nandyal: a rather challenging memory as we feast our way through Lent. But food is food, and received with thanksgiving among friends, a blessing. Nutritionally, the Indian version is somewhat superior to its English equivalent...

How to inflame Passion...

To start a media firestorm, you need a media flamethrower. Say what you like about Archbishop Rowan, anyone who writes 146 word sentences ain't no media flamethrower. So how do you whip up a firestorm out of a law lecture? The Wardman Wire has been digging through some BBC dustbins, to find out exactly how the Archbishop was kebabed by BBC news editors before he even opened his mouth.

The moral? The looser the nickers, the easier it is to get them in a twist. You need them well twisted when you're hanging archbishops out to dry. Many Congratulations to Matt Wardman for digging this lot up. Plainly the process of sexing up dodgy dossiers is not confined to government — You have to, if you’re churning out what Nick Davies calls “flat earth news” I’m really sorry the BBC’s editors are now on the game. Perhaps this story isn't all doom and gloom. Making Fox look like a serious news organisation is some kind of an achievement.

Love and Death

Having given up Chocs for Lent we’re on dried Apricots and Mango chunks in our little love nest this Valentine's Day.

Egg headed lovers with a taste for something slightly alternative can celebrate Cyril and Methodius, apostles of the Slavs, instead. Meanwhile, if you’re more into Galactic than Glagolitic, true love is conquering everything up on the Death Star:

Peter Serafinowicz — who else?

Free Love in Essex & Kent

Lucy and I were off this last weekend in The Emmaus Centre, helping lead an Engaged Encounter Weekend for couples planning weddings. They give each other a whole weekend to focus on the marriage rather than the wedding, in a Christian context. We really enjoy these weekends. We meet some fantastic people and always come back feeling, somehow, there is hope... It also feeds us both to share quality time far from the madding crowd talking through things that matter to our marriage. I always used to complain as a vicar about bureaucracy around ministry — on these weekends all that’s taken care of. It’s hard work but immensely rewarding. Amidst all the anxiety about marriage and family life, it’s good to light a candle rather than curse the dark, and we’re always the better for it.

Dave Walker tells of an Essex Vicar who is giving away free weddings this year. Assuming the financials be kosher, why not? I'm willing to confess I thought of doing this myself a few years ago, but bottled out. Wedding trimmings are lovely if they help people feel special, but I used to admire occasional couples who just got on with it, without all the extras.

I remember one couple in Reading where her mum (Jehovah’s Witness) pulled the plug on everything the week before. I asked them if they really wanted to get married whatever, and when they said yes, we did the lot gratis free and for nothing, including a bring and share reception in Church. Dad came and gave her away, whilst Mum and Chums stood at the bottom of the Church path. Didn’t tell the archdeacon.