L4/44-50 Bringing it all home at Easter

Not a bad approach and landing. Flunked 46 and 47, but managed most of the others; although the day job that helped with some tasks didn’t seem to help with others, and made one completely impossible:

44. Help someone carry a burden
Talking through job applications with a colleague or drumming up cash for historic church buildings could be seen as this, or are these activities too metaphorical? Carried the bag back to the car after our weekly shop at Sainsbury’s, just in case...

45. Forgive someone
Hard to think of anyone who’s wronged me really, but I forgive them anyway! As someone more sinning than sinned against, I’ve wondered down the years, about the difference between saying “sorry” (where the wrongdoer retains control) and “please forgive me” (where control passes to the person who was wronged.) Why is forgiveness such a dying art? perhaps many people are just so angry so much of the time, they just can’t focus on anything else?

46. Make Easter Card for a neighbour
Failed. Dong. I always love to get them from the select few friends who bother, and feel I ought to bother, and maybe we should make more of Easter Cards than Christmas cards, but never get round to it...

47. Polish someone’s shoes for them
Only bishop in England not doing this today. Next year? I miss it from parish life, though it was always difficult to get people to consent to having their feet washed. Maybe we’re just too prissy for this stuff in England...

48. Five Minutes Silence at 12 noon
Impossible, since I was kicking off a three hours service at exactly 12 noon, and if I’d fallen into total silence at that point someone would have called an ambulance.

49. Watch a film about Jesus Life
I need to admit that filmic Jesus seldom floats my boat. In the first century they had real problems accepting Jesus’ full humanity, but those are nothing compared to fifties Hollywood. Monty Python’s Life of Brian, pretty much a spoof of Hollywood Jesus, had a point. Mel Gibson was gross and schlocky, with a few shafts of light, but I couldn’t watch Casualty for months afterwards. So I settled for The Jesus of Montreal, which accepts Jesus’ basic humanity and is true to what it purports to be rather than creating a silly Disney world.

50. Celebrate Easter
Did that, round the fire first thing, in the snow at Coleshill, and at Buckinghamshire’s smallest parish church — Little Hampden.

PS Lucy’s and my chocolate fast did happen this year, though there was one party at which we were uncertain whether a brown smudge on a cream slice did or didn’t contain Chocolate. I resolved the situation by issuing a Rabbinic style decision that it didn’t. Perhaps I'm beginning to get the hang of this religion thing...

L4/33-43 Blockbuster Lent Catch-up

Too much Bucks rubbernecking and mocking the cat. I have notably failed to log my Loving of life and living of Lent. It has been purring away in the background, like Max the Cat on a radiator. So, briefly...

33. Volunteering in a prison or supporting prisoners' families
Been in and out of prisons for years. I’ve pitched in to help with a particular job in one after Easter. Long term member of the Howard League. Go to their website, and weep over the idiocy and waste of it all. There is a tiny number of really dangerous people who should be banged up for public safety. As for the other 97%, we spend more money per head than it costs to send them to Eton churning out designer criminals to satisfy the tabloids’ simplistic vengeful instincts. 70%+ of them are back for more within two years. I remember a geezer coming up to me after a funeral years ago saying “You work in Reading prison. Is it true they have TV’s in there?” and launching into a major diatribe. In those days they had the odd TV but no toilets. Which would you rather do without? Attempts at dialogue useless. Grrr. All sorts of other places in Europe just sort the little tykes out instead, and that actually keeps the crime rates down. When I worked in a prison we reckoned 50,000 was breakdown point. We’re currently shooting 82,000+ and hitting the international superleague for imprisonment rates, along with Iran, the former Soviet Union and Syria. The US, of course, leads the world in this, just in case anyone were tempted to believe it couldn’t get siller. Some of the best people I've ever met in my life work in those places, but the whole idea of them is crazy. Contemplate move to Finland, where the whole silly business has been pretty much abolished as a concept, but decide I can’t stand the cold winters. Thoroughly depressing subject.

34. Find out about your national patron saint
Cry God for England, Harry and Saint George. One of those is a patron saint. Saint George? Or is it Harry, these days?

35. Plan a UK based holiday or short break
Beginning the negotiating process for this summer, trying to get everyone together.

36. Pray for countries in conflict with each other
In Church — window on the world. Should be, anyway. It was in Ashendon.

37. Buy a Fair Trade product
Yeah, yeah. Do this all the time. So does Lucy. Got a bag of apricots just to prove the point.

38. Half the world lives on £1.40 a day. Can you?
Yes... and No. On the Tuesday in question I was working out in the Aylesbury deanery, so there was a bring and share lunch, and a lovely meal with ten friends from the church before my evening confirmation — a brilliant day sharing generous hospitality when I couldn’t have gone to the shops anyway, and no big bills went out. So, with a bit of help from our friends, any of us can do this for 24 hours — but, I would guess, not much longer. How do people live like this? I still admire George and Ben to the bottom of my boots.

39. Cook or eat from a cuisine you haven't tried before
Abject failure. Stephanie has invented a new way of doing bacon with honey and mustard dressing, but I don’t suppose that counts.

40. Take a bag of clothes to a charity shop
This is distinctly problematic, and I failed largely because, apart from running shoes and smalls we tend to get all our clothes from charity shops anyway! Especially in posh areas like this there's plenty of good stuff, with the added thrill of the chase you don’t quite get with homogenised high street fashion stores. Lucy manages this bit of my life far more efficiently than I could.

41. Find out about human trafficking
I was horrified back in February to read in my Amnesty magazine about the scale of Trafficking in the UK. Smoke, if not fire, is evident in hospitality and the catering trade, domestic labour, care sectors, agricultural and food processing sectors, construction and prostitution. One basic place to start on the world stage is for the UK Government to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT). Tell the so-and-sos to get on with it, here.

42. Learn how to say Hallo and Goodbye in a different language
And for my next language... Tamil. Hallo — easy peesy — Vanakkam. Goodbye — er, er, er, — Poyvituvaruviken (expecting the answer Poyvituvarangai). Working on Wednesday with a Tamil speaking colleague. Gotta start somewhere, so why not here? How long would the Beatles have had to stay in India to end up singing “you say Vanakkam, and I say Poyvituvaruviken”?

43. Read about what happened on Palm Sunday
Didn’t have to because the passion according to Matthew was read to me, beautifully in Church (in broad Bristolian), by someone who really cared about it, understood and entered into what was going on, enabling me to climb into the narrative and get lost in it. It makes an incredible difference for good when this happens in Church. I wonder about the fashion of everybody following liturgical texts in pew Bibles. I suppose if a text is being incompetently read you have to, but Biblical books were written for public recitation and hearing, not chopping up into little gobbets and following with your finger. Some people go to concerts and follow the score, but it isn’t the only, or even best way to fill your soul with music...

L4/28-32 At home in the real world?

28. Text or phone a colleague/school friend to wish them a happy weekend
A glorious, happy Saturday in Worcester for the inauguration of Bishop John Inge’s ministry as Bishop of Worcester. We were consecrated together, and John’s been a great and inspiring colleague, with a deep sense of how things fit together and what they really mean theologically. It was also great to see our old friends from Sandhurst, Andrew & Alexandra Bullock. Andrew’s now a vicar near Worcester. Tellingly, Worcester Cathedral has now been replaced on UK 20 pound notes with an 18th century pin factory, celebrating our tradition of lo-cost profiteering and treating people like machines.

29. Give a loved one a hug and tell them how much you appreciate them
I do this most days/nights. The old ladies were right when we got married — keep short accounts, about good things as well as fallings out.

30. Talk to someone of a different culture
Cressex Community School governors this afternoon — I am proud and delighted to be a governor of Cressex School, of which I've spoken before. It's a county school with a large majority Pakistani background Muslim intake, where we are looking forward to the arrival of a new head, and the rebuilding of our school in the next couple of years. Someone tried to burn it down recently, but It’s good to be part of this community. Amidst many challenges and low league table placing, we achieve Maths value added figures in the top 1% nationally.

31. Write to your MP about something they are doing right
Generally I have to say our Bucks MP’s seem to me to be basically decent people who try their best for everyone. Nobody’s saying they’re perfect, and in our system, of course, anyone who really thinks they could do better is welcome to have a go themselves.

32. Use a newspaper to reflect or pray about world issues
I counted 79 news stories in today’s Daily Mail. 66 (83%) were exclusively UK, including staples about the housing market and nasty foreigners. 13 had anything to do with the rest of the world. 6 were Gossip and Trivia. 2 were US election stories, and 2 crime reports. That left 3 stories help me pray over world issues — just over 3% of the paper. 5 stories were essentially Xenophobic, and 15 nostalgic whining. So if you really want to know anything about 98% of the real world you’ll need to look elsewhere. The Week? The Tomorrow Project? Amnesty? Forum 18? Tear Fund? WDM? Médecins sans Frontières? Chatham House? RUSI? The Mennonites? Christian Aid? CMS?

L4/23-27 Soldiering on through Lent

23 Recycle More
This is definitely Lucy’s department. As South Bucks Recycling Queen, she’s now got us down to a carrier bag every fortnight for 7 of us plus the office. What we need to do more of this year is digging for victory — potatoes this year!

24 Go a whole day without gossiping
For this I relied upon the kindness of strangers. I was working up in Edinburgh and thus didn’t know anyone they knew to gossip about. Bit of a cheat, really. A few years ago I got right up one lady’s nose. She said “Rector, I shouldn't be telling you this,” so I said “well don’t, then” and she complained to the Bishop! Happy days.

25 Cheer someone up
No names, no pack drill. But I think most people I meet feel pretty battered by work, bureaucracy, targets or even, perish the thought, Church. I'm trying to focus more on people’s strengths than their weaknesses, because however weak our weaknesses are, it’s our God-given strengths that enable us to be able to do anything about them.

26 Make and share cakes
Bit of a cheat — Nick decorated some shop ones, because there just wasn't time to warm up the oven and do it properly on the right day. The boys all made made up for this by producing Lucy’s Mothering Sunday Cake. It’s a kind of susbstitutionary theory of cake making. OK right, it’s a bit of a cheat.

27 Have lunch with someone you don’t know well
Back in Sandhurst for the funeral of Stanley Douglas-Cook, friend and companion to many in the town. A kind, decent gentleman who had not had an easy life in various ways, but walked through it all by faith and had time for anyone — including me. Rabbit Rabbit is definitely better than Grabbit Grabbit. I treasure the complete Studdert Kennedy poems Stanley once got me after a long conversation about suffering. It was good to meet Stan’s family, whom I didn’t know, along with many old friends I did.

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.

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.

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

L4/8-9 In the Middle of the Street

8. Do a local Prayer Walk
9. Find out the names of our closest neighbours
Done both. We don’t own a house and to be honest, I don’t suppose we ever will. It’s not troubled me — we all end up in a box anyway, so what’s to worry about? We’ve lived in all sorts of places in our time. The middle of Reading was fun. Being able to get anything at all hours, the variety of life on the street and great neighbours made it vibrant and joyful, though occasionally hairy. Sandhurst was far more of a dormitory, but we made friends for life there. There was a parrot in one of the houses along Fir Tree Close that used to imitate Trimphones and the Time Signal, which was fun. Great Missenden is posher, and when we came we were concerned about getting to know the neighbours. Actually they don’t bite, we soon got to know their names, and we've made all sorts of friends.

The parish system, much maligned and compromised by our modern designer lifestyles, says that everyone belongs not by being birds of a feather, but simply by being there. That way everybody counts for something, however alternative.

To celebrate metroland neighbourliness I have designed a Tee shirt that will get your neighbours talking and enliven all your domestics. It’s based on a true story, as they say, from my friend and former chaplain, the Revd Anne Faulkner...
Anyway that’s his Tee shirt taken care of — anyone out there got a slogan for hers?

L4/7 Better than Jaw Jaw — Chore Chore

7. Do a Chore
Lucy and I are away helping to lead an Engaged Encounter Weekend, of which more later, so there are plenty of practical chores around the party on Saturday night — I pitched in, and hoped one of them counted. Back home, and I suspect this is true for many vicars, the challenge is not to disappear after meals off into the study leaving everyone else to clear up the carnage in the kitchen. I’ll have to work on that one...

I notice that yesterday’s Love Life Live Lent involved playing a game — not an option here. But if your family is fed up with the monotony of monopoly, try high rolling rodents, Hamster Roulette:

L4/6 Turns me off, baby

6. Have a TV-free evening and play games instead

I managed to have a TV free evening, but I have to say I usually do. When we moved here there was satellite TV, and I dreamed of happy hours channel hopping between priceless costume jewelery sales and dumper truck racing from Stuttgart. I’ve tried it and confidentially, friends, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be as a way of life. Stewart and Nicholas are developing serious blokiness by spending hours on Dave (the TV Channel, that is = wall-to-wall Jeremy Clarkson.) Lucy has now seen every Ground Force there ever was, and I've done ditto for Grand Designs. We did the X Factor. The troops do like their Big Brother, though not as much as they did. Ah! Big Brother. Ten weeks hard Vicky Pollard in Slow Motion.

Stentorian Geordie Voice: Day nine-ee foour. Three-Thirt-ee Pee-em. Taser has been Soomoned to the Diarrhy Room.
Big Brother (for it is s/he): Housemates are reminded that it is against the rules to urinate in the Teapot
Taser (real name Lee): Yeah well Big Brother. It was Stig and GBH. They was doing my ’ead in.
Big Brother (for it is still s/he): How did they do that?
Taser (real name Lee): Dunno but they was fu**ing doing my head in and I told them they was fu**ing motherfu**ers and GBH said it's your own fu**ing fault so I pissed in his tea, but I missed cos it was still in the fu**ing pot and anyway GBH has been shagging Tasha and Day-glo in the boys toilets cos she's a fu**ing slag...
Stentorian Geordie Voice: Foour pee-em. Day-glo and Satnav are in the sandpit with Play-Doh, Yasser and Chippy, doing nothing... etc etc etc. for 10 weeks

Anyway eventually I realised this was enticing stuff but it wasn’t really me, so tried to be a brave soldier and cut down, and by and large I managed pretty well...

L4/5 Time to get up

5. Ask someone in your house about their day
Start with me: I’m having a really good day. I feel at peace with all the world. I can’t think of another human being I resent. I haven’t gossiped, snapped or lost my temper with anyone, and all I want for them all is God’s peace. But in a moment, Lord, I’m going to get up. And then I’ll be needing your help really badly.
Perhaps I’ll try someone else this evening.

PS the great thing about Christian gatherings on the day after Ash Wednesdays is that you get a pretty shrewd idea of which friends use real ashes — and which friends don't wash!

L4/3 Pancake Day

Like judgment day, but with Pancakes instead of Cyborgs. No street party, but today’s job interview colleagues got fresh pancakes with their breakfast, and we all had a bit of a do with children and a friend of Anna’s from school later.

Now for the unexpected serendipity. Whilst discussing mid life crises (I've got this friend, see...) over breakfast, it struck me that one modest step towards buying a motorbike / big guitar would be a Marmite Pancake. Soon afterwards a highly esteemed friend walked in, over the most dangerous age for this sort of thing you understand, but spontaneously made and ate his own Marmite Pancake. Friends, trust me, this dish is a bad as it sounds. Don’t do it. And if that’s saved you from a midlife crisis, my little action today has done the world some good...

L4/2 Kitting up for (Paperless) Spring

2. Give a LLLL booklet to everyone who lives in your house. Oh dear. Ive only got 1! I've printed off my electronic copy for the family noticeboard, but that's not quite what they had in mind, perhaps. Or is what I've (not) done the ecological option? I spent a happy day once reading the Guardian Guide to ethical living, which was full of creative ways to save the world like peeing on the compost heap instead of down the loo, and running your diesels on chip fat. It strangely omitted what I would have thought was the bleeding obvious way to save paper — not buying a daily printed newspaper! Or perhaps this is all excuses. We’ll pin it up in the kitchen and see how we do for now...

L4/1 Long Live Lent!

Love Life Live Lent began life in the Birmingham Dioese last year. It’s a C of E project to get people doing simple things in Lent to enrich lives and help us grow— a reminder that Lent means “Spring” not “Guilt.” Dave Walker has details, and will be doodling us through the experience a bit. Suzy Shipman is doing every day. I can’t guarantee every day, but I’m having a go this year — what’s the point of having all those theology degrees if I don’t actually do anything about it?

L4 starts today, not Wednesday. Not sure why, but there you are. So... We’re off!

1. Read the parable of the Good Samaritan. I used the Message, because it often opens doors on the Bible for me that other translations don’t. Jesus isn’t proposing anything dramatically new — just loving God and everyone, but for real. This is a serious challenge to the Dickensian Charity thing, where only the “deserving“ poor get help, because they’re deserving, not because they're human. In the old Tudor poor laws you whip the others from pillar to post, so that they become someone else’s problem. Being a Dickensian Prat damages the person doing it as much as the person they ignore. This is really disturbing stuff. It's a vision not a concept, to carry through the next few weeks, and see what happens...