Working in the Thirteenth Century

One of the things that’s helped me heavily into the notion of revolution by tradition is working in some fabulous medieval locations — like Charney Manor. Bishop’s Staff stayed there for a really productive overnight residential last week, where, as well as usual business, we spent some time exploring with Professor Martyn Percy what ministry education really has meant for us, and could mean in tomorrow’s church.
The house is owned by the Religious Society of Friends. It’s lovingly made available for groups with a basic commitment to peace, which I hope our Bishop’s staff is. Food is home-cooked and extraordinary. The house has a lived-in feel, not like a museum at all. Facilities are excellent — indeed they’re infinitely more homely but also stimulating than an average hotel-for-business-meetings site.

It’s good to work in a place where the Quaker tradition, that has played such a key role in British Christianity, is honoured and lived out. I was reminded of what it stands for by some words by her children about Joan Vokins, wife of Richard Vokins of West Challow, died 1690, after whom the annex in which I stayed is named:

She was one that did truly fear the Lord, and sought the prosperity of his precious Truth [“and” — surely a mistake] above all the glory and honour of this world. Whensoever the Lord was pleased to send her forth in his service, she went without murmuring, believing the Lord would carry her through it, though weak in body; who did enable her to bear a fathful living testimony to his Name, in this her native land, and in places remote beyond seas as in Barbados, and in other parts of America and in Ireland, through great exercises, in patience and cheerfulness, it being as meat and drink to her to do his will.

Wisdom and Night driving

From Benedictus to Magnificat — Today’s the Day everything changes gear. O Sapientia, 17 December, is named after the first of the great sequence of antiphons before the Magnificat, marking our final approach run to Christmas.
In the old money —

O Sapientia, quæ ex ore altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter,
suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiæ.

I love what this says — its depth and insight into how things really happen:

O wisdom that proceeds from the mouth of the most high, reaching powerfully from end to end, sweetly (elegantly, smoothly, gently) ordering everything: Come teach us the way of good judgment.

Much of today was a diocesan staff meeting. We’ve always been reasonably well-mannered and efficient, but I notice we’re working together more freely and joyfully. I put it down to a greater commitment to working at our relationships, and more time going beyond the shopping list of business items. In any enterprise there are things that need doing, and one strategy is to fixate on them until entirely functional and task driven. Do that and people try their best, but there’s always an x factor missing — harmony and understanding that comes from real working friendship, sincere ownership with open eyes.

You can only achieve corporate goals fully at a pace that matches your knowledge of each other. Like night driving, it’s only safe within your headlights. You may well get away with going faster, but output will be less than the group’s best, and everyone will have niggling doubts about it that they don’t want to own up to for fear of seeming to slow things down. It’s one mechanism that leads people to pretend things are better then they actually are. The same old niggling doubts surface and resurface ages after you thought the group decision had been taken. Better to trust God’s sweet ordering of everything, and invest more time in the people and their relationships — drive within the group’s headlights, not faster, and you actually arrive at a better place, possibly even sooner.

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.