Financial Crisis: Ringing changes

Sunday morning with brilliant sunshine amidst all the financial doom and gloom, at Winslow for the rededication of their ring of 8 bells — a considerable collaborative effort by bellringers and friends. They’ve been ringing at St Laurence for at least 400 years, but things rather declined in the nineties. During the run-up to the Millennium, Margaret Lowery raised a new band of ringers, and the frame has now been made safe and everything tuned up properly so that they’re a joy to ring as well as to hear. Manhandling the tenor bell up the tower felt like stuffing a small family car, or a hippo, up in the attic!

Change ringing (“ringing changes”) is a wonderful thing, in itself, to do in times of turmoil. You have to get things in perspective. There was life before Canary Wharf. Our society is heavily into panic and whining, but the fashion will pass. Winslow’s bells rang out the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the restoration of the Monarchy after the Civil War, Waterloo, Queen Victoria’s Death, the defeat of Hitler...

In the sermon I said:

A Light bulb joke. It’s about change. “How many English Heritage Inspectors does it take to change a light bulb?” And the answer is: “Change?” Hysterical fear of Change is slow death. So is nostalgia. Living tradition is far more than custom. It makes and remakes itself in us all the time, by the living Spirit. The Christian tradition can never be set in concrete without losing its heart, its driving force, its living logic.

Every possible change is not, of course, good. It would be silly to wally up this building, paint it red and trash it, but if the sentimentality and history that get parked here ever take over, it will end up as a theme park. The prime aim of Christianity is not to preserve ancient buildings, but to express God’s eternal love in our lives, that we may love him and love our neighbours as ourselves. Parish Churches represent, as they always have, a living tradition, a people called to be changed into God’s image day by day as they are made and remade. The building and its renewal is a window into our souls

In Church, at home, in society, how do we cope with change, our fear and fasconation about it? It’s a good question as various financial chickens come home to roost. How do we handle change aright — so that it blesses us, rather than cheapening our lives?

The music of bells offers a clue. Here is the Grove dictionary of music and musicians: Change Ringing

... is an art, peculiarly English and producing a music all its own.

Here’s the Oxford Companion to Music: Change Ringing

is not so much a branch of music as
mathematics athletically applied to the making of a merry noise.

Except of course, it isn’t always merry. The passing bell or half muffled peal is not merry. It has depth, as well as order. Ringing is a kind of abstract music; music that is musical not because of the tune, but because it reflects the order and coherence of the universe itself. That makes it a very special kind of music.

Change ringing is Mathematics athletically applied to the making of music. The courses rung here today are as true and as beautiful, mathematically, as they were in 1870 or 1770 or 1670. Their logic reflects the ordering of everything, through the beauty of mathematics.

I remember someone in may last parish saying the ringing of bells made her feel safe. There is a profound and simple logic underlying change ringing. Through it and over it people ring out millions of possibilities with an ordered yet incredible variety, a dancing brilliant logic, changes in hundreds and thousands.

If 0nly our lives could be made such creative, abstract yet ordered music. Overwhelmed by change, often fascinated and fearful, how can we learn to respect the ground bass of everything, which is love, whilst at the same time embracing the dancing logic of life that brings infinite change in its courses, the passion to find new ways of living which connect with people as they are and express in personal terms the life to which Jesus Christ calls us? That is the heart of the matter. The Church is not a club to preserve some set of doctrines or principles, or a kind of national trust. The health of the church comes from our capacity to express the call of the kingdom as a way of life; with our words and acts to weave traditionally ordered but infinitely changeful new music, with its own truthful, dancing and creative logic.

PS: Belinda Searle-Barnes is doing a great job as Vicar, and I was really happy to welcome Ann Harwood as newly ordained curate to the benefice.

PPS: They also have a fabulous choir at Winslow, who did us proud. We sang Vaughan Williams, and Graham Kendrick, joyfully. It’s the Anglican way.

Ringing in the new year

at Great Missenden. Towers ring out the old year and ring in the new as they have for hundreds of years. God offers an underlying stability for our lives, like the ground bass in music, if only we have ears to hear.

There is a pattern underlying everything, to show that there really is substantially more to being alive than the bleeding obvious. These are the words with the lighting of the paschal candle at the Easter Vigil —

Christ yesterday and today,

the beginning and the end,
Alpha and Omega,
all time belongs to you,
and all ages;
to you be glory and power
through every age and for ever.

A wet, blowy night, and New Year of Grace. Anyone for Tennyson?

I stood on a tower in the wet,
And New Year and Old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing,
And I said, “O years that meet in tears
Have you all that is worth the knowing?
Science enough and exploring,
Wanderers coming and going,
Matter enough for deploring,
But aught that is worth the knowing?”
Seas at my feet were flowing,
Waves on the shingle pouring,
Old year roaring and blowing,
And new year blowing and roaring.

Published in Good Words for March 1, 1868 as a decorative page,
with an accompanying plate by T. Dalziel. (never reprinted.)

Summoned by Bells to Olney

Saturday night out with Lucy at Olney, home of the pancake race, John Newton, Amazing Grace, and William Cowper, to help launch their bells appeal. Olney has a glorious medieval Church, with one of the most spectacular spires in Buckinghamshire — 185 feet in the old money.

Olney must have been special for generations of US migrants, because there’s only one in England, but no fewer than twelve in the US — townships in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Pennsylvania, and a school in Ohio. That list, in itself, is pretty much a canned history of the US!

Olney’s bells, the oldest of which has been ringing since 1599, have got into a bit of a state. Lucy’s a ringer, and had a go. She tells me they’re ringable, but only just — bearings wearing out, oak frame rotting and twisting out of true, bird mess everywhere. Ringing had fallen on hard times late in the last century, but under the leadership of Charles Knight (Tower Captain) and David Phillipson (ringing master) there’s a recently recruited band of ringers in the town of all ages, and the tower is coming alive again.

Olney PCC has decided that the best form of defence is attack, and they're going to sort everything out properly, rehang the bells on a new frame, tune everything up, and raise the tower to a ring of ten. When finished it will be one of the finest heavy rings of bells in the country, ideal for training beginners, as well as doing what it’s done for hundreds of years — marking out the shape of life in the town, ringing out joys and sorrows, calling people to worship, and reminding them of God’s love and faithfulness. There’s an interesting appeal website where you can find out the difference between a passing bell and a pancake bell, as well as donate.

I sometimes feel a twinge of puritanism about projects that require big fundraising for the fabric of medieval Churches. I find, however, that Parishes who steward their world class buildings competently are usually as committed and competent about their bigger responsibilities. No surprise then, that Brian Lintern, former churchwarden, was just back from Africa participating in a world development project, Olney’s eight year link with Newton, Sierra Leone. It’s both/ and, not either/ or, I find. Judas played Puritan games when a poor woman wasted oil on Jesus — partly because Judas was someone who took himself very seriously indeed but mainly, we are told, because he was a thief.

The appeal kicked off with a poetry evening, with Lance Pierson, a professional actor, introducing and performing poems by John Betjeman, most popular British poet of the last century. Not only do church bells form a surprisingly persistent theme in Betjeman’s poetry, but he saw himself as being the kind of hack for popular verses William Cowper of Olney was. Lance’s presentation was, frankly, brilliant and eye opening not only about Church, but also about faith and doubt in Betjeman’s poetry.

To bring it all home, Lance included Betjeman’s poem about Olney, a gentle parody of the style of the original 18th century Olney hymns. It captures precisely a spirit of grace in ordinary life that you can hardly avoid in this buzzing market town on the crook of the river Ouse:

Olney Hymns

Oh God the Olney Hymns abound
With words of Grace which Thou didst choose,
And wet the elm above the hedge
Reflected in the winding Ouse.

Pour in my soul unemptied floods
That stand between the slopes of clay,
Till deep beyond a deeper depth
This Olney day is any day.