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.

Who’s wrecking Britain, and how?

Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail includes Graham Kendrick in his list of 5o people who have wrecked Britain (h/t Dave Walker and David Keen). GK has wrecked Britain, apparently, by writing 400 popular Evangelical hymns. I can’t say I’m a particular afficionado of them, but somebody must find joy singing them. If people’s hearts are stirred to worship God this way, why be snooty and sarcastic about it? Unaccountably, QL’s piece also takes a mean sideswipe at Mrs Alexander’s All things Bright & Beautiful, which I would have thought was right up his street. Beating up old ladies in public is ugly, but it’s a free country, I suppose.

Somebody told me today that what’s really wrecking Britain for them is the angry cynicism, celebrity fixation, base xenophobia, mean spiritedness, superstition and crass materialism they find in the Daily Mail. I don’t often read the Mail, so I couldn’t possibly comment. But a marvellous contraption called the Vodex Mailmaker will help you explore for yourself how the Mail’s worldview saves (or wrecks) your Britain. In seconds I produced my own work of art.

Most of the work we do is by definition less than our very best. Every age’s hymns contain much that is ephemeral, and it’s only as they are sung over many years that the real long-term winners emerge. So it was pure joy to be in a large congregation in Winslow this morning, on the 50th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ death, a day designated as the International Day of Vaughan Williams, singing For all the Saints to his wonderful and uplifting tune.

I think we can all agree that RVW’s contribution to Britain’s worshipping life was sublime and enduring. How come some of our greatest hymn tunes were penned by an agnostic? Music is self-expression, but done with humility, the best music transcends its composers and artists. Great music is great music, and stirs the soul, full stop. God uses it as much as works by pious composers. Oh, and our packed congregation in Winslow also sang a Graham Kendrick hymn (Make Way with its curious evocation of Rule Britannia in the first line).
Nobody walked out, and I'm sure the Lord enjoyed the joke.

John Dale: Gentle Anchorman

Sad, but immensely privileged, to be in Winslow on Friday to help with the funeral of John Dale (1945-2008), Licensed Lay Minster. It’s a thriving parish, and a great pleasure to minister with Belnda Searle-Barnes, Vicar, even on a very sad day for everyone. Hundreds and hundreds of people came — indeed the roads were thick with people twenty minutes before. The weather was amazing — Dark clouds and thick hail in Winslow, then beautiful spring sunshine for the burial in Addington Churchyard.

John was a remarkable man, combining the roles of reader, sacristan, and general factotum in all things pastoral and practical. I’m almost always a virtual newcomer in any Church I visit. Visitors easily sense the quality of welcome and connectedness, spiritually and personally, in a congregation. John was the anchorman for both of these at Winslow; the special person who somehow catalysed the best in everybody else, as well as keeping things running smoothly in the background.

Everything in St Laurence vestry was immaculately kept but not in a fussy way. He was immensely loyal and gentle, improvising and easing things into order, so that services could just begin as though everything had been waiting to go for hours. But that wasn’t the best of John’s ministry. At the end of the service he’d stand in a Jeeves-like way by me in the porch whispering occasional comments — “that's Mr Smith; his daughter’s baby’s been ill and he’d never ask, but he’d love a word of prayer,’’ “Have you met Mrs Jones; her ruby wedding’s coming up, and you could bless her new eternity ring,” and so on and so forth. You get the idea. It was like pastoral satnav for Vicars. To this very inexperienced Bishop, John’s ministry was striking and just wonderful. Every Church needs someone like that, and more churches than you’d think do have somebody a bit like that. John raised this gift to an art form, in his own gentle, unassuming way.

Professionally speaking, John never did anything but a very ordinary clerking job. His peculiarly Church of England, lay, holiness was not about doing extraordinary things but noticing people, and doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. There was pain and sadness in John’s life, but he never let it cloud his clear awareness of the beauty and spiritual possiblities in everybody. John was a gentle, implicit, son of peace. Much love and support was there on Friday for Jean and Luke, his son.
Let God’s peace rest on John as he rests, until with him, we rise in glory!