Back to the future...

Churchwardens Day at Waddesdon School. One of the seminar groups described vividly the scale and scope of change being experienced in our parishes. David Ford calls contemporary life as “a series of multiple overwhelmings” We know exactly what he means in our families, our schools, our churches, our communities, our country.
Most of the statistics around our lives are unprecedented, but maybe they always were. What was it like, say, to be a churchwarden in Buckinghamshire at the time of the Black Death, with half the population dying, or the Civil War with all conventional authority dissolving? How did the Saint Wandrille brothers feel when the Vikings came up the Seine and burnt everything down, or the French Revolutionaries dissolved the community and destroyed its Church after more than a thousand years (then)? Without some consciousness that we come from God and are returning to God, I think we'd all go barmy.
Indulging a few moments’ historical imagination around issues of long-term change management, I found this medieval monks’ helpline for people struggling with change, off a Norwegian comedy show:

Credits to Øystein og jeg on NRK (2001), Øystein Backe (tech support guy) and Rune Gokstad (desperate monk). Written by Knut Nærum.

Waiting — a forgotten part of real discipleship

Rosie our Vicar preached a sermon I found really perceptive and helpful at this morning's 8.00 in Great Missenden, on the almost forgotten Christian virtue of Patience.

14 times the New Testament speaks of its centrality for life, and as a fruit of the Spirit. Unfortunately, from terrorists to supermarket shoppers, whatever it is, we want it our way, we want it Now, and nothing less will do. Not to have an instant solution is the ultimate failure. There's no such thing any more as a season for which we wait, not even for strawberries. Perhaps that's one reason so many people can't get no satisfaction, and are so angry and unhappy, scanning the bookshop for a 'How To' Book that will somehow take the waiting out of wanting.

But think how patient God is all the time! In us, Patience is a fruit of the Spirit that grows, in due season, as we wait in hope. The Eucharist itself is the joyful expectation of an unfulfilled hope — an act of patience.

So exactly the people to break bread with are the people you can't stand, whilst you wait, with them, for something better. That's exactly the point of the ruddy thing! Hang up on them and you cut yourself off, because God hasn't hung up on them yet, even if you have.

Food for thought.