Blog Archives
Some Links To Keep Going
Brad Sargent interviews Dr Margaret W Jones about leadership and spiritual abuse.
A YouTube video of N T Wright on postmodernity and the Enlightenement from Ben Witherington’s blog.
Madonna foreswears celebrity religion; converts to Methodism (via Anna Drew, Methodism’s press officer).
Avaaz have a petition about swine flu. They finger mass factory farming by agrobusinesses as contributing to the encouragement of disease.
Just a few links today – and if you wondered why I broke my sequence yesterday without a post, it had to do with a headache, a Chinese lunch that didn’t want to stay in my stomach, and many hours lying in a darkened bedroom.
Sabbatical, Day 83: Trixie Is In Heaven
It was our shared love of animals – as well as our faith, of course – that brought Debbie and me together. We were separately members of a Christian singles organisation. There are some dodgy ones out there, but we had each found a sane one, called The Network. Every few months, those members who were interested in ‘introductions’ would receive a list of several other members who might be appropriate for them, along with each person’s brief self-description.
One day, around September 1999, my name appeared on a list they sent to Debbie. She noticed I was a dog lover, and thought I might therefore be not only a Christian but also kind to animals. This was important to her, as she owned two cats she had rescued, Sam and Trixie.
I had a dog of the obscure breed I had grown up with, the Finnish Spitz. Being a pedigree, he had to have an original name for registration with the Kennel Club. My dog’s breeder was famous in Finnish Spitz circles, Mrs Griselda Price, and my parents had bought a succession of dogs from her over many years. Her tradition was to find original names with successive letters of the alphabet for each consecutive litter. She told me that one of her bitches was pregnant, and that this litter would have names beginning with ‘T’. Could I please think of a name no other dog could possibly ever have had, that began with ‘T’?
Well, where’s a minister to go at a time like that? To my Greek Lexicon, of course. I chose the noun ‘Tarachos’, which is used twice in the Acts of the Apostles. On one occasion it means ‘mental consternation’, and on the other it means ‘riot’. I thought it highly appropriate, as the Finnish Spitz is a very noisy breed. Mrs Price pronounced my choice ‘ghastly’, but proceeded to register the name for me.
When Debbie and I first met (after a protracted period of writing letters – remember that? – and phoning) the three pets didn’t get along. Yet they brought us together.
Today, that era ended when Trixie had to be put to sleep at the vet’s. That followed the deaths of Sam three years ago and Tarachos four years ago. After last night’s episode, the vet diagnosed a stroke. He gave us a range of three options: euthanasia at one end, anti-inflammatory tablets in the middle, and an array of blood tests at the other end. However, he could give no assurances that the anti-inflammatories would do much, and the blood tests might only confirm something even worse had happened to her system. We already suspected kidney trouble, since she was borderline dehydrated. The tablets or blood tests might only buy us another couple of weeks with her. With great heartache, we chose euthanasia. And when he came to administer the fatal injection, he had trouble finding a vein, because they, too, were deteriorating.
Rebekah had come with us to the surgery. She was off school with a rash, and was deeply distraught, whereas Mark, although sad before school this morning, was matter of fact about the situation. I took Rebekah back to the car before the injection, while Debbie spent a last couple of minutes with her cat. We three reunited at the car, all in floods of tears. You see, Debbie didn’t simply identify me correctly ten years ago as an animal lover: I’m a great big softie for them. So is she, and Rebekah has inherited that personality trait.
We comforted ourselves at home by sharing an Easter egg. Later, we went into town for lunch at a cheap, high qualiy sandwich bar, followed by ice cream.
When we picked up Mark from school, I broke the news to him at home. As with this morning, he was sad but matter of fact. He was happy to talk later about arrangements for finding a new pet soon, whereas Rebekah has remained distraught.
It has been an experience trying to explain death and Christian hope to the children. They aren’t completely unfamiliar with such talk, as they are used to hearing me talk about funerals. Good Friday this year also provoked a lot of discussion about death, including Mark wondering whether he would die on a cross like Jesus.
However, whatever routes or metaphors we try, they blow holes in them. I don’t have a problem with including animals in the Christian hope. I know they aren’t made in the image of God like human beings, but in Revelation heaven is filled with more than humans and angels. There are some (admittedly strange!) animals, too. So theologically, I include them in the new creation. I’m happy to talk about them being given a new body by Father God, just as people will be in the resurrection.
But it’s so hard to avoid conversations that sound like they are giving geographical directions to heaven. However much I read Tom Wright, it’s still surprisingly easy to slip into ‘up in heaven’ language. Debbie ended up talking about all the dead animals taking a train up into the sky to heaven. She hasn’t read ‘Surprised By Hope‘. Rebekah decided she could take a hot air balloon and poke her hand through the top of the sky to bring Trixie with her new body back down to earth. If any readers have better ideas about how to explain these things to children, I’d be only too glad to hear your suggestions in the ‘Comments’ section below. Perhaps Wright should write the kiddie version.
We’ve had a family conference over fish and chips tonight (we didn’t feel like cooking our own dinner). Thankfully, with some ease we unanimously agreed that we shall buy one or more cats soon, having dismissed Debbie’s joke suggestion that we buy a crocodile. We have already tracked down a couple of local rescue centres. The cat or cats will need to be young, because we cannot put the children, especially Rebekah, through another bereavement soon if we buy an older cat. We’ll leave it a week or two before visiting anywhere. For the next week or so, we are looking after a neighbour’s pets while he is away, so we shall take vicarious pleasure in them while dealing with our loss.
Finally, I want to say thank you for the kind wishes sent through the technology of social media. While tweeting on Twitter didn’t produce any response, status updates on Facebook certainly did. At time of writing, a dozen friends have left messages on my profile since I mentioned Trixie’s death this morning. Having trailed her ill health last night, one friend commented then and enquired again this morning. Debbie has had eight or ten comments, too. Whatever people say about the value or otherwise of community across a distance via a stream of ones and zeroes, these little messages have been small oases for us today.
Sabbatical, Day 71, Easter Sunday: Jesus Returns To Life
more about “Damaris Trust Holy Week 2009, Easter …“, posted with vodpod
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! In this final Damaris Trust video for Holy Week, Krish Kandiah and Peter May talk about how Jesus’ resurrection from the dead gives us hope when considering what happens when we die.
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A great service for Easter Day at St Andrew’s this morning. ‘In a packed programme tonight’, as the Two Ronnies used to say, we had the Easter liturgy, renewal of baptismal vows, Holy Communion (of course) and people invited from the community to remember deceased loved ones.
In the middle of all that, there were two highlights for me. Firstly, the worship band shrank at one point to the younger members only. So Emily on vocals , Dan on guitar, Bradley on keys and the drummer whose name I don’t know – they’re all round about thirteen years old – led us in Tim Hughes‘ ‘Happy Day‘. Here’s a version by the original artist:
Emily is a great singer, Dan a quiet and efficient bandleader, Bradley filled in subtly and the drummer guy is top drawer.
The other highlight was Lee’s sermon. Taking Mark 16:1-8, he made a virtue of the strange and sudden ending to Mark’s Gospel. He said we have to write our own ending to the Easter story in our lives. I thought that was great.
For all that, it’s been quite a mixed day emotionally. On the one hand, I have entered Easter with a renewed confidence in the truth and importance of the Resurrection. Not that I ever lost my belief in the bodily Resurrection of Christ for one moment, but sometimes when life or circumstances aren’t the most encouraging, it can feel far away. Reading Tim Keller (sorry to mention him again!) and Tom Wright (see this excellent article from The Times yesterday) has done much to fortify my faith.
But other things have been weighing me down. My friend Will says today, in talking about his service this morning,
Before the prayers of intercession, I reminded our congregation that for many the joys of Easter are still crowded out by their own personal Good Fridays. I know I have friends who will this week spend more time agonising in the Garden of Gethsemane (Jen and Mike, we are praying for you and Luke). For some, Easter is more like the women in Mark who hid when afraid.
And as he mentions his friends Jen, Mike and Luke, so I have been thinking about the three couples I mentioned last Sunday who have separated. Some events today have reminded me of them. Debbie and I feel such pain for them. And if that is how we feel, how do they?
More trivially, our eighteen-year-old cat is suddenly looking old, frail and weak. We are beginning to think the end might be near. The children realise, and on top of the fact that they have been asking questions about death as we’ve come through Holy Week, Good Friday and today. Mark in particular keeps asking whether he will die on a cross like Jesus.
I’m also starting to get more regular questions about how much longer the sabbatical has to go. The answer is that – with having tacked a week’s leave onto the end – I shall be back on duty four weeks today. The official Methodist literature on sabbaticals talks about planning your ‘re-entry’, which rather makes ministers feel like Apollo astronauts. The idea is that there should be a managed, phased re-introduction to active ministry.
Which makes me think of two words: ‘fat’ and ‘chance’. At least I hope it won’t be like my last sabbatical, when the superintendent asked me to come back early due to a crisis with the circuit treasurer. However, a sabbatical grants you new vision in all sorts of ways. It is then a huge challenge to share that vision with churches that are used to things being a long way different from such visions. I’ve always been a restless traveller on the outer fringes of Methodism: right now I feel somewhere out beyond Pluto.
Of course, it may just be a version of what anyone feels when a good holiday is coming to an end and they have to return to work. (Not that I’m suggesting the sabbatical is a holiday!) Time will tell.
Sabbatical Day 69, Good Friday: Jesus Is Crucified
more about “Sabbatical Day 69, Good Friday: Jesus…“, posted with vodpod
Here is the Damaris Trust video for Good Friday. Andrew White talks about the importance of Jesus’ death on the cross on our behalf. He discusses what this means for his ministry of reconciliation in Iraq.
We went into town this morning for the annual open-air united service in Chelmsford High Street. A band from the church where we are worshipping led the music, and the choir from our children’s school dazzlingly performed a selection of songs from a musical entitled Resurrection Rock.
A nun from a local community spoke. Hers was a serious address where she spoke of Bad Friday and Good Friday. Today is only Good Friday because it is about redemptive suffering. Anything else would be Bad Friday. Suffering isn’t good for its own sake. She spoke passionately as one who had spent years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, serving women and young girls who had been raped by HIV positive men, young boys who had been brutalised into becoming child soldiers and mothers who had watched children die from diseases we find easily preventable in the West.
And from that, she made a connection between Good Friday and Easter Day. For whenever we, who believe in Christ’s redemptive suffering and conquest of death, minister to those in need or work for justice, we are doing Resurrection work. In that sense, she asked, is the Resurrection happening today?
Later, Rebekah – who had understandably described that part of the service as ‘longer than church’ – posed again the question, “Why do we call it ‘Good Friday’ and not ‘Bad Friday’?” I tried to explain how God took the Bad that was done to Jesus and turned it for Good. She found that hard to grasp.
In the back of my mind I was thinking of Tim Keller‘s The Reason For God, and his chapter on the Cross. He explains how forgiveness and love inevitably involve both substitution and exchange. When we forgive someone, it always comes at a cost. If I forgive you a debt, I take on that debt. He doesn’t get into the question of Pauline language and whether to speak of penal substitution, just that forgiveness must in some sense involve the substituting of the debt, and that this consitutes and exchange. The notion of exchange, he says, is fundamental to love. If I love my children, I will exchange my freedom for their well-being. I will not only give them attention when it is convenient to me, for if I do that they will only grow up physically. Love means I will attend to them when it is inconvenient. I give up my freedom to serve them in love. This, says Keller, is like what Christ does for the world on the Cross.
I shall be interested to plug those thoughts into those from a book that is on its way from Amazon: Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision by Tom Wright. I’d like to see how this compares and contrasts with Wright’s more cosmic vision of salvation. The Reformation tradition has tended to take Luther’s question of “How can I find a gracious God?” and insert the word ‘personally’ after ‘I’. That is critical, but I know that in this book, Wright is saying that such a question makes the sun orbit around us rather than vice-versa. We’ll see …
Sabbatical, Day 68, Maundy Thursday: Jesus Prays Before He Is Arrested
more about “Sabbatical, Day 68, Maundy Thursday: …“, posted with vodpod
You have just watched video number five from Damaris Trust for Holy Week. Nick Pollard talks about Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest. He discusses the significance of this, and what the command to the disciples to ‘watch and pray’ might mean for us.
I should add that today is very significant for me, both as 9th April and as Maundy Thursday. For it was on 9th April 1976, which was Maundy Thursday that year too, that I found faith in Christ.
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When I was at theological college, we never got to celebrate Easter together. It always fell in the – guess – Easter vacation. So we celebrated it ‘proleptically’ (along with Holy Week and Good Friday). That is, we celebrated it in advance of it happening. And what follows here is something of a proleptic post. Three days ahead of time, I’m typing a few thoughts here about the Resurrection. It’s part of a synchroblog today suggested by Slipstream, the Evangelical Alliance‘s network for ‘younger leaders’. (I ended up in it because I was part of its predecessor, Leaders’ Digest, before anyone gets sarky about my age.)
And the Resurrection is the great proleptic event of all history. Mind you, even the Apostle Paul doesn’t use such a fancy word as ‘proleptic’. Just as Jesus regularly did, he uses an agricultural image. He calls it the ‘firstfruits‘. Ancient Israel celebrated two harvest festivals. One was the great ingathering at the end of the summer, rather like the harvests we still mark in a post-industrial, credit crunch, Web 2.0 world. The other was in the late Spring, when the ‘firstfruits’ appeared, and is the festival that was happening when Pentecost erupted in Jerusalem. The appearance of the first fruits promised what was to come.
In that sense, Jesus’ resurrection is ‘proleptic’ for us. It promises our resurrection at the end of time, and with it the new heavens and new earth promised in Revelation 21. As Tom Wright has correctly reminded us, it’s about so much more than ‘going to heaven when we die’. How right he was to say that ‘heaven is not the end of the world’. It’s the foretaste of the new creation. You want hope in what I just called our ‘post-industrial, credit crunch, Web 2.0 world’? You have it – in the Resurrection. Jesus has the currency the world craves.
And it’s not just for the world: it’s something we need as disciples of Jesus to renew us over and over again. Yesterday, I bumped into a friend. She is on the leadership of a church where a number of people are going through major pastoral crises. “We just need to get to Easter,” she said. I think you could take her comment more than one way. It’s not just about getting to a certain point in time. It’s that getting to Easter puts you at the place of hope.
A second thought on Resurrection: it’s twenty-five years since Michael Green wrote his wonderful book ‘The Empty Cross of Jesus‘. Opposite the contents page he wrote this:
Michelangelo once broke out in indignant protest against his fellow artists who were for ever depicting Christ in his death on the cross. ‘Paint him instead the Lord of life. Paint him with his kingly feet planted on the stone that held him in the tomb.’
But Michelangelo continued to isolate the death of Christ, from the Pietà of his youth in St. Peter’s to the unfinished Pietà in Florence … so did the theologians and the preachers.
The point Green makes in the book is that it’s dangerous to separate the death and resurrection of Christ in our thinking or our emphasis. It’s something Jürgen Moltmann stressed in a different way. In ‘The Crucified God‘, he says we should speak of both ‘The Cross of the Risen One’ and ‘The Resurrection of the Crucified One’.
Why is it important to hold Cross and Resurrection together? Because when we emphasise one at the expense of the other, dangerous distortions creep into our thinking and discipleship. When we overlook the Resurrection, we preach that ‘Jesus died for your sins’ but turn it into legalism: ‘You’d better be grateful and live a good life.’ Atonement has to connect death and resurrection. When we overlook the Cross, we enter tawdry triumphalism and entertain a faith that cannot grapple with suffering, like those who come to worship on Easter Day having avoided Good Friday. Or we are like the church steward who once prayed with me in the vestry before a Good Friday service and referred to the day as a tragedy.
A third and final reflection. (Oh why not, I’m not getting to preach this Easter due to my sabbatical, so here’s my chance!) I want to dig out a favourite story. In my first ministerial appointment, one couple (who had left the Methodist church for the URC anyway!) disdainfully nicknamed me ‘Laugh-a-minute Faulkner’. Why? Because I committed sacrilege in my sermons by usually opening them with a funny story. I know, terrible. Write the disciplinary charge now.
One Easter, the churches in the town decided to hold a united service on Easter Sunday evening. There was to be no sermon, but I got the gig for the five-minute thought for the day. I recounted a story I’d heard from Tony Campolo, in which he told how on the afternoon of Easter Day, Russian Orthodox priests would get together and tell one another their biggest belly-laughs to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection. More soberly, I then cited the poet Patrick Kavanagh who said that the Resurrection is ‘a laugh freed for ever’. I concluded that I had ample theological justification to tell a joke.
Which I proceeded to do.
You can guess which two people didn’t laugh.
You can guess which two people refused to share the Peace with me.
Now I know how to be miserable. Ask Debbie about my Scrooge impersonation around Christmas. But one thing I know about the Resurrection is that it’s the reason for great joy. If I can outdo Larry for happiness at the thought of the Resurrection – it’s what has held me together when I’ve had crises of faith – then something was desperately wrong with this poor couple. In every sense of the word they were sad.
Maybe on Sunday, the truth that ‘Christ is risen, he is risen indeed’ can force a smile onto the stoniest of faces. After all, why be stony on the day the stone was rolled away?
Finally, here is a list of the other blogs confirmed as participating in this synchroblog, as of yesterday afternoon:
http://blogdyfedwynroberts.blogspot.com/
http://theurbanpastor.wordpress.com/
http://lifefaithetc.blogspot.com
www.knightswoodcongregational.org.uk/blog/
www.deeperwaters.wordpress.com
www.bibleandmission.wordpress.com
Sabbatical, Day 65: Jesus Clears The Temple, We Visit London And The Lolly Stick Cross
more about “Damaris Trust Holy Week 2009, Monday:…“, posted with vodpod
Here is the second Damaris Trust video for Holy Week. Tony Watkins talks about the surprising display of anger shown by Jesus as he cleared the temple courtyards of merchants. He discusses why Jesus took such offence to what he saw, and what that might mean for us.
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A belated birthday treat for Rebekah today. For months, she has wanted to visit London, and today was the day. Leaving the car at the main Methodist church in town, we walked to Chelmsford train station, caught a connection to Liverpool Street and a tube to Victoria.
Once we arrived at street level, we asked around to find the bus stop for The Original London Sightseeing Tour. This company is one that offers open-top double-decker bus tours of London’s sights. You buy tickets that are valid all day. You can hop on and off. You receive earphones for a detailed commentary. Children also get a special fun pack.
Knowing that Mark would be young enough to go free, we calculated that two adults and one child would cost us £56 for the day. We used some Tesco Clubcard vouchers towards the tickets. For every £2.50 in Clubcard, you receive £10 in vouchers. Therefore we exchanged £12.50 to get £50, and expected to pay the balance of £6 in cash. But I was charged £60: I didn’t realise the prices had increased on 1st April. We could have exchanged a further £2.50 in vouchers and not have had to pay a single penny. Dang, to quote my American friends.
It was an ideal day to sit on top of an open bus. 15° Celsius (59° Fahrenheit), and sunny, so great weather but not hot. The tour would take us all across central London. We saw Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Park Lane, Oxford Street, Marylebone Road and ground to a halt on Regent Street. With Mark getting extremely bored and both children struggling to keep the adult-sized earphones in their ears, we elected to jump off. Using McDonald’s for the only thing it’s worth (their toilets), we dived into Oxford Circus tube station and headed for St James’s Park station, from where we headed for the park itself and enjoyed a picnic. The park squirrels were tame, and the ice cream from a kiosk was good. (There is no connection between the squirrels and the ice cream.)
From there, we walked down to see Buckingham Palace, which was the place Rebekah most wanted to see. Despite being a Londoner, I’ve never seen it in the flesh before, either. Neither Debbie nor I are avid Republicans (the thought of a President Blair or – worse – President Mandelson is scary enough), but we are both instinctively ambivalent about royalty, so it is never a place I have been worried about seeing. However, Becky was delighted, and from there was content to head home.
While in St James’s Park, she repeated a question we’d had to defer the other day: why was Jesus crucified? I tried to give her a simple answer on two levels. One was about how good people can upset bad people. The other was about the kindness of a friend who takes the blame for us. (Yes, I know that latter one can be pushed too far in some models of the atonement, but it was a place to start that she could understand, but I’m following people like Tom Wright here who accepts a form of substitutionary atonement while rejecting the ‘Pierced for our Transgressions‘ school. I also know there are problems with that particular article of Wright’s, but I’m interested here more in what he affirms than his attitude to certain partners in the debate.)
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Once home, Rebekah wanted to show me something she has been making since yesterday. She has wanted to make a model of the Cross on which Jesus died. I have to tell you it is made out of pink and purple lolly sticks from a craft set, but don’t be put off. At one stage yesterday, she wanted to make a Jesus to go on it, using furry balls, but that part of the project had evidently foundered. Nevertheless, the cross was decorated with the words ‘Jesus was crucified’ and a series of hearts.
But while there was no body of Jesus on the lolly stick cross, there was something else: a montage of triangles, soaked in glitter.
“That’s the star,” she told me, “the star that led the wise men to Bethlehem.”
She gets it. At the age of six, she knows in a simple way that the incarnation and the atonement cannot be divided. Oh that more of us would.
Sabbatical, Day 44: Link Love
What a beautiful day! Undoubtedly the warmest of the year so far, around 15°C or more here today. I’ve been walking without a coat for the first time this year, even without a jumper. (Don’t worry. It didn’t get worse than that.) So what better day for sitting in front of the computer and garnering a few choice links?
Allan Bevere is celebrating Lent with some jokes. Here is The Man Who Orders Three Beers and here is You’re Not A Monk. Special words for Allan – not only does he produce the weekly Methodist blogs round-up on a Saturday, he was also the first person to join my Facebook group, Christian Ministry And Personality Type. Thank you, Allan.
Some atheists want to rewrite history. Makes you wonder if they understand the baptism they’re decrying. Their point might make sense if baptism works automatically (‘ex opere operato’), without the consent of the one baptised, but for those of us who don’t believe that’s what baptism is about, this is more ludicrous atheist posturing.
If this doesn’t move, you nothing will: The 7 Life Lessons Of Craig Wong, 1972-2009.
Ben Witherington interviews Tom Wright.
Other than that, not an exciting day on the sabbatical front. More a time for some domestic jobs, like taking some old toys to a council centre to see whether they could be recycled. Buying a roasting chicken and some accompaniments before a church friend comes to dinner tomorrow: she’s going to babysit while we go to parents’ evenings for both children. Getting a repeat prescription from the surgery. Mark throwing a supersized wobbly, accusing me of stressing him (yes, he is really only four) when he wouldn’t change out of school uniform to play in the garden.
So it was good to discover Graham’s blog Digging A Lot with his Lenten series on finding grace in the smallest and most ordinary of things. Without his comment today on yesterday’s post, I wouldn’t have known about this blog. What a joy it is. Recommended to all my readers.
I’ve been dilatory in ordering the books I need for the rest of the sabbatical, but I have three vouchers from W H Smith, not my usual first choice for literature. Each offers £5 off books costing £10 or more if ordered by the 29th. They might just make the difference. So I’m off to surf there now; I’ll see you tomorrow, I hope.
Sabbatical, Day 37: In Between Reading, Some Links And Videos
Today, some odds and ends. In between reading some Clay Shirky, here are some links I’ve found.
John Martyn
The official John Martyn website reports today that BBC4 will be repeating the one-hour Johnny Too Bad documentary, and by a half-hour solo acoustic performance from 1978. Dates and times for the documentary are Friday 20th March at 10:00 pm, Saturday 21st March at 1:20 am and Sunday 22nd March at 10:00 pm. The concert is being shown immediately after the Firday 20th documentary and immediately preceding the Saturday showing. It is not being broadcast on the Sunday.
Videos
This video is doing the rounds of certain Christian blogs at present. N T Wright would be apoplectic in its denial of the physical and material in the afterlife. OK, don’t take it too seriously, but this is part of the problem with much populist Christian understanding of life after death:
(Via Parables of a Prodigal World and On Coffee.)
This one is popular, too. American comedian Louis CK interviewed by Conan O’Brien on the theme, ‘Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy’. I watched this just after reading some more of Clay Shirky‘s book ‘Here Comes Everybody’ where he says that social change happens not once new technology is invented, but once is becomes ubiquitous. Louis talks more about how easily jaded we become with new tech:
(Via Collide Magazine and others.)
At least these are YouTube videos you can watch in the UK. From next Monday, UK viewers won’t be able to see premium music videos on the site.
Gospel
David Wayne has a very pointed ‘failed Gospel tract‘.
Writing
American pastor Mark Batterson on his rules for writing.
And that will have to do for today. I’m sure you’ll find something of interest somewhere in the abvoe.
Sabbatical, Day 24: No Sleep Till Brekkie, More Lectures And The Bristol Tourist Trail
I don’t do well on first nights in new locations. Not on the evidence of this sabbatical, anyway. Having barely slept before 4 am on my first night at Cliff College a fortnight ago, I didn’t sleep before 1:30 here, then woke at 5:30 with a vile headache. (Not that I know what a nice headache would be, you understand.) At 7 am, I decided I needed a large dose of tannin, so I took the pint-sized mug I’d brought from home and made my first tea of the day. The pain slowly subsided over a period of several hours, until it was gone by late afternoon.
Trinity does worship differently from my time. Twenty years ago, nearly everything was Alternative Service Book. Except when Paul Roberts inflicted chanted Book of Common Prayer services, that is. Though the ASB has been replaced in the C of E by Common Worship, the college seems to have themes for particular weeks. This week it’s Iona Community worship, widely popular in many parts of the British church but something that drives me nuts. I have no problem with a liturgy that emphasises social justice and makes no division between work and worship. However, I have found several of their liturgies and some of their songs hectoring and lecturing. Not only that, the confession used this morning was fundamentally inadequate. I like the mutual confession approach of Iona (service leader confesses and congregation pronounces forgiveness, then the process is reversed), so I’m not critical of everything. But this confession started from the point that we had hurt ourselves, then others, then the world. Absolutely no reference to the rupture between humans and God that is central to confession. Remind me never to use it in worship.
There were good things – not least the brief testimony of a student as to what God did in a prolonged experience of a spiritual desert. And the guy who read the Gospel reading did so with great feeling. Those were highlights.
Lectures were more relevant this morning. The operating paradigm (I’m at a theological college – out come the long words!) was still that of the large church, but I felt that more of today’s material was translatable or adaptable. We began with a session on team leadership and issues around teams. We then looked at how to run a meeting, largely taken from the old John Cleese video ‘Meetings, Bl**dy Meetings‘. Finally, a few thoughts about some common mistakes made by leaders.
This afternoon had an optional session. I opted out. It comprised some BBC videos on assertiveness training. While that’s an area I could do with improving in, I needed some air and some exercise to counter the effects of the much improved food. I decided I would try to find some old haunts. Off I went across the Clifton Downs, down two roads whose names may just betray Bristol’s slave trade past – Blackboy Hill and Whiteladies Road – and on down, eventually to Park Street, where I used to frequent three shops. I knew that SPCK would have been long gone after the business atrocities that have been inflicted on that chain of bookshops. Sadly, Rival Records is no longer around – I remember buying Bruce Cockburn‘s World Of Wonders in there during my first year. And the Evangelical Christian Literature bookshop is now a branch of Wesley Owen, stocking everything from N T Wright to Joel Osteen. Insert words such as ‘sublime’ and ‘ridiculous’ as you see fit. I think I’m right in remembering that ECL had been founded by George Mueller.
Not being home today means I’ve missed Shrove Tuesday with the family, but Debbie told me tonight she and the children had decided to postpone pancakes until Saturday. I’m glad they have. Pancakes and their toppings are one of those simple pleasures where it is a joy to see the fun Rebekah and Mark have. Two small pancakes with toffee ice cream here at lunch time were delicious, but no replacement for being with the children. As to toppings generally, I’m a fan of those English Provender jars – no, not the garlic, ginger or horseradish, rather the raspberry coulis or the Belgian chocolate sauce. The latter has been harder to find in the supermarkets recently, though.Looking at the website tonight, I’ve noticed they now do a Fairtrade chocolate sauce, though.
More seriously, I had to miss a hospital out-patient’s appointment Rebekah had this afternoon. Eighteen months ago she had grommets inserted in her ears after protracted episodes of glue ear and consequent poor hearing. They still haven’t solved the problem. One grommet fell out a few months ago, and today they could see congestion in it. She may have to have more grommets fitted, poor lass. Recently, we’ve let her start answering the telephone, but conversations with her are punctuated with “What did you say?”
Tonight, I’ve just spent the time quietly reading. Next stop a spot of supper then an early night, I hope, to catch up on last night.
Snapshots
Our hairdresser is a family friend. We go together to her house for haircuts. Earlier this year, we were at Gemma’s and we noticed some fabulous new photos of her daughter.
‘Where did you get those done?’
She replied that she had used a new photographer in town. We had a 20″ x 16″ portrait of the children in the dining room, but it was two years old. At the age of our small children, that’s a long time in which they had changed.
So we booked a session with Melanie, who was wonderful, and Debbie asked that one of the shots be a new 20″ x 16″ as a birthday present for her. Mark was impeccable during the shoot, and Rebekah started out well before switching into full drama queen mode.
A little while later, Melanie gave us a CD of the best shots, and we spent an evening narrowing down our choices. Eventually, we placed the order and last week I collected them. They are fabulous. The new big portrait is up. Mark’s cheeky smile radiates across the room, and in Rebekah’s case you can see glimpses of the beautiful young woman she will become. It’s stunning.
So the first purpose of this post is an unsolicited plug for Melanie’s work. I’m not posting copies of the photos here for two reasons: firstly, I would be breaching her copyright, and secondly I don’t in any case put photos of our children in the most public parts of the web. I only use parts of my Facebook profile and Flickr that friends can see.
But the extended purpose of this post is to meditate on change and continuity. It’s there in the different photos of our children, separated by two years. It’s even more obvious when you go to the church social and the ice-breaker game is stuck on the walls: ‘Guess which church member this is as a baby.’
This struck me even more on Friday night, when Debbie and I sat down to watch Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. The main guest was one of my musical heroes from the 1970s, Stevie Wonder. His run of albums from ‘Music Of My Mind’ to ‘Hotter Than July’ (excepting ‘Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants’!) has to be one of the most sustained streaks of brilliance in popular music. I don’t care for much of his music since – indeed if ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ could be permanently deleted from the world’s memory, I’d be happy.
But I love his Seventies music as much today in my forties as in my teens. ‘Living For The City’ still has to be one of the great social justice songs. So am I behaving as an overgrown teenager when I put his music on, or am I still genuinely appreciating his music, despite the fact that I have grown – and hopefully matured?
One thing I did was ponder the roots of my musical taste. My love of some black music clearly comes from growing up in multi-racial north London. My best friend’s brother introduced me to Otis Redding and Stax.
But my taste is – well, the polite word is ‘eclectic’. Singer-songwriters feature prominently. Some of that comes from being a child in church during the Sixties when folk and protest music was acceptable in the mainline denominations. It was more respectable than that pop racket. Also, I’m quite an introspective person, so the Seventies singer-songwriters were an obvious touchstone for me – Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and so on.
And I’ve always had a thing about lyrics. I’m keen on meaning, so those people who say that lyrics don’t matter have little sympathy from me. Not only that, I tried writing songs with my best friend. Given that he was and is a musician and I never have been, the words were my department. Don’t worry, none of them has ever been released. You are safe. But it gave me a deeper appreciation of lyrics.
The serious side of me also went for prog rock – notably Genesis and Yes. (Genesis went down the pan when they became a pop band.) My love of the serious and the complex kept my loyalty to this kind of music in the punk wars. The late Alan Freeman once held a vote on his Saturday afternoon Radio 1 show. Punk yes or no? No won 51% to 49%. I was in the 51.
You can still trace a lot of these influences in music I enjoy thirty years later. Boo Hewerdine, John Hiatt and Aimee Mann are all currently trapped in my car CD player, strongly representing the singer-songwriter camp. I recently bought Stomu Yamashta‘s Complete Go Sessions on eBay on the prog front. And Stevie Wonder on the TV probably has me digging out some of those classic albums.
At the same time, however, there are aspects of my teenage record buying habits that I wouldn’t want people to know about. There are some singles I was glad disappeared when I finally and reluctantly said goodbye to vinyl. I’m too embarrassed to name them here, so I’ll just leave you to guess. Some of them should only have been bought by teenage girls, that’s all I’m saying. It’s change and continuity again.
All this is an extended introduction to say that holding together continuity and change is an important spiritual and theological issue. I’m not even referring to the management of change in a congregation, although there is plenty that could be said about that. At this point, I’m confining myself to the personal aspects.
The Reformation enshrined this when it said that people were simul justus et peccator, both justified and yet still sinners. Justification brings redemption and leads to sanctification, that is, change, yet we are still what we always were: sinners.
Or to put it another way: our past and our present go a long way to explaining us, and hope draws us on into God’s New Creation.
And in that respect, Tom Wright’s great sign of the New Creation to come is the Resurrection of Jesus, itself am expression of continuity and change in the nature of Christ’s resurrection body. There was continuity: once the disciples had got past their considerable intellectual barriers to resurrection happening in the middle of history, Jesus was recognisable. He was ‘known by the scars’, to take Michael Card‘s old phrase. But there was also change: whatever miracles Jesus did before the crucifixion, he never suddenly appeared in the middle of a locked room, as is recorded twice in John 20. In the Resurrection, Jesus is endowed with the ‘spiritual body’ of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 15, and which my MPhil mentor Richard Bauckham used to say means, ‘a body animated by the Holy Spirit’.
So it isn’t necessarily a mark of immaturity if certain things remain from my youth. They may be part of an acceptable continuity that will travel with and in me throughout life in this age and the age to come.
Indeed, if the theory behind the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is correct that we have the same personality type for life, then that is an expression of this. You’ll see from the description I gave about the roots of some of my musical taste that a fair bit has to do with personality. No personality type is perfect: all have weaknesses. However, this is not necessarily about moral failure or weakness. God made humans to be interdependent, and in the Church God made us to be the Body of Christ, with complementary gifts.
But other things will fall away and be replaced or renewed. And that’s OK, too. That’s where the issues of holiness come in. So for example years ago I read an article in Third Way magazine about one of my musical heroes, Van Morrison. The author (Martin Wroe?) acknowledged that Morrison was not so much a practitioner of faith as a student of religions. He also acknowledged the commonly known fact about Morrison’s personality, namely that he is a notorious curmudgeon. Rock’s Mister Grumpy, indeed. However, he expressed a hope that there would be a place for him in the kingdom of God.
If there is, then it will be by the grace of God, just as it is for all of us. However, the question will arise for him, as it does for everyone, of change. How will he and we be made ‘fit for heaven’ (or the New Creation)? Transformation begins in this life by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, but is it complete at death?
The classical Catholic answer to this has been in terms of Purgatory. Tom Wright makes a good response to this in ‘Surprised By Hope‘. He describes it as a medieval metaphor and myth, without biblical support, having more to do with Aquinas and Dante. He quotes the current Pope, who appeals to 1 Corinthians 3, where the Lord himself is the fire in judgment who purifies us. Purgatory is unnecessary. God will see to it that we are fit for heaven and the New Creation.
And when he does, in that favourite verse of babysitters, ‘We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed.’ By the grace of God, he will make us worthy of his presence. And there will be a degree of recognition due to continuity, although exactly what that is becomes another difficult question. Suffice to say it must be about more than physical likeness.
Who knows, maybe even some of my music collection will survive!
