Shadows

November 30, 2009 in Musings | 1 comment

Apologies to anyone out there who actually reads my musings, but today I am even more introspective than usual. A few weeks ago I did another Myers Briggs personality type day, and as usual my personality type came out as a predictable Extrovert, iNtuative, Thinking and Judging.  As an ENTJ I struggle to understand and “feel” my emotions. Except of course when they overwhelm me, and those of you who are in the vicinity.

Over the last few weeks I’ve tried to recognise and own the emotions that I’ve experienced. I didn’t know, for example, that there were so many colours to my anger; that I could be content but not happy; and that anxiety can lead to a form of pride.

I have usually dismissed my emotions as an inconvenience which distract me from the Vulcan way that I would like to live. However, I must acknowledge that by recognising and accepting the myriad emotions I experience in my shadow side, I am a more rounded human being.  Possibly I may even find that I am closer to the integrated heart/head/spirit/body that I believe God calls me to be!

Reflections after the ark

November 25, 2009 in Musings | 1 comment

The door was definitely stuck. It took an act of God to push open the water-soaked gopher wood, and let the light of a new day into the darkness. As the people and animals streamed out like new-born, the bright and silvery newness of re-creation must have been overwhelming.

From the old world Noah has brought with him a zoo and a farm, not a lot of food but a lot of fertiliser, a family.  There may have been more of some animals leaving the ark than originally entered (though extras must have made healthy eating for the carnivores); there may have been an extra human or two, or certainly a bump (what else was there to do in the darkness and fear of the storm?).

Noah has also brought a new understanding of God’s faithfulness, a rewarded patience and a heavy heart. The world is new, but the remains of the old taint the landscape; the loneliness of abandoned corrals and caves, the emptiness of a landscape devoid of living things, but full of bones; Noah charged with breathing new life on behalf of God.

The echoes of creation and new creation, Ezekiel, Jonah and Jesus are loud – this is not necessarily a story for a child.

Is the Church becoming Ageist?

November 11, 2009 in Rant | No comments

One of the words so dearly loved in church is ‘relevant’. We seem to think that it would be good to be relevant, and that if we can only attain that holy state, people who are not Christians will flock to our churches.

How wrong can we be, all in one go? Relevance is a myth, one dispelled some time ago by Henri Nouwen (The Way of the Heart).  We would be far more use to God if we stopped trying to be relevant, and worked at being deep. Which leads me on to ageism. In our striving to be relevant, we impose a particular world-view on the likes/needs/proclivities of young people (loud music, late nights, flashing images etc). Which does not, of course, suit all young people.

But we impose something equally stereotypical on older people (BCP, contemplation, tradition). But there are older people who don’t want those things (many of them, including my mother in law who would have hated being made to worship in any of the above ‘oldies’ styles).

The thing is, the cynical bit of me wonders if the church is being ageist because it is cheap and easy. We have BCP, tradition is already established and contemplation is mostly free, so that’s give the older people that, because it will keep them happy, and we can go and do something more relevant :-)

How scary is that? And what will the beloved C of E do if it manages to alienate its older people – than we generally won’t have young people or older ones, and even if we do get younger ones, just to remind you, they get older too…

Still boggling about Rome’s offer!

October 31, 2009 in Musings | 1 comment

The first week after Rome made its generous offer to employ those who cannot accept the ministry of women was marked by amazement. Surely Rome isn’t doing this now? Wrong! Surely the Anglo-Catholics wouldn’t be tempted to jump ship? Wrong! Surely the Roman Catholics don’t want disloyal, disaffected Anglicans? As yet, unknown.

This week, while I’m still boggling at the sheer affrontery of Rome’s offer, I’m also struggling with why, why, why, in an age of post-Christian disaffection with the church, a group of Christians are more concerned with gender than telling people about Jesus.

I hope, I think, I pray, that this ridiculous power play will not bring down the Church of England. However, it does bring the universal church into disrepute, and the name of Christ too. I’d rather we put our energies into spreading the gospel – but part of being in the world seems to me to be the need for credibility of the church within our society. So allowing women through the purple cloth ceiling is important.

For the first time, I’m beginning to wonder if we should let them go and move on.

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Emma

October 27, 2009 in Musings | 1 comment

Someone reviewing Jane Austen’s Emma at the weekend asked why we need yet another adaptation of it? The answer, of course, is so that soppy people like me get the chance to have a cry and a romantic moment. No-one believes that there is anything ‘true’ about Emma – it is a magnificent fairy-tale.  But magnificent for all that.

Of course following Jesus is in no way like being part of a Jane Austen novel, except when we are stymied by a sense of disconnection. We believe that God has in mind a happy ending, but in the present that seems a long way off. So in justification for my soppy moment, I would say that the scriptures are full of moments when the people of God declare how wonderful God is, even when everything around them is going horribly wrong.

The psalms are especially good at it. And why? Because, like Jane Austen, the authors recognised that there is a profound human need to make something true with our words that we believe in our hearts. As when the guy in the black dress declares that a couple are married (at that moment, by the will of the couple, and the assembly, rather than a month before or week after), so in the psalms we declare what we know is true, even when a part of us is struggling to believe that, say, God is good. By declaring it, so we tell our souls, it IS true.

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Trinity dance with two left feet

October 9, 2009 in Musings | No comments

You know how much I like dancing. I always wanted to be a ballet dancer (but never had lessons, so it was always going to be unlikely). At school I did some modern dance, on one notable occasion to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on Morecambe pier for a dance exhibition (more surreal than modern I guess). And there have been dalliances with Christian dance over the years, though never in Laura Ashley frills.

My amazing daughter is on the dance team at school, so now I get to vicariously enjoy dance through her. But I miss dancing myself – so much that I was tempted to go to the freshers bop this weekend. Then I remembered dancing in a blue jump-suit with a zip running all down the front the first time I was a student, and being chatted up by a bloke it took me the rest of term to get rid of, and hurriedly reconsidered…

But I am reading the most amazing book about the dance of God the trinity, Participating in God by Paul Fiddes. It has reminded me of the reciprocal, indwelling dance of God that we are invited to join as Christians, where our being, thinking and doing are all subsumed into the relational dance of the creator, redeemer and sustainer.

I’m so out of step with life in my new identity that I’m no longer sure of who I am, but in the great dance it doesn’t matter how many left feet seem to dance out of step for a time – we all get the hang of the dance at times in our lives, and then have the best time. Laugh out loud, and join in…

In Transition

October 4, 2009 in Musings | 2 comments

I’m feeling a bit lost this week. I’m not a lay person any more; in other words, I am no longer simply a baptised Christian, but something else too. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be able to feed the people of God with Jesus own supper. As a little girl I gave my toys communion, and the desire to be a priest just hasn’t diminished over the years.

It has been a very long journey, and there have been a lot of set backs. Now I’m an ordinand, training to be a priest, and suddenly the very thing I’ve been trying to get away from for years has become a significant loss.

If I had been accepted for ordination ten years ago, I would not have had the privilege of serving on Synod, nor of being on the Liturgical Commission. If I had had my prayer answered ten years ago, I would have missed out on all that fun! The old adage says ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans’. How true. Thank God that God’s plans are so much more sophisticated than ours.

So think of me, as I mourn something I never thought I’d miss. Perhaps there is something you are struggling with, that you might actually miss if you lost. Life is strange – following God even stranger.

Synod – speak

September 28, 2009 in General Synod | No comments

I’m just wondering if it takes a particular personality type to thrive on General Synod (I’m sure it does), and if so, what? Does Synod teach me to think in a particular way, or do I think that way naturally, and have been honed by ten years of meetings?

I know there are quite a lot of things I do really badly. And another load of things I do with very limited skill. But I can look at problems from lots of different directions, and sometimes come up with a whole new way of approaching a solution.

Wouldn’t it be exciting if the skills that Synod teaches were more widely recognised and appreciated; if there were a whole queue of people just desperate to get on Synod next autumn, and use their skills to change the church. So if you were wondering if church politics was for you – don’t be put off by the word ‘politics’. Change is what we are about, by asking better questions, and looking for better answers…

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Dry Stone Wall

September 19, 2009 in Musings | No comments

White van man has knocked down the wall into our field again.  And he wasn’t even driving his own white van. This is a pain because we have to find a dry stone wall-er to put it up again.

The wall will be rebuilt in due course, and will look the same as before, only subtlely different. The stones will be the same, but in a different order, so the lichen has the chance of new rock faces to grow on.

The church does the same. Every time someone suggests that a church without walls is a Christian fundamental, and others drive a white van into the church walls, a wall-er is hired to build the walls back up anew, subtlely different, but just as difficult to get into, out of, and around.

I wish the walls would come down – they have to really, if the church is going to survive the next decade or two.  But if we keep on rebuilding at significant cost, how can that ever happen?  Good for lichen and horses, less good for explorers.

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Run the race, but don’t worry about being last

June 12, 2009 in Musings | 1 comment

Although the sun is shining, the season of school sports days is upon us. There was a strong sense of competition at the ones I attended, with lots of over heating children running about; the little ones ran from one race to another race faster than they competed! My children are excellent sailors, dancers, and walkers. However, they are not very good at traditional sports day sports.

The wonder of traditional sports days, though, is that there are no concessions to those who can’t run. And quite right too. Whether a child can do sports or not, whether a child can do exams or not, they must compete in order to learn how to be adults. A good school will teach a child how to revise, how to run a race, how to time their papers, and how to cope with failure. This is the stuff of life. We all fail at things, and need to learn to move on. It’s so much better to learn this as a child.

And of course, as we choose our path in life, we learn to avoid the things we are bad at, and to put our energy into things in which we might excel. If we have really learnt how to be grown up, we might even choose to do things that we know we are hopeless at but we simply enjoy doing. That is when the lesson of failure has truly been learnt :-) I’m still working at it.  Bear with me.

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