Musings

We are about to finish West Wing Season 3 (again, having watched West Wing through umpteen times), in which Simon, aka Gibbs, aka the actor Mark Harmon, dies.  I shall probably cry; I usually do.  Mostly because he is so very nice.  It seems that in real life, Harmon is a bit of a hero too.  According to Wiki, Harmon rescued two teenagers from a burning truck outside his house.

Can an actor ‘act’ being nice?  I guess so, though I suspect Harmon is generally not acting.  I like watching him because he seems to be a genuinely pleasant person who like and respects others and himself.  My daughter feels pressure at school because she thinks that there is an expectation on her to be nice.  I’m proud of her for establishing that reputation among her peers and teachers.  And when I’m wearing my dog collar there is an expectation that I’m nice, which I try to live up to.  Is that a bad thing?

I guess it could be, but I see it as vital to doing my job well.  We generally like people who act with integrity – people who like and respect others and themselves.  Nice is a potent mixture of charm, graciousness, integrity, and a love of people.  Jesus had it in bucket loads, and that is really something to emulate.  So let’s hear it for ‘nice’!

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What would you have done?
As a disciple, a follower and friend of Jesus,
what would you have done?

After Good Friday, after the crucifixion,
after the Roman authorities and the leaders of the church
were so nervous of rebellion and insurrection
that they put a guard on the tomb,
just in case superstitions in which they could not believed
somehow proved to be true.
What would you have done?

Would you have gone into hiding?
Would you have gathered with friends,
tortured with guilt for abandoning Jesus,
for leaving him to his fate,
for allowing others to carry his cross
and wipe away his tears,
for standing powerless and voiceless
at the foot of the cross?
Would you have protested on the streets
in a fever of indignation and anger,
and risked being arrested
and tortured and killed?
What would you have done?

Would you have crept to the tomb
in the half-light of dawn,
because you just could not keep away?
Would you have come with friends
or come alone?
Would you have brought myrrh
to anoint Jesus’ body,
or come empty handed?
And would you have wonder on the way
how to get past the guard,
the stone, and the stink of death?

What would you have done,
when you arrived at the tomb,
your sandals damp from the morning dew,
and stood by the stone,
and looked into the darkness of the empty cave?
And smelt the clean, fresh air of new born day,
and seen an empty night in the shadows of the grave.
And seen the linens lying where they fell,
and hoped, hoped for something unbelievable.
What would you have done?

What would you have done,
when you found the tomb was empty?
The women fled in terror.
For a while they could tell no-one.
What would you have done?

Nobody saw the resurrection happen,
Jesus’ moment of breaking out of his tomb.
And yet we believe,
because each friend tells their story
of breaking into the light of shared resurrection.

Peter and Paul call us
to set aside our fear,
amazement, guilt, confusion,
to step into the transforming power of belief.
Maybe not into certainty,
but certainly into faith.

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My teenage son sent me the link for the Kony 2012 campaign this week. For those of you without teenagers, this is a Youtube video of 30 mins highlighting the evil perpetrated by Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA. This video, and the accompanying material produced by ‘Invisible Children’, is top trending on Twitter and went viral this week with millions of viewings.

It is an impressive piece of communication – slick, moving, tells the story, explains what has been done so far, what still needs to be done etc. The so-called youth who have watched it have caught a vision of the change that can be effected by civil protest. Their voice is becoming highly influential in the US becasue it commands such a large following.

But other people are very nervous – the US military advisers now dispatched to help capture Kony for the International Court are working with the Ugandan army, itself implicated in war crimes. By helping, are the US implicated in these human rights abuses, while trying to prevent others?

Of course, there isn’t a right answer. And I am no expert. But it seems to me that doing something is better than doing nothing. And the greater good is served when we work alongside people and demonstrate appropriate military resistance to abuses of power.

Better to try and change the world for better than to do nothing.

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I had a salutary experience this week. I get on very well with the wonderful asylum seeker who worships at our church with her two children. I’ve eaten with her, looked after her children, laughed and cried, and waited for the results of her asylum application with her. So when she has something to say, I listen.

A few months ago she threw me when she called me ‘Mother Dana’. I baulked at the title, partly historically because I was taught ‘Call no man father’ (and therefore, no woman mother), and partly because I don’t feel I can live up to the title.

But after the Ash Wednesday service, she told her child to ‘Say thank you to Mother Dana’. Then she turned to me and told me that she had to use my ‘title’ with her children as it showed respect of the authority that the church has given me.

This was a moment of acknowledging my persona even when it seems to conflict with my person. I can’t possibly live up to all the title ‘Mother’ implies. I’m only human. But perhaps I don’t have to.

I think my calling is to be at the interface between God and humanity – as it is for many people, and maybe especially for clergy. So I don’t need to be more than to try and be true to what God is calling me to be. Maybe I will learn to grow into ‘Mother Dana’ after all.

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I’m an ENTJ.  I’m a purple Quality Street – I look soft like toffee round the edges, but when you get to know me I’m a pretty hard nut to crack.  I’m an Enneagram Type 1.  I am ‘Mr Spock’ personified.  So it has come as a bit of a surprise to find myself recently overwhelmed with emotion.  A particularity wonderful parishioner was reaching the end of her life, and my prayers were torn between a) wanting her to be spared more pain and b) wanting, very badly wanting, for God to heal her.

I know intellectually that her death this week is a blessing, and she was ready to meet her God, in whom she trusted with considerably more conviction that I could muster at her bedside.  But my heart is bewildered, and reluctant to let her go.  I met her properly on the day before her diagnosis of terminal illness, and have journeyed with her, and her family, through these last weeks.  She has walked closely with God, a woman of faith and courage, honest, gracious and dignified.  I just didn’t want her to die.

It will be a privilege to be part of her funeral, and to continue to journey with her family.  But a part of me will be angry with God that our world is not yet part of the new creation, and that she cannot be made whole NOW.  I believe that the second coming may still be some time off – but can’t it come a bit more quickly…  It’s all very difficult for an emotion-phobe.

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We have an ordinand on placement in the parish at the moment, and I have therefore had an audience for my musings about the diversity of my job. That, coupled with someone asking me why I needed 2 years training and three years curacy to be a vicar (‘You only work Sundays anyway…’), left me reflecting on the skill set required. This month I have:

led assemblies for 400 children, with just 15 minutes to give a Christian message relevant to age, culture, religious diversity, and without any teachers present;

chaired a meeting, at no notice, for which I had no minutes;

sat at the bedside of the dying, and held the hand of a mother who had lost her baby;

led a service in a home for EMI patients, who had no concentration, but a love of singing hymns

led funeral services, Communion by Extension, home communions, and taken the diaconal role at every Eucharist;

preached on occasions when there were children, and/or families, and only adults present;

taught small groups of adults;

written a faculty application for the Diocesan Advisory Committee;

negotiated on a significant purchase, agreed a price, renegotiated, and started a fund raising campaign.

I expect there are things I have forgotten. And what is amazing is that this is no different from the work that most clergy undertake. It’s what I love about my job, and what is really tiring. No wonder we need a broad skill set! Pastoral care, administration, appropriate teaching for both children and adults (and all age), presentation and teaching skills, conflict resolution, biblical knowledge, and so much more. Not to forget time spent in prayer…  I am trained for diversity!

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This past week has seen the production of soup in England rise by several million litres, as churches share lunch together for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. There is some evidence that in my patch that some Christians engage in an element of ‘competitive church’.

Apparently we had more people at my church than the Catholic one the day before, but our soup-warmer was faulty, so the beautiful butternut soup made by a URC friend was served rather cool.  Some churches served scones, others biscuits, but most served soup.  And you could see the metaphorical score cards for whose was the best

This seems to me to be a metaphor for the Christian church in post modern Britain.  The in-crowd compete with each other to produce the best experience of church, completely forgetting that what we offer is not product but relationship.  It is the warmth of our relationships, the love which we share, that is our calling.

Which is all a bit of relief, after the cool soup debacle.  Another gaff to add to the curate’s list of failures – of course my greatest strength is that I can laugh at myself!  And my gift to the church is a redefinition of failure and success….

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I realise that those of you who have followed my rambling over the years know that I am no longer lay but ordained.  None the less, the liturgists among you will realise that my primary calling as a Christian is baptismal, and I have decided that that will have to be sufficient justification for remaining ‘lay liturgist’!  Put up with it, pedants

Now that I am wearing a dog collar, people keep asking me how it feels.  When I said it felt a bit tight the other day, a friend commented that yes, of course, because it keeps me leashed to the church!  Usually it just seems to illicit funny looks (especially when I’m driving our sporty little two seater…)

Today, though, it resulted in a very special encounter.  A crowd of kids at the pedestrian crossing acknowledged a woman coming in the opposite direction with such obvious enthusiasm that I asked her if she was a teacher.

She was, and then she bought me lunch, and told me that she had just got engaged to her partner of 20 years.  I offered to pray for them, and she asked for my details.  I don’t think we would have had that conversation if I hadn’t been wearing a dog collar, and now I’ve met my first person in the parish who isn’t a Christian, and I have my first people to pray for.  I’m so excited….

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Since 1984, when I was first an undergraduate student at St John’s College in Durham, I have sat in the chapel looking at the stained glass window which depicts the crucifixion.  I guess it is Victorian, and the top panel shows Jesus on the cross, his mother Mary to one side, his friend John to the other.  Below are, among others, pictures of the women going to the tomb, the angels with the stone rolled aside, and the resurrection.

What makes the picture so fascinating to me, aside from the great depiction of women serving Jesus, is the fragmented nature of the story.  Because I like to bring order to chaos, I would start with at the beginning of the Holy Week story, and move on through the story to the end.  But this depiction is haphazard, jumbled, and not at all linear.  The stories appear out of time, almost as though the glaziers were learning their job (which of course they were, since St Mary the Less was the parish church of the Cathedral workers).

Some of me is irritated by this disorder, and some of me refreshed!  I can’t decide… There should be order, but perhaps it is simply good for me to see the story in a different way, without the interpretation that my ordered mind expects.  Like seeing a story I know too well, from a different place, and being surprised by it again.  Like being an ordinand too, looking up at the story played out, morning and evening in the chapel.

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One long summer as a student, lots of lovely holiday, and two Christian camps. I worked at both New Wine and Greenbelt (in radically different roles) and I was surprised by how different they are. I guess in comparing the two I need to add the caveat that we go to New Wine annually with wonderful friends, and it is 20 years since I went to Greenbelt. It is always easier to appreciate the merits of a system one knows and understands. None the less, I find myself quite down on Greenbelt, and this is why…

There is a strong pro-Palestinian emphasis at Greenbelt, which was not interpreted. I think it has been in the past, but this year at Greenbelt, it was not. I cannot comment on the Greenbelt leadership’s support or otherwise of Israel, but without interpretation, the publicity gave leave for anti-Israeli sentiments to flourish. I heard them vocalised often. The situation there is simply too complex to offer only one side of the war.

I missed collective prayer and worship. Sunday morning’s service felt musically pedestrian and was made ‘creative’ by an abundance of unrelated symbolism. There was little in the way of prayer ministry, and an emphasis on maintaining Greenbelt, rather than a proactive challenge to a group of rich, educated Christians to get out there and change the world.

I’ll leave the little grips (queuing, prices, consumerism, commercialism!). And I’m glad there are people who benefit from Greenbelt, and have their faith enlarged by it. But I won’t be going back.

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