fuzzy edges

2012-01-27T12:41:00.000Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Thursday 27th January 1977

We went to the Ikoyi club, mummy and I played tennis. We went for a swim. Then we had lunch. We went to fish on the mule in the afternoon. My silly brother caught a bush.

Wednesday 26th January 1977

2012-01-26T14:00:00.001Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Wednesday 26th January 1977.

We went to the regatta but came home after a bit. We got some 7up from Bashan’s. We went to see the steel band.

Tuesday 25th January 1977

2012-01-25T17:20:00.002Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Tuesday 25th January 1977.

We went to the regatta it was good. We saw decorated boats, warriors with guns. One man on stilts he came right up behind me. I went to brownies.

I am amazed I was so matter of fact about going to Brownies as it was the highlight of my week. I was desperate to join Brownies when we went to Nigeria but I was only six and had to wait (very impatiently it has to be said!) till my seventh birthday when I was finally able to join. I was in firefly six of the 4th Ikoyi pack and very proud I was of it to!

Monday 24th January 1977

2012-01-24T23:45:00.003Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Monday 24th January 1977
We went to the museum. We had a very nice time. I bought a fluffy ring and mummy bought a leather foot cushion. We bought a coke and drank it in a grass hut. We heard the drums at the Embassy of Chad.

Sunday 23rd January 1977

2012-01-23T18:37:00.001Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote
during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Sunday 23rd January 1977

We got up late. We went to see how the regatta was getting on. We saw lots of painted boats on Queens Drive. We went to the Ikoyi Club for the afternoon and saw some friends.

Saturday 22nd January 1977

2012-01-22T15:39:00.001Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Saturday 22nd January 1977

We went to the National Museum to see it opened by General Obasnjo. We saw lots of people. We went to the ikoyi club. The electricity went of at night. Mummy has started to teach me to do corkwork.

Thursday 20th and Friday 21st January 1977

2012-01-21T13:44:00.005Z

Thursday 20th January 1977

Mummy went to play tennis in the morning. I did some of my model village. We went to the ikoyi club for lunch and a swim.

Friday 21st January 1977

We picked up a friend and went to Lagos. After lunch a lot of us went to the beach. We saw a school of dolphins everybody came out of the sea quick in case it was a sharks.

Clearly the influence of the movie Jaws could not be underestimated.....

Wednesday 19th January 1977

2012-01-19T10:35:00.001Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during
the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Wednesday 19th January 1977

On Wednesday we went to my friends swimming pool and we had a nice time. We jumped off the diving board. We had a drink. When we got home Mrs Nolan came from Pakistan. Our plants started to grow.

And for amusement value - here's the swimming....

Tuesday 18th January 1977

2012-01-18T20:44:00.003Z

Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during
the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

Tuesday 18th January 1977

We had a visitor today called Mrs Power and the electricity went off for six hours. We went to the National Stadium to see dancing from Ghana. I liked it very much. There was an English lady she danced good. When a man danced on the stage his trousers came down. On the way home we nearly hit the Head of States car.

This is probably one of my favourite entries from the diary.
I love the fact that I report everything so matter of factly and events of several different magnitudes are treated equally.... whilst I am sure a man losing his trousers on stage would have been highly amusing, colliding with the presidents car would have been anything but! It also shows one of the ever present realities of our life in Nigeria, frequent power cuts. Fetching the candles and eating strange meals from whatever was defrosting in the freezer were regular occurrences, as was keeping a supply of water on hand for when we lost the water supply as well. Given that my parents had never been further than Yugoslavia and my mother had only been abroad a handful of times I remain amazed and in awe by how well they coped in such an alien environment. No wonder the liquor cabinet was so well stocked!

And so we begin....

2012-01-17T17:12:00.003Z

As mentioned in my previous post I am blogging my daily diary, If I can call the few short lines I wrote each day that, written by my seven year old self, during the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria... Here are the first two days...

Sunday 16th January 1977

On Sunday we went to the stadium in Tafawa Balewa Square to watch the Afro National Band from Sierra Leone. It was good.

Monday 17th January 1977

On Monday we went to the art shop. The man showed me around the shop. We went to the Old Niger House. There was a good art and craft exhibition. We went to the U.T.C Tea room, we could see Apapa.

Way back when...

2012-01-17T17:06:00.002Z

One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to resurrect this blog. However given its the 17th January and this is my first post you can see it’s a resolution that’s going about as well as the "eating more healthy" one. However I have a bit of a cheat to get me back into regular blogging over the next month.

Back in January 1977 I was a 7 year old, skinny, straggly haired kid living with my parents and older brother in Lagos, Nigeria. Life was a simple round of school, playing with friends, going to the Ikoyi club and trying to earn badges at Brownies. However in mid January we had, what was for us kids, a welcome break from this routine as we were given a month off school. I have happy memories of me and my brother building cities of cardboard boxes in the garage, trying to learn to sew and going to see all sorts of music and dance performances. Why am I telling you this?

Well at the tail end of last year my parents were searching through boxes in the attic and they found a diary I had written during this month. The month off seemed to be less of a welcome break for the school and our parents and so we were set lots of work to do at home. Seems that the cardboard box city and the sewing were actually homework set by the school as was to write a daily diary of what we were doing.
It’s hardly high class journalism and I only wrote a few lines each day, but I suppose that is only to be expected given my age. That said I found it an astounding insight into the life we were leading back then and the way I viewed it. It re-awakened many old memories and really made me appreciate, once again, the remarkable journey that my parents took us on when they made the decision to move overseas. So I have decided to share that diary with you, day by day,
here on this blog. You too can have a look back at what was on the mind of my seven year old self.....

As a way of introduction I feel I should say that the school, St Saviours, Ikoyi, didn’t just randomly give us a month of school. All the schools in Lagos were closed to celebrate FESTAC 77 – the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. For a month several venues in Lagos hosted daily performances, there were street festivals, regattas and all manner of celebrations – some of which I mention in my diary. According to various website I have come across there was also a two week scholarly colloquium which had five strands Arts and Pedagogy, Language and Literature, Philosophy and Religion, Historical awareness and Science and Technology... quite the ambitious program.

So if I have captured your attention do move on to the next post were we find the first two days of my diary....

Musical Interlude

2011-05-05T21:26:00.004+01:00

Everybody knows the Lambeth walk right? Indeed my solitary claim to fame is that I have performed the Lambeth Walk (incorrectly as it happens) on Mongolian national television....

What is probably less well known however is that the success of the song spawned a whole slew of copycat songs from other areas of London. Looking through the church archives I have found our very own local ditty “The Deptford Dip” written by Eric Cuddon in 1939...

Who can resist such classic lines as “ Deep, deep down in Deptford Creek lies a treasure hard to seek. If you could find the spot, you’d be worth a tidy lot.” Or the masterful (and physically challenging) chorus “Raise your thigh and lower your hip , now have some pluck and try your luck with a dip, dip, Deptford dip.”

Do you think it might catch on?

10 things I have learnt in my next six months as a curate....

2010-07-09T18:58:00.007+01:00

I no more more like writing essays for post-ordination training than I did writing them at college.
Dave Walker cartoons are actually quite mild compared to real life but Rev comes close.
What a difference a year can make - the changes that God has wrought in me in the last twelve months are extraordinary.
You can drink almost any liquuid called tea and smile through it in the name of pastoral visiting.
I really should have known better then to introduce my father to the Bishop. The embarrasment of dad asking if I "was behaving myself" was out of the ball park.
Stewart Henderson says it better than I ever could.
People are very forgiving of mistakes - besides committing a body to be created rather than cremated has some theological justification surely?
The Church of England should consider ordaining octopi for the task of performing baptisms- one hand for holding the service book, one hand to hold down the squirming toddler being done, one hand to stop said toddler knocking the free standing font flying, one hand to show the Godparents were we are up to in the promises, one hand to indicate to the congregation this is the bit you say......Well you get the point.
It can be hard to switch off – all too often you find yourself listening to your friends in pubs and without realising it slipping into pastoral mode with the head tilt, the nodding and the periodic uhmmms and “where do you think God may be in this?”
I never realised that it was possible to feel so totally complete and content as a person.

You got to love a community with a sense of humour...

2010-01-27T23:43:00.002Z

A still point in a turning world…

2010-01-27T23:34:00.006Z

One of the (many) perks of being a minister is the expectation that we will spend a week each year on retreat…. indeed such is the expectation that many churches, including mine, contribute to the cost.

I was supposed to have the first week in January as for a retreat but my general inability to do anything well ahead of time meant that when I eventually got around to calling some retreat houses everywhere was full. As it turned out this was no bad thing as the weather being what it was there would have been little possibility of me getting there anyway.

Finally last week a combination of space in my diary, rapidly melting snow and spare beds at a retreat house saw me heading way up north to the mother house of the Northumbria Community.

I first came across the community at Greenbelt where they were running morning prayer in Soul Space. I fell in love with their liturgy and their community ethos and so welcomed this chance to go and experience it first hand. In fact so eager was I to go there that I must admit I turned up knowing little more than the title of the retreat “A still point in a turning world” – was there going to be organised sessions, guided prayer, spiritual direction?

The answer to that was no… what there was was the warmest of welcomes, evident in the pile of wellies, scarves, hats and gloves in the front hall available to be used by those daft enough to come to the wilds of Northumbria without and by the fact that there was always a kettle ready to boil on the aga in the kitchen.
what there was was the feeling of being totally at peace with the world. This house is really in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the most beautiful and rugged countryside. There are comfy sofa’s, roaring fires, companionship or solitude as desired, and a gentle rhythm of community prayer.

What there was was freedom to just be. There are no expectations, no requirements, no obligations, just the company of fellow travellers.

And most importantly what there was was the chance to just stop.
I am 99% of the time a total Martha, always busy, always having a to do list a mile long and always feeling guilty that I am not doing more. Indeed I went on retreat with a pile of theological books I “needed” to read and several projects that “needed” planning…. and you know what I didn’t do any of it. Instead I drank endless cups of tea, had long conversations with wise and generous members of the community, lost myself in the beauty of the Celtic liturgy spoken out in their beautiful wooden chapel in the woods and allowed myself time to just breath…. it truly was a still point in my turning world…

We often talk about thin places, those places where the veil between God and mankind seems almost transparent – The Northumbria community is most definitely one of those places, and I thank God that I had the chance to experience it.

Rest in peace…

2010-01-12T21:57:00.005Z

…. I was saddened to hear the news today that Miep Gies had died. Having reached the grand old age of 100 one cannot be sad for a life cut short but more for the loss of someone who was both a remarkable individual and the last surviving link to one of the most important stories to emerge from the second world war.

If her name is not familiar her story will be. Miep, along with her husband and 3 work colleagues, aided two Jewish families to hide in Nazi occupied Holland. One of those families was the Frank family and the diary of their daughter Ann is a worldwide best seller. It was Miep who rescued Ann’s diaries, left behind when the family were finally discovered. She kept it safe, never reading it, until she was able to give it to Ann’s father Otto, the only one of the hidden group to survive the war. She went on to aid with the publication of the diary and to spend her life working educating young people all over the world about the horrors of the holocaust.

Two things in particular strike me when I think of her. Firstly that she was, in her own words, a very ordinary person… and yet faced with an unimaginably difficult and dangerous situation she stepped up to the plate and gave her all. In an interview many years later she said “I am afraid that if people feel that I am a very special person, a sort of heroine, they may doubt whether they will do the same I once did. Not many consider themselves very talented or courageous and thus would refrain from helping endangered people. This the reason that I want everyone to know that I am a very common and cautious woman and definitely not a genius or dare-devil.I did help like so many others who ran the same or more risk than me. It was necessary so I helped."
“It was necessary so I helped “… it sounds so simple when she puts it like that, yet in reality she was risking her life, she lived in great danger for two years as day by day she kept the families going. Whatever she may say I believe it was a remarkable and courageous gesture for which I admire her tremendously.

Secondly, I admire the respect and dignity she gave to Ann. Miep never appears to have treated Ann as a child, even though the others in the house did. She talked honestly with her about what was happening outside the house, after their capture she retrieved the diaries from the hiding place. She understood their significance but never read them, respecting Ann’s privacy. It was only when Ann’s father gave permission that she read them and, recognising their potential, worked to get them published. It was through Miep’s work that Ann’s dream of becoming a published writer came true – a final act of love to the young woman who had come to mean so much to her.

I will always be grateful to Miep for bringing Ann’s story to the world and to me. She said a few years ago that "It surely is a painful experience to be the only survivor of the eight people in hiding and their five helpers, I miss them dearly, because I can no longer exchange memories and no longer enjoy their friendship." I pray now that she is resting in peace and can once again be with those she loved.

10 things I have learnt in my first six months of being a curate…

2010-01-07T21:04:00.006Z

1) When the bride and groom arrive so late for their wedding that there is only 25 minutes until the next church booking is right about the time when you learn which bits of the marriage service are optional.

2) Dave Walker cartoons are soooooo true.

3) Wearing a clerical collar around the parish leads to some startling encounters including the inebriated gentleman who when encountering me in the street looked me up and down with a shocked expression on his face and exclaimed “you’re a f*****g lady vicar you are, aren’t you?”

4) No matter how much previous experience you have had the first time you preach in front of your new congregation is very scary (as is the second and third…)

5) Hawaiian pizzas are not a good idea for a youth club pizza party – no one eats them

6) Deptford rocks!

7) Putting your feet up on a Sunday night after church is so sweet when Monday is your day off.

8) No one asks you the questions you have been taught answers to like “what are the eschatological implications of a Christian view of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” but instead ask really complicated things that you don’t have a clue about like “Do you know how to deflate a bouncy castle?”

9) It’s amazing how much people are capable of if they are supported and encouraged well.

10) To be able to minister full time is an immense privilege, and in those rare moments when you forget that, God always sends someone along to remind you.

You are welcome?

2009-03-30T15:13:00.002+01:00

How it is that on visiting two churches yesterday, one open and available for public worship and the other redundant I got by far the friendliest welcome at the redundant one?

The visit to the open church started well. As I was spending the weekend at my parents house I headed off on the Sunday morning, feeling smug that I had remembered the time change, to worship at the local parish church. Describing itself as liberal, catholic and inclusive certainly this church did all the right things on paper…. a note in the service sheet as well as a general greeting at the beginning of the service welcomes new comers and invites them to stay for coffee afterwards. The curate on the way out, shook my hand, recognised I wasn’t a regular and so enquired of my name and such like…. and a nice lady, rushing off to open the fair trade stall, invited me to come and shop...but that was it as far as being made welcome went.
I arrived fairly early and sat in the church at the end of a row watching the pre-service bustle, neither the people handing out the books/service sheets nor the people who sat around me in the church managed to say anything to me beyond, is this seat taken? Even when I was clearly struggling in the service trying to work out where we were in the liturgy (to many sheets/service books/hymn books for my liking!) there was no offer of help. At the end of the service, I got a cup of tea and stood in the hall drinking it for a good ten minutes, numerous people bustle passed me and yet not one of them said a word to me, or even seemed to notice I was there. At this point I cut my losses and headed home…

… contrast this with a few hours on. My parents and I decided to head over to look at Gorton Monastery. Once a Franciscan abbey and parish church it was closed in the late eighties and after a period of neglect and looting was in a terrible state by the mid-nineties. Fortunately for the monastery, a group of passionately devoted people were determined to save it and formed a trust which took ownership of the building and performed a truly magnificent restoration job on it. The monastery now operates primarily as an events venue but opens for a few hours on Sunday afternoons for the general public to look around, at no charge. At the door were a few greeters with wonderful smiles, handing out leaflets about the building, asking us about our reasons for coming, pointing us in the direction of some people who have expertise that might interest us … in our case an expert on the building restoration in response to my fathers expressed interest in the architecture.
Once inside there was activities for children scattered around, various information points with videos and photos of the restoration and several more volunteers on hand to pass on their enthusiasm for the building and to answer any questions. All this was done is a really friendly and yet un-pressured way. Several visitors there seemed happy to wander quietly on their own and no-one bothered them from their solitude.

Why, oh why, oh why can we not display that level of enthusiasm, passion for our mission and care of visitors in our parish churches?? My parents local parish church is far from unique in its inability to deal with visitors well. I have visited or indeed been a member of many other churches where the exact same scenario happens… It’s not in anyway deliberate but rather that everyone is so busy with their stuff, whether it be a particular job to do or catching up with their friends, or doing some business over after church coffee that the stranger amongst them is all but invisible. It’s so easy to do and yet so off putting. My parent’s parish church is clearly a lovely place, with huge amounts going on, and they clearly feel a mission to engage with their local neighbourhood, but ….. maybe they are so busy doing all that that they have ceased to expect that the local neighbourhood may be in their church and feeling uncared for and unwanted.

Yesterday was certainly a salutatory reminder to me quite how easy it is to get it very right and also how even easier it is to get it very wrong…

1662 and all that…. (addendum)

2009-03-05T10:22:00.002Z

Morning prayer this morning reminded me of another revelation that I have had about BCP since being at Ridley. That is that is remarkably flexible… no really it is…

This morning in chapel we came into an open space where all the chairs had been removed and we were invited to stand, sit, kneel or lie down as we wanted. The service was a BCP Taize and the combination was extraordinarily powerful. The tradition language sang, underpinned as it was by the simple music of piano, cello and violin. The simple chants sung as responses enabled me to focus truly on the depth of the commitments I had just made in the liturgical prayers, and the sense of the world wide connectedness of the Taize movement was enhanced beyond measure by the sense of historical connectedness of the BCP liturgy.

For hundreds of years and in hundreds of places these two streams of worship have refreshed people, this morning they combined into a torrent of living water…

Truly God is good.

1662 and all that….

2009-02-28T21:49:00.001Z

Its that time of term again…for 3 weeks at the end of each term, college goes incredibly retro and switches to book of common prayer for its morning services.

Why you may ask (certainly many people round here ask that!) well primarily because BCP is still authorised liturgy of the church and as trainee church ministers we need to know how to use it. I think it’s fair to say that for almost all the students at college this is the first time they have come across BCP and certainly the first time they have attempted to lead it, and I like them, was not at all impressed by the idea when it first came around. Being dyslexic I was fearful of the strange language and the incredibly small print and the complications of knowing what to keep in and what to leave out… but most of all I thought it was totally ridiculous that the church could keep something so out of touch with the modern world and I didn’t want anything to do with it…. That was last year… after this week when I have started my fourth cycle of BCP I find that it has really grown on me. Now that I know my way around it I find the language is understandable and, more than that is incredibly beautiful. It’s fantastically portable with all the services, lectionary and scripture in one small book, quite the contrast to my shelf full of the various books of Common Worship services… and the simplicity of saying the same liturgy every morning gives a real rhythm to the day. I particularly like the fact that the service starts with confession, particularly welcome in this season of Lent.

There are some down sides though…. particularly when reciting familiar passages such as the grace, I have lost track of the number of times I have worshipped the Holy Sp-ost…. as my brain just automatically provides my mouth with the modern version and I still find the text ridiculously small.. but all in all I am glad that the church still has BCP. Whether I ever get to use it out in the parishes however, will I think, be an entirely different matter….

Picking up and putting down….

2009-02-25T20:13:00.004Z

Many years ago my vicar at the time encouraged us to take something up for Lent as a change to the usual giving something up… It was one of those sermons that struck a chord with me and ever since I have tried to use Lent as a time for picking something up as well as putting something down.

So today saw me put down snacking between meals... so far so good but its only day one! My problem is that there its far to much of a temptation here at college where a fantastically cheap and well stocked tuck shop at which I can have a nice line of credit is located only a few feet from my room…. I am hoping that blogging this particular Lent aim will mean that my fellow students who follow this blog will help me keep to my promise – I can see them doing a nice line in interventions…. “Jane step away from the fair trade Ecuadorian 70% cocoa chocolate bar - NOW!”

As to the thing to pick up… well never one to take an easy option :o( I have decided to take up better communication. Strange sounding I know but there is a logical explanation, honest!

I want the things I pick up and put down, not just to be things that are good lifestyle sense but also things that help me draw closer to God in this season of Lent. So the lack of snacking as well as helping my general health and expanding waist line will, I hope, act as a reminder for me of all of God’s people that do not have enough to eat and draw me to look at what I can do about that.

The taking up better communication is because I have always found that I can draw closer to God through other people. It will be no surprise to any of you that know me that I don’t do well at the quite contemplative stuff of faith! So often in my life its been the support, love and faithfulness of my friends and family that have given me valued insights into the mind of Christ, they are also the ones that have kept me going through crises of faith and times when God has seemed very far away.
Knowing how important these people are to me and to my relationship with God I struggle with the fact that I am appallingly bad at keeping in touch with people I care about. If I see someone regularly its ok as I am more then happy to chat with people face to face, it’s over a distance that it becomes problematic. I do mean to email or phone people to see how they are and have a chat, but somehow weeks pass and I still mean to but haven’t. I am always planning to blog so that people know what I am up to, but somehow never seem to make the time. Looking back over my life I can see a pattern repeating over and again where I move on and lose touch with all the people that were important to me just through bad communication. I suppose that this is paramount in my mind at the moment as I face up to leaving college and therefore leaving all the people that have been so important to me whilst here. Also, as I prepare to move back to London I am all too acutely aware of how out of touch I am with my friends there…. people I don’t want to be out of touch with. ….
… So that is why I am resolving this Lent to blog more regularly, to answer and send more emails to friends, to talk regularly on the phone with the important people in my life… and in doing so I hope that God will dwell more richly in us all :o)

Sunday Sermon

2009-02-15T14:47:00.003Z

John 1:1-14, Col 1:15-20 and Proverbs 8: 1, 22-31.

In a recent poll, American’s voted Herman Melvilles book “Moby Dick” as having the best opening line of all time. Now whilst I agree that his opening line “Call me Ishmael.” does have a fairly distinctive ring to it, I can’t say it really sets my heart racing…

My vote for a best opening line would go to the United States Declaration of Independence. It begins…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Now that’s an opening….. These words are so powerful, so full of promise, they send shivers down my spine.

We have as our Gospel reading today the prologue to John’s gospel. This too has a spine tingling opening; we hear again those amazing opening words
“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”
Like the Declaration of independence they are words powerfully laden with promise…The promise of what is to come…

The first thing we hear in this passage from John is that all things came into being through God (John v3). Our Old Testament reading from Proverbs echoes this theme. In it we heard of a creation that was ancient and planned and, most wonderfully, a creation that was a delight to God. (prov v22)
John, of course, in this opening focus on creation is echoing the account of creation in Genesis 1. The creation that John is writing about is God’s powerful creative goodness, which once breathed across the earth, to form life out of a formless void. But we are not just being re-told the story of the birth of this world, John is telling us of a new kind of life, a fresh and creative goodness brought by Jesus, to breath new life into the world’s darkness and to stir humanity to new birth. Creation is being re-made from within.. powerful stuff indeed!

John is himself in the midst of this creation, he is the witness to it, The witness to a creation which is incarnational and intimate for it is the presence of Jesus amongst us – The word became flesh, In Jesus we have that which is so beautifully summed up in the Colossians reading
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.”
Here on earth was God incarnate and John was called to be witness to it.

But he was not called to be a mere passive viewer of these events, his witness was to be much more involved then that, for he was called “to be a witness to testify to the light so that all may believe through him.” Having seen Jesus, John’s calling was to enable others to see that self same light so that they also could be transformed by it. He had work to do.

That calling continues to echo down the centuries. John was the first witness, but thankfully not the last. Each new generation becomes the new witnesses to God’s light in creation. That is his legacy, we are his legacy…for here and now, for this generation in this place we are the witnesses who will testify to the light. We are the ones that can make visible the image of the invisible God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Now I am well aware that such a thing is much easier to say then to do. The rhetoric of the pulpit is all well and good but what are the practicalities of being such a witness? What exactly are we suppose to do as witnesses and where are we supposed to do it?

I will start with the where because that is straightforward – where are we to witness?…. Out there in the world is where. You see – God is visible in here, in this church… We see his presence through the sacraments, We see his presence in the spoken and sung worship, We see his presence in the faces of the people sitting next to us –God is visibly present here…. Its out there in the world that he created where he is not known…As the Gospel passage goes on to say ”The earth the word had made, made him a stranger…” (John 1:10)
So just as God came to us in the form of Jesus rather than staying put in heaven and expecting us to come to him – so we need to be the witnesses out where the people are. We need to go to them rather than waiting and hoping they will come to us.

Now we will have a chance to explore this idea further during our Lent sermon series that picks up this theme of God among us. We will have a chance to hear from people who are being just such witnesses in schools, universities, workplaces and professions. People, who, I am sure, will have valuable insights to share…

And so I will move to the what, the place where many of us come unstuck…
we may well know and believe that we should be witnesses for God in the world, but what exactly does that look like and what exactly are we supposed to do? Sadly there is no formula, no ten step program that we can follow that makes all this easy, because each of our callings in this regard is unique, we each have different giftings and each of us has different lives and so different opportunities to witness.

But don’t give up in despair the clues are there that can give us a start.
For example If we look to the Colossians reading we see various descriptions of God that can we can use in our witness. We see a God who “created all things in heaven and earth” Talking of God the creator can be a powerful witness in a world were environmental issues are becoming increasingly important in peoples lives and we heard only last week from Nigel Cooper of his work on environmental issues in this diocese, a powerful witness indeed.

The Colossians passage goes on to describe God as the one “in whom all things hold together” (Col 1:17) what a powerful testimony to a world falling apart! Our economy is in free fall and for many people this means that the things which gave them their security such as jobs, property, and share portfolios are looking increasingly fragile. They are trying frantically to hold together by themselves, we can offer them the opportunity to trust in the one who can take that burden from them… the one who holds it together even when they can’t.
Why not offer to pray for people you know who are troubled in these troubling times – or better still offer to pray with someone. Prayer is so powerful and interestingly very rarely refused even by those that have little or no faith. Prayer can be transformative, because prayer, by its very nature, brings people into the presence of God.

But most of all don’t forget that the “word became flesh and dwelt among us”….sometime we can get hung up on words, get tongue tied, don’t know what to say and we fear saying the wrong thing…but there are times when it is not about the words, its about the dwelling. It’s about sitting with someone, holding their hand, saying nothing but sharing quietly in their grief and pain.

As we conclude let us return to where we began..
The writers of the United States declaration of independence were so convinced of the power of what it contained that they ended it with these stirring words:-
“for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honour.”

And my challenge to us today is this – are we prepared to make such a pledge in support of the power of the Gospel? The final words of our gospel passage for today tell us-
“that the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. “

Our indwelling in the world should be that of
a life lived in grace and truth,
a life that reflects the glory of God,
a life that is a witness to God.

We need not fear living that life, for as the light shines in the darkness, the darkness shall not overcome it.

Looking ahead....

2009-02-11T17:05:00.004Z

... On a day when I have been facing up to future reality by buying clerical shirts I am grateful to ASBO Jesus for once again articulating, better then I ever could, the stuff that's swirling about in my mind....

I sooooo hate labels, and yet when I stood looking in the mirror this morning dressed in a very formal black clerical shirt complete with plastic dog collar insert I couldn't help but feel that I have just put on the biggest label of my life. Free with purchase comes a whole heap of expectations, assumptions and pre-conceptions none of which I think will remotely fit me. At the moment, how I managed to stay Jane in amongst the craziness is something weighing heavy on my mind... after all experience dictates that the system will change me much more then I have any chance of changing it.....

Still I had one moment of me-ness, in the shape of a black fleece hoodie with a dark red lining which has an inbuilt clerical collar - much more my style of dress.... but oh the temptation to go to one of the shopping centres where they have banned hoodie’s whilst wearing it and see if they dare throw me out..... but then that wouldn't be a very Christian thing to do... would it?

25 things...

2009-01-31T18:56:00.003Z

There is a new facebook game doing the rounds where you are tagged by someone in their notes who has listed 25 random things about themselves and wants you to do the same. Since I spent quite a bit of time putting them together I thought I would post them here, apologies if you have already seen them on my facebook!

1. I studied archaeology at university because secretly I really wanted to be Indiana Jones
2. I get really irate when slugs decimate my hosta
3. I never buy French white wine
4. I have performed the Lambeth walk on Mongolian national television
5. I genuinely scare myself sometime when I realise I am speaking and I have no idea what I am talking about
6. I miss my cat – a lot
7. I hope I get to visit Tristan da Cunah before I die
8. Abide with me is my favourite hymn
9. As a child I planned to have six children and be running a multi-national company by the time I was thirty.
10. I would love to learn to play the drums
11. I am a world class procrastinator
12. It wasn’t until last year I realised that I am actually quite a good cook.
13. As if to prove a point over 24 hours elapsed between me writing point 11 and point 12!
14. I am terrified of driving and consequently have never had a driving license.
15. I absolutely adore garden gnomes and hope to expand my collection when I get a place of my own again.
16. I only earned 4 badges as a Brownie, Home help, swimming, world guiding and bookworm.
17. Despite being nearly ordained I still don’t know the order of all the books in the bible – I keep getting lost in the Minor Prophets and the Epistles…
18. I am addicted to Spider Solitaire – which is probably one of the biggest contributors to point 11..
19. I think the closet thing to heaven on earth is a big, comfy chair, a log fire, a large pot of tea, a cat on the lap and a huge pile of books with all the time in the world to read them.
20. Despite being an incredibly clumsy person I have never broken any bones… yet!
21. Jane is my middle name, for some reason lots people in my family go by their second name including my aunts, grandfather, great uncles and aunts and great-grandfather.
22. I much prefer cold weather to hot and detest humidity – so why I keep going on holiday to hot and humid countries is beyond me :o)
23. I love people watching and particular like airports and train stations because you can have great fun trying to work out the stories of why people are there.
24. I never leave home without my keys, purse, I-pod and a book.
25. Nobody can make me laugh as much as my mum, she cracks me up :o)

Todays recomendation...

2009-01-12T23:10:00.003Z

... Is the film "Slumdog Millionaire". I went to see it tonight and it is blooming brilliant.

In a world where we tend to see the same old, same old over and again this is genuinely different. With fantastic performances, amazing cinematography and a great script its a real winner.

The only problem is it has made me want to go and ride trains in India!

In case you have had you head in a bucket for the last couple of months and haven't heard of the film, here is a trailer.... enjoy!

Recommendations….

2008-12-12T22:01:00.000Z

I often find myself amused if not a little perplexed by the recommendations for future purchases that Amazon sends my way. Given that they are supposed to be personalised to each individual shopper you would think that they could manage a little better than their latest suggestions…

Top Gear 2009 Annual (I don’t drive…)
The Pig That Wants to be Eaten (I am vegetarian…)
and believe it or not….Conversion to Judaism: A Guidebook…

Amazon, Sherlock you ain’t….

Nobody told me....

2008-12-09T23:12:00.002Z

... that this was part of the job...

and they wonder why people think the church is out of touch...

On being watched....

2008-11-27T12:49:00.003Z

This last Sunday I preached at the evening service. Not in itelf an unusual experience, but made so this time by the fact that it was my "assessed sermon" where 5 fellow students and 1 member of staff came along to listen and then to critique it with me afterwards.

There is nothing that induces nerves in me more then people assessing what I do and then reporting on it - so I am profoundly grateful the group for the tender and loving way they helped me to unpack the sermon and look at ways that it worked well and areas were it could have worked better. They left me feeling very uplifted and inspired - no easy task in the circumstances - thanks guys :o)

Matthew 28:16-20.

When it comes to last words, timing is everything. something that General John Sedgwick, the Union Army commander who was killed in battle during the American civil war didn’t have time to discover – immortalised, as he know is for his final words “They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. . . .”

Jesus, fortunately for us, was not cut off in the midst of his final message and so we have here in Matthew, Jesus’ last words The Great Commission, the passage that for 2000 years Christians have read as their marching orders – their mandate to mission. As such one of the most famous passages in the bible– but also I think, for a lot of us, it’s also one of the most scary!

I think this fear comes from the fact that its one of those passages that seems to whip preachers up into an absolute frenzy of exhortations for people to be immediately spurred into action to go out and help everyone they come across, whether they like it or not, and to convert everybody and everything to the cause of Jesus Christ immediately. Indeed, such can be the pressure to get out there and do something I sometimes wonder why these preachers bother to write a concluding paragraph to their sermon, because surly they don’t expect anyone to still be in church at that point do they?

But you may be glad to know that’s not my plan this evening, apart from anything else because I think it ignores an essential truth of this passage and that is that this great commission actually starts with worship. In this passage the disciples go back to the mountain where they were first called by Jesus and there they worship him. Whatever we are called to do by Jesus it is essential that it is grounded in worship. However we choose to do that, whether it’s in an ancient and beautiful setting such as this with words and symbols that have echoed over the centuries or whether it’s with drums and guitars and words that come from the moment that’s not the issue. It’s about us being drawn into the presence of God and through our worship being lifted up, restored and filled by his presence.

The image that kept repeating in my mind when I was thinking about this passage was of a Well. A well that is continually replenished and re-filled so that it is always a source of fresh water. But the thing about a well is that this fresh water is not there just for its own sake, its there to be drawn on, to provide nourishment and sustenance for all who have cause to draw water from it. Thus, though it may be tempting to make worship the be all and end all, to live life in a holy bubble of beautiful music and prayer that is not what Jesus asks us to do. For worship is not the end, in fact it is only the beginning for after the worship comes Jesus’ stark command – “Go and make disciples of all nations”.

Now if this command sends fear coursing through you, you are not alone for as we saw in the passage some of the disciples doubted too, they held back not at all sure about risking themselves so totally.
As one commentator I read put it “It must have been a staggering thing for eleven humble Galileans to be sent forth to the conquest of the world. Even as they heard it there hearts must have failed them.”

What’s interesting is the Greek word that is translated here as doubt is the same word as was used to describe Peter’s attitude when he tried to walk on water but only really succeeded in falling in! It’s often said that “if you want to walk on water then you have to get out of the boat!” but stepping over the side of that boat is for many of us terrifying, we don’t have the confidence or the belief that we will succeed…. But that’s the thing with Jesus, he often invites us to step beyond our inhibitions but in doing so he is right there with is and most importantly he never turns away from us if we fail. You know what I think the best bit about the story of Peter walking on water is? It’s when he gets scared and starts to sink, at that point the gospel tells us “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him.” He caught him and you know what he will catch us to if we need it!

And so the eleven were commissioned – or as I like to think of it empowered - to go from there out into the world. But now they were not on some restricted and very well defined mission like they were first sent on. Back in Matthew 10 we see the disciples told by Jesus where to go, what to take with them, what exactly to do when they got there, how to deal with payments, what to do if they weren’t welcomed etc etc… micro-managed in the extreme, and quite frankly they probably needed to be, and yet we see none of that here. For here we see the words of a leader who knows that he has taught his followers well, who knows that he can put his work safely into their hands for they would know what to do with it. They were to do all that needed doing, in all the places that it needed doing in, that’s the task and it’s the task from which the universal church was and is formed.

Again the fear can well up at this point for this is an overwhelming prospect – there is so much to do, what I can do in the face of all that is needed, I am not able. Well if that is what you feel then I have news for you – you are quite right, we are not able – at least not in our own strength.
Thank goodness then that we don’t attempt to do this in our own strength but rather we do it in the strength of Jesus. We are given the necessary strength by being empowered with his authority and what an authority it is because as we have heard it is not just any old authority it’s “all authority in heaven and on earth” its total and its there backing up all that we do and say.

And all that we do and say is the final section of this great command for it is a call to action to live out our lives in love and service to all around us.

And that service is this “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

How we go about fulfilling this commission is going to be different for each and every one of us. There is no way I can stand here and in all honesty tell you what to do, believe me, many days I struggle with knowing what I am supposed to do let alone anyone else! All I can say is that each and every one has a part to play, we are each commissioned and I believe that through our worship, through liturgy, prayer, bible readings, beautiful music, in these God will show us, each of us, what that commission is to look like in our own lives.

Whatever our own personal commission looks like one thing we can see from this passage is that it will involve teaching but the original Greek is probably better translated as “make learners of” – yes that is right – the schooldays of a Christian are never over.

We are to be and create a company of learners, brought by baptism into union with the Trinitarian God. Just as we are these new Christians are to be enabled in the strength of this divine fellowship, to live for God and in doing so be a living witness to those around them. So he doesn’t want us to create a new generation of Christian automatons blindly obeying strict teachings that we have laid down about the way that things have to be done. No he wants us to enable a new generation of people that know and love God and live their lives freely and openly for him. Continually growing and learning in faith to the extent that it overflows into all aspects of their life.
And I can’t emphasis enough that this is a call to enable a new generation of Christians is for everyone! not just a select few
“Though the details of what we are to do has changed over the 2000 years – the call to a practical outworking of our faith continues –
“Jesus still wants committed people!”

And so this most challenging of passages finishes with arguably the greatest of promises and probably the greatest ever last words – “I am with you always, to the end of the age” Day after day after day – Christ is with us. In all that we are called to do, whether it be great or small, whether we help bring Jesus into the lives of 1 person or thousands Jesus will be with us in it. The disciples were sent out that day on the greatest task in history but they had with them the greatest presence in the world, our task is no less great but the good news is that Jesus’ presence with us is no less great either!

Amen

if...

2008-11-15T19:30:00.004Z

...priests really looked as delicious as Martin Shaw did in the TV show "Apparitions" on Thursday then I have no doubt that church attendence figures would sky rocket!

Goodbye Mama Afrika…

2008-11-10T21:11:00.001Z

I was sad to wake up to the news today that Miriam Makeba has died. Like many people I am sure, listening to Miriam’s music was my first exposure to non-western music. Her blending of traditional African songs and rhythms with jazz and blues seemed so exotic and beautiful that it has remained a firm favourite of mine ever since, indeed her songs Mbube and Pata Pata feature among my favourite songs of all time.

She is a reminder of the power of music to transport and transform. Through 30 years of exile from her beloved South Africa she never lost her commitment to bring about reform and justice through her music and her witness. Similarly for so many people African and Western alike her music is the embodiment of a continent and its people.

Walking back from a lecture today through a cold, wet and grey Cambridge I put some of her songs on my Ipod and was immediately transported to the plains of Africa, such is the power of her music – her talent was unparalleled, her generosity to the next generation of South African musicians was legendary.
Mama Afrika, you will be missed.

Playing with your food...

2008-11-09T17:05:00.002Z

I think these people take it to a whole new level...

For more of the same check out their website

What next?

2008-11-07T18:38:00.001Z

On one of my extended procrastination sessions avoiding my latest essay I came across a book I bought yonks ago entitled 99 things to do between here and heaven… sadly since reading the book was not one of the 99 things I had not got round to it yet...

I found that I was already covered on 50 of them having visited Africa (#33), listened to a choral masterpiece (#57), taken part in a Passover meal (#91) and other such delights in life. Mind you I feel that I should do #48 “walk the stations of the cross” again to really count it as we were in a bit of a rush and so did them at rather an accelerated pace and also backwards as we were on the wrong side of Jerusalem to start them the right way around. Much as it was heartening to have finished up with Jesus is such good health at the end I am not sure that was the experience we were supposed to have…

Anyway I figure that, assuming I live till 88, I could cover the rest at the nice and leisurely pace of 1 per year (though I suppose I had best not leave such challenges as “attempt an extreme sport” till the end!) so that begs the question of which of the remaining 49 to do this year? The limited time left this year rules out many such as #15 – Learn New Testament Greek and the British winter definitely rules out #74… so which of these (carefully selected for their do-ability in what remains of the year) do you reckon I should do – The one with the most votes I will attempt in my next procrastination session!

#3 – read a gospel in one sitting
#40 – pray the rosary
#49 – contribute to wikipedia
#60 – Analyse yourself with Myers-Briggs
#68 – read religious poetry (if so, what??)

Over to you…

Denver reflections

2008-09-30T12:43:00.004+01:00

I was going to write a post about the many and fantastic things we did on our mission to Denver... but the very talented Rachel put together a video for the college meeting that is waaaay better then anything I could say - so crack open the popcorn, pull up a comfy chair and enjoy Denver 2008...

Mile High Club…

2008-09-20T17:42:00.002+01:00

Bet that got your attention!
The title of course is referring to the fact that I can now claim to be among the people that have visited Denver, the mile high city :o)

We are now onto day 4 of our mission and have a welcome day off – hence this post as it means I have managed to find some wi-fi when I am out and about doing some retail therapy!

The trip is going fantastically well. We have all more or less adjusted to the altitude, but it was a little ropey to begin with. You have to drink shed loads of water and if you don’t you tend to get tight chested and breathless. Apparently your body compensates for this quite rapidly by producing more red-blood cells that give your body more energy ,,, the positive side of this is that when you get back down to ground level you have bags of extra energy until your cell count returns to normal. Our tutor Dave is rather impressed with this as he is running the Great North Run shortly after returning, a race he is now confident of winning :o)

Our primary task whilst here is to work with a church called “Scum of the Earth” and its senior pastor, Mike has put together a fantastic program for our stay here. We have been learning about the church, its mission and how it works and are all looking forward to worshiping with them tomorrow. We have also met with various other church leaders and attended some events at Urban Skye, a group that works primarily in the arts community. I will post more about these groups when I get back home and back a regular internet connection as the work that they do is diverse and fascinating.

It seems like meeting over meals is very popular – which given the size of American portions is challenging, to say the least. Yesterday we had a brunch meeting at 10 which lasted about 1.5 hours. We then had about 20 minutes to do a brisk walk around the block to try and work some of this food off before returning for our lunch meeting at 12! It’s a hard life being on mission I can tell you…

So our day off today should be great, including the great American shopping mall experience and a drive out to Boulder (Na-nu, Na-nu) and tonight a concert by Phil Keaggy. We also have a day up in the mountains to look forward to on Monday – can’t wait… We will of course also be doing lots more work – honest!

American Elections

2008-09-15T22:46:00.003+01:00

... Say what you like about the American's but their elections are just so much more spoofable then ours....

lost and found…

2008-09-14T20:28:00.001+01:00

The ever wonderful Maturest Student in the World has been reflecting here about the loss of identity that can come from leaving behind one life to begin another. This is a topic close to my own heart as, like her, I find myself struggling these days to know how to answer those inevitable “what do you do” questions that seem to be the foundation of all modern conversation. Like many people I suspect, I found a great deal of my esteem in my working life. The fact that I had worth to my employers, gave me my identity. Each pay rise or new job was a boost to the confidence that I couldn’t seem to find for myself, I had an identity in my profession that was the framework to how I understood myself.
Loosing that external validation of worth when I gave up that profession has been hard and yet… it has taken me to the start of an amazing journey to discover my worth to myself and more importantly my worth to God. It’s taken me all year really to come to the sense that my old identity has gone, that an essential part of the training process is this stripping away of all the scaffolding of the past. Doing this enables us to be free to build anew, to work with God to come to a new sense of who we are and of his purpose for us…. a process that I know will continue long after college has finished.

This whole issue of identity has been at the forefront on my mind of late as I reflect on my parish placement this summer. There I witnessed one of the most heartbreaking things I think I will ever see. The funeral of twins, born extremely premature, long before there was any hope of independent life outside their mother. Born before the 24 week deadline that legally sees life begin these were not, in any official sense, children. Their identity, if you could call it that, was as unviable foetus’ subjected to a spontaneous abortion as a result of an infection. Yet, you only had to listen to their mother to know that whatever the law might say these were her children, much loved and much wanted, grieved for with the intensity that only a parent that has themselves lost a child could fully understand. They were her children. They each had a unique identity, named and known in the few days there was to say hello before the grim task of saying goodbye began. For the first time I really began to understand the importance of a funeral in declaring the full personhood of the deceased. This is never more so than here were the simple naming ceremony that preceded the committal put the identity of these children, as human beings known and loved by God, front and centre for all to see. Never have the words “a person known to God” seemed more real. Whoever the world may say we are, whatever identity we claim for ourselves or others claim for us it can never be more important then that.

Lord above…

2008-09-12T15:59:00.001+01:00

The critics weren’t joking when they said that Pierce Brosnan couldn’t sing. But that aside Mama Mia (which I finally got around to seeing this week) is definitely the best feel good movie that you will see this side of Christmas. Go on, take yourself along for 2 hours of deeply silly but magical movie making – bet you will be singing along to the songs by the end :o)

Modern dilemmas

2008-09-10T12:12:00.000+01:00

So do you go to Café Nero and get a decent cappuccino but have to pay for wi-fi… or do you go to MacDonalds that has lovely fast and free wi-fi but lousy cappuccino….
Decisions, decision…

You are only as old as….?

2008-08-14T12:31:00.000+01:00

How old is God?

That’s what I love about 8 and 9 year olds they have a knack of asking seemingly simple and yet at the same time complex questions, particularly about faith.
Well, I said, he’s been with people for thousands of years, even since we began so in that sense he is very old indeed, and yet in another sense he isn’t any age at all, because he lives outside of time.
Slight tilt of the head sidewise and a few moments in thought whilst carrying on colouring…. So how old are you then? comes the follow on question… Well I am old I say, I am nearly 40. Oh that’s not old he says with all his 9 year old wisdom. My gran’s 47 – That’s old….

Oh good, that’s alright then…. I have a whole 7 years until my youth runs out!

Interesting questions

2008-08-10T17:21:00.002+01:00

The intern at one of the churches I am working with at the moment seems to specialise in asking odd questions. It seems to be his way of getting a handle on people... but what he will make of me with the likes of....

What is your favourite book and why?
(Always an impossible question for me to answer, its like asking a parent to choose their favourite child!)

If you were a Jane Austin heroine which one would you be?
(Definitely not Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, she was a total wimp!)

What weather forcast would best describe you?
(That totally threw me, I can't say that I had ever given it much thought! But I decided on "Changeable weather ahead" after all how can one thing describe a person?)

If there were a movie made of your life who would play you? Who would play your boyfriend? and what would be the theme tune?
(Kate Winslet, chance would be a fine thing, and anything by Ennio Morricone because he is a genius with film scores.)

If you were a road, what kind of road would you be?
(Definately one of those winding B roads where you have a destination in mind but you are perfectly happy pottering along enjoying the view out of the window...)

I wait with baited breath to see what I will be asked next...

Galilee

2008-07-25T19:28:00.000+01:00

It’s an odd dichotomy being up in Galilee. On the one hand as a pilgrim its easier to feel closer to Jesus here, as everywhere you go there are connections to Jesus and the gospels and yet we are staying at a lovely beach hotel on the shores of the lake, are program is lighter leaving plenty of time at the end of the day to swim and relax and it can feel rather to like we are on holiday!

Thursday saw the start of the Jesus tour… first stop the Mount of Beatitudes – where it was lovely to have some time for quite and reflection on these most challenging of verses – The problem is that this is one of the main stops on the tourist trail and so there was a constant flow of people coming and going often noisily, many not really that interested in worship or reflection. But then what do you do? Its always a problem here that those who are here on pilgrimage are cheek by jowl with the tourists interested in antiquities, sunbathing and shopping This can lead to a conflict of interest at the Holy Sites. For example when we were at Armenian Vespers the other week in Jerusalem, there was a tour group in for whom this was clearly not a time of worship but a rather quaint sideshow that had been put on just for them. They were wandering around during the service trying to find good camera angles for their video and taking photos all the way through and thought nothing of going right up to the monks at worship and taking a flash photo of them at prayer – it was deeply offensive to those there to worship and deeply disrespectful to the monks. But at the same time many of these same churches have extensive gift shops and café’s – understandable as a fund raiser to maintain these wonderful churches – and yet surely giving mixed messages as to what they are about?

So having snarled at some noisy Taiwanese tourists (me that is, not the whole group…) we headed down the mount to Tabga to see the rock that the loaves and fishes were multiplied on and then next door to the Church of Peter’s Primacy to see the rock on which Jesus declared to Peter that he would be the rock on which the church was founded. Though both lovely churches I do find it amazing that in the fields full of rocks around here they can tell which were the exact ones on which these events took place!

By now it was nearing midday and it was incredibly hot – with the added joy we have come up against here of incredibly high humidity, so when we got to Capernaum and found the place jam packed with tour parties it was hard to get enthusiastic. It is an amazing site – the base for much of Jesus’ ministry and a place he spent a great deal of time, but of course this draws the crowds, It has done since the very early days of pilgrimages. The site of Simon Peter’s house, the place that Jesus lived, is placed with a deal of certainty as people have been visiting this particular house and leaving Christian messages on the wall since the 1^st century less then a hundred years after Jesus death, when the site would have still been well remembered. Not that any of the house is left these days it was ripped out in the 4^th century and a church built on the site and a modern church has since been built over that ancient one. So I must admit my attention at Capernaum was mostly taken up by trying to get a space in the small areas of shade that the site afforded!

Things got a lot cooler after this as we took a boat ride across the lake, stopping for a scripture reading half way – thought not an attempt to replicate the walk mentioned in this passage! and then on to a late lunch were all the non-vegetarians got to try the local speciality St Peters fish. – which was apparently tasty but I was rather distracted as it was served with its head and tail still on which I can’t say, as the tables loan vegetarian, I was too pleased about.

The best part of the day – definitely when we got back to the hotel and at last were able to dive into the cool, clear waters of the Sea of Galilee. As a place to swim its unparallel, the view is divine and the waters crystal clear and like nectar at the end of a long hot day – blissful!

The signs are getting stranger...

2008-07-25T15:19:00.002+01:00

Jesus presumably wouldn't be welcome then!

And you thought you had got rid of me for a while…

2008-07-23T20:37:00.002+01:00

Apologies if you were hoping for a blog free few days but it turns out that our hotel in Tiberius has Wi-Fi access for £1 a day :o)

The view from the window’s not bad either...

Unexpected delights

2008-07-22T07:18:00.002+01:00

Sadly most of the Israel museum is closed at the moment for major renovation, so when we went along to look at the dead sea scrolls I was not expecting the most exciting of afternoon. If truth be told I was feeling pretty grumpy as this museum has a superb art collection including a particularly good selection of Chagall’s which I would have loved to have seen.

So having seen the scrolls (old bits of parchment with very small writing) I wandered off to find something to do for the hour before the coach returned. In my wanderings I saw that they had a small temporary exhibition of Israeli art produced in the last decade, since they had air conditioning I thought I might as well pop in… Well God was smiling on me that day because it was an extraordinary show with some incredible pieces, so much so that I had to leave way before I had had my fill. One piece in particular really caught me

you don’t get to good an impression of it from this image due to its size but imagine if you can that its on an enormous canvas on its own on a stark white wall. I think it was especially poignant because of all that I have been learning these past weeks about the conflict here…

The photographer is Adi Nes and you can see more of his work here – Its definitely worth checking out.

On a different note entirely, tomorrow we head up to the Galilee for the final days of our trip – much as this will be fantastic it does mean losing access to the lovely free wi-fi I am enjoying here – so it may be a case of bloggus interuptus until I return to the UK at the weekend.

Sing to the Lord…

2008-07-22T07:12:00.002+01:00

Whilst here in the Holy Land we have had the opportunity to experience a wide range of worship styles and traditions. Each day at Tantur there is morning and evening prayer led by people staying here (which in itself has been a feast of variety!)

On the first Sunday we headed to Abu Gosh a crusader church with fantastic acoustics where nuns and monks chant Catholic mass in French, Latin and occasional Greek. Apparently, so those that understand French tell me, the sermon was fantastic… but since the only word I picked up was Jesus I will have to take their word for it! The music was heavenly though and in such beautiful surroundings it was a real winner.

We have also been to Armenian Orthodox vespers where I had absolutely no clue what was going on but was seriously impressed in the military precision that the acolytes had when going out in pairs to sense all the icons. Crisply clipping across the church in a liturgical military two step they swung their thurifals in perfectly matched timing – its was a sight to behold!

My absolute favourite those was this last Sunday when we attended Immanual Evangelical fellowship in Bethlehem. The church meets in a basement but they have got it well set up with projectors (yes they still have the cheesy Powerpoint backdrops when projection Arabic worship songs!), a full band, sound system etc. The service was in Arabic but they provide simultaneous translation into English via wireless headsets so we were able to participate. The congregation was a whole mix of ages, but with lots of young families that gave the whole things lots of energy. Lots of worship songs were sung – (we joined in loudly with the hallelujahs as that was the one word we could recognise in the songs!) and some really good and sound teaching was given – though the preacher had clearly been taking tips from American tele-evangelists as he could certainly ramp a crowd up!

Particularly moving was his teaching from Psalm 27 (Here is you are not familiar with it.) Given the state of siege that they live in and all the difficulties they face being Christians let along Palestinians in this land their total faith in the Lord, their desire to forgive their enemies and live at peace in the land is incredibly moving.

Also wonderful was the children who had been given the teaching slot that week. The younger ones sang songs and recited memory verses – they were sooo cute and the older ones put on a dramatic presentation of all the issues that they face as Christians. This was actually a pretty sophisticated message for ones so young and there was a definite sense that they don’t shy away from the tough stuff when teaching the children’s groups, there is a real sense of needing to equip the children well for the many challenges they will face ahead.

But best of all…. well that prize had to go to the wonderful man at the back who was providing the simultaneous commentary. It started off quite staid, translating the opening greetings and the words of the first few songs but it rapidly descended into what can only be described as the religious equivalent of Terry Wogan commentating on the Eurovision Song Contest – When the children came up to do their slot they starting shouting their song into the microphone as small children are want to do and all we heard in our headphones was “They are shouting, why are they shouting I have no idea what they are saying!” and when they were reciting memory verses instead of the verse we heard “oh he is trying John 3:16, that is good, oh he is doing well, amazing he has managed to remember it all – how good” rather then actually having the text translated. We also got the various asides to other people at the back about such topics as the state of the batteries on our headphones “we need atomic batteries these are no good they should be atomic” and we also got to hear is excitement at what the preacher was saying and so when the preacher was ramping things up and starting to shout so was our translator such was his excitement - bellowing in stereo - its amazing we didn’t go deaf. Needless to say we kept getting fits of giggles at all of this – it was great.

For all their difficulties there was a real sense of the presence of God in that place, among that congregation. It was spirit filled, true and courageous and it was an honour to be able to worship alongside them.

And it’s all thanks to Gordon Brown….

2008-07-21T12:51:00.001+01:00

… Which those of you that know me well know is not something that I would often say, especially not in a positive context! However yesterday I had every reason to be grateful to him as he inadvertently helped me to experience more fully what the Palestinians have to go through on a daily basis – or at least those who are fortunate enough to have passes to go into Israel.

Well there we were, having spent the morning at a wonderful church service in Bethlehem (of which I will say more in another posting!) heading back to the checkpoint so that we could get back to Tantur for lunch. There were 10 of us ambling down the road when we get to a group of people stopped in the road and a large number of armed soldiers and policeman blocking there way. Asking around we discover it’s because Gordon is about to come into Bethlehem for trade talks and so they have not only closed the barrier but stopped anyone who was walking or driving in its vicinity. We were stood there for around 10 minutes in the very hot sun with all these guys with guns looking far to seriously like they were prepared to shoot them at any minute when an enormous motorcade screeches past at high speed. Another ten minute wait and then the same motorcade, having picked up Gordon and party at the checkpoint, screeched back at equally high speed taking him to his talks. We did wave but decided he hadn’t seen us since he didn’t stop!
Eventually the solders clicked the safety catches back on their guns and we were allowed to continue on our way… only to be stopped a few hundred meters up the road by a blockage of armoured cars and barbed wire across the road – this not moved for another 15 mins or so. By the time we made it to the checkpoint what should have been a 10 minute walk had taken us nearly an hour – We had given up hope of making it for lunch at that point but were still hopeful of making the bus at 1.30 that was taking us on our afternoon trip to the Israel museum. That was until we saw the queue at the checkpoint – because of course having closed the checkpoint for well over an hour there was now a tremendous backlog of people trying to get through – added to which security was particularly high and so passage through was slower than we had seen before. The hour we spent getting through was a salutary lesson of the reality of life here. We had the chance to talk to many locals in the queue all of whom were amazingly resigned to this sort of thing, many saying that an hour was nothing compared to some times when passage through the checkpoint could take 2 or 3 hours – no joke when you only have a 6 hour pass, the time of which starts ticking down as soon as you enter the checkpoint. How swift passage through the wall is seems to be at the whim of the guards, most of whom are army conscripts and so in their late teens. Tales were told of how, having just got to the front of the queue you find the booth you were queuing at suddenly closed and that your queue is re-routed to another one and so you are suddenly at the back again, or of the air system being turned on or off at random so that it could be unbearably hot then cold then hot again. The people we talked to said “I suppose we should thank the Israelis for teaching us patience” but I am not sure I am able to be so charitable – To me it smacks of people being given to much power at too young an age – and these are people who are instinctively wary and mistrusting of those that they are dealing with. It’s no wonder that such an awful situation has been the result.

So thanks to Gordon we experienced a little of the daily frustrations that face the people of the West Bank and for that I thank him, as I do for speaking out against the wall and Israeli settlements in the occupied territories - It is my prayer that the 30 million pounds he has pledged to help the Palestinians will be the start of something bigger – something that can bring some measure of resolution to this situation – and do so soon.

Sponsorship opportunities.

2008-07-21T12:48:00.003+01:00

We have become used in Israel to seeing signs all over the place honouring those who have contributed to the setting up of various institutes and sponsoring their buildings…But this one at the Israel museum did take the biscuit…. Do you think that he didn’t like his brother much??

Hot to trot…

2008-07-16T17:58:00.001+01:00

On what was reputed to be the hottest day we will have this week we are of course scheduled to do probably the hottest thing we will do – such is the joy of organised tours!

An early start saw us heading down the side of the Dead Sea until we reached Masada. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of this place the wikipedia entry is good as background. Thankfully there is a cable car as the 60 minute uphill track would have been a killer in temperatures that were already past 30 degrees at 8.30 in the morning. The main structures on Masada were built by Herod as a place for him to flee to should his enemies gain the upper hand. You can see why he chose it as its defensive position is probably one of the best I have ever seen and the views weren’t bad either! Not wanting to spend a time of siege in any form of discomfort Herod build an enormous palace with every available luxury including a state of the art bathhouse, a synagogue, a swimming pool and terraces hanging off the edge of the cliff to make the most of the views and any breezes that there were to be had.

The ruins have been thoroughly excavated and in some places partially reconstructed and so it’s a great place to explore as you can get a real feel for what it must have looked like in its heyday. Herod never needed to use Masada as a refuge in the end but it earned its place in the national consciousness due to events of 70 years later. Thats when a group of Jewish rebels fled there and holed up atop Masada for seven months defying the best efforts of the Roman army to get them out. When the Romans finally did break through they found that all the people on the hill (nearly 1000) had committed suicide rather then be taken into slavery, the idea of death before slavery has been built up into a noble sentiment that’s so imbedded in Jewish culture that all recruits into the Jewish army swear as part of their joining up oath that “Masada shall not fall again!” Well given that the only invasions it seems to have these days are from coach loads of tourists – I think that’s a fairly safe oath to make.

After Masada we had a lunch stop at the side of the Dead Sea and we took the opportunity to go in for a float (it’s not possible to swim due to the buoyancy, floating is the best you can manage!). I must admit it was an incredibly peculiar experience. Firstly because the sea is no longer anywhere near the beach – The sea level has dropped considerably in the last 40 years and so getting in the sea now involves quite a hike down steep and rocky slopes. Secondly because once you get in you realise it’s the most ungainly thing going - you are lying on your back in the water with your feet poking up and then when you want to get out you realise that you can’t actually put your feet down as the salt content is to high you are too buoyant – you are reduced to sculling back to shore and sort of shuffling out on your bum! Still at least I can now say I have floated in the Dead Sea!

From there we went on to Qumran to see where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered – I must admit by then we were all wilting pretty badly and as the scrolls are no longer there it was hard to be that interested. I think we are looking forward to seeing the scrolls on Sunday in the air conditioned comfort of their current home at the Israel museum.

Though a long and tiring day it was really interesting and it was amazing to be exploring the lowest place on earth – I am looking forward to Friday when we are down there again exploring the Negev – thankfully we have a easier day tomorrow to rebuild our strength!

Going underground….

2008-07-15T10:24:00.000+01:00

Monday was a day of tunnels. We started off in the Western Wall tunnel that runs along, funnily enough, the western wall of the temple platform. The main part of the tunnel was dug by archaeologists in the 1980’s to try and get a better understanding of how the temple was built and it is a great way to do this. You really get a sense of how large the base stones of this platform were, the bottom few layers of cut stone are made up of blocks that weighed over 500 metric tonnes – to put this in context the largest stones in the Pyramids weigh around 50 metric tonnes so this temple had some seriously big blocks in it!. Fortunately the quarry was next to the temple site but even so moving these blocks was an incredible engineering feat.

Part of the way long the tunnel we came to an area were there were a great many women praying, apparently this area is the closet that Jewish people can now get to the place that the Holy of Holies would have been on the temple platform. So similarly to the orthodox Christians in the Holy Sepulchral there is a real sense of needing to be as close as possible to where events happened. This sense of “theology of place” is not something that I really feel and so it intrigues me as it’s clearly very important to others. *sigh* yet another topic to add to the ever increasing list of things I want to read about!

When we left the tunnels we spent some time at the Western (wailing) Wall which is a place much changed since I was last here. Then you could just wander into the plaza and saunter around and move from there up to the temple platform and visit the Dome of the Rock. Now the plaza is sealed off and to get to it you need to pass through metal detectors and bag checks. There is no direct access to the temple platform anymore, you need to move to another area to get up and sadly non-Muslims can no longer enter the Dome of the Rock. I feel really sad that such a holy place has needed to be sealed in so much, that fear is rife even here, a place of prayer.

After a move around to the Southern side of the temple mount to look at the excavations there we went down into the Jerusalem of David’s time which was sited in the valley below the temple mount close to the local water source. The amount of archaeological excavation that has been done and is ongoing there is astounding and new knowledge is being, quite literally, uncovered on a regular basis. But the highlight of this afternoon in David’s city had to be the trip through Hezekiah’s tunnel (2 Chron 32:30) . This is an amazing feat of water management dating from 701 BC that diverts a local spring through a 533 meter, hand dug tunnel, that would have led under the city walls and kept the city supplied with water during times of siege. The entrance to the tunnel is down a steep spiral staircase and then it’s a case of roll up the trousers, turn on the torches and plunge in – for the tunnel still carries the spring to this day. It was a little worrying at first as the water quickly reached hip height but thankfully it levelled of at mid calf for the remainder of the journey. It was an amazing walk that seemed to pass in an instant even though the reality is it takes over half an hour. We were wading through clear cold water in tunnels barely wider then we were and not much more then 2 meters high and often lower – When I had to stoop I knew it was getting low! Towards the end we turned off our torches and walked in total darkness till we turned a corner and quite literally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It may not have done much to aid my understanding of Middle Eastern politics or Biblical ecumenism – but boy was it fun!

Mind you so was the shower when I got back – it’s extremely hot here and set to get hotter this week – eeek!

Another brick in the wall…

2008-07-13T15:11:00.004+01:00

Crossing through the “separation barrier” into Bethlehem is a depressing experience. Passport checks, metal detectors and x-ray machines are a daily chore for the Palestinians that cross the barrier each day to work. This inconvenience pails into insignificance though when we face up to the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians cannot get permits to travel thought the wall and so are effectively trapped, unable to visit family, seek medical treatment or work in Israeli territory.

We visited the Holocaust museum at Yad vashem a few days ago, a profound place that has probably the most comprehensive collection of holocaust information in the world. There was a gallery there documenting life in the Warsaw ghetto and how harsh life was for those imprisoned within its walls… Its hard to imagine how a people who have survived such a thing as this can now effectively be perpetrating the same thing on others … for many Israeli’s the barrier its seen as a necessary evil that has brought some measure of peace to their land. That is as may be, but surely there must be some other way?

Images from the barrier wall

The Fifth Gospel…

2008-07-13T14:53:00.000+01:00

No I haven’t gone potty in the heat and decided I have discovered a whole new book of the bible, rather it’s what some people round here call the land of Israel.
We were told this when we first arrived and I must admit I didn’t get it… but I think a week in I may just be starting to…

There is something about being here, being in this place, seeing for yourself the places that are talked of in the bible that brings a whole new perspective to what we read. There is a real sense that we can never read it in the same way again.

An example… on Friday we went down to Jericho and on the way we stopped on the hill leading down to the city at a place called Wadi Quelt. Here, in this dried up river valley, runs the ancient road down to Jericho from Jerusalem. It was here that the Good Samaritan cared for the pilgrim in desperate need whilst everyone else crossed to the other side. When you are there and you see the absolute desolation of the landscape, the total barrenness that stretches for miles around you suddenly realise the utter peril that that pilgrim was in, this is not a landscape to tarry in and anyone injured would not survive long. The other thing you realise is the large effort people would have had to make to avoid the injured man. This is no two lane highway with a convenient pavement on the other side to cross to – this is a narrow track at the bottom of a dried up gully. To “cross over to the other side” would have meant scrambling up a dry and dusty slope and climbing along it for some distance, a difficult and uncomfortable task. This was a very deliberate and telling act. This is what is meant by the “fifth gospel” it is the one that alters how we read the other four.

On another note entirely I was very impressed by the Palestinian authorities facilitation of us all to sin – Thanks to American grant money a cable car has recently been built at the Mount of Temptation… no more must we struggle up the mountain to our temptations, rather we can be whisked there in a matter of minutes in air conditioned comfort and they even sell ice creams at the top – isn’t modern life wonderful!

Jesus Wept…

2008-07-10T19:03:00.000+01:00

Today was a day when we visited some of the sites of Jesus’ grief.

We began the day at Bethany, at the tomb of Lazarus were Jesus wept for his friend. Of course, you guessed it, there is a church that’s been built on the spot! just above the tomb. Ironically the weight of the churches over the years has caused the tomb below to collapse and so the tomb that you can now go in to is shored up with modern stone and there is little of the original left!

From Bethany we went to the Mount of Olives were of course Jesus wept for Jerusalem. You get really great views over the city from here and from this angle particularly you can really appreciate just how vast the temple complex would have been. For travellers who approached the city they would have crested the hill to see the city laid out before them dominated by this vast temple complex at the centre of which was the Holy of Holies. This was totally sheaved in Gold leaf, shinning so brightly that trying to look at it was like trying to look at the sun. It must have been totally awe inspiring!

We walked down the mount following the road that Jesus would have taken. It was pretty steep in places and I was grateful for the tarmaced surface and stout walking sandals. It was very moving to be walking down the route that Jesus himself used. Though of course it would have been rocky then and he was on the back of an untrained colt – literally trusting his life to the sure footedness of that animal. At the bottom of the hill we entered the Garden of Gethsemane a place where again he trusted his life another. I had such a sense this afternoon of how perilous his life was and yet how much he trusted – it was a humbling.

The garden was lovely – the olive trees were about 1000 years old and there was a real sense of history and antiquity there. Sadly you can’t go into the garden – how wonderful would it be to sit in peace under one of these trees but you could sit around the edge in the shade which was a lovely place to reflect.

Next stop was the pools at Bethesda. For some reason I had always imagined that these were fairly small, sort of like a large garden pond – don’t ask me why! But in reality these pools were vast. There were two main pools which served as resevoirs for the temple, each incredibly deep and wide. The current church on the site is a lovely simple church with the most amazing echoes. We sang “Amazing Grace” in the church and it sounded wonderful – apart from the verse where we all mumbled because we couldn’t remember the words! Its funny how natural doing such things seems, normally I would be embarrassed by doing such things in public but here, in the Holy Land, these things seem somehow very normal!

From Bethany we went to the Garden Tomb – the second site that claims to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. The guide we had was well versed and was incredibly passionate about the garden and it clearly meant a great deal to him that this was the place. In many ways I wanted this to be the place as this fitted my stereotype of what I thought the tomb should be, a peaceful place, a hill, a garden an empty and un-adorned chamber that has been left in its natural state. Was this the place? It doesn’t have the following that the Holy Sepulchral has that’s for sure and its “pedigree” is much more recent but does this mean its not? and does it matter anyway? Whether this was the tomb or not it certainly gave us a better idea of how the place that Jesus died would have looked, something that isn’t possible at the Holy Sepulchral church.

So we have four contenders for the shepherds fields and two for Golgotha, thank goodness there is definitely only one Sea of Galilee!

It’s Wednesday so it must be…

2008-07-10T04:56:00.000+01:00

Its only day 3 and I am already behind myself… The program is so packed with visits and lectures that finding time to think and reflect is at the moment hard to come by.. so I was intending to combine day 2 and 3 into one post but it was getting way to long so I shall have to get back to day 3 later,,,

Day 2 saw us head into Bethlehem. This of course required us to pass through “the wall” – the 8 meter (24 feet) high security barrier that separates the Israeli and Palestinian territories. This was in itself a profound experience, and one I want to blog about at a later date when I have had a chance to re-visit it both in terms of thinking about it more and physically going back through it.

Our first stop of the day was Bethlehem Bible College were we had a chance to look around and to talk with some of the people that run it. This was a fantastic opportunity to get a real insight in to what life is like for the Palestinian Christians who live in the West Bank. The Christian population, once 70% of those living in Bethlehem is now only 30% and forms only 2% of the population of the Palestinian territories as a whole. The college aims to support those who continue to live in the territory through education, the provision of public services such as a library and through job creation schemes to try and help people who want to stay in the territories but have no way of earning a living. It’s an amazing place, full of committed people and full of hope. We were fortunate to have the chance to talk to some of the people that work there and to hear a Palestinian perspective on what is happening in Israel. Again this needs to be a separate post, as I want to wait until we have had a chance to hear all sides of the story as we will later in our stay have a chance to speak with Jewish and Muslim people.

From the college we went to the shepherd’s fields, or should I say one of the shepherd’s fields – for there are at least four claimants to that particular title, each promoted by a different religion and each, of course, with a church attached! We went to the Greek orthodox one and jolly nice it was to, though singing “while shepherds watched…” on a boiling hot July day was somewhat surreal, even if we were supposedly standing on the spot that the events described took place!

The tour proceeded ever onwards at a pace and we were duly dispatched to manger square and the Church of the Nativity. Again a nice old church and it was good to see that the tiny door that you have to enter by really does exist and is not just a preachers construct to make a point in a sermon!… but I was struck by the same problem I had at the Holy Sepulchral church that the elaborate ritualisation of these sights leaves me spiritually cold. They are interesting and I am really glad that I have a chance to see them, but I feel like a tourist, not a pilgrim when I visit them and that makes me sad…I am at the (supposed) birthplace of Christ – should I not feel something?!?

Day 3 was a little better on this score, perhaps because it involved some of the smaller pilgrimage sites and it was easier to reflect in the simpler, quieter places? But that’s a tale for another post….

It’s another sign I tell you…

2008-07-10T04:53:00.001+01:00

Apologies for yet another sign but I saw this on the portico of the Gethsemane church and couldn’t resist bloging it… Fill in your own jokes about Gafcons recent “pilgrimage” in Jerusalem, the Lambeth conference or any church you know…

Its a sign I tell you.....

2008-07-08T17:56:00.001+01:00

Do you think the wise men had trouble getting their camels up there??

Israel – first days

2008-07-08T07:03:00.000+01:00

Being back in the Holy Land is in many ways familiar, walking through the Jaffa Gate into the old city on the first morning was instantly recognisable from my trip here in 1998. At the same time it’s very different. In 1998 I was here on a Guide and Scout conference, my focus was secular and when we visited the old city it was as tourists. Now we are here as a pilgrims. Our days start and end with prayer, we read the scriptures at various points and 10 years and half a theology degree later I look at things through different eyes.

That said I am wary here of thinking that I have any clearer picture now then I did then. In our first lecture – where we were introduced to some of the cultural and political issues you come across in this land – it was rightly said that the longer that you are here the less you know, and I am conscious of that fact especially as I will be blogging as I go along. So I start my musings with a health warning (or should that be a reality check?) that what I say at the beginning may differ from what I say at the end – but then I suppose that that is what this trip is all about :o)

So the first morning we went to the old city and among other things we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is a real eye opener and is a great introduction to the myriad differences that exist within the Christian community. It’s a great sadness that, at this most holy of sites, the church that is believed to encompass the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and his tomb, division is one of the things that hit me first. We came into the church through the back way, over a low roof where the Ethiopian Orthodox monks live, having been kicked out of the main church several centuries ago, in a disagreement that is somehow is still relevant and ongoing many generations later… then into the body of the church where each of the five Christian groups that are guardians of the church have their own areas and chapels, that they guard jealously. Worst of all though is that the keys of the church are in the guardianship of two Muslim families, because the various Christian factions cannot be trusted to deal with access fairly…. whatever the rights or wrongs of this situation, the witness it is to those looking in is anything but positive about the Christian faith.

Inside the church are several holy sites – The hill of Calvary, with the hole in ground into which Jesus’ cross was placed, the slab on which his body was anointed and of course the tomb in which he was laid.

To be honest these sites don’t do a great deal for me, I struggle to find any sense of Jesus through the vast ornateness of these monuments. I think that a lot of this is tied up with my Anglican and British sensibilities that looks for God in silence and simplicity, that can’t quite get away from the fact of questioning how do they know that was the actual hole where the cross was? or Indeed that this was even the hill of Golgotha? What you can see however is how much these sites do mean to other pilgrims there, especially those from the orthodox Christian communities. Everywhere around the church you see people reverently touching the artefacts, rubbing photos on them (to bless those who couldn’t make the trip perhaps?) and in the tomb of the Christ emotions run especially high. Kneeling before the stone slab said to be where Jesus body lay many people weep and in some cases sobbed in an almost hysterical manner, there was a real sense that, to be there, to be able to physically experience these places was the pinnacle of their lives. It was both humbling and moving to be among these pilgrims but also to some extent sad, sad because somewhere along the way in the western church we have lost the sense of the physical in worship. This is particularly so in the protestant churches and I think, based on what I witnessed, we are in some way lesser for it.

So something for me to ponder, the first of many things no doubt! It remains to be seen what effect they may have on me and my thinking over the coming weeks and months…

Useful phrases..

2008-07-06T19:11:00.000+01:00

Having arrived safely in

Israel

, I thought it would be a good idea to try and learn a little of the local language. What I love about phrase books is the seemingly completely random phrases that they think are top priority. Witness the phrases that Lonely planet think are the most likely to be needed on a trip to

Israel

…

Joseph eats falafel, Joseph’s fat.
The cappuccino is for David.
Are koalas from Australia?
Ilana studied Chinese in Paris.
The student is as stupid as a wall.
Don’t drink all the vodka!
The opera singer that sang all night is my friend.
I don’t mind watching, but I’d prefer not to participate.

Somehow I think I may be sticking to English…

On an entirely separate note Blogger is to clever for its own good. Sensing that I was in Israel it decided to very helpfully give me all the log in information in Hebrew… case of guess which button you press to log in!

It’s amazing who you run into…

2008-05-28T19:50:00.001+01:00

When sitting out on your steps!

It’s been quite a year for meeting people, first breakfast with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and now a conversation with HRH!

We had been told that he would walk around the college court and then go into tea with a few selected staff and students and so we were sitting out fully expecting to just catch a glimpse of the prince as he walked past. When he actually stopped to talk to us it took us totally by surprise but he was quick to put us at ease and was really nice, he even apologised for intruding on revision time and said we could blame him if we didn’t get good marks!

I know that the Royal family often get bad press but I have nothing but admiration for the Prince after seeing him at work. We were his fourth visit of the day and yet he was still full of enthusiasm and took time talking with people, especially the children. I think even the more cynical college members were won over!

So I wonder who will I meet next?

Worrying developments…

2008-05-24T10:44:00.002+01:00

… I think I am turning into a vestment-a-holic.

I entirely blame my attachment church who have a robe cupboard that is every little girls dressing up fantasy with vestments in every shade from deep green to rose pink and enough fringing, tassels and delicately embroidered silk brocade to sink a whole fleet of battleships. When you witness that week on week I think it starts to effect your perception of what is normal. It started off innocently enough, I bought a second hand clerical cloak last term, an absolute bargain as it had had only one careful lady owner and was less then half price. I consoled myself with the fact that I was merely being practical, thinking ahead to the time I will be performing internments in cold, wet churchyards and besides it would also be useful should anyone need to go to a fancy dress party as Count Dracula!

However this week I found myself racing to the reception after an email came out saying that the college had been given a set of stoles by the family of a recently deceased cleric and they were available to students on a first come, first served basis. I managed to acquire this ….

… which is just wonderful. I think it was made in the late 1930’s or early forties and the quality of the embroidery is exquisite and its all hand stitched. I tend to be very romantic about history and so I love the fact that its slightly scuffed and faded – it just adds to the sense that it has a great story to it….

However given that a few years ago I didn’t even think that the wearing of clerical collars was a good thing I am getting worried about my increasing love of clerical bling. I can but hope that should I ever attempt to buy a berretta some kind friends will stage an intervention and bring me back into the evangelical light!

It seems like my "avoidance of essay" tactics have been found out....

2008-05-20T19:24:00.005+01:00

I was wiling away some time using stumbleUpon on Firefox and this came up... ooops
Better get back to the grind I suppose still another 7000 words needed by next Tuesday :o(

New definition of stupid…

2008-04-30T15:32:00.000+01:00

…is, I have decided, a whole bunch of Ordinands, people who normally slouch around in jeans and trainers dressing up in suits and standing on wooden benches in the pouring rain trying to look happy for the camera so that in years to come we can look at the college photo and think “what possessed me to wear that jacket/tie/shoes (delete as appropriate)!”

However, I do take great comfort in the fact that we would have to get a whole lot stupider still to give Miss South Carolina, a run for her money…

Rogation – The craze that’s sweeping the nation…..

2008-04-28T23:36:00.002+01:00

….. or so I was assured by friends last year, but I have to say I had seen little evidence that it had until… . yesterday when I discovered that there are pockets of the Anglican Church that still go all in for all the fun of Rogation Sunday and my attachment church is one of them.

So after the briefest of pit stops for coffee after the morning service the massed ranks of the church – i.e. those who hadn’t managed to make a quick getaway on some flimsy pretext set out to beat the bounds.

I wish I could have taken some photos but alas I think that would have been deemed out of keeping with the seriousness of the occasion so you will have to imagine…

The procession was headed up by the verger with her staff of office (very handy for stopping traffic as we crossed roads!), academic gown and wonderfully lacy white gloves, followed by the aspersory bearer who was the chap in cassock and cotta swinging the thurifer full of incense round for all he was worth. He was followed by two taperers carrying the processional candles, then of course the cross then the church banner complete with wonderfully kitch Madonna and child sewn on it and its two attendants. All these people of course also in cassocks and cottas. Next came the choir in their choir cassocks and the cantor who had the most splendid gold cope on. Following was the master of ceremonies (though he spent a great deal of the time not in place but running up and down the procession making sure everything was going to plan (not an easy thing to do in a cassock and full length lacey cotta I can tell you, I though we were going to have a disaster at one point when in his hurry he slipped in the mud but he thankfully managed to stay on his feet – just!)

Are you still with me? – right well we now have the church wardens, also in academic gowns and carrying their staffs of office and then the vicar in quite the most magnificent get up of cassock, very lacy cotta, gold stole, gold heavily embroidered cape and his berretta with a red pom-pom on top. He was attended by two cope bearers whose job it was to hold up his cape to stop it dragging in the mud. He was followed by the Assistant priest and deacon also in gold and then the rear was taken by the congregation.

I can, hand on heart, say I have never seen anything quite like it in my whole life and judging by the shocked expressions on the faces of the people we passed, neither had they!

We walked round the whole parish boundary in this way stopping to pray for various things on the way. There was a worrying moment when we got the fields at the far end of the parish where we were due to bless the beasts only to find that the cows hadn’t been put out to pasture yet. I was wondering whether we were going to have to bless the nearby ducks in abstentia of the cows but thankfully a cow was spotted at the back of the next field and so all was well even though it did test the arm strength of the vicar trying to sprinkle the holy water that far…

The bounds were dully beaten towards the end when the building marking the boundary with our neighbouring parish was ceremonially struck with the churchwardens staffs and then all done for another year we retired to the church hall for a well earned cup of tea (and fantastic chocolate brownies…)

So will rogation sweep the nation? Sadly I doubt it – but I think I shall try and bring some bound beating to my churches in the future as it was wonderful to be out and about praying for the parish in this way – though I may well leave the gold cope at home, I wouldn’t want to overdo it after all…

Scrabulous…

2008-04-24T14:01:00.001+01:00

I love playing scrabulous, I really do but its hard not to get disheartened when you end up more then 100 points behind anyone else in the game :o(
But honestly who knows words such as otoliths, venae and didies?

I really need to make myself some less educated friends…

Walking with God in today's world...

2008-03-09T20:06:00.003Z

...is the title of the sermon series we have been running at the evening services during Lent. It basically a fancy title for various people to give their testimonies about how God is working in their lives. Tonight was my turn….

“Seeking to walk with God in today’s world”.
Matthew 20:17-34
Evensong Sunday 9^th March 2008

My mother always said I was destined to be a Librarian. I tried very hard not to be, I wanted to do something much more exciting then that! As a major league film fanatic I wanted to emulate the lives I saw on screen, but lacking the space flight needed to be Luke Skywalker or indeed the “license to kill” needed to be James Bond I instead settled on another great hero of mine and duly went to university to study Archaeology fully convinced that I was going to be the next Indiana Jones. Destiny is not something to be thwarted though it seems. My path was set early when I was elected the class librarian at the age of seven and I spent many happy hours re-arranging all the books into a classification scheme I had devised. By the sixth form I was 10 years into the job and had free reign of the schools book budget to order all the new stock and probably spent more time in the library then I did in my classroom. At university I spent weekends and evenings shelving and filing, classifying and labelling the diverse collections of the university library. There really was no question that this would be my career path It was only I that refused to see it!

I did give in, in the end of course and had 15 wonderful years working in a variety of libraries before I had to leave it behind to come to train in Cambridge.

I tell you this story, not as an advert for the joys of a career in librarianship, though it is great and I do heartily recommend it to any of you considering your career path! but rather because when I think of title of this series I came to the conclusion that my journey with God has been conducted in rather the same way as my journey to my initial career. For me I was less about “seeking to walk with God” rather I was usually to be found running as swiftly as possible in the opposite direction to him, determinedly set on a path of my own choosing, ignoring the rather obvious signs on the way, rather then walking at God’s side where I belonged.

The passage from Matthew we had read to us tonight tells us of Jesus and his disciples walking to Jerusalem – walking towards their destinies, walking towards the horror of Jesus’ passion. Jesus is clearer with his disciples then he has ever been. Time is short and he needs them to understand what it is that is going to happen. Nothing is more important on this journey surely then Jesus getting his point across? Well apparently it is, for he is diverted by the mother of two of his disciples who’s only concerned seems to be that her sons future is secure and settled.

Jesus’ question to this woman and his subsequent reply had real resonance for me as I reflected on my walk with God.
What do you want? To which his reply was - You don’t know what you are asking?
so true isn’t it – so often we go to God with a list of things we want, things that we are convinced are just what we need for everything to be just great – but the reality so often is that we “don’t know what we are asking for.”

I turn 39 next month – I first heard God call me to ordination when I was 26. I wasn’t joking when I said I ran in the opposite direction! Being a vicar was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I had just finished my library training and had an interesting and well paid new post. I had just got my foot on the property ladder and was engrossed in DIY projects transforming my small flat into the home of my dreams. I was settled at church and amongst family and friends I had no intention of disturbing that, thank you very much! I knew exactly where my life was going and managed, most of the time, to convince myself that this was the path that I was supposed to be on, really it was. I was focused and driven, the childhood dreams of being Indiana Jones being replaced by a desire to one day run a library of my own, preferably something nice and prestigious like the British Library or the Bodleian,

The problem was, there was, as the years past this persistent little nagging sense that I wasn’t on the right road, that this was not the journey I should be taking.

And so we have Jesus’ second walk of tonight’s bible passage. The walk from Jericho. The one where the noisy hecklers on the sidelines could not be quieted by the orders of the crowd. Over the years I tried every trick I could think of to get rid of the nagging sense I carried. I thought that if I got more involved in church God would be satisfied and I could keep my life as well as serving him. I joined the PCC, started to help with the youth group, helped out with small group studies and eventually started even to lead services and preach, trained as a Reader, I was putting in anything up to 20 hours a week at the church on top of a full time job ….and yet the nagging just shouted louder.

It came to a head in the summer of 2006 – I was approaching sheer exhaustion. I was so determined to walk the path that I believed was right for me, had put in so much effort to make it work I just couldn’t understand why God still seemed to want more – How could I give more – I had nothing left to give.

It was at this point that I found myself, through a curious set of circumstances, walking a prayer labyrinth. You may have come across such things before but for those of you that haven’t it’s an ancient way of Christian meditation that invites you to take a walk with God physically and prayerfully by following a complex set of intertwining pathways marked on the floor. During this walk for the first time in a long time I found myself rather then going to God with a list of all the things I needed him to do for me, that I was opening myself up to God to ask him “what do I need to do for you.”

The answer came so clear, he didn’t want more, he just wanted different – I was taken back to the day I accepted God as my saviour, I was put back in the chair I was sitting in then, I could feel and smell and hear that day so clearly – but now I could hear the additional commentary – “you gave me your life that day” – “Its mine now and I want it.”

I wish I could say I was gracious with my acquiescence. I wasn’t. I argued with God for nigh on 2 hours trying to counter each request with a perfectly good reason why not. But he persisted “you gave me your life” but….. “you gave me your life” It is mine, I want it.

In the end there were no more buts to be found. Exhausted I knew that from then on I needed to walk this different path, a new path that was mine alone but a path not decided by me.

The journey to being accepted to ordination is a strange one, not least because you, as the candidate, have virtually no say in the decisions being made. A long line of diocesan ordination directors, bishops, selectors and college admission officers are the ones that decide the course of your future. By the processes end I has this piece of A4 paper with a yes on it – a yes that would change my life forever and yet the reality was that my life had changed forever the year before – It changed when I finally allowed God to guide the route, to choose the path.

Just as the two beggar’s on the Jericho road had been I had been touched by Jesus, my sight was regained and I followed him.

I don’t know how well you know the Indiana Jones films but for those of you that do there is the famous scene in the film the “last Crusade” where the path that Indiana Jones is on leads him to the edge of a deep cavern. There is no way across and yet the map he has shows he is to step out. After much hesitation he does so only to realise that there is a bridge there painted in such a way as to be invisible until you are standing on it.

So in a bizarre way I did get to be Indiana Jones because each day now feels like that scene from the film. Each day I step out on the walk knowing that I am not sure where it is going to take me, but trusting that the path will continue underfoot.

It took me a long time, and wanderings up several cul-de-sacs for me to get onto this path but now that I am finally on it I know that it is the right journey for me, for no matter how hard it gets I know that God walks along it with me, and there can be no greater contentment then that.

Never let your pets stay with friends....

2008-03-06T20:44:00.004Z

.... they will only embarrass you!

All I can say is its a good thing P wasn't in a hurry to get any work done that afternoon.

O Happy day?

2008-03-03T13:48:00.002Z

It was announced at 11am this morning that Chris Cocksworth, principle of Ridley Hall has been appointed Bishop of Coventry. While its fair to say that all at Ridley were sure that Chris would one day be made a bishop we were all probably secretly hoping it would not be whilst we where students here.

It’s a great day for the Church and of course for Coventry, Chris is a man of amazing gifts as a theologian but also as a man of great pastoral sensitivity. The fact that he has been appointed directly to be a diocesan bishop, the youngest that will currently be serving, shows that the church has recognised these gifts as well. But for us at Ridley this it is a day touched with sadness as it’s a great loss to the college. It’s hard to imagine coming back next year and him not being here. Still we can take heart from those that have been through this before. When the previous principle left to be a bishop there were similar feelings said to be expressed then of him being irreplaceable and yet God was gracious and brought a principle that has also been a blessing to the college as his successors were. I have every confidence that God shall do the same again.

So please pray for Chris and his family as they prepare to take up their new post and pray for the college as they begin the search for a new principle.

(Please also pray that we are gracious and not stick our tongues out at those ordinands from Coventry Diocese who are jumping up and down with glee at the appointment!)

Just noticed that my friend Jeremy has also posted on this but has the addition of a rather fine photograph. Somehow I don't think this will make the offical press releases!

Hero worship

2008-03-01T22:21:00.000Z

It’s been an odd few weeks as I have had the chance to meet three of my heroes. The first was the week before last when I had breakfast with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Ok, so there were 249 other people there but it was nevertheless a special time. The Archbishops were kind enough to make time in the busy 3 day schedule of meetings here in Cambridge to come and talk to the federation students and though there was some grumbling at having to be there for 7.30 it was well worth the early start. After breakfast and Morning Prayer each of the Archbishops gave a short address and then they fielded questions from the floor for over an hour. Several things struck me, one the genuine friendship and mutual concern the archbishops had for each other. It was wonderful to see this and realising how important that must be, especially in the difficult times that the Rowan has had of late. Secondly was how enormously intelligent they are. They fielded a huge range of questions with wit, grace and massive dollop of wisdom. They gave amazing answers off the cuff that most of us would have struggled to give even with many hours of research. As those that know me well, know I am a huge fan of the “West Wing” TV series. One of the reasons is that I love the idea that America could be led by a man of the intelligence and integrity of President Bartlett. Well I realised that in the Archbishops the church has just such men. It did make me consider again though why is it that we have a national obsession with pulling people off the pedestals we put them on? We build people up and then having done so spend the rest of the time trying to find things to criticise….

The thing that struck me most however was the amazing humility they have. These are men who have ever reason to feel important and yet they struck me as so down to earth. There is such a sense of how important it is to them to be rooted in prayer and the word of God and to remember for whom they are doing this. As Rowan himself said in answer to the question of how he had managed to survive such sever criticism, “by remembering who it is I am ultimately accountable and that’s God and not the editor of the Daily Mail.”

The second hero I met was Sister Francis Dominica who founded Helen House the worlds first children’s hospice. I had heard her speak at Greenbelt and read some of her work and think she is the most amazing woman. I was thus very excited when I heard she was coming to preach at the church I am attached to. She spoke so wonderfully and movingly of her work that, as at Greenbelt, I found myself laughing through a veil of tears. I was fortunate to find myself sitting next to her at the lunch that followed and like the Archbishops there was an amazing humility about her. She was so generous with her time and graciously answered the many questions we all had. She was a fantastic source of anecdotes and kept us all amused with stories of the great and the good that she has met in the course of her work. There was such genuineness about her that when, at the end of lunch, she was saying to people “I hope we meet again” you knew she really meant it. Truly one of Gods angels…

Did the earth move for you last night?

2008-02-27T16:44:00.000Z

...well it did for me, which is not something I thought I would find myself saying whilst at theological college! The earthquake in Lincolnshire was certainly felt by some of us at college, though others slept through completely unmoved (literally and figuratively) and our American student, who grew up on the west coast, couldn’t understand why we were fussing about a tremor that “was only a 5.2”!

The initial noise woke me and then there was several seconds that felt like someone was standing at the end of the bed shaking the headboard. This felt so real that in my still half asleep state I thought the noise was someone coming through the window and who was now about to attack me. There was several terrifying seconds passed before I had the courage to turn on the light and be reassured that the room was empty and it quite some time before I felt calm enough to go back to sleep. Needless to say I was somewhat sleepy at morning prayer – not helped by the fact that we are in the first week of BCP – a termly ritual observed by college for the last 3 weeks of each term – Yeah, verily we rejoice!

Do you think anyone would notice...

2008-02-21T17:16:00.002Z

... that we are an evangelical college?

property update...

2008-02-16T18:25:00.001Z

My flat is back on the rental market due to the imminent departure of its current tenants. I certainly can’t fault the estate agents enthusiasm having got 3 viewings in that self same afternoon…. but I have to say that the feedback from viewers is at its usual level of strangeness….. There were the couple who apparently have allergies and so “don’t do carpet”, would they mind if they ripped out my recently installed pure wool carpets and put down some laminate instead – ehhh lets see on that one… that would be a definite YES I DO MIND! and my personal favourite was when the estate agent said a man had come to view and said there were too many walls, the temptation to suggest he rent a tent was hard to resist...

Still its only day one there’s lots of scope for weeks of silly comments to come, I will keep you posted!

brain ache

2008-02-12T23:13:00.000Z

If you like brain teasers and jigsaw puzzles try this

It is possible as I have just done it but it took me well over an hour of deep concentration!

And yes I am well aware it was a major procrastination... but hey my next essay is not due till mid April - sadly this is then followed by 1 for the 12th May and then 4 for the 27th May - eeeekkk

Tat anyone?

2008-02-12T10:39:00.000Z

The lecture hall is full of cassocks!

Not in the scheme of things a revelatory statement I know but today’s “tat fair” (I think the name gives some indication of the general view of clerical wear around here :o) is for many of the final year ordinands the place where the reality of what they are training for becomes all too real. Last terms talk of curacies and what kind of house is being offered has given way to stole brochures and the perplexing question of what colour lining to have in your cassock.

Though the few high church folk here are in hog heaven (one very excited that they have just found a Biretta!) for many the sight of so many clerical vestments in one place is likely to induce a panic attack. Even the most ardent supporter of clergy not wearing robes, or indeed clerical collars has to face up to the fact that for their ordination, if never again, they will need the gear.

This of course leads to that important question – why exactly do we dress up each week in a style of clothing that hasn’t been in use outside religious circles for 600 years? I have over the years come round to the idea that clerical collars may not be an altogether bad thing. They are, even in our increasingly secular society, a great calling card, singling you out as a safe person to talk to. There are amazing stories of priests who have been approached by the most unlikely people, in the most unlikely places to talk about God. The vestments however I remain to be convinced about. It’s not to say I don’t love the amazing vestments used each week at my attachment church. They have a robe closet so full of ecclesiastical bling I think ever Liberace would have been jealous and in this ancient church, with its traditional liturgy and a sense of things not having changed in the last 500 years it does work. However, in your regular parish church, striving to be relevant to the local population, wondering where all the real men have gone I am not convinced that a bloke dressed in a frock and looking like a penguin in search of a home is helpful…

I suppose it speaks volumes of my low theology that I think that it’s preferable for those leading services to be part of the congregation both in churchmanship and dress. To lead the people, surely you need to be seen to be part of the people?
However, as those going to the tat fair are finding out there is no escaping the fact that vestments are here to stay….

So a cassock it is then – not exactly the LBJ* of choice – but such is life…

*little black dress

Simple but effective...

2008-02-06T19:30:00.000Z

This is so simple and yet at the same time so off the wall. I love it!

New Christmas readings?

2008-01-28T10:24:00.000Z

Christmas with its same old readings can sometimes seem a bit of a slog for those of us that have been doing this church “thing” for a while. In an effort to bring a new perspective on things can I suggest that we add in Isaiah 61:11a from the ESV translation?

For those of you not familiar with this translation you can find it here

Now all we have to do is find readings for the rest of Christmas dinner – any thoughts?

treading carefully...

2008-01-20T18:18:00.001Z

As someone who can't even manage to run on a treadmill without nearly falling off several times I stand in awe of these four!

The building blocks of life?

2008-01-01T14:45:00.000Z

Clearly a priest with too much time on his hands – for lo – he has illustrated all the bible stories with Lego!

You have got to check it out, it’s a phenomenal piece of work (but beware some of the illustrations of Leviticus are very graphic – though highly amusing!!)

Homecomings…

2007-12-28T17:13:00.000Z

Coming back to London and my sending church after a term away was a strange experience.

On the one hand everything is very familiar and I all too easily fall back into the old familiar routine and found myself filling in as sidesman, selling cookery books and generally being treated as one of the locals…. And yet there is also the sense that I am not really part of it any more, there are unfamiliar strands of conversations continued on from the weeks that I wasn’t there, new faces in the back row and the surreal experience of visiting the houses of friends and seeing my ex-possessions in new places…

But for all the surealness it was good to go back – to find some sense of the comfortable past among the myriad of the new… and not least to see my gorgeous Julia and know that she has really settled in her new home – a heaven on earth where she can sit above a warm radiator and stare out of the window at the same time – life is so full of simple pleasures when you are a cat….

Topsy Turvey Advent…

2007-12-13T18:07:00.000Z

Apologies folks for the interruption in your blogging service from up here is chilly Cambridge. I had some serious procrastination to do which was rather time consuming :o)

The good news is that 1 essay is now handed in, I am well on my way with research for the second and I am trying to ignore the third for the moment as it’s really hard! Given that the hand in deadline is still 3.5 weeks away I don’t think, given my Phd level procrastination skills, that’s too bad?! And at least as part of the procrastination I have completed all my Christmas shopping which is a record for me so early in the season…

The last few weeks have been rather liturgically strange. As college terms finish so early we began our Christmas celebrations prior to advent Sunday with a mulled wine and carol singing evening. … I tried not to squirm in church on the advent Sunday following when the preacher was quite firm in his conviction that there should be nothing Christmas in Advent, though I have to say I thought the stern words about simplicity and the church being stripped of its decorations until Christmas eve were somewhat diluted by being given by someone dressed in the most sumptuous purple advent robes I have ever seen!

Things got even more muddled on the following Thursday when we had our last college worship of the term which included both Christmas carols and advent antiphons as well as the gospel choir and a robed church choir performing very different styles of music at various times. This was followed by the lavish Christmas banquet, in the magnificently decorated dining hall (complete with 7 foot glowing santa!)

So I have decided there is nothing for it but to say to heck with the liturgical year and declare Christmas well and truly started – Merry Christmas everyone!

Narrative Preaching...

2007-11-28T14:58:00.000Z

We have been looking at how to preach in one of my classes and this week we looked at how to preach a narrative sermon. Though these are not something you can do all the time, occasionally turning the message into a story can be a really effective way of getting the message across, especially at Christmas and Easter when you may well be treading a well worn path of readings that everyone has heard many times before. I have never done a sermon in this way before as quite frankly there were some absolute masters of this form of preaching in my sending church and I would never have dared to put myself within range of comparison. With this in mind I rather panicked when we were sent away with a bible passage and 20 minutes to put together a sermon. But you know, it was rather fun and my fellow classmates came back with some absolutely stunning work. Mine was less so but nevertheless for a first attempt I was quite pleased. You can judge for yourself below….

Matthew 28:1-10

I go down to the graveyard ever week. I wish I could go more often but there is just no time. I seem to be endlessly busy trying to make ends meet these days. It’s been 9 months since my Joseph died – 9 months I can’t believe it’s been so long. It still feels like it happened just yesterday,

It was different going there today, well for a start there were the guards. Guards, I ask you! Did they think anyone was going to escape from there? “We’re guarding the tomb of Jesus” they said, “There are rumours people are going to steal the body” they said. They were all set on keeping me out but there was no way that was going to happen! That preacher Jesus had already prevented me from coming to see Joseph last week, I couldn’t get through the city the crowds were so big. Well he was not stopping me again, I just pushed my way through, the guards didn’t stop me.

I had been there awhile , just chatting away as you do. Not talking about anything in particular. Joseph always used to say I rabbited on to much, he would laugh that I still am doing it…still he has an excuse not to listen now.

Anyway I had been there awhile when I became aware of a group of women who had come in. It was hard not to be aware to be honest, they were wailing and sobbing so much, holding each other up as if they would collapse any minute. They must have lost someone very recently. I know that kind of grief, so raw its as if you can’t breath, so fresh that the world has ceased to make sense.

Well I was watching them, remembering what that was like, re-living a little the days after we buried Joseph and then – you will never believe it, there was this massive earthquake, here in Jerusalem! The ground was shaking every which way I though the tombs themselves where going to collapse and yet in the middle of this came a man, calm as anything, and rolled the stone away from in front of a tomb. I say a man but I am not sure. I couldn’t look at him properly because he was so bright, the light poured out of him. I know it sounds stupid but its what happened. The guards where terrified I can tell you. They think they are such big men but they were crying out for their mums I can tell you!

The women though, they had stopped wailing and were standing there enraptured, the man was talking to them. I strained to hear, I thought I had misheard. Jesus wasn’t dead, he was alive. How could that be! I had seen him die, most of Jerusalem had seen him die, his body beaten and bloodied taken away. No one could have survived that, could they?

The women ran off so quick as the message ended, they dropped the herbs and bundles they had been carrying. As they ran though they stopped short for there on the path ahead of them stood a man, a man who greeted them. It couldn’t be, could it? That voice, that face, it can’t be! I saw him die!

The women knew though, they fell at his feet, clutching at him. They knew… I then I knew. “Don’t be afraid” he said and you know something I wasn’t. For the first time in 9 months I was without fear. Jesus wasn’t the only one to come to new life that day. I realised truly for the first time that death is not the end, just a point on the continuing journey.

I had new life that day – do you?

quirky...

2007-11-22T23:41:00.000Z

I was browsing photo sites on the web and came across this photo...

Something about it really appealed to me. I think it’s the sheer quirkiness of it, it looks so innocuous and yet when you really look at it and read it its bizarrely strange.
Also in the bizarrely strange category I also came across a wonderful series of photographs at by Julia Fullerton-Batten here

She has created some startling images by placing young models against a backdrop of miniature villages. The oddness of relationship between the people and the buildings is really accentuated when the relative sizes are reversed. I think its definitely worth a look.

Me church...

2007-11-16T17:08:00.000Z

In today’s consumer based society is this reality far away??

best blog?

2007-11-15T10:28:00.000Z

Its official I have found the bestest blog in the entire world here at to-do list blog.com. Yes its an entire blog about to-do lists, and there has even been a companion book published :o)

Now anyone that knows me knows I love to-do lists and usually have several on the go at once. Currently I have 3 (well 4 if you count my Christmas present list, to which the to-do list book has just been added!) My general things that need doing list , my things that need doing pretty soon list and the scrap of paper that constitutes the mega urgent, must get done today list… which does not of course have blogging about to-do lists on it – ho hum.

But seriously have a look at the blog its great (but remember to add it to your to-do list first!)

Global Poverty Prayer Week

2007-11-14T09:02:00.000Z

As part of Morning Prayer this morning we were shown Tear Fund's prayer film which they have made to highlight Global poverty prayer week. It can be seen on their website here.

I found it really moving, thought provoking and was a good reminder that when we feel hopeless in the face of so much global need we always have the power of prayer. It ended with that wonderful quote from St Augustine…

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

Amen!

Identity

2007-11-13T00:06:00.000Z

On Mondays and Fridays we have Morning Prayer in staircase fellowship groups rather then as a whole college in chapel. Monday’s prayers were led by K from our staircase who, through the use of music and reflection, enabled us to spend time thinking about who we are and how much of that identity is found in Christ. As part of the reflections we were each asked to bring an object that represents us and to say a little about why they had brought it and why it was important to their identity. After much debating I decided to take my cross necklace and being a good Anglican I had three reasons why!

1) It was given to me by my paternal grandfather at my confirmation and my name and the date are engraved on the back. My family is really important to me, both my current family but also the many generations before me. Up until a few generations ago my paternal family had all lived in the same village for hundreds of years. I have been thinking for a while about the importance there is in being known, really known, by other people and the value that we can gain from that. My family’s longevity in the village would have given them such a strong sense of who they were and where they belonged in a way that’s almost unimaginable in the modern world where we all move so much… and yet as Christians I think that we can have that sense as well. My cross reminds me that I am known by God more deeply and truly then I even know myself and that he calls me by name, the name that is engraved on his cross just as it is on mine….

2) That its worthless but means so much to me… My cross was probably bought for a tenner back in 1981 and is probably not even worth that now, but its one of my most precious possessions. This is a constant reminder to me that even though I am worth little in the global scheme of things I am incredibly and infinitely precious to God. It helps me to always remember that no matter what lack of value we place on ourselves or the world places on us we are loved by God as if we were the only one to be loved.

3) It’s incredibly fragile looking but is surprisingly strong. For many years I was reluctant to wear my cross as it’s very delicate on a thin chain and I was worried about breaking it or loosing it. As an adult I decided that this was silly as it was bought to be worn and I started to wear it and now wear it most days. Its been through a lot with me, travelled all over and put up with some rough handling and yet its still there, a few knots in the chain maybe and a bit worn around the edges but essentially still the same cross as it was all those years ago. Again this reminds me that no matter how fragile I feel, and there are some days when I feel like a thin piece of glass that can’t possibly make it through in one piece, that with Gods help even the most fragile things can be strong and can and will survive.

So that’s my object, anyone care to share theirs?

Celebrations

2007-11-12T17:28:00.000Z

Its been a weekend of celebrations and congratulations here in the community

First up was S from our staircase who celebrated two years of hard work by attending his BTh graduation ceremony on Saturday. He looked very spiffing in white tie and fur trimmed robes and I was a little jealous that ARU have nothing so posh – well that was until I read the regulations for the ceremony he posted on his blog – bizarre doesn’t even begin to cover it!

Second up was the wonderful news that one of the ordinands S, has become engaged to the lovely J. I was just about to go to bed on Saturday night when I heard an absolute racket outside my window. The sound of popping corks led me to go down and investigate where we heard the good news from the couple who had just come back to college after a celebration dinner. Once again I felt so blessed to be a part of this community. There was such a sense of genuinely shared joy, as more and more people came out to celebrate in the freezing cold. The champagne glasses were passed around, the chapel bell ended up being rung and the wedding march was heartily played on the chapel organ (apologies to all local residents for the lateness of the hour!). I do think the two people doing handstands in the organ loft may have been taking the celebrations a little far though…

Clarification

2007-11-07T17:50:00.001Z

Following some comments I have been sent on my last posting I feel I need a few points of clarification…..

No the falling off my bike was not related in any way to the wine tasting… hic!

And its been commented that I seem to be rather over proud of my pink Minnie Mouse bell. Well I don’t see it as over proud rather as justifiably proud because it’s a fantastic bell … See for yourself if you don’t believe me…

Feeling “proper” Cambridge…Part Deux.

2007-11-06T11:53:00.000Z

Well I have been cycling round Cambridge for a few weeks now and I am actually really enjoying it! This is somewhat surprising to me as I like walking and so thought I would be a confirmed pedestrian. Its so great being able to get places so quick as walking everywhere, even in a city the size of Cambridge, eats into your day. I was somewhat nervous as I haven’t ridden from years and so set out with some trepidation on my first ride. But its amazing how quickly the old skills come back its like…. well it’s like riding a bike to be frank, you really don’t forget :o)

Funnily enough I thought it would be the cars and lorries that would worry me when riding around the narrow streets but I rapidly realised that they were not the problem. The real problem is the, quite frankly, suicidal pedestrians that appear to be infesting the city. You would think that in a city that probably has more bikes per head of population then anywhere outside of China people would expect that the odd bike might be passing by, but oh no, the roads belong to them alone. Ok the best angle for taking a photo of Kings college chapel may be in the middle of the Kings parade road but its really not a great idea for the whole coach load of Japanese tourists to take the picture at the same time! As for the young students who step out whilst staring at the screen adjusting their ipods, you would think that since they can’t hear anything that it would therefore be wise to look! But oh no….. Most of the time you can see them doing this in enough time to take evasive action but sometimes it happens so swiftly there isn’t even time to ring my lovely pink Minnie mouse bell. At these times a loud OI has to suffice (and occasionally another word or two that are probably not suitable for an ordinand :o) I haven’t hit anyone… yet, but I sense its only a matter of time!

What I have done though is perform that rite of passage known as falling off for the first time. I wish that I could say that it was the result of some amazing near miss or other daring do but sadly not. I pulled up at a red light and decided to get off my bike to push it across the pedestrian crossing (I am still working my way up to crossing the really big junctions on the bike) got my foot tangled in the bike lock which was attached to the frame and topped over into a heap on the pavement with the bike on top of me. My ego was more sorely bruised then my knee and I dread to think what the line of car driver must have thought because it was ridiculously silly. A very nice lady rushed over to check I was ok with her small child in tow. The look on his face was priceless – there was this look of “what are you doing? I am five and I can ride a bike better then that!”

Ho hum, hopefully I will say upright from now on…

Wine Tasting

2007-10-31T23:10:00.001Z

The other day our ever hardworking and lovely social deacons organised a wine tasting in college. Now I know that I risk you thinking, even more than you probably already do, that being an ordinand is not hard work but it is really… well some of the time ;o)

After a short intro on how to taste the wine –thankfully we decided to forgo the spitting! – we began with an 2002 English sparkling brut from a fairly local winery Chilford Hall. Now I am rather a fan of Champagne (and those wines that are Champagne but can’t be called that because of geographical protection rules) but I wasn’t blown away by this, it wasn’t very varied and had rather a chemical after taste. At £15.99 I would have expected more – but as someone said for an English vineyard not a bad effort. We then moved onto a 2006 Chablis by William Fevre. This was rather nice, simple and uncomplicated, probably wouldn’t hold its own at a meal but pleasant enough for drinking at a party, though at £13.75 you would have to be a fairly generous host! We then moved onto to a 2006 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from Tarras Vineyards. Folks this was absolutely scrummy and I heartily recommend getting some in. At £12.99 not to cheap but it was rich and fruity with lots of layers of flavour. It was definitely one of the most widely favoured wines of the evening.

We then moved on to some reds starting with a 2005 Bordeaux by Chateau Laussac. This was a lovely light wine, dry and sharp, with a lovely oakey smell. Some found the aftertaste a little sour but I didn’t think it was particularly, At £5.99 quite reasonably priced. Getting a little heavier we moved onto a 2005 Beaune du Chateau 1er Crus by Brouchard Pere & Fils . It was certainly full bodied but I don’t think it lived up to its £17.50 price tag. Somebody described the smell of it as wet ashtrays…. Which I think is a comment worthy of the great Jilly Goulden..

Finally for dessert we had a 5 year old finest full rich Madeira by Henriques & Henriques which was absolutely delicious. I am not normally a fan of fortified wines (the Eucharist aside of course!) but this was lovely warm and rich, reminiscent of Christmas puddings and cinnamon sticks. At £9 well worth adding to the Christmas Shopping list.

It was the first time I had done a formal wine tasting and I was surprised by how much fun it was. I actually learned quite a lot – but sadly on a ministry division grant I doubt I will have much opportunity to use it for purchasing…. But if I did I would definitely use the final tip of the evening which was that 2005 was a good year for European Reds and 2006 has been the best year for European whites for a long time. Apparently if you have the money, space and patience its well worth buying some 2006 Chablis and White Burgundy and tucking them away for a few years.

Happy drinking!

In all seriousness…

2007-10-27T16:36:00.000+01:00

What is most wonderful and holy about being at theological college is the utter seriousness, respect and worshipfulness with which all tasks are done. Even the simple act of preparing a meal is an opportunity to display the quiet and reverential nature needed in all clergy. This is so ably demonstrated by my fellow students here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDoV0zCFHwU

Simeon Centre.

2007-10-20T18:10:00.000+01:00

I was privileged to attend the launch of the Simeon centre for prayer and spiritual life on Wednesday. This is an amazing venture; one that I think has the potential to be a rich and valuable resource both for the church and for the wider world. The Centre’s director, Adrian Chatfield, gave a fantastic inaugural address which sets out the aims of the centre and I recommend taking a look at it. The text and audio are online at http://www.ridley.cam.ac.uk/scnews.html

Its funny isn’t it how sometimes when something comes along you think why has someone not thought of this before? Prayer is so central to all we are and do as Christians and yet it’s something that is on the whole not well resourced or supported. Like money and politics, prayer is something that rarely gets talked about in polite company. This leads to what I believe is an all to common situation, that we feel totally inadequate in our own prayer lives and at the same time think that everyone else has the most amazingly rich and fruitful prayer life.
This has been really highlighted to me in the last few months. When filling in the application form for vicar training there was a question that said “Describe your pattern of individual and corporate prayer” followed by a nice big box that indicated quite clearly that not only were you supposed to have an established pattern but that it was to be a pretty extensive one! More than any other this was the question that my friends were interested in my answer to, it was as if they hoped I had the magic solution. Similarly when I came to college we had a session on prayer and we were encouraged to share our prayer experiences. Interestingly we all had hang ups and areas where we thought we weren’t doing it well enough. So if you are struggling with prayer please feel encouraged that whatever you feel like there is every chance that others around you feel the same. So please join with us in praying for the Simeon centre, that it may become a real source of hope and encouragement to ordinary people like you and me…

Heavenly Father
we give to you the life and work
of The Simeon Centre.
We pray that, by the guiding
of your Holy Spirit
it may become a channel
of your grace,
stirring up the desire to pray,
encouraging, sustaining
and refreshing
all who come to deepen
their love for you
and to follow your Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Prison visiting…

2007-10-16T12:46:00.000+01:00

As part of our training we have to complete a Social Context Placement, (SCP for short). The aim of these is to gain experience of chaplaincy work in various secular environments. My college offers a huge range of opportunities for placements in various healthcare settings, bereavement counselling, schools and universities, the armed forces, prisons and even Waitrose (sadly no discount card available with the placement :o( so the choice was tough. In the end I managed to get my choice down to either the armed forces or prison chaplaincy, with prison as my first choice. I assume you can guess from the title which I got assigned to! I am in equal parts excited and terrified but fortunately the time we spend in the prison won’t be until next year so I have time to get used to the idea. In the meantime we will be having a series of seminars on justice issues and a visit to the local courts to see the process that leads up to sentencing. So all in all it should be an amazing learning opportunity.

An unexpected consequence of this placement was having to send my passport for renewal this morning. (Because I need to show the passport I will use to access the prison at a seminar in 2 weeks and my current passport will run out before the placement takes place in case you were wondering…) So I have had to face the trauma of getting the passport photo this morning. Now photo booth photos are dire at the best of times but even more so when you know you are going to have to live with the results for the next 10 years! My usual trick of scanning them my computer and digitally “tidying them up” ie removing the dark circles under the eyes, removing one or two of the chins that sort of the thing! was not an option because of time and so I found one of those booths where you can have 3 attempts at the shot and uttering a short prayer sat down to try and make sense of the new instructions for passport photos. I have now realised why people look like startled rabbits on their passport photos, it’s the combinations of making sure you are the correct height and distance from the camera, don’t have hair over your ears, mouth closed, eyes open, sitting straight etc etc… that means your brain is fully occupied on anything but looking relaxed :O)

Well my first attempt flashed up with a large red warning saying not passport compliant, I had obviously transgressed one of the above rules but who the heck knows which one. The second shot was ok-ish but a bit lopsided and the third, well the less said about that the better – but think lunatic escaped from an asylum and you wouldn’t be far off… So after three attempts you see all the shots and are politely invited to choose one for printing or insert another £4 to try again. I have to say I do love English politeness… in reality the message should say something along the lines of “OK, this is what your face looks like. This is a photo booth not a plastic surgery clinic you are never going to look like Claudia Schiffer, get over it already and pick a photo!”

So hopefully in 2 weeks time I should be in possession of a new passport with a somewhat lopsided picture in it, what joy!

Word fail me….

2007-10-15T13:48:00.000+01:00

...they really and truly do… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeloN23PRrc

Community…

2007-10-15T00:07:00.000+01:00

Its funny how those things you dread often turn out to be actually rather good….

A case in point is coming to live at college. After many years of living on my own, in my own home I was really not looking forwarded to living with a load of strangers, sharing bathrooms, having little private space and no control over even the most fundamental things such as what time to eat meals and yet…

…those strangers are rapidly becoming friends, I realise what a gift it is not to have to worry about preparing food and the shower is amazingly usually free when I want to use it :o) Most of all though I realise that privacy can be found even in the most public places, that it’s a state of mind rather more than a physical location. And you know what, sitting in the common room on Saturday night with several bottles of wine, sharing the agony and the ecstasy of the England game with a motley collection of staff and students, I realised for the first time that there was no where else I would rather be. That’s not to say I don’t miss friends, miss my home and my familiar routines, of course I do, but I am supported and maintained by a loving community who understand that because they are going through it as well.

We talk so often of the grace of God that it can sometime feel like a throwaway remark and yet Saturday night was a powerful reminder to me how much I live in this grace. For so long I was so reluctant to pursue this path, I fought God tooth and nail over it and yet the tenderness with which he has placed me here and maintains me here is breathtaking. There is no sense of recrimination, no sense of “you should have been doing this years ago” rather there is a sense of a door drawn open, a warm welcome awaiting all who venture through the door.

So when I start moaning about wanting access to a decent washing machine, lack of cupboard space in the kitchen or the person upstairs stomping about late at night can someone remind me just how blessed I am to be living here, because I never want to lose sight of that...

wee mee.....

2007-10-09T12:38:00.002+01:00

... which I created because I didn't want to put a real picture on my blog.
I posted it only because it was the only way to get the photo in the profile and was intending to delete this post once that was done, but I rather like my wee mee and so I am going to leave it....

And now I really must stop procrastinating and get on with reading the commentary on Isaiah.... but, hark is that the lunch bell - excellent more displacement activity :o)

Feeling “proper” Cambridge…

2007-10-08T21:44:00.000+01:00

… Which has come about because I am the proud new owner of a very clapped out bike! My college were selling off old bikes for charity and I managed to acquire one for the princely sum of £30 which given it has no brakes, a flat tyre and a rusty chain I felt was a bargain! To be fair all this is going to be fixed before I part with my hard earned cash… I had a rather girly moment when I was asked which of the bikes I was interested in and I said the purple one – well I think colour is a perfectly good reason to choose such things on. Sadly the only bike that was low enough for me to get my leg over (insert your own smutty comments here…) was a plain black mountain bike but I have managed to get a girly touch in by purchasing a Minnie mouse bell for it :o) Actually this was the irony of the whole thing. The bike may have been only £30 but the basic accessories such as helmet, chain, bell and lights cost £70. Still at least that means I will have an incentive to ride it if only not to feel I have wasted my money. That and the fact that on Wednesday mornings I have the sum total of 20 minutes to get from an Old Testament Seminar on one side of Cambridge to an Ethics lecture on the other side of Cambridge… maybe they should put that on the recruitment posters…. “Forget the gym, become an ordinand and get that six pack you have always wanted”!

Friday...

2007-10-01T23:21:00.000+01:00

I have to say this is deeply unimpressive. It’s only my third post and I am already lagging behind…

Fridays is one of the days that we meet in fellowship groups for Morning Prayer rather then in chapel. So there we all were sitting down with our common worships ready to begin when one of the staircase stewards announces that we are going to go and pray for all our rooms, in each room, instead of Morning Prayer. Somewhat of a surprise for us newbies I can tell you.

While on the one hand I think this is a lovely idea and it was fantastic to have a group of people praying a blessing on my room and the work I shall do there I have to say the less spiritual/more practical side of me immediately went into panic mode trying to frantically think if there were dirty washing scattered on the floor or if the bed was made. Fortunately I had actually tidied up the night before (a word of prophecy perhaps!) so it wasn’t too embarrassing!

Immediately after that we had the second of our “foundation lectures” which is a series of college lectures to get us into the swing of studying before the academic term starts. We had the most amazing talk on “The dynamics of Grace” which was really inspirational and the one and half hours flew by. What’s so lovely here is that we start the lectures with prayer and end in worship, somewhat different from my last college experience! but so affirming. I am not sure the librarian is so keen however as the main lecture hall is below the library and we apparently can get a little too loud with the singing – oops.

I barely had time to catch breath before I went along to look at a church where I may do my attachment. I had said that I would be interested in being attached to an anglo-catholic church as pretty much all my church experience has been in the evangelical wing of the church and boy did they take me at my word. I went to “low mass” but even this involved processions, server, tinkling bells and lots of bowing. Most disconcerting of all was the fact that the priest has is back to the congregation almost the entire time. I can’t wait for Sunday for the full on “High mass experience” ! I am really exited about being attached to this church because there is so much to learn and I think the priest will be a great person to learn from. He seemed really open and welcoming and not at all phased that a random evangelical ordinand had turned up out of the blue :O)

Now where did I put that thurible…

View

2007-09-27T15:37:00.000+01:00

Well my living accommodation may have shrunk to one room but I have to say its got one of the best views I have ever had...

So why fuzzy edges?

2007-09-26T22:57:00.000+01:00

Well partly because Mary suggested it and she is much cleverer then I being “proper” Oxbridge rather then my pale Anglia Ruskin imitation but mainly because I think its a good expression of me and my thinking.

I am passionate about creating fuzzy edges in the church, blurring the boundaries between the church and the world to such an extent that it’s not possible to say where one starts and the other stops, indeed it could be argued that neither should stop but that they should continually flow back and forth into each other, enriching both.

Latterly I have also been feeling that I have had my own personal fuzzy edges as gradually I disentangled myself from every bit of the life I knew to start again at theological college. Doing this has made me realise how much I defined myself by what I did rather then what I was. I was a librarian, Reader, brownie leader, daughter, sister, friend… I knew how to be these things, knew what kind of person I was doing them. Now, sitting here, surrounded by boxes and strangers I realise I have no idea who I am anymore, and that’s pretty surreal….
…but I also know that finding out is part of what the next two years of training are for. Lets hope I do.