03/02/2010

CHILCOT

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ONCE AGAIN I’M GLAD that Bishop Nick Baines takes the risk of being “a bit silly to write too much here.”  His is an humane,  incisive, truth seeking and reflective eye and ear. What he writes about the Chilcot Inquiry below may infuriate some nearly as much as others have been inflamed by Tony Blair himself. But we need to read / hear it. Especially this year. And maybe a quick trip round to our local (whichever) party office with an offer of help might set any one of us on the path to a day and a time when we really COULD “do better”. Maybe in the UK. Maybe in Jerusalem?

It may just be that these impossible wrangles, where there’s not a single simple answer, where thousands of simple answers are demanded, it may just be that you really could do better? And it’s really important that we all know about you because the need for folks to “do better” shows no signs of going away.

Millions of words will be banged out today following Tony Blair’s appearance before the Iraq Inquisition yesterday, so it is a bit silly to write too much here. I’ll limit it to three observations that have the virtue of being honest, but run the risk of running counter to everyone else.

1. I think the war was wrong on every front: politically, militarily and morally. The premises as presented were false and it still appears that the Brits were too keen to be in Bush’s pocket. Nothing said so far in the Chilcot Inquiry has demanded a change of view on these matters.

2. The Inquiry is not a trial. Hectoring inquisition may satisfy the blood lust of would-be interrogators, but might also illicit less information than otherwise. Let someone talk: the more they say, the more words they use, the more holes they will potentially dig either by saying too much or too little. Shouting at people or questioning every detail is not necessarily the best way of getting to the truth. We must wait until the report is published to see what conclusions are being drawn.

3. Thank God the baying crowds or the foaming commentators don’t run the country. Blair’s appearance before the Inquiry Panel has been built up as a trial when it can be no such thing. The Inquiry is there to discover the truth – and they can only do this by looking at the matter from very different perspectives. This requires patience, attention and a willingness to hold judgement until all the evidence has been heard. Yet, already the Inquiry is being written off as a whitewash and a failure by the establishment to beat up one of its own.

via Nick Baines’s Blog.


 

31/01/2010

FRESH EXPRESSION (dated 1662)

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THERE ARE MOMENTS OF PURE JOY in parish life. What better gift, what better way to celebrate the first of our Parish Centenary events across 2010 than a Sunday Candlemas – the Feast of The Presentation of Christ in The Temple. Better begin (in these days of Growth Action Planning and “He’s turning the world upside down”) with a “fresh expression”. So we did. With (1662) Prayer Book Choral Evensong, a mixed choir of thirty, robed and unrobed, ‘traditional’ and ‘music group’, and the nave filled row after row. And it’s one of the seven deadliest sins, I know, but of all of them tonight, of all of us, of the entire parish family here, I’m proud as Punch! We’ve been helping each other along the road to glory for years and years and years …

A blind man recognises a beloved face by barely touching it with seeing fingers, and tears of joy, the true joy of recognition, will fall from his eyes after a long separation.

Osip Mandelstam, The Word and Culture

Subtitled text from Haggai 2 announced reflection on The Future Glory of the Temple. And Romans 12 exhorted us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship”.

What then is to be “The Future Glory of this Temple?” I wondered aloud in the pulpit. “What is the name of the song, the psalm, the canticle of praise that we would sing a hundred years from now?”

In Lent this year some of us will take up Terry Hershey’s “The Power of Pause”. It holds some clues as to the whereabouts of the Temple “not made by human hands”:

“… when I am present I am grateful. And gratitude is always a type of prayer.

… the entire region is bathed in sunshine. Now, at dusk, the cloud cover is scattered like tattered pieces of cloth … the sky is spring blue, baby boy blue … the water is ice blue and the mountains are blanketed with snow. In the clear winter air the mountains stand stalwart – enduring, comforting, and settling. they are bigger than any of my pettiness. And their beauty slows my breathing and eases my mind (page 27)

The well known priest and author, the late Henri Nouwen once wrote:

Too often I looked at being relevant, popular and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. Jesus sends us out to be shepherds and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hand and be led to places where we think we’d rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance … to a life of prayer; from worries about popularity … to communal and mutual ministry. What is new is that we have moved from the many things, to the Kingdom of God.

Henri Nouwen, In The Name of Jesus.

Ah! To the Kingdom of God. Look, my friends. Look beyond our little Evensong. Look hard. Can you see him there, with Anna? They’ve been dreaming about mountains and hills, and valleys and plains, and rising up like eagles, and blue sky and a blue lake, and a Kingdom promised from the beginning of time. And whilst they’re waking from their slumbers, as though in direct response to the prayers of their patient waiting, one of the most beautiful women that ever walked upon the face of the earth came near. A young woman most pure, still seeking purification.

Simeon stumbled forward, barely able to see through tears of recognition. He touched Mary’s beautiful face, and she placed a small white bundle into the trembling arms of this old man of the Temple.

And a rainbow stretched out over Mount Zion. The elderly Anna gasped and knelt down at Mary’s feet and the old man said, a little croakily:

Nunc Dimittis

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace : according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen : thy salvation;

Which thou hast prepared :

before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles : and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

Luke 2.29-32

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end.  Amen.

Never was fresher expression uttered. All that we ever longed for has been made available to us. All that we ever feared about death, or life, has been put to flight. Though hearts may sometimes be seared by sword, yet may we hold the Saviour. Yet we may hold, in an infant then and in every infant littleness now, a Song, a Psalm, a Canticle of Praise that we would sing a hundred years from now, and that with heartfelt gratitude and awe:

Nunc Dimittis. Now I may die in peace. I’ve longed for a fresh expression.

So I came. Present. Really there. And I opened the Church’s ancient Prayer Book, and found the reason it was written. God be be praised.

 

29/01/2010

BRANGELINA

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NICK BAINES, Bishop of Croydon, always seems to hit the nail bang on the head for me:

It is this ‘being human’ stuff that’s bothering me during my ‘reflective’ time. Take a couple of examples:

* Obama makes his first State of the Union address amid the opprobrium of those who know they could do his job better. Critics – some of whom have done nothing for the ‘common good’ other than take other people apart – scream how disappointed they are in him, how all the hopes of a year ago have been dashed.

One year. In the context of eternity that is not… er … a long time. People make unrealistic demands of leaders, then pull them down when they fail in one or two areas. Some of the hopes put into Obama were stupidly unrealistic and he was bound to disappoint before he even started.

via Brangelina and the real world « Nick Baines’s Blog.

The whole post is worth a thorough read

 

28/01/2010

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

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The main gate at the former nazi death camp of...

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THERE ARE PEOPLE IN MY CHURCH COMMUNITY who recall the returning from experience at Belsen of Daphne Waite, one of their own. One such person kindly wrote to me, in time for yesterday’s remembering:

Daphne Waite in later life until her retirement was a head teacher, but during WWII was one of the Allied Military Administration Staff, who followed close behind the advancing front line to start the immense task of re-building, in all senses of the term.  Daphne was one of the administrators who entered Belsen Concentration Camp a few hours after British soldiers had liberated it, and so was among the first to see the horrors it contained and to start to do what they could for those imprisoned there.

The same writer went on to tell of his own experience of visiting Auschwitz:

I found walking round Auschwitz, and visiting the sites associated with the Warsaw Ghetto and Uprising, an experience that permanently changes one’s outlook and perspective.  Some may have known, or met, a Holocaust survivor.  Some may remember listening to members of St Michael’s, now dead, who had more direct experience.

I have recently been awestruck (and I mean awe struck) in the presence, by the kind hospitality of our local synagogue, of a “survivor” who lost more than thirty of her own close family members. How thankful I am for Archbishop Rowan’s reflections, published yesterday. How humbled by a videoed conversation between the Archbishop, the Chief Rabbi and Rabbi Tony Bayfield who visited the camps, together, thank God, in 2008. Here’s a paragraph from the Archbishop’s pages. The whole is infinitely worth the reading:

We must attend to the signs at home and abroad of those attitudes in ourselves and in others which were the harbingers of the Holocaust. These include the dehumanising rhetoric which seeks to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ and then to project all that is negative on to the other, on to “them”. We need to be vigilant about every expression of ungenerous feeling towards people in need and all who may for a time be dependent on the wider community – the refugees and asylum seekers. We need to be alert to the signs of a casual attitude to the value of human lives, whether by acts of terrorism or more subtly, in relation to disability, or the beginning or end of life.

 

24/01/2010

RECOVERY OF SIGHT

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THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY brought two extra-ordinary gifts to St Michael & All Angels, Bramhall. Last Sunday the Reverend Geoffrey Clarke, Minister of Trinity Methodist/URC Church in Cheadle preached for us with passion and compassion. Gospel imperatives come alive in Geoffrey’s hands. Haiti came “nearer to us than when we first believed.” And this morning Margaret Dexter-Brown from Bramhall United Reformed Church brought us a “journalist’s account” of the sabbath morning when Jesus took up the Scroll in the synagogue and read from the prophecy of Isaiah …

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

“Oh, that voice! Beautifully read. Beautifully spoken. You could have sat there and listened to him all day”. A journalist’s account of a man who looked like he himself was about to bring good news to the poor. And then it began to dawn on our newspaperman that this isn’t just about a bloke called Isaiah bringing some good news; not just about a fabulously well-spoken teacher called Jesus bringing some gospel either. The word here is “me”. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. Gospel imperatives came alive in Margaret’s hands, too. And in her journalist’s.

All mindful today of God’s people in Haiti … and of his children in and around Doncaster … and of those in prison … and the millions to whom the Fount and Source of Life wishes to proclaim favour … the question that Geoffrey and Margaret have left in the air and in the heart of Bramhall Parish Church is this:

Does the Gospel imperative of an all inclusive, all embracing, all-compassionate LOVE come alive in our hands? In our churches?

God help us to make it so. For the world-changing Love of the God who anointed us to proclaim it, borne along with the cash we’ve popped into envelopes for the the Haiti Appeals, and the prayers we’ve spoken for little ones born into a fragile society, and the hopes we’ve expressed for the marginalised and the broken, could change life for God’s people in Haiti forever. And ours. (Lord, have mercy). And ours …

 

 

16/01/2010

AVAILABLE LIGHT …

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DR KELVIN WRIGHT is to be ordained the Ninth Bishop of Dunedin on the 27th February. I’m deeply inspired by his vision of what may be. And hopeful. And will pray for him and for all of us. Enjoy the whole of his piece, just a taste of which follows here …

True encounter. True communion with God and with other conscious beings. If we are not doing this, we have lost our way. And by and large we are not. And by and large we have. But as I relearned last night, it is not a difficult thing to do, and when it happens the results are astonishing; life forming and life changing.

As human beings; as parishes; as a diocese we can and must and will find our way again.

via Available Light.

 

01/01/2010

GOD DOESN’T HAVE TO KNOCK

Posted by Simon Marsh under God, New Year, poetry
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.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I’ve  been thinking about first-footing, as doubtless you have. For a few years now I’ve called to mind one of Andrew Rudd’s wonderful poems at the outset of new year:

.

God

doesn’t have to knock

uses the front door key

doesn’t check how clean the house is

knows how to use the kettle

and where the spoons go

washes up

is content to sit

and chat about issues

of no importance

or just be quiet

 

25/12/2009

A LIFE OF LIBERATION FOR OTHERS

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FR EDWARD SCHILLEBEECKX OP has died.  In 1974 he dedicated his monumental JESUS – An Experiment in Christology “to all my readers, known and unknown – and especially Bernard Cardinal Alfrink, ‘That you may not grieve as others do who have no hope’ (1 Thessalonians 4.13).

I thank God for “The Schillebeeckx Preface” we use frequently in our Eucharistic celebrations here:

Lord God, we thank you for Jesus, the truly human being, who has changed the face of the earth, because he spoke of a great vision, of God’s new age which will come one day, a world of freedom, love and peace, the perfection of your creation. We remember that wherever Jesus came people rediscovered their humanity, and were filled with new riches, so that they could give one another new courage in their lives. We remember how Jesus spoke to people, about a lost coin, a sheep that had strayed, a prodigal son: of all those who no longer count, out of sight, out of mind; the weak and the poor, all those who are captive, unknown, unloved. We recall that he went to search for all who were lost, for those who are saddened and out in the cold, and how he always took their side, without forgetting the others. That cost him his life because the mighty of the earth would not tolerate it, and yet he knew that he was understood and accepted by you, confirmed by you in love. He became one with you. And so, freed from himself, he could live a life of liberation for others. And so we gladly thank you, with saints and angels praising you, and saying: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed + is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

“God is always absolutely new”, Fr Schillebeeckx said, of the One who makes all things new. Indeed He / he spoke of a great vision. Requiescat in pace.

 

24/12/2009

PEACE IN YOUR LISTENING

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I LOVE THIS LITTLE SPACE each year. A quiet waiting before crossing the garden for the Midnight Mass. The preparations have been made. Now to celebrate the Feast and thank God. We’ve celebrated services already today in company with several hundred people of all ages. Snow and ice have not prevailed. It has been a joy to meet with the newly-weds of the past few years, and with the baptised – babes in arms only moments ago, and somehow already turned into enthusiastic and ultra-mobile toddlers.

From earliest childhood, I recall, Christmas Eve was always a night when my ears were most particularly attuned to LISTENING … so the Mass tonight will be preceded by William Stafford’s evocative poem of that name:

<>

My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.

William Stafford

<>

JOY TO YOU TONIGHT. Together with Peace in your listening. xx

 

21/12/2009

SNOWY ST MICHAEL

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more about “SNOWY ST MICHAEL“, posted with vodpod

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IT SEEMS THAT SKY & SNOW HAVE CONSPIRED together today to show off the newly restored and renovated east wall at St Michael’s Bramhall. My childhood dreams of Christmas holidays involved snow like we’ve seen in the last few days (with adult apologies to all those who can’t stand the stuff, and many of them with good reason). A favourite rom/com at this time of the year is The Holiday (Cameron Diaz, Jack Black, Kate Winslet and Jude Law) with its Christmassy romance, cottages, frost, snow, and fabulously haunting Ennio Morricone. So a few snaps and a touch of Morricone (courtesy of You Tube’s Audio Swap). Enjoy :)

 

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