A REMINDER that Bramhall Parish Church will offer glad thanksgiving for the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen at the celebration of the Eucharist at 11am, tomorrow, Sunday 3rd June 2012 (please note the time – our usual three celebrations will combine for this special day). Festal lunch will follow – and there’ll be lots and lots of jelly and ice cream! All assured of a right royal welcome.
Salisbury Cathedral – photo credit: Wikipedia
CHURCHWARDENS, parish administrator and priest have been enjoying a series of summer jollies – touring church sound systems! I wonder how, or if, the clergy in the cavernous spaces of our mediaeval cathedrals were expected to make themselves heard by those at the back?
I’ve lost count of the number of clerical reports I’ve read about the frustrations of church sound systems! We’re hoping that our tour of other churches will guide us towards a first rate new system come the autumn. We’ve seen some encouraging signs, and enjoyed each other’s company and the churches and people we’ve visited. And I, for my part, have been reflecting a bit upon the business of “speaking” and “hearing” in churches, whether with the aid of a good sound system or a bad one.
A good sound system is capable of amplifying a terrible sermon just as a bad sound system can deprive people of a good one. But speaking and hearing in churches, as in life generally, cannot be just about sermons or public acts of worship. What we seek both to communicate and to receive is “fullness of life” – and much as I love the Church, fullness of life is about so much more than what takes place in churches.
God saw that it was good
Terrible sermons lose sight of life’s fullness being celebrated out there in the big wide world, in millions and millions of people, places and traditions, sacred and secular. How many really want to hear the exclusive, limiting assertions of the “all knowing” and the self-satisfied? Not as many, I think, as those I come across daily who want, with God, to celebrate life. “And God saw that it was good”.
Good sermons remind us of the kind of world view that Jesus (and other great spiritual teachers) celebrated; that there is good to be found everywhere if we’ll only open our eyes and unstop our ears; that seeing and listening involve some kind of effort on our part (insist on sitting “at the back” – of anything, anywhere – and you can hardly expect to feel involved in what’s going on “up front”); that we’re sometimes persuaded that someone is dead when really they’re just sleeping; that praying on street corners so that others can have sight of how splendid we (think we) are is a meaningless idiocy that causes most thinking people to shut their eyes tight and flatly refuse to hear anything we have to say.
The worth-ship of life
What message do we want our sound systems to carry? What kind of life do we want to be mouthpieces for? Do we recognise that our acts of worship and our spiritual teaching and learning are about focusing on, training a magnifying glass upon, the glorious gift of life that every human person has been given? Does Baptism take place only in churches? I don’t think so. I think it’s happening everywhere, every day, in all of us. Is Holy Communion celebrated only in churches? Again, I don’t think so. What happens in churches magnifies and celebrates what’s happening everywhere, every day, whenever people “take bread and drink the cup” – there the God of Life is to be found and enjoyed. So “holy communion” isn’t exclusively Christian any more than the charisms of love can be confined to only one kind of human person (amongst the billions of kinds of persons in earth and heaven). Is the Word of God being spoken only in our pulpits? I don’t think so. I think the Word of God is being spoken by the supermarket cashier who takes the time to “hope you have a great day”.
What, given the best church sound system in the world, do we really want to say and pray, and be and do, bearing in mind that “whatever you did unto the least of these my brethren you did also unto me” ?
PS – I’ve just read Fr Richard Rohr’s meditation for today. Recommended, here
The yearning for holiness remains alive today. We live with a sense that we can be more than we are. We feel the pull of the transcendent and live with a call to be the person God intended. The ammas [the 'Desert Mothers', Christian ascetics in the 4th and 5th centuries] understood that holiness was founded upon wholeness. They teach us that we must shed our false self and allow our true self to emerge.
Laura Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers, p 157
WHOLENESS. What constitutes our wholeness? This is the question that lies at the heart of all questions, at the heart of all relationships and right living, and the saints who trod the path of life before us were women and men who recognised that we’re all of us caught up in a process of emerging. The pursuit of holiness and wholeness cannot be a rushed exercise. It’s our lifetime’s task. We shouldn’t be too quick to arrive at answers, still less to “provide” answers for others!
Wholeness and holiness will emerge in human persons at different times, in different places, and at different rates. Quick fix “evangelism” can be misleading, even dangerous at times, and destructive. If any of us need “saving” from anything it’s from those who want to draft out the terms and conditions of our wholeness for us. Wholeness will involve being our deepest, truest selves … and will therefore involve us in being distinctive, unique – and necessarily different.
Live and let live
The world’s religious and philosophical traditions, and the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion that I love and seek to serve, have no choice but to continue to grapple with the life issues that some find it so hard to be reconciled with, issues that are largely to do with diversity. We really do need to learn to live and let live. We really do need to be reconciled to the processes of emerging.
“We live with a sense that we can be more than we are. We feel the pull of the transcendent.” We are emerging – and we’ll know we’ve arrived in the fullness of the reign of God, or, if religious language isn’t helpful, we’ll know we’ve arrived in the state of wholeness, when we’re genuinely and wholly able to revel and delight in our gloriously gifted diversity.
Meanwhile, to return again to the wisdom of Sonny Kapoor, the young hotel proprietor in the fabulous The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel -
Everything will be alright in the end, and if it’s not alright now then it cannot be the end …
POETRY IS SOUL STIRRING. That’s its job. Stirring souls. From the Greek poiein – to make or compose – poetry is an exercise in listening, in making things new, in vivifying, bringing life and maintaining and sustaining it. Poetry opens windows onto the depths of our souls, and the depth always surprises us, opens us, stretches us, appeals to a deeper generosity of spirit, a wider inclusivity. We will never cultivate a love for poetry if we’re inclined to maintain fixed positions – on any subject or object under the sun.
On the move …
Poetry is on the move, dynamic (explosive), changing, creating, morphing. Poetry is beyond the control - of any one human person – even beyond that of the poet. “The Spirit listeth where it wills”. Poetry bears the very Word of Life to hungry hearts, souls, minds and bodies. Poetry is a wide open door and every man, woman and child is invited to enter or depart her portals entirely at will. Poetry – this particular kind of creativity – invites us to celebrate being free to be.
God is the Great Poet. Word has been breathed into the Universe – and thereafter, through the divers gifts of Spirit, trusted to do Word-stuff – something different, even when similar, in every hearer, indeed in every element and atom of Creation. My prophet doesn’t look, sound or make exactly the same sense to me as yours does to you. Your “Christ” and mine might be similar whilst also being different. God – and Life itself – are seen through different lenses. And God is apparently OK with that. We can no more say that another’s faith “is not true” than we could say the same of a poem. Truth is a matter of perspective and a matter of the Word heard; what, where, when and by whom.
Sacred writings
That’s why the world’s sacred writings – the Bible amongst these – are full to bursting with glorious poetry. That’s why, in the Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer is granted a place of high honour. That’s why the late twentieth century Church of England’s Common Worship points to Divine activity with supremely beautiful phraseology such as “the silent music of your praise”. Poetry itself might be bound between two covers, poetry binds up, gathers, collects – in the sense of drawing together, but poetry never seeks to imprison. Poetry recognises that the real grace of words is their function as vehicles for every person’s imaginative creativity and expression. Christian truth, as one example amongst the world’s faith traditions, is intended to hold and to celebrate the glorious fact of diversity.
I think that’s why poetry enters most every conversation I ever have with a would-be priest. Conversation with four ordinands today, two within our parish and two without, led naturally and fluidly into the sharing of poetry. That’s always rewarding and hopeful in my book. I’m assured thereby of a willing and loving open-mindedness and generosity of spirit.
All of one race – the human one
Further reflection upon the gifts of Pentecost at the Eucharistic celebration here this morning brought us again to that glorious affirmation in the King James Version of the Bible (Acts 2) – “we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God”. Different words and different languages for different people, but all of one race – the human one.
The sharing of three poems – each written by people of different religious traditions – was well received by one person after another at the fiftieth birthday celebration of our Associated Church Fellowships group here in the late afternoon. And – gloriously – in the relatively few words of the poetry a large assembly multiplied the power of the words by a factor of 50 or more persons present. Each of us hears a different measure of truth from exactly the same set of words – and are, at one and the same time, bound by a common, shared experience.
A Vision …
And then there was the sharing of Psalm 122. “O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.” Jerusalem is the big word here so we unpacked it. Jerusalem may be translated “City, or Vision, of Peace”. (Oh, can you feel the irony?). Let’s pray the psalm poetically – “O pray for the peace of the Vision of Peace”. Ah! There’s OUR point and purpose. Whether we’re praying for or about the representatives of the three Abrahamic faiths that look to Jerusalem, or for or about any other form of reaching out (or in) to the Divine, what is of fundamental importance is that we pray, with all our hearts and souls and minds and bodies, with our very lives, for the peace of the Vision of Peace. How are we to set about this in practice? By cultivating a love for the poetic, by being open-hearted, by being willing to recognise that the Divine Source of all our lives is “making all things new” and “turning the world upside down”.
Ria Gandhi, a writer friend who lives in Mumbai shares my affection for the works of Rabindranath Tagore. I love the 78th Song Offering in Gitanjali – with which I ought to draw this post to a close … (for the wholly pedestrian reason that I’m due at my aqua-fit class in half an hour!)
When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang ‘Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!’
But one cried of a sudden – ‘It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light and one of the stars has been lost.’
The golden string of the harp snapped, their song stopped, and they cried in dismay – ‘Yes, that lost star was the best, she was the glory of all heavens!’
From that day the search is unceasing for her, and the cry goes on from one to the other that in her the world has lost its one joy!
Only in the deepest silence of the night the stars smile and whisper among themselves – ‘Vain is this seeking! Unbroken perfection is over all!’
Blessed are you, Lord God,
our light and our salvation;
to you be glory and praise for ever.From the beginning you have created all things
and all your works echo the silent music of your praise.
In the fullness of time you made us in your image,
the crown of all creation.You give us breath and speech, that with angels
and archangels and all the powers of heaven
we may find a voice to sing your praisefrom Eucharistic Prayer G, Common Worship
A HAPPY AFTERNOON. Good house visits with good conversation about allsorts in the sunshine. I always come back from afternoons like this one reminded that there are some really wonderful people in the world, people of faith, people of courage, kindness, and solid down-to-earth goodness. And I often come back feeling that many people go out of their way to encourage and affirm.
The job of parish priest in a fairly large place like Bramhall often involves being what the parish profile, six years ago, called “the conductor of an orchestra”. I think that most parishes need the sort of leadership a conductor provides. It’s usually an unhappy, or at least a “going nowhere” sort of a parish where the only voice to be heard is that of the priest, (or any too-vocal individual for that matter) just as the sound of an orchestra requires vastly more than the voice of the conductor.
If the pastoring and other work of the Church in this place had to be done by the priest alone there’d many more thousands who’d have little or no contact with the parish church at all. Being “the Body of Christ” in this place involves every person’s call to pastoring of some kind or another, and to each is given a particular gift, a distinctive, discipling voice. A good translation of the word discipling might be “learning on the job!” - in our case within a big, big orchestra.
A large team
Bramhall Parish Church relies upon the gifts of a large pastoral team, and upon teachers and encouragers, and upon buildings and financial specialists. And we’re always actively hoping and praying for candidates for ordained ministry in the wider Church (currently four such people engaging with training and the processes of discernment, study and formation). We rely on praying people, and visiting people, and musical people and other artists and contributors of every conceivable kind.
And we’re constantly on the look-out for the ways in which all our members might be encouraged in life and ministry in the world, and right here in our own neighbourhood. (Not all of it church-based of course – we ought never to limit the word “ministry” to purely church-related sending or activity. The work of God is not confined only to the Church, or to any other religious body).
But in exactly the same way that an orchestral conductor likes sometimes to actually play an instrument or instruments, so, too, this “conductor” likes, whenever possible, just to get out and about amongst the people of our parish. It’s good to get alongside the different instruments and have a chance to play one’s own.
Whatever I’m doing here in Bramhall, and on whatever the day of the week, or the particular nature of the activity, there’s one thing I am certain of: we need each other. Every child, woman and man upon earth has a contribution to make towards the good of all. Whatever our faith tradition (or the lack thereof), whatever instrument we play or the song we sing, wherever we’ve come from and wheresoever we think we’re going, each and every one of us is made for and called to good conversation, thereby co-creating “the Peace that passeth all understanding”. Making great (and sometimes silent) music.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’
Isaiah 6.1-8
CONNECTIONS between the One whose train fills the temple and the elements of Creation are as many as the grains of sand on a seashore, as diverse as the stars in the sky, as colourful as the richest spectrum any human person has ever conceived. And the sheer greatness and gently loving power and mutuality of this relationship means that “sin is blotted out”.
Touched by even an atom of the life of this “temple”, where seraphs wait, and we’re changed and charged with glory, day by day, living and loving, we’ll be moved to hope and pray and be able to say “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty”.
Changed and charged with glory we’re moved to say and to pray “Here I am; send me!” Changed and charged with glory – and here’s the loveliest thing, we begin to see the richness and colour of the divine image in ourselves, and then – beyond that miracle – in one another.
Trinity Sunday this year will celebrate hospitality, the open and generous hospitality of God in Creation. How blessed is humankind when innumerable souls seek to reflect and to BE that kind of hospitality. That kind of diverse, rich and colourful hospitality is a communion. Connections onwards, upwards, inwards, downwards and sideways into Love’s eternity.
PENTECOST is a great day to engage with a group of wonderful, gifted people preparing for Confirmation. We’ve 11 candidates this year and amongst the many present day gifts, hopes and aspirations represented in the group are languages / interpreting, veterinary surgery, counselling, law, physiotherapy, university teaching, mothering, good family life and friendship.
Each candidate is a delight in his or her own right and the Life and gifts of God’s Spirit are individually and uniquely tailored in, upon and for each of them – as for each and every living person. Confirmation will honour, affirm and confirm the unique gifts in each, and – perhaps most especially – the gift of faith, of confidence and trust in this wonderful Life’s provision. As God once revealed God’s name to Moses as “I AM” so, sharing in the same “family name”, each of this year’s candidates will continue to go and to grow in the strength of that familial relationship: “I am ….” and “I am ….” and “I am ….”.
And this morning we celebrated the sacrament of Holy Baptism in the context of the Eucharistic celebration – joyfully acknowledging connection with another young Christian, and hers with us. And we further celebrated my colleague Fr David’s 45 years of service as a deacon, and 44 years as a priest. Added to that we celebrated the life and vibrant witness of Christ’s Church across 2000+ years, and our own blessed vocations within the universal family of the God who made and sustains each and every one of us.
I AM
I AM smiles upon us, calling us to ever deeper greatness, compassion, grace and love. I AM smiles upon us, calling us in the power of the Spirit to more and more Christ-like-ness, to more and more Anointed-like-ness. I AM smiles upon us, calling us to be gracious and loving and compassionate with ourselves – so that we’re built up in strength and in confidence to be all these things and more for others. I AM smiles upon us, calling us to open our hearts and souls and minds and bodies in loving and compassionate prayer and concern for brutalised people in Syria, in Stockport, and in many places all over the world. I AM smiles upon us, summoning us to care for the sick and the sorrowing.
I AM smiles upon us, gifting all human persons with unique blessings that may be put to good and creative use, contributing immeasurably to the sum total of faith and hope and love and healing hugs and peals of laughter in a beautiful, but in places torn and damaged world; in our spectacularly beautiful, but in places torn and damaged hearts. I AM smiles upon us, and at Pentecost, fifty days after the Feast Day of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, we are, most decidedly and assuredly, celebrating anointed LIFE.
I am alive and thriving in the Life and Love of I AM. And I am profoundly thankful.
image: 06 One Market Place Pinnacle DB.jpg
MY FORMER COLLEAGUE Esther Foss and I were forever exchanging notes about books when we were working together, and it was and still is surprising that we often found ourselves, quite independently, “singing from the same hymn sheet”. The other day I wrote about the sense I have that churches need to “loosen their grip” a bit more, to “let go and let God” …
The fullness of the Life of God has been engaging with growth action planning since before Adam was a lad – and without a great deal of help from us whole new worlds are constantly springing into being. We’re caught up in the act of co-creating with God, of course, but we do well to remember that it takes us a while to catch up with the sheer energy of God; it takes us a while to reckon with the fact that the Holy Spirit’s gift is patently intended for EVERYBODY – inside and outside churches and other religious bodies; it takes us a while to reckon with the Spirit’s gifts in people we think decidedly unqualified. And therein lies the Source of my greatest comfort and consolation as a Christian disciple and a parish priest. The universe is buzzing anyway. And I’m not controlling it.
Buzzing | Simon Marsh
Esther and I share a common regard for the wonderful Quaker writer and teacher Parker J Palmer. Now working in different parishes, in different dioceses, and not having seen each other for a while, it was great to read a note from Esther this morning:
When the church gets it right, when she is true to her identity as Christ’s body on earth, it is always down to the Spirit. And when she gets it wrong – as she often does – it is because we – clergy and people – have fallen into the trap of trying to go it alone.
The Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer calls this “functional atheism… the belief that if anything decent is going to happen, we are the ones who must make it happen.” (Let your life speak p.88)
Esther Foss
The creative, creating Spirit of God is still at work, changing people’s lives, calling them out of the places of darkness into hitherto undreamed of glory and joy and light and service and fulness. Esther’s very well aware of that fact, as I am, but goes on …
… So why are our churches so often half empty, you might ask. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, God is not restricted to the church! And neither should we be. If we look at that reading from Acts we see that the apostles got out of the upper room and into the market place. And when we get out and look about we see that his Spirit is everywhere too.
I feel myself freshly commissioned: to look for and to celebrate the signs of God’s Spirit at work in the Church … and everywhere else as well.
PUFFIN THE KAYAK has been lifted from her perch in the garage rafters and safely delivered to her summer season on Ullswater, on what must surely have been one of the loveliest days of the year. Just enough of a gentle breeze to cool but not to throw off course; progress atop the blue, blue lake gentle, slow and quiet enough to be able to come within a few yards of protective Canada Geese watching their still very tiny and fluffy young paddling furiously to keep up with the grown ups. Lakeland children still in school today, of course, but if the weather stays like today’s there’ll be a much larger picnicking presence here tomorrow morning. I shall sleep like a baby tonight, every muscle and sinew having been reminded of the part it must play to navigate a small boat upon and across the queen of the Lakes.
THE LANTERN TOWER at Bramhall Parish Church was internally renovated in 2009 and is currently clad in scaffolding for external repointing. It’s a bold statement in our community. Added to a fifty year old parish church in 1960, the brick and concrete structure was immediately detested by some in the neighbourhood and loved with a passion by others.
Towering above our baptismal font, and acoustically the church’s sweet spot, fifty+ years on it now houses one of the church choirs. I enjoy the generous sense of space and light and glory it affords; it is the very opposite of cramped and mean, and I’m delighted too that the tower provides exhibition space for suspended artworks and painting. But, most of all, this tower gives me pause to contemplate the connected values of light and vision.
Bertie Barnby was the energetic and inspiring 3rd Vicar of Bramhall in 1960. Several hundreds attended Sunday worship and he was “on the case” of those who didn’t on Monday mornings – which I admit, being an introvert by comparison, would probably put me off forever!
Canon Bertie’s autocratic style wouldn’t win him much approval in 2012, indeed there were mutterings and grumblings back in 1960, but fifteen years after the end of the second world war his vision was bold, brave and efficacious. An accomplished church musician, Bertie insisted upon the Christian virtue of “giving thanks to the God who made us, in the Lord’s House, upon the Lord’s Day”. That was how the Church was built. That was how good and just society would be maintained. The Church was to be the lantern set upon a hill. And so the Vicar’s powerfully envisioned dream of a lantern tower prevailed.
Lantern’s light source
What value has this huge and powerful “statement” of a tower for me and my fellow disciples today? Does it speak of vision in 2012? Yes it does. I want to pause to consider the source of this lantern’s light. And I want to do so in the wake of a friend’s describing a recent sermon he’d heard in which the preacher implied that life inside the Church is full of light and “out there” is full of darkness, for I beg to differ. Bramhall’s tower opens my eyes. At night, when electric light glows inside the Church, there’s a relatively low wattage presence in the road outside, from inside out. But much more powerful, and every single day of the year, too, our lantern tower is illuminated from the outside in. “Out there” is where the Light is, and “out there” is what lights up “in here”. No doubt there’s need for a great deal of healing and regeneration in the world “out there”. No doubt there’s need for a great deal of healing and regeneration in the world “in here”, too. But we’re – each and every one of us – caught up in a life-long process of being healed and vivified by the Light that comes into our lives (and into our tower space) from “out there”. The Church that recognises no need for healing and light from without its walls will crumble and fall. Churches (and individuals) that think they’re the only bearers of light are – in the long run – of no earthly use at all.
Bertie Barnby wasn’t daft. When he called people to offer thanks to God in the Lord’s House – this parable built of stone on Robins Lane – he was consistently inviting his parishioners to encounter God chiefly in the Lord’s House not built by human hands, the “temple within”. Human hearts and souls are built to be “lantern towers” – and in the quiet and contemplative moments of our daily thanksgiving we find that the life of the world is not an enemy, but the Source of the light with which we’re illuminated, from the outside in, so that we’re able to shine from the inside out. Our job is to love well, to reflect the light. The world is “changed from glory into glory” not in the first instance by churchy institutions but by the God, by the Life “in whom there is no darkness at all”.
That’s maybe why there’s such a sense of Presence at evening prayer in Bramhall Parish Church, when late afternoon sunlight glows in the tower space … of the parish church, and of our hearts.
“Bertie’s tower” is about repointing. God grant us grace and vision not to lose heart and to aspire – as extravagantly as God does – to ever more beautiful, ever more salvific and “towering” art.
