ST PAUL’S MACCLESFIELD - where I was Vicar from 1990-1996 – has been an enormous influence in my life since January 1971 when much loved parish priest Kenneth Burghall left my home church in Claughton to become Vicar there, and I became a frequent visitor until my own Collation as Vicar of the parish nineteen years later.

I always thought of St Paul’s (set upon a hill) as “my cathedral church” and as I’ve prayed through the years, and always on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, I smile as I recall the delightful story of Macclesfield St Paul’s Church choir visiting Interlaken in Switzerland where they’d been invited to sing Evensong. A large and bright poster advertised their advent. Evensong was to be sung by the Choir of St Paul’s England. Someone else thought of Macc St Paul’s as a cathedral too! May the household of faith at St Paul’s Macclesfield (and at St Paul’s England) continue to bless and to be blessed.

SUNLIGHT COMES AND GOES. Glory in a grey day. And I remember a long treasured gift (Martin Wharton, York, 1986), track it down and find the words that George MacLeod used to pray:

Almighty God, Sustainer:
Sun behind all suns,
soul behind all souls,
everlasting reconciler of our whole beings:
Show to us in everything we touch and in everyone we meet
the continued assurance of Thy presence round us:
lest ever we should think Thee absent.
In all created things Thou art there.
In every friend we have
the sunshine of Thy presence is shown forth.
In every enemy that seems to cross our path,
Thou art there within the cloud
to challenge us to love.
Show to us the glory in the grey.
Awake for us Thy presence in the very storm
till all our joys are seen as Thee
and all our trivial tasks emerge as priestly sacraments
in the universal temple of Thy love.

Of ourselves we cannot see this. Sure physician give us sight.
Of ourselves we cannot act. Patient lover give us love:
till every shower of rain speaks of Thy forgiveness:
till every storm assures us that we company with Thee:
and every move of light and shadow speaks of grave and
resurrection:
to assure us that we cannot die:
Thou creating, redeeming and sustaining God.

The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory
Wild Goose Publications, 1985

LONGISH CHURCH COUNCIL meeting tonight (8-10pm), but productive, and with plenty of causes for celebration scattered amongst Agenda items. It’s no secret that I’m a one-to-one-or-two-or-three sort of a man, not a great lover of formal meetings, still less of evening meetings after already very full days. Perhaps it’s worth recording, though, that I’m always impressed by the thought that in countless similar meetings, attended by volunteers all over the world, there’s a vast representation of human commitment to community building and a greater good, and that such endeavours teach us all, across lifetimes, how to listen to other people.

Some listen better than others. Some, like me, manage to listen attentively to some of the people at some of the meetings, and not to, or at others. It’s a human predicament. And extroverts and introverts, not to mention all the other different personality types, add further need for continuing improvement. But I think that Archbishop Sentamu was right when, addressing our diocesan clergy the other night, he stressed the great – even primary – need for listening in the Church and in the world. And in the life of a large and busy church like ours there’s certainly a lot of listening to be done. Tonight’s meeting showed me that, in our church council, there’s a high degree of commitment to the process. And I’m grateful for that.

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THRESHOLDS: Paul Deakin is heading back to Mirfield tonight. I’ll be meeting with Tracy Ward tomorrow. Rachael Elizabeth (above) preached a fine sermon at St Michael’s this morning – and what each of these people have in common is their membership of the parish family here in Bramhall, and a sense – each at their different stages – of calling to test vocations to the priesthood. And this is really what Gospel good news is all about – not just call to priesthood, of course, but call at all, to all.

Divine call is still heard today, even in the midst of our all-too-busy – and what my late mentor Bishop Victor Whitsey used to call “naughty” – world. The spark of the Divine is to be found alive and well in the heart of all life. And teachers are taught by those they’re called to teach! Paul, Tracy and Rachael are amongst the contemporary apostles of Jesus who teach and inspire me.

Many, many people have spoken to me of their newfound confidence – whilst the echoes of Rachael’s address were still in the air – that under Grace the Church will yet thrive and grow in the things of God, in all that she is called and directed to be. God plants the seeds.

I’m reminded of the Lebanese mystic Kahlil Gibran:

Then said a teacher: Speak to us of teaching. And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding. The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm, nor the voice that echoes it. And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither. For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. And even as one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth …

Again: God plants the seeds in the heart of all created things. Divine call will lead Paul and Tracy and Rachael to the thresholds of their own minds, as  I am continually led to mine. And I watch, and I wait, in awe, and in gratitude, and in wonder.

I’M JUST ABOUT to show my age! – I was a fan of tv detective partnership Starsky & Hutch. Time on my hands and a Saturday afternoon sleep in the chair (!) have set me thinking about some of the many conversations I’ve had in the past week. And about partners – pals, trusted colleagues, the people who watch you, and wait with you, and work with you across the years. The people you rely on. The people who know the truth of you. The people whose truth you’ve had more than a few glimpses of. Like Starsky & Hutch. Life circumstances brought me into conversation this week with three of my oldest friends, all priests, all pals in the sense already alluded to, each of us different, each of us aware of our need of each other, and of mutual appreciation. I’ve been blessed by friends and I’m grateful for them – and for that they each know who they are.

KELLY JOHNSON writes in God does not hurry (see ++ below)

In a beautiful reflection on time, Tolkien * wrote of creation as a work of music, a theme declared by the creator, Ilúvatar, and sung by the angels in their many voices. They

began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void …

The gift of time is musical, moving at a pace that is fluid but ordered, growing to fullness without racing to get finished. The beat may be fast or slow, but the good musician knows not to hurry. Time is not the enemy, something to be gotten through; it is tempo, carrying mobile harmonies. Although sin enters in through one angel who wants to win glory by introducing his own themes, Ilúvatar continues to weave the music through to its end, not silencing the discordant elements, but introducing a new theme,

… and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity.

Jesus does actually tell a story about God hurrying … rewarded with the sight of the prodigal on the road home, then God hurries, casting all caution to the wind, racing out to meet this lost child. The love that waits, scandalous in its patience, will finally be unreserved in its haste to welcome us into the feast of reconciliation. In the meantime, we wait in joyful hope.

* JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion (London, 1977)

++ God does not … (chapter 3: God does not hurry) D Brent Latham, Editor, Brazos, 2009

SECOND GRANDCHILD - first grandson – Jack Robert safely arrived tonight, firstborn to youngest daughter Ruth and Craig. Thanks be to God. Welcome little fella. And love and congratulations to you, and to your Mum and Dad xxx

photo/archbishopofyork.org

START WITH UNITY as a given. Then we’ll stand a chance of reaching some agreement in the Church of England. There’ll be no agreement unless we start with unity as a given. We are already united in Christ. God’s achievement, not ours. Start there, a joy-filled place to start, and agreement may follow. Unity isn’t dependent on us. It’s dependent on God. Already given.

Optimistic stuff from Archbishop Sentamu in a wide-ranging address to clergy and lay ministers of the Diocese of Chester at the Cathedral tonight. Invited to speak on The Challenges Facing The Church of England Today we might well have been there all night – given the archbishop’s first-hand knowledge of the size and complexity of some of those (human) challenges. Could have been. But weren’t. For the archbishop didn’t stay with merely human challenges, thank God. He’s an archbishop, after all. And he saved what I thought the best line of a half-hour or so address – yes: a bit like the wine! – until last.

“The Challenges Facing The Church of England Today? GOD“.

Amen! God first. Perfect underlining of our need to start with Unity as a given. As a God-given. As a God-is. Preceded by an archi-episcopal admonition: “if you want to talk about doctrine, ask yourself how your doctrine matches up to Jesus” – (do you love God’s people or do you just like preaching to them?) – God was presented fairly and squarely as the biggest and the best challenge facing the Church. And there, ultimately, I believe, lies the salvation of the Church and of the world: in that Divine challenge, in the Divine invitation to each of us that we remember who God is, and who God is not ( – is, and is not, limited, in both cases, by the provisionality of our human imaginations).

God is not our possession, not a celestial-Santa-Claus-in-the-sky. We may not command God. God is not made in our image. We do not have God all worked out. God is “immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light, inaccessible, hid from our eyes”. And God has already given unity, as surely as God has given life. God is Life, and that “in all its fullness”. Our unity can only ever be in our resting in that Life, in God’s Otherness. Beyond. And yet also incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, as in every single element of the Universe. United elements. Given elements. Given prophets, priests, kings and a Christ. United in God the Word before we’d begun to string words together.

Unity as a given. Perhaps that’s what’s behind the archbishop’s being able, cheerfully, to say: “I’m blessed. I’m the luckiest man in the Province!”

I’ll post a link to the Archbishop’s address if and when it becomes available here

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MERYL STREEP is an outstanding actor so The Iron Lady was, for that reason alone, a film I wanted to see. How now to set about an attempt at review? I knew at the outset that I’d be hard-put to describe the experience, and experience The Iron Lady most assuredly was. A maelstrom of emotions shook me out of the world of today so that I thought I’d done 10 rounds in a boxing ring by the end. Ms Streep, who has said I wanted to locate the human being inside those caricatures (of Lady Thatcher), is way way beyond outstanding here, and Jim Broadbent’s empathy extraordinary.

The (gorgeous) Alexandra Roach, playing the young Margaret Roberts, immediately located the human being in me. I wholly understood the ambition to “do something” that burned in the young Margaret, raised and inspired by her staunchly certain and well-meaning grocer father and Conservative Mayor of Grantham, Alfred.  I don’t understand however how anyone, male or female, of whatever political persuasion, is ever persuaded to take on the office of British Prime Minister. The personal cost involved, it seems to me, is beyond all telling, and in saying so I mean to assert no trite judgment, one way or the other, on prime ministerial leadership in what were tumultuous times. I hope that there are genuinely happy and “good times” for all holders of high office.

But the human stories of the time, right up to the present day, are the real power in this film – amongst these the miners’ strike, the Falklands War, the assassination of Airey Neave, the Brighton bombing, the jobless, the homeless, the good, the sad and the bad. And there must be a thousand parables contained therein. Perhaps in time, and with further reflection, the parables will unravel themselves further. But truth to tell I cannot attempt a review at this time beyond admitting that, thinking I was going to burst as I left the cinema, my wife and I headed quickly and quietly for the car and, once safely inside, cried like two small children overwhelmed by huge experience. Cried for countless thousands of lives, the lives of ordinary citizens, hard working, well-meaning people amongst them. Cried for “demented power” gone mad (wheresoever it does). And cried and cried for the heart-searing pathos of a lonely, fearful, haunted old lady who struggles to stay “upright” without the sustenance and support of a one-time certain Rock, peering at times into the abyss. Life is absolutely tough at times. Leadership amongst the human race is costly, demanding and often thankless. And life’s toughness sometimes clobbers leaders just as surely as the rest of us.

We all need to learn the language of compassion, and live accordingly, for we human beings, towering former prime ministers included, are made of flesh and not of iron.

]]> http://simonmarsh.org/2012/01/17/made-of-iron/feed/ 2 simonrobert the-iron-lady-630x430 alexandra-roach-934689071 http://simonmarsh.org/2012/01/16/master-of-arts/ http://simonmarsh.org/2012/01/16/master-of-arts/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:24:29 +0000 Simon Marsh http://simonmarsh.org/?p=6671 Continue reading →]]>

~

SOME DAY when I’ve a bit more time to play with I’m going to have a go at this! I find the talent and creativity in this young artist deeply moving and inspiring. I’ve been wondering whether I can call the practice of his art “prayer” and have concluded, at least, that I want to. This young fellow is quite obviously “in touch” with something, some “one” much larger than himself. Skill and space and place. Grace. He’s inspirited. I’m inspired.

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