Prayer, Perhaps

You might have thought it was a simple matter to get Christians together to pray. Our Church Development Plan envisages doing that - deliberately and consciously to seek the will of God for Swanvale Halt church rather than launching initiatives which might be costly in time, money and human resources, yet not what the Lord was really after at all. Yet it hasn't proved easy at all. Giselle the Lay Reader was the one tasked with this but when she gathered a group of likely souls to see what they thought found them more willing to revive something we used to have, an ecumenical prayer group to concentrate on the needs of our local community - a worthwhile thing in its own right, but not what I had in mind. We thought, well, perhaps this is also a movement of the Spirit, so Giselle set up a session - but nobody could make it. OK, I concluded, I will just pick a couple of times, half an hour before Morning Prayer one day and before Evening Prayer another, get Jesus out of the aumbry (in the form of a consecrated Host in the monstrance) and onto the Lady Chapel altar, and sit there and see who comes. And last Monday there were five of us which I consider not bad. 

I asked whether people had any impressions they might want to share with me. Matthew had a reflection on open and closed doors, Giselle asked 'what is the congregation hungry for?' and seems to have developed an unexpected interest in the iconography of dragons, and Estelle was 'just thankful to be there' as she usually is. Fr Donald the retired hospital chaplain mused on the salutary effect of encountering Christ in the Sacrament and thereby accustoming ourselves to listen to one another as well as to Him, and how our society might be improved if its leaders did more of it, like Harold MacMillan popping into the Westminster house of the Society of St John the Evangelist to pray when he got the chance. He may well have a point.

Abbotsbury in April

St Catherine's Chapel at Abbotsbury seems different on every visit. The weather is an aspect of that: on this occasion (Bank Holiday Monday) it was bright, but not especially warm. Lots of people were about, and a couple of children stumbled in while I was in the middle of the Office Hymn. As I left I could hear them trying out the famous acoustic: perhaps they wouldn't have, had they not heard me. The other changing aspect is the prayers people leave in the wall niches. There were two little stones decorated with Ukraine hearts, a range of love tokens ('we were engaged here 14.2.2022'), prayers of remembrance, and some heartache: 'I wish I had a child', read one. Although none of the prayers address St Catherine by name at the moment (that has been a trend in the past, but I've not observed it for some time), one either unwittingly or by design picked up on the traditional use of the chapel: 'Dear God/Universe, whatever. Please can I meet my love. I think I'm ready now.'

War Scenes

By the time I got to the ecumenical Prayer Breakfast at the Baptist Church in Hornington on Saturday, breakfast was over and prayer had long since begun. Naturally there was only one subject on people’s minds and Patrick, the retired Baptist minister leading the reflections, did a sound job bringing out the ramifications of events in Ukraine and the world’s response to them, including the effects on the poor both in Russia and here as sanctions cut in and prices rise. Yesterday I was in school to do assembly with the year 1s, and decided not to talk about war but about Lent: but Alison the headteacher told me the diocese had already sent through a bundle of resources about ‘how to talk to children about war’, not inappropriately as there is one child in the school of Ukrainian extraction.

I doubt the diocesan material includes anything on ‘how to talk to children about the potential end of civilisation’, but my prayers at the moment focus on the war not escalating beyond poor Ukraine. I’m a little calmer about this than I was since reading up a bit about what the situation actually is in respect of the global stock of nuclear weapons, and observing how moderate the Americans are being, but still think there’s a fair chance none of us will make it as far as Easter. It’s not just Mr Putin whose mind seems full of illusions: tyrants rarely fall in single, catastrophic events, tyrannical political systems even less often, but our liberal media love the idea that massive demonstrations will storm the palace and pluck the despot from his throne, or ill-conceived foreign adventures lead to his downfall as plucky small nations defy him. It’s the story they always tell, and it’s fanciful. Hope isn’t a strategy.

Cylene the Goth got in touch to ask how they should address St Olga: I boggled a bit as they’re a pagan. They were treating St Olga of Kyiv in the way they would a pagan deity, gathering things that the entity might like as an offering. ‘I’ve got blue and yellow candles for the Ukrainian flag’, Cylene said: ‘Should I offer vodka, or mead? What would have been around in her time?’ we had an interesting discussion about how the invocation of saints in the Christian tradition differed from pagan approaches. I was quite moved that Cylene even thought of it.

Father Jeffrey of the Roman parish offered the ministers a Shrove Tuesday lunch, and once we were safely through a discussion of clerical shirts and the game casserole I raised the topic of the war. How were my colleagues assimilating all this? Alan from the United Reformed Church admitted that he was so unsettled he was procrastinating about almost everything he had to do ‘because part of me thinks there’s a 5% chance none of us will be alive by Sunday’. Marlene from Tophill just felt fazed and anxious. Jeffrey got us back on a spiritual level by reminding us of the traditional triad of spiritual weaponry we emphasise in Lent – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We may feel powerless, but we are not: these things are ammunition in the Lord’s hands and, while they may not affect the surface of things, they operate against the deep roots of evil which causes so much pain in our world. I found that very helpful.

Finally Gisele, our new Lay Reader who has shifted her allegiance from Tophill, alerted me to the Diocese in Europe’s call for churches to pray about the war at 6pm this evening. A late email rounded up a dozen souls who sat in an intense silence in front of the blessed sacrament. Several of us had Russian or Ukrainian connections and Sylv our Pastoral Assistant brought in some photographs from the Ukraine gathered by her husband who worked there in the 1990s. I even mentioned St Olga in the summing-up: I hope she, and the angels, heard. Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.

Thanksgiving Day

My joke has always been that Hornington is a bit like Trumpton and it felt particularly Trumpton-like on Monday as I took part in a thanksgiving service for NHS and social care workers, myself and Jack the Salvation Army bugler moving backward and forward in and out of the Market House in the town centre like the figures on the Trumpton Town Hall clock. Telling the time, never too quickly, never too slowly.

I found it quite hard to put together the prayers. The NHS is a human institution and much as we in the UK load on it the ideals of charity and self-sacrifice we tell ourselves we believe in, it's nothing more than that. My family and friends of mine have suffered from mistakes it has made, structural shortcomings that have nothing essentially to do with resources, and, though I shudder at the resentment Jasper expresses at the NHS and all its works, you don't have to be a hardline anti-vaxxer to find some of its pro-vaccine propaganda a bit awkward and weird and wonder at how much it cost. 

There was recommended CofE liturgical material available for the day, but meek endorsement of whatever middle-of-the-road majority opinion is at the time is standard CofE practice so I didn't feel completely comfortable with it. I ended up focusing very much on the people who work in the NHS (and other care settings) with a single line referring to the 'vision and tenacity' involved in its founding. At least I felt I avoided the idolatry of structures and mainstream beliefs. Next stop the monarchy.

Happy Interruptions

Not for the first time I am going through Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's School for Prayer in the hope that something might go in. The best spiritual writings have qualities of definiteness and simplicity and call me back to sense. As I sit in my living room with the book, I am feeling very spiritual for a change.

The doorbell rings. It's Ken, the churchwarden at an evangelical church not far away who occasionally comes to the Office at Swanvale Halt (in the process wearing down my goodwill a couple of Advents ago, through no fault of his!) and now and again even braves the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He's heard it's my birthday (actually it's a bit early yet) and has brought me a bottle of wine. I put away the bag, and settle down once more with Archbishop Anthony.

Moments later, the bell goes again. This time the postman has brought me a box - another bottle of wine, from Dr Bones as it turns out! She remembers that I am a couple of years her senior. My cellar is restocked with no effort on my part at all. I am no connoisseur, but the combined sweetness and astringency of red wine is a great joy I have come to be thankful for.

These are not interruptions to prayer (or to reading about praying, which is only one step removed) which I can much complain about! In fact as Metropolitan Anthony's words were about gratitude, they seem to become part of the business of spiritual reflection when I come to actually praying. How good people are and how little I deserve it: if I can manage to pray for as much as a minute with any sense of God's presence it's a minor miracle, and these expressions of mindful kindness are small miracles too, tiny reflections of the divine grace which surrounds us and pours endlessly on us. How blessed my life has been to be touched by such mercies.

Noises Off

Finally we got around to trialling Taketime, the Ignatian meditation technique we learned about back in July. Thirteen of us (a coven's worth, yes) gathered on Sunday evening in a circle of chairs and thought ourselves into the story of Jesus calling the first disciples. I got some of the order wrong through misinterpreting the handouts from our training session, but it was fine and various attenders found themselves getting something valuable out of it.

It surprised me that our old church walls are so ineffective at keeping out what you might call non-diegetic noise. A group was setting up for a meal in the church hall and we could just about hear the odd clatter and instruction, but a little more disruptive were the sounds from the street. 'It wouldn't have been completely quiet at the Sea of Galilee', offered Marion, but we agreed that whatever noise they might have experienced, repeated car horns wouldn't have been part of it.

Mind you, it could have been worse. I had to burn a CD of relaxing classical music and only having done so realised that for some reason my program had done another copy of the previous one I made, a compilation of driving music including contributions from the Dresden Dolls, the Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, Chelsea Wolfe and the Accordion Death Squad. Few people, even me, would probably find that combination particularly relaxing.

Dorset in July

Green and lovely Dorset is parched in the heatwave, but is still glorious. I spent Tuesday of my week off looking for holy wells, and had a trip out with my mum this morning.

At Stoke Abbott they'd just had the Street Fair which not all the inhabitants regard with unmixed delight as, one local told me, 'the main road is closed off and strangers come and traipse through your garden'. Someone decided it would be appropriate to 'bless' the spring-fed water-trough in the village centre as some souls believe it's a holy well, which it isn't. No official of any religious tradition, Christian, pagan or otherwise, took part, but I found bunches of flowers floating in the water which is apparently what 'blessing a well' means. 

Of course I took in a trip to St Catherine's Chapel at Abbotsbury, toiled up the hill - now yellow with lack of rain - and sang the office hymn to the blessed Martyr. Sweat ran off me. The doves - many fewer than last year - watched me quizzically and a group of tourists waited outside until I'd finished! The votive deposit remains, including, this time, a prayer headed 'Dearest St Catherine'. There was another for a daughter about to have a baby - also Catherine. 

The iconic Colmer's Hill, which dominates the landscape around Bridport, stood out beyond Symondsbury village.

The most beautiful manor house in the county, Waddon House, looks simply amazing against the impossible blue sky.

Mum decided she wanted to go to Sturminster Newton today, a place neither of us has visited for years. The Museum is closed at the moment, but the roof is being thatched:

The parish church boasts some very good stained glass including this somewhat odd effort by the great Harry Clarke. I was gratified that I recognised it as one of his! Apparently nobody knows why he (a Roman Catholic) was given the commission:

In the much more standard window showing the Crucifixion, the artist - a Mr Webb - has signed the design not with a signature but with a rebus:

At first Mum was disappointed by "Stur'" which she remembered as a bustling market town where her own dad, my Grandad, used to attend the cattle fair (that was probably in the 1950s), but although there is a closed bank and pub along the main street which look a bit forlorn, it still has a greengrocer, butcher, hardware store, library, Post Office, a big Co-Op, and a flourishing farmers' market on a Saturday, as well as the now-ubiquitous small clothing, trinket and what-have-you shops, so this is probably all a small town now needs. On Tuesday I'd driven through Beaminster, and remembered a LiberFaciorum conversation with my Goth friend Archangel Janet who, along with her partner, has moved to Glastonbury and who finds the conservative attitudes she's encountering there rather trying: I was surprised as I always thought Glastonbury would be a pretty liberal place considering the people who are attracted there (like her). Beaminster's economy now seems to rely on organic food shops, beauty salons, alternative therapists and, of course, cafés. I even saw a Black Person. How the world changes.

Taketime

We found out about Taketime through our curate Marion who knows the chap who runs it, a Methodist minister based in Reigate. It's a way of using Ignatian meditation to facilitate an encounter with Jesus in the context of prayer. Ignatian meditation involves imagining yourself into Bible stories, either as one of the characters or an observer, and noting your reactions. Taketime's scripted versions of Gospel narratives shape that imaginary work and at the end you usually 'see Jesus coming towards you. He sits beside you and asks you to tell him whatever's on your mind.' Then you spend some time listening to the answer, whatever form it may come in. Sometimes there isn't very much distinct at all, and sometimes there is. Meditative prayer is like that. A full-works session is supposed to take about 90 minutes but as a prison chaplain Revd Clive has done it very effectively with prisoners in as many seconds.

We wondered whether we might introduce something of this sort at Swanvale Halt to take the place of an existing contemplative event which seems to be dribbling to a halt, and preserving the quiet, contemplative element people appear to value; so on Monday I, Marion and Lillian the Lay Reader went to Reigate to take part in a Taketime training day. It would begin with a sample session. 

And the sample session begins with a relaxation exercise. At this sort of point I usually have running through my mind a dreadful story Il Rettore used to delight in telling, of his wife attending a day for clergy spouses in the Exeter diocese: I will merely write the words 'and let those lemons go!' and leave it there. But I dutifully pictured relaxing warmth flowing up through my toes and so on and tried my best not to be resistant.

And then we got into the story: Jesus's encounter with the first disciples and the miraculous catch of fish. I am not that imaginative a soul and struggled to stay focused. 'Listen as Jesus calls you, by name ... And just tell Jesus whatever may be on your mind and in your heart ... and now just listen to his answer to you, however it may come ...' the calming, measured voice of Revd Clive moved through the room. And so I did. It was something personal I was battling with, something I'm not going to share here let alone with anyone else in that room.

I was caught out by getting an answer. Not a picture or a word as such, but an insight which led me to see the issue I was grappling with in a different and more helpful way. Of course if you're not a believer you're free to see it as the subconscious working away at problems unbeknownst to the waking mind. But that's exactly what makes Taketime a fruitful method for working with people with a variety of religious opinions and none. 

I went and had my lunch in the Castle grounds in Reigate, sitting on a baking hot bench and wondering how so many mussel shells got into the grass a couple of yards away. I felt an unfamiliar sense of lightness and liberty. I had gone along to a training day, and would be taking home a new understanding of myself rather than just a folder with some handouts in it, though I would have that too. 

The Stone Bandwagon

A month ago I reported on the decorated stones I'd found at the porch of the church and which turned out to be part of quite a widespread game which is being played across the county and beyond. I thought it was a rather lovely, simple way of brightening the world up a tiny bit. When we met to put together the Family Service order last time one of our number, whose Rainbow troop had joined in by decorating its own stones and hiding them around the area, suggested the church do the same. So I bought a big bag of pebbles from the garden centre and a selection of indelible markers from WHSmith and we gave a stone to everyone as they came into the church on Sunday. When the time came for intercessions everyone marked their stone with a cross or some other symbol (or an appropriate pious sentiment, though it had to be a short one) and they were held up to be blessed before being taken away to be hidden. I was delighted as it ticked all the bishop's boxes - outreach and use of social media in terms of reporting it on the relevant LiberFaciorum page - and mine as it is, in the broadest sense of using physical things to signify spiritual realities, sacramental. Although I forgot to do the final step and take a copy of the photo below to the Clergy Conference this week to add to the collage that was being assembled of all the wacky evangelistic things the parishes are doing. However I never heard anything about said collage so I wonder whether it happened at all. 

There were many more stones than this!

Pro Ceciliae

The feast day of my patron saint is approaching fast, but this period of November furnishes the festivals of a number of others. There is Edmund on the 20th, brave King of East Anglia who ended pincushioned with arrows by the wicked Danes, and gentle Pope Clement on the 23rd, drowned late in the 1st century with an anchor dragging him to the bottom of the Black Sea. And then, yesterday, the 22nd marks the entry into eternity of blessed St Cecilia.

Like Catherine of the Wheel, Cecilia was usually listed as one of the medieval Fourteen Holy Helpers, and appears luminously in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century rood screens in Norfolk. Like Catherine, too, and several other members of the Fourteen - Barbara, George, Christopher, and Margaret of Antioch - notwithstanding her popularity, her cult was suppressed by the Vatican in 1969 and she was expunged from the calendar, at the peak of the Roman Church's embarrassment at the credulous and picturesque pieties of its past. 

This was a shame, not just because it meant losing a branch off the great tree of the Church's devotional heritage but because Cecilia was very useful. In the 16th century she'd become the patron saint of musicians, mainly because of the line from her Acts which became part of the liturgy for her feast day: 'as the organs at her wedding feast were playing, Cecilia sang in her heart to the Lord, saying: May my heart remain unsullied, so that I be not confounded'. Musicians need a saint to pray for them, no matter what her history may or may not have been. Chris, our late organist at Lamford, when the new edition of the Guildford Diocesan Directory arrived in the church office, would never fail to flick through it and fulminate that organists and directors of music weren't included alongside all the pastoral assistants and youth workers and the like. Since then I've always prayed for our church musicians. 

Cecilia is still there in the Anglican calendar, but only as a minor observance, which means she doesn't get a collect of her own. If you observe her feast day you have to use the Common of Martyrs and stick her name in it, which strikes me as a bit stingy. There are collects for Cecilia online, but they seem to have been written by people who don't know the strict haiku-like conventions that govern the structure of collects. So here is mine, compiled from 'other sources'.

Gracious God,
whose blessed martyr Cecilia sang in her heart
to strengthen her witness to you:
grant that we may join with her in Creation's canticle of praise until the last,
and share in the song of those redeemed
by our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns,
one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. 

Dorset St Catherine Places

The first glimpse of my patron saint this Autumn came in Cattistock church. This has a gigantic and sumptuous 19th-century tower decorated with a frieze of saints and, sure enough, there she is, rather a long way up.


Naturally I also made my customary pilgrimage to Abbotsbury. I don't usually approach the village from the west, but this gives a different view of the chapel on the hill, lit by the morning sun a week ago, with Chesil Beach and the great dark mass of Portland behind it:

Most of the prayers left in the chapel at the moment concern departed loved ones. In the photo below you can see a variety of hand-made mementos, or offerings, and also a sort of memorial bottle which has been bought commercially. In one case a group of people had clearly visited the chapel to remember someone on their birthday, with the implication that they do this regularly; another deposit, in memory of a baby, had been gathered together over a number of years and left in the niche on a single occasion. There was one obvious exception to this memorial theme - the line on a piece of paper 'thank you for my transplant', next to a rough sketch of a heart. Nothing was addressed to St Catherine, or obviously Christian, or specifically belonging to any spiritual tradition at all.

From there I went down to the parish church. Somehow I'd never managed to take a photograph of the beautiful Catherine window, which makes her look like a 1930s movie star. I was entranced not only by that, but also the lovely little musical cherubs above her.

There was an upsurge in interest in St Catherine in Abbotsbury around Millennium year when a music festival was held and the Chapel played a crucial role in the branding. At that time a whole set of new kneelers were made for the church by local people, and a cover for the church's piano. Many of these pieces use imagery of Catherine, the wheel, and the chapel, sometimes in a whimsical way.

Now I had forgotten until quite recently that there is a third chapel of St Catherine in Dorset, as well as Abbotsbury's and the one at Milton Abbas. This is St-Catherine's-by-the-Sea, perched on the cliffs at Holworth above Ringstead Bay, and I had been there many, many years ago, yet its existence had completely slipped my mind. On this holiday I parked at the Ringstead Bay car park (£5, ow) and went on what I expected to be a demanding mile-long walk along the cliff path but which turned out to be relatively mild, to find the chapel. Abbotsbury's and Milton Abbas's chapels are of course ancient, but the Holworth one is modern. How it came to be here at all, looking out over the Channel with no more than a scattering of houses nearby, is a tangled story. Holworth was once a far more extensive village, part of the original foundation grant to Milton Abbey by King Athelstan in 933, and seems to have disappeared in the 1400s. This settlement was inland from where the chapel is now. I can't find out how old Holworth House is, but in 1887 it was bought by Revd Robert Linklater, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Stroud Green. Fr Linklater's appointment to Stroud Green had been controversial as he was known to be an advanced Anglo-Catholic and was taking over a church with an Evangelical tradition, but he gradually won his congregation over and had a successful ministry, retiring in 1910 and dying five years later. Holworth was his holiday retreat, and he was clearly fascinated with its history. Even though the area had been united with Owermoigne parish in 1880 (a more practical arrangement than belonging to Milton Abbas, miles away inland) he insisted on sending, so the story goes, an annual basket of prawns to the Vicar of Milton Abbas to recognise the historic connection between the two places. It was Fr Linklater's widow who built St Catherine's-by-the-Sea some time after 1926, setting up a Trust to look after it once she'd sold Holworth House. Of course the dedication makes sense given the chapel at Milton, but perhaps there was also a church dedicated to Catherine at old Holworth: I can't find any proof of that, but will look elsewhere when I get the chance. 

The chapel on the cliffs was made of wood and by 2012 needed complete rebuilding (you can see what it used to look like here). During this work, a broken medieval floor tile was discovered: it had been sent from St Catherine's at Milton Abbas when St Catherine's-by-the-Sea was built to mark the link between them. There it still is, a 'relic', as a label tells you.

Michael Ramsey

Checking, I find that official portrait paintings of recent Archbishops of Canterbury never seem to be that good. David Poole's of Robert Runcie makes him look like a cross between a minor official at the court of the Jade Emperor and a duchess on a commode. William Narraway's of Donald Coggan is at least appropriately dull, while June Mendoza's of George Carey manages to convert his usual expression, rather like someone who's just poured curdled milk in his tea, into something quite benign (I can't tell you what I think about Dr Carey as it's too uncharitable for this blog). These make the recent one of Rowan Williams by Victoria Russell look really very palatable.

My spiritual director has (or had before he retired and moved to his London flat, I can't recall whether I've seen it there) a sketch for George Bruce's portrait of the great Michael Ramsey, and that's not that good either. Ramsey is one of S.D.'s great heroes, and he's one of my 'minor patrons' as well. I'm not quite sure why, apart from his being such an attractive character, the most saintly occupant of the Throne of St Augustine, arguably, for many a century. The painting gives him a weaker character than in fact he had: this man looks so blithe you can't imagine him rocking any kind of boat or being a steadfast defender of one who needed it, whereas, while Ramsey was a gentle man, he was a strong one who was willing to defy nasty newspapers and challenge dictators. What the portrait does capture is his customary and endearing state of ramshackle disshevelment, stole, cope and hair all over the place. Ramsey was not the kind of Anglo-Catholic whose every pleat was a prayer and never made a gesture out of place: he was so clumsy he could barely handle a teacup. As a child he exhibited some very odd behaviour - running around his room hitting the walls being a favourite - and today he would almost certainly have been diagnosed with some dyspraxia-like condition.

I've just finished reading Owen Chadwick's biography of Michael Ramsey, a strangely old-fashioned book considering it was published in 1990, and Chadwick was only 74 at the time. I hadn't realised that Ramsey had been a very strong and political Liberal in his younger days, and had deliberately renounced the idea of a political career - which was offered to him - in favour of being a priest, on the grounds that the Christian life actually presented a greater opportunity for changing human relationships for the better than organised politics did. Something to reflect on as the UK enters another and entirely hopeless general election campaign.

I usually include Michael Ramsey in my prayers on Mondays, asking his intercession that I may keep focused on the things that are important. I need quite a lot of help with that.

An Interlude of Uplift

In the midst of a crazy world, blogs can default to a catalogue of complaints and gripes, and I don't want to give you the impression I am anything other than happy here in the fair parish of Swanvale Halt. I am remarkably blessed in every way you can imagine, thanks to no virtue of my own, and every day begins and ends with gratitude. It's been a long while since any very black moods have swept across me, and I turn my eyes to the hills that lie around the village, and remember from where my help comes. Sometimes happiness, I find, can even edge towards joy.

My New Zealand reader Fr Wellington offers prayers for me with great kindness and grace:

May the church bureaucrats be kind to you.

May the parishioners not desert you

Let the tithes and offerings not tempt to build bigger barns
May the media reports be gracious

May meetings be not too disputatious
Let the SD be perspicacious in his advice to you

And may the Bishop grant you her approbation in all things and leave you in peace.

Amen.

Not much chance of bigger barns being constructed, I must say, but it gives us something to aim at. God bless you, one and all.

(This won't last, of course).  

Documents and Devotions

Driving down to the record office in Dorchester afforded me one new experience: having to pay for my parking space by phone as I forgot to bring any change. 'Download the app', the voice told me. Not on my phone, which still has a black-and-white licence. I was there to cross-check some well references against the Tithe Maps where they were supposed to appear (though curiously, as it turned out, not all did).  The Dorset History Centre now has most of the county's tithe maps copied and freely available, so I was able to whack through the whole process very swiftly and only had to call up one actual document. I now have a slew of 'new' wells to visit when I come actually to begin that process, such as Paddicks Well at Allington and Orchard Well at Bishop's Caundle, probably none of them very spectacular sites but important to check out.

From there I zoomed to Abbotsbury. My last visit in the summer found the village swaddled in mist but yesterday was beautiful with chilly sunshine, filtered through high, filmy cloud. St Catherine's Chapel is now free of its transitory pigeon residents and their attendant aroma, and, true to its word, English Heritage has repaired the west window which makes the building so much lighter and happier. Far from me being the only person who now leaves prayers there, I found two 'votive deposits' in the niches, mostly candles and tealights but one with the unfamiliar accessory of a glass of white wine next to the photo of a loved one. There were a couple of little Christmassy arrangements on the window ledge, and a big lit candle. 

I wasn't sure I would have enough time to take in the chapel before heading back to Bournemouth for tea with my mum, and then home. But while at the record office I stopped for tea and thumbed through the latest edition of Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries which just happened to contain a little article on wishing traditions associated with St Catherine, so that was Definitely A Sign. 

Wanting to be terribly helpful, I tidied up all the spent tealights and broken bits of candle from around the chapel into a paper bag, and sat and ate my sandwich. And then left the bag there. 

All Over Again

Attendance at the indefatigable Crib Service was down a bit this year, although part of that fall may have been due to ‘accounting error’ – two different people doing the counting, one of whom tends to err on the side of generosity, and the other regularly underestimating. The other services were all up a bit, enough for them all to feel upbeat and encouraging rather than threadbare, even the 1662 Prayer Book service this morning at 8am, and a high proportion of the congregations weren't regular members of the church.

Every year I tell myself I need to revise the order for the Midnight Mass, and every year I forget as soon as it’s over: I must do it this year. The benefit of celebrating the mass facing east was revealed at the Midnight as the thurible came open while I was censing the gifts and sprayed ash over everything. The choice was whether to empty everything out and start again, or soldier on and cope – given that time was ticking I picked the latter, and scooped the ash out of the chalice with an extra host. Clearing up, I got to the bottom of the hosts in the ciborium and found a little pile of ash, which having again screwed up my fortitude I ate in case there were fragments of bread in it (rather than go to the palaver of burying it). I’m still here so presumably no harm done. Of course all this was entirely hidden from the congregation and you are not to tell anyone, especially not if they are wearing a pointy hat or a purple shirt.I am filled with gratitude for all the lovely people I am privileged enough to have around, the players who act out the Nativity at the Cribbage with such gentleness and sensitivity (especially when this year a collection of small girls came up impromptu to inspect the baby), and the servers and helpers who make everything work so smoothly despite me mucking it up now and again.

At four-ish, having been to the local lunch for those who would otherwise be alone (I escaped before Citizen Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor's speech), I got down to the church to say Evensong. I sat and prayed through the prayer slips left at the candle stand and the stars written out at the NCT nativity service and the Blue Christmas extravaganza a few days ago. A strangely child-like hand relates a prayer ‘to help me get rid of my fear of death’. Someone else prays for their father with dementia and their mother who cares for him. There are a scattering of memorial prayers for lost loved ones: one says ‘blessed are the broken-hearted, for they will be reunited’. A child I know thanks Mary for having Jesus. And so they go on, all the way through the pile. A few I can’t read at all and just commend them to God. For being able to take part in these prayers, ‘privilege’ is hardly the word. Merry Christmas, one and all.

Grace-Less

We've been looking forward to the ATC Squadron's 75th anniversary for some time. I turned up to the parade in the afternoon to find that I wasn't obliged to do anything at all apart from provide moral support, so that was fine. I didn't even have that many remarks about my responsibility for the weather (it rained before the parade and afterwards, but not during). In passing the chairman then asked whether I'd say a grace at the celebratory meal in the evening: 'it seems right that we should have one', he said.

Now, you'd have thought there was a suitable RAF grace somewhere around that I could use or at least adapt, but a round of mild Googling revealed nothing at all. I did find the blog of a clerical colleague elsewhere with some sound advice on how not to offer grace at a meal; but nothing that was actually helpful. Consequently I felt constrained to make something up, which was something like this:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

God of grace, you ride upon the wings of the wind and make the cloud your chariot; look with tender mercy on all the business of this earth below, on those who serve and those who wait, and on this company gathered here as we mark the history that connects us. In what we share, both the benefits of this food and the fellowship of one another, may we be blessed, and tender to you the joy of gratitude, and the true service of the heart. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

It has a sort of pseudo-Prayer Book rhythm to it which rather pleased me. One can go either minimally religious or very religious indeed and I found myself veering towards the latter but did say to the multitudes that they could give thanks inwardly in whatever way they felt moved. Ms Formerly Aldgate liked it, anyway, though she was drinking her wine quite fast at that stage in the evening.

Rubbing Along

Swanvale Halt parish has a history of involvement with ecumenism, the effort to foster positive relations between Christian denominations. For some years the parish housed the Swanvale Sisters, a group of women dedicated to praying for inter-church unity which had been established by a former deaconess of the Church of South India, and the sisters often came to address the congregation. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of our sharing the church building with the local Roman Catholic congregation who squeeze their Sunday mass in between our two.

A little while ago we hosted the local King’s Church for a couple of events, and out of this came a suggestion to our curate that it might be a good thing to get together to pray for the village and its concerns. And that’s what she’s done. The group has been meeting for a couple of months and last week I went along for the first time.

The composition for that event was four members of local Charismatic congregations, four Anglicans, and one Roman Catholic. The experience is not entirely an uncomplicated one as the Charismatics tend to be vocal in their prayers and the Anglicans tend to incorporate more silence. I can let it wash over me to a certain degree, and doing some thinking about it came to see the sort of torrent of words you get with Charismatic prayer as being in some sense a groping after the same suspension of ego and the seeking of God that absolute silence aims for – a different kind of silence. Not everyone can manage that, though. We’ve had a couple of members of our church who’ve tried this group and have decided not to come back. You have to be very robust and settled in your own prayer life not to be disconcerted by a different style. For me the only very hard moment was when a member of the local Free Evangelical church who our curate didn’t know and who had never been to the group before began praying about the Eastern European care assistants on the staff of a local home where she works – ‘They’re often staunch Roman Catholics, Lord, and we just pray that you will enable them to be released from their darkness’ – unaware there was a Roman Catholic sat yards away from her. There will have to be some ground rules set down (such as no praying against other Christian Churches), and some minimal structure placed on the proceedings so that silent silence doesn’t get squeezed out.

That said, our two lay Anglican attenders were entirely comfortable with the way things went. One, Mary, is a former Companion of the Swanvale Sisters and commented later ‘while I have previously experienced the Charismatic Movement from time to time, nevertheless it was not in conjunction with other Christian Groups, so this is a very unique venture that we’re fostering, and we will stick with it!’ Plus it’s worth remembering what a journey into the unknown our Charismatic colleagues are taking – walking past a statue of the Blessed Virgin with a candle next to it and praying in a chapel beside an altar surrounded by Gothic arches and with the Sacrament reserved in an aumbry in the wall. 

Telling Stories

A while ago I had reason to look up a prayer to St Michael for protection against evil on behalf of a parishioner. There is quite a well-known one from Roman Catholic sources and whose authorship is ascribed to Pope Leo XIII. But it has an interesting story behind it, involving a gradual inflation of the drama allegedly surrounding its composition. Originally it was simply promulgated by the Pope without comment. Then in the 1940s one of Leo’s secretaries claimed the prayer originated from a vision the Pope underwent at Mass one morning, in which the Church’s spiritual enemies were revealed to him. In its most developed form, the story has Leo collapsing, passing out and remaining insensible for days before coming round and revealing the details of his vision. That, of course, is complete fiction.

Then a few days later a former parishioner from Lamford sent me an email. ‘Greetings from the Shrine of Our Lady of Yankalilla!’ he said. Our Lady of where? Yankalilla turns out to be in New South Wales. In 1995 a damp patch mysteriously appeared on the wall of a very unremarkable Anglican church in this unremarkable Australian town, and, with some imagination, you can see how it resembles the traditional pieta image of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus. And so up popped the Shrine – endorsed by the Anglican bishop of The Murray, complete with a holy well and all the accoutrements of an albeit relatively minor sacred place.

In both these examples you can see very old patterns re-emerging, stories escalating and ideas gathering as imagination gets to work and tales get re-told. I can’t exactly forget these patterns as I re-tell the older stories in the Biblical texts, especially to the children at school. We’re careful to couch them in terms of being stories, and even fairly small children are aware that some stories are real and some aren’t. I wonder what exactly they think about the Bible’s, though, and how easily they distinguish between the categories.

Salutary Effects

At Swanvale Halt we have a vestry prayer before the Eucharist begins. It's all very well but a bit unfocused, rather along the lines of 'Oh God you are really lovely, help us to remember that you are really lovely'. Back in the days of the old English Missal the vestry prayer was a means for the priest to make his own confession and be absolved before absolving everyone else, something I rather like as it emphasises our human solidarity in sin and forgiveness, and makes it possible for the laypeople (acting together) to pronounce God's forgiveness over an ordained person. So for Lent I introduced a new prayer including that element along with other very, very trad bits taken from the old pre-service Prayers at the Foot of the Altar.

We've now done this a few times and I wondered how comfortable people really were with it. I wondered how comfortable I was with it, for that matter, and thought perhaps I shouldn't have bothered. Then yesterday morning for the first time Alan, our retired priest, presided, and so he said the confession and was absolved by the rest of us. How moving it was to hear someone, one other person, making an admission of sinfulness and being absolved. If that's how I felt in my agitated state (I am usually far from calm on a Sunday morning a minute or two before Mass), perhaps others felt the same.

Last Things

'Could you come and see my mother?' said the lady on the phone yesterday. 'She's dying and we think she would like to see a vicar.' So I pedalled down to the church, collected the Oil of the Sick and the Blessed Sacrament, and headed off to one of the local nursing homes where I met Ruth, unable to speak and possibly not hearing much either, drifting in and out of sleep. So I did as much of the standard Last Rites as made sense, assured Ruth had been a regular churchgoer in the past, and her daughters seemed to think that would have helped.

My experience of ministering to the dying has been unsatisfactory, really. I don't remember getting any preparation at theological college, and I think Il Rettore at Lambourne assumed I knew what to do, while I assumed I did as well until it became clear that there was an actual form to follow, at least in the old rites. In fact, I've only just become aware that there is a provision in Common Worship that covers the standard Last Rites of Confession, Absolution, Unction and Communion. The trouble is that none of the available rites seem completely satisfactory. The old 1662 Prayer Book order for the Visitation of the Sick has some beautifully moving prayers in it, but also suggests rather too strongly for modern tastes that any given sickness is a distinct expression of God's will. The traditional Roman Rite is better in tone and explicitly includes Unction, of course, but is massively lengthy and has a number of rather bizarre prayers. The Common Worship provision includes all four elements, which is a considerable triumph for Catholicism in the Anglican Church, but its prayers are comparatively watery. So, as so often, I've ended up cobbling together my own version, which is not what you're supposed to do.

Clergy are so rarely now called to somebody in the final stages of life, still less have a chance to minister to a person over the course of an illness, which is what the liturgies anticipate as the standard. This makes it all the more necessary to have some kind of coherent, standard pattern that at least satisfies you so that you can depart from it as circumstances dictate. As even the Rituale Romanum says:

The Church presupposes ideal circumstances, or at least normal ones, as witnessed by the Roman Ritual, for carrying out her many prescriptions with dignity, edification, and effectiveness. Take, for example, the rubrics for processions, for the burial service, for communion brought to the sick, and for the sacrament of anointing of the sick. Yet how often her wishes in these matters are interfered with by enfeebled faith, by adverse conditions of weather, by an urge to rush through everything, or by inadequacies as to place, appurtenances, and participants. This is especially true in the case of conferring the sacrament of Christian consolation to the sick or dying. How often in our day, when negligence or violence or accidents or sudden seizure with fatal illness are by no means the exception, it is impossible to give this sacrament at all, or it is administered only in greatest haste, with curtailment of all but the essential anointing, thereby losing for the recipient as well as the bystanders so much of its signification as the Christ-mystery which heals, soothes, strengthens, purifies, consecrates, and ushers the Christian's soul into the joys of everlasting beatitude.