Babygoth

And on the train heading up to Waterloo there was a family seated behind me all the way from Swanvale Halt. Included was a young girl all of 13 in eyeliner, big boots, gappy black and purple leggings and a black crushed velvet skirt,who sat reading a book whose title I couldn't see but was all black with a skull-and-crossbones on the cover. She did my old heart good, could she but have known. If only I'd been able to say some encouraging words.

A Tale of Two Libraries

Yesterday and today I was in the shocking and unprecedented position (since leaving college) of being able to go to libraries two days running. Yesterday it was scooting off to Oxford to visit the Bodleian and look up the recent volumes of the English Place-Name Society. I found myself in the same position as when I did this last year, that of being unable to remember which ones I'd looked at and which had been published since. However the question was rendered irrelevant by the discovery of the last volume of The Place Names of Dorset,whose previous section had emerged in 1989!

Now it is a rare day indeed that a previously-unknown holy well comes to light, and previously-unknown saint's wells whose names are recorded in the Middle Ages appear as often as the pheonix. Yet this book had one: in the obscure parish of Burstock (I can't even remember what the church looks like, yet I must have been there) in a 13th century document there appears the fontem s'cti Dunstani de Herstonehegh, the Well of St Dunstan at Hursey (as the hamlet now is). It's horribly geekish, and a horribly outré form of geekery, to get excited about this, but I did. It's a very odd well, though. 'Dunstan' appears to be the name of a local family in medieval Hursey, but how the well and the people are related is anything but clear. If the family are prior, why would they have 'sponsored' a holy well? If the well came first, how did they take their name from it?

Then today I was at Lambeth Palace Library looking at the remainder of the papers of Reginald Somerset Ward, the great Anglican spiritual director (to Michael Ramsey, Evelyn Underhill and other luminaries as well as hundreds of lesser figures), in whom I have an interest. That was quite fun too. RSW's writings are often a bit austere but there is a great sense of the living Spirit in them and I never fail but feel refreshed by reading them. Part of the reason RSW seems so stern to modern audiences (in so far as anyone knows him at all) is because of this picture which appears on the front cover of the little book compiled in his memory by his friend Edmund Morgan, the Bishop of Truro:

In the files I came across another photo, very obviously taken on the same occasion as this one, in which the great man has managed to forget to look like a grumpy old git and actually has a bit of a smile. A revelation, in its way, as momentous as a new holy well in my home county.

Looking Back

Before Easter I was in a bad state of mind, waiting for news from the authorities about our refurbishment of the church. Things were already improving as my mum asked me the very sensible question, 'What's the worst that can happen?' and the answer - we'll have to put the church back together again, and abandon all our plans - was bad, but not un-cope-able with. It got my mind back onto something like stable footing. Since the Faculty arrived there has been another nailbiting delay as the electrical side of the work, which is the first stage after the clearing of the pews, can't begin until early May. THAT means the fifth anniversary concert of the local music club which uses the church will have to be moved to the secondary school, and we'll lose a round of very lucrative music exams which we normally host - hopefully we'll be able to find them an alternative venue and they'll be back. That was all it took to plunge me, very briefly, into an extremely bad frame of mind. Strangely it only lasted a few hours, especially as it coincided with discovering that somebody I hoped was rather interested in me isn't (that's something that happens with dull regularity too - there's sense in priests either being married or celibate).

I have a very good friend who I can go and talk to about psychological issues and she thinks my difficulties are due to low self-esteem. I'm not sure about this as naturally I imagine I'm strictly realistic! However it would help to reflect on the things I have coped with to decrease my assumption that the situations I get involved with are as threatening as I seem to think, and to challenge the leap I usually make to the most extreme reaction to what are fairly normal stresses.

Whatever the truth of that, one of the consoling, and anchoring, thoughts has been to relate what I've been going through to the Cross, a sensible reflection given that it was all happening over Holy Week and Easter. Our own small sacrifices and mortifications are reflected in the great sacrifice of Good Friday and, just as that was utterly transformed by the great working of God into triumph and transcendence, so our lesser deaths can, if we nail them to the Cross and put them into the Tomb with Jesus, be the points of takeoff for new insights and change. Nothing comes to life except first it dies. I have never felt my weakness as I have done over the last few weeks, but God became weak so that our infirmities might be carried up and made the means of victory. I believe there is a reason why someone of my inadequacies and inabilities has been placed in this impossible vocation. I am not sure yet what it is, and may not be for years, but even if, if, the Church made in human terms a mistake ordaining me, God will still take the offering and work with it. And so I have to pray, always, and learn to be thankful for my mortification, because if I do not discover how to die joyfully I will not be able to live as I should.

An Unusual Request

Some weeks ago I was visiting the greengrocer's in Hornington when I met the gentleman who's opened the new fish shop on the other side of the road: he's a West Indian from a Methodist background. He asked whether I would bless the shop and so yesterday, having gained the permission of His Grace the Rector of Hornington, I did so. The owner was there, a friend of his, and, as I discovered when I looked round, three members of my congregation who turned up after the Walk of Witness, and a bemused customer.

Mr Fish Shop insisted I have a gift in thanks, which was a bit of swordfish he prepared with lemon juice and herby marinade ('Salt it for half an hour, cover it and cook it in the oven for 20 minutes and have it with some mash, that's all you need'), and some dressed crab from Cornwall. He also gave me £20 for the church - 'I had prayers said in my old shop elsewhere and promised to give something to the church but never did, so this is paying ma debts'.

The swordfish was lovely.

Witness

In previous years I've had a bit of trouble with the ecumenical Good Friday Walk of Witness through Hornington. Last year it was my own turn to lead it and we walked in silence which improved matters hugely; this year was OK and in fact rather more people attended than has been the case for a while, and we got a lot of not-hostile attention along the High Street. As we came up Bridge Street the gentleman who does most of the organising and always leads with a remarkable portable amplifier strapped to his chest for the assistance of whichever clergyperson is presiding, started up a particularly sugary and repetitious Taizé chant which, combined with my overall mental state and the especially voluble Baptist directly behind me who wouldn't shut up, almost made me give up and leave. But the music soon shifted to something more appropriate and I stayed.

However I pondered the significance of what we're doing. Christians insist on publicly remembering a single, immensely violent event on a sunny Bank Holiday when everyone else is enjoying themselves; certainly most of my friends, to judge by Facebook which is the measure of all things, were doing and describing a variety of lighthearted activities while I was deliberately and voluntarily turning my mind to pain and horror.

The relationship between these different modes of feeling and thinking is complex. Our natural human tendency is to avoid the painful and problematic, quite understandably and rightly, and yet our understanding of who we are, what we are capable of, and what life can include, is superficial and incomplete if we spend all our time avoiding such dark elements of our common experience - and perhaps that even encourages us to avoid those who suffer, or misjudge them. As always, in my opinion the Church has down the centuries got this wrong: but I think, by contrast with the heathen world growing up around it, the truth and rightness of the sacrifice of Christ is becoming clearer than ever.

A Piece of Paper

It's Easter Eve, and the faculty arrived today. I was warned that there were 'conditions', which turned out to be: That the Diocesan Advisory Committee should approve the final design of the flooring in the church (which they already have); and That if the stackable benches are not in use they should be put in a place where they are not obtrusive. All I will say about that is '!'

I will analyse all my feelings (doubtless obsessively) after Easter but, after a while as my reactions are usually delayed, it improved my mood quite beyond measure. One big push, and Easter will be complete.

Road to Calvary

People have been rather concerned about my last post. So was I, really. There's no need for any immediate worry, but it is a dire time: I'm not a depressive, I always desribe myself as a Melancholic because I've never been put out of action by sorrow as true depressives are. And Melancholy isn't always a negative thing. Nevertheless there is a long-term issue in that I am fundamentally an introvert doing a job which demands extroversion, and that will not go away: most of the time I'll be able to manage, but occasionally the contradiction will inevitably get the better of me. The current problem isn't that, it's the acute one of waiting for the faculty to be approved, and not knowing when that will be or what impact the delay will continue to have on the life of the church. Any more weddings or events to screw up? Or will the delay go on so long that our original quotations expire and we won't be able to afford increased costs? Every day at least ten people ask me 'Anything happened?' and I have to give the same answers.

Some time in the night I woke up crying having dreamt that the Chancellor rejected our faculty, not for any legal technicality which could be quickly corrected, but because he didn't approve of the whole scheme. The dark, dog hours are no time for clear thinking but I was doing some distinctly unclear thinking at that point. Having got up properly, I didn't really calm down for an hour; my usual prayer time reminded me of Christ's journey to Calvary which he undergoes this week, and how our own trials are taken up within his, and also of the fine people of Swanvale Halt church and how my job is somehow to take them through problems, not run away from them as I am tempted to do. Presiding at the Mass also settled me this morning - strange how sometimes you preach to yourself as much as anyone else.

Today's acute problem was probably caused by Tuesday being the day I call the Registry to see whether they've heard from the Chancellor. He has returned the paperwork, but they haven't had a judgement which usually arrives by email. That's a better answer than I feared, but still leaves the conclusion horribly open.