Confronting Countered Truths

Ms Trollsmiter was on her way home from her regular Friday protest slot outside Liverpool Street Station yesterday and at Harrow Station got into quite an altercation with a gentleman who took exception to her climate-change placard. To quote her:

His first sentence was: “You don’t believe in that, do you?” Pointing accusingly at my poster.

“Dude.” I gave him a prolonged look. “I am really tired and I have no interest in being in an argument with you right now. Come back some other day.”

“But you carry that poster, DON'T YOU? And you don’t believe in that, DO YOU?”

The brawliness was still somewhat tempered for about 2-3 minutes in which I tested his claim that the planet has gone through temperature changes before by asking him if he knew ‘why’ the planet had gone through these changes in the past, which he, naturally, didn’t … there was a point during the brawl when he started citing my poster loudly: ‘You’re a SCAREMONGERER!’ Now, at THIS glorious point, I was the LAST-PERSON-EVER-to-stop-him, because he was literally making every single person on the platform want to know what was on my poster …

You may recall my only encounter with a climate-change sceptic was more polite and centred on his bizarre assertion that carbon dioxide isn’t a greenhouse gas, a position which I suppose might be true but, if so, would demand the overturning of quite a lot of science; however, the conversation finished with the same assertion of irresponsibility on my part. I wonder whether all such meetings follow the same trajectory.

Of course we had the same thing from POTUS at the Davos summit a few days ago. It would be a waste of time to pick apart Mr Trump’s assault on ‘prophets of doom … alarmists’ and ‘fortune tellers’; but I have heard similar sorts of sentiments even from people who say they accept the scientific consensus, let alone those who don’t want to think about it. The conclusion you have to draw is that the motivation for this comes from somewhere other than the evidence; its source is, I suspect, not even primarily self-interest, but a facet of individual psychology which no amount of argument is going to shift. I mean, as a Christian priest I am used to dealing with apocalyptic and am very much aware of all the sorry souls who down the centuries have concluded that the End is Nigh based on the interpretation of ancient texts and current political events; but what we are facing presently is not that, it’s the result of decades of measurement across a variety of scientific sub-disciplines which all appear to point in exactly the same direction. For the record, I don’t yet think this is The End, as there are elements of the picture in the Book of Revelation which don’t seem present. It might not be the preliminary to Judgement Day, but merely to an unprecedentedly disruptive and damaging episode in human history involving the deaths of untold millions of people and the breakdown of our current civilisation, no worse than that. No biggie.

Given there is a persistent human constituency inclining towards ‘irrational scepticism’, perhaps we ought to be grateful that Mr Trump is there to articulate it so thoroughly: it shows it vividly for what it is, and as a result might dislodge some of the waverers and float them in the direction of reason. Others will find their attitudes confirmed. I suspect they will not number many in this country, but any at all challenge the belief most of us dreadful liberals have most of the time, that reason counts for a great deal in human affairs.

To Tintinnabulate or Not

So far nobody has asked me that we ring the church bell at Swanvale Halt on January 31st to celebrate the UK's departure from the European Union. I wonder how well the campaign to make this happen across the land is doing more generally. I see that the bit of www.Leave.eu that refers to it has, since I last visited, removed some insulting references to the Archbishop of Canterbury (who, God knows, many of us have some frustrations with), but there are still all the purported parallels with World War Two, despite many Leavers trying to tell us that nobody ever, ever draws on that rhetoric and to say that folk do is a Remainer smear. Ah well, that's by the by really.

When new bells are installed in churches they are, traditionally, not just blessed as any other bit of kit might be but hallowed in a ceremony referred to as Baptism, which suggests that there is something special about them which doesn't apply to statues, altar hangings, candlesticks, or anything else you might find around a church. I suspect this is because bells speak and therefore have a life about them which other inanimate objects don't no matter what holy uses to which they might be put. And what do they speak? In a way they are the voice of God. They summon, they proclaim, they announce his joy and his sorrow. They do not vocalise what we feel, but what he does, and our task is to align our wills with his. That means we ought to be very careful about how we use them. I genuinely do not presume to know what the Lord's opinion might be of the forthcoming shift in the international status of the United Kingdom, and so I will not try to speak for him.

Swanvale Halt only has one bell anyway. If anyone has a million quid or more down the back of the sofa to construct a bell tower it would be splendid to have a few more!

Putting Clergy in their Place at Shamley Green

In rather a companion piece to the last post, my travels a couple of weeks ago took me to Shamley Green to inspect Christ Church, a church which was built on land donated by the uncle of its first incumbent, appointed in 1881. Those were the days in the Church of England. Architecturally and liturgically Christ Church is a modest place, advancing in a moderately Catholic direction over a long while: its Lady Chapel was created out of the south aisle (the usual pattern) in the late 1940s, a modern statue of the BVM arrived in 1958, and the aumbry wasn't installed until 1994. However the great treasures of this little building are the reredos and eastern wall paintings, designed by a pair of sister artists, Mary and Eleanor Dacres, in the 1870s and 1890s. They aren't works of wondrous quality, but have a charm. 

The parish history contains short pen-portraits of previous incumbents, and among them are quite the frankest statements I have ever read in texts of the kind. The hapless Mr Alexander who was vicar in the 1940s is described as 'well-meaning but inept ... He had the ability to get people's backs up without meaning to, a process to which his wife unfortunately often contributed'. Makes you wonder what they'll say about you when you're gone.

Des Res

Back in the ancient, far-off days before I came to Swanvale Halt, I applied for the incumbency of Aybourne, a living with a former vicarage which was so colossal it now houses an entire junior school. The existing parsonage house was substantial enough, but it didn't tempt me (it didn't help that the previous vicar had given his dogs free run of the first floor and it wasn't quite clear what would be done to make good the damage). Aybourne, though, is not the only Surrey church whose priest used to live in some style. 

A couple of weeks ago I visited the church at Ewhurst whose incumbent lives in a nice post-WW2 house. I complimented the nice arched window lighting the stairs landing to be told that they'd had to have a blind put over it as otherwise from the churchyard you could see straight into the upstairs loo. The rectory replaced what is now the Old Rectory, a care home and which, when first built in 1874, looked like this:

In fact the Old Rectory has been expanded a bit to suit its current role, but it's pretty substantial. However, the 1874 building replaced an earlier one which, when I saw a print of it in the church history booklet, positively made me gulp:

What on earth inspired the Revd C.A. Steuart to have a slightly humbler version of Strawberry Hill constructed at Ewhurst we don't know, but its tragic demolition was blamed on its 'dilapidated and unsafe' condition - surely an excuse for his successor who for some unaccountable reason scorned living in a set from a Gothic novel.

Tailoring Tale

My cassocks have served me well, really. I had them made while I was at theological college so they have lasted the better part of seventeen years before the cuffs have started to look a bit worn. To be fair, I look a bit worn after seventeen years too, but I can do something about the cassocks.

Mr Taylor (appropriately enough) made my cassocks. He used to have a shop on the Cowley Road in Oxford which was convenient both for him and the theological students who found their way there, but a few years ago he decamped some distance away to Eynsham Sawmill. 'I hoped that things would get a bit quieter, but they haven't,' he told me, which is a surprise considering that students can no longer literally walk across the road from where they live to buy clerical shirts, collars and stoles. 

The nearest railway station to Eynsham Sawmill is Hanborough, about a mile and a half away. Miss T lives nearby and gave me a lift from the station before we went for a coffee, so I outsourced some of my carbon emissions. Mr Taylor has recreated his shop within the smaller and somewhat rougher surroundings of the sawmill outbuildings, though I didn't spot the antique till he used to use in picturesque fashion. 'It'll be a while before I can get the work done,' he apologised, blaming the company that usually supplies his Russell Cord for dragging its feet. 'They did a load before Christmas but then mucked up the dyeing'. 

Miss T realised that she knows one of the other businesses working out of the mill. Corset-maker Julia runs Sew Curvy, a couple of units down. Apparently Mr Taylor occasionally gives her offcuts of dramatic ecclesiastical fabric to be turned into very upmarket underthings.

I made sure we went through the right door.

It's That Time Again

When the next Archdeacon's Visitation takes place, I warned the PCC, we will be expected to have a new Mission Action Plan in place with all our aims and objectives related to the diocesan Twelve Transformation Goals, so we may as well begin. These days I am less convinced that the whole Mission Planning process is a way of galvanising the life of a church community, but it still makes sense to bring laypeople on board with what has to be done - if only so that the workload can be better shared. The resulting PCC meeting - where we were just trying to add definite ideas to the broad themes we'd already identified - went on a bit, but it was surprisingly positive and productive. Perhaps after five years of thinking intentionally about the future, people are actually getting a taste for it!

I intended to get the whiteboard for this brainstorming exercise but that was behind a screen in the hall, the hall being occupied by the prisoners of Slimming World, so I reverted to a lower-tech alternative. The chalk, though, was the stuff I'd blessed for Epiphany, so that must have added divine approval. 

Snakes and Ladders

Professor Abacus will be pleased that for once I have taken up one of his suggestions and bought the ladder that he recommended to me a couple of years ago. It's a tall, splayed-legged tripod ladder in aluminium, designed in Japan but imported, funnily enough, by a company in Shaftesbury. And I must say it is a delight, allowing me safely to butcher plants on a higher level than ever before. I took down a gigantic limb, which was threatening my neighbours' gardens, from the hazel you can see in this photo, and the rampaging bay has had reason to regret the purchase, too. 

St John Climacus saw the spiritual life in terms of a ladder: The Ladder of Divine Ascent was his masterwork, hence his Latin nickname. I haven't read it, so I don't know whether he includes the possibility that you might descend the ladder as well as fall off it entirely, his main concern. 

This morning I went to see Lillian, our former Lay Reader and now exercising other responsibilities including being a spiritual director. She has a depressive tendency and said that at the moment 'I go to bed rather hoping I won't wake up again'. 'I can tell you', she went on 'because I know you won't just tell me to cheer up.' Indeed I won't, because I have been feeling similar things. I wondered whether I could blame particular tasks of the day for thinking 'Oh no' the moment I woke up, but it didn't seem to dissipate once those tasks were done. Instead it seemed to be another of my periodic cloudbanks of misery and I know there's not much I can do to disperse it: I can only hope and pray that it doesn't interfere with work too much. I think I am emerging from this particular episode: certainly this morning there was a moment where, just after my absolutely lowest trough, a switch seemed to be thrown. My experience is often as sudden as that. What follows is not joy, but at least a change of direction, getting to the bottom of the snake, as it were.

This morning the switch was partly the dawning thought that some of my akedia might relate to the strange sense of living a kind of afterlife which has come on turning 50, as though I really shouldn't be here, and an accompanying purging of certain comforting habits of mind. Perhaps, I thought, this is a further bit of detachment that God is working in me (St John Climacus would approve that idea), and once it is done I will be able to understand those who are going through the same sort of withdrawal better. Then on the BBC website I happened to read about Hevrin Khalaf, a Future Syria Party activist who was butchered in the Autumn by a Turkish-backed militia. I was struck by this young woman's dogged work for a free, non-sectarian future for her country in contrast to my own exhaustion at my not-very-demanding duties. If she could carry on until they shot her, I thought, I probably can as well. 

Lillian and I agreed that being convinced of the purpose of what you're doing is helpful in avoiding akedia. The trouble is that it requires a sort of blinkeredness which in other circumstances can be a very damaging trait but which does allow those who have it to persist undaunted against adversity and actually achieve things, and possessing it is a matter of personality rather than choice.