Half Term Conversations

It has been deathly quiet in Swanvale Halt over the last week. Not only is it half term so as usual everyone who can be absent is, but the heat has ensured that those souls who are around hardly dare stir abroad. Each time I have tried, if I had any choice about it, I regretted it, apart from the Bank Holiday walk around the lake which furnished this nice photo.

Yesterday I tried to visit someone who I haven't seen for ages, and either they weren't in or weren't responding. Returning home my weariness (though I'd gone no further than a quarter of a mile) was interrupted by glancing into the windscreen of the parked truck of a gardening contractor and seeing a tatty Bible on the dashboard. The young fellow concerned appeared around the side. 'Must be an issue for you wearing all black', was his opening gambit - though it's a mild inconvenience compared to doing actual physical work while sweating through a reflective tabard. As one of the sessions at the Clergy Conference had discussed what seems to be a doubling in the purchase of new Bibles in the last five years (outstripping any Harry Potter volumes - The Bible! Less transphobic than JK Rowling!!), I asked him about his. He'd been given it by a customer after admitting he'd been having a hard time lately. 'I'm not much of a reader', he went on, 'but I follow some extracts on my phone and I've been finding it really helpful'.

That evening in my capacity as Bishop's Surrogate for Oaths I was seeing a couple applying for a licence to marry on Saturday having discovered their banns hadn't been read in their home churches; they assumed the church marrying them would arrange it, so it hadn't happened. Still, it's easily sorted out. Not only do they live in different parishes and are marrying in a third, but they actually attend an independent congregation in Guildford, so one might expect a little bit of Biblical literacy. It was decided that the groom would swear the oath, and I handed him a Bible with the customary instruction to take it in his right hand - 'the rule', I said, 'specifies the New Testament but this includes it so that's all right' - he did question how justifiable that was. I said we could deal with the theology on a different occasion if need be (once I'd thought about it). 

Two conversations with laypeople about the Bible must use up at least a season's quota in just one day! 

"Escape to Danger"

Well, if not danger, mild irritation, anyway. At the beginning of the Clergy Conference at Swanwick it is now the custom to ask everyone to stand, and then those whose first conference it is to sit, and so on until the longest-serving (or -suffering) clergyperson is left standing. This year our suffragan bishop had brought along a bar of chocolate which he claimed had been in his fridge for nine years to reward the final upright cleric and it went to Barry who actually retired three years ago and is house-for-duty so had the perfect reason not to be there. Can't he find anything else to do? I forget whether it was my seventh or eighth Conference: they blur. 

I ran away on two occasions, after breakfast on each morning. On Wednesday I went to the convenience store in the village as I was desperate for digestive biscuits, and on Thursday my destination was the same but I wanted a sandwich to take away for lunch as I was anxious to get back to Swanvale Halt for Ascension Day as soon as I could. On the way I spotted what looked like an ornamental drinking fountain in a Classical arch erected to celebrate the Golden Jubilee in 2002, but on inspection it turned out, disappointingly, to be a seat. Or a niche, anyway, with no obvious purpose if it wasn't a seat. I suppose you could put a vase or something in it to mark a notable occasion, but only if you could get through the iron railings surrounding it.

There was mercifully little breaking into small groups during the sessions. There was one occasion during a presentation on statistics about public attitudes to faith when we were encouraged to talk about ways we felt the environment for faith had changed, and I and two colleagues from mainstream moderate evangelical churches were rather taken aback by another gent none of us knew who stated 'As far as I'm concerned the bishops should be repenting for leading the Church into disaster with all this liberal garbage'. There wasn't really a good reply to that as it wasn't really what we were discussing, but in the spirit of engaging with those I disagree with I should have said something like, 'So do you speak to people outside your congregation who tell you that they would come back to church if only the bishops would be tougher on the gays?' but in fact we ended up talking about the Bible as this chap clearly felt he'd succeeded someone who was so liberal they were barely Christian at all and having found a bookcase of Bibles facing the wall his first act as incumbent was to turn them round to face outwards instead. I quite approve of people reading the Bible so that was a point of contact, anyway.

The highlight of the conference wasn't quite my two visits to the corner shop but the short meeting of the SCP chapter we were able to squeeze into Wednesday afternoon between lunch and the afternoon session on Wellbeing. Seven of us gathered in an upper room and had what turned out to be a very pleasant hour in which we heard about a couple of Catholic-side-of-centre churches served by members which had grown very considerably over the last couple of years through nothing more than faithfulness and diligent care of the things of the Spirit. 'A bit of a life saver' said one colleague. 

Parsing Prejudices

People seem to find it quite hard to distinguish between criticism of the actions of the state of Israel and antisemitic comment. I don’t think it’s that difficult. As examples, someone I don’t know directly, but a friend-of-a-friend, not long ago shared two images which I am not going to pass on here, but which illustrate the matter well. The first was a United States flag with the stars replaced by a menorah. The political relationship between the US and Israel and the violence both are willing to engage in is a legitimate issue of concern, certainly if you are an American or an Israeli. But the menorah is a religious symbol; it is a symbol not of Israel the secular state, but of the faith of the Jewish people. The message of that image is not ‘the alliance of the United States and Israel is an unhealthy one with deleterious effects for the world’, but ‘Jews control America’. Antisemitic tick. The second image showed an anonymous figure labelled ‘Jews’ watering a plant, a plant which grows to form a gallows bearing the title ‘Israel’; a noose hangs from the gallows around the figure’s neck. As the gallows-plant grows, the figure will be throttled. Here the intended message is that it’s unwise for Jewish people to connect their sense of self and wellbeing with the political entity that is the state of Israel. That may be debatable, but the image does it by showing a Jew with a noose around his neck. The only way it could be worse would be to present a figure with stereotypical Jewish features rather than something that looks like Morph. Second antisemitic tick. Of course the people who compose and promote these images don’t think they are antisemites; they think they are antiZionists. They think they are people of high principle. They are uncomprehending and angry at any suggestion that these images and the ways of thinking they embody might be questionable.

The ways of thinking they embody. It is not unreasonable to debate the morality of what the state of Israel does, but anyone doing so ought to recognise that, sadly, what it does is not unique. In the Chechen Wars the Russians carpet-bombed Grozny, killed 12,000 people, and replaced them with Russians in the city they built in its place. It’s on a smaller scale than Gaza, but it’s the same thing (the Israelis haven't got to that final stage yet). In terms of sheer numbers, vastly more souls have perished in genocides committed in Africa over the last thirty years, but we largely ignore them because they involve faraway places of which we know little. The only unique aspect to the conflict in what we call the Holy Land – theology aside – is that one party is an ally of this country; that’s a matter for proper criticism, perhaps, but the event is, unfortunately, far from an unprecedented instance of human evildoing. As for comment about what Jews should or should not think about it, or whether they are in some way betraying their own past by support for Israel now – that may be a matter for the Jewish community to debate themselves, but it has zero relevance to anyone else. You have to question why anyone who isn’t a Jew is so very fascinated with what Jews think.

And if, in any way, you are tempted to use an international political situation to ‘contextualise’ the attempted, or actual, murder of British citizens, well, you can’t see what’s in front of you. Context is not required: such an act is wrong, and if your first response to it is ‘Yes, that’s bad, but’, no matter what the ‘but’ is, please think it through again.

Misery Loves

For every expression of Christianity that gives the impression believers ought to be bouncily cheerful at al times and anything else implies you don't Know Jesus at all, there are others stressing the idea that the way of Christ is not a primrose path, nor even a steep and rugged pathway, but a trail of broken glass. For some time the Northumbria Community's Celtic Daily Prayer has formed part of my morning devotions after I was given it by a parishioner, and this month the reflections are taken from Gene Edwards's 1982 book The Inward Journey, an imaginative exploration of the relationship of suffering to transformation within the Christian experience. I have no idea whether the extracts in Celtic Daily Prayer are very representative of what is apparently a book structured around a Pilgrim's Progress-type story, but I moved from responding rather positively to its intention to provide a guide for 'the new Christian' which is not 'inane, useless, traditional, cranial, old, shallow, irrelevant, or carrying within its covers the curse of scholarship' to really gibbing at the constant emphasis on misery.

Each time that sovereign hand of God has fallen on [a new Christian] and he (or she) has truly entered into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, he is always surprised how hard, how unbearable, is the cross. For better or worse at the beginning they did not have the good sense to run out the door.

There is much good sense in what I can read here of this text, maybe enough to seek out a copy for myself. The way of transformation into what God wants us to be surely always involves the surrendering of delusions and illusions, what I describe to the tolerant people of Swanvale Halt church with tedious regularity as the 'white martyrdom' of ordinary Christian experience, as opposed to the 'red martyrdom' of blood which most of us will never come very near. Yet the point of it is not the suffering, but the transformation it brings. When Gene Edwards advises those who bear any sort of authority in the Church to approach their trials with the thought 'to suffer for the Church, to suffer in her place, this is why I was made a minister', there seem to me to be several perils. Certainly St Paul talks about believers rejoicing at being found worthy of participating in the sufferings of Christ, and 'making up whatever is lacking' in them, but that suffering has any kind of value only in so far as it is joined with Christ's - it is, absolutely emphatically, not a ministry in its own right. The Book of Acts describes God telling Ananias how much Paul must 'suffer in my name', but this is something that will befall Paul as a result of the special responsibility he is given, not a reflection of the general condition of all Christian souls or even all those in ministerial roles. 'I could handle all your problems easily' goes on Gene Edwards, 'but I got all the ones I couldn't handle. So did you'. This sounds neat, but what does it mean to be unable to handle something? Is is the point where you break down and stop functioning, or end up in hospital? Or just where you say to God 'I feel out of my depth, please help'? I say that virtually daily.

This may sound ungenerous, but I wonder whether an emphasis on suffering in the Christian life may sometimes come from an awkward awareness that in contrast to many other fellow-humans we aren't suffering very much at all. And I'm not sure the awareness should, in fact, be all that awkward. The Gospel reading on Sunday was from John 10, concluding with Jesus's statement that he, the Good Shepherd, has come so that the sheep 'may have life, and have it abundantly'. Of course, the path of true and abundant life passes inevitably through the shadow of the Cross and we have our own crosses to take up, but it is the life which is the point and the destination, not the shadow, or the rocks.

A Matter of Time

The new-ish contemplative service on the third Sunday evening in the month was over. I've been trying this since September: there are very simple, regular prayers, a reading, and two blocks of music, swirly kaleidoscope patterns projected on the rear wall, a few candles and a bit of smoke, and the Lord joins us in the monstrance. There had been, as usual, a small but appreciative congregation. I was just about to start packing up when Ellie who had attended came back in with the news that 'you've got two more takers who thought it was a 6.30 start'. That turned out to be Malcolm and Dora who are far too regular church members to get something as basic as this wrong. I was very apologetic and in these circumstances you doubt your own self even if you are in the majority. '6 is a bangin' time for me and Katie', Ellie said encouragingly. Once everyone had gone ('Well it's a nice evening for a walk' offered Malcolm) I checked the service register: this service has always been at 6, not 6.30, since I started it. It is fascinating that two people can get this wrong independently. It is the case that evening services at Swanvale Halt are often at 6.30 unless there's a good reason why they shouldn't be (it's a bit early for Compline, for instance) and I suppose in their minds people might group this one with those. I do the same: I still shudder at the memory of the time I turned up late at a service in a neighbouring parish having convinced myself they started at 10.30am, just about on time to preach even if it would have been more help had I presided too. Many has been the time I have waited to see, say, a banns couple at the church only to find they have been waiting at my house where we'd agreed to meet. I strive to stop this and it hasn't happened for a while - but who knows how long my triumph over myself will last?!

Cyfarthfa Castle Museum

Raven (who used to be Cylene, keep up) now lives considerably up the Rhondda Valley and so I don't see them very often. Yet it's surprisingly doable as a day trip provided the roads are favourable. Yesterday the weather was against us and Raven had an appointment in the middle of the day so although they would like to go to St Fagans one day we in fact stayed local and went to Cyfarthfa Castle, which functions as the municipal museum for Merthyr Tydfil. Even covered with scaffolding (and looking a bit rough in places) few local museum services have settings as grandiose as Cyfarthfa, complete with a park and lake. The Castle was built as the home of the Crawshay family who built their fortune on ironworking, and once they vacated it, oddly, the Council opened part of the ground floor as a museum and the rest as a school. You have to piece this history together from the displays rather than being oriented as you go in, but as we went round them in the wrong direction the task was made especially taxing! The collection is remarkably eclectic as the museum attracted art and artefacts from a variety of well-to-do gentlemen and only later began an effort to represent the social and working history of Merthyr. You are rightly not allowed to overlook the fact that the fantastic wealth of the Crawshays derived from the unspeakable toil of generations of local residents and often involved their injury and harm, exactly as you would expect from Red South Wales, as once was. Maybe that political identity only survives in its museums now. 

Smaller Than You Thought

In fact all the Easter services went rather well apart from a confusion about hymn numbers on Sunday ('I feel like a bingo caller', said Il Rettore as he tried to read out the correct one), but having also had to pop to the hospital to take communion to a congregation member on Easter afternoon as all the chaplains were off sick I was very glad to observe 'Bank Holiday Order' on Monday and only do the work I absolutely had to. This was complete early enough in the day to allow me to take advantage of the weather and zoom to Uffington. Algorithms had thoughtfully brought to my attention a new display at the museum there and as I'd never seen either Wayland's Smithy or the White Horse of Uffington I decided to go. 

Apart from the distance I ended up walking (further than anticipated) things being on the small side was the theme of the day. The Neolithic long barrow of Wayland's Smithy has two massive sarsens guarding its entrance but the proof that it was made by fairies is that only the Wee Folk could have fitted inside the burial chamber. I'd thought it was like the West Kennet Long Barrow which has space for visitors to wander around inside but no, it's only tall enough for an adult to crouch in. At the foot of a tree I found what were clearly 'cremated remains', reinforcing how important the place is for some people.

The Horse, too, I had imagined ranging over perhaps a hundred yards of a broad hillside, and P Newman in Lost Gods of Albion says that's how long it is, but I wouldn't have put it much bigger than 50 feet! Curiously that made the figure all the more moving to me - to think firstly that our remote ancestors made this effigy that they wouldn't even have been able to see properly, and also that it has survived three thousand years or more, just a fragile, delicate thing, an absence more than a presence, turf removed to reveal the chalk beneath. 

I did know that Uffington Museum was going to be tiny. It started out as a 17th-century schoolroom, and Bank Holidays are one of the few times it's open. There is basically one room, with a mezzanine forming a separate display area; that 'exhibition' that tempted me there was a small display about mythological landscapes, and I was very pleased with it. Very good graphics and information, a video with an Anglo-Saxon poem being recited against a background of spooky trees, and items left by visitors at Wayland's Smithy, from dreamcatchers to decorated stones. Easily the eeriest is a white-painted plaster ram's head deposited in the chamber itself. Most odd. I'm glad I wasn't the one who found it.