What A Difference A Year Makes

It is the time of Christmas concerts at the church - schools, choirs, councils, all doing roughly the same thing and getting lots of people through the door, although the GCSE music students from Widelake Secondary doing Bohemian Rhapsody was moderately unusual fare. The latest of these events came from the Hornington Singers. I left last year's concert midway through the first half, not because I had other things I absolutely needed to do or because I was any tireder than usual, but because it was an aesthetically challenging experience and I couldn't help concluding that putting up with it was an Advent penance I could manage without. When anyone talked about the concert I managed to come up with circumlocutions which obscured how bad I thought it had been.

This year they have a new director and instantly you could tell matters were very different: two hours later and they were understandably a bit tired, but even then it was OK for a bunch of amateur singers. Today I've had a couple of conversations with people who were there. Typically my interlocutor has opened with 'It was good last night, wasn't it?' and I have ventured a cautious 'Yes, and a bit improved on last year I thought', and then it all comes pouring out, the sense that this person has waited for twelve months for someone (presumably someone they don't live with anyway) to share how dreadful an experience it was. How much of life is like that, he says in 'Thought For The Day' mode. 

Hills of the North

I would like to have more photos of services and other church events to pop onto social media, but it's actually quite hard to arrange unless (like some churches I know) you've got someone handy to do it. We haven't! On Sunday evening I grabbed a blurry shot of the procession out of the church during the Service of Light, the Advent Sunday liturgy of carols and readings whose major distinctive element is the lighting of candles and carrying them out of the church and round to the hall at the end. It felt somewhat furtive and undignified but at least I had something to share.

When I came to Swanvale Halt the Service of Light seemed unusual, and I was told my predecessor in the 1980s had borrowed the idea from Salisbury Cathedral; but I've become more aware that Advent carol services of different kinds have been common for a long time, even if I'd never encountered them at my previous churches. I wonder if they've increased in popularity (or at least frequency) as a way of trying to preserve the distinctiveness of Advent at the same time as churches gave in to social expectation and moved their Christmas carol services, typically, to the Sunday before Christmas from the one after, where they used to be until about the early 1970s.

'Hills of the North' was our last carol on Sunday. We had to sing it twice as the congregation took so long to make it round to the hall, but it was none the worse for that.

And Just the Wrong Time of Year for a Journey

Oh dear, I realise that I have ascribed the name ‘Fr Donald’ to both the vicar of Elmham who runs the local bit of the SCP and my retired hospital chaplain colleague locally. Well, there is little to be done now and I can’t think of an alternative name for the time being and so will just say it was Fr Donald of Elmham who posted on LiberFaciorum yesterday about everything that was happening in the church there this week running up to Christmas. He does it because he loves it, he says.

As you know I have never felt that in the same way! The same period here at Swanvale Halt is very similar, though we will only have the one Crib Service today because the church is quite a bit larger than Elmham’s. This first relatively normal Christmas since 2019 is, as they always tend to be, a dragged-out, draining business, essentially three weeks of the same thing over and over again. I find myself even more than usual clinging on to the recitation of the Office which has doggedly remained in apocalyptic Advent mode even while the rest of the world is singing Hark the Herald. That provides some spiritual balance, it seems, as I try to wrap my vocal chords around the Great O Antiphons. Even those seem to have begun a long time ago, when it was only last Saturday!

This morning my Bible reading was the very last bit of the Gospel of St John, and the phrase that leapt to my attention was Jesus’s instruction to Peter, ‘feed my sheep’. Regardless of what I might be experiencing, and regardless of how remote any of the Christmas activities – the concerts, the turning-on of lights, and so on – might seem to be from the kind of spiritual activity that stands a chance of changing souls, they are all, in varying degrees, food for the sheep and therefore vitally part of what I am supposed to be doing. Weak as I am, I might find a lot of what I do burdensome, even when there are moments of joy and the conviction that the work is right and what I am called to. Perhaps the Lord felt the same. If misery was all I felt, I might be compelled to consider whether I should carry on doing it; but there is still the fundamental sense of rightness, surprisingly often love pokes through the surface, and ultimately I rest on the fact that it is a command: ‘feed my sheep’.

After all, this is what Jesus does, and what we are all called to take part in. I found myself thinking in my prayer time this morning that he who is the Bread of Heaven is laid where the animals feed. In 2000 years of meditation on this mystery I can’t imagine nobody has had this thought before, but I can’t remember anyone mentioning it. It was a bit thunderstriking, terrible and glorious. That's the business we are in. Happy Christmas! 

Words of Encouragement

The grim monument of Archbishop George Abbott in Holy Trinity, Guildford, provides one of the most Gothic experiences you can have in Surrey. His effigy rests on a charnel house propped up on columns of books, all carved in marble. Yesterday our suffragan bishop had been addressing us all in the church about the theme of ‘Tension’ in Advent, and as I sat with ++George for a few minutes to contemplate I reflected that this dramatic structure also had a tension about it. All flesshe ys grasse, it seems to want to say, and nothing earthly about us abides, but it also wants to do it in grandiose marble funerary art and to remind us that the Archbishop was very, very clever and devoted to his books. He doesn’t want us to remember that he was (to date) the only Archbishop of Canterbury ever to have killed anyone outside conditions of war. Oops! It was an accident, honest.

The Study Morning was billed as a ‘retreat’ though there’s only so much retreating you can do together with a hundred or more other people at a town-centre church. I am better at these things than I would have been at the start of my ministry, a bit less brittle and insecure, and so I can let most of it wash over me and even try to be prayerful now and again. After it was all over I went for lunch with Cara from Emwood and Gillian from Stanpool and we weren’t even that bitchy. Not about what we’d just been listening to, anyway.

On Sunday at Swanvale Halt we’d had three services. The 8am and 10am were a bit thinly attended and as I did the second of a short series of talks about elements of Catholic spiritual life in the Church of England I did wonder whether I was wasting everyone’s time. Problems with the sound system were horribly distracting and the PCC Secretary has just resigned for health reasons, two more little incidents which have contributed to the feeling that the millstones are grinding our little church at the moment. But numbers at the Advent Service of Light in the evening were a bit up on last year.

Yesterday Derek, who came into the church first thing to set the heating for the week, told me how his faith had revived since coming to worship with his wife; at the Study Morning someone I’d dealt with in my role as a vocations advisor and who is now sharing a curacy with her husband came over to tell me how our conversations had been ‘pivotal’ for them both; and Cara thanked me for giving her the idea that it’s important to pray in your church building, as this had actually had a positive effect not just on her own sense of relationship with her parish but also with some difficult souls within it. So perhaps I have done a little good! And the eucharist reminded me of the wonderful gift we are given and can pass on to the souls God loves, which is more important than anything.

Illuminati

 

There were Christmas lights in Swanvale Halt last year, but no ceremonial turning-on; we did it this year! Singing, Father Christmas, the Mayor of Hornington (and a number of former Mayors) and refreshments from the Day Centre and the café over the road. In fact this photo comes from 2019, but that doesn't matter. 

The Town Council Communities Officer, Sindy, asked me a couple of weeks ago if I would be willing to be involved again and apologised for the late notice - I said that was far from late notice in my experience. So, in between the singing group and the Mayor counting down, I spoke for precisely three minutes about how end-of-year celebrations in whatever religion or culture were all about marking the fact that we'd made it and that's sometimes all we can manage, so well done all of you, said a quick prayer and blessing and then handed over to the Mayor for the great illumination. We never used to have our own lights in Swanvale Halt: they first went up as an extra community initiative seven years ago and have become quite a feature.

There's no real reason why the parish priest should be involved in the turning-on of the Christmas lights in these secular times. I suppose it represents the dim surviving sense that the continuity the church stands for is a thread that runs through the whole community. The fact that I'm asked to take part is, I think, a huge privilege and one I made a point of thanking Sindy for. 

Originality is Overrated

So much of church life is impossible this year: Christmas's usual big draw of the Crib Service can't happen, and I won't be going to Smallham Chapel for their Christmas service, which I rather enjoy. The sheep will go uncarolled in 2020. While we were discussing how we might replace some of the usual observances someone suggested that we could put the Messy Church wooden crib figures in windows around the parish, and do a trail for people to follow. (I refer to them as the Messy Church crib figures: in fact it was only Mary and Joseph who were originally that, and the set was expanded afterwards for general use). 

I contacted various local businesses and the figures are now out in the windows of six of them, with a form on the website for entrants to fill out their answers, prize to be determined (something less than a holiday in Bermuda). The Polish proprietor of the computer repair shop was slightly nonplussed but happy to go along with it. I did leave out one of the shepherds, who strikes me as a bit scary.

Of course I discovered that almost every community in the country is doing the same kind of thing. Up in Leeds, for instance, Professor Purplepen has produced a silhouette inspired by The Box of Delights for her street's Window Advent Calendar. I hadn't imagined that nobody else would have had a similar idea, but its sheer ubiquity is humbling!

Wreathed

Rick the verger reminded me that today was going to be Advent Sunday and normally we would begin lighting the Advent candles. We hadn't ordered any! But he had scouted around the boxes in the vestry and found enough left over from previous years to make up a usable set. Thank goodness we were too stingy to throw any away. 

I would usually also make an Advent Wreath from greenery in the church grounds, but I couldn't find the circular reservoir I used last year, so resorted to buying one from the florists'. They are under new management and don't use old-fashioned crumbly green reservoir for environmental reasons, instead preferring tightly-packed pads of moss which they say function the same way. If they do, the only disadvantage will be to those of us who still derive a childish pleasure from sticking our fingers in the old stuff.

And they gave us a massive wreath to hang over the church door! I suspect this may be because they couldn't find anything else to do with it but it's very welcome and clears my head by a couple of inches so shouldn't cause anybody else in the congregation too much trouble. That's if it survives the attention of the village ne'er-do-wells - perhaps in the semi-darkness of the winter evenings they won't spot it.

Break a Leg

My brain feels thoroughly scrambled at the moment and I struggle to string words together in coherent sentences let alone contribute anything much to this blog. So I do nothing more than share a photograph from the infants school Christmas Production whose two performances this year - one for Reception, one for the older children - followed swiftly on the heels of a big funeral service for a former member of the church. The first edition came with a drama of its own when Mary managed to move her chair back unseen by a teacher and fall off the staging. She was fine and got a big round of applause when she took up her position again.

Accessible Worship

In view of our recent thoughts about the worshipping life of young families, the Advent Service of Light last Sunday was quite instructive. This candlelit event can veer in moments from the sublime to the surreal although this year it went off without incident, and all the short pieces the Choir sang were better far than the Rutter Requiem I heard at a concert in the church two nights before (after that, I found that one of the front benches was mysteriously covered in glitter: people suggested this might have been down to the soloist who was also thus covered).

As we sang the first hymn I realised there were piping childish voices raised among the adult ones. In the front row was Caelyn (3 and a bit) from Toddler Group and her very young mum and dad (or they seem very young to me) who I know have absolutely no Church experience whatever. What were they doing there? What had inspired them to come to this service in which, notwithstanding the picturesque qualities of candlelight and lighting, nothing really happens apart from very trad music being performed? How would they respond to the carols and readings, some of which are positively Apocalyptic? I intoned the Advent Collect: 'Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now, in the time of this mortal life ...'  'He's singing!' I heard Caelyn point out vocally.

She wasn't alone, either, as after a while another Toddler Grouper, Teddy, appeared at the front of the church on the opposite side, having apparently insisted that he and his mum move there to get a better view. He gyrated about the end of the bench a bit but did it silently.

The end of the service came when, to the strains of 'Hills of the North, rejoice' we all processed out of the church with lit candles and through the garden into the hall. Not many of our candles remained lit, but somehow Caelyn's did, and once she noticed that some were out, she insisted on going round relighting them for people, subsequently stationing herself in front of the door to catch anyone coming in who required this service. She did it with such solemnity that many of us had to bite our lower lips to maintain the proper demeanour.

Christmas Passed

In 2016 the late-Advent and Christmas period seemed entirely manageable, but this year the timing has brought a certain sense of strain, at least to me. Christmas Eve falling on a Sunday has meant that I was preaching five times over a twenty-four-hour period and, I’m afraid, all my sermons did cluster rather around the doctrine of the Incarnation, with a variety of different emphases. This came after the usual repertoire of nativity plays, carol concerts and other events which extends the Christmas season to the whole of the month of December, and backwards.

One of the tasks which occupies the last days of Advent is taking communion to people who aren’t going to be able to be in church over Christmas itself. This is no problem provided you know about them, and can build visits into the schedule. This year we only located one of Marion’s regulars on the Saturday before Christmas: she’d been trying to phone the lady in question but only that day did we discover she’d moved to a care home outside the parish a couple of weeks previously. I ended up arranging to see another indisposed couple on Christmas Eve after they failed to show for the morning service – had Christmas Eve been any other day than a Sunday, it would have made things easier. The liturgical concertina-ing was very strange as the day started out the Fourth Sunday of Advent and then magically transmuted into Christmas Eve partway through; all the usual preparations of moving furniture, changing altar linens, bringing in flowers and reordering had to be done after the morning Mass was over.

The one liturgical event I didn’t have to worry about was the Crib Service, as Marion the curate looked after it. Some of our usual actors and narrators for the tableau-style nativity we’ve done for the last few years weren’t available, so she thought it would be good to change to the more widespread model of having groups of children bringing up figures to assemble the crib scene at appropriate points in the story. I had visions of our china figures smashing to smithereens on the floor as the fingers of nervous infants turned to butter, so the congregation members responsible for the wooden figures of Mary and Joseph that already tour the parish during Advent in the homes of Messy Church families constructed all the other characters too. We used to do this at Lamford – a plastic crib set was used at the Crib Service and the ‘proper’ china ones were put in place afterwards. What we also did at Lamford was to have two younger choristers robed up and leading the groups of children with a pair of acolyte’s candles, so we imported that custom as well, and two of our more reliable youngsters did those honours. It all worked very well, even if some local people still wistfully remark what a shame it is we don’t have real donkeys taking part. If they could find them for me, I’d happily have the wretched creatures there.

Numbers at the Cribbage were significantly up; perhaps because it was a Sunday evening. The Midnight and 10am on Christmas Day were about level, and the 8am Prayer Book Mass down, but numbers for that are so low anyway it means very little, I suspect. The Midnight passed off without incident for virtually the first time, and certainly no repetition of the thurible mishap of last year.

We normally have a midweek Mass on Tuesday, but it being Boxing Day the worship committee had decided against it. It’s my usual day off tomorrow, and whereas once upon a time I would have said, well, I’ve already had a day off this week so I will work, I now take all the time off I can, not out of any particular sense of deserving it but simply from considerations of self-preservation. Boxing Day was my first full day without any church business since November. I will probably go to Marks and Spencer and look for trousers.

The thing I learned about myself was that I don’t think I could ever be a monk. Rick our faithful verger now attends Morning Prayer virtually every day, but in recent weeks he’s started turning up at Evening Prayer as well from time to time. We’ve also been joined in the morning lately by Ken, who is one of the churchwardens of a nearby evangelical parish church. Then he began to arrive in the evening too. As the last week before Christmas drew on they were both there, all the time. I came into church on Saturday 23^rd intending to do some photocopying before saying the holy Office and found them both seated in the Lady Chapel ready to pray. ‘Have you been waiting long?’ I asked, fearful that they’d been hanging round for ages, but they assured me they’d only just got there. ‘Only I don’t usually say Evening Prayer at any set time on Saturdays, just when I can get here,’ I went on. ‘It’s very faithful of you to come to the Office in the evening, Ken’, I offered. ‘It’s an oasis of calm amid all the madness’, he smiled. The trouble is that it turns the Evening Office, from my point of view, into yet another liturgical performance in which I lead other people in their prayer, albeit a very low-key one. When you come in to church and your heart sinks at the prospect of joining your fellow-Christians in worship, even if ever so slightly before you catch it up, to the extent that you have to combat the inner thought ‘oh not these buggers again', then your faith has worn quite threadbare underfoot, I fear. That's not what monks are supposed to think about their brethren.

On Christmas Eve when I came into the church after taking communion to Mr & Mrs Stirling, nobody else was there. I said Evening Prayer, in the dark, on my own for the first time in ages. As the liturgical season always changes in the evening, it was the first Office of Christmastide and it was lovely.

A Moving Scene

In the midst of a late Advent season which has made my head spin a little it is a tonic to witness a vision of the Holy Family portrayed with such serenity as the snow swirls around them, just as it would have done on that first Christmas night, hem-hem. Cal and family came to the Carol Service on Sunday and, being familiar with my mantelpiece full of dreadful religious tat, decided to pass on this find from the back of a drawer, in the expectation that I could give it a more appreciative home. Oy, can I.

Brightest and Best

The liturgical high point of the nursery nativity service (ah! but there are so many) comes when I lead the children around the church singing Away In A Manger while I carry a helium-filled balloon star. But this year I was caught out having forgotten to buy one. On Sunday evening I popped a note through the letterbox of the florist's in the village (they also sell balloons) to ask whether they could put one aside for me. It was only on Monday morning that I remembered that there was a backup option - the silver foil star-on-a-stick the Infants School had used for their Christmas production last week.  On my way to church in the wind and sleet I went to borrow that, and then battled round to the florist's where a balloon was indeed waiting for me - blue rather than silver or gold, but it was considerably better than nothing. But when I got into the church and popped the balloon on the altar, instead of soaring upwards majestically it flopped straight to the floor! I would have to rely on the school star after all. 

9.30 came and so did the nursery children, making their way along the footpath with the staff, nearly sixty souls all told. I said hello and we lit some candles and I turned to my props - and the balloon was now floating! As Rick our verger pointed out to me later on, it must have been the chilly weather outside the church contracting the helium so that the balloon failed to inflate properly; brought into the warmer surroundings of the church its aeronautic qualities were restored. 

That's the scientific explanation. I and the children agreed it was a Christmas miracle, or an Advent one.

How Many Churchwardens Does It Take to Open a Door

It was the Advent Service of Light yesterday evening. I'm still not sure how this got transplanted from Salisbury Cathedral where I think it originated to little Swanvale Halt in the mid-1980s; now quite a number of churches do something similar, although I think in those days we must have been virtually unique. 

The service consists of seasonal readings and carols, starting and finishing in candlelight, with every candle we can muster lit around the building. It culminates in a procession out of the church and round the side of the churchyard into the hall, attempting to sing in something like unison. Yesterday the hymn at that point was the old Advent carol O Veni Emmanuel - albeit in English rather than Latin. 

There were about 80 of us. The wind blew out all our candles almost instantly but we were prepared for that. We were singing the verse that begins

O come thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home

just as the crucifer arrived at the hall door - and found nobody had unlocked it. Marion the curate could hardly contain herself. The churchwardens rushed inside to locate keys and discovered they didn't know their way around the bunches as well as they thought. I like to think the surrealism prompted extra gusto in the singing.