Watts Gallery Excursion

The last time I went to the Watts Gallery at Compton was some years ago, before the artist's former home of Limnerslease was open to the public: I was part of a group being given a preview while it was all being set up. So I was grateful when Dr RedMedea suggested we go to see the gallery's current temporary exhibition (she had also been before, with Archangel Janet and Lady Wildwood). This was examining the generation of artists at the end of the 1800s and start of the 1900s who looked back to the original Pre-Raphaelites and used their idioms and styles to explore fantasies, dreams and symbolism. As always I was as much taken by fragments and details as overall pictures. In Limnerslease I shouldn't have been taking photos at all, but this was only pointed out to me when it was too late: 'the signage isn't very clear', the attendant admitted, and in the temporary exhibition you're positively encouraged to snap away, exactly the opposite way round from the practice of most museums and galleries. Mary Watts's amazing reredos for the Military Chapel at Aldershot reminds me, at least compositionally, of the one that still graces St Paul's church in Dorking, which I thought I had illustrated on this blog but now can't find!

Even the gallery shop brought surprises. They are selling a gin that apparently uses water from the holy well at Walsingham, and on picking up a copy of a book I knew had been planned about local buildings made of Bargate stone I found a picture of my own house in it, so just had to buy a copy to be supportive.

Shackleford and Peper Harow

The first round of my Surrey church-visiting, at least, is coming to an end - there are some buildings I will have to revisit, but I've seen enough on my initial sweep to be going on with and am now concentrating on the documentary side of my researches, mainly scanning service registers, which I can tell you is a mind-numbing exercise even if it has to be done. But there are still some photos to put here.

St Mary's, Shackleford, is hardly a bastion of high-churchery. The former incumbent of the parish used to come to us to borrow a chasuble for Christmas Day, because it was the only time they used one at Shackleford and the church had none of their own. It shouldn't even exist: it sits at what feels like a strangely isolated crossroads in the woods, built not because there was any pressing need for a church here, but basically to provide a living for a well-connected local curate. But it is a Scott building of grand proportions, and a surprise in the form of a very sumptuous reredos made by Mowbray in memory of a parishioner, Lady Caroline Grenville. It's younger than it looks, because Lady Caroline died in 1946.

Just down a lane we find St Nicholas, Peper Harow, a building which, neighboured by a big house split into flats and a farm, now seems almost as superfluous as Shackleford's, but which is much older. However it doesn't look it, because it was badly fire-damaged in 2011 and then lovingly rebuilt, so that the building you see now has a very strange quality: it's like reminder of what a medieval church would have looked when it was built. It's light and lovely, but there's nothing all that Catholic in its accoutrements apart from the icons, and of course everyone has icons these days.

The Same But Different

'I expect you're feeling a mixture of pleasurable familiarity and anxious trepidation', said Fr Donald after the service this evening. There were in fact many other mixed feelings as I found myself in a pew back at Lamford Church where I was curate to attend the Revd Fr's installation as its new Rector. My main concern was not to give offence by forgetting too many people's names, though I would surely be forgiven for having letting some slip my mind over the 13 1/2 years since I left the place. Lamford has had a long gap since Il Rettore left, and they are justifiably very glad to have Donald and his family in place. The Choir is a little greyer than in my time, but were in good voice. The Bishop did everything one could want so one can't complain, but it was a little bit odd to hear the Choir singing the Canon of the Mass in the usual Lamford setting and him interjecting with something which was sort of like Merbecke, but not quite. It was like Bjork's description of her proposed duet with Meatloaf at the 1993 Brit Awards: like onion and chocolate, two things you might both like, but which don't fit together (she ended up singing with PJ Harvey, of course). We were plagued throughout the service by flies, and there are various Biblical conclusions you might draw from that.

Resident Not Available - a Pastoral Episode

A freezing Swanvale Halt afternoon: I went to the church to collect the reserved sacrament to take to Alison, who lives in the block of sheltered housing flats adjoining the churchyard. I should have seen her in the week before Christmas, but she'd been in hospital and this was the first time we could set something up. I keyed in the number of her flat and waited a minute while the keypad beeped. 'Resident not available', the machine told me. So I tried to phone her, and found the line busy. I had a leaflet to drop round to a new resident around the corner, so did that, returned, and tried again, with the same result. I popped to the Post Office before coming back, and yet another attempt to make contact brought no further success. It was now 25 minutes after our appointment, cold, and getting dark.

I went to the church office, and happened to mention the situation to Sandra the office manager. She sings in a community choir with one of the other residents of the flats, and before I really knew what was happening called him: he wasn't at home, but gave us the number of another neighbour. This all seemed to be spinning a little out of control: I didn't really have any reason to think Alison was lying incapacitated on the floor of her flat and we were now only one over-excited misinterpretation of a sentence away from the fire brigade turning up. Sandra's friend's neighbour pinged me in to the flats and I eventually found Alison's door open and Alison herself contentedly watching the TV with the sound turned up so loud it obliterated even the residual chance she might have had of hearing the intercom when I called. The phone was still hooked up to a call from 2 1/4 hours earlier, explaining why the line was busy. The number was displayed as 'withheld', so possibly Alison had been unwittingly saving any number of other people from nuisance calls from the same source. 'It's lovely to see you', she said, having completely and blissfully forgotten our appointment.

Give Me Your Hand, My Friend

It was Patrick, the former Methodist minister at the joint Methodist-United Reformed church down the road, who concluded the Churches Together United Service his church was hosting one year with the hymn 'What Shall Our Greeting Be', and ambushed us, his clergy colleagues from other churches, by grabbing the hands he could reach and insisting we should do the same. Had he been a silly young fellow and not a doughty elderly one who should have retired several years before, I would have found it maddening and not splendidly nuts, which is the attitude I did in fact have. Today we were hosting the same event which included communion for the first time since 2019. Paula and husband Peter brought along the bread - boxes of little cubes of sliced white, not what we usually use - and some grotty de-alcoholised wine. I thought as a gesture in the direction of unity, Patrick's successor Alan should preside at communion, and as I hadn't warned any of my other clerical compatriots it was only his hand I grasped during the singing of that hymn at the end. We just about got away with it all, and there were nearly 200 people in church, far more than I thought there would be.

'That', said Alan afterwards, 'was so nerve-racking. I haven't been as anxious as that since seminary.' This surprised me. Once I'd got all the elements in place and everyone turned up, I was pretty unconcerned about the whole occasion. I suppose once you accept that communion isn't going to take place in the way you expect - that it will be in the form of little cubes of bread and wine whose best recommendation was that it didn't actually make you grimace, and that Paula will take the leftovers and give them to the ducks - you're not that worried about the rest. How strange to find myself the more relaxed party.

Living in Fallibility and Indeterminacy

The question will now be whether the shaky and open-ended compromise statement the College of Bishops is recommending to the Synod on human sexuality and equal marriage or its absence will get through it: you will remember that the last time they proposed something of this kind, it failed, and I am not at all sure the Synod will be in any more a mood to compromise this time. I refrained from making any comment a couple of days ago when the main points of the bishops' report were leaked because I wanted to see something more than the headlines, and read some of the reasoning.

Of course - lest it go without remark - at the very core of this report is a gaping inconsistency. The bishops apologise to LBGTQ+ people and 'welcome same-sex couples unreservedly and joyfully'. It will immediately be asked how, if they continue to regard same-sex relations as sinful, they can possibly say this, and, if they don't, what reason they can have for not treating homosexual individuals the same as everyone else. People are not stupid: they can see that question is unanswered.

The reason is, as the bishops say repeatedly, they cannot reach a consensus and the line they are proposing to Synod is the most radical one they can agree on. Frustrating though it may be, this humility and recognition of reality is somewhat refreshing. 'We are pursuing unity and not imposing it', they plead, and when you remember that once upon a time the Bench of Bishops was baying for Anglo-Catholic priests to be imprisoned because they put candlesticks on their altars, you can see how far we have come. 

I would be happy to bless a same-sex couple along the lines the bishops propose, though I can't see any turning up to ask me to anytime soon. Why would they? I have (as I've said before) an inkling why God might want the Church only to marry people of different sexes, but the report doesn't give any reason beyond the fact that the bishops can't agree, and that's not likely to make anyone feel very welcome and accepted. The bishops are right to say that more theological work is needed: my own position has itself arisen from asking what the sacrament of matrimony actually means, what it implies to pronounce a blessing, how sexual differentiation might reflect what God wants for human beings. I am delighted that the bishops even recognise these questions as ones that need to be asked; I am encouraged that they approach the task with seriousness. I do wonder whether the gigantic areas of theological work they identify at the end of the report are a bit ambitious. Perhaps it aims at more systematic organisation of thought than we need, and maybe we just need to ask Why does the Church marry people, and what is happening when it does so? Oh, and come up with an answer that makes sense. When I say what I think my impression is that people blink and have no idea what I mean.

Imperfect End

It had been a pretty good day and I had managed to cook a chickpea curry without burning anything, when I headed down through the frosty night to visit the Air Cadets. All was going well when I moved onto the steps leading to the bridge over the railway line and promptly slipped, coming down hard on my bottom, more specifically my tailbone.

More out of shock than anything else, I stayed on the steps for a minute or two, trying to work out whether it was possible or sensible to move and how bad I felt. I was making some inarticulate noise, a sort of escalated version of the kind of grunts and moans a person of advancing years tends to emit when bracing themselves for a particular physical effort. A young woman with a dog came from the other end of the bridge and attended to me, which I found very welcome indeed. I can't remember what preceded it, but her statement 'Everybody knows who you are' struck me as the most moving thing I had ever heard. She introduced herself as Erica and asked me whether I could stand, and I felt I could, and did, and then felt giddy and sick, before I came to on the ground again. 'It's all right, you fainted', said Erica, repeatedly, as I found myself rather terrifyingly unable to speak though I was trying very hard to do so. I concluded I had better give up the attempt, until over the course of a couple of minutes my ability to vocalise returned. I have only ever fainted twice before, once alone, and had forgotten that's what happens. A second attempt to stand up was more successful, and Erica and her dog walked me home. It was a tremendous act of kindness and solidarity for which I was immeasurably grateful, and I much recommend you do the same if the occasion arises.

I didn't try to get to Squadron again. I was very, very sore going to bed, but with the application of painkillers I have been surprisingly mobile today and able to do everything planned, so I consider myself, yet again, very lucky indeed.