Mechanical and Biological

Dr Abacus is right: you can find a video to help you do virtually everything these days. So when my mower wouldn't start and there didn't appear to be anything wrong with the spark plug (which was as far as my technical knowledge went, as I always say my Dad was a car mechanic by trade but it never rubbed off on me) I consulted Youtube and found a film by a bluff Yorkshireman - not that there is any other kind - offering to show me how to service a 400 series McCulloch mower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. Mowing my grass this time of the year is an oddity, I know, but it will encourage the wild flowers come the Spring, or at least that's the idea.

The very first thing I attempted to do demonstrated that I didn't have the right tools and so I bought a box of socket drivers from the ironmonger's in Hornington. However even then none of them fitted the first bolts I needed to remove. I borrowed a very old set from Jack at church who reminded me that as Briggs & Stratton is an American company their bolts will be imperial and not metric. Embarrassingly I have never serviced the mower once in all the years I've had it so it's no surprise that it was mucky to a Stygian degree, and I'm hoping that a mere clean should be enough to make it fire up again. In fact towards the end of the video Mr Yorkshire presents us with a sparkling clean and refurbished mower which still won't work, and which turns out to need a new spark plug. I am also relieved to discover that he does go through reassembling the mower after you've finished servicing it, as I was surveying the growing spread of parts laid out around it and wondering how I successfully I'd remember how it fitted together again.

One thing Mr Yorkshire couldn't have forewarned me about was the mummified frog I found in the bowl I got down off a shelf in the garage so I could wash off the air filter. I don't think I put it there.

Death of a DJ

As I've recalled on another occasion, I've only ever ventured in through the doors of the UK's and arguably the world's longest-standing and grandest Goth club, Slimelight, on two occasions. My contact with its organiser, Mak Ma Yuan, was confined to asking and receiving permission to lift images from the 1987 home movie of the club to use in that blog post a couple of years ago. But discovering that the reason why so many of my friends were quartering their LiberFaciorum profile images with the Slimelight logo was because he had died gave even me a jolt. Yuan had opened the doors of the club in its various homes for 33 years, and under the current restrictions had kept it going virtually. He'd been instrumental in securing Slimelight's venue, Electrowerkz, a £78K grant from the Cultural Recovery Fund via the Arts Council to help the recuperation from COVID, when that becomes possible, a fact which shows as nothing else could how culturally indispensable and uncontroversial the Goth world now is. As I say, my contact with him was fleeting and remote, and that seems to be the case with the far greater number of the people I've seen commenting about his death. But he is one of ours, and one whose work allowed many others to express an important part of who they are: a benefactor, then, whose passing deserves notice and regret.

The other day I found myself encountering a funeral procession in the village - not one I was taking, obviously. Peter from the undertakers, top-hatted and frock-coated, led the hearse over the crossroads not far below my house, and what were obviously members of the family made their way variously across the road, a black car following behind and other vehicles waiting to move with differing degrees of impatience. I took my hat off and waited for them to pass, wondering not for the first time how virtually everyone else on the street ignored what was happening, pretending that the death of an individual they do not know is nothing to do with them, an event which they don't know how to react to and have no obligation to acknowledge. No man's death diminisheth them, it seems.

Synchronicities

It was just as well that nobody taking part in the Royal School of Music exams at the church today around noon was learning the tuba, and instead were all angelic children plonking out whatever the current version of 'Chopsticks' is, as that was when, rashly, I had chosen to revive a midweek Eucharist at Swanvale Halt, celebrating for the first time since March and at several points realising that neither I nor Rick had remembered to put out this or that bit of kit we needed. It was me, and him, and Eva, the only member of the congregation who'd taken notice of the several emails and other mentions I'd made of the change. And even she'd only seen the message an hour and a half before. The old and holy words competed with the modern and less sacred ones of a music teacher chiding his small charges in the midst of their scales. This does often happen in normal times, to be fair.

The reason Eva was especially moved to come to church today was that it was the anniversary of her confirmation, many years ago. By chance it is also an Ember Day, one of the occasions set aside by the Church to pray for the vocation of all God's people, and your confirmation is a step forward, at least, in discovering your vocation. There are all sorts of routes we do not take in our lives, identities we do not take up and possibilities we have to surrender for our genuine vocation to come to birth. Concert pianist was not one of Eva's rejected life choices. As she listened today to the students banging out scales on the practice piano before facing the ordeal itself in the church hall, she remembered, she told me, he own struggles aged eleven with exactly the same things. We prayed for the examinees in the mass. 'It was good to be part of that,' Eva said, 'and', she added definitely, 'apart from it, too.'

There, and Back Again

It was with a jolt that I realised this Sunday morning that I hadn't attended an 8am service at Swanvale Halt, as opposed to leading it, since March. As Marion took the service - 'struggling to remember what to do', she admitted - I found myself ever so slightly uncomfortable in my seat, not due to fearing infection (I have made the point ad infinitum that a quiet, said communion service is quite the most controllable and safe indoors religious activity you can engage in) but simply because of the unfamiliarity of the circumstances. It's odd to be seated on a chair isolated by space all around without the usual oak benches to separate you from your fellow worshippers. The oddness faded quickly, but I felt the unease which some members of the congregation have described to me on venturing back into the COVID-compliant church for the first time, and which when you're leading the service it's all too easy to ignore.

One of the Tophill clergy casually mentioned in a remote conversation the other day that they haven't celebrated the Eucharist there in nine months ('If people want that we direct them to you or the Cathedral'). Even I was slightly shocked. Churchmanship is part of this - even a fairly moderate church might gib at giving up the Sacrament for quite so long - but from conversations we have had I suspect the Rector of Tophill is on the extremely cautious side and regards communion as fraught with risk which, as I say, is not my view. It's from Tophill that we are starting to get stories of congregants who are positively preferring to stay home and watch services on their computers in dressing gowns and slippers on a Sunday morning rather than drag themselves into their church building.

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!

The Latest Missives

Any idea (hope, perhaps) that the hierarchy of the Church of England had got its act together after a recent series of mis-steps was scotched a couple of days ago when the Archbishops sent out what appeared to be a draft encyclical about arrangements for administering communion in churches over Christmas. Since the beginning of the pandemic we have got used to the laity receiving communion in bread only, an anomalous situation but one perfectly acceptable legally and theologically. Their Graces of Canterbury and York decided that this was a shame, as most of us agree, and wrote to the effect that the priest could intinct the Host before giving it to each communicant. They did this in a letter which had to be rescinded hours later in favour of an updated version which corrected the grammatical and legal errors, but that still left the basic issue untouched of how practical it is to dip a wafer or even a cube of leavened bread into a chalice and then hand it to a communicant without it dripping, without contaminating the wine, or without hands touching which they are not supposed to do, notwithstanding the excessive detail in which the letter described how it might be done. One might have the strange impression that neither of Their Graces had ever presided at the Eucharist before. The country echoed to the sound of diocesan bishops, to their credit, incredulously choking, stressing to their clergy that they had seen nothing of this before it was published, and stating that it was probably better if everyone continue as they were. 

The idea that the Archbishops are now trying to make policy on such a practical matter without talking to anyone outside their own offices is quite bad enough, but they also took the opportunity to advise what is arguably a complete breach of canon law. Non-alcoholic wine is permissible at communion, the letter said. Now Canon B17 defines wine as 'fermented juice of the grape', and it's a nice matter whether it remains that once you artificially remove the product of fermentation, that is, the alcohol. I have since seen Anglicans anxiously debating what is, and isn't wine, or what is brought to the table, as it were, by the alcohol. Now sacraments must in some way represent the thing signified: the matter they employ must be capable of bearing the symbolic meanings and resonances of the act, and canonical statements of what is or is not valid matter represent the consensus of the mind of the Church about what can or can't do so. You could see debates about the matter of other sacraments - whether you can ordain women, or celebrate marriages with two people of the same sex - as subsets of this issue. What seems clear, however, is that two metropolitan bishops can't change the Mind of the Church on their own as though they were a sort of Anglican Papacy.

Meanwhile the Diocese of Manchester is advertising for seven full-time Area Dean positions. This is a diocese that can hardly pay its stipendiary curates. Traditionally Area Dean is a thankless job that clergy do in addition to being a parish incumbent, but over recent years it has been drawn upwards into the hierarchy, transmitting and implementing the management initiatives of the new breed of activist bishops who think their mission is to 'transform' their areas of charge. The new Area Deans in Manchester are to 'play a significant part in our exciting transformation', 'to implement pioneering and strategic decisions', 'bringing about change and transformation to the way we are church'. 

At St Stephen's House I did a long project on 'Catholic Mission' and envisaged a time when stipendiary clergy would be something like little bishops in their own areas, tying together a series of Christian communities which would not necessarily be parish churches. To be honest, this would not be all that very different from the situation in many big parishes in the past: my reflections were helped on their way by the weeks I spent on placement in the parish of Poplar, which before World War Two had half a dozen churches and about ten curates all presided over by the Rector from his Georgian pile next to All Saints Church. Moving towards seeing the Area Deanery as the fundamental organisational unit, rather than the traditional parish, isn't a million miles away from what I was thinking about some 16 years ago now. 

I wouldn't mind that, although I am feeling old enough and tired enough not to look forward much to reorganising the way I think in this way. If the bishops, if our bishop, would be honest and talk humbly, realistically and genuinely about a way of advancing which might stand a better chance of making sure we are still bringing people into contact with the God who loves them in generations to come (presuming there are any generations to come, which must always be a caveat in these times of climate emergency), I would give them a hearing. But what we get - and forgive me because I am just sounding off, really - is management guff and corporate bollocks, and I'm very much afraid I am coming to the conclusion that there are few less honest and straightforward groups of people than the episcopal bench of the Church of England. And as the letter on intinction shows, an episode every bit as messy as trying to dip a bit of bread in a cup of wine and then give it to someone, they're not even very good at it. 

Living in Love and Faith

It was an irony that for the very first time I was actually looking forward to attending one of the bishop’s Clergy Study Mornings, and couldn’t find the link to the Zoom gathering. Eventually Marion chased it down on the diocesan website, and I arrived twenty minutes late, just missing the opening worship: quel dommage.

The topic for our investigations was the Living in Love and Faith material produced by the Church of England in advance of a potential revision, or not, of its policies in the field of human sexuality. Chaired by the Bishop of Dorking, we spent a couple of hours hearing about how the material was devised, and engaging in a miniature version of the ‘course’ the Church envisages parishes and institutions following in order to take the process, the ‘conversation’, forward.

I think I will have to get the book associated with the LLF matter: in the little I've read I can already see both some coherent and wide-ranging thinking about the topic and also some obvious gaps, but even at this stage it is at least impressive that the Church is bothering to do this at all. Clearly it’s bothering to do it because it has despaired of reaching any sort of consensus by the normal means, scarred as it was by the terrible precedent of the ordination of women and their consecration to the episcopate, but never before, I think, has any religious organisation engaged in a similar exercise of exchanging different viewpoints and experiences, in such detail and at such luxuriating length. The videos we were shown bear testimony to the colossal variety of personal narratives which disrupt any simple set of categories we might want people to fit into. Nevertheless, we all suspect that we are unlikely to do more than learn to disagree with one another less vituperatively – which is not nothing, as Cardinal Ratzinger would have put it, but is a limited result.

I am not sure what we will do with all this at Swanvale Halt. When I first came here a gay male couple were part of the congregation, though they split up within a year or so and disappeared. I gather that when they first joined the church my predecessor had given the assembled masses a lecture from the pulpit (metaphorically, if we had had a pulpit) to the effect that she would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who gave them a hard time. The collection of grey heads looked at her nonplussed, as nobody had thought of doing so. Their main concern was, and is, managing to walk round the corner to the shops and back without falling over, and what anyone else gets up to in their bedrooms is something they are perfectly happy not to think about at all.