Passed For Service

One of the woes revealed at last week's Deanery Chapter was that of the vicar of Wormton, whose boiler had been condemned by the gas safety engineer sent by the diocese. As there wouldn't be a replacement for a fortnight or more, and the temperatures were due to dip below -5, he was fortunate to have parents not far away from whom he could borrow a range of electric heaters to stand in. This became in itself another cause for complaint, as some years ago the diocese stopped doing full annual services on boilers in clergy houses and just authorised the bare legal minimum of making sure that they aren't belching out carbon monoxide. The Wormton machine had failed because a previous engineer had neglected to put a small component back properly, and had this been picked up on a subsequent service visit it might have survived another five years or more. The engineer came to me today, and much to my relief declared that my boiler could limp on another year. 

Another change that apparently slipped past without any fanfare is that the diocese has decided it's no longer responsible for the maintenance of any outbuildings at parsonages unless they are physically joined to the parsonage house itself. This might explain why nothing has ever been said, still less done, about the various faults identified a long time ago with my funny little garage that used to be a stable. A visiting fellow dropping off a card for his gardening/fencing/maintenance firm pointed out some corner tiles on it that he says are just about to slip off to disastrous effect, so I will have to look into that for myself, I fear. 

London Revelations

Following on the recent theme of not doing work, some time ago I was invited to pop out to London with Lady Wildwood and Ms MaisyMaid as they both liked the idea of visiting the Transport Museum in Covent Garden. The stuff I immediately needed to do could be compressed into the morning, so yesterday I went. My first discovery was Adelphi House in John Adam Street off The Strand, an amazing 1930s Art Deco block I had no idea existed.  

The Transport Museum had a long queue outside. We had anticipated neither the effect of the start of half-term nor a go-slow by the ticketing system, not helped by the TM's insistence that all its tickets are annual passes so they have to take your email address and details so you can come back in should you want to. I doubt I will unless I find myself at a very loose end: it was fun (though not cheap), but I think you have to be very interested in the topics covered to want to find out more. Now, as a former museum worker I like to go in to a museum, and be welcomed with a big sign saying 'Hello, this is X Museum, this is what it's about, and this is where you go next', as I can then choose to disobey if I wish. Yesterday we went round the whole place the wrong way, as we missed the small sign telling us to start on the second floor and work downwards. That added an extra chaotic element to the visual and aural chaos, as small children ran heedlessly around us until we felt like targets in a pinball machine. But there was a lot to enjoy. I especially liked the Brunel Thames Tunnel Peepshow, a paper concertina you can look through to see the three-dimensional scene, like a tiny toy theatre. 'You can see it more easily just by looking at it from the side', pointed out Lady Wildwood, and of course she is right but what's the fun of that?

We were exhausted after a couple of hours and set off on a slow amble along The Strand and Fleet Street to the Cheshire Cheese where we were dining with two more friends. As we drew closer to St Mary-le-Strand we could hear bells ringing, before realising that the strange glowing pentagonal structures on posts lining the road were a sound installation. But then we worked out that they were producing ambient ringing noises and not the bells: those were coming from St Clement Danes along the way. Was it a practice or being done for a particular event? Lady Wildwood was delighted to be hearing The Bells of St Clements - though that lyric may refer to a church in the City instead.

24-7

'This is my 19th day working without a break and it's going to go on', said Hilary at the Deanery Chapter, and at one stage I thought she might cry. Hilary is unusual in this diocese in looking after a collection of four churches, though two of them have very little going on in them these days. In many rural dioceses, of course, this is nothing unusual and there are swathes of countryside where benefices might comprise groups of churches that run into double figures. Taken to that level, it makes a mockery of the parish ministry we all have in the back of our minds as the model of what we as local clergy are supposed to be doing; no clergyperson can hope to replicate that with such a proliferation of sacred buildings and their communities to care for. My only limited experience of that kind of thing came when I was still attached to Lamford but looking after Goremead; I wasn't doing very much at Lamford during that time, just the odd service and some of the many weddings we happened to have that year, but it was still disorientating trying to remember where I was supposed to be at any one time. 

That's one issue: clergy overwork is another. I always feel a tremor of guilt when this subject comes up because I don't feel overworked. There are periods when what I have to do seems overwhelming, but this is always in anticipation of work and linked to my sense of inadequacy rather than the sheer weight of activity I have to cover. I defend my day off jealously, and although I sometimes end up biting into it there is still a sense of balance. Last week, for instance, Candlemas Day fell on my usual Thursday break, so I did a service in the evening and was glad to, but the evening before I was in London seeing Monsieur HaslandGraphica's pictures on show, which was compensation for Candlemas. I did that rather than shift my rest day around and miss the Toddler Group and other things happening on Friday. I remember some years ago Colin, a really experienced priest not that long off retiring who looks after another parish in the Deanery, saying to me 'When a funeral comes up on your day off, you have to do it, don't you?' and I didn't have the courage to say, Well, I don't, no. The local undertakers know when I can't do funerals and don't ask me to. Our friendliest undertakers are reluctant even to call me on Thursday, and always apologise if they absolutely have to to get a date for a service sorted out. If it was for a member of the church and there was really no option other than a Thursday, I'd do it, but I've found that anyone who really wants me and nobody else to take their Auntie Doreen's funeral will wait a day or two.

I don't think I'm the one that's wrong about this. Sabbath is a Biblical principle and even if clergy require a Sabbath different from everyone else's, they cannot ignore the basic idea without, frankly, breaking one of the Ten Commandments: 'on this day you shall do no work'. Hilary and Colin wouldn't dream (I imagine) of pinching someone's lawnmower from their back garden, but this Commandment is fair game, it seems. 

Now some of this may be due to a clergyperson's need to be needed. Hilary mentioned especially a recent OfStEd inspection at her church school which came up on what would normally have been her day off, and so she had to be there 'to support the chair of governors'. In Swanvale Halt our church school has had three OfStEds during my tenure, and I've always felt my contribution is best made by going nowhere near the place apart from finding out how it's gone once it's over. They really don't want me around exposing my sketchy knowledge of what's actually happening in the school: I could drag it down a grade single-handed. I wonder whether Hilary is really so clued-up about the technical aspects of the school that her presence really makes that much of a difference beyond, say, making the headteacher a cup of strong coffee. 

But not all of the pressure falls into that category. Sometimes there are, indeed, parochial activities it would be good to have, and might have had in the past, but there's nobody to run them apart from the priest. Because a priest's work is so undefined and shapeless, in those circumstances the only way you can possibly prioritise is to ring-fence time when you do no work, and what doesn't get done in the rest, doesn't get done at all. I have seen from bitter experience what happens to priests who go bang: they are packed off on sick leave, and usually never come back. They don't get a medal. The diocese treats them as an embarassment, and their parish quickly forgets them. They may tell themselves that they have made themselves sick in the service of the Lord, but what were they really serving - him, or an institution?

Fr Somerset Ward said that a priest who did not have a full day off in every seven should examine his conscience. Mind you, he also said that of anyone who didn't get eight hours' sleep a night, and insisted that no average Christian could get by on less than an hour's silent prayer each day. Oh, it's hard! 

Men Only, Supposedly

Edgar organised the Men's Breakfast for many years until he became too poorly and had to give it up and, as nobody felt able to take it on, the event fell into abeyance. On Saturday the members organised a special one-off gathering in Edgar's memory, close to his birthday on Candlemas Day, with his wife Jill at the head of the table. All very splendid though my venture back into carnivorous habits by partaking of a convivial bacon butty failed to convince me I was missing anything - unlike the leftover bits of ham and beef I took home after my mum's Christmas lunch (those were worryingly pleasurable).

When I went on the New Vicars Course many years ago one of my fellow sufferers had already been in his parish for a couple of years, and when he arrived there was a well-established Men's Breakfast. He went for a couple of times before noticing that while the chaps sat down to partake, as we too did at Swanvale Halt, of bacon butties, toast and cereals, in the kitchen the wives were doing all the catering. My colleague was outraged. 'If this is the Men's Breakfast, the men should do the work', he maintained, and insisted this should be the case. The members stopped the event rather than do it themselves. 

It was understandable and in fact very good that Jill was present on Saturday, but I was perturbed to find Susan and Renee in the kitchen doing the washing up. 'We don't mind, it's all for Edgar and just the one', they smiled. It had better be!

What To Pray

At first, Sally our pastoral assistant told me that Harriet wasn't going to be able to get to church anymore. Her Parkinson's had advanced to the point where she would now need two people to get her out of the house, and while we have some very obliging members of the congregation, there are few confident, and none trained, in moving around the dead weight of a human being, even one rendered lighter by long illness. So I dropped round a note saying I would be very happy to bring Harriet communion at home, and suggesting Friday after our Toddler Group. Then in the middle of the week I had another conversation with Sally who reported that Harriet was determined to get to church. I thought this would turn out to be unrealistic and let things stand as they were. After the toddlers were finished, then, I toddled round to Harriet's and was let in by Nadia the carer who told me Harriet was having a tough day. She was in her usual chair, but barely able to move or speak. The sign of the Cross was a vague movement of her hand across her chest. It was no surprise when her son called me later in the day to say she'd been taken to hospital, or that her daughter rang me this morning with the news that she'd succumbed to pneumonia and died in the early hours. Given how weak and ill Harriet was, the nine-hour wait for the ambulance probably didn't make any material difference, but it doesn't look good that her daughter was able to fly back from Spain and get there in less time than it took an ambulance to arrive from Guildford. At least receiving the Sacrament was virtually the last positive act of Harriet's life, as she would have wanted it to be.

As soon as I had the news that Harriet was in hospital I asked Giselle the lay reader to ask the prayer chain to keep her in mind. I stood in front of my little shrine at home and wondered what I should pray. Of course basically you hold the person before the Lord and pray that his will for their best interest be done, but you still have your own feelings. Harriet's has been a long and hard road and there have been times I have found her 'courage' - which has seemed occasionally to involve a refusal to accept that her illness brings limitations on what she can do - enfuriating. She began to lose track of time and would call late in the evening and spend ten minutes telling me - what? Usually I could only pick out a few words. Sometimes it was to apologise for not being present at a service I never expected her to attend. Didn't she realise it was virtually impossible, by that stage, to understand what she was saying over the phone? I tried to see it as an act of service in its own right, but I feared so much misunderstanding something that was actually important. What was that like, to have a functioning brain, except when pharmaceutical fog affected it, and not to be able to communicate? I couldn't pray, Friday and yesterday, that Harriet wouldn't make it, and I expect she would have wanted to. But it was part of what I felt. 

The last words of Harriet, our friend and sister, that I understood, repeated over and over until I could grasp at them before they fled away again, were 'Where am I?'

An Art Evening

It's ironic that I went to the Brick Lane Gallery Annexe - not in Brick Lane at all, but Sclater Street - in order to support my friend Monsieur HaslandGraphica and didn't photograph any of his art at all. He was contributing to this multi-artist show based around abstract art, and as Lady Wildwood couldn't make it down from north of the capital due to strikes on her line I wanted to make the effort, especially as it would also balance out working on the night of Candlemas Day. Msr HaslandGraphica developed this particular sequence of works while in lockdown in France, filtering the cliffs and rivers of the immediate surroundings into digital paintings. 

My favourite bit of the whole show was a large black canvas decorated with patterns of black, scarlet, and rust-red, but I wasn't going to reach down the back of the sofa to pay for it. I was also intrigued by Hannah Robinett, who reads Psalms and decides which colour they make her think of, before blocking the words out with gold. I wondered which translation she uses, and also whether there was anything I could justify buying. There wasn't, I fear.

Learning Experience

Months ago Sally, our pastoral assistant, suggested we should investigate providing meals for families who might need them in our current challenging economic circumstances. Asking around I found that there were several projects of this kind being run by churches elsewhere in the diocese, and more were establishing themselves as 'warm hubs' with or without support from the relevant local authorities. Sally went about the project in an impeccable way, talking to every local agency she could who could be assumed to know more about these things than we as a church might - the home-school link workers, the food bank staff, the Council, the youth service, and so on. Everyone was very supportive and enthusiastic and money was forthcoming from the Council, the Bishop of Guildford's Community Fund, and the like. Most impressively of all, Sally was able to recruit a team of helpers hardly any of whom had prior connection with the church. The trouble was, as it turned out, that very few people availed themselves of the opportunity to benefit. The time of the sessions was tweaked, the marketing was amended, the schools (who were our main source of communication) offered to accompany family groups to the church hall when the sessions were on, but it never caught fire, and Sally has now called a halt to the project and is thinking whether it can transmute into something else. It wasn't the quality of the food which those who did come thought was great!

Thankfully we know it's nothing personal, as the Council report that other similar initiatives have met the same problems and are returning their funding. One 'warm hub' has had not a single person turn up in the months since it was established. I am relaxed about something like this failing: I think we did everything we could conscientiously have done to research and plan, and failure is part of the process of development. The experience does raise big questions about the nature of our local society and how need and poverty are perceived: we doubt that the experience in other parts of the country than leafy Surrey would be the same. But it's very hard to discover why something doesn't work than why it does.