a ministry scrapbook
It is not revolutions and upheavals
that clear the road to new and better days,
but revelations, lavishness and torments
of someone’s soul, inspired and ablaze.
Boris Pasternak, “After the Storm”, 1958, quoted by Meg Wheatley in Finding our Way: Leadership for an uncertain time
Seeing red is a turn on for male primates according to a recent survey. The survey suggests that men are more turned on by women in red and that although men like to think that they respond to women “in a thoughtful and sophisticated manner, it appears that at least to some degree their preferences and predilections are, in a word, primitive”. Well!
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza playfully argues in Discipleship of Equals that if all the bishops are going to be men, all the cardinals should be women. What would happen to the bishops if they were seeing red? Fiorenza quotes from an article by Congo, Goodwin and Smith called “We Are Catholics and We Are Feminists”:
Perhaps we should wear red. red to acknowledge courage. Red to acknowledge that we are angry. Red to acknowledge that we are passionate. Red to acknowledge that we are sexual and like our sisters of herstory are still officially barred from the sanctuary because we menstruate. red to acknowledge the blood that flows from us with each birth, with each abortion, with each battering and with each assault …
For now, we pray for the election of a Pope who can build leadership which is holy and humble of heart so that bridges can be built and mended. Our Daily Prayer today contains this prayer as response to Psalm 79:
When faith is scorned
and love grows cold,
then, God of hosts, rebuild your Church
on lives of thankfulness and patient prayer;
through Jesus Christ your eternal Son.
One of the principle insights of Belbin’s theory of team roles is that all of us have preferences for particular roles within a team. Belbin lists nine of these roles emphasising that all of these roles need to be filled if there is to be a fully functioning team. Our role preferences are governed by our strengths. For example, somebody has to check the bright ideas that come from the team members. That person, is, according to Belbin’s description, a “monitor evaluator”. This will be a preferred role for someone who is “sober, strategic and discerning” and “who sees all options”. But there is a downside to these “strengths”, and for the “monitor evaluator” there are “allowable weaknesses” of lacking drive and being unable to inspire others.
Our default position about weaknesses is complaint and annoyance. The consequence of this is that it is more usual not to publicly acknowledge individual weakness, and internalise the complaint and annoyance. That can’t be good for teamwork! Weaknesses are only usually judged negatively, but some weaknesses are allowable and could be viewed constructively.
Why do we not celebrate our weakness? It seems to me that Belbin gives us permission for that, because there is always a flipside to weaknesses. Instead of complaining about X’s lack of drive, we can recognise that X can play a vital part in our enterprise.
For my part (my preferred role is “plant”), I know that some may find my inability to “communicate effectively” (because I get “too preoccupied”) and my “ignoring of incidentals” frustrating and annoying. But that’s what you get in exchange for someone who can be “creative, imaginative, unorthodox”. Personally I am grateful for those who have seen the potential that I have through those weaknesses.
So, why don’t we talk more openly, and more positively, about weaknesses?
Carmen Agra Deedy spins a story starring her maddening mother.
The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things are falling apart?
You’re either going to become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or you’re going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along.
Perma Chödrön as quoted by Meg Wheatley in Finding our Way
On August 17th last year a man was kicked to death in by three teenagers on a dare. The man was Kevin Bennett, 53 year old who slept rough at the back of Iceland in Walton, Liverpool. He suffered a fractured eye socket, collapsed lung and a broken ribcage. His attackers were convicted of his murder yesterday.
This blurry photo seems to be the best of him.
According to Tommy Allman and others abuse of rough sleepers is common. As former rough sleeper Allman described what happened to him and others he knows through his work with the Basement, a Liverpool homelessness charity. He describes how rough sleepers get stamped on, crushed, urinated on and even set fire to. To add to that list, we now have someone who has been kicked to death as dare. In a TV interview Allman highlighted the importance of education and increasing awareness of the back stories causing people to become homeless. Homelessness does not happen in isolation and can be caused by financial difficulties, health issues, relationship breakdown or addictions.
Shelter Scotland has found that one in four of is just one paycheck away from homelessness, and that 5300 children were homeless last Christmas. Not all homeless people are rough sleepers, but rough sleepers is the public face of homelessness, and that public face is often not seen in human and humane terms. For many, they are just “bums” to be kicked, sometimes to death.
This was the story that held my attention as I read the ancient wisdom we call Psalm 35. The Psalm could have been written by murdered Kevin Bennett. Or it could have been written by one of the many people whose “back story” and heart of love is ignored and trampled on. The psalmist prays: “Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those that fight against me”. It could be Kevin Bennett praying “let those who seek after my life be shamed and disgraced; let those who plot my ruin fall back and be put to confusion … They reward me evil for good.
Friend Rob yesterday observed “we don’t know what people think”, and it is likely that there weren’t many people who bothered what Kevin thought. Certainly the psalmist’s abusers had no idea what the psalmist thought. They couldn’t see a heart that loved them. The hands they trod on weren’t apparently praying hands. Little did they realise that “when they were sick he put on sackcloth, fasted for them and prayed”. The psalmist writes out his agony when his prayer for them seem to be unanswered:
When my prayer returned empty to my bosom,
it was as though I grieved for my friend or brother;
I behaved as one who mourns for his mother,
bowed down and brought very low.”
In spite of that, the mocking continued. “When I stumbled, they gathered in delight; they gathered together against me; as if they were strangers I did not know, they tore at me without ceasing.”
They carried on kicking him in.
As a dare
to look big
they blindly crushed scum,
unable to see the man.
Forgive them, they don’t know what they do.
As for me,
I would not have seen.
It would have been a vague impression,
from the very edge of averted, defensive gaze,
of a blur with no depth of feeling.
I did not know him.
The Bishop of Digne is a key character of Les Miserables. He is the one who offers Jean Valjean refuge, who treats him as an “honoured guest” and a shelter from the rules which allows Valjean to change his mind to the question which echoes through the story: the question of “who am I?” Valjean, or, rather, Prisoner 24601 conforms to type when he abuses the hospitality. He runs off with the silver and is captured by the law enforcers. They deliver Prisoner 24601 to the Bishop. The Bishop seizes the moment (what had he done to be prepared to react with such imaginative compassion?) and lyingly claims he had given the silver to Valjean, dismisses the police, commending them for their duty, and gives Valjean his chance.
Digne is in south-eastern France. I don’t know whether the name Digne had significance for Victor Hugo, but surely some association with dignity was intended. We might say that the Bishop of Digne was a steward (another word for “bishop”) of Dignity. The Bishop is only a marginal character but according to Theresa Malcolm “he is the soul of the novel, he who sowed love where there was hatred, light where there was darkness”. Bishop Myriel (as was the name of the then Bishop of Digne) was also known as “Monseigneur Bienvenu” for his spirit of generosity and welcome.
Victor Hugo dwells on the character of the Bishop of Digne at great length. He describes how he moved out of his episcopal palace so that it could be used as a hospital. He describes how he gave 90% of his stipend to charity, and how he simply lived for the poor. He spent his life for them matching deed to word. He spent time with prisoners. Hugo described how Myriel went with one prisoner, standing side by side with him on the scaffold, having spent the previous day with him, sharing with him “the best truths, which are also the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless.” It was through such a lifestyle that people came to refer to the Bishop as “Monseigneur Bienvenu” – a bishop most welcome and welcoming.
This key character brings freedom. He unlocks Valjean’s soul and “gives him back his life”. Fourteenth century poet Hafiz comments on such great people who “drop keys all night long”:
The small person
builds cages for everyone
he
sees.
Instead, the sage,
who needs to duck his head,
when the moon is low
can be found dropping keys, all night long
for the beautiful
rowdy,
prisoners.
Valjean sums his situation up with these words:
For I had come to hate this world
This world which had always hated me
Take an eye for an eye!
Turn your heart into stone!
This is all I have lived for!
This is all I have known!
One word from him and I’d be back
Beneath the lash, upon the rack
Instead he offers me my freedom,
I feel my shame inside me like a knife
He told me that I have a soul,
How does he know?
What spirit came to move my life?
Is there another way to go?
I am reaching, but I fall
And the night is closing in
And I stare into the void
To the whirlpool of my sin
I’ll escape now from the world
From the world of Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean is nothing now
Another story must begin!
The engraving by Gustave Brion shows the Bishop of Digne – prepared for the first edition of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables in 1886.
“Learning is not a process from which the learner can stand aloof, remaining fundamentally unchanged, as the possessor of her knowledge. Rather, learning – if it is true learning – is a process in which the learner’s present understanding, her present configuration of desire, her present way of being in the world, are at stake. It is a process in which the learner’s relation to the object of her knowledge, and so everything that she has invested in the present form of the relationship, are placed at risk. Yet the Gospel proclaims both that the learner must take such a risk with herself, and also that she is safe enough to take it. Held by God’s lavish mercy, the learner is freed to take the risk of an ongoing kenosis that is the form of her journey deeper into God’s own knowledge, and the proper form of learning.”
14th century poet Hafiz suggests two ways of playing God at chess.
What is the difference
Between your Existence
And that of a Saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the beloved
Has just made such a fantastic move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over joy
And bursting out in laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
Photo from Gabork
Theological perspectives have changed. Tonight I am meeting with our “Readers’ Council” to hear their concerns about their “Continuing Ministerial (Professional) Development”.These changes in theological perspective will be very much on my mind.
Reader ministry in the Church of England was “revived” in 1561 and in 1866 to minister in poorer parishes “destitute of an incumbent” and to cope with the population explosion in cities in the early 19th century. They had a different point of view from the clergy. The Bishop of Bangor (in 1894) saw the advantage of “Christian men who can bridge the gap between the different classes of society” – And the Dean of Manchester recognised that most Readers were “more in unison with the masses with whom they mixed”. Although the Diocesan Readers came from the professions, the Parochial Readers were described as ‘the better educated from among the uneducated’. Nowadays Readers and clergy train together both before and after licensing and ordination. I have been ordained long enough to remember that this was not always so, and to remember that the idea that Readers and clergy could train together seemed preposterous. Now we take it for granted and appreciate the advantages of learning together.
This movement of theology is reflected in many of our traditions. From a Roman Catholic perspective, Ilia Delio traces the development of theology from the preserve of the priest in his academic study to a vast lay, creative and inter-disciplinary movement. This huge paradigm shift is dated back as recently as the 1970’s when only 5% of theologians were non-priests. That figure has grown to over 60%. Theological education is now well beyond the control of the institutional church. Diarmuid O’Murchu lists features of this shift in his book Adult Faith:
For O’Murchu the “Kingdom of God” is “the companionship of empowerment” with theology being the “servant wisdom” of that companionship, so that “theology once more becomes a subversive dangerous memory, unambiguously committed to liberty from all oppressions and to empowerment for that fullness of life to which all creatures are called.” (O’Murchu, p65).
Theology has changed. In many traditions theology was thought to have been the preserve of the clergy. Readers and other lay ministers helped to open those boundaries, but their tendency remains to “prioritise the church, its traditions, teachings and expectations.” Now we increasingly realise that theology goes beyond the church (why has that taken so long?). Our shared “ministerial development” is to realise this, to overcome the tendency to prioritise the church and to engage with the “companionship of empowerment” wherever that is found.
Grits and Grains 
