Grits and Grains

Ah Bisto! Conspiracy Theories of Pentecost and Community

June 10, 2011March 20, 2013 David Herbert1 Comment

People who breathe together, stay together. People who can smell one another create community. The person who holds his nose because he doesn’t like the air that he is breathing is excluding himself from that community.

Ivan Illich reminds us of an old German saying: ich kann Dich gut reichen, “I can smell you well”. It captures well an apect of openness we often miss. We have our eyes and ears open, but rarely do we talk about having our nose open. I can smell you well. For me that adds another sense to the story of the Good Samaritan. Did the victim in the ditch smell so badly that people could not tolerate his smell, and had to walk by on the other side, holding their nose against the stink. With nose open, the Good Samaritan had his arms free to manhandle the victim to safety and recovery.

There is a custom in Christian liturgy called the “kiss of peace“, or osculum pacis – only recovered relatively recently in the Church of England. These days the kiss of peace isn’t so much a kiss as a handshake – very British – but at least it’s touching. Apparently in some places, until the 3rd century, the kiss was “mouth to mouth”, and was a sharing and mingling of breath. John’s story of Pentecost reminds us that Jesus breathed on his disciples, saying “receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). They smelt each other well. They shared their breath in con-spiracy. The church formed conspiratorially to be a conspiracy. Illich writes:

“Peace as the commingling of soil and water sounds cute to my ears; but peace as the result of conspiratio exacts a demanding, today almost unimaginable, intimacy.”

Pax board, Early 16th century, in a frame from 19th century

16th century Pax Board from Budepest

The intimacy didn’t last as some regarded the practise as scandalous. For example, Tertullian (in the third century) was rather worried about possible embarassment to “a decent matron”. The practice got well watered down. By the 13th century, the Catholic Church had substituted a pax board which the congregation kissed instead of kissing one another!

“Don’t imagine you can be friends with people you can’t smell.” That was the advice Illich was given. Friendships and communities develop amongst people who smell each other well, who can breathe in the air and the smell of their friends and neighbours, and who allow their own air and smell to be breathed by others. Friendships and communities are conspiracies – threatened in our de-odourised times of Lynx, Colgate and Ambi-pur where we struggle to smell anyone, or anything, well.

The playground cry “you stink, you stink” marks a cruel exclusion by those who won’t smell a person well – it is often accompanied with the gesture of the nose being held or up-turned. The person excluded has to find their friends who are prepared to smell. Above every friendship, every community, every conspiracy, there is a nose.

>Rhyl in Panorama

June 7, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

photo from Postcard Farm

It was friend +Tim Ellis who made me aware that poverty has been exported from our cities to our coastlands. For Jeanette and myself, Rhyl is a “day out”, refreshment and time for ourselves. We enjoy the wide spaces, and the walk from Rhyl to Prestatyn along the beach.

Jim Pickering outside
Rathbone’s Rhyl Taste Academy

Panorama presented a very different picture of Rhyl. Apparently in West Rhyl nearly half of the people are unemployed and on benefits, and these are the people the Government has in its sites in its welfare to work programme. We followed Adam, Steve and a few others. Adam did work experience at Morrison’s, which eventually resulted in his being all smiles over landing a job there for 18 hours a week. Steve described a hopeless situation of long term unemployment. It seems so sad that these people are “targets” and that they are seen as fraudulent malingerers. There are imaginative programmes aimed at helping some from welfare to work, including the work done by Rathbones in projects such as the Taste Academy and Rhyl Football Club “Strikers”.

Rathbone is a UK-wide voluntary youth sector organisation providing opportunities for young people to transform their life-circumstances by re-engaging with learning, discovering their ability to succeed and achieving progression to further education, training and employment.

The dark underside of the Government programme though is that those who can work but who don’t are going to be severely penalised (loss of benefit for three years). The little given now is going to be even less unless they accept the jobs they are offered – whether they like it or not. I don’t know where the boundary between work and slavery is, but maybe we are getting pretty close. Fitness for work assessments sound fine, so long as they are fair. MIND – the mental health charity – claims there are many problems with them.

I feel like DWP want to send me back to a workplace where I don’t have the skills necessary for coping. Whenever I deal with a government agency I feel pretty bad afterwards – it is like nobody takes me seriously and that because I don’t have a physical disability, I am somehow a malingerer or scrounger. This is not the case. (from MIND)

Rhyl beach – on the North Wales coast

I am glad I have a job I am nearly fit for. I would not want a job that didn’t fit.

For us Rhyl is a day out. We can afford to get there and we can afford to eat there (and we will be going to the Taste Academy). I’m afraid reduced incomes aren’t going to buy any days out for the people of our coastlands. It is no wonder that there are drug and alcohol issues – drugs and alcohol bring opportunities of days out – (not of place, but of mind), away from the frustration, anger and hopelessness.

>supervision

May 25, 2011July 8, 2011 David Herbert1 Comment

Interesting discussion on supervision at yesterday’s training session for those who are going to be “supervising ministers” for newly ordained clergy.

Peter Chantry offered insights from his experience as he looks forward to welcoming a new curate to his Nantwich parish. They safeguard space each week for a supervision session. One hour every Thursday morning. That is impressive. One of the impressive aspects of his presentation – besides his low-tech mind-map handout – was his emphasis on the quality of the relationship and the way that he is obviously facilitating a collaborative/community approach to formation. There is evidently a care-full building of trust for the relationship “centred on loyalty and commitment, characterised by gentleness and honesty, sharing humanity, respecting confidentiality, meeting & praying regularly.” Good stuff.

It begged the question from friend Julian of what supervision is for. Or, what does successful supervision look like?

I wonder. We spend so much time talking about supervision, insisting that it is a good thing – but what is it for? Is it about “seeing things for ourselves”, “seeing through things” (where there were blind spots), and “seeing things through” (sustainability)?

I have been reading John Hull‘s incredibly moving and honest account of the onset of his blindness, Touching the Rock. He refers to the “thousands of tiny accidental happenings” which led him along the path to blindness. According to Hull faith transforms such accidental happenings into the “signs of our destiny”, by “retrovidence” rather than “providence”.

He describes his stumbling on the altar at Iona Abbey during his stay there in 1986, through which he became a WBS a “whole-body-seer”. Here he sees things for himself, sees through his blindness, and discovers how he can see things through. His seeing is full of feeling and emotion as he touches the rock.

Altar at Iona
photo by Calypso Orchid

“After several nights, I discovered the main altar. I had been told about this, and I easily recognised it from the description. It was a single block of marble. Finding one corner, I ran my fingers along the edge, only to find that I could not reach the other. I worked my way along the front and was amazed at its size. The front was carved with hard, cold letters. They stood out baldly, but I could not be bothered reading. The top was as smooth as silk, but how far back did it go? I stretched my arms out over it but could not reach the back. This was incredible. It must have a back somewhere. Pushing myself upon to it, my feet hanging out over the front, I could reach the back. I did this again and again, measuring it with my body, till at last I began to have some idea of its proportions. It was bigger than me and much older. There were several places on the polished surface which were marked with a long, rather irregular indentations, not cracks, but imperfections of some kind. Could it have been dropped? These marks felt like the result of impact. The contrast between the rough depressions and the huge polished areas was extra ordinary. Here was the work of people, grinding this thing, smoothing it to an almost greasy, slightly dusty finish which went slippery when I licked it. Here were these abrasions, something more primitive, the naked heart of the rock.” (P 163).

As a post-script, he writes: “God is many and yet one, and in God there are many worlds yet one. God does not abolish darkness; God is the Lord of both light and darkness. If in God’s light we see light, then in God’s darkness we see darkness. If a journey into light is a journey into God, then a journey into darkness is a journey into God. That is why I go on journeying, not through, but into.” (p165)

PS Simon Marsh has a different slant on this and has an interesting post on teaching the world to listen – with a video of profoundly deaf musician Dame Evelyn Glennie.

>pointless disappointments

May 15, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

historic marker for Camp Disappointment
(photo by Jimmy Emerson)

That is not the sort of review you would like to see on TripAdvisor if you were the owner of a campsite. There are many places called “Disappointment” – it must be hard for those who live in those places. “What’s it like where you live?” “You mean disappointing?” “I thought so”.

By a strange quirk of the Church of England, my most recent appointment meant that I was listed in the “resignations” rather than the “appointments” in our mailing. I presumed that this was therefore a “dis-appointment” rather than an appointment!

old Fresnel lens from the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse by Grace Fell

I have been struck recently by the high expectations we have of one another, and that appointments can often lead to disappointments. Once we are a disappointment to someone we are always then seen through that lens of disappointment, and our own self-perception can be coloured by that as well. When it comes to disappointment, it is often the solo leaders who are disappointed, and those they appoint who are disappointing. Belbin points this out. According to him (Team Roles at Work (2003) p98),

A solo leader “plays unlimited role” (and interferes), whereas the team leader chooses to “limit role” (and delegates).
A solo leader “strives for conformity”, whereas a team leader “builds on diversity”.
A solo leader “collects acolytes”, whereas a team leader “seeks talent”.
A solo leader “directs subordinates”, whereas a team leader “develops colleagues”.
A solo leader “projects objectives”, whereas a team leader “creates mission”.

Life is hard in the land of Disappointment. The only escape is into a a different world of team leadership.

Talking of disappointments, I just love Nilsson’s “The Point” – a story about a round headed boy called Oblio, who lives in the Land of Point with his dog Arrow. Its moral – everything has a point, and nothing is pointless.

Integrity and teaching

May 4, 2011March 20, 2013 David HerbertLeave a comment

“A complex web of connections”
Organic Growth from the Internet Mapping Project
posted by jurveston

These lines from May Sarton indicate something of the integrity of the “good” minister, teacher or human being:

Now I become myself.

It’s taken time, many years and places.

I have been dissolved and shaken,

worn other people’s faces … (the rest of the poem is here)

I have worn other people’s faces because it’s safe to be in the crowd. I have worn other people’s faces but they have never fit. I have tried to be clever. I have tried to be funny. I have even tried to be effective. But these faces never fit. We live in a world where standards are imposed and where we are trained from the outside in to conform to certain standards. When Jesus breathed new life into his disciples (John 20:19-23) he seemed to be giving them a very different inside-out spiritual direction for their lives. Parker Palmer, who quotes the above lines from May Sarton, talks about the divided self and the undivided self. A self divided is a self dis-membered and lacking integrity. For Palmer “good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” They “join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.”

Palmer goes on to say that good teachers are “able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves. … The connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts – meaning heart in its ancient sense, as the place where intellect and emotion and spirit and will converge in the human self.”

When I reflect on the good teachers I have had I find that they are people who refused “other people’s faces”, who committed time to me and gave me their undivided attention. I also reflect that they have been a rather rare breed, but then I may not have been the right student to help great teaching happen with all the others I have known. The good teachers, though. have been more than enough – thank God.

>never marry, but for love

April 29, 2011July 8, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

>The Big Fat Gypsy Royal Wedding, Kate and William – weddings galore. But for me today, the privilege of being present at Dave and Shelley’s wedding – a secular affair (and in the sight of a generous God) – at which I have been asked to read “Never marry but for love”, by William Penn – a 17th century Quaker whose face is said to be the face of Quaker Oats. Like Kate Middleton, William Penn was from Reading (Twyford) – or as they say of Kate – “a village in Berkshire” (Bucklebury). Penn, himself, was one of the many missionaries who travelled to America – he founded Pennsylvania, and his experiment there was influential in the development of the American Constitution.

I have sat lightly to the Royal Wedding – and the media interest in it. I did catch sight of David Starkey’s programme, Romance and the Royals – which did underline the importance of romance in marriage as something that has been influenced by royal marriages down the ages where feelings have been the basis of marriage (including lust) – cf various Henrys, Edwards and Georges – as opposed to royal weddings in many other countries, which have been about political alliances.

And congratulations and best wishes for all getting married today – Kate and William, Dave and Shelley – and Irish travellers, Mary and Paddy (married two weeks ago). Never marry but for love.

Never marry, but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
He that minds a body, but not a soul
has not the better part of that relationship,
and will consequently lack the noblest comfort of a married life.

Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love.
As love ought to bring them together,
so it is the best way to keep them well together.

A husband and wife that love one another
show their children that they should do so too.
Others visibly lose their authority in their families
by their contempt for one another,
and teach their children to be unnatural by their examples.

Let not joy lessen, but augment affection;
it being the basest of passions to like what we have not,
what we slight when we possess.

here it is we ought to search out our pleasure,
where the field is large and full of variety, and of an enduring nature;
sickness, poverty or disgrace being not able to shake it
because it is not under the moving influences of worldly contingencies.

Nothing can be more entire and without reserve;
nothing more zealous, affectionate and sincere;
nothing more contented than such a couple,
nor greater temporal felicity than to be one of them.

William Penn 1644-1718.

>between concentration and diversity

April 22, 2011 David Herbert1 Comment

>Lighting effects figure in the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. The spotlight is turned on the cross – all else is darkness. Then the metaphorical curtain opens and the lights go up. It is not only the thief crucified with Jesus, or the Roman soldier who realise what a good day this Friday is. The curtain veiling God is ripped from top to bottom – a new act in history begins.

Funny how evil is an anagram of veil. Today, Good Friday, embraces the evils of what we are able to inflict on one another. Venom and spite concentrated on Jesus was returned with the full force of humanity. Blind passion gives way to a forgiving love which permits no final solution.

A very belated cut to a hedge came to a sudden stop with this discovery.

Then the following morning in this very suburban garden a resident hedgehog revealed itself. The garden is only two years old, and has developed from a wasteland of a former running track (so the builders reckon). So quickly we are teeming with wildlife in an area which was jokingly known for its radio-active streams.

In contrast, how monstrous it seems to fly in the face of such diversity. This photo shows the one-eyed stupidity of such concentrated evil who thought they could control destiny. It was in the concentration camps that Hitler was able to concentrate on absolute power, without the restraint of any other point of view. I came across this quote from Primo Levi, who wrote in If this is a man “Never has there existed a state that was really “totalitarian.” … Never has some form of reaction, a corrective of the total tyranny, been lacking, not even in the Third Reich or Stalin’s Soviet Union: in both cases, public opinion, the magistrature, the foreign press, the churches, the feeling for justice and humanity that ten or twenty years of tyranny were not enough to eradicate, have to a greater or lesser extent acted as a brake. Only in the Lager [camp] was the restraint from below non-existent, and the power of these small satraps absolute.”

Auschwitz II Entrance – known as Death Gate
photo by vm-ramos

Lazarus Sunday

April 11, 2011April 2, 2017 David Herbert2 Comments

laughter of a 125 year old Israeli.
Source unknown.

Lazarus’s laughter brought a challenge to yesterday’s sermon (April 10th 2011). “Doesn’t God only laugh at the wicked?” was my tight-lipped challenger’s question.

According to the Lazarus’s post-mortem report I had picked up from Eugene O’Neill’s play, Lazarus LAUGHED. Lazarus had replied to his sisters’ question about what life was like after death by saying that God’s laughter resounded round heaven. Lazarus too in his post-mortem life could only laugh. That is how he came out of the tomb, with laughter welling up from his whole being.

I thought. Maybe God does laugh at the wicked (though I think he probably takes them more seriously than that), but I am sure he laughs along with the righteous (sorry, theological correction – those he has made righteous).

Two points intrigued me with the Lazarus’s story.

Firstly – it’s what’s in a name. Lazarus isn’t a name you hear much about – would his nickname be Laz-y (we often shorten names to the first syllable and then add a “y”). If we pronounce it Lazzy, his friends would be members of the Lazzy band. Lazarus means “God helps”. He’s from a village called Bethany. Bethany means “house of affliction”. So the story of “Lazarus in Bethany” is the story of “God helps in the house of affliction”.

Secondly, Lazarus stands for all of us. Laz ‘R’ Us. We can’t establish Lazarus’s cause of death for his post-mortem report from John’s gospel (11:1-45). But we know what causes ours – pick any from poverty, abuse, disease, anger, anxiety. We all get bound up with these, with deadlines, with expectations of others. They all suck the life from us. When Jesus called “Lazarus, come out” he is calling us out of our bind, so that we can have post-mortem life. (How that phrase “coming out” has gained new liberative meaning in recent decades!) No longer bound by his ego, no longer with death on the horizon, Lazarus stands for all of us.

God helps Lazar/us in the house of affliction to laughter and life. When Lazarus laughs, he laughs with all who enjoy post-mortem life, whose date of death is not some time in the future, but a moment in the past.

I was struck by the beauty of this Lazarus blessing by Jan Richardson from her beautifully Painted Prayerbook.

The secret
of this blessing
is that it is written
on the back
of what binds you.

To read
this blessing,
you must take hold
of the end
of what
confines you,
must begin to tug
at the edge
of what wraps
you round.

It may take long
and long
for its length
to fall away,
for the words
of this blessing
to unwind
in folds
about your feet.

By then
you will no longer
need them.

By then this blessing
will have pressed itself
into your waking flesh,
will have passed
into your bones,
will have traveled
every vein

until it comes to rest
inside the chambers
of your heart
that beats to
the rhythm
of benediction

and the cadence
of release.

Understanding Samaritans

March 27, 2011April 20, 2012 David Herbert1 Comment

Water of Life by Stephen Broadbent at Chester Cathedral
Photo by James Preston

Gordon McPhate, Dean of Chester Cathedral, preached this morning on the gospel for the day – the Samaritan woman – depicted in this sculpture. (The sermon is here from Curate’s Corner). Gordon described how a social worker won the trust of a difficult London community in a situation where so many before him had failed. He moved into his flat on the estate, but had no tools. He went asking for help – to borrow saw, hammer, ladders, screwdriver etc, etc. And that was it. He presented himself as needing help.

Likewise Jesus presented himself to the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar – asking her for a drink. Jews and Samaritans despised each other – and men looked down on women. So this meeting of Jesus is remarkable. Jesus, a Jew, is asking a woman and Samaritan for a drink. Their relationship is captured perfectly by Stephen Broadbent. The woman is on top of Jesus. Jesus stands under the woman – and understands her to the extent that she is able to tell her friends “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.”

Our social worker friend is in similar posture – as the one asking for help – standing under his neighbours whom his predecessors had quite possibly looked down on. Was the under-standing the secret of his success – plus the fact that his neighbours felt under-stood and needed?

Elizabeth Day has written a moving article in today’s Observer highlighting the predicament of those who are gay in Uganda by telling the stories of John Bosco and Florence Kizza. Their treatment has been abominable, not only in Uganda, but also by the immigration authorities in this country. They have been shown such little under-standing. The authorities have been tyrannical and overbearing – postures without understanding. We think we know so much till we stand under other life stories – and allow them to move us and shake us.

Nicodemus

March 21, 2011February 20, 2023 David HerbertLeave a comment

St Michael’s, West Kirby by Arthur John Picton

Fun at West Kirby with Nicodemus as the focus for the gospel reading – he comes to Jesus by night (John 3:1-17). Is that to hide himself? Does it describe his “unknowing” – which Jesus exposes? Does it describe his anxiety?

Does John attach any significance to his name – which means “victory of the people” (as does “Nicholas/Nichola”) with the passage ending with the words about Jesus’s coming not being to condemn the world, but to save it – the victory of the people?

Nicodemus is a shadowy figure this early in John’s gospel. He crops up again – John 7:45-51. Here he defends Jesus while still being very much part of the ruling council. He stands on his own when he says: “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” To which his fellow councillors react, replying: “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you?”

By the time Nicodemus makes his third appearance – John 19:38-42 – he is no longer associated with the rulers, but does come with Joseph of Arimathea (who is a secret disciple because of his fear) to take Jesus’s dead body to prepare it for burial.

I’d say that that was quite a journey John describes of the prestigious Nicodemus – from meeting Jesus in darkness, to being in two minds while keeping his old party membership – to his new identity of being with Jesus in his death and resurrection.

The Myrrhbearers from Fr Stephen’s blog

Nicodemus is one of the myrrhbearers celebrated in the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers in the Orthodox tradition on the 3rd Sunday of Easter. He and Joseph wrapped Jesus’ body with myrrh before burial. The other myrrhbearers – Mary Magdalene, Mary (wife of Cleopas), Joanna, Salome and Susanna – all brought myrrh to anoint Jesus’s body after his burial.

A story that begins in night and ends with the new morning of resurrection is a telling way of explaining the possibility of being born again. It’s a telling story for Lent – for Lent comes from the old English for “lengthening days”. One day, “there will be no more night” (Revelation 22:5), but in the mean time we live in the restlessness, anxiety, secrecy of the night – for some a time of great fear and violence – as we see in this clip from Libya.