Grits and Grains

>h.r.l. – his royal lowliness

November 29, 2010July 8, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

this stone marks the lowest point on earth

Jesus starts at the bottom – and stays there.

Ten days ago we were rounding off the church’s year by celebrating Christ the King – it has to remain a private awards ceremony because so many in the world choose to disagree – and Jesus would never impose himself. He’s King only to those who want him as such. Humility is his middle name.

We start the new year with clues that it is not “Highness” to describe his position, but low(li)ness. It is his royal lowliness (no capitals please) that according to the Advent hymn O come, o come Emmanuel “from depths of hell thy people save”. Jesus’s ministry begins at the lowest point on the surface of the earth – in the River Jordan. His life proceeds along the same low level of altitude – the wrong side of the fault line – to his death on the cross.

Jude Simpson has a wonderful Advent Reflection called Broken Open which takes us along this low line. She traces Jesus’s movements through the lowest points of people’s lives.

>between hope and optimism

November 28, 2010July 8, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

Between optimism and hope there is a huge credibility gap. Optimism can be foolish or a realistic prediction based on evidence. Is life getting any better? There are grounds for both optimism and pessimism depending on your point of view – but a well rounded maturity would find it difficult to call one way or another because the evidence is so complex. The folly of liberal optimism shows itself in the advent of Holocaust and economic meltdown. The only ground for optimism seems to be forgetfulness – when we forget our history and our nature: or arrogance, when we think of ourselves superior to either.

Optimism trusts human progress. The opposite of optimism isn’t pessimism but hope. Miroslav Volf (in Against the Tide: love in a time of petty dreams and persisting enmities) reminds his readers of Moltmann’s wonderful work on helping us to think about “hope”. Moltmann distinguished between two ways in which the future is related to us. There are two Latin words for “future” – futurum and adventus. “Future in the sense of futurum developes out of the past and present inasmuch as these hold within themselves the potentiality of becoming and are “pregnant with future”.” But future, expressed as adventus is the future “that comes not form the realm of what is or what was, but from the realm of what is not yet, from outside, from God.”

Advent is about the future that bursts in on our darkness. There is nothing in the data of our existence that gives us grounds for optimism. It is just faith. There is no optimism in W H Auden’s Christmas Oratorio “For the Time Being”. There is no sense of “what shall we get for Christmas?” that we have to endure in the commercialised Christmas. How could there be? Auden was writing in the 40’s where the overwhelming “grinning evidence” is that the “Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss”. There is only one option left for us “who must die”. Auden writes:

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
the Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die, demand a miracle.

And Volf writes:

“Every year in the Advent season we read the prophet Isaiah: “The people who wlaked in darkness haveseen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.” (Isaiah 9:2) This is what Christmas is all about – something radically new that cannot be gernerated out of the conditions of this world. It does not emerge. It comes…. God promises it”

The Kingdom

November 25, 2010March 20, 2013 David HerbertLeave a comment

>I have listened to two sermons from +Robert Atwell in two days. Today I get a day off!The first sermon was at the induction of friend Kathy Kirby as Vicar of St Paul’s Macclesfield. Kathy is a special person who is immensely generous in her appreciation of others. She will offer a very special ministry of affirmation and encouragement. The second sermon was to our Committee for Ministry in which he quoted “the Kingdom” by R.S.Thomas:

It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
R.S. Thomas, Collected Poems 1945-1990

I am playing round with ideas on supervision at the moment. Where many minds are bent on specifying, my mind is bent on generalising. I am told that if supervision becomes too general it loses its meaning. I counter that if supervision is too specific it doesn’t mean so much. If the kingdom is “mirrors in which the blind look at themselves and love looks at them back” I dare the word to bear such meaning and defy those who say I go too far.

>Supervision and oversight

November 24, 2010 David HerbertLeave a comment

>It’s hard to believe the stories of people who have been told by their supervisor that they haven’t time for supervision.

Friend John Lees led a training session on supervision and collaborative ministry for clergy who will be moving on to posts of responsibility in the next few months. He invited us to think of the different supervisory roles people may ask us to take on. In our own words these roles included acting as advocate, mediator, valuer, confessor, coach etc etc. This has got me to thinking that supervision actually happens formally and informally. By formal supervision I mean the intentional setting aside of space for supervision (that’s the space that often gets crowded out by business). When we ask for feedback, support, directions are we not also asking for supervision, but without requiring the creation of an intentional space? To my mind we are at that moment asking for someone to watch over us, to look after us and to help us to a superiorvision.

I worry that “supervision” has become a word made precious by those who would like to see themselves as supervisors. I wonder whether supervision thereby becomes something that is exclusive to the few – depending on scarce resources. I wonder whether supervision isn’t something that all of us need – but in very different guises. Vigilance and watching out for one another alerts us to the needs of others – when they need encouragement, assurance and challenge. The requests aren’t always verbalised. Jesus tells the story of the victim of violence lying at the side of the road. He remarks on the neglectful carelessness of those who passed him by. He highlights the response of the Good Samaritan who looked after the wounded victim and watched over his recovery.

Supervision belongs to the whole people of God. It is in fact a gift of God for his people which gives us confidence in prayer. The Lord who watches over us will neither slumber nor sleep (Ps 121). Therefore, we need to avoid the exclusive practice of supervision to make room for both the informal and formal requests that come our way (the way of all humans) – and we all need to have the confidence to ask for the help we need to get a better sight of our lives. We are all vulnerable. I fear that if we don’t make room for both the formal and informal aspects of supervision we will continually overlook the victims of our peripheral vision. I wonder whether the priest and the levite who passed by the wounded victim of Jesus’s story said – “sorry, that was an oversight”. It’s strange that “oversight” has two such opposite meanings.

Post-Phone (get it?)

November 19, 2010March 20, 2013 David Herbert1 Comment

I rarely get letters now – apart from leaflets from the local pizzerias. There are days when the phone does not ring. Communication has changed very significantly and rapidly. We have moved from beacon to drum to messenger to post to phone to fax to email to facebook to …. We have moved from moorland track to canals to railtrack to the road to the by-pass to Runway 5. Our horizons have shifted from village to town to Spanish Costas to antipodean holidays and now interplanetary travel plans.

My own journey is from a 35 year ministry in parishes where my business was “to know and be known” to living more anonymously on a housing estate. I have been discovering what most people have long known. That is, that communication is minimal in neighbourhoods. We talk amiably as neighbours – though we don’t see much of one another because working hours are very different. Others are just “passers by”. When we go to the local shops (thank goodness we’ve got some) we pass by one another without recognising one another and realising that the common ground that we share.

Fortunately new communities are being constructed all the time. These are often communities of our own making – virtual communities which offer conviviality and new possibilities for relationship. Unfortunately we feel safer in our Facebook communities than we do in our own street (even though the stats say that crime is lower than it has been for years).

Good Samaritan window at Tarvin Church

Passers-by don’t get a good press in the gospels. The Good Samaritan was the exception to the general rule of passers-by when he went out of his way to help the victim. Peter Shaw, in Conversation Matters, reports on a discussion with Veronica who told him about the short conversations she had (she is a flight attendant). She explained that they were all trained to be cheerful, and to look people in the eye and smile. She was full of stories about conversations she had with footballing stars and leading politicians making the point that what mattered was not who they were, but the way they were. What sort of tone did they adopt? Did they smile? Were they cheerful? Did they say ‘thank you’?

I suppose these sort of short conversations prevent us from being just passers-by of one another. A “thank you” shows we appreciate the other person. A “good morning” shows we’ve noticed. A “how are you” shows we care. Words get over our boundaries. Maybe communities are only built brick by brick and word by word.

>Equal in the sight of God

November 15, 2010 David Herbert1 Comment

>I have been following Riazat Butt’s pilgrimage to Mecca. It sounds a wonderful experience – millions of people moving together in worship of God. One of the principles of Haj, and one of the beauties of Islam is the practice of equality – we are all equal in the eyes of God. In prayer Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder. (No fancy hats, private pews or deferential behaviour!) However, it seems that it is hard to keep differences out of even the Haj, as this clip shows.

The Christian practice of hospitality is also inspired by the insight that the poor are and have a particular blessing. It is the rich who go empty away from God. It is the poor who are raised up. God can even swim against the tide of world power, even if we find it impossible to resist.

Chaplaincy

November 11, 2010March 20, 2013 David HerbertLeave a comment

Poppies painted by Pam Kelly

Today is a day to remember.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,They fell with their faces to the foe.We will remember them.
Also it is the day we celebrate St Martin of Tours – patron saint of France. Martin was a soldier who changed sides. He was a Roman soldier who became a “soldier of Christ” whereupon he declared, “I cannot fight”.Martin is famous for having halved his cloak to share it with a beggar. The cloak became an important relic which was specially cared by a priest in its reliquary. Wikipedia tells us that this priest was called “acappellanu” and “ultimately all priests who served the military were called cappellani. The French translation is chapelains, from which the English word chaplain is derived.”

St Martin and the Beggar by El Greco

This gives a fascinating insight into Christian ministry with “chaplaincy” grounded in this act of love – the sharing of the cloak. There is a further twist to the story in that Martin discovered his cloak restored when he woke one morning. Love defies the accountant and moves us into a world of magic and mystery. How can one cloak become one and a half cloaks, or even two cloaks? (Because I bet it wasn’t only Martin who was so blessed). Jesus defies accountancy logic when he declares that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life me will find it” (Matt 16:25). This mystery means that those who are determined to give of themselves don’t need to count the cost.

Those who give their life for their friends have a love which is supreme. There is no greater love than this – and there is no waste in such love. Simon Marsh has a wonderful story on his blog about the war veteran being greeted by a grandchild from one of the villages he helped to liberate. Such stories highlight the life-giving commitment of people who share Martin’s vocation as soldiers and chaplains. But Martin’s declaration sounds a warning at a time when we tend to avoid the hard questions of war – when life is wasted and brutalised. “I am a soldier of Christ. I will not fight.”

>The joy of work

November 10, 2010 David HerbertLeave a comment

>We are living in the middle of a building site – I have been intrigued by the teamwork of the builders, their methods and their planning. Every now and then the radio gets turned up. Like this morning, when they launched into Roy Orbison’s song “You got it”. It must be so rewarding to be building homes for others – and to be doing that under blue skies. It looks like good project management has released energy for really productive teamwork. Result – happiness and dignity at work. I take my soft hat off to them, hoping that government realise the value and satisfaction of providing homes fit for generous living.

>George’s difficult medicine

November 2, 2010July 8, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

>Churches can be very exclusive. A mother of a young man with severe communicational difficulties has her story told by Swinton and Mowatt:

We have a lot of young people in our church … but I never see any of the young people getting alongside George. None of theem ever sit beside him in church … none of them have invited him roun to their homes … and as a parent carer I find that difficult. I see them maybe going off for lunch or whatever and george is going home with his mum and dad and I just think how he has missed out on social interaction in his teenage years. In fact I could tell a little story:

A couple of years back one of the teenage girls who was having her 16th birthday and after the church service all the young people were going back to her house for a birthday dinner and afternoon. You know we had sung happy birthday to her in the church and the word had got round that you know the party was on and so forth. But of course, George wasn’t invited and so as we drove off from the church we just felt saddened that it was just again another example of exclusion and just how painful that was to us. Not knowing how George felt about that. We came home. We had our usual Sunday lunch… I went through to his bedroom later on in the afternoon and he was cutting up bits of paper, and I said to him, “What’s this you’re doing George?” And he said “I’m making up tickets for the party”.

What a story! We perhaps try to be inclusive but finish up excluding. We don’t know how exclusive we are until we hear stories like this. Makes you think. Does it make you change?