>Lonely Heart

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>

Isolated Christian
57
Pew 5, seat D
St Peter’s Church
Duddon
Tarvin Parish
Deanery of Chester
Chester Diocese
York Province
Church of England
Anglican Communion
21st century
Church of Christ
in the world

seeks playful companions
to take me out of myself
to discuss past differences
and future hopes
with view to long lasting friendship
GSOH
absolutely essential

Hobbies and sexuality totally irrelevant!
Smokers also waiting to be embraced
So that our prayers may join
and rise like incense
and we, at last,
shall be
ONE

>A green place in a burnt land

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> Tomorrow’s the begining of what is called “The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity” when we take up Jesus’s prayer that God’s people should be one. I discovered in my run the other day that when we see how far we still have to run to reach our goal that we may be tempted to step on the gas and rush, failing to take care of each step taken, finishing up getting nowhere. Maybe that’s what I have felt about the quest for Christian unity – that we are getting nowhere. It becomes frustrating – and frustration leads to anger, and we all know that anger is no good for any sort of unity.

Perhaps it is better to recognise the small steps we take, and to celebrate them – to take care over each step taken.

Timothy Radcliffe (in What is the Point of Being a Christian?) mentions a convent in Burundi. Six of the nuns are Tutsis and six are Hutu. All lost their families in the fighting between the two ethnic groups. Radcliffe asked how they managed to live in peace with each other. They replied that besides their common prayer, they always listened to the nes together believing that nobody should be alone in their grief. Radcliffe writes: “slowly people from all the ethnic groups learned that the monastery grounds were a safe place, and gathered in their church to pray and grow their crops. It was a green place in a burnt land.”

Confessions of a Jogger

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>Another crisp day for a run – like skating on ice. A bit greedy this morning, trying to run further than I could, and halfway round thinking what a long way there still is to go. That’s always dangerous. The thought comes with tiredness and the temptation is to up the pace and get it over with. Far better to take care with each step and to get there in the end. Who siad life’s a marathon?

The Last Word

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>Sometimes we feel that people have to have the “last word” in an argument. It is so annoying! Sometimes I have to do presentations – and I apologise for all those occasions when I’ve appeared to want to have the “last word”. That’s the way it happened in my educational background – lecturers who seemed to have everything buttoned up. What they said really was “the last word”, and there was no chance of comeback or developing what had been presented. The impression given was that you had to go away and “learn your lesson”.

I would rather be giving a “first word” – something to set trains of thought going.

And that’s got me thinking about the first word and the last word. The first word is the Word by whom all things came into being – and the last word is also spoken by God. A word of triumph – “it is completed”. Kingdom come – on earth, just as in heaven. The first and the last – alpha and omega – but thanks be to God who allows us to get a word in edgeways, even if we do make a hell of a din.

Space – to fill or to create

David Herbert1 Comment

> Do you fill a space or create a space?

I suspect Victorians loved spaces to be filled – if our church architecture is anything to go by. There’s no room to swing a cat let alone set it amongst pigeons. I wonder if that’s the reason. I wonder if it was a sort of control mechanism. If the space was filled with furniture there’s no room to move. If the space was filled with pews everyone is lined up – all neat and tidy. I wonder if this was a reflection of the mind games going on – that people had to believe and that minds were absolutely cluttered by what they were told to think and remember.
I wonder if that’s why there aren’t any cats in churches.
Post modernism has gone minimalist (has that got something to do with the atomic age?) and as we have explored space we have decided to make space. TV programmes focus on “decluttering our homes” which reminds me that is what I am supposed to be doing now, and architects talk about the significance of the space that surrounds an object. But. still many people insist on filling the space. Pages, diaries are there to be filled – when actually it is the white space of a page which highlights meaning and the days kept free which are the most refreshing.
Alan Eccleston – Communist priest serving in Darnall, Sheffield for many years – referred to the practice of the French philosopher Charles Peguy. His practice was to write blank pages into his books. When challenged by his publisher, Peguy replied that he wanted to give his readers “thinking space”.

>Breaking the mould

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>One member of our church aged 60+ (his age is important) commented to me at the beginning of last Sunday’s Carol Service that he had sung the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City as a solo at the carol service when he was a boy. I suspect that every year the Carol Service began with Once in Royal …………. Things get like that don’t they? This year we started with “Let all mortal flesh keep silence”. Nobody minded. The world didn’t end and nobody complained that we hadn’t sing Once in Royal David’s City at all.

The change that has upset a lot of people is moving hymn books to a table further in the church – done so that those greeting people can concentrate on greeting instead of giving books out, and so that they don’t have their backs to people as they come in. Also it means that people don’t have to walk past the coffee station at the end of the service to return their books. Old habits die hard and I suppose it’s always been done like that. Some change is noticed – other change slips in unnoticed.

I am old enough to remember Roman Catholic churches having to have central altars, so the priest faced the people when celebrating instead of having his back to everyone – and having to use the vernacular instead of Latin. They managed the change almost overnight. Sometimes it pays to have a Pope!

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>Children

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>

A frosty morning for a run – all the better for seeing more clearly!

Carol services always raise the contentious issue of the place of children. If the service is too child-centred the adults complain about it not being enough for them (as if services are for our own pleasure). If the services are too formal, parents worry that it’s been boring for their children. All very ironic as the Christmas story is totally child-centred (baby centred), and when that child grew up he used a child to show his disciples what faithfulness looks like.

One way round is to take turns. One year, the Carol Service is for children – the next it’s for adults. While it may teach some people a lesson it doesn’t do much for healing divisions.

The inescapable fact is that Christmas celebrates God’s gift, in the form of a baby and those who enter the spirit of Christmas accept that gift with joy. Children love the story and love playing their part in it – as you can see from these photos of our recent Nativity. Their response, joy and enthusiasm is an inspiration for us all. Not only should we welcome the Christ child as God’s gift, we should also welcome children as God’s gift – to be treasured, and as we say as a church in the baptism service – “we receive them with joy”.

>The Innocents

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>Well – I’m not sure it worked! The Liverpool Nativity was obviously very ambitious but probably fell between the two stools of celebrating Liverpool life and the telling of the Nativity. It was good to see a city celebrating itself (though what say did the citizens have in that?) and the ideal to be “hospitable” was good to highlight. But the plot was naffly political although feasible and lost credibility in trying to be politically relevant. Joseph is an asylum seeker from the beginning, rather than becoming an asylum seeker after Jesus’s birth, and asylum seekers become the target of strong government as opposed to boys under the age of two. I got the feeling that the story was being (ab)used for publicising the Year of Culture. There will be better attempts at retelling the Christmas story in our schools and churches over the next week – including “Come to a Party” – the nativity at Tarvin with so many children enjoying being part of the telling story.

What did come across was the power of government and the vulnerability of the holy family/migrant worker. In today’s Guardian Madeleine Bunting refers to R I Moore’s book on medieval history called “The Formation of a Persecuting Society” suggesting that today’s society is just as likely to be a persecuting society as any. She paralells today’s society with medieval society. One comment (from PetraMB) to her article puts the blame on “the church” but rimbaudbob points out that scapegoating has always been part of human nature, and that Jesus on the cross was scapegoat. Rimbaudbob is saddened that the work of Rene Girard has been ignored on this subject.

The Birth Story Christians treasure is a challenge to how church politics are conducted and how the power should be lived. Only saintly and exceptionally has the challenge been met – but I guess that is also the point of the Christmas story – that we should be so surprised to be so highly favoured, and that God so loves the world that he gives us his life. Why?

I wonder whether persecution is part of wanting to be powerful and whether it’s better to conclude that power is something we can’t really be trusted with. One of the hymns of the early Church praises Jesus for resisting it (Philippians 2:6).