New year uncertainty

We stand on the edge of another year. Some may be glad this one is nearly over. It’s been a hard one for many of us with things happening to us we did not expect and a journey we had to take that was not very happy. 

The road into 2019 lies ahead of us. We travel on it expectantly. For me the early part of the year will bring continued uncertainty with health and well being not as yet bringing much peace. I had longed to return to work this week. That is looking highly unlikely and I’m having to be told I’m nowhere near strong enough. I feel I’m letting so many people down and I’m just very sorry that others are having to do so much because I’m not doing what I’m meant to be doing. 

We place ourselves at the turn of the year into the God who goes ahead of us. I don’t know what 2019 will hold. I’m quite scared to enter it. But we journey slowly, honestly and in quiet confidence that there is nothing we will face we cannot with the divine carrying us not get through. God’s time is not ours. Someone said to me the other day perhaps what I’m enduring at the moment is a sign. I’m not sure what it is a sign of yet! I plod on taking a breathless day at a time. And I look for God every day in something small and count my blessings. 

The world is uncertain tonight and the place of the believer in hope and in light is to be amongst that uncertainty. The Celtic Daily Prayer book for today has this lovely thought. We need to be here to help the world cope with what it cannot understand. Be that sudden illness or Brexit or migrants frightened in the Channel. 

Happy 2019 everyone. I hope and pray we will find peace and joy in it. Or if not, the courage to hold on. I shall be thinking of Thomas Merton’s words as the clock strikes midnight later. They are a comfort as I have far too little answers to my questions. 

My Lord God, 

I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think that I am following 

your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. 

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. 

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

God in the face of the other

A very happy Christmas to all those who are walking this journey with me at the moment. 

I’ve been to Christmas Eve communion and to service this morning. The services were all about relationship. God comes in vulnerability to share our vulnerability. I tried so hard to sing some carols. I nearly choked last night during O Little Town of Bethlehem. Why are carols so high? We sang it again this morning with a verse I’ve never ever sung before:

“Where children pure and happy, pray to the blessed Child, where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the Mother mild; where Charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”

Phillips Brooks, who wrote the hymn, had it when the hymn was first performed in 1868, according to my internet research. (My Wife is watching some rubbish on Pick and I’m bored!) It never then appeared in any hymn book. Goodness only knows then why it was on our hymn sheet this morning? 

If today is about relationships and people will either be together partying and eating or feeling acutely lonely yearning for relationship or mourning one - then we are called into relationship with others as a priority. 

The leader of the services included this story last night from the Jewish Talmud as a challenge. A rabbi sits with his students. 

“How do we know,” the rabbi asks, “when the night is over and the day has arrived?”

One student replies: Rabbi, night is over and day arrives, when you can see a house in the distance and determine if that’s your house or the house of your neighbour.

Another student responds: Night is over and day arrives when you can see an animal in the field and determine if it belongs to you or to your neighbour.

Yet a third says: Night is over and day has arrived when you can see a flower in the garden and distinguish its colour.

“No, no, no” thunders the Rabbi, “Why must you see only in separations, only in distinctions, and disjunctions. No. Night is over and day arrives when you can look into the face of the person beside you and you can see that he is your brother, she is your sister. Night is over when you can see that you belong to each other. That you are one. Night has ended and day has arrived when you can see God in the face of the other.” 

 May today bring a new commitment to care. May we be better people, less selfish and self obsessed. Let’s think about others round us a bit more. It’s not 3 yet but I think the Queen is going to say this too. I’m grateful to those who care for me today. 

I’m grateful for the person who led the services we have shared in. I told him my story on the church step last night (well, at 1am this morning) and he told me to relax! This morning he grasped my hand and said, with no prompting, “I hope your recovery is quick.” He sent me on my way feeling I mattered. That’s the message of Christmas too.  

We both wish all our friends who read my stuff a happy Christmas and a blessed and for many, a much better 2019. 

Promises

I should have been in this room at Ore Community Centre this afternoon leading a carol service. I was glad to see this picture posted by Steve Stewart but it also reminded me of what I am missing this season and I’m finding it so hard. I hope my churches are all okay and I really thank those who today and tomorrow and Tuesday will be taking all my services. I really miss you.  

I’ve not been good this week breathing wise and then I managed to get the bug that has been going round - it came on as I was driving. I now know what the hard shoulder you can pull onto is for! I slept for 36 hours solidly after I got into bed. Lis now has it, and is sleeping upstairs as I write. 

I managed to drag myself to church tonight. I am trying to listen for God’s promise over the next few days. I’m still very unclear what God is saying through this time of uncertainty and hard going to me. 

This Christmas people need some comfort and joy; they need the men of strife to hush their noise and they need to hear an angel sing. It’s been a year of wondering where we are going. Perhaps that’s why a song about a sausage roll has reached number 1: a bit of light relief but also doing some good as it has raised timely monies for food banks. There seem to be more houses with lights on them this year and the season feels longer.

 People need something better than what they face in the everyday. But not just artificial temporary “it’s all okay” but something to hold on to. January and February can be bleak because you really believe in the words of that trite song because it is Christmas “from now on your troubles will be out of sight.” We need some comfort to help in a bad time. That often needs to be gentle. I’ve just managed my first food since Thursday evening: a very slow eating of parsnip, apple and thyme soup (yummy from Morrison’s) and it feels good! 

I heard three divine promises tonight: they don’t take my trouble away nor do they make me feel suddenly better, but they give me something to hold on to.

1. The Psalm for tonight was Psalm 25. There were only three of us in the service and we read the Psalm slowly. I owe a lot to the Anglican dot on the page as it makes you pause and take the words in better. The 15th verse stood out for me: “Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.” So many people are caught in a net tonight. They want escape, freedom, to be rid of what is holding them back, often people! The promise here is if we keep our eye ever towards God he will pluck our feet out. I’ve been very honest in my writing recently and I know some find that hard who read this but while I’m struggling with much, my writing and thinking are somehow a strength. I still believe God has a plan, even if I haven’t a clue what that is yet. In July I was going along quite nicely...

2. Tonight’s Gospel was the lovely “other” reading of Jesus’ birth from Matthew chapter 1 where Joseph is reminded of the ancient prophecy that God will come as Emmanuel, which means, God is with us. With us, that’s the point, with us. To be with someone is to sit with them where they are. When someone is in pain or mental anguish or just uncertain, the thing that they need is to know they are not alone. But too often we don’t stay with people, we dare not face their reality or we make excuses why we can’t be there. I remember when my Dad died and my Mum was widowed at a ridiculously young age of 48, people would cross the street to avoid interacting with her, because they didn’t know what to say. But the more they stayed away, the more detached she became. If God is with us, then the church that says it worships him has to be with people wherever they are and whatever they face. The huge promise of Christmas is that, surely?

3. We shared the Magnificat tonight. I’ve shared these words over and over many times but tonight as in the Psalm another verse hit me perhaps for the first time: “He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.” I’m tired of people, as I think we all are, who think they can lord it over others and can push us about and who never make mistakes and never are accountable to anyone. President Trump seems to be imploding but he doesn’t notice; the Brexit thing is out of control; so many examples. To be “excessively proud of oneself” is a disease of 2018. “Look at me!” celebrity culture cries; “I’m very important” shouts the man in a responsible post in an office,  yet does not do that post justly or honestly. The promise is these types will be scattered! And one day a new world will come. And we need to live it now and work for it now. I think learned folk call it “realised eschatology” - look it up! Jasper the cat sits on the bedroom window sill of the Hailsham manse. The cats love the bedroom window sill because it is a sun trap. He’s looking in my picture at the tree in the front garden. It’s full of blossom. It thinks it is spring. A sign of better days to come. 

So I guess this unusual Christmas for me is God saying to me “hold on with me, there are no answers, but I’m still with you, stick with me.” I was grateful to the President of Conference who posted this prayer the other day. In all my writing I’m yearning for honesty as we search for the promises and its brilliant to see some of that in her leadership of us. I’ll listen for what Christmas Eve and Christmas Day say to me and come back with more. If you are bored, you don’t have to read it!

Here is the President’s prayer:

“Praying for all who are finding this season a challenge. May light break into darkness and may those dazzled by too much light find safe dark spaces in which to heal.”

Amen to that! 

Doing what we can do

I dragged myself on Sunday to a carol service at the local Methodist church here in Hailsham. I’m really struggling with church at the moment and feel very outside of it because I’ve been away from it so long. I’m not engaging with Christmas at all and so I needed to hear the story and at least sing a few carols before it’s all over. 

I sat and thought about all the characters in the story as the passages from the bible were read. God came into the world in human form helped by people who said yes to him. They offered what they could to be part of the drama. 

I’ve been very good at focussing over the last four months I’ve been unwell at what I can’t do. I fret I cannot superintend my Circuit; I cry when my lungs ache so much because I’ve done too much. Tonight I’ve only changed the fillings in five cat toilets and made the dinner and I haven’t stopped coughing and I’ve gone violently hot. When I do too much which at the time doesn’t feel too much, I get frustrated. 

But maybe I need to refocus on what I can do, not what I can’t. There is much I can’t do at the moment. I need to rejoice in little steps. I thought about Mary as the service progressed on Sunday morning. She was frightened, she didn’t understand, but she said “let it be to me according to your will.” And then through that act of obedience, giving what she could, even in uncertainty, remember her fiancée in law could well lead her to death for playing away - she enables potential revolution.

One of my favourite writers, Rachel Held Evans, talks in a blog post about belief being hard this year. In her yearning and her offering to God she concludes “ And so I’m waiting with the angst of the prophets, with the restlessness of the psalmist who cried “How long, oh Lord, will You hide your face forever?” and with the stubborn, unsentimental hope of a woman so convinced the baby inside her would change everything, she proclaimed in present tense that the great reversal has already arrived.”

 

We can make a difference even if we can only do a little. My phrase I say a lot when I collapse is “this is so ridiculous!” I can’t see I’ve done well doing something as pathetic as servicing cat toilets! 

We had to be in Chichester today and slipped into the cathedral for a few moments. Above the nave is a star created using two laser projectors, set high up in the cathedral roof, directing light onto a transparent mesh to form its image. “The Star of Bethlehem” appears as a morphing geometric shape, moving slowly and gracefully across the space.

Visitors to the Cathedral can interact with the artwork by operating an iPad to change the star's appearance and colour. The idea is to see the vibrance of light always ahead of you with endless surprises and colour. When we went outside in the dark, we passed the statue of St Richard, floodlit, but more powerful was the reflection of the light from him in the wall opposite. (Even if it does look like the late Bruce Forsyth). It spoke to me about when we choose to obey, do, share with someone, the light spreads. We don’t know what the little we can do, will do. 

So I’m trying not to beat myself up when my body says enough. I’m trying to be content with doing what I can. Incarnation is for me about small acts making a difference. God comes quietly and in a tiny child rather than with power. That child changes the world! 

I was glad the minister at Hailsham, Roger Leslie used an old bidding prayer for Christmas in the service on Sunday. This season if we take it seriously challenges us to make a difference rather than focus on what is beyond us. It also challenges us to sit alongside, be with those who feel they are worthless and don’t matter or who feel outside of love today. Your visit or card or call, just letting the person in pain know you walk with them, can be Christmas come. Let the words of this prayer challenge us all to do what we can in response: 

In the name of God, who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and made a place for us in the kingdom of his beloved Son, we welcome you: grace to you and peace.

As we meet to celebrate anew the coming of God's Kingdom, we hear revealed the mystery of God's loving purpose for us -- how that when we were far off, he met us in his Son and brought us home; how he humbled himself to take our human nature, that we might share his divine glory.

Let us then so celebrate this coming with our carols and hymns of praise, that our lives may be charged with his life; that we may bear witness to his glory and so bring light to those who sit in darkness. So first we pray for those among whom the Christ was born: the poor and helpless, the aged and young children; the cold, the hungry, and the homeless; the victims of poverty, injustice and oppression, the sick and those who mourn, the lonely and the unloved; those in despair or in the shadow of death.

Then, as we hear again the message of peace on earth and goodwill among all his people, we pray for the leaders of the nations, that all may be inspired to work together for the establishment of justice, freedom and peace the world over.

And that we may bear true witness to this hope in a divided world, we pray for the peace and unity of Christ's body, the Church universal, that the whole earth may live to praise his name.

Finally, as we rejoice with the saints in heaven and on earth, we remember all who have gone before us with the sign of faith, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we offer up our prayers for the coming of his Kingdom.

And may the Lord when he comes find us watching and waiting, now and at all times. Amen.

 

 

And so I’m waiting with the angst of the prophets, with the restlessness of the psalmist who cried “How long, oh Lord, will You hide your face forever?” and with the stubborn, unsentimental hope of a woman so convinced the baby inside her would change everything, she proclaimed in present tense that the great reversal has already arrived—

Waiting

My car is in for its service and MOT this afternoon so I’ve time to kill. I’ve never written a blog in a garage before! Several of us sit here waiting. The coverage of Mrs May’s confidence vote is on the television. My beloved MP Ms Rudd is on as I write. She’s supporting the PM later she says. She just called today’s events “shenanigans” - gosh, I agree with her on something!! 

Waiting, life is full of waiting... 

I don’t know how parents manage a month of Christmas these days when Santa appears in November and children need to be kept calm as the number of sleeps until the actual big day seem endless.

We are naturally impatient. I was in a building the other night wanting to get out of its door. Hundreds of people were trying to get in. They didn’t want to wait for me to pass through them! Go on an underground train in London. People don’t wait for the next one coming in two minutes time even though there is no more room on this one. Why do we have to wait two minutes? We want to go now. 

I am not a great fan of our Prime Minister but I think today she has been treated appallingly. She’s always had a poisoned chalice after the former PM who I hold responsible for this whole Brexit mess by calling a referendum in the first place and is now in his shed writing his memoirs, did a runner. Mrs May has some steel, at least in public, although in private she must be suffering. Tonight, she waits for the verdict on her leadership and her future. I can only compare it to ministerial invitations. Waiting to hear from the Circuit Stewards after a process of consultation whether you should be invited is a desparate wait. 

People wait in uncertainty all around us. I’m in the middle of endless medical tests and appointments. I wait for the results anxiously. I’m now under the care of two consultants, one thoracic and one neurological. Both will have news in the new year for me. One in particular after telling me with no warning what might be going on, will either reassure me or scare me when I see her next. What she told me I was not expecting. I only missed some of those dots in an eye test at Specsavers! I am getting more and more anxious to be back at work but I have to wait. It’s been a hard thing to come to terms with. 

People wait for news. Silence is unbearable. We all need to know what is happening even if others who have the power over us haven’t any answers yet. I often think of those relatives of soldiers in world wars pre social media or texting. They waited not knowing if their loved ones were okay or would ever return. 

I’m not doing the Christmas story normally this year. I’ve not yet sung a carol nor have I been to church very much. I’m trying to get into the characters a bit by simply reading their story and imagining what their experience of divine encounter was. Three people, often overlooked in the narrative, speak to me deeply about waiting. 

Joseph, well he has a bit of a nightmare waiting! None of this baby coming business was to do with him. But he decided to be faithful and make the journey. Waiting in anxiousness for birth, waiting as a hard journey to exile has to happen, waiting for it to be safe to return. 

Simeon and Anna are my favourite participants in incarnation. They waited patiently for the consolation of Israel. They never left the temple and believed one day they would see God come in a new and dynamic way. They prayed and they waited and people who did religion every day in that temple probably laughed at their stupidity but they kept at it believing it would be. And in one of the loveliest prayers of the church we use now, the elderly Simeon says, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.” Certainty and peace in the waiting. 

When I was a child I was made to wait. We had one holiday a year and you waited for it. You had one birthday a year and you waited for it. Christmas was one day. You bought things when you had saved up to buy them. The joy of having was after the waiting. The instant world means we take a lot for granted and maybe we need to take waiting as a spiritual discipline much more seriously. 

If life was sugary sweet and fluffy bunny then we’d have everything we want when we want, and we’d never know that yearning we have to go through so often in life. I don’t know how I can sit here and just write but two pieces of writing come to me surrounded by elderly men getting frustrated their cars aren’t ready NOW! 

One is by the fabulous writer Kahlil Gibran

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

And how to be sustained in the waiting when as Gibran says there is, for today, more sorrow than joy, well, what’s the message of Christmas? You don’t need the church to just glibly tell you this wrapped in tinsel as though it suddenly makes all your problems disappear, you need to hear the story lived out in people’s lives: I turn finally to the writer Shane Claiborne: 

“A few years ago I remember a pastor friend telling me they tried something a little different for their Christmas services. Instead of the usual holiday décor and clutter of the sanctuary, they brought in a bunch of manure and hay and scattered it under the pews so the place would really smell like the stank manger where it all began. I laughed hysterically as he described everyone coming in, in all their best Christmas attire, only to sit in the rank smell of a barn.

They even brought a donkey in during the opening of the service that dropped a special gift as it moseyed down the aisle. Folks looked awkwardly at each other. Some were offended, some snickered, and some left. But for those who stayed… it was something like they’d never seen before. It was one of the most memorable services they’ve ever had.

They were reminded of the real meaning of Christmas — God entered the crap.”

In a world that today waits, as Mrs May waits, as we wait for Brexit or not, as we wait for test results, as people wait for cars to be fixed, as we wait in the uncertainty for certainty perhaps the only certainty we have is that God is with us in the crap. Crap is a great word! I’m not doing worship at the moment but I can write it! 

Maybe the not yet is a divine gift in this time and maybe as one poet put it the meaning is in the waiting...

Beckoning

We left Holy Island yesterday. This visit has not had much sun. But yesterday as we prepared to journey back south, the sun came out. 

People find crossing the sands at low tide by these posts showing the way from Beal at the end of St Cuthberts Way a powerful end to a pilgrimage. But yesterday I thought about the posts beckoning me the other way. The brightness being ahead of us, the challenge of the mainland having light in it to illuminate the darknesses we face. Leaving the causeway is always hard for us, but always on leaving there is a message given. Yesterday while going home felt hard, and today I’m paying for a long drive and can hardly move or speak my lungs have been overworked, there is a hope amongst the barrage of medical appointments and scans and lung function tests ahead, and feeling out of control of life in so many ways. The message of this season is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not put it out. So while I’m sad as ever to leave the island, there is enough spiritual strength in me if not physical to face each day. I think! 

This season is all about journeying and also journeying back different. Shepherds return glorifying and praising God for all they see, magi return by another road. This season is also about light. That’s why I guess trees go up so early and houses are bedecked with stuff to make the darkness bearable. We seem to have a month of Christmas now. I even heard the Wombles at breakfast this morning! We wish you a wombling merry Christmas is a classic, let’s be honest about it! 

On my first visit to the island to stay on sabbatical in 2009, I found a poem which said I didn’t come to stay however wonderful the experience, I came to go back. The challenge is how we remember the God moments in the rubbish of everyday. I guess as I keep writing that God incarnate is in the shit. And a lot of people today are having a lot of that. A group on Facebook called Nite Blessings had an honest prayer the other night I share here: 

Naughtily I yearn for this sort of prayer to be in our church. People struggling going back to stuff need to be allowed to voice what they face. 

‪May fear’s threats be silenced by Hope’s promises. May the terror of darkness be destroyed by the Presence of Light. May the nausea of uncertainty be settled by the Giver of Faith. Fragility is not weakness. Honesty is not failure. Hope requires no pretence.‬

Advent Sunday: a shocker

The house over the way from us on Holy Island put lights up outside yesterday and a tree today. Last night, the community gathered to sing carols and the official lights were switched on. I’ve just read a post on Facebook that described yesterday, December 1st, as the first day of Christmas. 

My congregations will tell you I don’t like to hear the C word too early! I know some churches have had nativity services today. Advent, which began today, is a separate season and it is only partly about preparing for - note - preparing for - Christmas! 

The service we went to here this morning did not mention Christmas at all. No tree was up in church, nor apart from the Advent candles, were there any decorations. We were reminded of the three Advents we are challenged to think about in these weeks ahead:

• How God came on earth as a child in Jesus.

• How Jesus comes today through how we live.

• How Jesus will come again in glory. 

The priest this morning described the Gospel for today as a “shocker”! No babies in mangers or lights or parties but judgement and destruction and the world shaking.

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

It’s not often you hear a bit of gloom in church! What’s all this mean as we begin Advent? 

Perhaps two things:

First, we need to be watchful. The promise is he is coming again. Surely this is about not being complacent and weary as God’s people. We can’t do things as we’ve always done them if they are tired now. We need to rediscover some excitement about what we profess we believe. Sometimes we act as though God doesn’t do anything any more. It’s easy to miss the signs of divine activity. These can be small and quiet so easy to miss. We need to be brave enough to try and make a difference. That’s how Christ comes today. But we also need a sense of urgency again. What if the second coming really did come tomorrow? What if we were found sleeping? Or involved in carousing and drunkenness? 

The priest reminded us in his sermon about Cuthbert who retreated to this island away from the diocese to practice contemplative prayer and try to read the times and what the heck God might be doing. The world around us is full of unanswered questions. All we can do is listen for direction. 

Second, there’s a bit in this passage which I find really hard at the moment. My heart is not “to be weighed with the anxieties of life.” That’s so difficult! I got very very upset this afternoon as I wanted to walk to the beach by Cuthbert’s isle. I managed it but I really suffered for it. I’m not finding this waiting to be better very easy. Someone tells me “of course you won’t be back to work in January” as we haven’t had all the tests yet so we don’t know the damage to my lungs or any treatment. That’s really hard. 

But on the beach as it was getting dark I met a lovely Methodist deacon who was getting some  head space here today. We shared our stories and he helpfully suggested that while I’m going through a tough time, maybe God has led us to this place we love as a gift. Maybe to rest in the present might bring healing. And maybe through conversations and through care and through gazing on the wonder of the nature around me, Christ is come. And maybe I just name the bigger stuff I worry about and let God deal with it in his time. I doubt Brexit will be sorted by the paruosia anyway! 

I read a quote some years ago which said “ life is one very long Advent and it’s often not very pretty.” I take comfort that’s how God came in Bethlehem long ago, to mess, I take comfort that parts of the church and recently for me many outside of it, bring an assurance in time of pain they walk in hope with us, and I take comfort that God will one day have the last word. 

So today, a challenge to be alert, to be watchful and to be faithful and name the things I simply don’t get to God. And speaking of things I don’t get, someone chose this hymn to end the service this morning, a challenge as there were only 15 in the church and I think only one person knew it. Have you ever sung this hymn????! 

Sleepers, wake! the watch cry pealeth,

While slumber deep each eyelid sealeth:

Awake, Jerusalem, awake!

Midnight’s solemn hour is tolling,

And seraph-notes are onward rolling;

They call on us our part to take.

Come forth, ye virgins wise:

The Bridegroom comes, arise!

Alleluia! Each lamp be bright with ready light

To grace the marriage feast tonight.

Zion hears the voice that singeth

With sudden joy her glad heart springeth,

At once she wakes, she stands arrayed:

Her light is come, her star ascending,

Lo, girt with truth, with mercy blending,

Her Bridegroom there, so long delayed.

All hail! God’s glorious Son,

All hail! our joy and crown,

Alleluia! The joyful call we answer all,

And follow to the bridal hall.

Praise to Him who goes before us!

Let men and angels join in chorus,

Let harp and cymbal add their sound.

Twelve the gates, a pearl each portal:

We haste to join the choir immortal

Within the Holy City’s bound.

Ear ne’er heard aught like this,

Nor heart conceived such bliss.

Alleluia! We raise the song, we swell the throng,

To praise Thee ages all along.

The voice of prayer is never silent

It’s been a very windy and wet couple of days here on Holy Island. The place has been very quiet with few people about. Few tourists come here in the wilds of November! We met a young couple in church on Monday who had never been here until this visit. They were amazed nothing was open, it was too wet to walk about so they had spent most of their visit sitting in their car. 

It was a challenge tonight to get to evening prayer at 5.30 through Storm Diana which is hitting the north today and tomorrow.  But I managed it as I have every night so far, and tonight I was very conscious of two things: one, that prayer has been offered every day here since Saint Aidan’s day. The Venerable Bede, writing in c.731, records that St Aidan arrived in Northumbria from St. Columba’s monastery on Iona in 635 at the request of King Oswald and was gifted the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to establish his own monastery. It’s awesome to think prayer, morning and evening, has been offered here since 635 and this week we join in the story of those who faithfully plodge to church in all weathers to remind ourselves that the rumour of God is still alive. There were only  seven of us tonight who braved the journey through the storm, but it’s brilliant the rhythm of prayer never stops here, that people are doing this bringing the world to God thing every day when most of us forget to do it. 

Secondly while especially today I’ve been struggling physically, my lungs hurt so much, being here is proving to be healing and life giving and this connecting to community while we can’t be with our normal church life which is very painful, is giving me some peace. We are working being back here for Christmas as I can’t work and we know no one in Hailsham. This place gets us and we are blessed every time we are here. 

I thought tonight about a verse in The Day Thou Gavest, here, as in many other thin and holy places, the voice of prayer is truly never silent. This isn’t namby pamby Christianity where we pretend nothing is wrong, this is offering all of our rubbish and good stuff to God in an authentic and honest way. I may not be better yet, but systematic offering of my lot to God every day surely will do me good, even getting drenched to do it!!  

How will it end?

We have, after a very long and tiring journey arrived on Holy Island. After three months now of being laid aside from my ministry actively and another six weeks at least stlll signed off, I’ve realised how much this time has hit me mentally. I’m struggling and I need some time to have some space away from sorting our stuff in our temporary home and from endless medical appointments. There is no better place than here to do that especially when the tide is in and it goes amazingly quiet. 

Today is the last week of the church liturgical year when we are encouraged to think seriously about how things will end. Does a belief in Christ mean anything? 

“How is it going to end?” is a real question for many people today. 

“How is Brexit going to end?” We have a deal which now Mrs May needs to get through Parliament. How is it going to end if she is defeated? 

“How will a television programme I’ve invested time in trying to follow going to end?” I’ve tried to keep up with The Little Drummer Girl on a Sunday night. I don’t really understand it but I hang in there. 

“How will my current problems end?” Pastorally people wait for endings, a test result, a cry for relief in unspeakable pain, a letter from the DWP after a benefits assessment, there are many examples. I wonder how things will end up for me. I am physically not much better, I go for a walk and am shattered, I have conversations with people and am shattered. I am in the middle of tests and scans and hospital appointments and am now under the care unexpectedly of two consultants and await the results of the barrage of stuff they have called for urgently, to come. I don’t know the end. Where will we be living after the rental time on our temporary home in Hailsham comes to an end? I don’t know the end to that, either! 

Today, in church, we were reminded through readings from the apocalyptic parts of the Bible that the end with God will be a positive one. Christ will return in glory and his Kingdom will come. We sang mighty hymns like “Lo he comes with clouds descending” and “Rejoice the Lord is King” (No trump of God in the Anglican book and no mighty organ bit after the last verse - how I missed Clifford Foster today!) Words all about the end and no need to worry about it.

But we do worry about it!! I didn’t vote to come out of the EU and I am worried how it will end. I know people as I write this whose life circumstances mean they are paralysed in grief and fear and they don’t need Christian platitudes saying “pray harder it will all be okay, dear.” I am scared of the results of my scans because they may have long term implications for me health wise. I want to know where we wlll be living next year as the Central Sussex United Area need their manse back by June at the latest. How do we live not knowing our own personal ends but focussing on the end the preacher tells us about? How do we keep faith with the long term view? 

Kate, the preacher here on the Island this morning reminded us we make our own ends. If we believe the Kingdom has come and will come how we make it a reality in our world matters. If we believe the Kingdom might come we will be apathetic, but if we believe it will come and is come we live in the light of that reality, even in our uncertainty. 

This morning a small but devoted group of Christians became church and together here they heard the story and hopefully were encouraged through the liturgy to live positively this week as though they believe it! I was glad to be part of them. We’ve been coming here for many years now. This place puts us back together. A lady after the service told us she is tired in old age of being told to “take care” but rather she wants now to “take risks” and “have some fun!” I liked her a lot. It’s easy to wallow but even in hardship and uncertainty we hold on to what we know and we live in the light of that. 

I received communion this morning for the first time in three months. It was powerful to hold my hands out to take the elements in a church that is my spiritual home. I have prayed in it, I met my wife worshipping together in it, I have cried in it, we had our marriage blessing in it, and today I lit some candles for a friend who is in pain after losing her husband suddenly this week. In bread and wine today I seemed to be told even in your not knowing, you know more than you realise, the broken Christ is with you and gets it, and we hold on together for you know what, crucifixion doesn’t have the last word and nor does my illness, at least not having peace in it. I remember Cuthbert and his faith, even his time he needed to contemplate life away from the parish on his island and I remember the faithfulness of his followers who in persecution later carried his body to Durham where it now rests. 

So I don’t know the end but I do know the end! 

Yes I want to be able to do more physically, I want to be back in my churches, I can’t believe that I am unable to do Christmas, I don’t trust politicians and I ache for my fellow human beings today who hurt. But I live believing one day it wlll be different. Doing the liturgy, living faithfully, holding on to the certain, making a difference pastorally to people, and as Wesley found in uncertainty preaching faith until you have it are all vital. 

I nicked the liturgy from today and hold on to this prayer: 

God the Father, help us to hear the call of Christ the King and to follow in his service whose kingdom has no end, for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, one glory. Amen. 

Tonight I am hoping for a good end. 

Receiving Remembrance

Not being able to lead a Remembrance service this year and having to be at an appointment in Peterborough tomorrow and needing to break the journey as I can’t drive all that way in one go, we have spent Remembrance Sunday in Hertfordshire. 

This morning, it was a privilege to be in Wheathampstead where my family come from, to do Remembrance. My Grandad, Harry Smith, is buried in the churchyard at St Helens and went to the First World War with his pals the Folly Boys, enlisting in 1914. He survived the war, despite being injured. An exhibition in the village today told me he received a gratuity of around £50 - £70 after he was demobbed in 1919 for the loss of his finger. 

 

Several things have struck me receiving Remembrance 100 years after the Armistice. 

It was deeply moving to be in the middle of a village community this morning of all ages. We made a communal promise to reject the ways of war. If only we would do that together after Remembrance Sunday! We need more respect, we need to admit our mistakes, we need to try and understand each other more, we need to work out together how to put things right when something is a mess, we need to work harder at community. What makes so many people come out and stand in silence and make promises together one day in November? Remembering is literally putting something back together. We work for peace, we live in grace, we put others first, we say enough of the dark things of life. Canon Ian Black has it right in this extract from his sermon preached for Remembrance in his church:

“On Remembrance Sunday our remembering is not just a roll call of death and loss. It is a sober pausing to reflect on what happens when we stray from the kingdom of justice and peace and travel a road that leads to so much destruction and death. It is a call to the ways of peace, to build social relationships where all are honoured and oppression is ended. That pause and call is as real and necessary today as it has ever been. When we have disagreements – and there are many not least with the mess we are in over Brexit and with how we care for the poorest in our society, welcome the stranger in need and protect from those who wish us harm in terms of organized crime and exploitation – when we disagree it is important to remember that those on the other side are our neighbours and fellow siblings in Christ. Battles destroy lives, but also the bonds that connect and build.”

How often do you have to queue to get into church? The church In Wheathampstead was not large enough to get all the village in it! I had to stand. In the service in church some of us were given a little card with a fallen soldier from the village on it. When their name was read out each person with their card was asked to stand. It was moving to see just from a small village how many stood. These ordinary folk were real people, who were led to do their duty in an impossible situation. I was struck how many surnames of the fallen I recognised. I know I sat in church as a child with at least two ladies who lost their husbands abruptly. 

The exhibition in the village memorial hall I visited after the service had the story of my Grandad and his friends Sid Arnold and Jim Elmore. While I was there I had several conversations with people about Grandad. People knew him and my family. We all thought it important the stories continue to be told. We need to learn from sacrificial living in a world that is very selfish, never admits it is wrong and lashes out at the different. We need a commitment to try harder every day. Otherwise the stories we remember of my Grandad and those who fell just become history. 

Tonight there was another moving service in Harpenden of music and words. We focussed in the service of the horror of war then moved to think about hope. The minister Mark Hammond, had found sermons from 1918 by the minister in Harpenden then, the Rev Frank Bertram Clogg. His sermon on 27 October was on the resurrection of the body. He spoke of people being found out at the last. He said the bully will be found out. But also those who work faithfully and sincerely to make a better world today. We ended the service and my day like this: 

Peace in our time, O Lord,

To all the peoples – peace!

Peace surely based upon Thy will

And built in righteousness.

Thy power alone can break

The fetters that enchain

The sorely stricken soul of life

And make it live again.

Too long mistrust and fear

Have held our souls in thrall;

Sweep through the earth, keen Breath of Heav’n

And sound a nobler call!

Come, as Thou didst of old,

In love so great that men

Shall cast aside all other gods

And turn to Thee again.

Peace in our time, O Lord,

To all the peoples – peace!

Peace that shall build a glad new world,

And make for life’s increase.

O living Christ, Who still

Dost all our burdens share,

Come now and dwell within the hearts

Of all men everywhere.

Inclusivity

I like this a lot. I found it on the notices of Shildon Methodist Church on a recent visit. 

In a world that excludes, we need a different way... 

Earthing myself

I’m still struggling - nearly two months after being signed off sick. My breathing is a little better until I try to do something and then I get all hot and cough uncontrollably and go all wobbly. I am signed off for longer which is frustrating as I’m desperate to get back to work. That cannot be just yet. 

I’ve been moved over recent weeks about how God has in this mess reminded me he or she is bigger than anything I might face. Three episodes stand out:

I went to see my former congregation in Shildon on the way back down south from a stay in the Lake District staying in a cottage gifted to us by a friend to try and rest in it. The church, although now smaller in number, seemed in good heart. Laughter was always at the heart of their fellowship and that was still there. I was minister at Shildon for just a year from 2006 to 2007 while I was Superintendent of the then Shildon Circuit, the only full time minister for five churches. This church were a great gift to me in what was a difficult year. Some ladies well in their 80’s got me on stage with them to do YMCA with actions and choreography - don’t ask! 

A lady said to me on my visit the other Sunday how much they didn’t want me to leave and that I was always so sincere. We went to another of my former churches later and there a young mum came up to me and asked if I had been the minister there in June 2007. I had taken the funeral of her baby who tragically died and she was so upset then she never said thank you and had been searching for me for 11 years to do so. I was really moved by that. In exile from my ministry, I’ve begun to wonder if I can do this anymore. Two conversations away from the situation, people who’ve really been helped, have now helped me.

On the way down south after leaving County Durham we made two stops both which helped in this earthing me and helping me refocus away from chest pain and frustration that I can’t function. We had on our way up north and on our way down to have plenty of overnight stops as I can’t drive far yet without feeling exhausted. We had a night being hosted by Jonathan and Sue Baker in the vicarage at Beverley Minster. Jonathan married us last year and moved last December to be the vicar of Beverley Minster and four other churches. Jonathan described life to me as “bonkers, but happy!” This is the view from his vicarage drive! Wow! I enjoyed looking up at the Minster then touring it the next morning. There was a real sense of history. I love cathedrals because I’m acutely aware people have kept the faith in them for centuries and my footprint in them is part of a long story which will go on and on. It was a gift to be listened to over post evening meal coffee, to relax with friends and to simply wallow in the awe of a holy place and refind the mystery of God in my life and on my journey. 

On the way back down to the south coast we called as we always like to on our cathedral. Beloved Peterborough! Over the last few weeks they have had the Museum of the Moon there - an awesome piece of work. Also at the moment Tim Peake’s spacecraft is there for people to see. We went to a half hour experience of what it was like to descend to earth from space. Amazing! Thousands of people have visited the cathedral to see the exhibition and the moon. We sang evensong looking at it. I was struck by the cross in front of it - while the earth turns the cross stands - we need to know what is permanent. I’ve been struggling with my health and my home and my job and our cats being taken away temporarily. I’ve been struggling with sudden change. I don’t want to have to sleep for ages after doing anything or go for a walk like today just round a square and have to sit on a bench and sleep before coming back! I want to come back to work. I cannot. I go into the Co op this morning and have to stand in the doorway for ages because I haven’t a clue why I am in there! How can I run a Circuit with absolute brain fog? 

Perhaps I need to look up. Perhaps there’s more to know. Perhaps even in my illness there are lessons and signs to discover. You certainly rejoice in small blessings: “I am coughing less”; “It is ridiculously warm for October”; “someone sent me a lovely message today.”  There is always something beyond us. What must it be like to go into space? Here’s a budding astronaut!

So here we are. Still off sick, breathing still bad, energy poor, blood test confirming I’ve been exposed to the aspergillosis mould and I’m going to hospital to sort some treatment soon; Lis now very unwell with similar symptoms; my Circuit, well, I’ve no idea what’s happening in it, I just have to trust others to care for it; we face letting go of our home next week and moving into an empty manse in Hailsham temporarily while those responsible for our whole life and future sort out a longer term plan. But in all this we are held, by outbursts of Christianity; by awe; by assurance we do not travel this road alone. There is a fixed certainty in God. 

Lis reminded me the other day over this journey I haven’t laughed much. So thank you for This Country, a gem of a programme. Kerry and her crumpets made me laugh out loud on Saturday and I thank God for that.

Lifting my eyes

I write this on Holy Island. We have a night here after nearly a fortnight gifted to us by a friend letting us use his lovely cottage in the Lake District for nearly a fortnight to try and get some rest.

Sadly I’m not a lot better. I have needed to find a big God bigger than my pain. I’ve looked out from my friend Rob’s bathroom window on the might of Blencathra. Every day it looked different, in sun and in rain, in clear sky and in mist. A sign like my favourite spot on Holy Island, that there is always something or someone beyond us and our worries are mere trifles.

I lift up my eyes to the hills. I recommend it.