December 2010 - PEACE - ARE YOU CRAZY?

Centuries ago a favourite leisure attraction where crowds flocked to marvel at the torment of the physically fractured, or mentally traumatized was the public hospital in London known as ‘Bedlam’. The word bedlam that has entered our language as synonymous with madness, is a corruption of the name St Mary of Bethlehem intended by its charitable founders as a sanctuary of peace and caring, inspired by the Bethlehem we sing of and perhaps dream about at Christmas.

I had the moving experience of making my first of two visits to the original Bethlehem just over two years ago. In a ten day pilgrimage we visited a great number of holy sites. Of them all it is the site of Jesus’ birth that has left the most enduring impression. The real Bethlehem, today, as for much of its past is at once full of horror and yet of holiness.

Our guide was a Palestinian Christian whose wife was born in Bethlehem. If she wants to take her children to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins there, she is required to make application for entry – a formal application which, for hundreds like her is more likely to be denied than granted. For Palestinians to leave Bethlehem even for access to public services is similarly restricted. Checkpoints manned by bored young Israeli soldiers have to be negotiated and Palestinians are considered fair game for taunting, and physical abuse. Construction of a 10 metre high wall continues to surround the little town of Bethlehem, choking the economy, by the restriction on freedom of movement. Families are prevented from having access to their own fields, cultivated by them for centuries before the creation of the modern state of Israel. They are cut off from land and livelihood and herded into - there is no other word for it - ghettoes. This is worse than the Roman occupation; according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu ‘Worse than Apartheid’.

How many of the soldiers executing these orders I found myself asking are grandchildren of concentration camp survivors? How is it that they are not able to look at the Christians and Muslims violently displaced by the establishment of the Israeli state sixty years ago and subsequently degraded and denied basic human rights and not recognise their own family, how is it, we might ask, that Jesus came to his own and his own people received him not?[ John Chapter 1] This surely, is madness.

Bethlehem invites us back to the beginning, to relearn our own personal history lessons in the light of hope, not to repeat old mistakes. Bethlehem is not some fairy tale place. It is chosen not by accident but because if peace, heaven’s kingdom can break out of such a place as then there remains hope even after 2,000 years that peace can flow throughout the world.

November 10 - Rusper Remembrance

On Remembrance Sunday November 14th 2011 at the conclusion of the service we will observe the customary silence and hear again the list of names of those from our village whose lives were lost in the two great conflicts of the 20th Century. ‘We will remember them’ Some might ask ‘how?’ There is now no living memory of the trenches of 1914 -18 and no-one now under the age of 80 who saw active service in the second war.

We want to honour that promise and make remembrance real, because the people and events we recall have shaped history and the way we live now.

There are still a handful of people, family and friends who remember clearly the Rusper men and boys who to most of us are little more than names on the memorial. There are others who whether or not they realise it, live in the homes from which these soldiers went out never to return. Still others are simply touched at a deep level by the human stories behind the names, regardless of any other connection.

Remembrance Sunday is a day of powerful symbolism in the life of our nation. On November 14th this year we want to remember that it is a day for fathers, sons, husbands and brothers to be remembered as individuals and so they will this year be given a voice by someone calling out their name.

It has been customary for some time now for proceedings at the memorial to be concluded with a traditional ritual known as the Peace. When the sharing of the Peace was revived and reintroduced into modern services in the 1970s it ironically divided congregations. I still meet people who date their exodus from the church precisely to this period, when they felt forced to fraternise at what they perceived to be a superficial level, being asked to move around church shaking hands when what they craved was silent communion with God. Love it or hate it, the practice engenders some deep emotions. Perhaps this is because we sense at a deep level we are not at peace in our hearts and that we cannot be at peace with other nations if not with our own neighbours. Quite rightly this apparently innocent little ritual challenges us. In the context of Remembrance it does not, as some fear, interrupt the flow of the service since it comes at the end. I think it earths the current of powerful emotion generated by the occasion and reminds us of our duty to be peacemakers in daily living.

October 2010 - In store

Many of you will recall a large department store that until recent years graced the shopping centre of North Street in Brighton. Had Hanningtons held on it would by now have celebrated two centuries of trading having been founded in 1808.

The Hanningtons were a Hurstpierpoint family and one of them James, achieved notice in choosing a very different path. In 1885 James Hannington became Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa and set out on a missionary journey to Uganda. This previously welcoming kingdom had become hostile to Europeans under a new king Mwanga.

James and his entourage were ambushed and taken prisoner as they were travelling to see the king. On his orders, they were soon afterwards, on the 29th October 1885 speared to death. The martyr bishop’s reported last words were ‘Tell Mwanga - I have purchased the road to Uganda with my blood.’

Indeed within a few years Mwanga was forced to negotiate with Britain and after being deposed and exiled, he did himself become baptized as a Christian, while in Uganda the church flourished.

Within more recent memory we saw the rise of Idi Amin in Uganda and the return of inhuman government to that part of Africa. At the height of the atrocities Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum, an outspoken critic of the regime, was famously asked what he would do if handed a gun in Amin’s presence; would he take the opportunity to end the violence with a swift bullet? His answer was that he would give the gun to Amin and say ‘This is your weapon, not mine. My only weapon is love.’

In 1977 Luwum himself, like James Hannington before him, met a violent death on the orders of his president., a measure of how powerful and feared such a ‘weapon’ can be.

What could be further from life and death atrocities like these than retail therapy? Apart from the Hannington connection, perhaps there is something deeper. A few years ago many of us boycotted goods from South Africa. The economic impact of that strategy is debatable, but the medium of choice was certainly one that raised awareness of the evil of apartheid and contributed to the tide of opinion that began change. With fair-trade products and so on there are increasing opportunities for our shopping choices to be informed in favour of the poorest and most vulnerable in our world. We are more aware than ever of the wider benefits to the community of supporting our own village stores. Many parts of Africa continue in crisis at levels some of us can barely imagine. Traditionally our Harvest services in recent years have contributed collections to some of those poorer parts where we have links with their dioceses. Harvest Thanksgiving for us is a thanksgiving for freedom and choice, a reminder not to take it for granted and an opportunity to ‘sow a seed in Africa’.

Let us also give thanks for the varieties of worship opportunities in our church; something for all tastes, temperaments and ages, an open and accessible church. We’d love to see you in store sometime!

September 2010 - Have you met my mother-in-law?

As a shy person by nature, like many people I often dread the approach of social occasions, and yet seem to end up enjoying them. Perhaps you feel in heaven at a cocktail party, perhaps it puts you in mind of another place altogether.

I sometimes imagine Paradise as a kind of garden party and wonder who I would like to meet. You can picture the scene, the way conversation opens with a familiar face introducing you to another acquaintance and so on. You get a glimpse of how few ‘degrees of separation’ there are in reality between you and the rest of the world’s population and indeed the same could be said with historical figures. A few questions in and you invariably find some point of connection with a stranger.

For instance it would only take my mother-in law to introduce me to her aunt, who was a nun and she could introduce me to her Superior, Mother Ermenild, daughter of the Reverend John Mason Neale. So I would find myself talking to one of my heroes in the history of the Church. He wrote Good King Wenceslas, his order of nuns began a groundbreaking ministry in nursing at precisely the time Florence Nightingale was pioneering new approaches. Neale had an all embracing [one of the meanings of Catholic] vision of the Church. He drew deep from the wells of Christian spirituality for inspiration and is remarkable for combining in depth scholarship with practical social concern.

Throughout his relatively short life and ministry as a priest Neale remained in bad odour with the Bishop of Chichester, who was displeased not least with his ‘smells and bells’ High Church Anglo Catholicism went hand in hand with a desire to ‘bless the poor’, which quickly found other expressions and areas of need beyond Sussex where his work began.

The work of the Society of St Margaret [not exclusively nursing] today continues in a number of bases in the UK, as well as some in the USA and is well established in Sri Lanka and currently in the thick of rebuilding in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti where the convent itself was a casualty of the disaster. The spiritual heart of the community remains in Sussex although after 150 years in East Grinstead the sisters have now downsized to a new convent in Uckfield, from where they remain a spiritual resource for the wider church, a powerhouse of prayer, and a place to come away and spend quiet reflective time.OCtober 2010

August 2010 - Countdown to change
  
The first major change to the pattern of services for over a decade is coming. Actually, like many ‘changes’ it signals a return to old ways. There was a time when the main service at Rusper was the same time every Sunday. People knew where they were, and the stable continuity of time underpinned a variety of styles of service.

Changing the time on alternate weeks from 1998 was always an unsteady compromise, but fairness to both parishes in the new relationship between Colgate and Rusper was seen as paramount. The situation has however been under constant review and the PCC has voted unanimously to take the risk of fixing the time of the service at your church at 11am every week

As congregations have grown at the 11am services, especially on the third Sunday, the gap between attendances at 11 and 9.30 has yawned wider and wider. The 11am congregation has come to reflect more and more a blend of our faithful older generation with the young and vibrant side of our village community.

Neither the PCC nor I are arrogant enough to believe that this one change is the quick fix solution to all of St Mary Magdalene’s challenges as a church, which is why we are in the first instance introducing this fixed time for an experimental 12 month period, and carefully monitoring attendance numbers.

It will mean that apart perhaps from the traditional service on the 4th Sunday the services as a whole will be found more flexible and child and family friendly. For a long time the PCC have been looking precisely for ways that demonstrate a commitment to encouraging all generations to worship together more regularly. While specifically the third Sunday and major festivals and occasions continue to be decidedly ‘family services’ this is not an exclusive term and attendance every Sunday is always to be welcomed.

Congregations are very generous and the extra £70 a month calculated to cover occasions that will arise more frequently when either Gerald or I are at Colgate can be provided by just £1.50 more from each person in the weekly collection – especially when the white tax beneficial envelopes are used

July 2010 - Art in heaven?

Once everything was black. It was cold. There was no life. This is how God painted his universe in the beginning out of the empty darkness

When God spoke first there was white. Pure, dazzling, white. It was breathtaking, but for God’s angels it was too much; beautiful, but blinding hot, pure as snow but lifeless. No angel dared tread there.

Then God let a single tear drop from his eye. A stream of blue flowed into the light. Blue flooded, fresh into every part of this new universe.

Next God scattered seeds from heaven. Life sprouted and grew green, and God poured yellow onto his canvas of creation. Yellow warmed life into ripeness.

Life in this universe was good. Life was colour and the people God had made - his rainbow children – loved the mixing of colours of every shade.

Then out of this God’s heart came another wonderful colour – deep warm red. It was the life of God himself. But people wanted this colour for themselves and fought over it. God sent his son to show them like an artist how this life could be shared. He blended colour in new and exciting ways. But not everyone could see the picture he was creating or bear the beauty of it, so they spilt his life on the ground and once more the world became dark. No colours could be seen…

…until a glorious gold sunrise awoke the world again. The artist was alive, and promises that we can be his rainbow sisters, brothers and children!
the potential to grow, and while ‘goodbye’ may often signal growing pains, remember it is a prayer ‘God be with you’. God being with each of us means we are never alone or even truly apart from one another.

This story was written for Amen to Art Service in 2009.

You say goodbye, and I say hello!’

Little Luke’s gran decided to take him for a walk in the countryside. Fields and woodland stretched away from them for as far as the eye could see, the sun shone in a blue sky punctuated by white fluffy clouds, like airborne polar bears.
His gran remarked, "Doesn't it look like an artist painted this scenery? Did you know God painted this just for you?"
Luke said, "Yes, God did it and he did it left handed."
This confused gran a bit, so she asked "What makes you say God did this with his left hand?"
"Well," said Luke "we learned at Sunday School last week that Jesus
went up to heaven and is sitting on God's right hand!"

We have just celebrated the Ascension of Jesus. Like little Luke the imagery religious language can conjure up may leave us a little puzzled, even sceptical about elements in the story. The fact that even the same author gave us two factually irreconcilable accounts of it, while the other Gospel writers vary on key facts should suggest that we are to be more interested in the inner meaning than in the aerodynamics.

Jesus was leaving his disciples and things would never be the same again. But crucially, there were no longer to be mere onlookers to his glory. As witnesses to his Baptism and ministry, his death, resurrection and Glorious Ascension they were now fully in the picture. Jesus’ glory is for us – something we share.

It seems that my comment in the May magazine unintentionally gave some the impression I am planning to leave. For the sake of clarity let me say I have no such intention at present. Of course, inevitably one day I shall no longer be rector, and it was in that context that I found myself thinking out loud about my [eventual] successor. Life is a matter of change and the potential to grow, and while ‘goodbye’ may often signal growing pains, remember it is a prayer ‘God be with you’. God being with each of us means we are never alone or even truly apart from one another.

May 2010 - Life in the Fast Aisle - concluding episode

I’ve had more comments from this short series of articles than about any other I have written over the years for the Parish News. I’m glad to have opened a window onto the working life of a country priest in the 21st Century. When I began I was shocked to discover I couldn’t squeeze it into one normal length article!

After a morning catching up with emails the weekly Cottesmore Confirmation Group is mid morning. This is only the second time I have prepared a group from the school. Bishop David, a retired bishop, is coming up from Eastbourne in June to confirm the candidates. He is a personal friend, and the only bishop in Sussex prepared to ordain women priests, so has had an active retirement.

It so happens today there is a funeral. I often find these occasions draining of emotional energy, but such an immense privilege in ministering to people at these most fragile and revealing moments in life. The majority of such services I take are for people I have known, whether churchgoers or not and this helps me bring some personal warmth to the service which I know is some comfort to those who mourn.

Most Friday evenings, secretarial help and specifically computer skills I do not have arrive in the form of Sarah who comes for a couple of hours. As in almost every walk of life increasing administration takes up so much time. My fees for funerals and weddings which are paid to the diocese, statistics, permission for gravestones, updating parish records, responding to family tree enquiries, typing up notes, preparing the three reading rotas and much more are dealt with in these sessions, which have been an incalculable improvement to my working routines.

Dressed in casual attire, picking up the weekend paper can easily take an hour! Especially in a village one is never completely off duty. It is great to feel a part of village life and to know that most people find me approachable. As well as the strong sense of community there are the casual encounters that are so much part of parish ministry. A chance meeting in church or churchyard ‘My great great grandfather lived here. Can I find his grave?’ I can’t resist getting involved in listening to ancestral searches or more recent reminiscences. There are stories to tell and share ‘We’re visiting from Lincolnshire - why does your church have a window of St Hugh of Lincoln?’ ‘Funny you should ask…’

2010 has been the busiest year for weddings since 1996. When there isn’t a wedding, or even more than one at one church or the other we strive to make some all important family time. It requires some adjustment, not having the kind of weekend many assume is the norm. I usually get the pew sheet or service sheet photocopied. One or two roughly fashioned sermons may require some fairly urgent polishing at this point, but with an early start I really must be in bed by 10.

I think my successor will need some extra hours in the day. They will almost certainly have a full time diocesan post as well as looking after at least one thriving village.  

APRIL 2010 - Life in the Fast Aisle

Despite the pagan origin of their English names Christians have attached spiritual significance to each of the days of the week, seeing in them signs of God’s timing in our experience of time. The underlying mysteries of Holy Week and Easter can be encountered in ordinary hours, days and weeks with an attitude of faith.

After the usual high visibility start to the day I may work at desk or computer. As well as ongoing messages there are few weeks when I do not have at least one sermon, two as a general rule, and maybe a magazine article to prepare as well. Sometimes I resent the time spent in the study, preferring to be out in the village. It is a privilege to exchange friendly banter in the shop, and even when I’m in the car I try to offer up a silent prayer for the parishioners I see go by or whose houses I pass. I’m a member of the Diocesan Church & Countryside Group and this may mean a meeting in Hove, which can take a large slice of the day, and more articles to prepare. In the particular week I am reflecting on there was also a lengthy meeting with the architect and the wardens who give so much of their time. Regular meetings with the wardens of both parishes have been replaced with separate Rusper and Colgate meetings as and when the need arises. I also facilitate a preaching skills group for clergy and other ministers in a neighbouring parish, which I find very rewarding, as I do acting as a tutor to two Readers in training. The parishes reap the benefit when they come and preach. On this particular day I head over to the monastery at Crawley Down to pick up a new Paschal candle made by Brother Martin to be blessed at our Easter Sunday service.

The 10am service on a Wednesday is a spiritual must for me, kept going when there has been only one in the congregation, but this has grown dramatically in recent months. Once a month toddlers and babies arrive with their Mums after this sedate service for the ensuing organised chaos that is ‘Rise+Shine’ Wednesday is typically the day I take the Blessed Sacrament to the sick and housebound, at home or in nursing homes. Once a month I have a service at Wayside. Also on a monthly basis I try to support the meetings of the local clergy of our deanery, including Horsham and outlying parishes, as well as the Society of Catholic Priests, of which I am a member. The group exists to maintain a liberal balance in presenting Christian faith which is we feel in danger of being obscured by a lack of openness in our changing society. In particular we stand for affirming the ministry of women at every level in the ministry.

After the Little Angels choir practice with Gerald and Margery, there is time to revisit the desk. During a typical afternoon, like most family homes there is competition for turns on the computer. With Sarah working late I may plod on past 10pm on a typical day. PCC looms, and it is not infrequent that both Church Council meetings fall within the same 7 day period, so I sometimes have to remember which village I am in!  

MARCH 2010 - Life in the Fast Aisle - Day 2 Monday

Just as Christmas passes into Epiphany the season which celebrates the universal spread of the Christian faith, so the start of the working week leads clergy out of their Sunday church duties into the ordinary, sometimes messy, always surprising world of a fresh new week, whether it be in parishes, urban or rural, hospitals, prisons or other areas of specialized ministry.

The playground offers me a chance to be visible to the more scattered flock. Interesting conversations often take place and sometimes I reflect whether I am seen as more approachable as a Dad and on those other occasions when I am not ‘in uniform.’ On my way back the church beckons for a quiet moment of morning prayer, before I return to deal with ‘phone messages and email. Then I visit both primary schools for their morning assembly. The afternoon may present an opportunity for casual visiting, assuming there are no more pressing calls to make on the housebound, sick or those with the funeral of a loved one to arrange and the accompanying bereavement to share with a sympathetic listener. Every few weeks I meet with a house group for some discussion. It is especially refreshing on the occasions when I am not leading, and it means I have a proper lunch! Hospital visits can be quite lengthy, especially when involving a drive to Redhill and back, but I expect to return in time for a wedding couple, either to meet with them for the first time or to rehearse the big day with them in church. Locking the church is an occasion for a quiet prayerful close to the day. Can I resist the temptation to check my email again – probably not!

Lent is approaching. Perhaps many of us would benefit from the discipline of rationing our time spent in front of the computer screen?
 

FEBRUARY 2010 - Not afraid to learn from his mistakes Bishop Lindsay would squirm whenever I teased him about his advice that I move to a country benefice for ‘rest and reflection’ and I think it fair, if a little pointed to venture that the sum total of rural parish experience between senior clergy in our diocese suggests a reason for this blind spot! What is life really like for modern clergy in our ‘sleepy’ slow paced villages? I decided to do a diary of a normal week while reflecting on the seasons of the Church Year. The proposed article soon took on the life of a mini series. So here it is...

  Life in the Fast Aisle - Day 1 Sunday

Advent is the church’s annual time of waiting, reflected for me at the start of every Sunday, the start of every week. Advent resonates at many levels; excitement, mystery, preparation. I like to begin the week early before the house wakes up and at this time of the year that means it is dark when I creep into the study to start the Lord’s Day in contemplative mood. I don’t know how I would get through a busy Sunday without a couple of hours’ stillness. I get to church half an hour before the first service begins. There is a palpable sense of warm togetherness at the 8am service that is a strong spiritual foundation to the day. Having waved people off and grabbed a quick breakfast I jump into the car and am off to the 9.30am service, praying that the cyclists will not be out in force, which as you all know is quite a Summer phenomenon round the villages. The four or five miles from the 9.30am to the 11am service is often a journey through time from Cranmer’s Prayer Book and traditional chants to an altogether less predictable style of service. From delivering a measured conventional sermon I have to switch to a different style of informal delivery with an ‘off the cuff ‘feel. Arriving only 15 minutes or even less time before a service begins I don’t personally find conducive to worship, particularly when there are questions, information or anything unforeseen to assimilate. Anyone who has suffered the frustration of giving me a notice 5 minutes before the service only to watch me forget has shared that frustration!

Lunch is usually a hasty sandwich, especially when there is a Christening, and again the turnaround seems short as I make sure I am prepared before heading back again and to the farthest reaches of Colgate again for an evening service at Cottesmore School Chapel. I usually manage to be back for a meal before 9pm and am more than ready to unwind, once I have given at least some thought, if not actual preparation to school assembly.