For a while I have subscribed to Mucky Paws … great creative liturgies from Roddy Hamilton. I found this catching my eye this week in particular … a challenge to remember what it’s all about!

The passion of Christ is something the church is invited into… not just to try out like a new dress… but to identify with… in other words to be marked with… This Sunday of the passion of Christ is the time to betaken back to our original identity… to be in communion with the suffering of the world…

The success of a church however is usually described through numbers… a growing community… an enhanced sanctuary… a tea bar and a coffee bar… ten bible studies and hundreds in our youth groups…

But that is success only by worldly standards… The word ‘success’ is not a gospel word… it is not in the vocabulary of heaven… it is a word never found on the lips of Jesus…

Success can never be used of the church… so hush your mouthes you doom merchants of the church… Anything we do it can only be marked against how we identify with the suffering of the world… how much this community of faith-people… is in communion… shares the passion… the suffering… of the people of Palestine… Syria… Peru… Korea…

This is a passion that takes us out of ourselves… our local community… and places us… side by side… with those globally… invited into our suffering as we are into theirs…

How much do we partner people… not from a position of power… but in the place of pain… sharing the suffering enough that it becomes part of who we are… Living any other way as the church… simply bloats us with numbers… that brings a comfort that is closer to the high priest in Jerusalem… than the saviour on the cross…

This passiontide… we bring ourselves back to our primary identity… to carry that cross… and share in the passion… that is very real in our world today… In sharing in this suffering of the world… we come face to face with Jesus Christ…

You can subscribe here if you wish.

It’s been a little while since I have given a placement update … which is poor of me as SHP is the main format through which my time at St Stephens will be reflected upon in the weeks after Easter.

A lot has happened … nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but a lot. I mentioned in my last update that a reflection I had was that parish ministry is quite crammed and there needs to be a lot of discipline exerted if you wish to achieve the stuff you set out to do and not be deflected by a lot of good but other stuff. For me this is meeting with those outside the church regularly, and I have been able to develop a loose timetable around parish stuff that still allows that to happen. That does mean I am catching up on other stuff in the early hours of the morning, but that is sustainable for a few weeks.

I have to be careful how I share this next reflection, but I am not criticising anyone at all here, but I am noticing that St Stephens is like many other churches I have attended as far as distribution of workload goes. I reckon about 20% of the congregation do something like 80% of the work. I see the same people at events and various planning, PCC and other meetings. We have planned a creative Palm Sunday evening service … and again the people involved in the planning and running of that are the same people I have seen at other things.

It seems that getting a lot of people involved is a challenge because of busy lifestyles and other commitments; I have no right to criticise or challenge that. As I said, I am not making a judgement but merely reflecting on an observation. I do  think it’s a model of church that we need to be careful of. There are many ‘post church’ people around who have been burnt out by the inherited church 20:80 model and so quietly left the building!. There are a few people like that that have passed through the gathering, stayed a while and then moved on to another church.

One of the values of the gathering is one of inclusivity and on our about us/vision page you may find the following line: We believe church is about participation and engagement of the majority, rather than being consumerist and led by a few specialists. We find the reality of that to be a real challenge, and in many ways we still aspire to that value, but I think we are moving in the right direction; even if quite slowly. One thing we are learning is that it is easier to produce something or take on a task when we know what is fully expected.

I’d be interested …. is this other peoples observation of parish life, I mean the 20:80 thing? Have others noticed that? What do you think the reasons are? Is it a matter of people being too busy, or is it more a case of needing to make it easier for people to become involved? Are there any answers or is this a simple case of ‘that’s just how it is’?

One of the things I have taken on or committed to do more in Lent is to receive a daily meditation thought from Richard Rohr. I loved his thinking in The Naked Now so Sister Diane, my spiritual director, suggested I might find the daily meditations ‘useful’.

Todays daily meditation, which I read to season my thoughts and outlook throughout the day, talks about perfection and imperfection. It reminds us that the western mind is obsessed with logic, fact and proof in its dualistic make-up; whereas the eastern mind is happier to sit with mystery and paradox.

In the west we think of perfection as the elimination of imperfection … whereas Rohr suggests today that perfection is, in fact, the ability to recognise, forgive and include imperfection. 

I’m going to carry that with me today – and I reckon that is an amazing image of how the church should, and could so easily be – a community that recognises, forgives and includes imperfection.

On Sunday I spoke at the Mothering Sunday Eucharist at St Stephens. Quite an enjoyable experience and I think probably a first as I’ve not spoken at this service before. I took the text of John 19:25-27

Standing near his cross were Jesus’ mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the follower he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the follower, “Here is your mother.”From that time on, the follower took her to live in his home’.

I wondered why Jesus did this. I mean … we know he had brothers and so logically, according to the local custom, they would have looked after their mum. There was no need for Jesus to worry about her welfare. With that support in place I found myself asking, ‘why is Jesus doing this?’ Or … ‘what is the gospel writer wanting us to hear?’

I’m not entirely sure – I rarely am – but I make a suggestion that Jesus here is reframing and reinterpreting what family, and therefore relationships, are all about. I wonder whether Jesus is redefining what family is for those who follow him; and by that I mean ‘the church’. I wonder whether he is saying that this is now greater than a blood tie.

It’s as if he is saying that we are all to be family to each other … to mother each other, to look out for each other, to care, to love, to protect each other.

I then started to dream … what would churches be like if people acted like loving family to each other? I mean if they really did this properly, really really treated others as family … and embraced the different brothers, mothers, sisters, sons, cantankerous old aunts …. and so on. If that really happened … if we disagreed and loved, fell out and loved, enjoyed life together and had fun …. well I thought that might look quite good, colourful even (!), it might even transform a few places ….

…. and that might just be good news worth getting excited about!

The placement continues … and I am using this space to reflect on my experiences I guess … although there is not really a lot to reflect upon from today.

The day started with morning prayer at 930 …. which is great as it is a whole 90 minutes later than the cathedral, and we don’t pause at the red dots which I have never really got! (If that last ‘red dot’ sentence means nothing to you … then thank God that you have been spared but ask an anglican what that’s about!).

Today we got key dates in the diary and then I was able to get to Rochester in the morning and the afternoon to chat with some great people. I believe these people keep me sane and grounded. So although I mentioned above that there is not really a lot to report, I am mightily hit today by the importance I place on people who are willing to be real. We live in a world of superficiality where the illusion of fame seems to be idolised in place of integrity and reality. Even without the fame, people live false lives of correctness, wearing stiff exteriors to give an ‘I am ok’ vibe to those around them, when they are clearly anything but. To be honest, and hence vulnerable,  in our society has come to be seen as a sign of weakness.  I am really honoured that in my life I am surrounded by real people who are honest and full of compassion for others and integrity in the personal lives. They are some of the strongest people I know.

To be real is to be vulnerable, to be honest when things are not going well rather than pretend. To be real also means you want the truth and are willing to deal with it … which means when you ask someone if they are ok, being prepared to accept the pain when they say that they are not and to live with that reality … rather than trying to solve stuff with glib phrases. The vulnerability of realness is a risk, because being vulnerable opens our reality to others around us. That is a pretty dangerous place to put yourself.

I am hit smack in the face on this day of Lent by the vulnerability of people that in turn point me to the vulnerability of Christ. The Christ that put himself at the mercy of others and , ultimately, suffered to consequences. Today I have noticed the vulnerable Christ living all around me in my everyday world. My response today, to God, has been a simple but tearful ‘why?’ Beyond that I find myself speechless.

I give thanks today for the honest vulnerable people who have become important to me … may you be aware of God standing with you in the silence …

To be creative you actually have to do something. It involves putting your imagination to work to make something new, to come up with new solutions to problems, even to think of new problems or questions. You can think of creativity as applied imagination.
Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

The last few months I have been struggling to think ‘what next’. There is a pressure (my current role as a curate will come to an end in September and I will need to leave the cathedral) and sometimes pressure to act can be stifling.

I guess I have been struggling because when the question ‘what next?’ has been asked I have not been sure how to answer. I’ve not been sure how to answer because I have not been sure what I want to do next. Or, as a ‘good’ Christian what I really mean there is  .. ‘what God wants me to do next.’ I do think, though, if you are trying to follow God that you sense that and my interests are given by God.

My problem of not knowing what to do formed a vicious circle of inactivity. I didn’t know what next, got frustrated when thinking what next, so stopped thinking what next, which meant I didn’t know what next. And round and round that went.

Until a couple of weeks ago.
I felt the need to ‘do something’. I felt challenged by a still small voice to simply write. To write my thoughts and see what came.
Pages came … and pages.
But amongst those pages ideas crystallised and started to take shape.
And then …
almost like an epiphany moment when mist cleared
my vision became clear.

It’s not that the vision was new or developed then in that flash of a moment. It was as if the ideas were always there, but I needed to do something myself to draw them out.

So … now, I have a vision. Soon I hope to be able to share it a bit more widely … watch this space I guess is the best I can  say …

But Robinsons quote, which I read today over at Lateral Action, struck a real chord with me experience over the last few months. We can think, we can dream, we can talk, we can think and ream some more … but at the end of the day we need to do something and it is in that ‘doing’ that we start the creative process.
 

One of my Christmas presents this year from my lovely mother-in-law was a trilogy of poetry anthologies I have been wanting for a little while. I have been dipping in and out of these since Christmas day and think I have adopted ‘The Door‘ a poem by Miroslav Holub as a motto at least for the first part of 2012. This year I have not made any resolutions as such …. or maybe I have …

Go outside and open the door.
    Maybe outside there’s
    a tree, or a wood,
    a garden,
    or a magic city.

Go and open the door. 
    Maybe a dog’s rummaging..
    maybe you’ll see a face,
or an eye,
or the picture,
                      of a picture.

Go and open the door.
    If there’s fog
    it will clear.

Go and open the door.
    Even if there’s only
    the darkness ticking,
    even if there’s only
    the hollow wind,
    even if
              nothing
                          is there,
go and open the door.

At least
there’ll be
a draught. 

 This year will be a year of change for us. My curacy at the cathedral is coming to an end by September. I know what I want to happen next, but that is in the hands of a higher authority … and by that I mean the God who created me!

The blog has been quiet since Christmas Day because I have needed space to be able to make that statement above … you know – the one about believing I know what I want to do next! There has been so much activity and I have been immersed in such great stuff that I have neglected to take time out an think and mull and dream …. and most importantly listen.

I have been pushing a few doors of enquiry because I have grown up in the wing of the church that says ‘that is how you do thing’s. I was always told you push doors and see if God opens them. Sometimes that is right.  I also think sometimes we can use that as an excuse. Sometimes we all know that if we push doors lightly there is no danger of them opening! Sometimes I have fooled myself into thinking I have pushed a door when I have merely nudged it lightly. Sometimes I even wonder whether God is bored of opening the doors which he has given us hands to open ourselves! Maybe there is a need to grow up and take responsibility? … just saying!

Rather than just pushing, sometimes it is necessary to fully open doors, step through and experience what is on the other side. There is always the option to turn around and close the door afterwards. As Holub says … ‘if nothing else there will be a draught’ … it won’t be the same … the door is not opened in vain. So … these last few days I have been opening doors to see what happens!

So … I guess I have kind of made some form of resolution … to open, not push, the door!

who would think that what was needed

to transform and save the earth.

might not be a plan or army

proud in purpose, proved in woorth?

Who would think, despite derision

that a child should lead the way?

God surprises earth with heaven

coming here on Christmas Day.

(John Bell)