Category Archives: faith

the only survival, the only meaning

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A friend at work lent me a book recently called The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

It’s a short book (127 pages) written by Thornton Wilder in 1927 and I have read it in more or less one sitting (bar eucharist and evensong) yesterday. It’s an amazing little book and the synopsis on the back cover tells you all you need to know before you read:

‘An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy. But one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths might not be as random as they appear. Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all he can about the travellers. The five strangers were connected in some way, he thinks. There must be a purpose behind their deaths. But are their lost lives the result of sin? … Or of love?’

The story looks at each of the five characters who were on the bridge, all the while asking what connects these people and why this has happened. Thornton Wilder said that he was posing a question: “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?” It seems to me that he was challenging the all too common ‘over judgmental’ view of God that sees God as a schoolmaster looking to catch people out and dish out punishment for every and all sin. He was, I think, challenging the view of God that causes people to blame God when bad things happen to them whether that be a flat car battery in the morning or a hurricane that flattens their house. It challenges the pettiness that many seem to think God exists in – a God that says ‘I don’t like what you just did, so I’m going to do this nasty thing to you!’

That is not the God of love that I have a relationship with!

This wonderful little book challenges us to really ask what life is about and what is important. The final words of the book cause me to ponder and reflect:

‘…soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for awhile and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.’

This little book has been an amazing read – why not go find it!

No ribbons

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I have had a few conversations recently about faith with various people and they all seem to boil down to whether faith can or can’t change.

It seems to me that there is a lot of looking and deciding and packing away with the ‘this is what I believe, I’ve investigated that, and that part of my faith is set and won’t change.’ It is then neatly boxed and brought out, but not unwrapped, to be used in some argument about what is right or wrong – or in my experience more of a who is right and who is wrong!

I find that approach difficult as it seems to me that as I look back my faith is changing. It’s a different faith to the one I had when I was 18, and when I was 25, and 40 and so on. It seems to me that the more we investigate and keeps things open the greater, or more rounded, our faith becomes. Surely this is natural as our understanding of other things changes then surely faith should change.

This cartoon is cool and helpful. Maybe if we regarded faith as a gift (rather than as something to be protected or tied up) as Jon over at ASBO Jesus is suggesting then our faith would continue to grow. A faith with no ribbons …. I like the sound of that because I want my faith to continue to deepen rather than allow me to box it away somewhere where it will get dusty.

God in the noise

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Each morning I pray in the Ithamar Chapel before going out onto the streets of Rochester. Today I smiled a lot while I was praying as in the background I could hear the school groups playing tunes on bottles filled with water. when I say tunes… well it was more of a joyful noise.

There has been a bit of a conversation going on within the cathedral community with some showing concern that there is nowhere quiet to pray within the cathedral. My immediate reaction to this is that over the last 12 months I have never found that a problem. There is always ‘quiet’, maybe not silence. But, ‘should there be?’ was my almost immediate comeback at myself.

I understand and relate to people wanting quiet, but should a cathedral be a place that provides quite for people whenever they want it? I’ve thought about this and have come to think that as well as being virtually impossible to achieve it surely gives the wrong idea about how we talk and listen to God.

This morning was not quiet. It was, in fact, very noisy and it caused me to smile. It encouraged me to praise and pray to a God of disorder as well as order. The noise and experimentation reminded me as I prayed that God is a creative God, and that God has given us that creative gift in a variety of ways – the ability to create, amongst other things, noise.

After my prayer time I then went up to the nave and saw the children and heard the hub bub around the cathedral. This brought another smile as I thought – surely this is how we want our cathedral to be as well as calm and quiet. The children had looks of awe on their faces as they looked around and explored the spiritual space. The noise and the actions of the children seemed to enhance the spirituality of the space rather than distract from it. It brought a certain life and showed the cathedral to be a vibrant living space. It showed faith is till alive and relevant today.

It is right to have times of quiet in a busy 21st century lifestyle but I have a concern if we give the impression that quiet is always necessary for access to God. If we do give that impression then surely we tell those for whom quiet is a rarity that, essentially, they cannot hear or speak to their creator. The ability to ‘pray continually’ means that God is in the noise as well as in the silence.

God is in the noise as well as the silence, but more often than not we need to be able to understand how to approach God in the noise because noise is all there is.

the sacred made real

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The Sacred Made Real exhibition coming later in October to the national Gallery looks well worth a visit.

The blurb from the site says:

This exhibition will bring together paintings and painted wooden sculptures by the great Spanish realists of the 17th century. ‘The Sacred Made Real’ will provide a reappraisal of the crucial role of these hyper-realist sculptures in the development of Spanish art.

Providing a unique experience, sculpture and painting will be displayed side-by-side. This will be the first major exhibition to explore this relationship.

Most Spanish sculptures from this time were dedicated to key Christian themes. ‘The Sacred Made Real’ will explore how painters and sculptors combined their skills to create arrestingly real depictions of the saints, the Immaculate Conception and the Passion of Christ.

I must try to get along to see this – anyone fancy going?

let your creative instincts ramble

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I just listened to a great audio boo interviewing Maggie Dawn on ‘Art and Heresy‘.
Not even 5 minutes long – but worth a listen.
I love some of Maggie’s lines:
‘living on the slightly heretical edge’
‘getting paint on my clergy clothes’
‘let your creative instincts ramble’

Often, as Christians, people can be too restrained through fear of crossing certain boundaries, whatever those boundaries may be.

But, as I preached on Sunday …. Jesus seems to cross boundaries induced by culture all the time and I wonder if he doesn’t call us to join him from the other side of the boundary line … whih means living on the edge … even a heretical one!

Breakfast vulnerability

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It’s strange sometimes how ‘things’ occur that seem to re-emphasise a theme. Last night I was working on my sermon for next week and for some reason felt I should watch (again!!) Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

It may seem a bit of a ‘chick flick’ to be watching but it is one of my classic favourites and it does seem more and more that one of the ways that God communicates with me in a format that I can understand and hear is through film.

The film is about Holly Golightly and her ‘free-spiritedness’ and relationship with life. She values ‘being rich’ only and is determined to choose a rich husband, even when she starts to fall in love with the writer who has moved in upstairs, who only has $50 to his name!

If you have not seen the film you should watch it just for the beauty of the film itself and the joy which Audrey Hepburn exhibits in her portrayal of the character. I’ve just found out that Anna Friel is playing the lead role in a stage show which is due to open in London in early September.

To follow on the theme of vulnerability the film ends with Paul ‘Fred’ Varjak’s words:
You know what’s wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You’re chicken, you’ve got no guts. You’re afraid to stick out your chin and say, “Okay, life’s a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness.” You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

Our relationship with others, as well as with God, I am seeing, from my times of waiting necessarily involve having guts and courage to step put of the cage. It involves vulnerability. Being in the cage offers us protection and we acclimatise to being caged thinking our safety equates to freedom. In fact, the cage we crawl in for self preservation is the cage that prevents us from growing, exploring and developing in the way we are supposed to as human beings.

I think we sometimes try to sanitize our faith and think that we can engage with people from the safety of our cage. We try to minimise risk and eliminate vulnerability. That cage could take many shapes – home, family, friends, clubs, and of course church, which may be the largest cage for many – a lace where we feel we are safe but have an increasing awareness that actually it may be holding us back in various ways.

To engage properly, to hear, to be able ourselves fully and therefore fully engage we need to step out of the safety of the cage into freedom. Freedom and safety do not equate. As we step out we lose the security and suddenly everything becomes a lot messier and more dangerous. As I attempt to do that in my own little way I find that I have increasing occurrences of the ‘mean reds’ – to understand that you may have to watch the film!! (or a google search!)

the authority of Nazareth

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Adrian gave me an excellent article to read a while ago as part preparation for my ordination to the priesthood. The article is comprised of two talks given under the title of ‘Authority of Ministry’ given at the Dean’s conference in Chichester earlier this year by Revd Dr Sam Wells.

The talks are excellent and Wells looks at the different kinds of authority represented in the priesthood which I found very interesting. I got particularly excited, however, towards the end of the speech when Wells starts to talk about we restore authority where authority has been lost due to being abused or misrepresented.

He argues that there are three approaches to restoring some form of authority.
One way is by working for people. This is quite common in all areas of professional life where we train and get good at what we do and then use our skill to try to resolve problems on the behalf of others. This may make us feel good, but it quite often leaves the recipient feeling deskilled and devalued in some way.

Wells says the second model is working with people. This can make for good partnership as long as the agenda is set by the person in need. This is more a relationship based on equality, recognising that the journey is as important as the destination.

Wells suggests a third model, which resonates with me in a significant way. Wells calls this being with which acknowledges that some things are not problems and some problems simply can’t be fixed. ‘It means having the patience not to search around for the light switch, but to sit side by side for a time in the darkness’ and ‘learning to be with people is learning to treat people as if every day were their birthday. Being with is just that – spending time being with people not to fix them, or to instruct them, but being with them for no other reason than wanting to hang out with them.

He looks at these models and compares them to the shape of Jesus’ life. I find this illustration particularly powerful:

‘So Jesus spent a week in Jerusalem working for us, doing what we can’t do, achieving our salvation. he spent three years in Galilee working with us, calling us to follow him and work alongside him. But before he ever got into working with and working for, he spent 30 years in Nazareth being with us, setting aside his plans and strategies, and experiencing in his own body not just the exile and oppression of the children of Israel, but also the joy and sorrow of family and community life’.

Wells calls this the Authority of Nazareth. May we both experience and develop more in the way of the authority of Nazareth.

How did we get here?

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It was a real honour to be at St George’s Greenwich last night to join with Jeremy as he presided for the first time at the Eucharist. I’ve traveled the SEITE journey with Jeremy and there have been key moments that the friendship of this guy have kept me on the ‘straight and narrow’. Jeremy has become a good trusted friend and so being there last night was important to me. Not only is he a special bloke, but his family are totally wonderful too.

Jeremy had asked Canon Grahame Shaw to preach on this occasion and he asked the question ‘how have we all got here?’, wanting us to consider, I think, our life journey to this point so far. It is an interesting thing to reflect upon and I think, for me, I also need to consider the thought ‘where have I come from?’.

I am amazed how, by looking back over my journey this far, how little decisions have had major consequences. One little decision of going to Warwick University rather than join the RAF meant I met Sarah, not only my lover and best friend – but a soul mate in many ways. If I had not met Sarah at 18 I am fairly sure that I would have lost my fledgling Christian faith which then was a mere few months old.

Likewise on SEITE if I had not met Jeremy, and a few others that won’t remain nameless (Dave, Jen, Babs, Nic Nic) then I wonder whether I would have completed the course.

So … today as I travel to the final KCME session of the year in Canterbury, while I sit on the train I shall be reflecting upon that question … how did I get here?

getting in retreat mood with Ardbeg

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Today has been a day of very strange emotions.

We prayed a lot this morning as we had an ‘incident’ with a person who had not been taking their medication which resulted in the police needing to be called to section the person concerned. For the first time in ages I felt quite worried and scared for my personal safety and the safety of others in the cathedral at the time. The person is normally lovely and it was very sad seeing the effect of not taking the drugs that clearly help normally.

Later in the pub a good few people wished me well for Saturday as most were aware I am off on retreat tomorrow in preparation for ordination on Saturday afternoon. It was an interesting and quite surreal experience – unexpected and quite heart warming. I don’t really understand what is happening between me and this group of people, if anything, but there seemed to be a desire for things to go well.

This afternoon I received a phone call from Beth’s school as she had fallen and hurt her wrist. We went to casualty and after a wait x-rays showed her metacarpal to be fractured which is now strapped and awaiting a visit to the fracture clinic next week. Beth is doing fine and everything will be ok.

This visit was another quite weirdly emotional experience. Beth and I were an oddity in that we did not seem to have the whole family, including grandma, with us. I iid you not – this seemed to be very much like a day out for many people and was quite disturbing. The casualty department looked quite full with about 40 people in it …. but when I counted there were only about 10 patients with the other 30 or so family memebers. maybe I am being unkind, but it did seem weird.

More distressingly, many of these people seemed very needy and sad in themselves. I just felt a great sense of broken spirit in a negative way; these people seemed to have lost their self belief, their dignity and I felt very sad for them. That sounds patronising but it is not meant to be – I wanted to cry in prayer with God for these people.

It has really hit me today as I prepare to go away on retreat tomorrow how needy of love the world is. I became acutely aware that I cannot provide that love and that only God can. I realised that my role is to stand in the midst of this and just be available, and that that availability leaves me vulnerable.

As I ponder that further I am now sitting and relaxing with a great glass of Ardbeg! God’s true way of ending an evening.

don’t grow up!

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Yesterday we enjoyed our Christmas present from very good friends, with very good friends which were tickets to see Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

The show was amazing with fantastic stage management. The picture shows the stage as it was in the round with projection on the walls of the marquee. This pic shows an underwater scene and the flying through London scenes were stunning!

Peter Pan has always been a favourite of mine and I suspect it has something to do with the reluctance to grow up. Thankfully, I don’t believe I have achieved the growing up thing yet! Pater Pan’s longing to stay a boy reminds me of a word or thought that someone had for me at a YFC retreat a few years back. They felt God was saying that I must not lose my ‘cheeky chappy childlike humour attitude’ after ordination as that was the person that God was calling. I hope I have managed to keep it in place!

If you get a chance to see this show in Kensington you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks Terry and Jo, and thanks to friends and family that made yesterday go so well!