This week at Agapai we started our Lent study using Paula Gooder’s material based on the gritty TV series Broken. Prior to our meal we had all agreed to watch episode 1, entitled Christine,which like others in the series, is hard hitting and full of moral dilemmas.

We shared how the episode made us feel … there were a variety of emotions expressed, my own personal one being anger. Anger that those who are vulnerable and in need of support are deprived of it. Others, again, felt great sadness as we tried to get our heads around the subject finding it difficult to understand how being desperate someone becomes when they find themselves with the choices that  Christine faced on a  daily basis.

I love discussing stuff but anyone that knows me understands that somewhere along the way, somewhere in any conversation or in any teaching, I will eventually get to a point of asking:
‘So what?’
‘What is our response as people, as Christians?’
‘What are we called to do?’
‘What can we do?’

In desperate situations of poverty it is hard to know how to support or help and we talked around this for quite a while.  There are no easy or quick fix answers and that makes answering the question the much harder.

After the meeting one of the group found and pointed us to this link. In this Kerry Hudson writes of her return to the towns where she grew up. Some of her comments hot hard and may point to some of the answers as to how we can respond. They all involve getting involved. Getting hands dirty. Being vulnerable. making a difference.

Today, the Richard Rohr thought for the day really resonated with me as I was pondering the Agapai discussion again.

Today Rohr quotes Beatrice Bruteau

we bear some responsibility. We have to take our part in the work. We, for instance, are now in a position to do something about all the suffering. . . . We are agents within the system and can have causal effects on other parts of the system. We have intelligence, we have empathy and capacity to feel for others and to care about them, we even have insight into the Ground present in every being and calling for an appropriate form of absolute respect.

What will we do? . . . What does “God want us to” do? Not a good way of putting the question, because it distances God from the world, but the answer I propose is Be! Be creative, be interactive, be agape, give being, unite, be whole, be in every possible way, be new. The self-creating world is unpredictable. It’s like a musician’s improvisation. . . . But the artwork will always resemble the artist. So the cosmos will somehow be like the Trinity, the vast Person-Community that is Agape, inter-being. . . .

The answer of ‘Be’
That is real
That is intentional
That is us.

A little while ago I was persuaded by my good friend Anna to join Sion College … who have a strap line of ‘supporting the education and fellowship of church of England clergy in London’.

Each month Sion College hosts seminar suppers amongst other things. I really enjoy the chance to meet new people, and old friends, and engage with some great thinkers and practitioners…. and eat good food and drink wine!

At the last Sion Supper, we listened to Hilary Ison speak on ‘Priesthood and Leadership’ and I found myself, once again, resonating with a lot of what was said.

I found myself sitting up and tuning in quite intently (despite the abundance of red wine) when Hilary said ‘priesthood is about the quality of presence’. I love that phrase,

Quality of Presence

and it sums up what I wish to do and be as a priest …. to be present …. really present …. really and fully present to those that I meet with and come across. I believe wholeheartedly that great quality of presence, where you have time for one person, and totally devote that time to being with them, to showing them they are worth your time and, even more, communicating through that presence that you are actually wanting to be with them, not just being there because you have nowhere else to be. Sometimes I have got that so wrong … and I have learnt the hard way that when that happens massive genuine regret doesn’t cut it! Sometimes quality of presence with strangers seems to be a lot easier than quality of presence with people that really matter on a personal level to me. I wish I could do so much better on that.

Hilary went on to say that we needed to have the confidence to reclaim the priestly role of being present with both God and people which inevitably needs a massive level of vulnerability.

There comes that word again!
It seems I cannot get away from it.
May I refer you again to Brene Brown’s TED talks on vulnerability …

She went further to say that when working with others, leaders of presence needed to be confident in their wait … in holding ‘negative anxiety’ (which occurs when things are taking a while to happen) … the vulnerable bit coming in the holding of that anxiety (both personal and communal) as they wait for God to act and for vision to emerge.

Sometimes that can be hard when the pressure is on to deliver results, or increased numbers or maybe even to do something very different …. but as painful as it is …. bearing that vulnerability of presence when needing to balance tensions of anxiety and waiting for God to reveal a plan is really the only thing to do. Maybe that can be easier to do when we remember that church is family and community, rather than business with business ways of working.

But …
the vulnerability if that waiting and holding …
anyone else wish God would sometimes just be that teeny weeny bit quicker tho ….. ?

Every term or so the ‘clergy / reader team’ of the East Greenwich Parish get together for a theological discussion which someone at the previous get together agrees to lead. Last year I ran a discussion on Eucharist while other shave looked at salvation and other great topics to get us talking.

Today Tim led us as we considered Luther and the Reformation with Tim asking us to think around two pretty interesting questions:

This week I attended my first Sion College Seminar Summer. I was put on to it by my good friend Anna who I trained with at SEITE.

Lincoln, the speaker for the evening, (and one of my lecturers as well as my personal tutor at SEITE) spoke well and provocatively on how we do theology and how we express and develop our views. There was so much to think about and I may well take him up on his offer to visit him at St Mellitus and chat more over coffee.

I was struck, though, by the warmth of individuals at this meeting. Often new things i visit, in my experience, are cliquey and hard to move into. This was not the case at this meeting. Everyone was lovely and welcoming and I look forward to the next stimulating event.

One of the highlights of the evening was meeting and chatting with some of Intermission Youth Theatre. This group of young people were stunning in their ability and skill of acting; and the act they performed for us was profound and thought provoking. They would be excellent to have in school if you are looking for a theatre group to bring a message to school.

This was a great evening and so glad I was persuaded to go!

Vicky Beeching has continued with her posts on LGBT theology here.

I believe she is being incredibly courageous, at some significant personal cost, in her great attempt to get debate and conversation going.

Sadly, the comments on all of her last three posts make horrible reading. Some people who disagree with her inclusive outlook have been unbelievingly nasty in their comments. There is definitely an acute lack of love or Christian human-ness in the content of their messages which is, quite frankly, both embarrassing and sickening to read as a Christian.

It’s really important that as church, let alone the evangelical church, really gets to grips with and discusses this. We need a robust theology and not just allow ourselves to fall unquestionably into ‘tradition’ while hitting blocks off of each other because we do not like the idea of other people believing different things under the banner of ‘Christian’. This is not about the erosion of moral fibre …. it’s about a real understanding and theology of a real issue.

Please go read what Vicky has to say …. and maybe consider some encouraging comments …. no matter what your viewpoint is. I’ll show my age in this closing comment …. but it’s good to talk!