A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life

Yesterday was almost a day off - I won't disclose how many work phone calls interrupted it (despite the answerphone) - and included a trip to Borders at Fosse Park (for once devoid of other Baptists so far as I could tell!) to browse the shelves and pick up a few novels for relaxation.  I bought four and by the end of the day had devoured two of them!

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson, Portobello 2009 (not the only book of this title it seems from a check on Amazon) is a very quick read (took about 90 minutes) slightly quirky and definitely in the 'feel good' genre which is 'a moving story of the final moment of a life and of a lifelong romance.'  Gentle without being twee, it was enough to generate a little bit of thought whilst providing relaxation.

By contrast, Before I Die by Jenny Downham, Black Swan 2008, is more challenging.  It is a first person narrative of a sixteen year-old girl with terminal illness as she works through her list of things she wants to do before her death.  Definitely not a children's book (some fairly explicit, if elegantly written, sex scenes as well as drugs and law breaking!) but feels authentic as a teenage narrator.  I found lots of resonance with questions I've pondered at various times over the years - how would the final weeks be spent?  Do the 'rules' change when time runs out?  What might those final days or moments be like?  The story is never ghoulish or mawkish, rather it draws it reader into Tessa's world - or is it maybe that of our own inner-teenager - as well as that of her family and friends.  I found myself oddly reminded of the biblical story of Jephthah's daughter, who went off to spend her final days with her friends before being slaughtered to fulfil her foolish father's vow, simply because it raises the questions of what constitutes a fulfilled life.

The other two books aren't (ostensibly) about death and dying but we shall see!

Children sing of it at Christmas - 'the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay' - and the synoptic gospels tell of it 'the grown up Lord Jesus asleep in a boat' and this morning I found myself recalling a sermon I heard in a small church in Manchester almost six years ago that explored this theme.

In childhood we learned to sing 'with Jesus in the vessel you can smile at the storm' but of course adult life shows you it isn't always like that - certainly it wasn't for the little church where the sermon was preached, and although now that storm is long past and they did indeed weather it, there was a lot of pain and struggle on the way.

The Markan accounts are often noted for their 'zap, pow' pace and brevity, but every now and then an adjective or detail slips in that nuances the whole thing - whether it is people sitting on green grass (6:39) or Jesus sleeping on a cushion (4:38) as the boat risks being swamped in the storm.  I have no idea what a first century cushion was like, but the implication seems clear enough - Jesus is comfortable and relaxed, sparked out after his preaching and teaching whilst the disciples presumably are awake and sitting in the boat, maybe even sailing it.  They see the storm brewing (not something that unusual on Lake Genessaret), they get cold and wet and frightened and 'grown up Lord Jesus'?  'Just z's he makes!'  So they have to wake him up - incensed that he is blissfully slumbering while they fear death by drowning (the worst conceivable fate).

The preacher who spoke on this passage reminded her congregation that though it seems Jesus is indeed in the land of nod, he is present in the boat, in the storms they face.  But just maybe, she noted, he needs to be shaken awake!  Not because he doesn't care, but because we need to be real, to admit and express our fears of drowning.

Life for churches, individuals and whole nations is incredibly stormy at the moment - and maybe this story, with a Jesus who is present but seems as much use as a chocolate teapot in his somnulent state has resonance.  Maybe we need to rouse him (or at least our perception of him) risking the accusation of 'little faith' (though he also says that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains) and hear him 'shush' the wind and waves, or at least 'shush' the inner storms of our hearts and minds.

Desist! Be aware of I AM God - I WILL BE, exalted among all the nations, in the whole of creation (Psalm 46:10, my paraphrase)

The end of the financial year looms and with it piles of administrative work and relentless challenges for the small church.

This morning I have submitted our application to Social Services for funding for the next 12 months for our lunch club.  We already needed an above inflation increase because the coach company with whom we work have had to increase their charges significantly.  Then the restaurant with whom we partner announced that they are being forced to close as their lease will not be renewed and we are forced to look elsewhere.  Thankfully we have found a possible venue but it is further away and the coach costs will rise again.  Will the council - themselves squeezed by the credit crunch - be able to meet our requests?  And what do we do if they can't or don't?

Our deacons nominations closed on Sunday and we have no candidates for whom to vote - reducing the diaconate to three after the AGM.  Thankfully we have someone willing to stand as treasurer but our retiring secretary has no obvious successor.  Is it reasonable to expect three people to carry this amount of responsibility?

Sale of our building now nears completion - contracts have been exchanged and a completion date agreed, but the presence of bats in the attic means that the buyer has to get planning consent for a temporary bat house before he can demolish the building - which needs to happen prior to the birds nesting or the whole project is delayed until the fledglings fly.  And all this so that, hopefully, some much needed low cost housing can serve this community.

Yesterday there were only 18 of us at church - most of the others were sick.  Each week my "significantly sick or housebound" visiting list grows longer and I am merely grateful most are now in the local cottage hospital rather than the city hospitals.

No wonder, I realise, that I am weary!  Not sure what impact this will have on blogging - to some extent it acts as a 'bolt hole' or 'sanity check' in the madness of pastoral life but I also have other commitments - two papers to write for the university and one I offered to write for the BMJ (no, not that BMJ, the Baptist one) and so on.  So, if I am 'missing' for a while this is why, and if I'm not this is why too!

I have a 90-something almost blind, partially deaf Gideon who is in hospital.  Tonight I failed to take a Bible with me, there wasn't one in the locker and his request that I recite a chunk of scripture managed to rob me of the few passages I can just about recite!  In the end we had Psalm 23 in the KY-NRS-NI-GN-almost-version; of course walking down six flights of stairs afterwards I could recite it perfectly in the KJV I learned as a child but hey.  He said what he'd like is cassette tapes with short , light inspirational stuff on - we have loaded him up with tapes of male voice choirs, hymns and the like, but he now wants words.  I have a few 'teaching' tapes and there are oodles of Bible on tape things around but I think he's more after 'thought for the day type things.  Anyone know of anything or got anything I could beg, borrow or buy from you?

This I decided when I eventually found the crematorium this morning - if only AA routefinder gave H and V numbers for Milton Keynes... fortunately I had heaps of time, found some helpful council gardeners and my mother survived me shouting at her that there was no point saying 'that way looks good' when she had no more clue than I did.

Maybe the deep sadness of a young man with only seven people to mourn him (plus his cousin to officiate) added to the sense of the event, and it was a cold, damp, grey, old kind of a day.  Logistically, whilst I'm not keen, the crematorium is very well laid out, unlike one I've been to in Warwickshire where corteges 'cross' mourners returning to their cars.  But it felt horribly clinical and cold (despite a red hot waiting room).  Hard tiles on which shoes clatter; completely bare, almost white walls; a tiny cross high on a stark wall; clumsy wooden pews not quite designed for the purpose; oh, and a little silver cover for the curtain button in case you inadvertently pressed it before you meant to...  Add to the that the very basic coffin, starkly unadorned, and the ache of bereavement was probably the most intense I've ever sensed in such a place.  The staff were incredibly helpful and kind, the acoustics worked well and the garden area for viewing flowers (had their been any) was tastefully arranged.  There was nothing wrong with it at all, it is a well conceived, functional crematorium, I just didn't like it.

So I conclude I'm a crematorium snob!  I like places where the mourners can move completely indoors from waiting area to chapel, where there is carpet to soften the foot falls and something other than stark walls and a coffin to look at.  I can cope with the odd failed lightbulb, I've decided (though it annoys me!), and even slight shabbiness because somehow it softens the clinical feel of a conveyor belt system.  I have my preferred crematoria and one I really dislike (which wasn't today's) and realise that no one size fits all.  Despite my snobbery, and despite the incredible sadness I felt today (more because of the situation than the place) the undertakers and crematorium staff were superb which, ultimately is more important.

Today I've been working on Sunday's service which will be based around Pslam 126 and Revelation 21: 1 - 7.  As I was reading some commentary on the psalm, I found the song 'I dreamed a dream' from Les Miserables came into my mind, so in the end the sermon will juxtapose Fantine's hopelessness with Christian hopefulness despite the hurt and struggle.

There's a lot that resonates in Fantine's song that will be woven into the sermon:

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted

I guess almost anyone over 40 can identify with some of those sentiments, and also these, later in the song:

But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

In ending my sermon I've tried to use these two lines as the start of a (plagiarism?) that has a more Christisn hope to it.  It needs tweaking before Sunday, but here it is as it stands...

True, there are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather

But if Christ is at our side

At least we’ll face these things together

We have a hope that keeps us strong:

The promise of a new creation.

Until then we’ll walk by faith –

And trust in One who keeps their promise:

An end to death and tears and pain;

An endless spring of living water;

Forever in the love of God:

The dream which keeps our hope alive!

That was the title of yesterday's invitation service - half way between Candlemas and Shrove Tuesday for those who know their liturgical calendar, the day after Valentine's Day for those who operate in another plane.  I was impressed by what the 'Gang of Four' had done, finding hymns that linked Christmas and Easter ("Thou didst leave Thy throne" and "in a byre near Bethlehem"), using a couple of OT Messianic prophecies (Isaiah 9; Micah 5) and linking them things about love (1 John 4; 1 Corinthians 13).  My talky bit had anticipated the links they wanted to make, so I'd arrived with suitable props - candles, flowers, chocolates, wine (don't tell the school!) and 'love hearts' sweets.  My tack was along the lines of gifts we give to people we love - so everyone received a tealight (hey, I trained at Northern...) and was offered chocolate; one person was given the flowers for her sick daughter, a visitor went home with a bottle of wine, and the sweets hinted at love-letters.  These were then compared with the wonder of the gifts God gives - star-spangled night-time skies, choirs of birds to herald the new day, flowers in endless variety carelessly strewn across the meadows and popping up in the cracks and crevices of derelict buildings, food and drink in flavours beyond our counting.  Then I moved on to the idea that better than cards, flowers, wine and chocolates is the gift of ourselves, our time, our love, our friendship and so on.  And so with God, incarnate in Christ Jesus.  Events in the UK and Australia over the past weeks have shown the depths of human selfless love - someone trying to rescue a sibling who has fallen through the ice; whole communities banding together to try to avert the consequences of raging bush-fires.  So it is with God's love in Christ. Writing it down it all sounds a bit twee and naff - but it felt OK at the time.  One of the visitors said it was the nicest church service they'd ever been to, and one ninety-something who'd for some reason thought she was being taken to a garden centre left with a lovely smile on her face.

As outreach I'm not entirely sure how to measure it.

A good half of our normal folk weren't there, and of those who were only five had brought anyone with them.  Out of 32 people (so someone told me) there were 11 guests and 3 people whose links with the church are rather tenuous.  So, proportionally, it was pretty good.  In terms of 'back to church' infleunce then, yes, there were three and that's a good thing.  In terms of people with no other church link there were possibly four, and that's good too.  Which means four belong to other churches - so hopefully they've been inspired to try something similar themselves.

One thing that troubled me, and always troubles me with churches, is cliqueishness.  We all sat cafe style around tables which was great, but everyone (apart from me and the two tea-ladies) stayed where they were - noone else from church went to talk to the visitors or even to each other.  Whilst I didn't mind those who'd brought people staying with them, I was not so chuffed about others sitting with their own little clique and phoning or texting!  Someone told me off for eating standing up - said I'd get indigestion - but how else was I to get round and talk to people?  I just wonder how other churches handle this aspect.

The best bit was, I think, enjoying the growing confidence of the 'Gang of Four' who will hopefully be encouraged to do something again in the autumn.  Room for further development, but overall a good day.

Today we have an afternoon invitation service, being organised by 'the Gang of Four' - a group which formed at one of our Vision Days last year to look at the 'community engagement' side of our life and who did our B2C service last autumn.  It was their idea to have regular invitation services and it is a delight to sit back and let them get on with it - albeit that I have to blag the five minute address at the end.

So, this morning I've been writing reports for the AGM next month - for "Thing in a Pub", for "Saturday Prayers" and for "Lent 'n' Advent".  As I have done so, I've been very conscious of how different is the 'feel' of these groups from the church I came to a little over five years ago.  Gone is the religious language to be replaced by something more real yet more innately spiritual; gone are the lists of of 'they who must be named lest they take umbrage and leave' (though there are still a few they aren't in the groups I report on!) to be replaced by words like 'laughter,' 'warmth,' 'friendship' and 'openness.'

More generally, gone are the reports from all but two of the organisations in place when I arrived: the knitting group left en bloc when the building closed; the children's work closed when there were no leaders (mid-week) and no children (Sundays).  The oddly named men's social committee (whose purpose I never discerned) vanished like morning mist, the walking group reached journey's end and the singers sang their swansong.  Now we have reports on the lunch club, the pub group, the prayer groups and the last surviving Bible class.  It is, I realise , not the church to which I came!

This reflection seems good - whilst some of the changes sadden me, and their longer term implications are worrying, on the whole we are in better shape now than then.  Numerically smaller, older, frailer, financially more precarious true; but more open, more gentle and gracious, more forgiving, more risk-taking too.

I am sure I've changed a lot too.  I am in some senses less anxious and in others more so.  I have a proven track record for mission and ministry, for risk-taking and tough-challenge facing.  I feel I am less 'holy' and more able to be surprised that God still confirms/affirms me in unexpected ways.  I know so much more that I now know I know so much less than I thought I knew.  Now I am five-and-a-bit - a big, grown up minister person who is out of the 'drop out danger zone' of experience - I wonder what I'll be like by the time I'm ten!!!

Tonight I've been doing some work next week's funeral, and was looking for some words of commendation that would be suitable.  Among the resources on my shelf is a book with the original title of Funerals: A Guide, James Bentley et al, Hodder and Stoughton 1995.  Looking through I found this one by David Adam which I really like, addressed to the deceased:

[N]

You shared your life with us: God give eternal life to you

You gave your love to us: God give his deep love to you

You gave your time to us: God give his eternity to you

You gave your light to us: God give everlasting light to you

Go upon your journey dear soul to love, light and eternal life.

This funeral is relatively unusual in that there are no hymns and the only music is entrance and exit.  I am pleased that my cousins felt able to say 'no' to music during the service but am intrigued and inspired by their choices for processional/recessional, which I will ask to be played in full.  Both are by a musician called Lisa Gerrard, of whom, to my shame, I had not heard.  She sings using a form of glossolalia which evidently she says is 'singing to God' (according to something like wikipedia anyway) though she is not actively of a specific faith tradition.  The music - which I listened to on YouTube and subsequently bought a CD of - is incredibly haunting and has an innate spirituality to it.  On the way in we are having one called Sanvean (I am your shadow) and in the way out Now We are Free (from the film Gladiator).  These two threads - of shadows and freedom - will frame my thoughts; a Biblical focus on the beautiful Romans 8 'what then can separate us from the love of God' will underpin it all.

I have probably prepared extra well for this one - I hope that's not favouritism but appropriate familial care.

At the meeting today there was a request for articles to include in the organisation's publication.  Foolishly I said I'd do something on blogging - not least because I am aware of someone who has written a brief theological piece on this.  So, rather than just me waffling on about why I blog and what I think is good blogging etiquette or posting ethics, I thought I'd canvas a few views from readers and writers alike.  The only wrong answers are untrue answers - and anything that breaches my private code of blogging etiquette or ethics.  Comments, which can be anonymous, are invited from Baptists and non-Baptists, ministers and real people ;-) , bloggers, lurkers and commenters.  It would be helpful if you indicate which you are but not essential.  Also, if you happen to be a Baptist-, a minister- or a theological-blogger and happy for your blog to be mentioned in what I write, please let me know.

Some thoughts you might want to share are...

why you read/write blogs?

what you read/write about?

what rules/etiquette do you endeavour to observe (if you write or comment)

do blogs have a useful lifespan or sell-by date?

if you blog, has yours changed over time?

if you blog, why is it called whatever it's called?

and anything else you think is interesting (and publishable!)