A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life

Posting is likely to be sporadic for the next month or so due to the nature of clearing, packing, ending, moving, beginning and sorting internet connections near D+300.  I will probably post  the various 'lasts' if only as a way of 'anchoring' the memories of them, but probably not a lot else.

Today is my penultimate preach at Dibley, the last 'normal' service, and a day that is manic in extremis - an away evening preach, lunch with my musicians and a 50th birthday party all on one day.  Hopefully the stress will offset the calories!

If it is quiet around here I haven't got bored with blogging just extra busy with other stuff.

Today I spent my day off sorting out my paper for submission to the university.  It is not the greatest essay I've ever written, but then its learning outcomes and title were not the most inspiring either.  Trying to correlate two very different sets of comments on the draft meant it took most of this week to sort it out - even if it doesn't look that different for 20 hours input, apart from being nicely comb-bound.

Anyway, the bank holiday meant that it had to be posted today to be sure it would arrive by the deadline which is Tuesday, so slave away I duly did and got to the post office at 4:10 p.m. - fifty minutes before the post goes, phew.  I asked for first class recorded (what the univeristy insist on) only to be told that they could not guarantee it would arrive on Tuesday unless I paid for speical delivery.  Hurumph.

Once upon a time first class meant same day delivery, so I'm told, and even as a child it was next day.  Then it was next day as a target and two days.  Now - oh well, when we feel like delivering it we will.

I'm not blaming the post office or even the employees of Royal Mail but there's nothing very first class about 'probably in two days, three over a bank holiday'.  Mutter, mutter, mutter.

My only consolation is it is cheaper than driving up to Manchester on Tuesday - although that would have given mer three more days to get it right.  Still, the electronic submission today means I really beat the dealine by three days anyway not that I'm paranoid about being late or anything... much!

Yesterday I finally got round to preparing Sunday's Ephesians 6 sermon, as part of which I am using some parallels with the clothing and equipment the builders next door use.  It doesn't quite match up but it does a good-enough job.

As I re-read a commentary the passage, the commentator suggested the list was in the order a soldier would put on/pick up the items - notably observing that once he was holding the shield, he'd have to put on the helmet before he picked up the sword or he wouldn't have a hand free so to do.  Hmm, I thought, I'd put on the helmet before I picked up the shield, so I'm not sure it quite works.  And then I pondered the attributes in the listed order - truth, righteousness, readiness of the gospel of peace (not the gospel as sometimes is said), faith, salvation, word of God.  Is this the order in which the average church would list them? I'm not convinced it is.  So is there a danger of reading far too much into the minutiae of the metaphor and missing the point - I'm sure there is!

All of this made me wonder, though, how the metaphor was created.  Did the writer have a set of attributes and then match them up to items of armour (and if so how did he get the number of items to match up) or was it done the other way round?  How significant are the parallels with priestly attire, of which commentators make much, and do they inform the order?

It has made we wonder how I would go about generating a metaphor for aspects of faith or discipleship: which I would include, what parallels I might employ and why.  This very familiar passage did not drop out of the sky fully formed but began as the (albeit God-inspired) ponderings of a real person writing for real readers.

So, what might it mean to speak of the 'toolbelt' of truth (the truth shall set you (hands) free) or the 'hi-viz jacket' of righteousness (unmissable, reflective stripes of Gods glory perhaps), the 'hard-hat' of salvation etc.?  What is gained and lost by changing the metaphor?  Is a building site a more helpful metaphor than a battle field?  Or just a different one?  The 'cosmic battle' theme that runs through Ephesians doesn't neatly parallel one of building a Kingdom of peace, so I don't think it is that simple... but I will still try to focus my folk to a constructive 'building' approach rather than a defensive 'battle' approach.

The current in-phrase in BUGB so cringe if you must.  Twelve pages of ideas and intitiatives that churches - large and tiny -  have been up to, to provide cross-over between church and not-church (two-way traffic), including dear old Dibley.  If you know which one is Dibley, enjoy but don't name them if you comment here - their privacy within wider blogworld is to be respected.

Check it out here

Seen today on a poster advertising an upcoming mission to Dibley and District:

Thursday: Grill a Christian session, lunchtime in the cafe

Would you like sauce with that...?

Thus spake the secretary of D+1's women's meeting when I rang her to confirm the hymns for tomorrow's meeting where I am covering for the scheduled speaker who broke her ankle (a bit desperate as a means of avoidance really...).  Not really what I wanted to hear when I had decided to recycle my prodigal son narrative from a few weeks back, have two services still to write this week and am frantically rewriting and editting for word count (my nemesis/bete noir/something or other) a paper which I have to post on Friday.

So, I think I'm going to ask them what their favourite Bible stories are and take it from there.  Maybe I'll ask them which character they most relate to and why and how they'd tell the story from that perspective.  Maybe I could then tell the prodigal son from the perspective of the fatted calf...?!

No, honestly I'm not trying to show off my rusty language skills by titling two posts in one day in non-English.  Truth is I never did learn any Latin other than odd phrases in even odder contexts.

Yesterday one of my musicians commented to me that when I depart, along with my data-projector, they probably won't sing anything out of Mission Praise or Songs of Fellowship anymore (let alone Common Ground which they've resolutely not bought but have odd photocopies from!).  I looked into the cost of buying them a set of word books for any of the above, and decided it was too dear, so am currently collating "Dibley Praise" a collection of diverse hymns and songs we have sung over the six years I've known this church (it is roughly six years now since I first met them) along with some they sang long before they'd heard of me and had on a collection of tatty sheets of paper.  Of the roughly 200 on the list about a third are in BPW (no, I don't know why they put them on sheets either) about a quarter are drivel and the rest are slowly being transcribed - via Hymn Quest, via SOF discs and in a few cases by typing.  The supplement will end up, I anticipate at around 100 items including a few in Khosa, Spanish and Latin and from Iona, Hillsong, Vineyard, Kingsway and Pratt Green Trust.  What this say about us/me is debateable -  though I think it reflects a healthy openness and flexibility.  Not every song that is included would be my choice, and there are lines in some of them that make me squirm, but I am big enough, old enough and ugly enough (as my Dad would have said) to distinguish between what I sing and what I believe, and whilst my theology is inevitably shaped by the things I sing, it is't determined by it.

Lex orandi, lex credendi? Well, I've never been convinced that I do, but as others may be less discerning/questioning it pays to think what is a healthy balance in our supplementary song collection.

Anyone else do Longman Audio-Visual French back in the 1970s/1980s?  I am currently doing 'Teach yourself Glasgwegian' with my copy of 'The Complete Patter' and rediscovering phrases my mother used to use, before almost half a century in England replaced many of them with southern equivalents.  At the same time, there are many phrases listed that my Dad, born and brought up in the west midlands used, and not a few that were common parlance in Northampton (where I spent most of my childhood) and the north west of England (most of my adulthood so far).  Given that my mother's parents hailed from east London and and Plymouth, and theirs from as far afield as France, Holland and Spain, it is perhaps no wonder that the idiom I use is rather polyglot.  Maybe I need to write the Wandering Aramean's Phrase Book?

In the meantime, I am back to my daily round of learning to pronounce 'loch' correctly!

Been a busy few days - good on the whole - and illustrative of this crazy world of being a minister.

Wednesday afternoon was one of those privilege moments when the hard work pays off, as the funeral for baby R went off smoothly, with a sense of peace and completion, release and hope.  There were a few smiles amidst the tears, and a sense that this young couple would be 'OK' despite all they'd experienced.  And one of those 'Holy Spirit' moments when I walked across the grass to meet them (they were too timid to approach the great wooden doors of the chapel) and the mother asked if I could read a poem they'd found on the internet... which was one I'd found in one of my numerous books and then discarded as I didn't have their permission up front to use it.  'Born too soon' is not too mawkish and reflects the mixed feelings such an occasion brings.

Thursday and the discovery of what first class train travel means these days - and that it is no guarantee of them having the food listed on the menu!  Endless cups of free tea and time to read made for a pleasant journey.  The Smoke was mobbed, and I abandoned a visit to the National Gallery as it resembled Blackpool Prom.  Even so, I had a great and useful meeting with R & C whose wedding I will conducting later this year.  It was great to discuss the service with someone who understands about 'mood' and 'movement' through an act of worship, and a couple so obviously at ease with each other.

After a day of sorting and shredding, it was good to have our songs of praise service today.  Church folk were rather thin on the ground, though those who did come brought lots of cake, and I was very glad of around a dozen lunch club people who had come to sing the things they'd chosen.  With the three-fold theme of creation, the cross and God-in-the-everyday the songs formed the basis for a lovely act of worship.  After a couple of cuppas and at least three cakes each (plus a doggy bag) everyone wended their way home.

A very mixed few days then.  Three people I encountered shared the same forename, and the diversity of their circumstances was striking.  The week saw joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, hellos and goodbyes, planning and delivering, God-moments and earthy-moments.  Somewhere in the mix was blessing - given, received, shared.  A week when I know why this is what I am, and why I can do no other...

This week I have been following Lucy's reflections as she prepares for her ordination on Saturday.  With maturity and thoughtfulness she has explored what the promises mean for her at this time.  I have enjoyed reading her thoughts and been challenged to reflect on my own ordination promises, those made at my induction (and which will be made at the next one in October) and of the realities of ministry.

This much I think - have I kept the promises I made?  Well, yes and no.  I have tried, and with God's help, to an extent succeeded, but have not always been able to fulfil them, at least to my satisfaction.  Partly because real life gets in the way!  And yet, maybe, mysteriously, it is in the  failing that we succeed?  This week is maybe a case in point, not a typical week, because actually there are no typical weeks, but a week in which I have struggled to find the time to those things I feel I should do because I've done the things I had to do... and yet in these have found fulfilment and blessing and in some way have done what I'm meant to do.

Among my strengths/weaknesses is what I might euphemistically term a protestant spirituality (or I'm a bit of a workaholic, in plain English) which means winding down at the end of this pastorate is just not happening.  Yesterday I spent most of the day taking someone to hospital, then fitted in a funeral visit for today's service and wrote the service.  This morning I have been preparing Sunday's 'songs of praise' service and doing some admin before I head to the crematorium. Tomorrow is kind of a treat though, a train ride to London to do a wedding preparation visit.  Of these, only the London trip was in my diary, and the week was meant to be spent doing some studying and reflecting as I prepare to move on.  And yet, all the busyness is what, for me, ministry here has been about, is the reality of me doing my best to keep my promises.

Moving on gives me the chance to re-evaluate what those promises mean for a new season.  And maybe that's the point - at one level keeping those promises is impossible but at another it is in the struggles and pressure of real life ministry that they are kept.  I wish I didn't fall asleep saying my prayers, I wish I felt more overtly spiritual... but God, knowing who and what I am called me and equipped me for real ministry knowing how those promises would, with the help of the Spirit, be worked out.

I pray God's blessing on Lucy and others starting to live out their ordination promises and on those who have spent a life time trying so to do.