The Dibley Manse looks like a cross between a jumble sale, a craft shop and ancient Egypt - all in the cause of mission!  To the left you can see the Amazing Pyramid at Dibley, flanked by a Sellafield Palm, the only variety able to grow to the height of a pyramid!

In just over a week we will be running our Churches Together Holiday Club - an initiative now in its third year and involving churches of three flavours.  It will be at St Smells & Bells and looks like being our best attended yet with around 30 registration packs sent out.  We are doing Pyramid Rock this year's SU offering, though with our own slant on various aspects.  Our children will be between 3 and 11 years old - a deliberate shift since we discovered that many parents were not registering their children because they also had a toddler; for under 5's a responsible adult must stay all session (sneaky - free washers up and new contacts!) and it looks as if it has paid off.

St S&B have been very accommodating, allowing us to take out the chairs and use church essentially as a hall, so there will be tinsel palm trees strung from the rafters, inflatable palm trees and a gazebo at the entrance, a sand pit in the nave and craft materials all over the place.  Hopefully, the leaders will enter into the spirit and don the Egyptian style wigs!

We are looking forward to a fun, if exhausting time, as a motley crew of adults and children explore the Joseph story.  It seems a little sad to think that in another year St S&B won't be here as venue, since it is the most central we have yet used.  Nevertheless, it is good to see how out of adversity has been born a meaningful ecumenism that might never otherwise have existed.  As they used to say in the north west, God works in H M Prison, Manchester (Strangeways).

Summer is nearly over and as September begings to be glimpsed over the horizon, things start stirring again in Dibley.

Our courtship with D+1 resumes in September with a joint meeting of all our members - the concept of 'open church meetings' has yet to reach this corner of the world, which may or may not be a good thing.  Towards the end of September we will gather at 'D+2' and their minister will chair our discussions.  It seems a good next step, no decision making, just an open forum to share conversation and raise issues for debate. 

One of my deacons, on being told of the date, revealed that summer is to be equated with amnesia, as he saw this is a totally new initiative, not something we'd agreed to back in June!  In an email he shared his views on the whole thing and then suggested that if we did consider a merger we should have 'a trial period first before committing to it.'  I am suitably shocked - a deacon proposing that we (the churches) should live together without being in a covenant relationship.  What is the world coming to!

Whilst I can, at one level, see his point, I can't help feeling that the marriage analogy holds even in this aspect - at some point we have to decide 'yes' or 'no' just as a courting couple move from courtship to commitment.  Churches take a very dim view of couples who cohabit prior to marriage (i.e. who enter a 'trial period' to see if it'll work).  Most of our angst seems to be over what takes place in the bedroom, but we are never entirely happy when an engaged couple move into a house even days before the marriage ceremony because we feel it's 'not quite right'.  I can't help feeling that a similar caution should exist with church congregations -since we are ultimately talking about human relationships, albeit of a different nature.  I am not quite sure what might constitute the ecclesial equivalent of pre-nuptial sex - we claim communion is one of our most intimate expressions of faith yet gladly 'commune around' so to speak.  Perhaps the concerns of my deacon are more akin to discovering that your partner leaves the top off the toothpaste, wet towels on the bathroom floor and the loo seat up/down!

If living together is about seeing if the irritations and tensions are too great to make life-long commitment sustainable (i.e. not about sex, which let's face it does not need a shared home) then maybe my deacon has a point - but this may have implications for our attitudes to couples who do likewise.  Similarly, if we are of the view that a couple must eventually decide to marry (or not) without a trial run, surely we should be consistent in our potential ecclesial marriage?  It seems to me that at some point, both we and D+1 will need to make some important decisions.  First an 'engagement' or "betrothal" where we begin to work out the details of what marriage might mean: where we might live, what shape our new family will take, etc.  Then a 'marriage' when (if) we decide to go for it: the point at which we say, we'll never know until we do it, we're both committed to making this work so let's go for it.

I am fairly confident that if a cohabiting couple arrived at my church several eyebrows would be raised, and people would feel that if they were committed they really ought to marry.  I am also fairly confident that we would be less ready to take the plunge with D+1.  I am not entirely sure how good the parallels are, but I do wonder how much we operate different standards (and please, gentle, reader, no lectures on sexual ethics, I am merely thinking about the concepts of commitment, covenant and risk taking that apply to all 'troth' relationships).

But don't get too excited, we are still in a very formal, well behaved courtship as yet, so no need to worry that we might do something to raise the ecclesial eyebrows just yet!

I am now in the process of preparing a three service series using Brueggemann's categorisation of the Psalms, and this week it is the 'Psalms of Orientation' for which I am using Psalm 19 which encapsulates two of his 'certainties' or 'givens' - the natural order and Torah.  This got me thinking quite a lot about concepts of 'law' as used by scientists and as used by society. 

Scientific laws endeavour to express something that is 'given' about the way things in the natural world behave - we don't see an object fall under gravity and instantly mutter (for example) 'v squared equals u squared plus 2 a s' (let alone the ones that actually relate to gravity and I have long ago forgotten!), rather we accept this 'law' as a given, something that is dependable, reliable and unchanging, something that provides the stability and order needed for life.  Implicit in the logic of Psalm 19 seems to be something of this - it is the predictability of the 'heavenly bodies' that points beyond themselves to a God of order and stability.

Societal laws on the other hand often have a feeling of prohibition about them, and seem increasingly to be drawn up in response to something that has gone wrong - for example the recent laws on possession of knives or holding suspects without charge.  What I think that Brueggemann is saying is that Torah is not this kind of negative law, based on prohibition, but actually something a bit more akin to the laws of science which can almost be deduced from the order and stability that result.  Rather then constraining behaviour, Torah is liberating and enriching - Psalm 19 speaks of it bringing joy to the heart, revival to the soul, light to the eyes.  This is far from an 'anything goes' view, for that would be disordered, but it offers a more positive alternative to the legalism that Jesus criticised in the religious people of his day and that, sadly, characterises so much of church life today. 

If the essence of Torah is as much a 'given' as the fact that night follows day, and if the lives of Christians could reflect this, then I guess we'd be approaching utopia.  Life of course is never so simple, and this is where the psalms of disorientation and reorientation come into play.  What I think is a reasonable deduction though, is that both the created order and the Torah point us to a God who is dependable, reliable and consistent rather than one who is capricious and variable.  Such 'givens' are things that we tend not to think about, but they are the essential backdrop against which our lives take place.  Just as I can expect cows to moo, grass to be green and the sun to rise, so I can expect God to be.

I have no idea what my good people will make of my thoughts but it has been helpful for me to revisit my understanding of 'law' in a way that moves beyond mandates and prohibitions to means of order and stability.

Brueggemann speaks of the 'canopy of certainty', Africans apparently have a metaphor of God (or maybe of faith) as an umbrella.  Some concept of a secure, dependable 'domain' (in its scientific/mathematical meaning) seems to be consistent with these ideas.

I am just starting to read Walter Brueggemann's The Message of the Psalms published by Augsberg and not to be confused with similar title published by IVP in the 'Bible Speaks Today' series (not that there is anything wrong with that series, it's just aimed at a different audience I guess).  Anyway he notes that both traditional devotional and contemporary critical readings have strengths and weaknesses and offers what he calls a 'post critical' approach drawing on both strands.

In the introduction when he has noted some of the limitations of a purely devotional reading he goes on to say...

'My criticism, uncompromised as it is, is never the less restrained, because the Psalms permit the faithful to enter at what ever level they are able - in ways primitive or sophisticated, limited or comprehensive, candid or guarded.  The faithful of all "sorts and conditions," with varying skills and sensitivities, here find "the bread of life" as abiding nourishment.  Any critical scholarship must respect that gift that is given and received in this literature, even if we do not understand the manifold ways in which that communication occurs.'

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I think Brueggemann here manages to express something with which I constantly wrestle both in personal devotional reading and in preaching, and not restrictied to the Psalms.  Sometimes I find the published devotional material really naff because it is either blatantly wrong or it has the naivety that Brueggemann also struggles with.  Yet often at almost the same time I am working out how to gently nudge the thinking of my congregation forward whilst still respecting their starting point.  I can no more unlearn what I have learned about critical scholarship than I can turn back the clock, nor would I wish to, yet the insights bring their own challenges.  I think it is too facile  to say that either naive Bible reading or critical theological thinking are means to growth, rather it is some kind of 'both/and' balance which needs to be constantly worked at.  Brueggeman seems to manage something quite special in appealing to people of assorted theological and academic hues and in these words I find encouragement to continue my own engagement with this 'debate.'

Well, we did it - ten days, a fair few blisters and one sprained ankle in the process but we completed our trek from Liverpool to Hull covering the greater part of 200 miles in the process (there are semi-official mileages but they don't always quite match the conditions on the ground).

We set off from Liverpool in scorching sun and arrived in Hull looking like drowned rats.  Most of the journey was hot and sunny but the last three days reminded us what England in August is usually like.

I enjoyed the walk with its diverse scenery and range of walking surfaces.  From vast stretches of open countryside - and panoramic views from Woodhead Pass - to thatched cottages, to long stretches of canal tow path and a few delightful water treatment plants and industrial estates, we saw a microcosm of England.  We crossed and re-crosssed the M62 and M60 many times both over and under, and are now adept at crossing level crossings in rural areas where 100 mph trains clatter by every few minutes.  It was never dull and we developed some awful humour along the way which, perhaps thankfully, does not translate (though there is a small B&B in Padfield where a 'man' stays in one of the rooms so beware!).

We met some interesting people on the way - a few groups of cyclists doing the trip in 3-4 days (and had to give directions to one or two!), a Sustrans Ranger who told us where to get a good cup of tea cheaply - and who we met a day later at an RSPB place where we'd got one for free - a woman training to cycle the route alone, an ex-marine who we impressed with our efforts and a police officer who caused a traffic jam by stopping to read the notice pinned to my rucksack and then chatting to us.

It was a fun adventure and I am glad that we undertook it but of course it also had a more serious purpose - that of raising money for the charity Wellbeing of Women.  It looks as if we will between us raise about £1000 which is a superb response and a tribute to those we are remembering (Gillian & Rachel) and celebrating (Jean's sister who has survived ovarian cancer).  At times the walking was a slog - we were tired or our feet hurt, but at least we knew that there was a (positive) end ahead.  Even my sprained ankle is recovering well (just don't tell the medics I walked on it for a couple of days assuming it was just a simple twist!) and will soon be a memory.  For many women (and men for that matter) pain is a life long companion and diseases such as ovarian cancer do not simply go away with a bit of rest.  Traipsing through a field of sheep poo in driving rain it was good to recall just what this was all about and lend a bit of perspective to our discomfort.

On a couple of days I wound up walking in flip flops - not, I hasten to point out, the cause of the ankle injury which was sustained later.  After walking 10 - 15 miles my feet were FILTHY and reflecting on the story of the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears & hair took on a new level of meaning as I began to appreciate what his feet may have been like.  Far from a ceremonial nicety, foot washing after a long day of walking is a necessity, and I was very glad of the convenience of showers and baths in the B&B's where we stayed.

My final reflection on the whole journey was on its voluntary nature - there was no compulsion to go anywhere and only stubbornness to make me continue to the end.  I was free to choose what to take with me, knowing that at the end of the journey I would return to the security of home, not find myself a refugee in a hostile nation.  Each night I knew there would be a roof over my head and food to eat, clean sheets and hot water; at all times I was only a phone call from friends and family and received encouraging texts from a friend in Manchester.  During the same period, how many people worldwide have had to flee their homes with only what they can carry, not knowing if they will eat or where they might find shelter?  It's a sobering thought that what we do for fun or for a challenge is what other people do of necessity.

Now I am back in Dibley, have checked around 80 emails, opened a couple of dozen letters and dealt with 6 messages on my answer phone.  Normality returns all too quickly.  I am secretly (or not so secretly now) proud of what we achieved in the last two weeks and have enjoyed being away from routine, yet there is something actually quite reassuring about life picking up its familiar threads...

I have not yet decided what the next adventure will be - but I reckon the next time I go from Liverpool to Hull it will be via the M62/M60!