Tough Times?

It is an error – one which I so often excuse in myself – to believe that our uncontrolled emotional outbursts are a natural reaction to events around us or within us, a justifiable response to Tough Times that beset us and oppress us without our bidding and outside our control.\r\n\r\nBut this is not an appropriate Christian response to Tough Times. F D Maurice spoke about it this way:\r\n\r\n“God has brought us into this time; He, and not ourselves or some dark demon. If we are not fit to cope with that which He has prepared for us, we should have been utterly unfit for any condition that we imagine for ourselves.\r\n\r\n In this time we are to live and wrestle, and in no other.\r\n\r\n Let us humbly, tremblingly, look at it, and we shall not wish that the sun could go back its ten degrees, or that we could go back with it.\r\n If easy times are departed, it is that the difficult times may make us more in earnest: that they may teach us not to depend upon ourselves.\r\n If easy belief is impossible, it is that we may learn what belief is,\r\n and in whom it is to be placed.”\r\n

And so in the words of the Teacher:\r\n“Whosoever puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe”\r\nProverbs 29:25

Hijacked Epiphany

While shopping early today (yes, shopping on a Sunday) there were Easter eggs on sale alongside the Christmas leftovers in the Asda clearout.\r\n\r\nIt’s January 6th\r\n\r\n- the twelfth day of Christmas\r\n- the day Anglicans celebrate Epiphany\r\n- and there are Easter eggs on sale.\r\n\r\nIn fact, before Christmas there were Easter eggs on sale next to Christmas gifts at the local Shell petrol station. Stocking fillers?\r\n\r\nIn some ways it’s to be expected. It’s what happens when a secular society gets hold of a Christian festival without the patience and understanding to see it through.\r\n\r\nBut it’s not only a feature of a secular society. For many churches the rush in and out of festivals happens at an equally startling pace.\r\n

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  • It’s as though churches have caught the impatience around them rather than expressing their own mature patience to see the season out.
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  • It’s as though we need to be always turning to something new or, God forbid, the congregation might get bored.
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\r\nIt is written into the seasons of the church, especially in Church of England liturgy, that time should move slowly, which admittedly is hard in a fast world.\r\n\r\nSo how about using these words when planning our way out of our festivals:\r\n

Dwell. Wait. Watch. Feel. Hear.

\r\n(PS: Maybe it can go too far? I also heard today of a man who celebrates Christmas until 2nd February (Candlemas)  by leaving Christmas decorations up outside his house. 40 days?)

Counting blessings on the walk to work

After working way into the early hours of this morning on seemingly  impossible problems, tired, under pressure, my day was suddenly elevated by the walk to work.\r\n\r\nThe sun in the city. There’s nothing like it to pick up a sluggish pace and open jaded eyes.\r\n\r\nIt’s a blessing, I think, as I pause for thought over coffee in Bordeaux Quay before heading to the studio taking photos along the way … on the iPad mini!!\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n 

A Sofa called The Beast

We have an enormous sofa. We call it The Beast.\r\n\r\nIt’s a Tetrad four person sofa that only fits in one place in the room – in front of the radiator. It’s so big it absorbs probably three quarters of all heat emitted.\r\n\r\nWhich should make it great to sit on. Hot and Big.\r\n\r\nBut no. It’s too deep to sit on without tucking legs and feet on the cushions. Imagine a sofa larger than a single bed. And the cushions are so big that people don’t sit on them as much as climb into them, and it’s hard to see out, let alone get out, once in there. And of course guests feel uncomfortable sitting without their feet on the floor.\r\n\r\nWe bought it as part of a three sofa strategy developed to allow at least nine people to sit comfortably in the room.\r\n\r\nWhy? I really can’t remember. It was something to do with growing a church.\r\n\r\nSo we have a very big sofa.\r\nGuests don’t want to sit on it\r\nThe room is cold.\r\nAnd we never have nine people in the room at the same time.\r\n\r\nWhich made us think, if buying the sofa didn’t bring people in, maybe if we got rid of the sofa we’d have more people over?\r\n\r\nWe paused for a moment.\r\n\r\nWhen spoken out loud that sounded as farcical as the weekly Sunday conversation about removing the pews in church.\r\n\r\nAs if removing the pews would grow the church …

Prayer – after meeting friends for the evening

Father, when you watched us tonight\nAs we laughed and larked around\nWere you happy with us?\n\nAnd as you listened to us pontificate\nTalking about other people we know and those we don’t\nWere you disappointed at any of our conversations?\n\nWhen we insisted on confidentiality\nWere we deceiving ourselves\nInto saying words that should never have been heard in company?\n\nWhen we laid out our plans for the future\nWith such confidence\nDid we please you?\nOr did our arrogance and self promotion make you turn away?\n\nOn behalf of my friends, and myself,\nI ask that you forgive our naivety,\nEncourage us in our unity,\nAnd bless each one of us with easy sleep and a clear conscience throughout this night.\n\nAmen.

Leave no stone unturned … in prayer

It may have been a typical experience, but troubling none the less, when my prayers drifted off into nothingness this morning as I prayed. The particular prayers I have in mind concerned two people both in need of an intervention by God if their lives are to be whole and complete.\n\nIn my mind were the words that described Jesus when he ‘prayed earnestly’ and I started well and in earnest. And also those words quoted often here, that ‘It is possible to move men by God through prayer alone’.\n\nWithin seconds I imagine, for really I cannot remember, my mind was blank. It wasn’t drifting onto other things. It wasn’t distracted. It wasn’t reflecting on the weekend sport or the day’s activities ahead. It was just … blank.\n\nStartled, I started again. I named the people involved and prayed out loud as I imagine earnest prayer should sound, and again, within seconds, my mind was blank. Coming back to prayer was harder this time because I was unsure of my ability to actually pray.\n\nSo with more focus and determination I started to actually think of specific areas and items for prayer for these two people. I prayed small prayers at first, about their memories of the weekend recently past, for their conversations, for their work, their aspirations for the day ahead. For their financial well being, and their friendships, and their homes and … so on. Then I tried to put myself into their situation. I prayed for their ability to reflect well on their circumstances and so to grow in wisdom.\n\nIn these prayers I prodded and pried into my mind to uncover new areas to pray about.\n\nIt was like turning over stones on the beach to look at them from different angles and so determine which one should go into the bucket as a treasure.\n\nThat was the picture. Turning stones. Leaving no stone unturned.\n\nHow long should it take?\n\nHow big is the beach?

Two Women Praying

At the end of an evening with colleagues I fell into conversation with a friend. Our discussion moved surprisingly quickly into deep areas with high level of personal reflection.\n\nAs we were about to go our different ways the other person stopped me and said, ‘let’s pray’. And she prayed for me.\n\nThe following week I spent an afternoon with a group of colleagues working on a particular project. At the end of the afternoon I  fell into conversation with a friend. Our discussion moved surprisingly quickly into areas with high levels of personal reflection.\n\nAs we were about to go our different ways the other person stopped me and said, ‘let’s pray’. And she prayed for me.\n\nThat made me think.\n\nTwo women who pray spontaneously.\n\nWhy don’t I pray at the drop of a hat like that?

American Prints

I’ve come to realise relatively recently (or rather I had forgotten from a long time ago) that a beautiful image gives me a great, uplifting, bursting joy somewhere in my chest. It happened for the first time in years in February whilst staring for fifteen minutes at Canellettos ‘Grand Canal’ in the National Gallery. It happened again watching Ben Johnson actually painting his magnificently detailed and huge paintings of London in his studio set up in a room also in the National.\r\n\r\nMost recently I felt it while exploring the exquisite, elegant and intricate prints in the American Museum in Bath. Rooms of often small prints whose size can obscure the quite breathtaking levels of details the artists managed to achieve by bringing metal spikes into contact with old trees. And yet, with such technical skill one expects of a surgeon or a royal seamstress these men and (more often than expected) women created whole worlds in ink.\r\n\r\n

The Yellow Wallpaper

We arrived at our holiday apartment in London, looked around (delighted) brought in the luggage (vast) and settled down on lovely sofas with a glass of wine (exhausted). Then The Clever One started to tell me a story she had heard on the radio the day before.

A woman was staying in an attic room in an old house. Every day from her attic she saw her husband go off to work in the morning and come home in the evening. At first all was well, but soon she started to notice that there was a line developing around the walls where the wallpaper had been scratched away, just above the skirting at first, but getting higher and higher each day. The woman was completely trapped in this attic room, literally locked in, and frightened because more of the wallpaper was disappearing each day until the whole wall was bare at least as high as she could reach. It was a sinister story, a ghost story perhaps.

Throughout the story I had shown a mild interest –  all I could muster after a long day – but I thought I did pretty well.  Soon afterwards I fished around in various bags to bring out one of the huge number of books I had brought with me. I had chosen a book of sermons by Archbishop Carnelly, one time Archbishop of Australia, called ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. When The Clever One walked into the room and saw the book she exclaimed “that’s it! That’s the story I heard on the radio yesterday. It was called ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. We checked it out more closely and yes, the sermon of that title after which the book had been named was based on the same story heard on the radio.

It turns out that the woman was in the attic for her own good because her doctor husband thought it would be good for her after getting pregnant to be isolated, to ‘rest up’. She hated it, and gradually fell into increasing insanity, which expressed itself by her gradually stripping the yellow wallpaper off the wall. In her mind the wallpaper held the demons she was trying to exorcise. She locked herself in the room and threw the key out of the window so no-one could get in. By the time the husband came to his senses and broke into the room (clever but not bright, it turns out) she had stripped all the wallpaper off all the walls as high as she could reach. In the words of Archbishop Carnelly, a chilling story of insanity.

Unsurprisingly this was the sermon I read that night. Also unsurprisingly I paid attention. That’s what serendipity is for. When we notice it.

Inverted Virtues

At a recent visit to Knole House in Kent one of the volunteers made a mistake. The main staircase has a painted tableaux of the Virtues. In one of them a king is seen ruling over subjects. The volunteer ran through the five virtues displayed and when she arrived at this one she described it as the virtue of ‘Monarchy’.

When The Clever One with me queried whether that was right (‘is there really a virtue called ‘Monarchy?’) the volunteer’s plucky trainee said of course, it was in the interest of the monarchs who owned the house to show ‘Monarchy’ as a virtue. (It should be said that the monarch only owned the house after Archbishop Cranmer had been forced to make it a gift to Henry VIII –  a example of the virtue of Monarchy at work, no doubt.

As we walked on to the gallery of royalty and archbishops I questioned it too. The Clever One muttered under her breath that the virtue was actually ‘Submission’. That made much more sense. How often to we invert the virtues and give ourselves a pat on the back, I wondered.