With a Song in my Heart

And trembling, to its source return

2011-10-17T08:33:00.002+01:00

Well, I said the words and the bishop did the bishop-y stuff and I've been confirmed in the Church of England. I'm a really real Anglican now; you other Anglicans are stuck with me for the foreseeable future.

I felt a great peace, which is still with me, and erupts into joy. Some of you might call that the Holy Spirit. I am not certain, but prefer to say this is what I felt, what I feel.

Still here

2011-10-10T20:37:00.003+01:00

Boring Health Crap:

1) the Mystery Illness seems to be abating, on its own. I'd still rather know what it was, but at least I'm getting better.

2) I hurt my back a couple of weeks ago. I'll be fine, but it's painful and affecting mobility and my ability to work.

3) My Gee Pee wants me to see the Trick Cyclist about medication I've been on for years (and which is working just fine for me, thank you very much). This worries me. The tablets help, you see, to the point that I feel uncomfortable when faced with the fact that medical professionals who have no idea what it is like to be inside my head might take them away. But last time I had to do this (two years ago) the Trick Cyclist in question was very sensible and so there is probably nothing to worry about. So I keep telling myself.

However, this stuff takes a back seat to something else:

I'm being confirmed on Sunday.

Assuming I don't get cold feet between now and then, that is.

Boring Health Crap continues

2011-08-24T13:29:00.003+01:00

The doctor on Monday was pretty useless. My bloodwork is all normal, so of course there couldn't possibly be anything wrong, right?

On the plus side, I'm not about to keel over from any of the things they could test for, things that show up in blood tests. But given that I have a few chronic conditions already, none of which were diagnosable from initial blood tests, I don't feel happy about this.

I'll be back in a month for my regular meds; if I'm still having symptoms (which at the moment have me spending half a day in bed about once a week, which says a bit as I don't retreat easily, but don't seem to be getting any worse) I will see if I can get things taken seriously. The problem is, of course, I'm not a doctor -- I don't know what should be investigated next. If the doctor doesn't take me seriously the only thing I can do is see a different one.

I'm quite tired of things going "wrong" with this body of mine. I can understand the appeal of a sort of dualism, of thinking well, my body isn't really "me", my soul or personhood will somehow be released from this at some stage, the material doesn't matter, matter doesn't matter. But this is the stuff I am made of, and it is at once broken and perfect, like the rest of the world.

I live in the hope that love can transform matter.

Living Well

2011-08-18T18:52:00.005+01:00

Whilst on holiday I read Living Well by Alan Hargrave. It is a fairly practical book looking at various aspects of finding a Rule (or habit or discipline?) of Life, with questions at the end of each section. It is not excessively long and it is personally, even affably, written, but painfully honest at times. There are challenges there for me, especially in terms of how I relate to those closest to me.

I think I'm going to end up working with some of the questions more, with pencil and paper rather than just reading straight through.

But I'm also aware that on some level, I have a tendency to want this to be a sort of magical fix. If I can just get this right, I think to myself, I won't feel so overwhelmed or inadequate, and I can be more effective at fixing the world. Ho ho, not so fast! Not by my own strength am I saved, not by my own bow. There is no perfect strategy, no perfect routine, which will mean I never feel bewildered, never feel insignificant, never feel lost.

I won't always understand everything. I am confused. I won't always be able to change things. I am weak, and I am only me. I won't always know what is what or what I should do; I will feel disoriented and lost.

And that's good.

Because God is more complex than anything I can understand, and it is right to feel bewildered. Be-wilder-ed. Made wild? Lost in wildness? Whatever it is, my bewilderment is not wrong. (Higher are my ways than your ways, my thoughts than your thoughts. Oh yes.)

And God is powerful, more than I can ever imagine, and it is not inaccurate to feel insignificant. What can I do that isn't with God's help? What do I have to offer that isn't first given to me by God? (Lord, treasure up my mite...)

And God's love is huge, huger than huge, enormous beyond all reckoning. It cannot be measured or counted. Of course that's disorienting. Of course I will feel lost. What a wonderful place to be lost! (Lost in wonder, love and praise.)

None of that means I don't need a Rule, of course. An appropriate Rule, like good liturgy, gives me the tools to bring my bewilderment, my weakness and my lostness to God, to recognise God at work in the world and in my life, and to join in with that work -- especially in those challenging relationships, those where I wish I could fix the systemic problems. But it is just a Rule, just a habit, and it is just as well not to get too hung up about it.

Boring Health Crap

2011-08-18T18:47:00.003+01:00

I have been having some weird health stuff for the last two months, which doesn't fit the pattern of any of my existing diagnoses. Blood tests a few weeks ago; I haven't heard back, which might mean they are normal, or might mean that nobody has bothered to ring me.

I have an appointment with my GP on Monday. I am hoping to be taken seriously, and that the good doctor might have some idea what is going on.

Prayers appreciated.

For you alone, Lord, make us dwell in safety

2011-08-08T23:56:00.001+01:00

I'm on holiday. Distressed by events in London but things seem safe where I am. Further comment later, just wanted to let people know I am safe.

Kyrie eleison.

Credo

2011-07-30T20:31:00.001+01:00

"The Latin credo means literally "I give my heart." The word believe is a problematic one today, in part because it has gradually changed its meaning from being the language of certainty so deep that I could give my heart to it, to the language of uncertainty so shallow that only the "credulous" would rely on it. Faith...is not about propositions, but about commitment. It does not mean that I intellectually subscribe to the following list of statements, but that I give my heart to this reality. Believe, indeed, comes to usfrom the Old English belove, making clear that this too is meant to be heart language. To say, "I believe in Jesus Christ" is not to subscribe to an uncertain proposition. It is a confession of commitment, of love."

-- Diana Eck, Encountering God, quoted in another book I'm reading.

This seems at first a comforting sort of quote. I don't have to defend the cold hard historical facts, I don't have to say "This definitely happened." Belief is about love, about commitment, not about what can be proven to be objective reality.

But commitment is exactly what makes this sort of belief difficult. Commitment requires action. Every Sunday I go to church and I say the Nicene Creed along with the rest of the congregation, and I'm not so sure of the cold hard historical facts, honestly, but I say it because I have given my heart to this concept, to the concept of God-with-us, of God loving us more than any of us can ever imagine, of love triumphing even over death. And that's all well and good. Then at the end of the service the Reader says "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" -- with all that entails in terms of serving others, loving others, even when it is not easy -- and I know I will fail before I've even walked out the door of the building that houses one part of the community I now call home.

But I keep trying.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small,
Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

--Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

How can I not keep trying?

Meandering update

2011-07-03T20:27:00.004+01:00

The old demons I was fighting last week are... well, not conquered, but I've done all I can for now, and my brain seems to be letting me have a rest from that until I find out what the next step is.

Meanwhile everything else is still shifting, and I wait.

I went to Evensong at a church in the next deanery, and was asked if I'd read. I did. Afterward the organist mentioned, after we'd chatted about other things, that during the reading he'd thought I "really should be ordained".

This keeps happening. It's disconcerting that others see this so clearly in me. It's disconcerting that so much of it depends on others, on circumstances, is beyond what I can even try to control.

I mentioned a new spiritual director, a while back. She is excellent; slightly daunting, perhaps, but in a good way. And very near by, which is such a relief when so much of my life involves commuting in one form or another.

The radishes have bolted in the garden. The flowers are so pretty I haven't quite had the heart to pull them up, even though I know the sweetcorn needs the light.

I've been writing more music recently, not a great deal more but some. It feels important, and I've had some encouragement from unexpected directions.

I am terrified by the politics in this country at the moment.

I'm not sure yet what I'm using this blog for now, or where it is going. When I started it I needed a place to try out ideas, a way of interacting with a community I couldn't easily reach in person and didn't know I needed to seek, a space to reflect. I've made some wonderful friends as a result. But the real heart-on-sleeve stuff feels too precious now to put online, even somewhat anonymously. Other spaces to reflect have become more comfortable through being less guarded. I have got "stuck in" to various church communities locally, to the point that I think it is the non-church communities that I need to make an effort to engage with. I no longer have a daily commute which lends itself to reading blogs.

But I still have a feeling I don't want to leave this abandoned, I don't want to break contact. So I post a sort of "still alive" thing every once in a while.

2011-06-23T08:45:00.002+01:00

I am having a bit of a hard time at the moment, confronting past demons and making sure they can't hurt anyone else. I don't want to talk about it at length here, it's too public even if I am somewhat anonymous.

I am deeply blessed by the support, kindness and prayers of people who know some or all of is going on.

Thanks be to God.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

2011-06-18T21:51:00.003+01:00

I am tired. I always seem to be tired when I get around to posting here.

Things that are going on at the moment:

Confirmation preparation: This is fairly gentle, though not without some challenges. I read a book, go back and talk to the lovely grandfatherly priest who is helping me prepare. The service will be mid-October, sooner than I thought. I think we've talked about ordination as much as confirmation, now. It's wonderful to have the time and space to talk about some of this stuff.

Work balance, now: No, not work/life balance, though that could do with some thought as well. This is more to do with the balance of work that I do. As a freelance musician and teacher I need to make sure I keep on doing the long-term stuff, the practising and composing, as well as the various bits of more immediate, paid work. This hasn't been working so well recently and so I'm trying to do some practising that isn't linked to one of my "jobs" and some composing, each day. I find this harder if I don't have a routine, and at this point it's so long since I had one that setting one up is causing some difficulty. But I persist.

Work balance, later: I am a musician. Recent events suggest that I also have some sort of vocation to ordained ministry (oh, how many times on this blog or in comments elsewhere have I said "I don't think I have a vocation to ordained ministry"?)... but I'm pretty sure this is not instead of being a musician. And so I am going to have to figure out how to fit in music and ministry, practising and priesthood, composition and Communion. There are lots of part-time or house-for-duty posts kicking around the C of E these days and I think that is only going to increase. Where it might be more difficult to find a balance is during curacy; the training models all seem to assume NSM or full-time, neither of which are quite right for me. So I feel like some of the work balance stuff I'm trying to implement now is going to be important later, both in terms of having the habits of keeping the music up, and in terms of having something to show for being a musician, being able to legitimately say "Look, this isn't a hobby." Of course in all of this I am getting ahead of myself by many many years. Maybe I seem cynical, but observation of the Church Bureaucratic leads me to believe that it is worth at least thinking about these things.

My mother came to visit: we had a good week together. She started out, as always, saying she was mostly happy at home and not bothered by my stepdad any more. After a few days, as always, came the tears, the lamenting, the needing to be handled with kid gloves (he is unkind to her and she needs me to compensate by being extra nice), the dithering over whether she really should stay or go, the justifications of why she has stayed so far, the daydreaming about what would happen if he were not around any more. I've had twenty five years of this. It is tiring. This time, some of it put a few of my own experiences with my stepdad into a different perspective, which was unpleasant. Please pray, if you do, for my mother, and for my stepdad. I have particular difficulty praying for my stepdad.

I recently had an awkward Facebook request: it is from an uncle who I think molested me when I was a child and he was a teenager. There's a huge amount I don't remember. I feel sick when I try. But he has kids now, and I've realised I need to at least decide properly whether this is something to tell others in my family about, rather than just trying to file it away as no longer relevant. The knowledge of that has shredded my concentration and so since the request I've been getting very little done besides going to actual appointments. Sweetie is supportive but seemed a bit distressed even by the detail-free version I gave him, and I don't want to distress him further if it can be avoided. So I've arranged to talk to a trusted, much-loved friend about it on Monday. That will either make things clearer, or stir things up very badly indeed. There is nobody else in the whole world that I would rather talk to about this stuff, nobody I would feel safer with. I am dreading it.

My physical health: is middling. My joints aren't really appreciably worse, I can still do the things I need to do, but I've been needing more painkillers than I really like to take. In the last few weeks I've been getting bouts of physical fatigue, increased pain, and sometimes nausea, accompanied by swollen glands as if I'm fighting off a cold or 'flu, but I don't seem to get the cold or 'flu afterward. I guess I am fighting it off effectively. I can't tell how much of the nausea is thinking about things in the previous paragraphs.

On the whole it's all going well. I'd like to be physically in better shape, but all the other stuff -- it might feel unpleasant but it's growth, of a sort.

Tentative rejoicing

2011-05-23T13:49:00.002+01:00

New spiritual director seems very good; she offered a balance of affirmation and gentle challenge that I think is what I need at the moment, and seemed to look at my life in a much more connected way than many people have.

Hey ho

2011-05-21T09:16:00.003+01:00

Off to see new spiritual director this morning.

I hope this works out well.

...that's all, really.

Feeling vulnerable

2011-05-18T23:48:00.006+01:00

I've been feeling tired, but also forlorn, petulant. Various things have been a bit different, the last few weeks. A dear friend has had no internet access and our usual frequent e-mails have been replaced by intermittent text messages. Teaching has been a bit fraught, with some worry over students doing exams, though I'm less concerned now. I went to mainland Europe for a wedding, and the travel was tiring. I'm behind, as always, on various bits of admin and paperwork, and feeling a little overwhelmed with it all. None of these things are major but they are all rather wearing, and the what-ifs have been creeping in.

A bit of time with pen and paper and I can see that large parts of my anxiety are linked to a sort of feeling of impending loneliness, of not wanting to be overlooked, left behind, brushed aside, abandoned. I'd like to be adored, special, cherished... and I harbour unrealistic hopes for what that means in terms of how others interact with me. I should have recognised this sooner; it turns up in a wistful feeling of "please don't go" at the end of every conversation. Stay with me, don't leave me alone, I think as loudly as I can while saying polite goodbyes. In short, I feel unreasonably clingy.

I am blessed with many people who care for me, love me, and show it. The reality is that with the best will in the world, these people don't have as much time for me as I might like, or as they might like.

Even while I understand that this isn't something to take personally, it still makes me feel uncertain, threatened, vulnerable.

How much of this is just egotism? Does it really matter whether I feel safe, if I'm doing what I am made for and helping others do what they are made for? Isn't some sort of risk always going to be there, whether I feel it or not? Isn't living life to the full, serving God in theist terms, worth any amount of risk, anyway?

But then, how much of this is that my hope of being loved, of being safe in God's love, has been something I have primarily experienced through the love of human beings? How much is a selfish demand for impossible security and how much is a yearning for that light of Christ which I do see in others (yes, even some of the atheists)?

I don't really know how to respond to this loneliness, clinginess, yearning. I can be honest, say "I'm feeling lonely and vulnerable and I don't really know why, please comfort me" and people will probably try. Of course they will! But it seems self-indulgent, somehow, to ask for that, even from Sweetie.

I can try to ignore these feelings but they'll surface some other way. The most damaging way leads to me trying to be someone I am not in order to please people. That kind of emotionally manipulative achievement is very seductive, but I know it doesn't really work. Is being aware of that dynamic enough to stop it happening? One reason I was so hesitant for so long about the vocation stuff is because I thought maybe this was me trying on some subconscious level to please or perhaps imitate some people I love and admire (which is absurd when you think about the rather long process of discernment in the C of E, but there you go).

This isn't constant or miserable enough to be a medical issue, I don't think. I've lived with mental illness before. I don't think this is it. I think this is well within the "normal" range of healthy human experience, whatever that is.

So what to do? Turn to God with it, spend more time in prayer, wait for things to change, hope something feels better soon? But prayer isn't something I do in order that I might feel better, even though it often does have that effect. What is the point of my petty nagging?

Even posting about this seems a bit over the top. It's late, too late for me really, and I'm tired. I'll say Compline, go to bed, have six or seven hours of sleep, get up in the morning and busy myself with the day. Life goes on. Fear is part of life, and I will be frightened and vulnerable and lonely at times but I will also rejoice in the smell of the rain, the sound of a 4-3 suspension, the words of a prayer. This yearning isn't some unending misery, it's just part of being alive. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.

But I would still like to be less afraid, Lord. Sorry about the nagging, it's just where I am tonight I guess. If vulnerability is part of being alive, please give me the courage to live anyway. If my heart is going to be split open for fear of abandonment every time I admire someone, please make it large enough that I act out of love rather than for the avoidance of pain. If I must be hurt by people's imperfection or just by them having their own lives to lead, help me to see them for who they are (your beloved children, every last one) rather than for how they might hurt me. If I am to be someone who sees the provisional nature of all existence, the possibility of danger at every turn, make me someone who can see all of it as a loving gift. Put my worries and anxieties in perspective. Let my desire to act in love overcome my insecurity. There isn't really anyone else I can cling to.

meandering update

2011-05-07T21:16:00.002+01:00

Confirmation preparation is going well. A lovely grandfatherly priest in a neighbouring parish is helping me, since finding a suitable confirmation class turned out to be something of a non-starter. I have mixed feelings about that, as I think it would do me good to work with a small group rather than individually, but I'm not unhappy.

I was to read a book, a rather dry book I must say, with various World Council of Churches statements from just after it was formed throughout the remainder of the last century, on a certain topic. I read it, and thought about it, and on Thursday I met Grandfatherly Priest for a chat. He liked my approach to the subject (which is a specialty of his). I told him about the vocation stuff (see, I don't think that would have been possible in most classes) and that was an incredibly useful conversation, too, affirming while recognising the difficulty of my position. I'm still trying to figure out how musicianship fits into this; I can't not be a musician any more than I can stop breathing, you see, and most clergy I know have precious little time for anything other than their parish work. He was keen to stress that ordination doesn't mean being a vicar, that being called to preside is not the same as being called to serve a parish. But he also told me it was Good News. I swear I could hear the capital letters. What can I say? I hope to bring good news, Good News, Gospel, regardless of my official ecclesial status. If that means being the Good News I will try, though I know my own efforts will be imperfect. I think all Christians are called to that.

We had rain today. Not enough, I don' t think, but we've been a month without which is very strange for London in April. The vegetable garden will be glad of a proper drink rather than me hobbling around with a watering can. You make the rain fall and the wind blow.

I've been feeling really tired again. Politics are depressing me. Yesterday I cooked an elaborate household meal, which went very well. Today I was terribly short with Sweetie; the old habit of pushing at the boundaries because I'm afraid of being abandoned still crops up, when I'm tired enough. I wish I were a gentler person, less inclined to be critical, less inclined to remind people of their mistakes when I'm feeling vulnerable. He is more patient, more forgiving, and has been lovely to me all day, even when I was upset.

We are away for a few days next week which I think will help.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

2011-04-24T08:15:00.001+01:00

And yet...

2011-04-22T22:13:00.003+01:00

I had a very mixed day today.

I felt twitchy and scattered and all the things that keep me grounded, keep me connected to some sense of God in the world, seemed like things that aren't very Good Friday-ish. After all, we mustn't rush to Sunday.

I question the puritanism, the masochism, of spending Good Friday wallowing in our misery -- and especially of implying that those who take a gentler route are not taking things seriously enough.

Yes, mourning is important. Yes, remembering where we have been is important. Yes, knowledge of our own sinfulness, our own utter dependence on God, is important. We have a liturgical calendar for a reason and there is value in dark times, quiet times, solemn times, in confronting the hard truths of our lives. I don't deny that this time is harrowing for some, and that is right and of God. I don't deny that there are people who would rather take shortcuts, would rather skip the hard bits, and that we all need to be aware of a tendency to minimise, in our own minds, the suffering of Christ on the Cross.

But I spent years feeling bereft and bewildered and I am not ready to let go of resurrection hope just because the church's calendar says this is a time of remembering bereft bewilderment. I'm not clinging to hope because I want to skip the hard bits. I'm clinging to hope because if I cling to anything else I deny God in favour of my own pride. I keep reminding myself of the light not because I don't recognise the power of darkness, but because it is the only way for me to avoid succumbing to that darkness. That is true on a daily basis in my life -- hope in Christ keeps me turning toward God. Withdraw the hope and I turn away, into myself. If that means my faith is somehow small or weak, lame or shrivelled, well, too bad. It is what it is.

It took most of a day of near-paralysis, not really knowing what to do with myself, to get to the point where I gave up on thinking I "should" or "shouldn't" do things. I stopped fighting myself and went outside and did some gardening. It was that or head back to church, and the garden was closer. There is no unholy ground, only ground we refuse to recognise as holy.

Only after I came inside did I realise that burying seed in the ground is a pretty Good Friday-ish thing to do. I never sow seed and know for sure that it will grow, but the hope is always there.

My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?

2011-04-22T13:53:00.007+01:00

When I was in highschool, we studied this poem by James Joyce:

I HEAR an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

I don't really remember what we learned about it, but I know we studied it, and it stuck with me. Years later, when I was caught up in the mire of depression and the turmoil of a failing relationship, it expressed my fear and bewilderment better than anything else.

This week has been kindof all Passions, all week. In addition to the standard Palm Sunday Passion liturgy, there was an afternoon Palm Sunday devotion including the music of Stainer and Maunder. There was the Bach St John Passion on Tuesday night at St Paul's Cathedral. At Nearest Church we had Stations of the Cross on Wednesday, and then today the Passion was read again.

I keep hearing this, in various transliterations:

אֵלִי אֵלִי לָמָה עֲזַבְתָּנִי

(Usually translated as "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")

And in my head, this year, it has been associated with the last line of that poem as much as with Psalm 22. It's odd, the connections a mind will make. I don't know what triggered it. I just know that I imagine Jesus on the Cross, crying out to God, and somehow these are the words:

My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small

2011-04-22T08:26:00.002+01:00

I have a bunch of thinking to do, some of which I'll blog. I just didn't settle at the vigil last night; what I really needed was to walk. I'll walk this afternoon, and it won't be the same, because it's a glorious sunny day and despite the sombre tone set by the Good Friday liturgy I will see new life everywhere. I can't help it, going outside in spring. Love doesn't wait until Sunday to overcome Death.

Maybe it's just as well. Maybe it's just as well I go through all of this week with that hope so strongly imprinted on me that I can't quite let it go.

I've been keeping pretty busy. Holy Week is like that.

Keeping clergy especially in my prayers this week.

Update

2011-04-13T08:22:00.001+01:00

Eric went home from hospital yesterday. It sounds like he's still pretty uncomfortable, and he will be on medication for a long time, but is stable.

Patience

2011-04-11T17:04:00.001+01:00

Patience does not come easily to me.

Of course I'll be upset, again and again, when I find out (again and again) that the Church is not perfect. Of course I'll be upset when I cannot protect myself and those I love from the effects of that brokenness. Of course I am broken, too; we are broken, too.

I am not walking away from this broken church, or from searching out God's intentions for me within it. Oh, I cannot fix it, I know that. But the church needs people who know its brokenness, the church needs people who are aware that it is imperfect, the church needs people with some sense of the damage it can do. To leave it to those without such awareness would be to stand by while it becomes more monstrous, more destructive. There is a time and place for prayerful standing by, for watching and waking, but this is not it, for me. There are those who must shake the dust from their feet and move on, but I don't think that is what I am being asked. Likewise, I am not here to weep and wail over the corpse. I am to command the dry bones to dance. I just don't know which ones yet!

I am also not placing conditions on the relationship I have with Sweetie. Oh,neither of us are perfect, either, I know that well enough. But we are not just happier together than apart; this isn't about mutual gratification. I know that I am stronger, kinder, gentler and braver with Sweetie than without him, and I dare to say that he feels the same about me. His beliefs are different than mine, but in being with him I am more like myself, better able to serve God. Of course it follows that the service I am invited (asked? compelled?) to take up will affect our life together, will affect him. We will talk together; I will pray and he will "mull things over"; we will talk some more. I will not coerce him or manipulate him, and any changes will be mutually agreed.

I have no idea how all this will turn out. I have to assume that God has some kind of resolution in mind, but I don't know what it is. I'd like to find out. It may take a very long time.

I guess I'll be learning patience.

Mostly angry

2011-04-09T11:55:00.007+01:00

I am mostly angry at the church today.

I am angry on behalf of all the women who were never ordained because it "wasn't time yet" and all those who will not be consecrated bishops. I'm angry on behalf of the lesbian and gay priests in relationships who have been forced to decide between honesty about their relationships or recognition by the church. I'm angry on behalf of those who have chosen celibacy when they might not have done so. I am angry on behalf of those people who have loving, sacramental polyamorous relationships and so are turned away, and on behalf of those who would best express who they are in a polyamorous context but do not because of the church's disapproval. I'm angry on behalf of those who courageously commit themselves to another in every way except legal marriage and are sent the message that this doesn't count, doesn't mean anything. I'm angry on behalf of anyone denied any sacrament because they don't fit into a tickybox, whatever the sacrament and whatever the tickybox.

For Christ did not come to condemn the world.

What are we doing as a church, what are we doing as the Body of Christ, if we condemn those who do not fit our received, preconceived notions of sanctity?
Lord, have mercy.

What are we doing as the Body of Christ when we draw a line in the sand and say that those who stand on one side of it are worthy, and the rest are somehow not in receipt of God's grace?
Christ, have mercy.

What are we doing when we define priesthood in such a way that some who feel called to it are excluded, not by their selfishness but by their integrity, commitment and honesty? What are we doing when we define membership of the church that way, or say that church membership is somehow many-tiered with one standard of goodness for laity (which is just a fancy way of saying "people") and another for clergy?
Lord, have mercy.

What foul deception is this, this idea that we get to decide who God invites to serve in one way or another? Oh, we have to take an active part in the discernment process, certainly. But "I don't understand your choices, so your experience of vocation means nothing" is not discernment; "You don't fit into this tickybox, so you can't possibly be obedient to God's will in your life" is not discernment; it is rejection, condemnation. This rejection, this condemnation holds the entire church ransom to fear, so that those who would ask the questions of discernment (try "What is God doing in this situation? What do this person's experiences, in light of Scripture, tradition and reason, say about God's will for them? How can the church encourage this person to grow to be who they really are, for the greater glory of God?" for starters), those who have open imaginations and loving hearts, can only do what is right by pretending that they don't know, making sure nothing is official. Of course, it isn't those who are fearful of anyone different from them getting authority who are blamed for "putting the church in a difficult position" -- it's those who are trying to make the best of a bad situation, those who have got their toe caught in the door and are trying to pry it open despite the crushing weight of all that fear, those who would rather display mercy than demand sacrifice, those who act with love and welcome in Christ's name despite being told they must condemn and judge, those who hunger and thirst after God despite being told in no uncertain terms to go away until they can behave themselves and conform to the received cultural norms -- those are the people who get accused of putting the church in a difficult position.

Is this, truly, the Kingdom we are invited to help build? I don't think so. It saddens me, sickens me, this scrabbling at boundaries, bickering over control of grace as if there isn't enough to go around. Do we really think the Holy Spirit follows our measly little rules?

And yet... Love is stronger. Love is stronger than fear, love is stronger than death, love is stronger than any of the hogwash the church might throw at anyone.

I just wish I knew what that means about what I should do next.

Don't ask, don't tell in the C of E*

2011-04-08T14:44:00.003+01:00

I'm waiting until after confirmation to go anywhere official with the vocation stuff. The bureaucracy will find it easier that way, and in the grand scheme of things a few more months are probably no bad thing. Little steps, lots of reflection and breathing.

It's better, I'm told, not to mention anything objectionable. Those who are liberal won't ask, and then it won't be an issue if they do eventually have to answer to those who would try to exclude on behalf of God. For the record, I'm not talking about not being confirmed yet, here. Let's just say I'm caught between integrity in a relationship, and the conditions the church puts on those it would recognise as clergy. So, of course, I'm way way way ahead of myself. And I'm in no real danger, which is a huge privilege. But I still don't like it. I don't like this idea that I might get away with things if I just keep my head down, keep quiet. I don't like the disconnect between where things should be and where they are. It tastes rotten.

Lord, have mercy.

*or to quote MadPriest, I think it was, "The truth will make you the Dean of St Albans."

If you pray...

2011-04-07T23:33:00.001+01:00

Please keep Eric and all who love him in your prayers. He had to go to A&E last night and will be in hospital for at least a few days.

liturgy and life

2011-04-03T14:38:00.004+01:00

I went to an Area Vocations Day.

It made me more certain that I need to pursue this vocation stuff seriously, and also pretty frustrated at the people who were organising the day. There were too many people, the vocations stuff was combined with "leadership" stuff which was pretty evangelical in its leaning and seemed to be more about equipping people for proselytisation than about a broader definition of leadership, there wasn't enough time to reflect, process, breathe... they tried to have some silence after each speaker but starting late didn't help, and the speaker who I most wanted to hear had to rush her talk rather badly (it was still excellent, and I'm glad I went if only to hear that).

There was worship, but it was almost entirely unfamiliar liturgy -- no benediction or confession or absolution, no doxology, no psalmody (except for about two lines), no sacrament. No Lord's Prayer, even, or if there was I managed to forget (I don't think I would forget). I didn't know either of the songs. There was praise and there was intercession, both in very personal terms... flattery and whining. No depth, no real cohesion.

Thank God -- a church in a neighbouring deanery has a Eucharist early on Saturday evenings for those who struggle to get there on Sunday mornings. I met Sweetie for a bite to eat and then went there, taking refuge, sanctuary. The Lord be with you, said the priest, and I was home again, never mind the unruly children running about the place, the lack of music. At some point I wept, not the anxious and embarrassed tears I'd been holding back earlier in the day, but just out of relief. I felt physically lighter and my mind seemed less dark -- en-lightened.

We talked afterward, the vicar and I, or rather she listened while I talked, scattered and unfocused after the events of the day. I floated home, exhausted, still upset, still uncertain, still frustrated but aware of being loved, connected to and grounded in the love that underpins everything.

How many times, earlier in the day, did I hear people talk about equipping Christians for outreach and mission, equipping people to change the world?

What feeds me, sustains me, equips me to do my work, is prayer and sacrament, mystery and miracle.

Maybe providing more of that would be more useful than having fancy leadership conferences.

Just saying.

Here I am.

2011-03-19T07:16:00.001Z

Spoke to Sweetie about this vocation stuff, the other day. He is pretty spooked, but it went well. I did promise him I won't ask him to change his beliefs or come to church services, that seemed to reassure him some.

I talked to Gentle Vicar, said I'd been thinking about attending the area Vocations Day. He was completely unsurprised, and said he'd been meaning to ask me when I was going to start looking at vocation more seriously. A clergy friend, someone who has known me longer, who I love dearly and trust implicitly, was similarly unsurprised. She and one or two others have been brilliantly supportive, each in their own way.

I dropped off the application form for the vocations day the other evening.

It's all feeling frightfully real just now.

Meanwhile I'm nearly done the book I was asked to read as part of confirmation preparation. I have a lot of work to do where I am in addition to preparing for whatever comes next. I can't ignore the possibility of vocation to something different any longer, but I can't run away from where I am, either.

I'd better get used to it, I suppose.

More and less

2011-03-07T21:17:00.003Z

Lent approaches and I've been thinking about giving things up, taking things on.

I don't want to let this just become about self-improvement. That does seem to be the gist of a lot of it for some people, and I'm not sure that's right. When I start to think about dietary changes, I can very quickly end up with a list that would have me eating perfectly, but making so many changes that I wouldn't really be contemplating God at all, because I'd be too busy avoiding fried food/sweets/meat/trans fats/processed food/etc. There's fasting, and there's neurotic behaviour.

I also don't really want to get into competitive self-denial, not even in the guise where I end up competing with others to get the self-denial "just right" rather than taking things to extremes.

I have the same trouble taking on spiritual practices. I go from "might like to try praying differently" to "keeping a Rule most monastics would find a bit on the strict side, while living a fully-engaged secular life" in about two blinks.

So I'm going to give one thing up, and I'm going to take one thing on, and I've given them both a lot of thought, trying to make sure this is about a journey toward God, not about perfectionism. I've only really told one or two people about these things and I'm not telling anyone else what they are. Even making this post is probably too far toward smugness. Enough.

However, I am going to devour me some pancakes tomorrow!

So there.

Then were we like those who dream.

2011-03-07T20:47:00.006Z

I said I had more to write. I wasn't joking.

I'm someone who likes to figure things out by talking them through, writing them down, thinking about them. Sometimes I don't even really know what I feel about a situation until I've put it into words.

Last Wednesday night/Thursday morning I had a pretty strong dream.

I'm used to weird and crazy dreams of one sort or another. I generally think of them as my brain's maintenance subroutines, and best not interfered with unless they are causing me undue distress. I am hesitant to give them significance. I want to be able to explain things, and dreams are all too often inexplicable.

This dream was different. In this dream, things I've been trying to understand became clear. The answers were there all along. In the dream I was asked to write them down, and I did. I almost never have words in dreams, let alone write them. Words are for the day, the light.

When I woke, I remembered what I'd written. So I wrote it down. It still makes sense.

I was asked to write down what the church is, what I'm supposed to do there. I wrote:

1) Togetherness/unity in Christ.
2) Unconditional service.

For 2) I meant unconditional service of all people, serving God through serving God's children.

For 1) I meant the Eucharist. And it's so obvious -- there is only one bread, I've said that how many times? -- but I think, on the whole, I get so caught up in 2), in service to others and the community, that I tend to push aside 1).

So much else was going on, Thursday and the days surrounding it -- tidying and cleaning in preparation for a house inspection was just one of the things on my plate -- but this, this came along anyway. And I can't ignore it, and I can't ignore little itches, insistent scratching about vocation, priesthood even, any longer. All the same, I felt less stressed about the whole thing than I have in a while. There's plenty of time, you see, and other things this week make it quite clear that the work I'm doing now is just as important, will not be rushed.

The problem with dreams is that if I tell someone "I had a dream about X and now I feel very strongly that I must pursue Y" they will think I have come rather unhinged. I have, of course. But who'd be sane by this world's rules?

That doesn't help in talking to Sweetie, talking to spiritual directors, talking to all the people I'll have to talk to if this leads where I think it will. Explaining myself. I like explanations because I can use them to explain myself to others. If this is what I think, there's going to be a lot of 'splaining to do.

Even typing that, a part of me thinks "If? What do you mean, if? Surely you mean when?", and I stop, and take another breath, and somehow, there are no words.

More house stuff

2011-03-05T21:23:00.002Z

We had our house inspection today.

It takes a certain special something to be that rude, that condescending, and that oblivious to having just walked dog poo into the carpets we spent hours cleaning earlier this week.

But we did "pass" the inspection, so we should be left in peace to the quiet enjoyment of the property. As a bonus, the house is looking cleaner than it has in a while and, while I think it was well within what is legally acceptable before, I am happier with it in its current tidier state.

There is so much more that I could write, but I'm tired and I have work in the morning, so I think it's time to head bedward.

Home away from home

2011-02-27T22:56:00.003Z

Off I went to Leafy Suburb Church for Evensong tonight. As I always am, I was glad I went. Leafy Suburb Church has been special in so many ways.

My first piece of liturgical music was sung there by the choir, in honour of Ambassador for Compassion. The choir let me sing with them, too, and though I'm only there about once a month I feel part of things, part of a sort of community-within-a-community. It's not the belonging, I think, that gets to me. I think it's that I emphatically don't belong and yet am still welcome that's so powerful. I can't come to most of the rehearsals, I don't live anywhere near the parish, I can almost never be there for the main events of that church, and yet what I do have to offer is accepted, openly.

When I first spoke to the vicar about writing a piece of music I was so scared, so scarred by previous experiences. You know, I don't think I'd willingly spoken to a priest for years, never mind initiating contact. The first choir rehearsal I went to, to figure out what the choir might be able to do, I was so nervous, so unsure what to expect. At the first service I went to I was uncertain and uncomfortable, so uncomfortable about participating in a Christian act of worship.

And yet all along the way I have been met with friendliness, acceptance, love. That meeting with the vicar was exactly as informal as I needed it to be; that first choir rehearsal was entirely unremarkable. That first Evensong service was uncomfortable for me but it was somehow okay that I was uncomfortable, and the vicar said "God loves us to bits" in her sermon. The first time I sang in the choir it felt like coming home, and every time I go back I come away feeling a strange lightness. It's always bittersweet, knowing I won't be back for a month or maybe more, but I am always glad I went. And occasionally, I find the same feeling at other places. There were bits of Greenbelt that were like that, and K's vicarage is, and taking Communion for the first time in so many years certainly was, and I went to a midday Eucharist at a city cathedral a few weeks ago where I nearly cried with the sense of welcome I felt. But Leafy Suburb Church was the first and I guess that makes it sort of sticky, so that every time I go back I'm reminded.

I don't think that the issues with the letting agents are going to go away and I will still be mightily pissed off if I end up having to move -- either in the next month or two, or this summer after our contract expires. But I am much-comforted tonight by a small community in an unremarkable leafy suburb which, for me, has been a model of what church can be like, and which reassures me I have another sort of home than the sort over which letting agents and their ilk can have any say or sway.

Thanks be to God.

Waiting

2011-02-26T21:51:00.006Z

We decided, more or less by default, to take a "gently gently" approach with the letting agents. Oh, the Scrabble magnets on the refrigerator say some pretty rude things about them at the moment, but we haven't written any exceedingly polite letters about our right to quiet enjoyment of the property, and we haven't rescheduled or cancelled the second inspection, due this weekend. We're trying to be philosophical about the "opportunity" to give the house a good spring clean. I'm mostly coping, but feeling stressed at times, especially the nights Sweetie isn't home.

Meanwhile, life goes on, Lent approaches fast, I have realised that I am working long enough hours to become inefficient and need to place some sensible boundaries on things. I'm looking for a new spiritual director, having spoken in some depth to people I consider spiritually astute about my experiences; I think I've found some good guidance on this, closer to home than I expected. I also realise I need to return to a regular journal-writing practice; not necessarily the public one of blogging each day, but some sort of time putting my thoughts into words. I've done this on and off for over a decade and I am always happier, healthier and more "productive" (though not always in ways that are immediately apparent) when I do it. Of course, correlation is not causation and it may be that when I am well I return to the journal because I finally have the energy to do so. So this week I've been writing in spare moments, and I think this is good. I will see where it leads.

I'm considering studying theology more formally, by distance learning. There's a course that might be suitable. I can't really justify it yet; my musical career (hah!) needs a lot of attention before I'll be self-sufficient and I can't really afford the money until then, but I'd love to do it.

I want to be planting my garden, it's planting time here, but I have to wait until I know whether we can keep living here. Still, I've done some things in containers. It's something.

House and home

2011-02-13T14:51:00.007Z

I dislike renting a house.

I dislike not being able to add solar panels, better insulation, windows that don't leak, floor materials that wear better, adequate kitchen cupboards that have doors that close.

I dislike knowing that if the landlord decides he doesn't want to rent any more, I will have to move.

I dislike inspections every six months in which a letting agent can decide to make my life difficult or easy based on the "condition" of the house. Inspections of any kind make me nervous anyway, due to unpleasant childhood episodes, but house inspections are frightening enough that I've wriggled out of being home for the last two, leaving them to Intrepid Anthropologist.

On Wednesday we had one such inspection. Previous ones had been all right, we aren't perfect housekeepers but the place isn't filthy, but I was still worried. And this man who didn't even give his name came into the house where we live, our home, and declared it unsatisfactory in all sorts of ways. He actually said "I don't know how you can live this way" to my face.

I repeat, we aren't perfect housekeepers -- but the place is by no means filthy, and we certainly aren't causing damage to the fabric of the property.

And so now we've had a nasty letter from the letting agents, saying there will be a re-inspection for which all of us must be present (why?), demanding various bits of the house are "professionally" cleaned (professional cleaners are, as my housemate points out, just people with materials, experience, and not much better career prospects), saying we must put the garden back in its original state (I've put in some raised beds for growing veg -- the plan is to take them with me when we leave -- on previous inspections they haven't been a problem) and so on. The letter is unpleasant in tone and it isn't even grammatically coherent.

I have a sneaking suspicion that what is actually happening is that the landlord wants the house back, he wants it back before the end of our contract, and the letting agents are trying to get us out by 5th April and have us clean the place from top to bottom first so they don't have to.

We do have friends who work in housing law; as I type this, Intrepid Anthropologist is on her way to visit them to discuss what is and is not reasonable and what part of the letting agent's actions constitute interference with our quiet enjoyment of the property.

But even if that goes well, even if we clean the place from top to bottom before the next inspection (5th March, at least we've got a bit of time, though it will interfere hugely with work), it seems likely to me that the letting agent would rather have us gone than keep us -- if we argue we'll be "problematic" tenants -- and we'll end up moving house again by this summer at the latest. And that, in turn, scares me. I cannot tell you how much I loathe moving house, and doing it because someone else has decided I must is very much worse than it being my own decision.

Your prayers, if you're a praying sort, would be appreciated.

I know that it is unlikely I will end up homeless. I know that even if I were to end up homeless I would, ultimately, be okay. Love is stronger than death, I keep telling myself, so this ought to be a piece of piss. It's a struggle to keep that in mind with this sort of upheaval looming. Emotionally I am veering between trying not to fret because I'm fairly powerless anyway, and a sort of paralysis around the things I can do that might make a difference (mostly, lots of cleaning) because they might not be enough anyway. Ultimately, I do not get to decide whether I stay here: someone who sees me as a source of income, as an object rather than as a human person, gets to decide.

Where I've got to

2011-02-02T22:00:00.005Z

Does anyone know of any spiritual support resources or organisations for church musicians? There seem to be lots of things aimed at fairly keen laity, and lots of things aimed at clergy.

I don't want to be precious about it -- being an organist is not the same as being ordained and the amount of responsibility I bear is much less than that of the vicar. I am, in essence, a "fairly keen" layperson. But learning the music and leading choir and congregation in song is surely a different type of work, too, than reading or leading intercessions every few weeks or helping hand out pew sheets and hymnals. I don't mean to diminish the importance of these other things, but they don't require hours of practice on a daily basis.

All the resources I've found aimed at church musicians seem to be primarily geared toward musical training and certification. That's useful, but it isn't all of what I need. I've been complaining to a friend this week that it's quite possible to have a conversation about church stuff with most organists without anyone mentioning God at all. But we also tend to work in isolation, all being busy on Sunday mornings. Clergy have that problem too, but (in the C of E at least) there are various structures in place which increase their contact with one another. I only speak to other organists at all because I go out of my way to do so. I don't know any of them well enough to discuss matters of heart and soul. Gentle Vicar is wonderful but he is also my boss, overworked enough as it is, and not a musician.

My stepdad has had a bereavement. I find it incredibly difficult to pray for him, yet it seems like something I am meant to do. Mostly I try and quickly revert to just wishing he didn't exist and then I feel incredibly guilty for it.

Things are not going well with my spiritual director. I am thinking about other options, while trying to think of what I can bring to this relationship that might be constructive.

I have been talking about all this stuff to a friend of mine who I think would be a wonderful spiritual director, but who isn't in a position to offer formal direction for a number of reasons.

I am cycling a lot and my physical health is mostly good, though I am still very tired.

Gentle Vicar had surgery recently and so we have not had our mid-week said Eucharist since the first week of January. I miss it more than I thought I could; last week I had occasion to be in town at lunchtime on a weekday and went to a service at one of the city churches. The sense of unconditional welcome was wonderful. I'm not sure if I need to make a point of doing this more, or just find a way of hanging onto that feeling.

Always at church I am conscious that I am in a certain role, that to be a good organist, to serve this community well, I need to be gentle but firm, kind but truthful, that I need to listen to others, that I need to think before I speak and comment constructively or not at all. Communion is one time when all of that goes away and I am just there as myself, bringing with me all the cares and concerns of friends and community and family, yes -- I don't generally feel like I'm approaching the rail only on my own behalf, it's hard to explain except to say there's only one bread -- but it's a time when I'm there as me, not as The Organist; where I'm not concerned about trying to coordinate anyone else's responses.

The other time is when I'm improvising on the organ after the Communion hymn. Then I'm very much aware of the rest of the community, very much aware that what I do can support or detract from the liturgy, but I'm absorbed in the here-and-now of playing and somehow it works and even though I am quite clearly being The Organist, I am there as me rather than hiding behind a role.

Or maybe I just feel good after receiving Communion.

Or perhaps it comes to the same thing.

Trying not to get ahead of myself

2011-01-20T21:53:00.004Z

I'm less tired now.

I did go to the doctor about the cough I've had for ages, and was offered a choice of over-the-counter medicine I hadn't considered, or antibiotics. I really dislike antibiotics so took the over-the-counter stuff and it is helping, slowly.

I haven't caught up on reading blogs; twitter is still the main touchstone with the online world for me right now. And I could apologise and I could feel guilty, but I've been practising again -- this is important -- and there is only so much time in a day.

I think the practising is what is helping most, really. I think Bach does me more good than cough syrup.

I am still getting other people telling me I have some sort of vocation to ordained ministry, as if I'm walking around with a big neon sign over my head that is plain for others to see but which somehow escapes my awareness. I don't understand, and I'm finding it a bit scary, in terms of what it would mean for me but also in terms of what it would mean for loved ones. So I played the "second-guess" game a lot, wondering whether people just see someone who is reasonably young, reasonably enthusiastic about God (and even, sometimes, church) and reasonably bright and thinks that means I should be collared... wondering how much of this religion thing is because some of my dearest, most admired friends happen to be priests... wondering whether the reason I don't see this is because it isn't there, or if it's because I just don't have a coherent enough definition of priesthood and sacrament to be able to identify it, or if it's because there's a big "NOT YET" that I need to wait out first.

Seriously, all this feels like stalling. It won't go away; it feels like I'm avoiding something, not like I'm making a decision. But the "NOT YET" is going to win for a least a while; as far as the C of E is concerned I am not even confirmed.

I don't play Bach a movement at a time or a page at a time or a bar at a time but one precious painstaking note after the next. And every note demands all my musical might, all my attention and focus and love. But playing one note at a time doesn't mean I'm not playing Bach; rather, it means I am.

So I guess I live one day, one breath, one note at a time, keep learning and growing, keep doing the work set before me, regardless of what some people say is just over the page.

Show me the manna

2011-01-02T16:53:00.004Z

I'm still feeling very tired, more tired than I think I ought to be.

I had a conversation with a few different people this afternoon about churchy stuff -- feasts getting moved to Sunday so people will attend, multiple service times on weekdays, how to get people involved, why there is no secretarial support in a huge number of parishes, what to do about it all. It was a good conversation in lots of ways, but mostly I just feel tired.

My own experiences of church as a child and teenager were not exactly positive and it was the sense of unconditional acceptance, care and welcome that I found in some people (in person and online) and in some very special C of E parishes that really got me back to church. And as a result of this I tend to want to err on the side of making everyone welcome.

I'd like people to meet for the Office, or at least Morning Prayer, at Nearest Church -- partly because it would be easier for me to keep up that discipline if I were with others, but partly because of my experiences of being in different bits of London and not able to find any church where I knew this was happening, not being able to find people to pray with. My prayers alone aren't worth any less but there is something forlorn about trying the nearest two or three churches and finding that no, there is no official time for prayer on a weekday. I'm glad that where I live now there is Long Walk church to attend; I'm thinking about starting to cycle there four mornings a week, rather than just Fridays, because it would really be that much easier.

I'd like to keep the church building open if we possibly can. In London this means we need people to sit there; it isn't just the risk of things getting stolen that makes an unattended church problematic but of fairly wanton vandalism.

I'd like to see better service booklets, better pew slips, some way of combining all the paperwork so that juggling pew slip, service booklet and hymnal isn't so difficult. Yes, it would make my life as an organist easier (though I'd still need a hymnal separate from the other stuff), but the reason I feel strongly about it is that so many different printed bits of paper are a bit of a nightmare for dyslexics.

I'd like to see services at some other time, not just Sunday morning, for those who are working or have young families or whatever and just find Sunday mornings very hard.

We're a small parish with a small congregation. We might, if we're lucky, manage the "keep the church open" thing one afternoon per week -- in the summer. But the pew slips, the Office, the multiple services... none of this is going to happen, because we don't have the resources to justify it. We don't even have the good sense to work together with neighbouring parishes on most of it.

The question is, how far must one go to make people feel comfortable and welcome? It starts to get difficult, because not all welcoming measures actually work. Announcing all hymn numbers is something I very much favour, but we don't do that at Nearest Church because there is a concern people would find it patronising or that it interrupts the flow of the liturgy. Surely the flow of the liturgy should be secondary to making it more possible for everyone to participate, but not everyone sees things that way. And even if we had the budget to do the extra photocopying that would let people use one booklet instead of a bit of paper, a booklet and a hymnal, who would do the formatting each week when we already don't have any secretarial support?

I could do that, I think to myself. Except that I know I hate office work and admin of any kind, I barely stay on top of my own; I have little enough time as it is and any additional bits and pieces will eat into my earning ability; I am already doing a lot there. And Lord, I'm so tired...

And I also know that unconditional welcome is not enough. There is only one thing the church can do that will bother me more than being bossy and high-handed, and that's telling me that whatever I want will be fine! I need to be challenged. I need to be asked hard questions. I'm unusual in the degree to which I will seek these things out myself, but if church is always comfortable then we are doing it wrong. There should be discomfort, and if that means those who plan and lead worship have to put up with a bit of whingeing from those who are a little less comfortable with discomfort but need it all the same, then so be it. But I'm so tired...

Part of that discomfort for me might be in accepting that I can't just fix things by working harder. Part of it for someone else might be realising that if they don't get involved, the parish can't do the work we are called to do as part of the church. The difficulty is in discerning which is which.

My instinct always is to work harder, you see. What I can't tell is this: when I hold back, when I am cautious in getting involved, is that sensible conservation of my (already limited) time and energy? I'm so tired... Or is that scarcity thinking, a rejection of the abundance God promises?

I always want it not to be about the numbers. "Wherever two or three are gathered," I remind myself, it will be okay, this will continue, or something will continue, and I go back to bloodyminded counting of blessings, ignoring the grimness of churches that turn people away, people who hurt each other, starvation, disease, war. Two or three people gathered for Mass in a cold church redeem all that, I tell myself. And yet it is surely true that different things are possible with twenty than with two, it is surely true that three hundred could do more than thirty, it is surely true that five thousand were fed. (I'm so tired...) And so I offer up my five loaves and two fishes, and manage to feed maybe ten people, and I wonder what is not working. I'm so tired.

I'm thinking the brief vacation with Sweetie, starting tomorrow, is not coming a day too soon.

Christus Natus Hodie

2010-12-25T01:41:00.002Z

Oh, I have been waiting for this for such a long time. It always feels like longer than Advent. Midnight Mass went well. Humbling, terrifying, exhilarating; what a privilege to do the work I have, in this community. Then I came home to wrap presents (I'd "hidden" them a bit too well so this took some searching) and read a sermon from a friend who'd kindly sent it (at Nearest Church I can't always hear them from the organ box) and it said exactly, exactly what I needed to read.

God-is-love. God-with-us. God-is-Love-with-us. And we are invited to participate, to pass it on. I know this, but I forget so easily and having it pointed out in big flashing neon letters is extraordinarily helpful.

In just over 7 hours I need to be at church, practising. Also, I've been awake for nearly 22 hours. So I think that I will stop here in favour of sleep.

Gratitude and O Virgo Virginum

2010-12-23T23:49:00.001Z

1) I slipped on the ice earlier -- refrozen slush is the worst. I don't seem to have injured myself, though.
2) As an organist for a small parish church with not too much going on, I can practise pretty much whenever I want.
3) Leftovers from last night have fed us well today.
4) After a comment from a friend suggesting it might be useful, I opened a Christmas present early. Heated gloves! Quite amazing.
5) Sweetie tucked up in bed beside me as I write this. Because the 25th and 26th are Saturday and Sunday, the next two days are statutory holidays. This means he'll be home for four days in a row.

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be?
For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after.
Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me?
The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.

Gratitude and Emmanuel

2010-12-22T23:16:00.001Z

1) old friends
2) new friends
3) both sitting in our living room, giggling
4) gin
5) the internet.

I'm rather tired now. Having people over for dinner so soon before Christmas is a bit mad; this weekend I'll be playing as many services in 3 days as I usually do in a month. But I'm really glad I did it.

Besides, there's plenty of leftover lasagne...

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Gratitude and O Rex Gentium

2010-12-21T23:43:00.001Z

1) Shiny people are coming for dinner tomorrow
2) I found something to play on Friday night
3) Found some lovely mohair yarn in a discount shop; colours I'd been watching for at 1/6th the price
4) People have been lovely and supportive even when I've been stressed and impatient
5) From now, for the next six months, the days grow longer.

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

Gratitude -- O Oriens

2010-12-20T22:20:00.001Z

1) The snow has not messed up any of my travel plans. Admittedly this is because I haven't got any travel plans, but it's still quite good not having to worry about it.
2) The piano has been fitted with a dehumidifier which will help it stay in tune.
3) Dad put draught excluder on the front door. I bought this over a year ago, but didn't get around to dealing with it.
4) A different position for the heater at church meant my hands didn't get so cold while I was practising today. It was still uncomfortable, but they didn't stop working.
5) I made dumplings for dinner, they were tasty.

The night shelter was over capacity last night. Next week it has a break and guests stay at the Crisis-run shelter. Then the next week I'll be out of town...

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal
and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death

Gratitude -- O Clavis David

2010-12-20T05:57:00.001Z

1) The visit from my father is going reasonably well. We're all having to make an effort, but on the whole things are calm, even pleasant.
2) I'm receiving so many beautiful Christmas cards. I will hang them on the Christmas tree soon (we haven't many decorations and it solves the problem of displaying the cards).
3) The chocolates I made yesterday turned out all right, I think.
4) I went to Leafy Suburb Church for their Nine Lessons and Carols. There I found something I had lost, delivered gifts to dear ones, had a chat with my father which was challenging and good, and made a snow angel. Also I got to sing some good music!
5) Sweetie is quite unremittingly wonderful. Yes, I'm soppy. But he is.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death

So, last year I had key problems when I went to record this antiphon. This morning, the padlock on the gate at church had froze, and I had to hop the (low) wall to get in.

Gratitude and O Radix Jesse

2010-12-19T06:51:00.001Z

1) Sweetie bought me a better snow shovel
2) My hands are soft from cocoa butter; I was working with chocolate this afternoon
3) Although the insulation in this house leaves something to be desired, the heating does work and if it comes to it we have enough money to run additional heaters
4) Lots of blankets and cozy sweaters, which we all use before additional heaters
5) The way a good batch of snow reflects the streetlamps, so even though the sun set over six hours ago, everything is orange and strange.

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

Gratitude and O Adonai

2010-12-17T18:11:00.003Z

Gratitude:
1) The piano has been tuned and had some repair/maintenance done on it. It's much nicer to play now.
2) I did a really solid chunk of practising this morning.
3) It snew, and I shoveled before too much of it turned into packed ice. I like the snow, myself, but I know some people have problems getting anywhere when it's icy. I'm grateful that my joints are good enough that I can shovel.
4) My housemate learned a lot on her trip to Foreign Parts, and told me all about it over lunch earlier.
5) Later, Sweetie and dad and I are going for a nice dinner.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

I struggle with laws. "Honour your mother and father" is particularly difficult today.

Gratitude and O Sapientia

2010-12-16T23:20:00.002Z

1) My father arrived safely.
2) So did my housemate, who has been working overseas
3) Choir worked hard tonight
4) I'm catching up with the mess in the kitchen, and feeling less stressed about it.
5) Snow tonight in Upper Suburbia. It didn't settle but made me smile as I watched it fall.

Thanks be to God.

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High
reaching from one end to the other
mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Yes, it's another gratitude list.

2010-12-15T22:11:00.002Z

1) I saw a friend, an ex-housemate of mine, for dinner today.
2) With company from a different friend I was able to get some tidying and minor housework done today, without feeling too overwhelmed or stressed by it.
3) My student's grandparent fixed my bicycle light -- I couldn't get it open, had broken the tab off, but he managed to pry it. Now I can change the batteries.
4) I cycled to Neighbouring Neighbourhood to do banking. I've really been enjoying cycling.
5) I didn't cry once today, and it wasn't because I was trying to hold back tears, it was just that I wasn't feeling so low as I have been. This might just be that I'm not so far behind on sleep as I was on Monday and Tuesday, or it might be the higher than usual amount of social contact I've had in the last few days, or any number of things, but I'm still glad of it.

Thanks be to God.

My father arrives tomorrow for a 2-week visit. I am having very mixed feelings about this. It isn't always an easy relationship and visits are generally A Big Deal since we live on different continents. Mostly, I wish the visit weren't just now, when I have so much music to learn and won't be able to spend as much time as I'd like and my brain is playing silly buggers. I don't feel like I have the spare cycles to deal with a parental visit right now and I don't really want him to think that I'm always in this sort of state... And then, of course, I feel guilty for being so ungrateful. After all, I'm fortunate he can afford to visit at all, he's well enough, we are on relatively good terms and so on.

I have been being grumpy and short with Sweetie, and then realising it, and sinking straight into "If I am too difficult/grumpy/horrible/ill/NotGoodEnough, people will stop loving me and they will go away and leave me all alone." Tears, streams of apologies. Sweetie is wonderful about it, just hugs me and holds me and tells me I'm not horrible, just overtired and tetchy. Still, I wish I were treating him better.

It is late, and I am tired...

Better late thanks than never

2010-12-15T17:08:00.004Z

Yesterday's gratitude list:
1) I finished crocheting a scarf I am making (gift for someone). I need to tie the ends in and wash and block it and then it will be done.
2) Though I felt very bleak in the morning, people were unremittingly lovely to me and by evening I was on a much more even keel.
3) I didn't get all my work done -- was really struggling to concentrate -- but it turned out to be all right in the end.
4) NO MORE long commute to North Of The Hill until January! Yesterday was the last day!
5) I had lunch with a friend who is quite amazing and who is also going through a really bad patch right now; she's keeping her chin up, staying brave but recognising she'll have bad days, and just being generally inspirational.

Thanks be to God.

Gratitude: quite a few of Maslow's wossnames.

2010-12-13T22:43:00.003Z

1) Lovely people keep on keeping in touch with me even when I am dropping balls all over the place and not communicating as well as I'd like.
2) I didn't sleep through my alarm this morning. I'm always worried I will on Mondays when I go help with breakfast at the shelter. I haven't yet.
3) Online charity shop. This means I can search for things from brands I know fit me (at my height, random charity shops very seldom have anything). How did I not know about this before?
4) I'm still not keeping up with household stuff in any meaningful way, but I'm feeling less stressed about being behind than I was a week or two ago.
5) I had a really good lesson this evening with a student who has been difficult for ages. It was good to see him smile again and be excited about our plans for the next lesson... it was also good to be reminded that whatever else happens, right now teaching is still part of who I am, part of what I'm for. Of course, I can't take full credit for this evening's positivity; it's a complex situation and there are many other factors. Even if that were not the case some of my best teaching is when I can "get out of the way", provide a safe space and a jumping-off point and let things unfold as they will. But seeing some of that happen with this child who has been so sullen reminded me why I try to do that.

Thanks be to God.

Gaudete Sunday: carol service gratitude

2010-12-12T23:48:00.001Z

1) the organ made some strange noises, but still works
2) nobody set themselves on fire
3) nobody set anyone else on fire
4) the vicar seemed pleased
5) some of the singing was all right...

Gratitude; Test post from e-mail

2010-12-12T00:32:00.001Z

1) my back hurt less today
2) the temperature has risen enough that our heating is actually keeping up. I am hoping it has also melted the worst of the very dangerous ice in some areas.
3) despite today being a working day there was time for a slow morning with Sweetie.
4) my keyboard skills are immproving. Tonight at a party I ended up at the piano, playing carols. A year ago I couldn't have read well enough.
5) the commute to work when I get up will be walkable.

gratitude

2010-12-10T23:52:00.002Z

1) A lovely partner who carried a heavy thing for me this evening

2) The opportunity to catch up with a colleague from Academic Institution

3) Ibuprofen. Chamomile tea. Both of these things being helpful to me and available cheaply.

4) Physio exercises that I know will reduce the amount of pain I'm in

5) Not having had to deal with this much pain for several months.

I'm not sure what I did. But this will pass, and it is bearable, and I can still do things. For all this I am grateful.

Gratitude List on a day of protests

2010-12-09T22:36:00.003Z

1) I am grateful for the education I have had. There's been rather a lot of it -- an Honours degree at a good music college, but also lots of private music tuition when I was a child, and of course the compulsory education required in Canada.

Even though my subject might be seen as inessential and much of my paid work is not directly related to my higher education training, I don't think any of this education has been wasted.

2) I am grateful that there are people who believe strongly enough in collective funding of education, and in the power of protest, to get out there and protest the university fees structure proposed (and, today, passed) by the government.

3) I am grateful that there is technology which lets people at the protests broadcast their descriptions of events, in real time, without it having to pass through official censors. Yes, I've been watching all this on Twitter for some of today. It's heady stuff.

4) I am grateful that we have free-at-the-point-of-delivery medical care in this country, so that those protesters and police officers injured today have been able to get treatment without worrying about whether they need insurance.

5) I am grateful the people I know who were there all seem to be okay, at least the ones I know about. There are still people held in various places, so that could change, but it's good that the ones I know about are safe.

Lord, have mercy.

Advent Year A

2010-12-08T22:18:00.005Z

I had avoided starting an Advent discipline; I thought maybe doing some writing every day, or some sort of music-related thing, might be useful reflection. Then I realised that it would just be one more thing for me to be perfectionist about, and that maybe "getting through Advent" is discipline enough for those of us with responsibility for leading others in worship.

These last few weeks I've been leaning heavily on friends, getting lots of hugs online and in person, being listened to patiently by people who really are rather too busy but manage to make the time anyway. The message that has been coming through is that the care and support that pulled me out of the pit last time are still there.

The last few days I've also been e-mailing one friend in particular, not with my usual meandering e-mails full of the adventures of the day with added musings, but even longer letters full of rather a lot of analysis, comparing my last serious depressive episode with how I'm feeling now. She's sparing with her advice but has had some useful insights.

I could spend several hours and many paragraphs explaining how I've come to this conclusion, but I think I do need the structure of some sort of Advent discipline right now, and I think it needs to be something gratitude-based. Not to beat myself over the head with my many blessings, and not to ignore or discount the mess the world seems to be in and the huge amount of work ahead to make God's kingdom known, but to hone my perception of God in everyday life.

I don't want to make this too complicated or too rigid so I am going to go with a daily gratitude list and try not to sweat too much if I miss a day.

1) I am grateful for the green tomato chutney I just ate with cheese and crackers. I made this earlier this year out of tomatoes from the garden -- we had a bumper crop and couldn't manage to eat them all fresh.
2) I am grateful for the group I performed with this evening, who have in their way become a big part of my life over the last couple of years.
3) I am grateful for the care and attention immediately directed my way when I started to talk about low mood or depression or whatever this current dark cloud is.
4) I am grateful for all the care and attention that people normally show me, when I'm not in crisis management mode and nothing is "wrong" but things are just ticking over. Even if I can't see it, or don't normally notice it... right now I assert that I believe it is there.
5) I am grateful for the heated underblanket in my bed. I have trouble not seeing this as extravagant and wasteful, to be honest, but in the cooler weather we've had recently and with the lack of insulation in the home we rent, being able to climb into a warmed-up bed and let the muscles in my back relax properly is a huge help.

And it is late, and I am tired, and that underblanket is sounding mighty good about now so I will stop there.

Filling what is empty

2010-12-01T10:43:00.005Z

I've been volunteering at a local shelter one morning a week. It's a sort of floating church emergency shelter, at a different church every night of the week. Sunday nights/Monday mornings it's at a United Free church down the road from where I live. I'm on mornings because I work too many evenings to do those and frankly, I think my health probably isn't up to the overnights.

The guests are referred from a day centre; the shelter is given a list of people to let in. People not on the list are turned away unless there is space after a certain time. There are rules (no drugs, no alcohol, no weapons), there are boxes to tick. I don't know how I feel about this; I can see the point of trying to make it safe, but how do we help those who, through no fault of their own, cannot tick the right boxes? Lord, have mercy. And yet, the other week I heard another volunteer explaining to one of the guests how to get to the day centre, which boxes to tick. Clearly if there is space we take anyone we can.

The day centre offers hot meals and so we don't do a cooked breakfast; rather it's cereal, toast with jam, tea and coffee, occasionally some leftover dessert from the night before. I spend the morning filling milk jugs, sugar bowls, coffee machines, insulated flasks, the dishwasher, the cupboards. Things spill and I wipe up as I go along, almost unconsciously, a reflex when there is nothing left to fill. I don't talk to people much, and I hope that doesn't make me seem aloof.

There are rules about physical contact, about agreeing to meet guests outside of shelter hours. I'm not sure how I feel about this; I do think loving and kind relationships are important, and that physical contact can be part of that. How horrible must it be to have nobody to hug you? But I'll freely admit I'm also relieved not to have to make the decision, relieved that what I might be willing to give has been put into a nice, safe box. Lord, have mercy.

This past Monday someone asked me if I'd marry him. I declined as politely as I could, aware that I am culturally way out of my depth. Another volunteer said that's fairly normal and is a sign that I'm being accepted. I'm not sure about that, but the conventional dating scene must really suck if you're homeless.

The shelter runs until March.

I don't have anything profound to write about it, not yet.

Maybe there isn't anything profound to say. People are homeless and I've decided to try and help meet some of their immediate needs for food and shelter during a difficult time of year -- in a very safe and cautious and organised and cowardly way -- and that's all there is to it. I don't particularly enjoy or dislike the work itself; I don't come back feeling all aglow with lovingkindness. I come away wishing I could do more, and wondering why the shelter is so warm compared to our house (which is a bit nippy in the mornings), and whether the pregnant woman will get some more stable support once her child is born (does she know the father? is he homeless, too? Is he kind to her?) or whether we're going to be dealing with a baby come January, and reminding myself to bring some jam along next week.

On her kindness

2010-11-25T14:10:00.004Z

I've had a bad cold this week, nothing serious, but enough to slow me down.

I've been feeling shaky mentally for a while now. Nothing drastic, but enough to slow me down. I'm in a foul mood more often than I like, being avoidant even about activities I love, increasingly unable to imagine enjoying things, my sense of perspective is a bit all over the place and I am wondering if it is time to start with the dried frog pills again -- not to drug myself out of my sense of dissatisfaction, not to medicalize a perfectly reasonable response to an uncontrollable and dangerous world, but to correct or ease or change whatever chemical or structural characteristic makes my fears so overwhelming that I resort to avoidance, displacement, or numbness.

The thing is, I don't really believe it was the antidepressants or the three and a half years of therapy that got me out of this last time. I think it was the continual reassurance of other people caring for me, doing their best to help me despite the difficulties (and I know I did make it difficult, for it was so hard for me to trust), making it clear that even if I don't understand why, I am valued and cherished and loved.

That support has not been withdrawn. On the contrary, it is very real and very ongoing. If you are reading this and you are someone who knows me, please do not think I don't notice that you care. I do notice, and I am grateful, but sometimes it's still hard for it to have any effect. It's as if another layer has been peeled away, and the fears that disabled me in years past have been replaced by some newer ones and some older ones, and suddenly my need to understand why I am loved -- so that I can keep doing whatever it is, you see, and so control my fate -- outweighs my ability to accept love I do not think I deserve. And the messages that I don't deserve love echo from a church that systematically excludes me and my loved ones and a society that makes it clear that the poor are to be discarded, right back into childhood fears of violence and abandonment. My ability to see myself as a beloved child of God disappears in a puff of Pelagianism. My ability to trust God to love me even though I am decidedly imperfect evaporates. I don't understand, and I can't trust, and so I am afraid. But I also have this desperate desire to improve things, to act on behalf of God in the world, to heal the sick and bind up the brokenhearted and all that priestly stuff from Isaiah. Christ has no body now on earth but ours, said Teresa of Avila, and I want to be the hands, the feet, the eyes -- even while I cannot imagine I will ever be anything but dust, not loved, not hated, not even noticed. And the danger of that is that without the sense of belovedness, without the knowledge that I am valued and cherished and loved, all my works are forced and manipulative rather than joyful. I will not be able to refill the well from which I draw water, and eventually I will be too tired and dried out to continue being unkind to myself while I try to serve others and will lapse into apathy or selfishness or despair. I know this is how it goes. I've been here before. It's not kenosis, a joyful self-emptying, a costly but beneficial surrender... it's sort of the opposite of that. But I don't know what else to do, I don't seem to have any control over my sense of being loved, and so I keep going through the motions, hoping beyond hope that if I keep going the doldrums will clear, waiting and watching for some subtle shift in perspective and meanwhile struggling against my instinct to withdraw, hide, hibernate, conserve what I think I have left -- as if any of it is mine.

I am already weary, already thirsty. I keep saying, on Twitter and a few other places, that I know this will pass, winter is always a bit difficult, I know I will be okay. But what I need to remember is not just that I will be okay but that I am already more than okay, that I am already valued and cherished and loved, and this is not contingent on anything I say or do or think or believe. I need to remember how to be kind to myself while being kind to others, I need to remember how to accept the kindnesses others offer.

Only say the word, and I shall be healed...

War On War

2010-11-11T11:51:00.005Z

Here is my dilemma about war:

Clearly, war is never what God wants for us.

Equally clearly, God does not want us to stand by while innocent people are slaughtered. I can condemn so many wars that have happened in my lifetime, but over them all hangs the spectre of gas chambers, concentration camps. I condemn violence but I cannot endorse genocide.

Lord, have mercy.

Regardless of how we let the world get to the point where the Holocaust could happen, regardless of the undoubted economic incentives for wading in, I think we reached a point where the atrocities would not have stopped with anything short of a war. Regardless of the knowledge that history is written by the victors, I cannot say we should not have fought. I don't know that anything else would have worked. Maybe it would have -- but I don't know.

Christ, have mercy.

We? I wasn't even alive during WWII. I am much-removed from the danger of current wars, even while I am (along with anyone else who uses oil) complicit in creating the conditions where they can happen. And so my disgust with war and violence turns into a sort of self-loathing, a need to seek forgiveness for my part in all this. And that, in turn, isn't what Remembrance Day is "supposed to" be about at all, is it? I can hear the patriots protesting, "It isn't all about you and me, it's about those who gave their lives!"

Lord, have mercy.

What did they give their lives for if we continue to behave in ways that cause war?

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

What am I on about? What do I mean, "if we continue to behave in ways that cause war"?

Here's my understanding of what causes war: War is caused by the fear of death, and our constant striving to hold it off or delay it or make it more comfortable.

Lord, have mercy.

War is caused when we see what someone else has and want it for ourselves even if it means hurting them.

Christ, have mercy.

War is caused when we value our own comfort over the lives of someone else. That's what the Holocaust was about, and that's what Afghanistan is about, and that's what the Gulf wars are about, and every other war I can think of.

Lord, have mercy.

non-Biblical witness

2010-10-31T13:26:00.005Z

Yesterday in the park an Enthusiastic Evangelist approached me and started to chat.

He was moderately polite, but took great pains to explain to me at some length that if I believe that God's love is unconditional, I believe in a made-up-in-my-head God, contrived based on my own desire for comfort. He quoted the Bible at me to try to prove that Jesus believed in hell and judgment, that anyone who fails is eternally damned.

I tried to explain something I've tried to explain before: that if Christ will draw all people to himself, then any hell that exists cannot be eternal, and hope must prevail. He wasn't having any of it.

We went our separate ways. I didn't get into discussions about scriptural literalism, and I didn't get drawn into prooftexting, and the whole thing bothered me a lot less than it might have three or four years ago.

I've been thinking about it, though, about how my beliefs and convictions differ from those of this young man so doggedly determined to save, to convert, by discussion and reference to scripture.

Maybe that works for some people.

My understanding of Christianity is certainly informed by scripture -- it would be difficult for it not to be given my background and upbringing -- but I do not believe in God's love for all humanity because the Bible declares it, or because people preach it. I do not believe in God's love for us because I have been told it exists.

I believe in God's love for us because I have been shown, in a hundred thousand little ways. I believe Christ died on the cross and rose again because a hundred thousand actions have pointed to that.

I have seen Christ crucified and risen in the mother worrying over her sick child.

I have seen Christ crucified and risen in the teacher who risks missing her train home in order to spend another five minutes reassuring a nervous student.

I have seen Christ crucified and risen in the counselor who responds promptly to a last-ditch-effort e-mail from a girl suffering from depression and supports her through the years of upheaval that follow.

I have seen Christ crucified and risen in the woman whose greatest concern on holiday seems to be that she can't keep in touch with friends who need her prayers and support.

I have seen Christ crucified and risen in the churches who operate a Floating Shelter because local council provision for the homeless obviously isn't enough.

I have seen Christ crucified and risen in a vicar who says "God loves us to bits" and means it, in a woman who cares for her ailing husband without complaint despite the toll on her own fragile health, in an online community where all are welcome, in the very oak leaves that fall dancing from the tree and go on to form soil.

It is not only the grain that, in order to live, must fall to the earth and perish. Sometimes I am the leaf, sometimes I am the tree, sometimes I am the grass growing in the soil of the sacrifice of others. And always, Emmanuel -- God-with-us. I don't believe this because I have read it. I don't need to read what I have lived.

That doesn't mean I don't have any use for canon, for scripture, for the Bible. But I don't believe the things I believe because they are written down in words somewhere. I believe them because they are inscribed on the hearts of the faithful and acted out day after day after day.

And these same things are inscribed on the hearts of those whose faith is known to God alone, those who acknowledge no higher power, those for whom talk of a personal God is nonsense but who work tirelessly to heal the sick, comfort those who mourn, help and encourage one another in what is good, bring justice to the poor.

Theism is not a dealbreaker.

Philosophy is not a dealbreaker. Political affiliation is not a dealbreaker. Sexual orientation is not a dealbreaker. Race is not a dealbreaker. Achievement is not a dealbreaker. Competence is not a dealbreaker. Income is not a dealbreaker. Social class is not a dealbreaker. Health is not a dealbreaker.

Sin is not a dealbreaker.

There are no dealbreakers in the Kingdom of Heaven. Thanks be to God! There is nothing that cannot be forgiven by a God of infinite love.

May my thoughts and words and actions reveal this as truth.

Semi-Retreat

2010-10-27T17:26:00.004+01:00

I took a few days and went to visit a friend in another city. It was wonderful to be easy walking distance from the cathedral where I went to Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.

The idea was to rest, read, maybe get to work on a Mass setting I'm supposed to be composing. It wasn't a problem that my friend was at work all day; being on my own without a squillion things to do was the whole point, though it was good to catch up in the evenings.

I mostly rested. I didn't even start the Mass setting. I'm feeling very okay about that.

The next time I get more than one day off in a row will probably be after Candlemas...

Now the only problem is when I'm going to manage to actually write this music.

cutting the Kingdom to shreds

2010-10-21T10:39:00.004+01:00

I'm feeling sick at heart over the UK budget cuts.

These are going to hit the poorest hardest. The big corporations that have evaded tax won't be touched; neither will the banks that got such a huge bail-out of taxpayer money.

People are angry, and hurt, and confused. More than that, I think, a lot of people are frightened. Money is power in this society, and it just got more powerful. Of course we're frightened; we're terrified that might will prevail. It all seems so incredibly stupid.

What I'm struggling with is trying to get a mental picture of how much of the wealth I enjoy has really been "borrowed" from my future, or from people who have less economic clout than I have. I've been saying for a while that we live too well for it to last, but completely turning away from a broken economic system isn't something I've had the guts to do.

I think I do practise right livelihood, mostly: my actual work as a teacher and musician doesn't exploit others much. If anything I need to charge a little more, be a little less principled, because right now I still don't earn enough to break even and that means I am reliant on my partner for some of my living expenses. His work is perhaps less salutary. But then, so is the work of the parents of many of the students I teach; even without doing work that is damaging, I collude in a damaging system.

I also try to spend reasonably responsibly, and here I am less successful... my best intentions will not do the paperwork to change banks, or get me to the point where I do sew my own clothes rather than buying ready-made ones (Fairly Traded clothing that fits me and is appropriate for some of my work is almost impossible to find). I waste huge amounts of resources every winter because the house where I live doesn't have adequate insulation; as I can't afford to buy a house or flat and my landlord has no incentive to change anything, my options are to put up with what I can rent or to give up having a roof over my head. I don't think the latter would be constructive.

By removing myself from the monetary economy I would essentially remove myself from the information stream. If the number of people turning away from what's broken is small, they won't be missed. I recognise that there is a case for hermits, for prophets, for people who turn drastically away from broken societal structures to show that a different life is possible. They are necessary and I am glad they exist. But if the choice is black and white -- either sticking with the current structures or rejecting them completely -- most people will find the choice too hard, the current structures will continue, those who leave will be considered insane and nothing is achieved.

Rather, I think that it is important for me to continue to engage with the current structures, and contribute, if I can, to creative solutions to problems. I can't live perfectly, but I can take the money I'm paid and spend it on FairTrade rather than non-FT products. I can act with kindness toward people even if there is no obvious gain to me for doing so. I can try to improve my balance, living more independently of the broken system in some places, colluding where I have no other choice, and -- and this is important -- staying in contact, encouraging others to find out for themselves that life can be done differently, that win-win situations do happen. I can work with others to find creative solutions for the problems of injustice and poverty.

The UK government may have just made all that a bit harder, but all that means is that it's even more important that I do what I can.

Oddly, this is pretty much my stance on church participation, too. The C of E General Synod is pasted all over the Anglican blogosphere at the moment, so that even someone like me with hardly any time to read can't help but notice that there's an awful lot of dirty politics flying around. My fear is that the women bishops stuff will eclipse the Anglican Covenant stuff and we'll end up with no women bishops AND a stupid governing document that we don't need. But I don't think I can leave over this... because the reason I've become tangled up in the Church ~~Hesitant~~ of England in the first place is because people have shown me that there is another way. If General Synod doesn't have the outcomes I think would be best, that's just a stronger argument for me to stay, get involved, keep showing people that there is another way -- even if it means that what goes on at parish level and what goes on at institutional level get even further apart.

The thing is, the changes in information tech make both of these things more easily possible. Seriously, the potential for functional "shadow" economies is HUGE with tools like Twitter, and the stronger those get the more irrelevant government provision will seem. Look at things like Kickstarter and FundBreak, which are private start-up funding for projects; look at Kiva which allows private lending, and initiatives like WorldBike (which might seem a bit conventional compared to the other examples, but is actually an example of what is possible with better communication).

Don't get me wrong -- I believe we're an extremely long way from being able to provide a crowdsourced NHS, for example. I know the budget cuts announced yesterday will harm a lot of people before we can get to that point, and I think the danger of reverting to depression is very real. And I know human beings well enough to know that the Church As An Institution is going to be around for a while. These things won't change overnight and we are all going to be wounded.

But this is my hope: to build up what is good rather than tear down what is destructive, to help others where I can, to put my money (what little of it there is) where my mouth is and let every action, every word, every breath point to the values of the Kingdom of God.

Who's coming with me, then?

Flourishing.

2010-10-09T20:44:00.004+01:00

Not everything is glumness; not everything is grey.

Last year I found an orchid in a pot sitting beside a rubbish bin.

I brought it home, put it on a sunny windowsill and watered it intermittently.

Our days are but as grass; •
we flourish as a flower of the field; (from Psalm 103)

Oh, but what a flower!

Fit for purpose?

2010-10-08T20:19:00.005+01:00

Morning Prayer -- 5 days out of 5 this week. No, it isn't about the numbers... but setting a time, having a structure, seems to be helpful. Structured prayer doesn't confine my prayer to the limits of the structure but it does ensure that some prayer happens.

In addition to the thinking I've been doing about vocation or purpose, I'm struggling a little with a general mental malaise or low mood. I don't think it's a reaction to the things I've been thinking about or coming to recognise, though of course it could be; it doesn't feel like that kind of emotional response. I think it's much simpler. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and some years it's worse than others. I'm using my lightbox, and that's helping, but I still feel low.

As anyone who's had a major mental illness would be, I'm rather frightened that this mild low patch will develop into full-blown, whimpering-under-the-duvet depression.

I know that I have much better external support now than I did last time.

I know that I have much better mental tools now than I did last time.

I know that over three years of therapy did help heal a lot of the things that made my previous experience so debilitating.

I know that I don't react badly to some of the dried frog pills and that medication, though inconvenient, is an option.

I know that I'm aware of this and in a much better position to do something about it than I once was.

And I know that there is a chance that even if I do all I can, I will still get very ill.

And that's scary, because even the work I'm doing now -- which I love -- will fall apart if I get too sick to do it.

So I find my prayer this week sliding from "Please tell me what You want me to do" to "Please let me remain well enough to do it..."

I keep using the lightbox, I keep practising, I try not to sweat the small mistakes while allowing myself to focus on the small pleasures. I ask friends, loved ones, for help and company, I try to pace myself in terms of what I take on, and I reframe, reframe, reframe every all-or-nothing, black-and-white condemnation of myself or the world that my maladapted lizard brain tries to throw at me, trying always to turn toward what is good, turn toward what is God, the ground of all being, wanting to believe that love is stronger than this greyness.

Turn us again, O God of hosts; •
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
from Psalm 80

PLN

2010-10-03T23:41:00.005+01:00

So here's my little plan...

I will go to Nearest Church Mon-Thurs and say/sing Morning Prayer at (or near to) 8.30am. I won't tell anyone there that I'm doing this; I'll just do it. I never see anyone about at that time of morning when I go there to practise, and with the foreboding mornings getting darker and darker I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

If it is working well for me after a few months I will talk to Gentle Vicar and see if he (or someone else there) wants to join me or put it in the pew sheet or whatever. If it doesn't work I'll try something else.

Fridays I'll try and get to Long Walk Church.

The Other Stuff... I need to sit with it for a while.

I met two lovely people on Friday, strangers, new friends. Without knowing me, without knowing how deeply they were scratching, they said some things about vocation which made me think. One was in the context of lay chaplaincy one of them had done, about what a privilege it was. The other was that anyone who finds a vocation to ordained ministry is an easy thing, a thing they say they've always been totally sure of, probably shouldn't be trusted.

I realised that "not ordained ministry" now holds the same slot in my brain as "not Christianity" once did.

I have a friend or two that I sometimes talk to about sermons as they're in the process of writing them. I realised only last night that, er, I really enjoy those chats. I find joy in reading the text, finding the truth in it, finding the love in it, finding God in it, and figuring out how to try and portray that. Something in doing this strengthens me just as much as making a meal for beloved friends does (and yes, I'm aware of the Eucharistic implications of that).

So, the "you really ought to be ordained at some point" comments from friends are not new, not new at all. I don't know exactly when they started. I know last summer, sitting at the piano playing Bach, I imagined it as a possibility -- and quickly discounted it, frightened at the upheaval. This week there has been lots of reinforcement, and I'm noticing or accepting that there may be something there after all. Or maybe not.

But mostly right now I need to wait. I have other work to do right now, and a huge pile of complications which cannot be written off as trivial.

Philippians 4:4-9 this morning at Nearst Church; a favourite of mine, I think, though something I don't do so well at practical aspects of it. Maybe that's another thing to work on while I wait.

Goodnight, beloved.

Lead me?

2010-09-29T08:53:00.005+01:00

Had a meeting with my spiritual director yesterday.

I'm not sure if it's working very well as a direction relationship. That's not really something I want to discuss in much depth here. Suffice to say that in this, as in so many other situations, I find that I am not being led, but leading. I feel that our conversations challenge and stretch her but don't offer me a whole lot beyond the reflection I already do. She's a wonderful person and in many ways I enjoy our chats, but I don't feel I am being directed.

I join choirs and end up playing instruments rather than being part of a section of voices. I join a church and end up an organist.

I am trying to figure out how to live a semi-monastic life in a largely secular world. My partner, my housemate, many of my friends are not religious; I am someone who needs regular and structured engagement with God. Sharing that with others is important to me, but people with similar needs to mine seem to be few and far between. We talked about this. And I mentioned that a few people I know have commented (some in more depth or with more vehemence than others) that I could be a priest, and that I don't really feel like that's what I'm called to but I'm not saying "never" because the last time I did I was wrong, and because, well, Mary didn't. (And there, now you know too, dearest internets. Is this a surprise? Am I going to get a rash of comments along the lines of "of course"? I'm curious.) We talked about confirmation and preparation for confirmation and the difficulty of finding appropriately-timed classes of a suitable nature, and drew the same conclusions I'd already drawn.

I would dearly love there to be a local Morning Prayer I can get to. Long Walk Church is, well, a long walk, and taking two hours out of my day (which is what it is by the time I've walked there, prayed with the others and walked back) and walking so much is not always workable. We talked about this. One of the things I have mentioned before in our chats is that we could have Morning Prayer at Nearest Church, but I don't feel I can ask for that without ending up leading it, and I don't want to take on too many additional leadership roles (in addition to being the organist and choir director). I go to the weekday Eucharist even though there is no music at all specifically so I can be involved in a service where I'm not taking a leadership role. Half the time, I get asked to read. Big sigh.

Last night after talking with this lady who is "directing" me I asked if we could say Evening Prayer, since it was getting late. (One of the reasons I am not sure about this relationship as one of spiritual direction is that we never pray together.) She couldn't stay any longer due to another appointment but a colleague was meant to come just under an hour later for Evening Prayer. I asked if I could stay and practice the organ, in that case... so I did that. My phone battery died and my wind-up watch had wound down, so I had no idea what time it was. Evening Prayer was meant to be at 6pm. I practised, a lovely instrument in much better repair than the one I usually play. It got dark outside. Some people came and had a meeting in a back room. No (identifiable) clergy about, though, and nobody saying Evening Prayer.

So I said Evening Prayer on my own. Again.

When I got to the train station 20min walk away it was nearly 8pm. I'd waited two hours.

It felt like a pretty pointed message that if I want daily prayer to happen locally I'm going to have to do it myself, or at least ask, and may well end up leading it, and is it really so bad to lead if the alternative is praying alone?

I do not like this. I don't like the feel of it. I don't feel ready to lead and I think there is a huge amount of confusion among other people about what sort of leader I am. I am a musician and I am happy to take the lead, sometimes, in music. I don't know what it is that other people see or feel or intuit about me that makes them think I am a leader of prayers. I don't know why after at least a year of praying that I'll find people to pray with in some sort of local setting, the answer still seems to be "here, you do it".

Is this really something I'm supposed to do, or is it just that I'm not in quite the right place? Am I meant to take the lead in this or find somewhere that will have the kind of support I seem to need?

Guess I'd better get on with things and find out. No sense asking God to lead and then refusing to follow, even if I'm not sure of the path I tread.

Dialogue

2010-09-26T22:38:00.003+01:00

I went to three church services today, each with something for me to take away.

The first was the usual at Nearest Church, where I am settling in as organist. It's interesting getting to know the choir members individually and as a group, it feels rather different than it did when I was singing with them. I can't quite tell if I'm doing things "properly" but there is much that feels right. Gentle Vicar was on good form and the sermon was, if a little meandering, compassionate and affirming and challenging.

In the afternoon I went to a sung meditative service at Long Walk Church. I hadn't been to one of these before and wanted to hear their choir (which is small) and find out how they do things. It was interesting. It was good to be in a service where I didn't bear responsibility for the liturgy. It was good to see what was going on there. I realised that one of the very important things for me as a choir director is going to be to make sure I keep singing in other situations and especially in choirs where I am not leading. This is harder than it sounds, but having realised how important it is I think I might be able to fit it in.

The third service was at Leafy Suburb Church, which has been so important on my spiritual journey and which has one of my favouritestest people in the entire wide world, previously referred to here as Ambassador for Compassion, as Curate. Her sermon was good but I did struggle with one possible interpretation of what she said. She was preaching the potter in Jeremiah and the images of wrath and destruction which follow; she said that God does continually re-form us and that sometimes this is uncomfortable or frightening, especially if we are willfully resistant. She spoke of change and fear of change, about how we respond as individuals and institutions, about actions having consequences, about judgement being part of growth. She spoke of clay pots before and after firing, about flexibility and brittleness and the uselessness of shattered vessels.

The problem I have with this model is that it is too easy to extend it into something ugly, evil even. It is too easy to fall into the sort of theology that is found in some of the psalms: the idea that those who are prosperous are so because they are righteous, and conversely that those who suffer have somehow managed to piss God off. That kind of tit-for-tat petty logic is rife in our society and it is so very easy, and so very unhelpful, for people who are successful to think they needn't engage with those less fortunate, and also for people who are in real distress to blame themselves and get stuck in the mire of guilt.

I don't deny that change can be uncomfortable. I am sure that sometimes God speaks to us with discomfort if other methods don't work. I know that cause and effect is a simple fact of life in this world. But I don't think that's the whole picture. I know we suffer hugely at the hands of one another, and to say that is God's doing is to deny free will.

I believe God's love is transformative. I can't square that with punitive aspects of judgement. There is this whisper of hope that says nothing is wasted, not even our most selfish sins; that broken clay pots can still be made into mosaics. There is some persistent whiff of something I can only call redemption. The God who created the heavens and earth may well be a jealous God, but this is Christianity we're talking about here, and the God that loves us so much that God gave God's Son for us is not going to withhold that love because we've messed up (and isn't the Greek "hamartia" or "sin" more about missing the mark, the way an arrow misses a target, than about willfully doing wrong? No idea what the Hebrew is like).

That, too, can be oversimplified into something ugly. Our sins will be forgiven, transformed into something good? Then why bother trying to be good? Why bother striving for right action? Isn't trying to please God just a sort of Pelagian heresy?

That oversimplification also falls apart when viewed from the foot of the cross. I can't speak for others, but when I love someone, I wince when they are in pain. How much more so for God who loves us infinitely and unconditionally, and has much better than my measly human awareness of others' suffering? When we turn away from good, when we harm one another, that infinite love results in infinite pain which God bears on our behalf. That is quite terrifying. We are commanded to love God; by extension that means caring enough to want to reduce any pain God might bear. That means that even though by God's grace we are forgiven we should still strive to do God's will -- not for fear of what God will do to us should we fail, but because we love God's delight and abhor God's pain.

The other thing Ambassador for Compassion spoke of was the need for a two-way relationship with God. We are not golems, fashioned of clay with no will of our own. We live and breathe and laugh and cry; we respond. When we respond to God with open hearts, we participate in our own fashioning, our own formation if you like to call it that, and God responds back.

I think that dialogue-rather-than-monologue relationship with God is a key to avoiding both of the oversimplifications I've outlined in this post.

Turn and return and turn again

2010-09-22T08:39:00.005+01:00

Oh dear, it's got to the point where people are leaving me comments asking me to come back and I don't even see them because the most recent post is more than two weeks old.

That, in and of itself, is mildly distressing. Many apologies to any of you who might worry about me. I am well.

That I can't say I've been blogging much anywhere else is perhaps more telling. My career-related blog is getting posts even more intermittent than this one; my locked journal (which had several posts a day for many years) is all but abandoned. I'm not even really leaving long rambly comments on Nick Baines' blog (which has more than once been the cause of my not having time to blog here). My e-mails to various dear friends have become shorter and less introspective, very much more "I did this and that and the chard is still growing" than they once were. I'm not even doing pen-to-paper reflective journaling on my own (I tried for a few months early spring but it isn't good for my elbow to do that much longhand writing).

I'm not doing badly -- my physical and mental health seem to be pretty good at the moment, I'm doing lots of work, I'm mostly getting enough rest (although as always there is this battle to catch up, this temptation to be busy on days off). But given how much I have previously relied on reflection and analysis in a written format, I'm starting to wonder what's up here. Am I really just too busy, or am I avoiding something? Is this about finding a voice (I typed "void" the first time, Freudian or what?!?) for my career-related blog, or giving myself space to speak at all? Is this about being more private, more circumspect now that some of my job is so obviously tangled with my religious life, or about being honest with myself? Is this about busy-ness or about not allowing stillness? I don't want to be precious or dramatic about this, and maybe I just need to accept that it won't be perfect and I can't do everything, but I have written hundreds of words per day for several years and don't seem to be doing so now. It isn't that I can't think of what to write, as evidenced by the verbosity of this post. It's that I'm not sitting down and starting.

I think I need to work out a Rule again. I have sort-of had one of one sort or another since my last year at Academic Institution, where the Rule consisted of "practise two hours before anything else" and I built everything -- my prayer life, my social life, my work, even my love life -- around that.

I don't have anything like that focus now. I have some things that are major -- the organist job, the teaching, a chamber group -- which will always take priority over other work. I've tried to shape my days sensibly and I'm not generally spending hours and hours online talking when I should be working. But there are things that are getting neglected, including this blog. Some of the neglected things are optional; some are not, and I wonder if some of my tiredness is not from being too busy but from being a little ungrounded.

Do you have a Rule of Life, or a set of intentional habits for your daily life? How specific is it, and how flexible? How do you decide when, if ever, to make changes to it? How do you make this fit around variable working patterns?

A double portion of manna

2010-09-03T14:35:00.003+01:00

I'm not sure how long this will last, but...

I've been taking one day off per week for a long time now. I used to keep various rules for what constitutes a "day off" but now it is mostly "a day where I don't do anything unless I feel like it." All plans for my day off are provisional: if I'd rather stay in bed that's what I do.

Anyway, for years, the pattern was teaching work on Sunday, academic work Mon-Fri, day off Saturday. It didn't take very long, once the teaching work moved to weekdays, to fill Sunday with other kinds of work. Sunday is a special day for me, but it is not a day off; what I do in the mornings is worship, but it is still definitely work. Often I go to services in the afternoon and the evening to participate in or study what other congregations are doing, musically; I like it, but it's very much work. When that doesn't happen, Sunday is turning into a sort of study day. I like that, too, but it's still work.

I've been mostly taking Friday or Saturday off, depending which one is available.

Here's the problem: there is a Day Off, and then there are various chores. You know the sort of thing -- laundry, grocery shopping, the weeding in the garden that I truly don't feel like doing but which needs to be done, that kind of thing. These aren't things that belong on a day off, but they also aren't things I necessarily get a chance to do during the working week.

I'm thinking about taking two days off. I can't really justify taking two days off of practising... but I'm thinking about designating either Friday or Saturday as maintenance-focused rather than career-focused, so that I can do what practising needs to be done and then run around doing the various chores so that on my real day off I can rest without these things hanging over me.

What brought this on, of course, was talking to someone else about the importance of taking a day off. I wrote:
The idea is that God gives us a day to rest, even dropping a double portion of manna the day before... the idea is that there is value in your resting as well as in your working, value in your sleeping as well as in your waking. There is as much value in dreaming as in filling out forms, there is as much value in not trying to achieve anything as in striving to improve the world. God's kingdom includes your day of rest.

I think that last bit is the bit that we lose so easily.

The Kingdom of God includes our rest. It isn't only, as I wrote earlier in the same e-mail, that our rest makes our work possible, that without rest we wither, lose our edges, lose our flexibility. It isn't only that we need to rest: it is that our resting, in and of itself, is part of living in the Kingdom of God.

Tomorrow is my day off. I'd better get on with some laundry!

Back from Greenbelt.

2010-08-31T20:51:00.003+01:00

Half a week holiday isn't very much for someone who usually gets one day off per week (if that) and hadn't had a holiday of more than 3 days since January.

So I decided to take the rest of August gently. I did some practising, but blew off paperwork and other tasks. I had a weekend away with Sweetie and actually did not go to church on Sunday for the first time in... over a year, I think. I went to Greenbelt, which was great.

Everything starts again tomorrow; phoning students to arrange my schedule, practising in earnest, printing music lists, planning Christmas services (or at least the music for them), trying to coordinate rehearsals, the lot.

I've blogged on my public, professional blog about some of my experiences at Greenbelt. It feels very strange to do so, like I've exposed some of my spiritual innards. But I think it's necessary if I'm going to find a voice on that blog.

I'm not planning on disappearing from here, but the more I blog about music here the less anonymous I'll get, so I'm going to try to keep the music stuff more public.

If I "know" you here and you want to read it, let me know your e-mail address and I'll give you the url to the other blog. But don't out me, please.

While I breathe I pray

2010-08-13T14:55:00.000+01:00

I've been on holiday for half a week. It's been good to get out of London.

Cycling has been good; in London I've not been riding as much as I'd like, but I've not become as desperately unfit as I'd thought. Cycling is significantly kinder to my joints than walking is. I've been taking advantage of the fact that most countryside churches are left unlocked, going there to rest. Sometimes I'll say the Office or a psalm but more often I simply sit and breathe in the calm, quiet stillness.

Sweetie and I stay in a B&B; during the day he does martial arts training and I go cycling, and we meet up for meals and lovely relaxed evenings together.

The other night we were watching the Perseid meteor shower. It had rained, so the sky was lovely and clear. The first verses of Psalm 19 were made for stargazing, and I remembered them as we sat there:

1 The heavens are telling the glory of God • and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 One day pours out its song to another • and one night unfolds knowledge to another
3 They have neither speech nor language • and their voices are not heard,
4 Yet their sound has gone out into all lands • and their words to the ends of the world.

It's been a lovely few days of that sort of quietness.

Yesterday I cycled to Glastonbury. I paid my money to enter the ruins of the Abbey and walked around the grounds with the other tourists -- pilgrims, even? -- mindful of And overwhelmed by the history of the place. Of course the line between history and legend is rather blurry there.

In a chapel with an altar I saw a notice politely informing me that "No services, prayers, music, ceremonies or rituals are permitted, without the written permission of the Custodian."

What a contrast with the unassuming country church where I'd stopped to rest on the way there. What a contrast with the spacious firmament on high, the stars ringing their silent witness.

My first instinct was sadness. I can understand that with so many different faith groups making some claim on the area it is necessary to have someone decide who gets to do what. But it makes me sad that humans have such trouble sharing, such trouble expressing faith in a way that doesn't threaten or condemn.

I suppose I'm one of these rebellious types, though... a ban on unauthorised liturgy doesn't, can't, stop me praying. A written notice cannot silence the music written on my heart. The notice really doesn't make sense. Sadness bubbled over into chuckles, then peals of laughter as I realised that, too, was a prayer. ...their voices are not heard, yet their sound has gone out into all lands and their words to the ends of the world.

Televangelism

2010-08-04T19:51:00.002+01:00

No, not that sort.

"Watch 'Rev.'" said my vicar. "Watch 'Rev.'" said a handful of other clergy I know (where, exactly, did you all come from?). I don't have a television. I haven't watched television regularly for over a decade. But iPlayer came to the rescue, and I watched it...

...and yes, it was good. It was funny and serious. I think it portrayed quite well some of the challenges faced by urban clergy these days.

I wonder how many people watched it who weren't already interested, though. I wonder if anyone who doesn't go to church watched. I wonder if anyone who doesn't really know any clergy watched. I wonder if anyone who has been seriously wounded by the church watched.

I am not thinking about this in terms of converting people to Christianity or bringing lapsed Christians back to church, but more of the perception of religion and faith in this society. If one person watched this television program and thought, "Okay, maybe not all churches are prejudiced... maybe not all clergy are insufferable holier-than-thou hypocrites... maybe not all communities value conformity over justice or love or freedom..." then I would be very happy indeed.

It never rains but it pours

2010-07-24T23:13:00.002+01:00

...and so for the second time in as many weeks I am asking you, please, pray for Margaret and her family.

2010-07-15T22:56:00.003+01:00

Please pray for Margaret and her family.

I have been reading "The Go-Between God" by John V Taylor; a friend recommended it to me in the course of an e-mail discussion about mission. There are some things that are very dated, some things that I don't understand, some things that I don't agree with... but every three pages or so I read a sentence and think, "Yes, THAT! That is what I have been trying to say, that is what I have needed to hear!" I think this is a book I will keep coming back to.

Life continues. I had a nasty deadline a few weeks ago for a competition and lost a lot of sleep over it. The NHS has been giving me lots of physiotherapy for my dodgy ankle and it is, slowly, improving. My phone is on the way out -- same problem as the last one had. Teaching is winding down for the summer. Sweetie is sweet. Intrepid Anthropologist has submitted her thesis. The C of E is lumbering its way slowly toward more inclusive structures.

Any recommendations for books on intercessory prayer?

Table manners

2010-07-14T08:13:00.003+01:00

When I was keeping kosher, and seriously considering conversion to Judaism, hospitality was important.

It was also difficult. Despite my best efforts, despite being committed to the laws of kashruth, there were some people -- kind people, good people, caring people -- who would not eat at my table because it was not kosher enough for them, not because they doubt the earnestness and diligence of my efforts or their correctness according to halacha, but because I was not Jewish.

Eventually I learned not to take this too personally.

The thing is, though, that nobody would have accused me of being prejudiced against Jews, or of purposely making them unwelcome. There was nothing I could do differently (save actual conversion, which in Orthodox Judaism is a lengthy and arduous process) which would have changed things.

Something I never experienced was people refusing to eat at someone else's home because I was also there, or because our mutual hosts might be willing to eat at my table. It simply didn't happen. In the community where I lived there were various interpretations of what "kosher" means, but the overarching rule of hospitality meant that if someone was Jewish you accepted their interpretation when dining in their home and you didn't refuse an invitation. Even if that had been the case, nobody would have claimed they were being persecuted because someone invited us both.

But that's what I see happening with groups wishing to leave the Church of England.

It isn't just that people won't take Communion from a woman, or don't want to deal with a female bishop. I don't agree with that response -- it smacks of the law rather than of grace -- but I understand it on some level, and I respect that for some people it might be the only way to move forward with any integrity, just as I respect that some Jews could not in good conscience eat food I had prepared.

But being invited not only to dine in someone's home, but also to help with the preparation of the meal, and then recoiling in horror when you find out who else is invited? And then claiming that those other guests are "persecuting" you for not sharing your interpretation of the law? What are we to make of that? If you invited people to dinner and they behaved like that, how would it make you feel? Lord, have mercy!

I have huge amounts of sympathy for anyone who feels they don't fit or are no longer welcome in a religious group with which they once identified strongly. I grew up in a Christian church and my family of origin was very much still involved in that church, and I walked away from that; I was fortunate, blessed even, that my family were understanding and even supportive, but it was still not easy.

And then, the reason I did not convert to Judaism all those years ago was not because my beliefs were incompatible (though they probably are now!) but because I did not think I could bend to some of the other requirements and maintain my own integrity. Not only did I end up leaving a faith community I had grown to love, but I had to admit that I had been wrong -- about myself, about Judaism, about how to live.

I have pretty big issues with the C of E, too, much as I am growing to love it; the structural changes which would make me feel truly accepted and welcomed are unlikely to even be discussed in my lifetime. (As an aside -- yes, I know I am complicit in these issues not getting discussed because I am not open about them ... I am still frightened, and with good reason. Lord, have mercy on on those who make the world unsafe for people like me, and on my cowardliness!) I respect anyone who takes a decision to walk apart. I know it is not an easy decision.

However, I don't think saying "Women are welcome" is persecution of those who are too frightened to extend that welcome to women. Nobody is forcing opponents of women's ordination to do anything. Synod has said, the majority of the church has said, "We are going to share this work more widely than before," not in order to chase away or hurt or persecute or reject anyone, but to finally include some of those who have been turned away and rejected for many centuries.

General Synod

2010-07-09T11:25:00.002+01:00

Psalm 13 (Common Worship translation)

How long will you forget me, O Lord; for ever? •
How long will you hide your face from me?

How long shall I have anguish in my soul and grief in my heart, day after day? •
How long shall my enemy triumph over me?

Look upon me and answer, O Lord my God; •
lighten my eyes, lest I sleep in death;

Lest my enemy say, 'I have prevailed against him,' •
and my foes rejoice that I have fallen.

But I put my trust in your steadfast love; •
my heart will rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord, •
for he has dealt so bountifully with me.

-----

How long will I feel ashamed of how the church treats women?

How long will I feel ashamed of how the church treats LGBT people?

How long will I fear to speak openly, even here, of those issues of equality and fairness which affect me personally?

I don't know. I can't know. I am sometimes too weary even to think about how long these things might take.

But if the Christian claim of salvation and mercy is true, if the Christian hope of unconditional love is true, it won't be forever.

That is the song I will keep singing.

Here's hoping and fervently praying that General Synod will be full of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Thanks, @philritchie!)

All fun and games?

2010-06-27T20:29:00.002+01:00

Recently my Twitter reading list has been full of games. Football, mostly, but I think there was some rugby at some point, and then of course there's still Wimbledon. Among those who don't follow any sport at all one of the topics seems to be, er, Big Brother.

Does this seem absurd to anyone else?

It's not that the games are trivial, though Big Brother might seem so at times. As a musician, I understand something of the rigour of athletics, of training for an event, working with others or alone and then, on the day, doing the best one can in circumstances one cannot control. I admire those who have the level of commitment require to attain a professional level in sport, even if I myself have very little interest in the actual games. I respect that it is hard work, and I understand that it can be beautiful, sublime even, for those who appreciate it.

But more people I know have casually mentioned football or tennis than any other one topic. The English flags I've seen hung off of windowsills or attached to cars have almost rivaled the number of adverts I've seen on the Tube, and then of course some of the Tube adverts have been football-themed too.

I'd love to see that level of involvement over... I dunno. Something that actually affects us all. Homelessness. Environmental damage. Electoral reform.

I can't be the first person to ask why this enthusiasm for football isn't echoed in other arenas. What does football have that church doesn't? Why will people faithfully follow a team but not get anywhere near religion?

I think one answer is this: for fans and spectators, football doesn't make many demands. Oh, there are people who will go to great lengths to show their support for a team, who will spend a lot of money on tickets for games, who will obsess on one level or another about managers, players, game strategies.... but for the most part, that doesn't actually affect the outcome of games. I don't doubt there are people for whom today's World Cup loss is painful, that there are people who are so very attached to their teams that this is a significant wound. But I am pretty certain that for most of them, "What could I have done differently here?" is not a question that is on the agenda. The game isn't like that. And that makes it easy to engage with, easy to follow.

In football, nobody is going to ask you why you haven't been kind to your neighbour. In football, nobody is going to expect you to make a serious attempt at finding out what you are for. In football, nobody says you have to change your life, nobody says you have to care, nobody asks you to look at what is wrong with the world and try to figure out how you can change it.

Of course it's popular. It has all the camaraderie of a shared hope without having to get to know your fellow-fans as people rather than as fans. It has all the excitement of a big battle, without having to actually take any risks.

Perhaps that's too harsh a judgment, but the same could be applied to music in some circumstances. Music can speak to the soul in songs of comfort, songs of challenge, songs of pain and songs of joy -- or it can keep the ears occupied for a while without making much impact. The same could be applied to liturgy, in some circumstances. I've certainly been to church services where people seem to feel good but they don't seem to be challenged in any way, though of course it's impossible for me to judge what is going on internally.

It isn't that I don't think there is value in entertainment. There is. The camaraderie of a shared hope can make future collaboration on shared goals and purposes easier. The shared excitement can be the basis for lasting friendships in which people do learn to see one another as human beings, rather than fans of one "side" or the other. Getting used to the disappointment of a cherished team losing may well be good practice dealing with losses that have more practical impact. There are probably other positive aspects that I don't pick up on, simply because I have never been a serious spectator of sport.

I was getting at something here, but I've forgotten what it is, and I'm too t to pick it up again now I think.

Money and worth and so on again.

2010-06-25T18:02:00.003+01:00

At Nearest Church I'm in the process of trying to negotiate a contract for playing the organ. The rate that they pay is significantly below the going rate for this area of London, and that has consequences for me and for the longer-term viability of music at Nearest Church.

I'm finding it all very uncomfortable. You see, I wish I didn't have to deal with money. I'd like to be able to do all of my work for free. All of it is work I would do if I didn't need the money. I think if we were all generous enough with our time and energy, we wouldn't be so dependent on transactional labour... and I know that if I want that generosity to come about, I need to be willing to be generous even when others aren't.

I mentioned this to a friend today and her response was, "How are you going to live if you don't get paid?" which is quite a reasonable question.

I bit my tongue and changed the subject, got on with the task at hand. But my first thought, and the one that has been nagging at me since, was Why should I live and another not?

Why should I have enough to eat when there are people in the world who starve because of my food choices? Why should I have a roof over my head when there are people who are sleeping rough? I am not better than they are, I am not somehow more deserving. I know that with every fibre of my being. So why am I blessed with material abundance, a garden to grow my vegetables in, a safe bed to sleep in, medication to treat my nagging chronic health problems? By many people's standards I am not wealthy, but to those who are starving, those who are homeless, those who have no access to medical care, I am incredibly, unimaginably rich.

Why should I live so well?

So I eat out of a local veg box scheme, grow some of my own veg in the back garden, don't drive at all, try to buy fair trade for those things I can't get from local sources, try to be moderate in my consumption of electricity... but it is still my privilege to do those things. I have a choice only because I am already rich. Do these little things help enough to make a difference? If I'd make a bigger difference by giving it all away, shouldn't I do that? When I tell myself my skills are best used where I am, is that me being sensible, or is that me running away, crossing to the other side of the road? Do I live as I do out of obedience, using available resources to create a lifestyle that can sustain the work I am meant to be doing, or out of fear, turning away from the call to give away what I have?

Even having the time to think about these things seems like a completely undeserved luxury.

Working together and who knows what challenges may come?

2010-06-19T23:02:00.004+01:00

Interesting times locally. Vicar of Long Walk Church is retiring sometime next year. Local C of E churches in Upper Suburbia are talking about working together more, but at Nearest Church there's significant concern that too much collaboration means no time or energy left for things that are ours. And I can understand that sort of isolationism, but I don't think it will work in the long run. I think we can collaborate and still contribute uniquely. I think we need to collaborate if we're going to have any sort of unique contribution to make.

I asked about mentoring, about having church music experts I can talk to after Networking Organist has moved on. It's been suggested that I go along to a service in Neighbouring Suburb, because the music director is very good and shares some of my interests. So that's where I'll be off to tomorrow morning.

I couldn't find said music director on that church's website. They do have a link to Anglican Mainstream. No no no no no no no goes my brain. I don't want to go. I don't want to get involved. I don't want to risk being in a position where I might have to say something, might have to upset people, might encounter some injustice or exclusion that I can, and therefore must, do something about.

Anglican Mainstream have the following quote on their website:

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. To be steady on all fronts besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point"

Martin Luther

Christianity posits that the truth of God is the love of God: merciful, unwavering, steadfast, faithful love. One of the places where the battle rages is in deciding how to show that. I don't think the debate on sexuality and ordination is really about sex. I think it's about perfectionism, about whether we can decide and judge what is human, what is acceptable to God. It's about whether we can accept that those different from ourselves are still human beings, still beloved children of God. It's about whether we have one standard for our sins and another standard for those things another might do which we think are sinful. It's about taking responsibility for embodying God's mercy.

I happen to believe that homosexuality is not sinful. I can't claim I have "done the theology" -- I was just raised in a reasonably liberal background. It's a no-brainer. But I am concerned with this argument around whether LGBT people should be ordained, not because I am convinced that homosexuality is not sinful, but because I am convinced that we are all sinners and even if I am wrong about the sinfulness of homosexuality I do not think that it is fair, just, kind or merciful to refuse the vocation of any human being based on something so minor. And it is minor, compared to so many things.

I know if I am asked, I will say the above, in some form. I will say that whether clergy are truthful is more important than whether they are gay, but that I probably don't know any clergy who haven't at some stage told at least a little "white" lie. I will say that whether clergy are jealous and covetous is more important than whether they are openly lesbian, but that I don't know anyone who hasn't had at least a tinge of envy toward a neighbour's house or car at some stage. I will say that in the grand scheme of things I hope that mercy trumps our judgments, I will say that I pray that love will topple our fears. And I will say it even if I think people probably don't want to hear my answer, because if they ask, I can't justify saying otherwise. To be steady on all fronts besides is mere flight...

Oh, bother.

Heresy Sunday

2010-05-30T13:46:00.002+01:00

I mean, er, Trinity Sunday, of course. Although I think perhaps a better name would be Mystery Sunday, because how three can be one and one can be three is a mystery to me, and why three instead of three thousand is an even bigger one.

Something in Kathryn's sermon really struck a chord with me. She writes:
"...the love that defines and informs the one reaches out and spills over into the other
Look, says the Father.......look at the Son........
Look, says the Son...........look at the Spirit
And so the Three gaze at one another in mutual love and delight"

My best performances have been like this, in a way. They are the ones where I love the music, and am full of love or at least general goodwill for the listeners, and my desire to introduce one to the other is far more important than my nerves or worries about my own ability. "Listen to this," I want to cry, "isn't it amazing? Hear what these sounds, combined this way, do! Sing along if you like, get up and dance!" And that time, in that place, I am the performer, the audience are listeners, the specific pattern of notes that makes up the music is being performed... but those roles are provisional, fluid, and utterly interdependent. None exist without the others. All can control the outcome, too: if the audience gets up and starts dancing, you can bet it's a very different experience for the performer, and that the music is very different as a result.

I hadn't really thought about three persons of the Trinity that way before.

I've struggled with the Trinity; my experience of God includes a sense of overwhelming unity. I can just about cope with the Holy Spirit (though equating the Holy Spirit with the shekinah of Torah, which is feminine, and then speaking of it in masculine terms really bothers me), but "Father" and "Son" are loaded words, words we ascribe roles to, specific jobs for each of them to do, and then oops modalism!

It seems to me that an awful lot of our attempts to describe the Trinity end up with that sort of putting-God-in-a-box.

And that's okay, I think, as long as we don't take ourselves too seriously. We musn't kid ourselves that what we describe actually matches reality with 100% accuracy. Language doesn't work that way: saying a thing does not make it true. We just compare notes on our own experiences, trying to arrive at some sort of common meaning, common agreement.

This idea of each person of the Trinity pointing out another, though, and the bit after it -- the bit where we are invited to join in -- appeals to me. If the Church is the Body of Christ then the Trinity is not limited to three, but is infinite, as we each point out what is holy, with love and wonder and delight.

Back later. Gone dancing.

Order and Orders.

2010-05-18T11:46:00.003+01:00

I wrote this in a comment over at The Church Mouse Blog, but I think it's worth repeating here.

Mouse writes that both Ruth Gledhill, who writes for the Times, Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester, have essentially stated that the debate around sexuality and ordination is essentially a second order issue. I have to admit I have some sympathy for this viewpoint. I get tired of all the debate, all the wrangling. I feel something like I do about discussions about the Anglican Communion: all this dithering is fine if you have the time and the money for it, but I've said before and I'll say again that the rest of us have work to do. It's very easy to jump from that to "this is not a first order issue."

It's not a first order issue for anyone who has been ordained or consecrated without controversy and has never had to worry about whether someone else will question their ministry because of their sexuality.

It's not a first order issue for anyone employed by the church who doesn't feel they have to hide or disguise or even break off a close relationship (not necessarily a sexual one) because of what others in the church might think and the effect on their livelihood.

It's not a first order issue for those who don't have to question whether their time and gifts as volunteers will be accepted and appreciated, those who don't have to "come out" to anyone, those who don't have to constantly answer questions from their friends about why they are religious if their religion (or at least its bureaucratic structure) is so anti-queer.

This is not a first order issue for those who have the privilege to ignore it.

I cannot tell my brilliantly gifted organist friend, made unwelcome for not fitting into a heteronormative mould after being a church musician since the age of six, that her pain at such a cruel rejection is not a first order issue. I cannot tell my spiritually astute friend who is not pursuing a vocation to ordained ministry because he is bisexual and feels the barriers would be insurmountable that this denial of his gifts is not a first order issue. I cannot tell my friend who would love to get involved in all sorts of outreach work, faith-based or not, that it is not a first order issue that the C of E is not a safe space for her. I cannot tell my friends that it is somehow okay for the church to behave this way as long as it does some other good in the world, or that I am not afraid for my own livelihood should I be deemed unacceptable in some way unrelated to my ability to do my work. I'm quite serious about that last point: I live with a man who is not my husband, I'm quite open about it, and I'm well aware that a number of years ago that would have meant I'd be considered completely unsuitable as organist/choirmaster. As long there is not full inclusion, we are in the tricky business of drawing lines in the sand, and it is only by God's grace that I am currently on the "acceptable" side of the line.

That doesn't mean I think the other work of the church is unimportant. That doesn't mean I think we should not be striving to heal the sick, comfort the mourning, bind up the brokehnhearted and proclaim liberty to those who are captive. Of course we must do these things, we must care for the widow and the orphan, we must alleviate poverty. But excluding people from any level of ministry based on their gender or sexuality seems to me to be at direct odds with that.

The basic underlying message of Christianity, as far as I can tell, is that God is loving and God is merciful; it will always be a first order issue when the church fails to act like it.

Blogging about not blogging, again

2010-05-17T14:21:00.003+01:00

So, I've not been blogging much, here or elsewhere.

It's partly that i've managed to get to that point where I don't want to post something that isn't finished, isn't quite what I wanted to say, isn't perfect. But that perfectionism degrades the medium somewhat, and certainly makes the quantity of my output plummet.

What have I been up to?

Lots of rehearsing, a bit of performing here and there, still teaching, more projects than I have time for and I don't seem to stop having ideas for even more. I went up to visit Kathryn of Good in Parts and had a simply grand time, as always.

I was going to write a post about keeping a strict Sabbath when I was observing Jewish law, and how that experience affects my attitude toward days off etc now (especially as I am a self-employed musician who works most Sundays), but I haven't taken an honest-to-goodness, all-day, Proper Day Off since 7th May, and I kindof stayed up until 5am watching election results the night before, which meant it was perhaps not as restorative as it might have otherwise been. I'll do better this week.

I'm still behind on reading blogs, too, but still thinking of and praying for many of you.

I'm going to try to do a post-a-day thing to get myself blogging again, but most of that probably won't be here: my public, identifiable-as-me blog needs more of that attention.

May Day

2010-05-01T21:30:00.005+01:00

A local Labour councillor came around yesterday for a chat. We nattered for a bit and he asked, as they tend to do, whether I had any concerns about local issues.

Now, I've not lived in this area all that long, and I've not gone very far out of my way to find out what the local issues are. The bins get emptied, and I feel relatively safe here, so I don't have much cause to complain to the council; if I did, they'd certainly have heard from me before now.

So I mentioned the people outside the local tube station. I said that I realise it's a systemic, complex problem and not something that can just be changed overnight, but that I do worry about the people begging, and I asked what support the council is providing for them.

He then proceeded to tell me that the vast majority of beggars are economic migrants,
mostly from Eastern Europe, who have come over for temporary labour and got stranded here by being laid off, and that the council tries to "help them get home". I could hardly believe my ears!

I don't think it's an accurate assessment of the situation. I've written here before about my shameful failure to actually talk to people who are asking me for spare change, especially when it's dark and I am tired, but I do listen and I don't hear an overwhelming majority of foreign accents. Most people seem to be from London and environs.

Even if these people were mostly not British, there are a whole bunch of reasons that I think simply sending them home would not always be the right answer.

Instead of chasing him off the doorstep I decided to try and waste as much of his time as I possibly could, though I'm afraid I didn't manage to change his assumptions.

If there had been any danger of my voting Labour to try and keep the Tories out, it has well and truly passed now.

(I've written a very similar post to this elsewhere, with identifying information; the readership there includes more locals, and I think they need to know about this.)

This morning I did a spot of guerilla gardening, as is my custom on May Day. Upper Suburbia is pretty verdant, really, but there is a small patch of land I walk past often that doesn't get much attention. There were some trees planted there earlier this year; one of them was destroyed by folks who apparently had nothing better to do, leaving a bare spot. The edge of the patch, near a garden wall, is also bare of grass but does get a lot of weeds.

I'm pretty sure that the sunflower seeds will be eaten by rodents, but it's quite possible that the fennel, rocket, lamb's lettuce or catmint might sprout and grow. The chives and garlic chives were in small pots already and will blend in nicely with the grass for a while until they get established.

Please vote.

2010-04-22T19:17:00.004+01:00

By now if you aren't registered to vote in the UK's forthcoming general election, I'm sorry, it's too late for you to register.

There is a BNP candidate in the constituency where I live. This makes me feel vaguely nauseous. I will be voting, and of course I will not be voting for the BNP.

Otherwise? Life continues apace. This identity and my real name are colliding in some interesting (but I think manageable) ways. My foot is healing, walking is getting easier, the regular therapy for joint issues is going well and soon we will be down to monthly instead of weekly appointments which will be cheaper (I would have had to wait, on the NHS...) and take less of my travel time. I am behind on the gardening, composing, teaching prep, tidying, laundry, study for the Big Project (thank God it has no actual deadlines yet!), chamber music administrative work, general life maintenance paperwork, oh, and that thing all musicians must do, the thing that keeps me what I am, practising. Reading other people's blogs is minimal; commenting is happening even less.

I am having a great time and learning a huge amount but I am not going to catch up.

I haven't heard back from the homeless shelter I sent the volunteering application form to. Psalmody work continues apace, and often of an evening I tell Twitter I'm nearly home before stumbling wearily off the Tube, having been reading, half-asleep and exhausted from teaching, about Reformation politics and vernacular worship or some such thing, and more often than not there is someone begging. And I know I'm not in a position to just invite them into the house where I live, I know I don't have the skills, I don't have the understanding, to be of real help, I'm mentally fragile enough that dealing with someone who has really serious problems might well push me back into mental illness myself; I don't even have the financial resources of my own, given that Sweetie pays my rent! and I don't know whether giving money is the right thing -- it won't treat the mental health problems or drug addiction or whatever else has caused them to slip through the ever-widening cracks in a welfare system that has been comprehensively screwed over by the Tories and then by New Labour -- and I'm horribly, shamefully safe about it, never stopping if I'm alone or there aren't people about or I'm carrying an instrument or I don't have money easily to hand, never pausing for a simple decent conversation with a human being, finding out their side of the story, forming some sort of relationship that isn't based on my relative wealth. I walk that last leg of my journey home wishing I weren't such a coward, and I pray someone else knows what to do and has the courage to do it. And I get home, and tell Twitter I've got home safely, and I fail even to mention those who haven't got a safe home to go to.

Lord, have mercy.

A regular mid-week rehearsal has had to change to another time, and my first thought was "that's going to be really annoying for the group". My second thought, so quickly after the first, was "Now I can get to the mid-week Eucharist at Nearest Church". A said service, no less, not a hymn or a chant in earshot (though in my mind's ear the chanted kadosh, kadosh, kadosh and the blessings for ha-motzi and ha-gafen remain). I didn't expect bread and wine to become such a part of me so quickly -- or rather, I knew the bread and wine would, I didn't know the body and blood would. I am taking great comfort in this sacrament, even though my view of the entire world as sacramental has not changed in any fundamental way.

Keeping on

2010-04-13T06:37:00.004+01:00

I had a more relaxed Easter week; some gardening, then at the weekend some spring cleaning with Sweetie and Intrepid Anthropologist. My ankle is better than it was but still a bit complainy; other standard aches and pains are behaving as they usually do.

All that stuff I put off until after Holy Week? I have to do it now. Can't keep putting it off.

I'm away the end of this week and all this weekend. The idea is that after I've settled in I'll spend a day writing music while my host is at work, and then when she comes home we can have some social time.

It will be my first Sunday morning away from Nearest Church since I went to Leafy Suburb Church for All Saints, back at the beginning of November. I'm really looking forward to that. I love the work I do at Nearest Church, but it will be good to see how things look from the west end for a change.

In May I am pulling the same trick one week, going to visit Kathryn for a few days. Again I hope to write some music while she is working; last time I tried this I just sat underneath her cats instead, and if the same happens again it is no disaster.

I'm doing this stuff now because I'm well aware that once Networking Organist leaves I'll need to be ultra-reliable for a time, in order that the choir at Nearest Church get to know me better and get a feel for how I am going to do things.

I keep trying to tell myself I don't want to change too much, but there are some things that absolutely must change, and those are going to be a big shock. We are going to start doing some breathing exercises and vocal warmups at choir rehearsals. We are going to start doing a teensy tiny bit of sight-reading practice. This is going to make some waves, I think, but after people get over it I think it will help.

But it does mean I need to be there, I need to be consistent, I need to be trustworthy. I need to make it clear I am going to push people but that I'm going to be realistic about where we are now.

Easter Bonnet

2010-04-04T13:37:00.003+01:00

Sorry the picture is such poor quality, but that's the best I could do this morning. The flowers have wilted now, the wreath has been removed from the hat and is being used as a garnish for a dessert Intrepid Anthropologist is taking to friends.

People seemed quite surprised despite my having told them I would make and wear an Easter bonnet. I think they didn't quite believe I was serious.

Christ is Risen

2010-04-04T01:47:00.001+01:00

and I haven't stopped grinning since.

Alleluia!

2010-04-02T13:41:00.003+01:00

It's probably about 15 years since I was in church for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, and then they would have been very different.

This is all feeling rather new, at the same time as being rather familiar.

I had been feeling nervous about foot washing last night. I was feeling quite strange about it, not wanting anyone to wash my feet... not because I'm ticklish or embarrassed about my feet, particularly, but because it feels like I should be washing someone else's feet, not the other way around. It feels backwards.

But that's a false dichotomy. Gifts need recipients... we can each give and receive, we can each love and be loved.

How can I relate to the Cross if I can't even let someone else wash my feet? How can I accept that ultimate gift from God if I can't accept Gentle Vicar kneeling with pitcher and towel?

So the time came, and I went with the others and had my feet washed, and it was fine. It still felt backwards, but it was fine.

I loved the silent vigil afterward. So often for me, singing is the way to become aware of God's presence. Silence can be awkward... am I supposed to say something? Do something? Short silences in the liturgy make me feel nervous. They always seem either too long, or not long enough. I get stuck in a cycle of worrying about whether I'm supposed to be ready for the next bit, whether I've forgotten someone, whether I might be doing it wrong. In chant or song I often lose that, lose track of worrying about myself, because my whole self is in the song, takes on the song, becomes the song.

The longer silence in darkness was more like singing. My mind was not exactly quiet. I sat there, sometimes with other people and sometimes not, turning over various problems, asking God to be present to various people in various situations. How can I explain? I don't believe that God is ever not with us. I don't believe God could be there in the chapel of repose last night but not also with me now as I sit in front of my computer. But my perception was different, changed, maybe by the silence and darkness, maybe by the preceding liturgy, and God seemed very present.

I didn't really want to leave.

For this morning's Gospel reading we had a sort of dramatized version, with a narrator and different people taking different spoken parts. I loved that our reader, who is female, was reading the part of Christ. I don't know if anyone else noticed.

I did find it all rather short. I'm not sure if Nearest Church doesn't do the entire liturgy or if I'm still accustomed to the longer services in Judaism, but it seems odd to be out by early afternoon. What am I to do with the rest of the day? It doesn't seem right to treat it as a normal day, getting on with bits and pieces of work and study, or to spend time catching up on housework. It doesn't seem right to treat it as a usual day off, relaxing and resting and reading fiction or cooking fancy food. This day feels as if it should be like Yom Kippur, no participation in any of the 39 melachot, no eating, drinking, washing, wearing leather (a luxury), hours and hours and hours of liturgy. Instead I am at something of a loose end.

And yet there are no "normal" days, just as there is no "ordinary" time... if God is with me at church but also out in the world, God is with me when I pray but also when I go about my work, which is even another sort of prayer, if you will. But I am a creature of liturgy, of habit, of susceptibility to ritual, and setting aside times and places to focus on God helps to increase my awareness of God the rest of the time and in the rest of the places. This day is a set aside time.

So I will go for a walk, I think, and I will go back to Nearest Church and sit in silence a while, again.

Leafy Suburb Church

2010-03-31T06:49:00.008+01:00

Off I went to Leafy Suburb Church last night; I probably could have attended a service more locally, but I wanted to touch base with some people there. It takes me an hour and a half to get there and the same again to get back, and it's a rather fiddly journey with three changes. People sometimes speak of "thin places", places or times where the boundary between heaven and earth seems especially fragile... and I think I don't usually like that language, because the word "seems" is so easily dropped and then we start to think that one bit of Creation is somehow more holy than another.

But if I believed in these "thin places" I think Leafy Suburb Church would be among them, for me. I am particularly susceptible to a strong awareness of God while I am there, and even better, to a feeling of belovedness, a sense of being loved and cared for by God.

Some of that is because of the ministry of two women, one of whom was so very dear to me even before she started there, and one of whom I hardly know but who has been full of welcome. It pains me to admit it, but I do feel safer with women in charge. That isn't a reflection on Gentle Vicar who leads Nearest Church, or on the kindly, rather grandfatherly vicar at Long Walk Church, or on various other male clergy I have come across... it's just that I am slow to overcome past hurts. And so I thank God for women's ministry in general, and for these two women's ministry in my life.

Some of it is the choir. They have been as welcoming as can be.

The the choir were kind to me when I was in touch about a sort of secret project (long since completed). Last Easter I could hardly be said to have embraced Christian faith -- I'm still not sure about some of the essentials -- but on that Easter Sunday I did know, pretty clearly, that I really would rather be in the choir than in the congregation. I guess the choir knew it too, because I was welcomed with open arms. Now when I am there I sing in the choir if it is a choral service.

I started attending Leafy Suburb Church because I wanted to visit Ambassador for Compassion, and to do a bit of research for the aforementioned secret project... the "church" bit was rather secondary. The congregation were as friendly and welcoming as the choir later turned out to be. AfC made sure I had someone to sit with, but always people greeted me, and mostly they remembered me. At last night's non-choral service I was reminded of this by someone who doesn't usually attend the Evensong services I can get to; she came up and introduced herself, and without actually asking if I needed anything seemed to make clear that if I did, I could ask. It may well be that there is some committee or other that deals with whose turn it is to be welcoming but it didn't feel like that. It didn't feel stilted or contrived or something she was doing because it was her "turn"; it felt like the most natural thing in the world to happen there.

Even the building helps, I think. It's not a large church, but it is an old one, and those ancient stones feel cozy rather than constricting, comfortable rather than claustrophobic. We all have to sit rather closer together than we might choose to in a larger space and this is, I think, good.

It is all rather wonderful, in the sense of being full of wonder. I'm sure it isn't perfect, but the overall effect is such that going there stopped being just about seeing AfC quite some time ago. It has become something else, something halfway between retreat and pilgrimage, a place to sit and rest and a place to grow, a destination and a step along the journey. I leave with happy reluctance, feeling well-nourished, ready to go out into the world but also ready to stay in church much longer.

Thanks be to God.

Swings and roundabouts

2010-03-26T17:38:00.004Z

I'm feeling better than I was the other day. Thinking about big stuff from my past always takes it out of me a bit; it's just tiring.

I'm still uncertain about some things. I still have a stinking cold, which always makes me more vulnerable to feelings of uncertainty. I still have more to do than I can actually think about, though I think I'm getting through some of it pretty well.

I asked Sweetie to look after me a bit, bring me some soup and some comfort food and put me to bed early, and he did and it helped. I stepped away from the comment thread that was making me think about all this, even though someone is wrong on the internet. I've been trying to get things done but I've also given myself permission to postpone some things and back out of others while my body and brain sort themselves out, and that also helped. I've allowed myself the delight of getting distracted, despite being very busy, by this wonderful season of planting in the garden, pottering and re-potting, starting to grow food for later in the year. That helped too. I spoke to a wise friend, and there was prayer and understanding there, the like of which I can't easily explain. That helped a lot more than anything else has. I understand a bit more of what is going on in my head, why this particular thing has spooked me, how to approach it safely. I have been reassured that my judgement is correct by someone who I know would tell me if she thought otherwise, and whose own judgement I respect. And somehow, knowing there are two of us asking God for guidance on the matter makes it a little easier.

I'm feeling a lot better today.

So of course, now I have hurt my foot. In the immortal words of Donald Swann: "What a pity!"

I'm sure it will be fine in a day or two.

Processing

2010-03-24T09:26:00.006Z

I've been thinking through some stuff about childhood and abuse and memories that keep cropping up, partly precipitated by conversations elsewhere. It's... all a bit too personal to go into much detail here, I think.

In more general terms:

People talk about breaking a cycle of abuse as if it's a black-and-white thing, as if someone is either a monster or a saint. That isn't true. When I look at how my stepdad treated us compared to societal norms, some of what he did was pretty bad, and it's hard to see how anyone could do that. When I look at it compared to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his family, and I consider that he didn't have any sort of ongoing support or stability or guidance except from my mother (who was definitely as much a victim of his abuse as I was), I wonder how it wasn't much, much worse.

Abuse is systemic, even if it isn't systematic. For my stepdad to be abusive toward me, my mother had to not stick up for me. Later on that may have been because I didn't tell her, but earlier it was because she was also afraid. Why was she so afraid, too afraid to speak for her own daughter? Her own childhood, her own difficult background, a history of conditional support from others. It's very easy to talk about this and say that she was also responsible for what I went through, to apportion some sort of blame or fault. But that isn't useful, and I'm not trying to blame others for who I am now, just to acknowledge what happened (admittedly not easy when I'm also trying to protect anonymity). But breaking the cycle of abuse, if it can be done, is not only about teaching abusers other ways of relating to people: it's about teaching victims not to be accomplices, not to look the other way.

Given that my stepdad is clergy some who don't know the details would say that I have an obligation to report the abuse, in order to protect others who might be vulnerable. But despite my own experiences, I do not believe my stepdad is generally dangerous. His abusiveness was in the context of family life, not in the context of church work. Oh, he was (and to an extent still is) a bully and that permeates everything, but honestly? There are so many minor bullies about, people can deal with it. The physical abuse was generally poor anger management and would never get that far at work; the sexual abuse was rare and, I believe, accidental (no, I cannot explain this without going into detail. But what he thought was okay, what was an attempt at building intimacy and trust into a fractured relationship, was not okay with me, and I didn't tell him any differently because by then I'd been terrified of him for a decade... and yes, I think that is abuse, even if it was not severe or violent), and again would not happen in a work context where there are stricter guidelines.

However, I'm also aware that I can't think about this without bias... that my own issues make this frightening to me, to the point that I might rationalize away my responsibility. Maybe I am messed up enough that I could think he is not dangerous, even if actually he is; maybe what I went through is the tip of the iceberg rather than the worst of it, and I should be shouting from the rooftops in case anyone else has been hurt.

And yet I do not want to bear false witness.

I guess I need to have a good long talk with someone about this, someone who is going to be confidential about it no matter what and who won't automatically advise one way or another. I've always compartmentalized it... spent three years talking to the brainhacker about the emotional problems and a bit of the physical stuff but didn't have the courage to go further, have alluded to the sexual abuse without really discussing it properly. I don't know if the latter is protecting privacy or another form of false witness.

Meanwhile today I am remembering that the man who terrified me throughout my childhood also stood up for me. I had a paper route, and one of the kids from school lived on it, and he used to throw things -- tennis balls, rocks, whatever -- at me when I went past. One particularly bad day (I think there might have been broken glass involved) I came home crying about this, and my stepdad noticed (unusual) and asked why, and I (reluctantly) explained. And we walked to the house, there and then, me terrified the whole way, and knocked on the door. And he told the kid's father, calmly, what had happened, and the kid's father said he'd talk about it. I hope beyond hope that it was just talk. But that kid didn't throw stuff at me any more.

I'm really looking forward to Mass later.

Growing into love

2010-03-21T20:37:00.005Z

Chatting briefly with a friend about an impromptu children's passion play earlier today, I was struck by how the children seemed to understand, on some wonderful and very basic level, that God loves them.

I hear similar tales from this friend fairly frequently and it always warms my heart.

Tonight I found myself wishing I'd had something similar, growing up. Oh, I went to Sunday School or Youth Group or whatever else was available at whichever church we were at, providing it didn't conflict with musical activities. But always I was playing a role, being the minister's daughter, having the right answers. I was never really allowed, let alone encouraged, to ask the questions. Or maybe I was just too scared.

So I grew up in the church and somehow just didn't get that the whole point is that God loves us. I don't quite understand, now, how I missed it. Was it the disconnect between what we professed on Sunday mornings and what happened in our lives the rest of the time? That disconnect is present in most of us, I think. No matter how good I hope to be, I am imperfect. That doesn't mean I shouldn't state the hope. But perhaps not addressing the contrast was part of the problem.

Was the theology at fault? It's hard to say. My stepdad preaches well; I have accepted this. I can't remember ever finding much fault in his sermons, which were logically coherent and, from what I recall, doctrinally sound. But I don't remember, now, any of the content. Half-snippets of phrases, perhaps. Yet some of the preaching I have heard (or in some cases, read) since I started attending church again has stayed with me. Maybe that's because now I'm listening differently...but the sermons that have bothered me stick, too.

This goes along with my complete inability to remember any of the content of my confirmation classes, other than having to learn by heart the order of the books in the Bible (long since forgotten) and the Lord's Prayer (which I had already committed to memory), though I do remember the more general content of many other lessons.

But I do remember some of the Sunday School classes. Either the message that God loves us didn't get remembered, or it was lost among all the cutting and sticking... someone forgot to say, because they were more concerned about having run out of glue sticks.

And the liturgy? I don't have any service sheets ("bulletins") so I can't be sure. But we definitely had the Apostles' Creed, we definitely had the United Church of Canada Creed. We definitely had at least two readings per service. There were some antiphonal responsive things that I now think may have been psalms but I don't really remember. How is it that despite all this I did not make the connection?

There were the hymns. Some of those did make an impact, I think, but one I'm only really becoming aware of now, gradually, in fits and starts. Hymnody wasn't enough to keep me in church. It's more something that I'm discovering is still there now that I'm coming back.

I remember the pain of it, the searching that led me first to reject Christianity and then to walk away, too, from Judaism... and I see what is happening with my friend and the children she works with, and I think, "I wish I'd had that." I wish I had had such an environment. I wish I had been able to understand such amazing belovedness.

Oh, I don't always understand it now... but how is it that I knew, beyond any doubt, that God exists, and yet grew up in a church that tries to proclaim God's love and I didn't have an inkling of it? What would it be like to grow up knowing you are loved, unconditionally and beyond your wildest imagination, by Someone completely reliable, all-powerful?

But now I am veering off into the "what-if?" game. What if I'd been born somewhere else, what if my parents hadn't split up, what if my mum hadn't married my stepdad, what if, what if, what if? It all boils down to what if I'd been someone else.

As much as I wish things could have been different... I also have to take into account that if this love which I am somehow becoming aware of, somehow growing into... if this love is real, then I am loved for who and what I am, and that includes my painful experiences and my reactions to them. That does not mean I should not work to alleviate others' suffering -- far from it -- but it does mean that the yearning, the loneliness, the pain of feeling utterly unloved, which have shaped me and formed me, were not for naught. They are part of who I am, and who I am is a beloved child of God, even if that sometimes seems impossible to grasp.

As much as I wish things could have been different when I was a child, I don't think that I'd go back and change them if I could. The last few years have been such a journey, such a discovery. If one little thing had changed, perhaps I wouldn't have moved to England. Perhaps I wouldn't have met Sweetie. Perhaps I wouldn't have a household with him and with Intrepid Anthropologist...while our domestic situation is trying at times it is by far the most rewarding I have ever lived in. Perhaps if my path were different I would not have encountered Ambassador for Compassion, who convinced me by actions rather than words that some people really do walk the walk. Perhaps I would not have started blogging here and found you lot, for that matter. I still have so much to learn, so much to discern, but of late it seems that God shouts, not whispers, to get the message across. Christ on the cross (with his arms out to embrace the world) isn't just waiting patiently for me to get there. Instead I have this sense that he's running to meet me, and somehow already with me when I stumble.

I don't imagine that the times of feeling forlorn are over. It only takes a bad night's sleep, a missed meal or a particularly uncomfortable joint pain day to put me right back into self-pity mode, and I'll be surprised if those are the most difficult things I have to face. But for tonight I rejoice in the children who are growing up being told they are loved by God, and I wonder at my own growing into such love, and I give thanks for all those who have helped me on the way.

That time of year again.

2010-03-20T17:30:00.000Z

Been rather busy lately; several creative projects on the go at once, as is usual, plus things are getting busier at Nearest Church in the run-up to Easter.

Margaret said, "Lent is never quiet, never a time for reflection or spiritual house-cleaning. Not if you work for the church." She's right, of course. For those who are called to shepherd others, to provide the time and care and infrastructure for helping people along their various meandering spiritual paths, it can be quite difficult even in ordinary times to carve out the time for one's own needs. It can be well-nigh impossible to attend to discernment and or even just find time to relax into God's presence. Yes, there are spiritual directors, yes, there are retreats, but the system is never perfect, and I know an awful lot of people who go hungry because they're so busy feeding others.

So I pray for all who work for the church, lay or ordained, at this particularly busy time. I pray for all who are struggling to carry their own burdens as well as those of others -- all who are dealing with bereavement, uncertainty of employment, illness or injury in themselves or loved ones. I pray for all who are weary and exhausted, all who are trying to fit their work for the church into secular work in a secular society, all who are feeling academic pressure. I pray for those in obvious leadership roles and for those working quietly behind the scenes. I pray for the hopeful and for the discouraged, for the ones who minister with joyful eagerness and for the ones who are more reluctant.

Oh...

2010-03-11T20:30:00.004Z

Had a chat with Gentle Vicar this week.

I knew about this but hadn't said much here, just yet. Networking Organist is leaving Nearest Church in the autumn and has recommended me to be his replacement. Gentle Vicar is happy to employ me on the strength of that recommendation. That's a little daunting; I think Networking Organist carries a higher opinion of my skills than I do.

The money is not brilliant, but it is regular. Professionally, there's a reasonable amount of flexibility, a reasonable freedom to experiment... the music at Nearest Church is in a bit of a sorry state, but building something out of that will be a valuable and rewarding experience, if trying at times.

I have concerns about some of the relationships within the community, concerns about my own leadership ability, but Gentle Vicar does seem to be, for the most part, my kind of heretic; he's someone I do think I can talk to about these concerns, as well as some of my hopes and tentative plans for what could be done. I think, I hope, that we can also be quite reasonable about the hat-swapping -- sometimes I will be the organist, sometimes I will be the parishioner. Sometimes Gentle Vicar will be my boss and sometimes my parish priest. I think we can deal with that.

The organ is in a rather sorry state, too. But you play the instrument you have. It won't get repaired if it doesn't get used.

While my physical problems are painful at times, they're unlikely to stop me playing in the near future. When they do -- if they do -- loss of function should be gradual enough that I can give appropriate notice. Gentle Vicar is supportive about that, too.

I said yes. I think I'm going to make a huge number of mistakes, but I said that, and I said yes anyway. We'll sort out the details nearer the time.

I don't know how much I'm going to blog about it. I want to protect some of my anonymity. I guess I'm just another organist in a suburban parish church with an ageing congregation, though.

Keeping on.

2010-03-06T12:31:00.005Z

Still ticking. Last day on the stronger tablets today, though I've been managing with food rather better this week than the one before.

I'm working on a project. It has to do with psalmody. Ultimately it's going to be something I'll attach my real name to, which means I can't discuss it much here. If you do want to hear about it let me know. I'll e-mail you if I have your address. Some of you have heard about it already.

The more I do research for this project, the more I let the psalms get into my head and my heart, the more it seems really important that I do some sort of direct voluntary work with people who are homeless. I wrote about this before, at the end of January. I don't know what the connection is; I don't know if my interest in psalmody will mean that the psalms are somehow directly involved in the work I eventually do, or if they "clear the lines" somehow so that discernment is easier for me, or if I'm going to need to know the psalms inside out and backward to deal with what I might find and this is a sort of preparation period for that. I only realised there was a connection fairly recently, after I'd written that other post.

This is way off the beaten track for me. The psalmody project itself is far more research-based than my usual work, but I can at least see a connection, a drawing together of various threads. But direct work with the homeless is unfamiliar in just about every way possible. Using my existing professional skills doesn't seem to be the requirement, and everything I can think up that uses them is definitely not the right thing.

I've spoken to some friends about this. I've spoken to my spiritual adviser/director. I've prayed. I've thought and thought and chased my tail.

I've found a night shelter/day centre within walking distance of where I live and printed out a volunteer application form.

I'm just going to have to try it and see what happens. I can't think this one through any further without taking action.

Right then. Thy will be done, and I hope I don't screw it up.

2010-02-26T23:01:00.003Z

The stronger tablets to try for two weeks? I've been on them about a week. They help with what they're meant to help with, but they make it difficult for me to eat as much as I normally would, and what I do manage makes me a bit nauseous. So I'm overtired and grumpy.

Things at Nearest Church are getting interesting in ways I can't really talk about here without taking silly risks about anonymity. I am trying to learn to be patient with others, and with myself.

In general I'm feeling grumpy about LGBTQ issues in the church, but I don't know where to begin discussing the issues. If grace is unconditional, why should any sacrament be withheld from anyone?

Just asking.

Mundane medical stuff

2010-02-20T09:51:00.006Z

My body has been more achey than usual recently; this week I hauled myself off to first-line tech support (my local GP) to see if anything could be done about a couple of joint-related things.

I have a new diagnosis concerning one of my hands. It isn't really unexpected; people with another of my conditions are quite prone to it. There's nothing they can really do about it at this stage of things: all the treatments would involve serious loss of functionality, and I'm already doing all the preventive stuff I reasonably can. This isn't hugely painful yet, more a mild niggle that I thought I'd better mention, and at the moment I do have full functioning...the worst bit is not really knowing whether or when it will deteriorate, knowing that I'm really not in control of whether I will be able to play.

I also have some stronger tablets to try for a couple of weeks in hopes that the recent flare-up of ongoing stuff will calm down. We shall see.

I am trying to look on the bright side of this, to accept that it could all disappear anyway, I could be hit by a bus or whatever and poof! all gone! All of life is provisional, a gift, and it's absurd to expect mine to be free of pain or disability. I'm not sure if I'm succeeding, taking this in stride as just one more thing that sets me apart from those who are considered healthy and normal in this society, or if I'm simply ignoring the news.

Thanks be to God for the NHS, though -- without it I wouldn't be able to afford treatment.

Make me hear of joy and gladness,
that the bones you have broken may rejoice.
--Psalm 51, v9

On balance.

2010-02-18T20:48:00.003Z

I still agree with what I said yesterday, but it wasn't very complete, made some huge assumptions.

I said if something ceases to be a labour of love, you should stop and re-think. I said self-improvement can be about God, if it means discovering and becoming who we are.

But that doesn't mean we should all just do whatever we feel like all the time.

I may enjoy chocolate and sweets, but I have a body to look after and too much of them won't do me any good. I may love stretching and relaxing but if I don't get up and move around I will become ill. Looking after the body I have been given is somewhat complicated, as it comes with some non-standard variations which in this society are seen as medical problems... but even if I were "healthy", the same would apply. Taking good care of myself means recognising that my instincts may be incorrect, or that I may be so far out of touch with my instincts that I need to base my decisions on some general rules or principles.

I think the same is true of my relationship with God. No, I should not do things that I do not do out of love -- but that doesn't mean that I will always be ecstatically happy about everything I undertake. My short-term will and my long-term goals may be out of sync. My ability to discern God's will for my life may be unreliable, or even absent.

God gives us freedom to ignore God, freedom to refrain from an active relationship with God... in order that we can truly enter that relationship in love, not out of fear.

But that means the relationship can be absent or distant. It means we can go about our merry ways, oblivious. We can become so distracted that we don't listen to God's calling to us, Beloved,, or so wrapped up in our own lives that we don't even think to look at the loving work we could do in the world.

I think that's part of why it's important for many people to spend some time in solitude, away from the clamour of all the things that we allow to make claims on our time and energy, away from the people we serve not because we love them adn they need, but for some other reason. Sometimes in the silence we can hear.

I think that just as surely it is important to be part of human communities, to open our eyes to one another's wounds, to see something of God in the earnest schoolteacher, in the lady who does the church flowers... to see Christ in the people we would classify as "good" or "friends" or "saintly" and in those we might rather avoid: the sick, the distressed, the poor; the ones who have been taught no manners at all; the abusive parent, the alcoholic sibling. Even the people who have hurt us most, the people who are most frightening to us, the people who seem monstrous, are beloved children of God.

We are called to share what we have. That means being honest with ourselves and others about what we have, and about what we don't have.

Learning to look after my body means listening to my instincts, but also observing what happens when I do some things or avoid others. It means consulting people who are experts, at least some of the time, and gathering information from others. I cannot look after my body by ignoring every symptom I have until it becomes crippling; neither can I look after my body by allowing slight aches and pains to send me to bed wailing of my discomfort. There is a continual process of observation, fact-checking, reflection. I have to be willing to find out that I am wrong, that I have been mistaken, if I am to learn well.

So, too, with a relationship with God. I need the reflective solitude and I need the close-knit community and I need the extended fellowship. To discern God's will for me in the world, I need to listen to God and I need to look at the world, and if I neglect either then I run the risk of destroying myself in vain to serve others, or harming others to serve my own short-term whims.

Perhaps Lent is, if anything, a time of examination rather than penitence, a time of exploration rather than contrition. Oh, penitence and contrition will probably come along anyway if we see, in our examination and exploration, how badly we have treated one another. But they aren't the purpose, they aren't the point.

As for the claim that you don't need Lent to do that -- no, but we time-bound humans tend to function well with a certain amount of cyclical routine. I don't need Christmas to learn about Emmanuel, God-with-us, but it helps. I don't need St Valentine's Day to know Sweetie loves me or to tell him how very much I love him, and indeed we often don't do anything special that day, but when we do it is a pleasure. And frankly, I do schedule time to be especially aware of God. I make time for Morning Prayer, why not make time for Lent? I use an alarm clock, why not a calendar?

A fast post.

2010-02-17T17:29:00.006Z

I don't have much time to write this before I have to leave. God isn't time-bound but I am... and so I am a creature of rehearsals, of attending services at the same time as others, a creature of liturgical seasons even. I think outside of time, the Kingdom of God exists, and this time-bound experience of ours is part of that. So my haste is part of Paradise, and yet there is no hurry. But that's not what I meant to write about today!

There is much ado, as always at this time of year, about fasting, giving things up for Lent or for a day or a week. And there is much ado in response, from people saying, "Hey, this isn't just about self-help, you know, don't forget you're a beloved child of God" and they are, of course, absolutely right.

Margaret said,

So, if you must, do those things that help you know deep inside that you are nothing but dust, then GET OVER IT; know that you are redeemed, get over it, and get on to the true fast of reconciling the world to God. That is our vocation.

+Nick Baines said,

It [Lent] gives us the space to be grasped again by the overwhelming generosity of world as gift, of life as gift, of time as gift, of gifts as gift. Lent should make us more generous in and to the world, gracious for the world and committed in and to the world.

Just because you wanted yet another opinion, yet another piece of advice from an armchair theologian:

I say, to embark on a programme of self-improvement, to attempt to become more yourself, more who you really are? That can be about God. That can be part of "getting over it". That can be exercising the gift of freedom.

So by all means, fast during Lent if you want to. Give something up, take something on. Do it in remembrance and celebration of God's love for you. Do it as an extension of that love to the rest of the world. Do not fast because you think you should, or you want to be seen to do it, or because you're worried about not being holy enough in the eyes of God or think somehow God will love you more if you do the "right" things. There's probably a fancy theological word for that kind of manipulative behaviour.

God already loves you, with a love so large and bright we cannot bear to look straight at it and yet so small and silent it is there even when in all our searching we think we just find darkness. There is nowhere that love cannot go. There is nothing unlawful, nothing you can ever do that will make God love you any less. Love is stronger than any human sin. Love is stronger than death. Love is stronger. That's the point.

So if you're going to take on some positive habit, or give up some perceived vice, do it as a response to that love. I wrote that the other way around first time -- take on some perceived vice, give up some positive habit! Maybe I should have left it! But whether you do something or nothing, do it with a commitment to stop if it ceases to be, literally, a labour of love. If you don't love it, maybe God has other plans for you.

Among many clergy I know, and others involved in church, there is a feeling of overwhelm, of impending exhaustion. We all have these extra things, Lent courses for churched and unchurched, extra services, and most seem to take on some Lenten practice or other as well. And then just when you're getting used to the routine of it but have been doing it long enough to know it really isn't sustainable and you're starting to get the hang of Daylight Saving Time but really could have done with keeping that hour of sleep and found out that the person who usually brings you palms has pruned early this year and there aren't any, there is Holy Week with even more to do and the organist can only be at half the services because their other church pays more and maybe nobody will turn up anyway and someone is sure it was different last year and someone has moved the key to the flower cupboard. You wanted a broken and contrite heart, Lord? What you're getting is a desperately exhausted one!

And breathe.

Do what preparation you have to, but do yourself a favour and remember every day that you are loved now whether the service sheet for Palm Sunday is finished or not. Do yourself a favour and don't worry too much about how you will feel at the very busiest time... you'll get through it. Make a healthy, tasty casserole and freeze it in single-serving portions so you keep yourself fed during the busiest times. Book a retreat, even a half day of quiet somewhere, if you haven't already done so. Outsource as much of the paperwork as you can.

Then take Lent one day at a time, one step at a time, one breath at a time, knowing you will come out the other side of it even if right now you don't know where or how.

Fast slowly.

One year blogiversary

2010-02-14T07:46:00.001Z

I'm probably writing this so late that everyone else has said it already. I've been trying to write it for the better part of a week, and I keep tripping over the words.

I read the Archbishop of Canterbury's address to General Synod on Tuesday. I read it, and my soul hurt.

I share some of his vision, I think. I agree that some of the language around so many debates within the Church is so adversarial, so us-and-them, that it seems people are saying "yes, we want you, but only on our terms", and I wonder whether this is really constructive.

++Rowan Williams speaks of a vision of Church where we all consider how our behaviour affects everyone else before acting. That is commendable. I share such a dream; so do many, many others, I think. How many times have I written about the ultimate interconnectedness of things, about the fact that none of our actions, however small, are in isolation from the rest of the world? What I eat for breakfast does actually affect you who are reading this, in some very small and immeasurable but definite way. What you do can show me, in small ways and large, how I might act for good in the world.

I love the Archbishop's vision of mutual care and learning. But I do not think it can be enforced; I do not think it can come about by people following "guidelines" to fit into one "structure" or another. I think freedom is something we already have, not something we can grant or withhold from one another. He speaks of restraint, as if the imposition of restraint (or not granting certain freedoms) will make people think of others before themselves... I think obedience without freedom is meaningless. He speaks of an Anglican Covenant as something which will encourage people to judge their own actions with more care, but he forgets that many people will go along with it for fear of being found unworthy by human judges.

I think that ++Rowan Williams has confused causation and correlation. He says:

To be free is to be free for relation; free to contribute what is given to us into the life of the neighbour, for the sake of their formation in Christ’s likeness, with the Holy Spirit carrying that gift from heart to heart and life to life. Fullness of freedom for each of us is in contributing to the sanctification of the neighbour. It is never simply a matter of balancing liberties, but of going to another level of thinking about liberty.

but he does not explore the possibility that those he calls to exhibit "restraint" have followed their own very valid discernment processes; he does not acknowledge that the gifts of the Holy Spirit may be exhibited differently in different people, different places, different contexts. He does not seem to see that just because diligent, caring consideration of the whole Body of Christ sometimes leads to restraint, does not mean that it always will. He does not seem to see that imposing restraint externally, rather than leading to open hearts filled with the Holy Spirit, is likely to close them.

The whole thing puts me in mind of a parent trying to sort out a squabble between siblings, not acknowledging why either did the things they did and telling one and then the other to say they are sorry. The result is surly, forced apologies, and lots of resentment for the next round of squabbles.

I know as well as anyone that it is possible to find freedom in structure. I am someone who needs a lot of structure in my life, in order to do my work effectively. Thinking about every action I take and the full range of consequences of that action would wear me out in about half a day: there are infinite possibilities, and infinite repercussions of every thing that I do, and my awareness of that is overwhelming. I need rules to systematize that, and I follow what could, I suppose, be called a Rule; I have consciously-chosen routines for different times of the day and for the most part I follow them. And on a day-to-day basis my reasoning has to be "structure says it's time to do the washing-up, so I'm going to do the washing-up now". Contrary to making me feel trapped, this structure is, for me, very freeing. I have chosen the rules as a useful strategy for getting through each day and they free me, at least partly, from the endless cascade of "what if...?" that I would get stuck in without them, or from the disengagement of just allowing routines to happen as a reaction to everything else, an unconscious set of habits. Rules for me are a strategic adaptation to the fact that every second of every day I must decide what to do next and I must often do so with insufficient information.

But a structure or set of rules that works for someone else wouldn't work for me, and what works for me might be disastrous for someone else. There are things about my structure that are useful for others, and things others do that would be useful for me. And every so often I find that I've failed to take account of something, that my strategic rules aren't working so well any more, and I have to stop and evaluate and make some changes. This is all considered quite normal, and as an adult it is recognised both that choosing my habits and structures and rules is my responsibility, and that I will sometimes mess up or need to make changes. People might have opinions on my actions, they might want to give me advice or indeed I might want to ask their advice, but ultimately I am the one who has to make the decisions. Every second of every day, I am choosing... even if what I'm choosing is to follow the rules I've chosen for myself.

Organisations, too, choose structures and rules, laws even, to navigate the intricacies of daily life in an uncertain world. Different communities in different contexts will arrive at some different conclusions as to the best way forward. So why does the Archbishop of Canterbury think that it's appropriate to chastise and scold those who re-evaluate some of their rules? Why does he think that imposing a structure externally will bring about the lovingkindness and awareness he so desires?

Lovingkindness isn't something that can be legislated, something that can be enforced. Compassion isn't something we learn by being told explicitly how to behave in a given situation; it's something we pick up by observation and example, something we might catch, like 'flu but longer in duration.

One reason I've struggled to write this post is because in my reaction to this is so full of questioning others and thinking I know some of the way. That isn't a particularly loving response. Love does not say "you are wrong" but "what can I do that would be constructive?".

I'm not sure about the answer to that. I think it does mean continuing to stay involved with local communities, continuing to do the work I do and to find out what other work there is that I could do. I think it means continuing to blog, not from a perspective of saying what I think is right but from a perspective of reflecting, of exploring. And I think it means hanging onto hope, letting go of fear, reminding myself that love is stronger than death.

Today is my one year blogiversary. I was surprised by the warm welcome I got last year; I continue to be surprised by the friends I've met and the things I've learned. Thank you all for making it such a wonderful year in so many ways.

Creation and evangelism.

2010-02-04T18:05:00.006Z

I went to Evensong last night at a local church; not Nearest Church, where I've been attending morning services, but another one.

It was good to have some sung psalmody, and indeed the Magnificat and the Nunc dimmitis sung congregationally as well. I'm not very good at singing these without music dots and it's hard to do in a huge church with 10 people dotted around it (any English person walking into a church full of strangers will sit as far from all the others as seems reasonably possible and this is horrible for singing together), but I went, and it was good.

What I didn't like was the sermon.

I cannot tell how much the priest was preaching to the evangelicals I know exist among that congregation, and how much he believes of what he said. The main thrust of his sermon was that we should value, cherish and care for all of God's creation, because the awe and wonder it can inspire in some people is an important tool for evangelism. His view of human arts -- architecture, music, poetry, and flower-arranging (his example, not mine) -- is also that these are to be kept, to be honoured, because they may be useful in evangelising the unchurched. Before the service, during the announcements, the same priest was talking about friendship and community outreach in the same terms, stating that the hire of the hall to a local group was good not only because it brought in income, but because it facilitated a new set of relationships which might be a fruitful field for evangelism.

I am not one to put a huge stock in literal interpretation of the Bible, as any long-time reader will know. But the Old Testament reading, Genesis 1.1 - 2.3, seems quite clear to me. The passage contains the words "God saw that it was good" no fewer than six times, and then adds "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." Not "it was good because it made people see God" or any of that. Just, plain and simple, God saw that it was good.

Do we need more reason than that?

It seems to me that means and end have been confused.

It's true enough that people may be drawn to faith through their wonder at the beauty of creation. Surely the sun and moon are beautiful and may remind us that God is God; much of my sense of the holy is grounded in sheer awe at the natural world. But surely also the centipede is created by God and therefore is also good, even if to most humans it seems repulsive. Surely even the rat and the louse are God's creatures, regardless of our revulsion. Are they less good than a waterfall, in God's eyes rather than in our human context? Truly the stars sing of God's majesty, but so do the grasshoppers. Either might bring someone to consider the Creator behind the creation, but they do not somehow fail in their createdness if they don't. God made them and saw that they were good.

It's true enough that people may be drawn to faith through the observation of human-created artefacts...grand cathedrals, concert halls and the concerts within them, shuttles that fly to the moon, poetry that sticks in one's mind, a child's scribblings on the back of old envelopes. Indeed, music has been and, I suspect, always will be an important part of my own journey to and in faith. It's a lot more complex than "listening to or singing the music leads to belief in this or that doctrine" and I suspect that most paths are winding, most journeys are complex. There's no denying that the creations of human beings can glorify God and that sometimes people may be receptive to that. But if a cathedral fails to inspire someone, should it not have been built? If a piece of music falls on deaf ears, either spiritually or literally, should we condemn it as bad because we cannot conceive of a use for it? Context is important, purpose is important, but to reject all that does not fit our human-defined contexts would be a grave error.

It's true enough that people may be drawn to faith, or to church, through their relationships with others. Again, this has certainly been the case for me. Where would I be today without a kind word here, a bit of quiet understanding there, the hands that caught me as I stumbled, kept me from hitting the ground and helped me keep my balance until I found my feet again? Where would I be today without those who continue to offer me support and guidance? I have encountered people who somehow bring light, and I have wondered what makes them shine so brightly. But are those who help me, those who show me love, somehow more worthy in the eyes of God than those who are indifferent, or may even hurt me in their fear and brokenness? I don't think so. Taking a less personal approach, is a bishop a better person than someone who works at a supermarket? Is a hardworking father who pays his taxes, donates to charity, spends time with his family and volunteers at his local church somehow more Godly, more valuable, than the homeless, frightened refugee who sneaks in halfway through the service to pocket as many biscuits as she can before the wardens notice? No! All these are made in the image of God. All these are God's dearly-beloved children.

I attempt to serve others not because I wish to influence them into thinking or behaving more like I do, but because I love them, or because even if I cannot find it in myself to love them I believe that God loves them. I am human and this is complicated and difficult but I do try to eliminate in myself any expectation of reward for this: love does not entrap.

I pray, not so that others might see or know of me praying and feel that they should too, but because I have something to say to God (usually "Help!" or "Thanks!" or "I don't understand!" or "I love you!") and I believe God just might have something to say back, if I can but listen. I sometimes delight in praying together with others and sometimes find it difficult, but my prayers are prayers, not some sort of social propaganda.

I write and play music as part of service to others but also so that God might hear it, and so that others might explore their faith through music as I have done, or if they so wish, join me in the most authentic form of prayer available to me. As a musician involved in church liturgy I do hope that others will use music as a route to worship and prayer, and I aim to facilitate that, but never to force it. As a teacher I try to give people the tools of my art, to empower them to find their own creative voice, but I know full well that I cannot make anyone choose what to do with those tools or whether to use them.

I sing of my sorrows and joys, frustrations and triumphs, struggles and wonders, complaints and gratitude. I sing my confusion and pain, and my love and praise, not to change others to do my will, but to reconcile my human will to God's divine love and mercy, justice and majesty.

"Natural" wonders, created artwork, and the love we can feel for one another -- these are all precious gifts from God, and they are to be valued and cherished. To my mind, using them with the intent of manipulating others to be more like ourselves is not worshipful, but idolatrous.

Church

2010-02-04T18:05:00.005Z

It seems such a long time ago I was writing posts about searching for a local church to attend.

I settled on Nearest Church, partly because of the warm welcome given me by the congregation there. I haven't been disappointed.

I've had some quality mentorship and guidance from the organist there; I am involved in choir directing, choosing hymns, and pretty much anything to do with music. I've been practising the organ and playing for services occasionally when Networking Organist can't be there. The choir, like the congregation, is small but caring.

Gentle Vicar has been on sabbatical for the last few months, so I haven't gotten to know him any better. Having visiting clergy has been interesting, but I'm looking forward to his return.

Delightful Reader I was shy of at first, but we are slowly getting to know one another. She is also very supportive, but in a different way than Networking Organist is.

It isn't all kittens and cookies...there are issues. There are parishioners who would really rather have a Resolution C parish, and stayed away when we had a female priest the other week. There are parishioners who don't get on with other parishioners, new arguments and ones that have been running for years. I think I've managed to stay clear of them so far but it's only a matter of time...But we rub along, somehow. We all need grace. One bread, you know?

I find myself struggling not to jump in and provide admin support. I can do the work; I worked in a synagogue for a few years, I grew up in a house with clergy in it, some of my best friends are church folks, and I'm reasonably competent with computers as long as someone will proofread for me.

But me taking over the secretarial work would not be best, in the long run. I know from past experience that office work is, ultimately, something that makes me very unhappy. I know I have difficulty with long-term follow-up on paperwork tasks, and I struggle with that enough in the secretarial side of my own work. Longer-term, I would be a poor secretary, but having me do the work for free would block progress toward a sustainable solution for them and block my own progress in work that is meaningful and fulfilling.

Yet, it needs to be done. It isn't any more fulfilling for the people who are doing it now. Most of the world is run by people doing what needs to be done, rather than what brings meaning to their lives, and why should I be any different? The perfectionist in me hates to see it being done badly, too -- not that I'd do it perfectly, but I see errors that are avoidable. So I find myself wondering whether there is some way that I could help without taking over, some way I could help streamline some processes and document others in such a way that people can do them without as much stress and fuss as now.

I am biding my time on this. I am waiting until Gentle Vicar is back, and has been back for a while. Much has changed in this community and it will take time for it to settle. If there's no sign of improved admin after 6 months I'll say something.

The musical situation is similar, in some ways. Networking Organist is not paid for the choir rehearsals or the admin work he does in connection with the choir (the sort of thing that might reasonably be passed to a secretary, if such a thing existed). He is paid below what is usual for the service on Sunday mornings. The choir is small and lacks confidence, though they are enthusiastic when given reason to be.

But with this, I can build something. I don't mind doing most of the work for free, because I'm learning a huge amount. Because of my training, because of the guidance Networking Organist gives me, because of my experience, I'm in a position to meet people where they are and show them a bit of what they can do. Networking Organist is really great -- when he puts me in a leadership position he is absolutely supportive, with any suggestions being made entirely behind-the-scenes and any questions from choir members referred to me. People seem to be responding. I have ideas for a children's choir and various other projects, and I'm being given the freedom to take my time figuring out what I want to do, even as I'm having one or two small things dropped on me when I'm ready.

At the same time, I go to Long Walk Church for Morning Prayer a couple of times a week if my dodgy hip (which has been very good recently) will let me, and although I've not been there for some time, I haven't lost sight of Church-by-the-Station. I'm not spreading my bets, exactly, or looking for another community -- for the time being I am committed to attending Nearest Church and getting involved there -- but these other connections are not to be abandoned. I've not worked out what I have to offer in these other contexts, but they seem important. I keep visiting Leafy Suburb Church when I can, though I'm never quite sure whether I want to go to see Ambassador for Compassion or because of some other gentle yearning for the warmth and caring of the community there. That connection seems important too.

I can't write about most of this stuff in any detail without destroying what anonymity I retain here, and I want to keep that anonymity so that when I do need to write about the difficult stuff, I can do so without fear of professional repercussions.

Making home

2010-01-31T07:12:00.006Z

I've been thinking about home, and about homelessness.

"Home" is a very important idea to me. Having moved so many times in my life, so often to places that I knew would be temporary, having a place that I think of as home is something that has often been absent from my life. I remember going to university, the first time and the second, and finding that my fellow students got homesick, a bit -- that never happened to me. I found they referred to their childhood homes, their parents' homes, as "home home", differentiating between that and the casual slang of home as wherever one happens to be sleeping for the time being. I've always had a roof over my head but this house I'm living in with Sweetie and Intrepid Anthropologist is the first place that has felt like a home, the first place that has been at once a sanctuary from the world and a base from which to do work in it.

Also I think I might be finding a spiritual home of sorts in Christianity, even in Anglicanism. I'm not sure. It does seem to be more about the people than the doctrine, more about the fellowship than the structure, and that makes me wonder whether any other community wouldn't do as well. There are certainly things that make me very uncomfortable, too. And yet -- no family home is without running arguments and conflicts. And no matter how much we wish for different parents, different siblings, most people wouldn't seriously consider giving up the ones they have.

At some point I started saying the Nicene Creed with everyone else. I still don't know how I can believe it. I still wouldn't have any trouble singing it. I don't know when I started, or whether I'll stop being able to say it. But right now, saying it and holding the tension seems to be important. Like my physical home, I find myself turning to this religion, these scriptures, this God, for spiritual solace and protection, and also as a base from which to work in the world. So that is where I am right now.

But that's not the only thing that's making me think about home. It's partly the home I do have here in Upper Suburbia, the spiritual home I and finding in Christianity (and there is nobody more surprised than I am about that!). It's partly... I've been thinking a lot about purpose lately, about vocation if you like. What am I actually for?

See, I thought I knew that. I'm a teacher and performer of music. I'm a creator. I find shiny things and show them to people, or make shiny things and show them to people, and this work makes me feel deeply fulfilled. It brings pain, it brings joy. I love this work. It doesn't feel onerous. It feels like a great privilege.

But every time I walk past a homeless person I wonder how it is that I have somewhere to stay and they don't. It really is a case of "there but for the grace of God go I." There, but for the social support that seemed to spring up around me while I was depressed, would I be. There, but for the institutional support that was offered to help me sort myself, would I be. There, but for the NHS, I almost certainly would be! My impulse, my instinct, is always to bring someone home to share what I have. At this point I don't know if I could deal with that, and I'm certain my housemates would have some pretty strong words. But that doesn't change the insistent scratching at the back of my soul.

I don't think this is a straightforward "do some work with the homeless" nudge, though.

The one thing that makes me think I probably won't end up on the street is that I believe if I had to I could perform my way off it again. As long as I'm able to sing I'll sing for my supper. I've done enough busking to know it can be a viable subsistence for me. There's not much to do about that but thank God, for the years of music tuition (almost none of it in singing), for the fairly good memory, for the experience busking previously, for the instrument I have -- this voice, this mind, this body. Wouldn't take me long to buy a tin whistle or a recorder, something that carries the sound further.

It doesn't take me long to think of half a dozen projects involving music and the homeless, or music and vulnerable people. It doesn't take me long to justify my existing work as a sort of musical guiding people home, helping them find and create their own safe space from which they can reach out to others -- the children I teach are often quite privileged, but that doesn't mean they always feel safe.

None of that feels like exactly the right thing, either.

I guess thing to do at this stage is to wait, and listen, and maybe take a few tentative steps. Volunteer at a shelter, wait and see if anything presents itself. Talk to people I trust with this sort of thing, see if anything presents itself. Pay attention: is it homelessness, particularly, that's making me feel this unease, or poverty? Or mental health issues? Or the general lostness of humanity that we all try to ignore but is absolutely obvious in the sight of a woman in her 50s wandering the streets looking for somewhere to sleep? Am I responding to some God-given part of who I am, or just trying to fix the world before breakfast again?

What is this insistent scratching at my soul telling me about how to serve God?

New media.

2010-01-24T16:56:00.003Z

This interview with Sam Cavender should be required reading for anyone involved in church and communication. I had a good laugh over some geek jokes, too.

Nick Baines has some comments on the Pope's recent speech which encouraged priests to blog, among other things.

I think of the internet a little differently than some people might. I am old enough to remember a time when I did not have a computer, and when most people I knew had no internet access. I can remember not knowing what the internet was. I can remember going to the library and using a card catalogue to look things up, making telephone calls to sort out social arrangements, ordering things from paper catalogues and waiting a month for them to arrive.

But I am young enough that looking things up online is second nature to me, and that living my life and doing my work without internet access seems like an impossibly limiting idea. It would just be so inconvenient! I would spend a lot more time looking for information and a lot less time getting on with my work.

The internet has been important to me socially for over a decade; long before Facebook and Twitter were around, I was on IRC channels and bulletin boards. I had an online diary before weblogs (originally links with commentary) really existed, and over half my current friends are people with whom my primary contact was initially online.

The technology to make all of this possible is new, but I don't think the concepts are all that new. I think of all of this as a sort of extension of written language: it's what happens when you take easy printing (so easy, even I can learn to type!) with easy and good information transfer technology.

This is my ignorant, non-historian's understanding of things. It isn't so much an accurate timeline as a conceptual one; progress in different areas has happened at different rates.

In a pre-literate (or certainly pre-literary) age, information would have to be spread orally and aurally, for the most part. If you wanted to know something you had to ask someone. In a world where most people couldn't read and write, that meant you had to get at least within shouting distance. And so to really get a feel for what your community was like, and what was going on, you had to take lots of different bits of information, remember them, evaluate their reliability, and synthesize them. Of course there were always people who could and would manipulate the information they gave out, to their advantage and possibly to the detriment of others. Oh, there was some more long-distance information -- signalling drums and all that -- but mostly, you had to be there.

Writing has changed that. Suddenly you can write something down for later. Your internal memory is not your only record. You can ask someone to write a contract, to make a record of their words.

That's new media.

But if not many people can read and write, it isn't very useful to do it... you might be better off hunting, or planting potatoes, or whatever. So you ended up with a class of people who could read and write, and would have access to much better information. As before, some would use that to the detriment of others and some would not. You might have a town crier who would read the news every night, or you might not. You might have clergy or politicians who could read and write; the literacy of ordinary folk would be, I imagine, variable.

The more people can read and write, the more information is available to those who can read, and the more useful it is to learn... but as any of you who have written letters by hand will appreciate, if there is only one copy of the information and it gets lost, it might have been better to commit it to memory, or make a second copy. That's labour-intensive, and it's expensive if you're writing on sheepskins. But people aren't stupid, and for the most part if they see an advantage in learning to read they'll try to do it.

Fast-forward to deadtree paper and to the printing press. Suddenly, information doesn't have to be copied down by hand. Suddenly you can teach a lot more people to read, because you have the materials to do it, and then you can print something quickly that they can all read and be influenced by.

That's new media.

There's money to be made in running a press and soon they're everywhere... but the money to pay to have something printed isn't so easy to come by, so those who have money and skills get to decide what people are reading. Things only get printed in multiple copies if it's worth the risk that the copies don't sell, or if they're very important. Eventually you get vanity publishing starting to happen among those who can afford it. Literacy is rising but there are still people who simply don't have time to read much or write much. And distribution of printed material is still expensive: paper isn't lightweight, and once it gets to its destination there is no guarantee your intended target will read it.

Further advances bring the ability to transmit sound to anyone with suitable receiving equipment. The increasing division of labour brought by the industrial revolution means that producing radio receivers can be done reasonably cheaply by mass manufacturing. You can bypass literacy now, to an extent: radio is an audio format. People are listening. If you can buy the airtime you can get your message across to huge numbers of people, all simultaneously. Television follows suit; it's visual, and so harder to slot into daily life while doing other work, but the principle of simultaneous broadcast is the same.

That's new media.

Of course, buying the airtime isn't all that cheap. And live broadcast is not always straightforward... soon enough there are recordings. Instead of having to perform something live every time it's performed you can record it instead, and broadcast it multiple times. Soon enough people have devices to play back recorded media, too, whenever they want. It keeps getting cheaper and easier, the middle-class keeps growing, and you have households with a huge variety of communication available: printed matter, tapes, videocassettes, radios, televisions. Letters from your sister-in-law, newspapers, textbooks, sheet music, novels, things to listen to while you run, while you eat, things to watch with your family, pornography, junk mail. So much information at your fingertips!

That's new media.

But most of that is still broadcast-oriented. You can write a letter back to your sister-in-law, and you can write a letter to the editor of your newspaper, but the latter might not get printed: the owners of the means of publishing are in control of that. The vast majority of people, now that there is so much out there, are consuming more media than they produce.

Technology, however, is getting cheaper. Soon you can photocopy a little essay you wrote, or a bunch of short stories, and post them to friends cheaply. Soon you can record your toddler's birthday party on videocassette, get a copy made by your media junkie friend, and send it to the grandparents who couldn't be there in person. Soon you can put a small recording device in your boot at a concert and make copies for other fans.

The fax machine comes along and you don't have to wait for the postal service any more. Soon fax machines are near-defunct as any listed number attracts huge amounts of rubbish advertising and something even better is born: e-mail. Now you can just type straight to your sister-in-law, your business associates. It isn't long until we're in the heady world of mailing lists, bulletin boards, websites. The entry barrier is still high but it's falling all the time and the Internet is getting more and more participatory.

Broadcasting doesn't matter so much any more.

I think that's the thing about "new media" that most stalwarts of traditional media miss. I don't want to read a news report I can't reply to, asking why something wasn't looked up in more detail or examining the wider implications of the story (or perhaps the narrower ones, if I'm looking at how my local community can respond to an interntional event). I don't want to take a sermon seriously if you don't at least show yourself willing to take some questions from the floor. I do listen to music but I create it, too. I do read books but I write, too. I'll probably never be considered a great composer; I'll certainly never be considered a great writer. But I do have something to say, and I'm going to say it. Only now I can say it, instead of to people living in my village or my immediate family, to whoever in the world wants to listen. It isn't just the people with enough money to try and make a return on their investment any more and, though access to the required technology in the developing world is not as readily available as here it is catching up -- look at Twitter and Iran, look at e-mailed reports out of Haiti. More and more and more people have a voice. Word of mouth is now a global phenomenon. There are moves to regulate this, but I think inevitably they will fail.

Out of that cacophony, no human can follow everything. I cannot monitor six billion trains of thought and expect to pick out the ones that bear some message for me, some meaning. But I can follow some, perhaps some nobody else follows the way that I would. I can listen and read and think and learn. I can give voice to my agreement or objections. I can receive and I can repeat, receive, repeat, and if everyone else does the same, we get some idea of our common interests, our common values, our common humanity. Through the waves that zip through the air to connect our words, our pictures, our songs, we can get some idea of our interconnectedness. Through our communication we can get some idea of our being in community, our communion with one another.

That's new media.

Outward signs

2009-12-28T08:41:00.004Z

I've been thinking about this one for a while.

When I was actively avoiding anything to do with Christianity -- remember there was around a decade of this -- it was easy to feel inundated by it. Frankly, I find it hard to have much sympathy for people who feel Christianity is becoming a minority faith, pushed to the sidelines. Just try keeping a faith where all the religious holidays mean you have to take time out of your allocated holiday, rather than having convenient Bank Holidays to help out with the major ones. Try having your strictly-kept Sabbath a day earlier than that of the established religion and finding that some of your local shops don't open on your other weekend day because of Sunday trading laws. The "secular" world in this country is still very Christian, from the perspective of anyone trying to follow Jewish law. And while I think changing public service adverts so that they don't have the word "Christmas" in is rather silly, I find the assumption that everyone is Christian very grating, too.

My experience of Christianity growing up was not the worst I have heard of, but it did lack the space for me to ask questions. My exposure to people who talked about their faith anywhere other than at church was limited to those who were quite evangelical in a "going around trying to save people" sort of way.

Something I've noticed recently is that my reactions have changed.

There was a time when seeing various Christian posters and advertisements -- you know the ones, they come in varying degrees of fundamentalism but tend to contain a passage from scripture and seem to be meant to encourage people to convert -- made me feel hounded or shouted at. Now I'm a lot calmer, and sometimes even take some comfort from the passages quoted.

There was a time when seeing someone wearing a cross or crucifix around their neck would make me feel quite uncomfortable, quite wary of that person. That was certainly a prejudiced reaction on my part, but one based on my previous experiences. Seeing someone wearing overtly Christian jewelery made me feel I had to brace myself for the possible barrage of being told what I ought or ought not do to be saved. I felt defensive. Again, I'm now a lot calmer; when I see someone wearing Christian jewelery, even the "let's go convert heathens!" fish, I mostly take comfort from the idea that this is someone trying to follow a set of values, someone trying to be kind and do what is right, and they may not always have the same interpretations as I do but at least they're trying. Or sometimes the cynic in me despairs that they may only be wearing a cross because it's fashionable.

The odd thing is that I've never much had trouble with clergy wandering around in collars, cassocks or whatever else their particular tradition asks that they wear. I suppose my stepdad being both clergy and in the military got me accustomed to the idea of "uniform" pretty early. As a musician, too, there are specific and distinctive working clothes I'm expected to wear on some occasions. But jewelery, bumper stickers, posters... these all seem optional, and when I was avoiding Christianity I found them intrusive and threatening because of the implied criticism I imagined they carried, the perception on my part that anyone who subscribed to this faith would set out to convert me.

I don't wear much jewelery myself. For several years I had a necklace an ex-boyfriend had given me, and I wore it always; eventually it broke and was lost. As a teenager I had a series of very simple rings, always for the middle finger of my left hand, but these too broke or were lost. I have a pearl necklace my mother gave me, a pendant and chain Intrepid Anthropologist gave me for a graduation gift, and a lovely glass snake that Sweetie gave me; I don't wear the first two often because they seem too special for every day, and I don't wear the third because I don't have an appropriate chain for it. My ears were pierced when I was 11 but it is several years since I even owned a pair of earrings; my skin tends to be quite sensitive so I had to stop wearing the earrings I had.

I've been thinking I'd quite like to wear something which reminds me of God... something I can wear all day most days, which I can feel, something symbolic... but I don't necessarily want it to be something which will mark me out as Christian. Why not? Well, partly because of my own experiences of feeling defensive. I don't want anyone to feel that way around me and I realise that many people would, including some of my students. But it's also because I still balk at labels, I still balk at being called Christian -- not only because I do not wish to be associated with the more harmful interpretations of Christianity, but because representing Christ on earth is a huge task, one at which I would almost certainly fail. I don't want to be associated with the negative aspects of Christianity, but I also don't want Christianity to be stuck with my mistakes. When I forget myself and act unkindly, when I am tired and make poor spending choices, when I am selfish -- I don't want the stranger on the street to lump that in with Christianity.

I can think of a few different symbols that will mean something to me but aren't so overtly Christian as to cause anyone any distress. There's no rush.

But I don't know whether this shyness on my part is right. I don't know whether my reluctance to label myself "Christian" despite increasing involvement with the Church is right. I don't know whether my reticence to identify my faith in a public and outward way is a symptom of fear, in a society which increasingly derides all theist religion and expects people to parcel up their faith and keep it private, or whether it is in keeping with the respect for others' experiences and beliefs that I value so much.