Home away from home

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.

Dialogue

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.

Leafy Suburb Church

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.

Words

This morning I played the organ for one of the hymns at Nearest Church. I had help. Networking Organist handled all the complicated stuff with stops, because the organ has been undergoing repairs lately and I've lost track of which bits work and which bits don't and I'm not quick enough yet to adapt mid-phrase if I realise something is wrong.

It went well.

It's sort of preparation for a few weeks from now, when Networking Organist isn't going to be there and I'm meant to play for the entire service.

Then I went off to Leafy Suburb Church for their Harvest Evensong.

Harvest Evensong at Leafy Suburb Church last autumn was my first ever Evensong.

This evening the vicar asked if I'd like to do a reading. So I said yes, and had a look at the readings, and went for the New Testament one. The Old Testament one was a lovely bit of Deuteronomy but the bit about the strong hand and the outstretched arm always makes me think of Pesach and it was a bit dissonant somehow. So I read Philippians 4:4-9.

A year ago you would not have convinced me that I would be reading bits of the New Testament aloud to other people in the context of a church service.

I am very, very tired. And I have that not-sure-if-I'm-flying-or-falling feeling again, but it feels okay because I also feel very much held in the palm of God's hand. There's a lightness, a freedom to it, a sort of ticklish feeling.

Some of the words keep coming back.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

This is what I referred to yesterday in proclaiming the Gospel by deed and word. I'm not not NOT one for in-your-face pushy evangelism. Partly that's because I have such an uneasy relationship with scripture myself. Partly that's because I don't think it's necessary.

I do think it's possible to make the Gospel known by our words, without going all Bible-quoting at people. If I had to distill my understanding of the Gospel I'd whittle it down to "God loves everyone." And I think making that known through our words means speaking with love and care, even when we have to address hard truths. I have in mind a friend who I think manages to do this better than most, so that I think she must have spent quite some time learning it. It seems to me that she is always ready to point out something good in a situation, always looking for that which can be encouraged and expanded upon. She does not make pointless platitudes; she does not shy away from difficult questions for herself or others and yet she never seems to be attacking. I don't know if this is because of her commitment to truth or her commitment to kindness but I admire it greatly.

Making the Gospel known by our deeds, I'm sure I've discussed before, but I'll have another crack at it. If the Really Short Version is "God loves everyone" then the way to make that known is to treat people with love.

That is a very tall order. It is a very serious invitation.

I have to stop and sleep soon. But it seems to me that to treat people with love is a whole lot easier if you actually feel love for them. And how do you learn to feel love for people you might dislike, might feel threatened by?

I fail at this every day. But when I do manage it, it's because I remember that God created everything, and start looking for what is good r Godly in a person. I might only get as far as 'this is a human being created by God and so deserves my respect and care'. I might not get as far as that.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

That does seem to help. Apparently the "think about" is translation from Greek which could also be "take account of". Take account of what is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy. Count your blessings, in other words.

Not bad advice.

I like that St Paul in his letters addresses people as "beloved" (or this translation uses that term). I love sitting in church and being addressed as "beloved" -- once or twice it has been a very stark reminder that I needed to hear. I discovered, today, that I also love reading that, speaking aloud to everyone there and realising that I am reading to people I love, on some level. Leafy Suburb Church is maybe a very easy place for that to happen because I do care very much for some of the people there, but it felt bigger than that. In English culture we don't like to use these terms of endearment, of familiarity, or admit that we might love anyone. There's this stiff upper lip to maintain, you know. But within the liturgy it is sort of okay... I like that.

I am wittering. It is time to sleep.

Goodnight, beloved.

Back to Church Sunday

Yesterday the C of E had "Back to Church Sunday" in many churches.

It's rather fitting that I spent it celebrating the ordination and first Eucharist of someone who has had a profound influence on my own return to church and indeed to Christianity. When I met this woman for the first time, I was still hurting too much from my own experiences to see what Christianity can be, but her actions as long as I've known her have painted a very challenging and compelling picture of what is possible.

I still don't know whether I'd call myself Christian, but I've been told a number of times now that my beliefs are more Christian than not. Would that my actions could also match this description, or at least the best spirit of it!

The services were beautiful, not in a "that's really pretty" sort of way (though there was plenty of aesthetic beauty about) but spiritually moving. It was wonderful to attend the ordination in the morning as a member of the congregation, and an honour and a joy to sing in the choir for the Eucharist in the evening.

So, yes. Deacon Friend is now also a priest. Since I've started associating with so many clergy online, Priest Friend really won't narrow things down, so I shall from now on refer to her here as Ambassador for Compassion.

A quick request

If you're a praying person and so inclined, please pray for Rev J who had a heart attack Friday night/Saturday morning. She sought help quickly and the prognosis is good, but it's still scary stuff. Please pray also for her parishioners.