Calling or Climbing?

The clocks leap forward an hour tonight and we enter British Summer Time. Note that the Empire is alive and well in our time-keeping. No "Daylight Saving Time" for Britannia, but good old BRITISH Summer Time. Pity our poor Colonial cousins with their bland Eastern Standard Time and the like.

And "in the good ol' summer time" I can step back a bit from the rant. So what if the pension plans are changing? I never started out on this ministerial path seeking financial security in work or retirement. If that had been my goal I would have stayed in secular employment. It was my choice to follow the Call as I perceived it, and as the Church ratified it. I could have walked away.

Some years ago, when seeking a move to a new post, I applied for a Team Vicar vacancy down on the north Devon coast. It was a superbly beautiful area, and the churches and people were very pleasant. Having waited for two hours whilst the Interviewing panel made their deliberations the Rector came out and told me that I had been unsuccessful. The reason given was that the panel did not think that becoming a Team Vicar after I had been “caretaking” an urban Team during a vacancy for the past two years was enough of a “step up the ladder”. They had failed to grasp that I have never sought to ascend any “ladder” of preferment. In contrast to some I trained with, who clearly had their sights set on reaching higher levels (one from my own Tutor Group is now an Archdeacon), I see myself as working in a parish setting until I retire. And then enjoying some freedom of offering assistance to a church without all the administration. Maybe one result of the pension changes is that since I no longer have to work to 69 to gain full entitlement, I am freed to retire earlier if I so wish.

That’s if I live that long, since that may not be in the plan …..

Oh yes, it's Spring ....

.... and everything in the garden's lovely.



Well, it is, actually.

So perhaps I ought to live in the garden .....

as a gnome ...

A job for life? (Hysterical laughter)

When I started my theological training I remember my Director of Ordinands saying to me, "You'll have a job for life, and the church will look after you to the end." This was just before they shafted me over the loss of my home. I was asked if I could find accommodation for the holidays whilst I was studying, and I said that I could go back to my parents. The deal was, if you give up securing your own future to work in the church, the church will provide for your future. Consequently I moved out of my little, comfortable, flat, put my belongings into storage, and for the next two years lived a nomadic lifestyle either in College "digs" or back in the parental nest. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I learnt that if I had said "No" to the question about holiday accommodation, the church would have paid the rental on my flat whilst I was in training. It still rankles.

Then as my second licensed post came to an end in 1996 I found myself still in the process of making applications for a new one. The Bishop refused to extend my licence, and I ended up down at the Employment Exchange drawing the "dole". They didn't have a category for an Anglican clergyman, so I had to be registered as a "Methodist minister". Well, I'm all for ecumenicalism. But so much for the promise of "a job for life!".

Now there's a revision of pension arrangements underway. From the time of my ordination in 1984 I have been aware that the church required 37 years of service to get the full pension. I knew that if I worked to the age of 69 I would just scrape in under the 70 years obligatory retirement level and get my full pension. But things are changing. The proposals are going forward that 40 years of service are required for a full pension. So I'm cut out of it. I shall never get the full entitlement as the goal posts have been moved. And what rubs salt into the wound is that the letter that accompanied this bit of news came with a response sheet since they wished to "consult" all the clergy before it went to General Synod. "Consult" be buggered. Their minds are made up, and this is nothing more than a political move so that they can say that we have been asked about the changes, and I said so on my reply form. What a waste of time, energy, effort and paper.

And then there's the lack of having any sort of stake in the housing market ....

Time for a very large Bacardi and coke.

Early spring

The last few days have been absolutely glorious! Warm sunshine, trees bursting into blossom, primroses, crocus and daffodils all coming out, and the windows open to let the fresh air of 2007 blow through the house.



And now all is set to change this coming week, with weather predictions of cold arctic gusts and wintry showers. It will be a shock to nature and to us, and just as I put away my thermals!

Revelation 6: 12 (b)

Well, you try taking a picture of the moon with a normal camera .... but tonight's total lunar eclipse has been quite a sight.

Travel the world

create your own visited countries map

This is a fun site - you customise it with the countries you have visited. I'm a definite European, with the exception of my one excursion onto the African continent.

Okay, I've calmed down now ...

... mainly due to the excellent thinking about the situation on today's posting on this blog.

http://emberdays.blogspot.com/

I'm still annoyed, but part of my annoyance is with myself and the ease with which I demonised the debate about which I heard a 15 second news report.

Lent might be a time to develop a more mature outlook.

Removing the speck and missing the beam

What a jolly communique from Dar-es-Salam. The congregated bishops in their collective wisdom have decided that there be a moratorium on the election and consecration of any more gay bishops (just as well it's not retrospective or half of the historic succession would have been barred!) and there be no more blessings of same-sex unions.

Now that we've disenfranchised all the gay people from expressing their faith in our churches, who's next? Shall we bar all who have been divorced? Let's shut out all who are separated. Why not get rid of those who are still single after, let's say, the age of 28. Surely if they were normal they'd be married by then and procreating according to the purposes revealed in Genesis.

Wait a minute! I've an even better idea. At a time when we're all beating our breasts and apologising for our historic actions over slavery, let's close the door to all those with a skin colour other than pink. After all, the church used to firmly declare that they had no souls anyway.

What a bunch of .....

I am seething at the news that 7 Anglican bishops have refused to take communion with the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA at the Anglican Conference in Tanzania. They seem to have forgotten just who it is that invites them to the Supper. It makes me ashamed to be part of the Anglican Communion. The sooner it falls apart, the better.

Lenten discipline of assassination

This morning I had a go at culling some of my books. I started on the Bibles on shelf seven of one of the two stacks of shelves in my study (each has 8 shelves), and twenty minutes later I was half-way along that same shelf and not a single volume had been discarded. Instead I had browsed, and read a section from a Ferrar Fenton 1906 translation of the Bible that was given to me many years ago in Brighton by two elderly ladies who were aunts of a friend of mine. Dolce and Nen were not church people, but they clearly thought that this book was something I should have, and they inscribed their gift on the front flyleaf.

I have numerous Bible translations, and this one by Ferrar Fenton is one I hardly ever pick up. Yet this morning I got engrossed in the tale from the First book of Kings of Solomon’s coming to power, and how he got rid of all those who were a danger to his throne. I hadn’t realised it before, but his right-hand man, Beniah-ben-Jhoiadah, was nothing less than a professional assassin. First of all he is sent to kill Adoniah, then he slays Joab as he clings to the altar in the Temple for sanctuary, and two years later, he is sent to dispatch Shemai, and thus, says the text “the kingship was secured to the hand of Solomon.”

We tend to have this image of Solomon as a ruler who governed with wisdom and tolerance, not only because we’re told that he prayed for the gift of wisdom, and the Lord granted it, but also because of the story of his judgement in the case of the two women who were arguing over the parentage of a baby. Maybe what we tend to forget is that the threat he uses to bring about the resolution of this case, the slicing of the baby in half, would not have had the desired result had he not had some reputation for being ruthless. Like all the rulers of his age, and since, when he came to power he carried out a cull of his enemies. Like Hitler with his “Night of the Long Knives” in June 1934 when he purged the SA of its leadership, Solomon systematically removed those who could raise rebellion against him.

My own attempt at a cull was a dismal failure. I have so many books and I need to thin them out, but every time I pick up one and look at it I think, “That may be useful, I’d better keep it”, no matter that I haven’t referred to it once in over 20 years of full-time ministry. I need to be more ruthless. Perhaps it should be my Lenten discipline to dispose of one book every day. That would get rid of 40 volumes, and it would be a start.

Lack of heat

I had already decided that the theme of this posting was going to be about the lack of heating in our ancient rural churches before I read my colleague’s blog about the loss of his central heating in his clerical abode on Long Island. He makes the point about how we are now so used to living in heated homes that a loss such as this is seen as a crisis by some. Well, they should try coming over to the “old country” and worshipping in the churches in this Benefice.

In the two churches where I celebrated the Eucharist this morning, the breath from the sparse congregation plumed out of their mouths like smoke as they sang the hymns. One, having removed its ineffective bar heaters high on the nave walls, has just underpew heaters, and in the other the boiler has broken down and there are only ancient heaters under six or so pews.

I suggested that people brought blankets or hot-water bottles with them, but “We couldn’t do that” was the general response. My reply was “Why not?” If you know it’s going to be cold then why not prepare for it? It wouldn’t bother me if people sat there wrapped up if they were warm. How on earth did our worshipping forefathers manage in the “Little Ice-age” of the 18th century? There may have been stoves in some of the churches, and this old photograph of the church at Ilketshall St. Margaret shows such a contraption with the chimney going out of one of the south windows. But equally, some of the churches would have been without any sort of heating, yet the congregations (and clergy) survived.

It seems that we’re breeding church-goers who expect these ancient buildings to have the same level of warmth and comfort as their hothouse double-glazed hermetically-sealed homes. I think they're going to remain very disappointed ..... but, as my clerical comrade-in-arms says, probably much more healthy.

L'hiver sont arrive

But the Lord was not in the wind

Well, we didn’t get blown away this last week, but it was rough. No damage to the house or trees, but all around there are signs of the fierceness of the wind. One of the Scots Pine trees in the churchyard at Ilketshall St. John was snapped off about 9ft above the ground, the falling trunk missing the church and all the gravestones. Large branches off the same trees at St. Cross South Elmham, again falling onto the grass. Some tiles dislodged on the porch and chancel roof at Ilketshall St. Lawrence, which we were able to replace once it had all calmed down. A tree down in St. James South Elmham and another in All Saints SE. Large trees down at Flixton across the driveway to the Old Rectory and church car parking area. Tiles off roofs in Bungay, and lots of debris on the narrow lanes, which made driving a bit dodgy.

Although the power stayed on during the storm, we had two lengthy cuts yesterday, and I rummaged in the garage and got out the small camping gas stove to boil water, and, as darkness fell, an oil lamp which supplemented the candles in the lounge. That’s one thing a Vicarage doesn’t run out of – candles.

Today, Sunday, has been calmer, though the temperature is now dropping and the forecast is for possible snow showers on Wednesday as the wind shifts to the north-east. That is when we usually get some snow as it blows down the North Sea from Scandinavia and hits land on the East Anglian “bump”.

So winter hasn’t finished with us yet even though the snowdrops are coming out already. They might get a shock! But at least the hosepipe ban has been lifted ......

BBC news picture of Brighton's Palace Pier

Constable or Turner?

The wind is howling again, but the open expanses of Suffolk do allow some rather spectacular views of the scudding clouds.
Is it a John Constable sky, or a one more suited to J W M Turner with his rainstorms and winds?

Hot chocolate

It's amazing how far chocolate powder will spread if you drop a full carton of "Grand Poulain" onto the kitchen worktop and the lid flies off .....

Perhaps someone's trying to tell me something ...

chocolate ... ...

diet ... ...

but it's been a stormy old day and I want some comfort ...

*slurp*

Stormy weather

Well, that was a bit rough! It’s a turbulent day, weather wise, rain, with a strong gale-force south-westerly blowing, and we’ve just had a squall pass through. The wind howling and blowing water under the garage door and the back passage door, roaring in the chimneys, and making the lights flicker. So I sit here with a mug of hot coffee and chomping on de-frosted a chocolate éclair and watching the cobwebs get blown away. I love weather like this. Put it down to my growing-up in Brighton where the “sou-westerlies” would scream in from the Atlantic and hammer into the sea-front. I would go down to the beach and watch the waves surge onto the promenade, the sound of the moving shingle almost deafening. On really rough days I’d head out to Rottingdean where the spray would drift across the road, and where you would continually have to lick the salt from your lips. If I was feeling in need of added excitement, I would make my way along the Undercliff Walk, a path some 10-15 feet wide that ran from East Brighton’s “Black Rock” the three or so miles eastwards along to Rottingdean. That was fun at high tide, for the waves would break over the walkway, and you would have to dash from one raised seat to the next to avoid them. It only ever caught me out the once, when I misjudged the wave on the narrowest part of the Walk. It was a wet and cold walk back to my flat that day.

The Global Warming predictions say that the weather is going to get more extreme. If you’re in a safe, dry house, then it can be enjoyable, but for those whose homes get damaged, or who are homeless, or who have to work out in such conditions, I do have sympathy. But I still look forward to experiencing more wild weather.

Twelfth night

Is this Twelfth Night or not? If you count Christmas Day as the First day of Christmas, then tonight is Twelfth Night, and all decorations, apart from a sprig of holly or greenery, should be down. But if you take Boxing Day as the First Day of Christmas, then it's tomorrow. And I was brought up with January 6th, Feast of the Epiphany, being Twelfth Night. But this year, and today, I've taken the decorations down, and the tree stands bare in the hall waiting to be carried outside. The baubles are wrapped in their tissue paper and packed into the old box, and the cards lie waiting to be trimmed into gift tags with a pair of pinking shears. And although I had to change three bulbs on the light sets at the start of the Feast, I haven't had to touch them since. We'll see how many still work when I unpack them at the end of this year.

The crib scene has been dismantled, and Mary, Joseph and the child now await the arrival of the Magi. That second version of the Crib will remain up until Candlemas, February 2nd, as will the illuminated star on the top of the church tower, as well as the one on the front of my house. A note of explanation will be attached to the garden fence.

I have managed to get the Christmas boxes away into the hall cupboard, but I can see that there is going to have to be a bit of a sort out later on. I have old suitcases piled in there which are filled with costumes, art materials, and camping equipment. I think they will have to be culled, maybe as part of Spring-cleaning.

I host my monthly Coffee Morning tomorrow, and the marmalade is bubbling on the stove. We move into the season of Light and Revelation. What Wise Men will knock at my door tomorrow? As is the custom in Eastern Europe, I shall put the initial letters K M G there to welcome them in place of the now-removed Christmas wreath.

Fast away the old year passes

2007 - and I saw it in watching one of my favourite films ....

... wishing that the Aston Martin DB5 had a longer run and was more successful in evading the pursuit.

It's a bit like watching "The Great Escape" and hoping that this time Steve McQueen manages to leap the barbed wire fence on his motorcycle and make it into Switzerland ....

My New Year's Resolution of getting off my backside and taking more exercise has already been put into practice. It's a glorious morning here, clear blue skies, bright sunshine, with a stiff and cool north-westerly breeze. Just right for walking, so I've tramped the foootpath circuit out of the village and across the fields to the south. The last section, across a sown field, was particularly muddy, and when I got back it took me ten minutes to clean off my boots. Still, as proof that I actually went ...


The walk isn't really long enough though, so I shall have to consult the footpaths map and see which one will take me through to Brooke Lane. That way I can return to the village on a dry road, rather than across our version of the Somme!

Hot coffee now, and maybe a biscuit since it's "elevenses" time.

I wonder what film's on the telly this afternoon?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The gate of the year

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown!" And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."

Darkness has fallen on this New Year’s Eve, and shortly I shall be walking across the road and down the gravel path to take the Watchnight Compline in St. Margaret’s church. The candles will be lit, and we shall sit in their warm glow and sing “Here we come a-wassailing” and “Deck the halls” – perhaps a bit secular, but these traditional songs speak of the New Year and so are fitting for the occasion.

And what of my New Year resolutions? Well, my main one is to regain my fitness. When I was in post in the large Midlands Potteries city I had access to all sorts of sporting facilities. I swam once and often twice a week, and played badminton weekly, but since moving down here to this rural location the opportunities are limited. The nearby town has a swimming pool, which local wags consistently rename on the direction signs “Swim_in Poo_”, which is quite descriptive. When I’ve been there on the late night public swimming times the pool has always been full of corpulent ladies of the female sex resting after their hour-long “aqua-robics” session, and standing around in the Shallow End nattering, thus preventing anyone from doing decent lengths. I haven’t been for ages.

But, surrounded as I am by glorious countryside, there’s no real excuse. All I have to do is put on my walking boots and stride out of the door. There’s a straight-forward road walk of a mile to the Brewery and pub at St. Peter’s, but then I’d have to buy a mug of their ale for the return journey, which wouldn’t do me any good at all.

Or there’s a circular route that takes me across several fields and back towards the village at the rear of the Old Vicarage. It’s a good circuit, but not that long. I shall need to study the footpath map a bit more and find an extension.

Maybe the resolution should be, rather than regain my fitness, to get out and do a walk, anywhere. Having tramped over 360 miles through France a decade or so ago, I know how well regular walking takes the weight off, and how it tones the muscles. I just need to get up and do it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

“So, I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night, And He led me toward the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.”

From “The Desert” 1908
Minnie Louise Haskins 1876 - 1957

Three French Hens

With Christmas Day now past, the 12 days of the Feast roll onward. Today there are three French Hens perched outside my study window as I draw together the prayers for the Feast of Holy Innocents tomorrow, and our opportunity to commemorate lost children whose days on earth were short-lived. In these small communities I know of about 12 families who have undergone such a loss, but I do not impose this remembrance upon then by including the names of their children without their knowledge or consent. As it is, I so far have two names to read out, one being that of my mother’s infant sister who only lived a few days. Up until about five years ago, when I did some research at the Family History Centre in London, my mother never knew why her sister died, but when I located and obtained a copy of the death certificate, it was revealed. No major surprises as it was due to illness, but to a certain extent it provided closure on that episode of her past. And this is the purpose of all remembrance – not so much to hear the names again, though this is valuable, but to complete the circle - to recognise the loss and thereby to rob it of its power.

In a way, the remembrance of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem closes a circle, and begins it again. The annual cycle of Christian Feasts and Festivals take us from before the birth, through the life, death and resurrection, and onward into the operations of the Holy Spirit, who has been there from the beginning, and who therefore was there with the Word that is made flesh, and so on ….

In this yearly celebration of light in darkness, the remembrance is strongest for those who see beyond the commercialism and secularisation and look to the manger throne. For those of us who can see the significance of this birth, Christmas is more than just remembrance. It’s part of the cycle of faith in our own lives that gives meaning to who and what we are. We are more than mere fireflies, here for a span and then extinguished in the dark. We have a significance that is greater than the sum of our parts. Our existence is bound up with the Word that is the light and life of all people, and which the darkness cannot overwhelm, no matter what human losses are suffered along the way.

Three French Hens sing their Trinitarian song for this season of festivities. Tomorrow the Four Calling Birds will invite us to the Eucharist, and along with the Innocents and other lost children we shall remember and celebrate the gift of God’s only-begotten Son.