Advent 1: The Journey

 

A few thoughts as our Advent journey begins.

I don’t know about you but I sometimes drive the car and end up at my destination without any detailed memory of the journey I’ve just done, especially if it’s one I do very often, like driving to church.  It’s as if I’m on automatic pilot.  Maybe I’m listening to the radio as I go along, or perhaps I’m planning next Sunday’s sermon in my mind.  So, I get to my destination, the church car park say, and I’ve barely noticed my journey. I can almost hear Rachel, my wife’s reaction to that confession: Well, that just explains your driving!

When I walk to church it feels so different.  I start off at the Manse and notice the neighbours, I cross the road and go over the railway bridge looking at the tube trains making their way to Baker Street, I’m now outside Tesco Express and if it’s lunchtime 150 students from our local Grammar School will also be there buying lunch, it’s then a walk up the high street, a nod to our neighbouring church of St Michael’s, make my way over the Zebra crossing, trying to always remember to be polite to the car drivers who have stopped, especially if I’m wearing my clerical collar, and then in, via the back door of Amersham Free Church. A ten minute journey in which I’ve probably met, noted and encountered 10 different people or events taking place that have made an impression on me. 

 Such a different journey walking to driving, because I’ve noticed so much more.

Advent, these next four weeks is often thought of as a waiting time, and in many ways that’s a good understanding, especially in our impatient society.  Yet, the idea that Advent is primarily about waiting can imply that nothing of too much importance will happen between Advent Sunday and Christmas Day.  Maybe viewed like one of my car drive experiences, just a journey of convenience, no more than just getting me, perhaps rather mindlessly, from A to B.

I’d rather look forward to the gift of these next four weeks and Sundays as a walk, instead of a drive.  A journey when much might, and probably will happen.  And in that sense, I tell myself this morning that Advent is just as much about watching as it is about waiting.  Watching is active.  Watching is being open to the whispers of God.  Watching is about becoming engaged and available.

So, as we start our Advent journey, rather than ask Sunday by Sunday ‘Are we nearly there yet’, let’s take time to notice the journey and enjoy the discoveries found round every corner along the way.

Stir Up Sunday

 

This coming Sunday, the one before Advent, is sometimes referred to as Stir Up Sunday, and  there are two reasons for this.

The first is liturgical and the second, perhaps more interestingly is culinary!

The traditional Collect for Sunday begins with the phrase: Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…

In terms of cooking this weekend is considered a good time for all home bakers to make the Christmas Pudding and give it a good stir in the process.  Originally a meat-based pudding eaten either before or alongside the main course on Christmas Day, it was made into a meat free, dried fruit based sweet pudding introduced into Britain from Germany by George I in 1714.  As well as stirring, other traditions surround the most important pudding of the year such as: mixing it from East to West in memory of the journey of The Wise Men and using 13 ingredients, representing Jesus and the twelve apostles!

Stir Up Sunday – it has a nice ring to it.

Of course, we all get stirred up about particular things; whether it’s faithfully shouting support for our favourite football team or just passionately standing by our family and friends through good times and bad. 

I think of the stirrings and passions of God.  Of the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters in the Creation Story, stirring up life and bringing it to birth.  Of Jesus whose passion for love and justice stirred up so many people, and not all of them on his side.

To call someone a stirrer today isn’t usually considered to be the kindest thing to say! Yet, we need people who get stirred up. Passionate people, full of convictions and energy to make positive changes in our world.

And we need that stirred up spirit in us too.  Keeping us passionate about loving our families, supporting our friends and playing our part in our community.

So, have a happy day on Sunday – and keep stirring!

War isn't normal...is it?

 

Well, I suppose you could argue the exact opposite; that war is, in fact, very normal.  Although Western Europe has been blessed by decades of peace since WWII, other conflicts have proliferated and, of course, since February Ukraine has dominated our thoughts and prayers.

It seems to me that when conflict so cruelly interrupts life, one of our very natural responses is to try to re-create, in some small way, a sense of normalcy around us.  The Revd Tubby Clayton, a WWI chaplain did this at Talbot House, in Belgium.  In those bleak days he started what became known as Toch H; an upstairs room that became a comforting ‘home from home’ for soldiers so far away from loved ones.

I saw a snippet of a BBC report a few days ago of a family from Ukraine who, when the bombs are falling on their town, crouch in the kitchen with their young daughters and together make bird song noises.  By re-creating a beautiful sound – one that used to be so normal - they seek to distract their daughters, so they don’t hear the abnormal noises of destruction outside.

Two thoughts regularly come into my mind around Remembrance Sunday.  Firstly, I note, with appreciation, the quiet and sincere dignity surrounding our commemorations.  Indeed, during my college years in London I twice attended Remembrance Sunday at The Cenotaph and will always recall the deep emotion upon hearing the massed bands strike up Elgar’s Nimrod.  Then, secondly, I think of the truly horrific opening scenes of the film Saving Private Ryan, set at the time of the Normandy Landings.  I’ve never managed to get passed the beginning of this film because of its graphic and truthful betrayal of the brutality of war.  Yet, for all that I think, if I were a history lecturer, I might make it required viewing for my students – with the hope that such an honest depiction may guide future generations not to go down the same avenues as previous ones.

So, I really do want to say, and to believe, and to strive for a world where war isn’t normal and should never be seen as inevitable.  It is the prayer I will be praying in my heart at 11 o’clock this Sunday as we salute, with gratitude, all those who gave their lives so that I, who have lived all my life in ‘freedom’, can write a blog such as this.

A Picture of Joy

 

Photos are important to us during this Season of Remembering.

During this time of All Saints and All Souls Tide, we held an In Love and Remembrance service at church.  People attended who had held funerals here over recent months, or whose loved one’s service I had had the privilege of conducting up at The Crematorium.

Whilst tea was served after our time in church, one lady, whose husband’s service I had taken, was keen to walk me down the corridor and show me a lovely picture of her husband as a young boy in our Sunday School many, many decades ago.  It was part of a display of archive photos currently in the Carey Room celebrating 60 years of our present building.  There he was, sitting with his Sunday School class at a trestle table in the old church hall.  This picture was a precious window into the reality of the past and it was good to linger in front of it together.

I’ve often heard people say that if the house caught fire the most important commodity they’d run out with would be the family photo albums.  Indeed, one friend even told me recently that for years their albums lived in a cupboard by the front door for that very reason. 

The first photo portrait, actually it was a selfie, ever taken was in 1839.  I was amazed it was so early in the nineteenth century.  By then photography had moved on enough for Robert Cornelius from Philadelphia, to take a self-portrait.  It had to be done in the open, to catch enough light, with the shutter being held for a whole minute – so no blinking!

Over half term we visited Vienna and on Austria’s National Day we went to Schloss Belvedere on the outskirts of the city.  It was once an Archduke’s palace and is now an art gallery.  Back in 1955 it was the venue for the signing of the State Treaty that gave Austria back its independence after the country was occupied by the Allied Powers after the Second World War.  There are lots of impressive photos of the dignitaries attending that seminal moment in Austria’s modern history, yet the one I remember most in the exhibition was of the crowd looking up to the balcony as the State Treaty was brought out and held aloft for all to see; it struck me as a picture of such joy.  A snap shoot into the soul of Austrians in 1955 as they stood with immense hope on that first day of their new republic.

November offers us this season of remembrance with both All Soul’s Tide and Armistice Day held in the first half of the month.  The pictures we have in our minds will carry a mixture of emotions because life is made up of light and darkness.  And maybe the most precious images we carry in our hearts will not be of great public occasions, but small intimate moments shared between family and friends when love went deep and joy felt tangible.

And as every driving instructor will tell you, we look back (not too long and not too short) so we can go forward with confidence, knowing more precisely where we are on our journey.