All good gifts around us...

I guess like many churches we are celebrating Harvest this weekend.  As I left the building this morning folks were bringing in flowers and foliage to decorate the Sanctuary - creating a bit of the countryside in our worship space.

Amersham blends town and country rather well.  As a 'townie' I enjoy living here - a compact community at the end of a London Tube line!  Yet drive just a couple of miles outside of town and you are immediately in the rural context of 'leafy Bucks'.  I realised that more than ever on the Churches on the Hill walk one Sunday evening over the summer - we wandered through fields full of corn and it was simply beautiful!

Although I enjoy the countryside I'm not really sure that the quietness of a village would be my cup of tea.  That said I'm transfixed by Thomas Hardy's accounts of rural Dorset life in the middle of the 19th century.  He paints both the charm and the challenge of living at that pre-industrialised moment in history.

One of our folk at AFC has given me their own version of the Harvest hymn, We plough the fields and scatter - or at least verse one - and it goes like this:

Our food is grown by farmers
Who harvest all the crops
And most of us do little more
Than buy it in the shops
We take it all for granted
And rarely pause for thought
How seeds which have been planted
Become the food we've brought

Behind the humour there is the truth that most of us are quite divorced from how a harvest actually comes about.

This festival throws up many issues.

The Psalms often extol a Creator God as in Psalm 8.  And to many people they do feel 'closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth'.  Yet it's also true that the natural world is  'red in tooth and claw' and not always the calm idly we pretend.  In fact sometimes the sheer force and seeming brutality of the natural order hardly seems to point to a benevolent God at all.

These are complex issues.  This week a quietly spoken Pope reminded a powerful President of the need for wise and careful stewardship of the planet.  And the unfolding human drama of the refugees isn't one with an easy or straightforward solution even if it is an issue that should begin with a spirit of compassion and generosity of spirit.

At this Harvest time it seems to me that we not only celebrate an abundant and beautiful world around us but we commit ourselves to sharing with God in its stewardship - even its 'recreation'.

All good wishes,

Ian

Carpe Diem

On Saturday evening we enjoyed a concert of Baroque music at St Martin in the Fields.  The programme included Pachelbel's Canon, Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and Vivaldi's Four Seasons.  As well as being struck by the beauty of the music I was also intrigued by the biographical notes alongside each composer's name - in particular (for some reason that now escapes me!) how old, or young they were when they died.  It's hard to believe that Mozart - who seems to have composed a billion masterpieces - died aged 35. Pachelbel at 53, Vivaldi reaching 63 and Bach making it till 65.  None of them making the bible's 'three score years and ten' let along today's expectations of living well into our eighties and even nineties.

What really struck me - especially about Mozart - was just how much they achieved in so short a time frame.

I suspect my mood might also have been influenced by the knowledge that this Saturday I'm preaching at the Memorial Service for a dear friend, The Revd Dr John Tattersall who was my 'mentor' whilst I was at Spurgeon's College and who died a few months ago out in the USA aged just 70.

None of us in our house speak Latin but we often use the aphorism from that language which goes Carpe Diem - Seize the Day!  We usually shout it trying to get the boys out of bed!

Although Woody Allen tried to make us all laugh by saying of his death that he'd prefer not to be there when it happened - the truth is we all have a finite amount of time and making the most of it - by seizing the day - seems to me to be a very positive way of approaching the days and hopefully years that are left to us - and also one that honours God who has given us this gift in the first place.

Life is precious - so Carpe Diem!

With best wishes,

Ian

Amazing Grace

We've spent part of the summer this year in The United States.  Firstly in Princeton - a small New Jersey township dominated by its prestigious Ivy League university.  There are lots of Presbyterians in Princeton!  In fact we were amazed at how full the Presbyterian church was on the Sunday we worshipped with this friendly and vibrant congregation on Nassau Street.

The last five days of the holiday saw us move up to New York and it's difficult to imagine a greater contrast with sleepy Princeton.  If Mum and Dad rather preferred the township our two sons reveled in the city!

On our last evening our youngest son treated us to a surprise - planned and paid for by him. We had no idea what was in store for us as we left our hotel off Broadway and walked up to Times Square.  Eventually we arrived outside the Nederlander Theatre - he had tickets for us to see a new show called 'Amazing Grace' - a musical about the life of the hymn writer John Newton!

Ever since I learnt about this Buckinghamshire cleric, Newton, in Sunday School as I was growing up he's been a hero of mine.  I love his story of being press ganged into the navy, living for a time as a slave himself before actually becoming a slave ship captain, of his 'encounter' with God in a fierce ocean storm, his time as tide-surveyor in Liverpool and then his two parishes as an Anglican priest, firstly in Olney alongside the English hymnwriter William Cowper and then opposite the Bank of England at St Mary's Woolnorth where he befriended the abolitionist Wilberforce.  Newton's was such a dramatic life and we are all the richer for having his hymns - such as Glorious things, and How sweet the name of Jesus sounds as well as Amazing Grace, in our books today.

The Nederlander Theatre on Broadway has a reputation for taking historical figures and working them into a musical.  The Wall Street Journal gave the thumbs up to this production saying it was 'One of the best looking musicals to reach New York in recent seasons'!

I loved it too - although I do recognise there was a certain amount of dramatic license with the plot!!

I loved the fact that in the middle of this most cosmopolitan of cities we were listening to songs and dialogue charting the life of a man who experienced the touch of God in his life so much that he turned full circle from slave ship captain to abolitionist.

There were some great songs in the show we saw but if the standing ovation at the end was anything to go by it was the last number that did it for most of us.  It started quietly with a lone African girl singing the first verse of Amazing Grace and one by one members of the cast joined her on stage until, by the time of the last verse, everyone was present singing the old sea captain's song about the love and grace of God that blesses and dignifies every human life on the planet.

It was a great message - with not a dry eye in the house!

best wishes,

Ian

The Bluebird Cafe!

On one of the sunniest days of the year this week we drove down to Southampton to visit my brother and his family.  His son, a golfing pro working in China, was on holiday and spending time with them so we popped down to see him too.

I've not lived in that part of the world now for thirty years but I 'finished' my growing up there so my memories of the area come from one of the most formative periods of my life.

Two things struck me as we went through the day.

In the afternoon we walked by the coast at Lee On Solent - ice cream in hand.  We passed the Bluebird Cafe and immediately my mind went back to the days I would take my grandfather there.  He was living with us and was virtually blind so occasionally I'd drive him over to the Bluebird for coffee and a Danish pastry.  He loved those simple outings.  And there it was, this small seaside cafe, three decades on still thriving and serving up coffee and Danish to other grandads and sons!

We move on and even leave an area - but the story continues in the places we've left behind.  We experience that in towns we've lived in, churches we've been part of and even cafes we used to visit.  Our lives touch for a time but it is ultimately temporary.

The other thing that struck me is that with family it is different - there is a certain continuity.  This week I saw my brother again - we've known each other now for longer than we knew our parents! Decades come and go, our respective children grow up and leave home, yet still our stories interweave and are permanently connected.  A 'constant' to be valued and worked at - don't you think?

Best wishes,

Ian
Blog holiday now for a few weeks!

Who are Funerals for?

This morning as I met a 'parishioner' at The Crematorium she said to me with a gentle grin 'We must stop meeting like this'.  That's because some of my congregation have attended two services there this week as we've said 'farewell' to two dear friends of the church; one on Wednesday and another today.

I've spent some of this week asking myself the question 'Who are funerals for?' In truth I have quizzed myself on this topic before - I was simply reflecting on it again because of the prominence of this rite pf passage amongst us this week.

There's no doubt that the service is to honour and celebrate the departed.  We are there to remember that person - if we can, in a spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude.  Funerals become so much better when some thing of the one we are commending to God shines through making the service more personal and intimate.

Yet funerals are also most certainly for the living.  In our corporate grief we offer corporate encouragement. These services can be cathartic experiences bringing both a sense of closure and hope to the bereaved.

Sometimes the balance between the departed and the living has to be worked at in the preparation for a funeral service.  We cannot, for example, take it for granted that if it is for a person of faith that their relatives, left planing the liturgy, will themselves have faith or even realise its deep significance to the one we are remembering.

And in a way the service - like all acts of worship - is for God.  We come to him with our grief, our prayers, our confusion and longing - and through scripture and the framework of the rite we receive his comfort and hope - yet all of this is done as an offering of worship presented to God with faltering, hesitant yet real trust in our hearts.

At funeral services us ministers cannot answer all the questions we may have about why someone we are grieving for lost their battle with cancer or suffered a cruel accident - but we can speak of a loving and compassionate God who suffers alongside and travels the road with us.  This is the hope we proclaim at every funeral service - Jesus, the resurrection and the life.

This week as I recall two friends now in God's nearer presence my prayer for them is 'May they rest in peace and rise in glory.'

Best wishes,

Ian

Long Journeys

This week the New Horizons space craft took photos of Pluto during its historic flyby of this dwarf planet.  Apparently the images and data collected has exceeded the expectations of the scientists with one image of the surface showing a mountain range comparable in size to the Rockies!

The thing that struck me was the length of the voyage to get to this last planet in our Solar System - an incredibly long journey lasting nine years.

In a day and age when 'instant' has become the norm there is, I suspect, still much to be said for the speed of the tortoise as opposed to the hare!  I even see recipe books on the theme of 'Slow' food!

Spiritually most of us would consider ourselves on a long, and sometimes 'slow' journey of faith.  Perhaps we sometimes feel we're going round in circles and arriving back at the start once again! I often think our journeys take us through 'repeated' experiences yet we tackle these episodes as different people each time round.

I think there's great value in a long, slow journey - that's the journey of faith - one that takes a lifetime.

Best wishes,

Ian

Are you an Ecumaniac?!

During my first few weeks as an ordained minister I was invited to supper with an older colleague whose opening gambit, as we tucked into the melon, was 'Are you an Ecumaniac'?  I didn't really know how to answer!  So I waffled on about how I believed in churches working together -  but how I also believed in churches maintaining a strong individual identity.  Anyway, it seemed to satisfy him and we progressed to the chicken casserole without further incident!

Almost thirty years on and I would probably still answer the same way.  So I'm really pleased to be working in Amersham where the three Churches on the Hill are in a meaningful Covenant - but I'm also thrilled that my own church, AFC, has a really strong and vibrant identity.

Ecumenism has figured strongly with us over the last week.  On Sunday we held a joint Churches on The Hill service at St Michael's and the photo above shows four relieved clergy afterwards - enjoying each others friendship and grateful that all had gone well!

Then on Wednesday we held our COTHA (Churches on The Hill Amersham) AGM.  We had two wonderful reports - firstly from The Chiltern Youth Projects (a wing of Youth For Christ) telling us what they do at the local youth centre, all in the name of the local churches. And a report from Open The Book telling us of their work at school assemblies using teams drawn from many churches in the district.

These wonderful and lively projects are not examples of 'committee' based ecumenism but 'task-centred' ecumenism - which I think is the best sort and a model that's always worth pursuing!

Best wishes,

Ian