Howzzat!!

On Sunday evening, on my way home from our monthly Communion service I was surprised to see ten Whatsapp messages from my brothers in Southampton and Spain.  Once back at the Manse I realised they were sharing the nervous tension surrounding the final moments of the cricket World Cup from Lords.  As brothers we do this!  We may not have spoken for weeks, yet come a sporting cup final of any kind and there's an instinct amongst us that we must share the moment together!  Even though I'm the least 'sporty' of the three I love these moments - they are very special!

It's got me thinking this week about the 'community' side of life and how we are simply not made to experience our deepest lows or most exuberant highs alone.

This week thousands of students will have shared their Graduation ceremonies with invited family guests.  Their achievement is a very personal one yet it is to be shared collectively.

On Monday I had the privilege of officiating at the funeral of a wonderful lady well into her nineties.  It was inspiring to see so many people at the crematorium, so much so that the stewards ran out of both orders of service and seats.  It was clear that the guests that morning wanted to be together, to gather around her widower and share the moment with him. Human love and decency at its very best.

And this weekend our family will gather to celebrate an 80th birthday.  I cannot imagine that ever being a private affair!  Cakes have been baked, cards drawn and speeches prepared.  How could it be otherwise?  We all simply want to gather together and sing 'Happy Birthday!'

The notion of God is expressed in the bible as Trinity, a COMMUNITY of love, goodness and light.  We are made to share in that sense of togetherness - it's part of our humanity which reflects the nature of God.

To pinch a line from a one time advert on TV promoting chocolate toffees: Life is meant for sharing!

Have a good summer - the Blog returns in September.

God bless!

Every common bush afire with God...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861

In the book I'm currently reading for our church's discussion group in a few weeks time I came across these inspiring lines by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Earth crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.

I suspect I'm not always so positive as she was and it's easy to imagine she wouldn't have been either if she had lived today amidst some of the most negative news headlines of recent years.

But, that may not be true!  That's because Browning wrote these words against a backdrop of personal struggle, challenge and disappointment.

She was brought up a Dissenter and perhaps she would have felt at least half at home in AFC because she once described herself as 'not a Baptist but a Congregationalist'. All her life she suffered from chronic spinal pain and lung problems, was disinherited by her father upon her marriage to the poet Robert Browning, was passed over for the post of Poet Laureate which, on the death of Wordsworth, went to Tennyson, and had four miscarriages before her son, Pen, was born.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew real pain yet continued to write poetry, work for the abolition of slavery and strove for better working condition for child labourers.

To see earth crammed with heaven in the light of Brexit and this week's breakdown in diplomatic trust between the UK and the USA takes some doing, but maybe we become more balanced and whole people when we try to make this connection.

The Jewish Scriptures show us the way in the stories of 'exile'. Even when wrenched from their homeland, our Jewish cousins were encouraged by their faith leaders to seek the good of the new country in which they found themselves, and to pray for its prosperity.

Finding goodness and encountering the divine even on the bleakest of days and in the most alien of contexts is part of a spiritual discipline that sees every common bush afire with God.

Ringing Bells

I heard on the radio this morning that they will be ringing lots of bells in Manchester tonight.

Apparently the idea originates from Yoko Ono to ring a bell for peace.  Hundreds of Mancunians will be doing just that in the Cathedral Gardens and the sound is anticipated to be so loud that ear plugs are being offered free of charge to those listening.

The ringing of bells is up there with the lighting of candles as deeply meaningful and symbolic acts much akin to prayer.  When words seem inadequate or simply can't be found, actions can express the depth of our longing, so why not ring a bell for peace?

When I served in Malvern I was amused to learn that in granting our church 'permission' to build on the lower slopes of the hills in the mid 1890's, Lady Emily Foley stipulated that even though the design had a tower, no bell should ever be hung in the belfry.  She didn't want the Baptist's call to prayer to be in competition with that being sounded by Great Malvern Priory across the road!!

Perhaps today, 4th July, it's worthy remembering the central place 'Liberty Bell' has in the folk lore of the United States.  Although there's no evidence it was ever rung on July 4th, 1776, it is documented that it rang out on the 8th, when the Declaration of Independence was actually proclaimed from the Assembly Hall in Philadelphia.  Years later the bell became a focal point for the Abolitionists and the freedom they sort.

So, ring out the bells in Manchester this evening, each one a heartfelt and worthy prayer for peace.

Smile...

With thanksgiving for Joyce - whose smile inspired us all

Yesterday, in Northampton, I attended the funeral service of one of my Sunday School teachers from years ago.  It was, for all sorts of reasons, a lovely occasion set within the context of loss.

Many uplifting aspects of her character were referred to in the service, yet it was the photos, being projected before the service, which struck a chord with me.  In everyone, even in her latter days in a wheelchair, she was smiling; and that’s exactly as I remember her, along with her inspirational teaching and wonderful example in Sunday School.  Indeed, a friend alongside me said, as we watched the photos, ‘you can almost hear her chuckle, can’t you?’, and I could!

I don’t want to over romanticise it, but a person’s smile seems to be something of a window into their soul.  It says so much, without words, about the essence of who we are.

Earlier this week I, along with other friends from church, sat alongside one of our members who is deep in Alzheimers.  It was deeply moving to be with her, and with those who visit her far more regularly than I.  Her mannerisms were much as I remember them from former days, yet the content of her conversation is now entirely without coherence.  However, her smile remains, and it can light up the room.  At those moments something of her very essence shines through and makes us glad.

As we read of those post-Easter appearances of Jesus greeting his disciples we can only imagine the scene.  I like to think of him greeting those vulnerable friends with a smile, welcoming them back into the fold and reassuring them for coming days.

Smiling – it’s a very precious way of communicating, and... 'Joyce - thank you for yours!'

One small step...

Exactly a month from now, on 20^th July 2019, we shall be commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing.

Apollo 11 left the Kennedy Space Centre on July 16^th, 1969 and on July 20^th the lunar module, Eagle, landed in the beautifully named part of the moon designated as The Sea of Tranquillity. Neil Armstrong was the first man out and as he set foot on the lunar surface broadcast those immortal words: One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind. Minutes later Buzz Aldrin joined him and that day they spent two and a quarter hours roaming the surface, collecting forty-eight pounds of rock to bring back for analysis.  One of those small fragments is now encased in the Lunar Window at Washington Cathedral.  These brave and adventurous astronauts, along with the not to be forgotten Michael Collins, who flew the command module and gave them a lift home, splashed down in the Pacific on July 24^th.

I remember watching all this as an eight-year-old and being transfixed by those fuzzy images as we all gathered around the family TV. 

I know it is probably a much-overused metaphor, but we often talk of our pilgrimage through life as a ‘journey’. 

The journey to the moon is about 239,000 miles and a bright spark has worked out it would take most car drivers six months to complete the journey! 

Yet, maybe the most important journey we make in life is the ‘interior’ one.  We are constantly moving on from one phase of our lives to another for nothing stands still very long.  Sometimes we fear the change that comes our way whilst at other times we embrace it. What is true for all of us is that ‘the next step’ in life is usually a step into the unknown. 

Way back, in 1696, Tate and Brady set the words of Psalm 34 to music and came up with a hymn that urges us to trust in God as our companion and guide.  Their words still resonate with me as I consider that interior journey which is as life changing as any lunar landing:

                                Through all the changing scenes of life,
                                               In trouble and in joy,
                                        The praises of my God shall still
                                          My heart and tongue employ.

aaggghh I've forgotten my mobile....!

The other day a personal crisis of epic proportions came my way!

Whilst driving, en route to a dog walk, it suddenly dawned on me that my mobile phone was missing from my right hand side trouser pocket.  A wave of panic and anxiety filled me, all be it momentarily!

I had left it on the breakfast table.  Later that day I would be attending an organ recital at Southwark Cathedral.  We had got talking over the toast about the history of the place and, as is our custom these days, pulled out the phone to ‘google’ (is that really a verb as well as a noun?!) some information about its antiquity.

Well, despite my irrational fears (because I have existed on this planet perfectly well for half a century before buying my first mobile) I survived the dog walk without a phone and arrived home in one piece.

Just to prove the point, Google tells me the first cell phones came about in the USA in 1973, six years later in 1979 they were used in a car phone network in Japan.  The first portable cell phone, resembling a brick, came on the scene in 1983 and whilst these became popular in America and on the Continent it wasn’t until 1992 that they were introduced to the UK.

It’s hard to believe now that the general public were at first mystified as to why they needed a mobile phone.  Sales were sluggish! 1992 saw the first text message on 3^rd December, it simply said ‘Merry Christmas’.

We got used to mobiles throughout the 90’s and in 2007 the iphone was launched, and the rest they say is history!

I suspect it’s all about that insatiable and intriguing human need for connectivity and although some of us need it more than others it does seem to be a universal desire.

Family and friends who are younger than me have a virtual world of connections that runs into hundreds of people; Facebook and WhatsApp to name just two platforms a dinosaur like me is aware of.

A minister friend of mine is working on a doctoral thesis examining the impact of this idea of ‘virtual community’ upon the Church.

In terms of faith ‘connectivity’ is a big issue.  This weekend congregations around the world will be celebrating Trinity Sunday, a time when we ponder the community of The Godhead and the connectivity between Father, Son and Spirit.

I sense, in my own pilgrimage, that much of my search for meaning and purpose rests on the idea that I am, in some way, ‘connected’ to both God and other people.  That gives me a sense of identity and hope.  It is the essence of prayer.

Whether walking in the countryside or bowing my head in church I think of prayer as the process of making ‘connections’ and sensing my place in the network of life.

Fortunately I can still pray whether or not I’ve remembered to pick up the phone from the kitchen table and that sense of the blessing of God and others in my life is not, ultimately, dependent on the availability of a 5G network.

Pentecost Gloves

Some of the lessons you learn in Sunday School stay with you a life-time; as has one about gloves and the Holy Spirit for me.

I remember my Sunday School teacher holding up a glove.  It was a nice glove – not that as a nine year old I took much notice of their finer points!  She asked how this glove might be transformed and come alive?  We must have been a particularly dense lot because I remember none of us proffered an answer!  Of course, she simply put her hand in the glove and it was instantly transformed into something that moved.  That, she says, is a picture of the Holy Spirit filling the life of the Church enabling us to become the living Body of Christ.

Well, it’s stayed with me all these years; the simplest of illustrations with the profoundest of meanings.

Without the Spirit of God we are merely a very worthwhile institution, yet with His Spirit we become a vibrant expression of God’s love and life for the here and now.

Happy Pentecost on Sunday – and, remembering that Sunday School lesson of years ago, I’ll be taking my gloves to church for the All Age Talk!!