Nests

My "Nature Notes" contribution for the month to come . . . my second on this subject.

Most children believe that birds live in nests - or at least, they do when they are very young. If they are interested in nature they will soon come to realise the truth - so far as nearly all birds are concerned - that nests are very temporary structures, used only for the brooding of eggs and the nurturing of chicks. But just now the nesting season is in full force, and nests will be in use.

There are many variations on the basic nest template. Some birds make virtually no nest, with some coastal or seabirds, for example,  more or less nesting directly on rock ledges, or in a scrape on a pebble beach. And then there is the cuckoo, of course, which doesn’t bother with making its own nest - or indeed caring for its own offspring - but parasitises on others.

Garden birds do make nests, which vary from the flimsy jerry-built bundles of twigs that are the nearest that pigeons get to nests, to the amazingly detailed little domed nests of long-tailed tits. These small masterpieces can take a couple of weeks to build (or, better perhaps, to weave) - they are soft and warm, made from moss, hair, wool, and maybe a thousand or more feathers. It is usually very well concealed, in the fork of a tree or in thick brambles. But even such a fine and detailed nest is only used by the baby birds for some two to three weeks.

Another very detailed nest is that of the wren, made of grass, moss and leaves. In many birds it is the female that takes the lead in nest-building, while the male spends most of his time defending the territory. In wrens, however, it is the male who builds, and he will in fact build several nests, often quite inventively sited, and the female will then choose the nest she wants to use. Wrens will on occasion use their nests as winter shelters in very cold weather when their small size makes them vulnerable.

Most nests are carefully hidden away, but inexperience and pressure for nest spaces may mean birds build in places that are too obvious, and if you know where a nest is, then predators probably do as well. Nests are at risk from magpies, crows, cats, rats, squirrels, even wood-peckers. Try and keep some thick bushy cover in your garden if you want breeding birds in spring as well as feeding birds in winter. Nest-boxes will benefit many birds which like to seek out holes in which to build their nests - like tits, nuthatches and sparrows. House sparrows like to nest together, and multiple occupancy sparrow boxes can be bought. Other social nesters include jackdaws and rooks - social but not always sociable, as jackdaws will take over the nests of neighbours, and rooks are notorious stealers of twigs - and of course swallows and martins.

Finally, a little mention of the robin, one of our most entertaining nesters. Robins will often nest in sheds and outbuildings, and use buckets, pans, kettles as shelter! Most years a robin or two will make the news with their amusing choice of nest site.

Apology

A very busy week has left me without time to post anything. That's my excuse, anyway . . . so, several posts all at once, now!

Mary

Tonight we celebrated the Annunciation, on the first available day in the lectionary, a good week and a half after Lady Day. Here is my short address . . .

A London tour guide working the open top buses, being interviewed about his job, told the story of how one day his microphone was taken off him by a very bright little girl on the bus, who proceeded to captivate the rest of the passengers with her version of the story of that tragic nine days queen of England, Lady Jane Grey. She'd seen a famous painting in the National Gallery and she wanted to tell the world about it. The painting was by a 19th Century artist, Paul Delaroche, and it presented the execution in 1554 of Lady Jane Grey as a martyrdom, in which Lady Jane's innocence is declared in the pale lustre of her skin and the simple, pure white dress she wears, all very different from the elaborate Tudor gowns of those who look on.

Delaroche’s painting tells the tragic story of the ending of a young and vulnerable life. Lady Jane was only seventeen when she was put to death, and was by all accounts a young woman of both beauty and learning, to whom the throne of England had passed in the deathbed will of Henry VIII's son Edward VI. But Edward, being only fifteen at the time of his death, was not old enough for the will to be valid. Edward's sister Mary soon gathered the support she needed to claim the throne, and Jane was doomed.

That story lingered in my mind as I sat down to prepare some words for tonight mainly because it contains these great themes of duty and destiny and - in this case - their tragic consequences. There are those in history whose destiny has been to say 'Yes' to the call, no matter where that yes may lead. We could see Lady Jane Grey in that light, Queen Mary too, perhaps, who knew herself born to be queen, and who might have changed the whole destiny of England had she reigned for longer than the five years she did. Had Mary not died at the age of only 42, and had Mary had children, history might have taken a very different course.

But tonight we’re thinking of another young woman to whom destiny called. The Annunciation to Mary the mother of our Lord is a story with the same interplay between destiny and innocence, in which a young girl is told she's to bear a child who’ll be nothing less than God's anointed Son, the one given to set his people free. And so Mary’s life ceases to be her own; later, after the child is born, old Simeon in the Temple will tell her of the sword that will pierce her heart; later still Simeon’s words become reality - and Mary stands on the hill of Calvary to see her son die.

Lady Jane Grey had little choice, perhaps, in her yes to destiny’s call; her destiny was closely bound to the political ambition of the Duke of Northumberland. But Mary the mother of Jesus maybe could have said no. Whenever I read it I sense all of creation collectively holding its breath and waiting on her answer. Then again, God knows us before we know ourselves; and Mary was chosen for the unsaid yes that even so she was sure to say.

Colossal news breaks in to an ordinary life as Mary says what she perhaps need not have: Let it be to me according to your will. Those are words that run counter to much in the modern world. They're about being where we ought to be, and doing what we ought to do, rather than insisting on that modern god, freedom of choice and the right to do whatever I want. But still today there are those who have a sense of 'ought' and even of destiny, and I thank God for their vision and courage and faith; for society to be able to provide well for its members we need those who know the meaning of service and obedience, and who get on and do what needs to be done. And in a society founded on Christian principles, the Church needs to be faithful and responsive and responsible. Its leaders and members need to be responsive - ready to say yes to God's call even though that call may take us to places we may not choose to be, and responsible - knowing we’re here for the sake of others, and that in serving them we serve our Lord.

So may we then take to heart Mary’s words 'Let it be to me according to your will'. What is God asking of us now, at this stage in the history of our nation and of our Church, at this stage in the living of our lives? He is calling me, and he is calling you, be sure of that. Each one of us has a role, a place and a calling within his purpose; in the building of a holy Temple, each stone has its part to play and its place to fill.

The story of protestant Lady Jane and catholic Queen Mary is a tragic tale made only more tragic by the fact that it was religious intolerance what led Jane to the throne and then to the block - an episode in the history of our nation when those who should have been striving together for the Gospel of Christ were instead fighting each other. Mary prayed was that it should be to her according to God’s will. If that prayer is ours too, may we also recall the prayer of Jesus in the garden: 'Father, may they all be one, that the world may believe.'

I’ve never done an open top bus tour in London, but Ann and I did do one some years ago in Marrakech. We were on the edge of the Sahara, but it was cold and rainy, and the rain grew heavier throughout our journey. Being British, we stuck it out upstairs for quite a while, but eventually we had to admit defeat and retire to the relative dry and warmth of the enclosed seats downstairs. God sometimes has to work very hard on us before we finally give in and let him have his way; he does have to put up with us being short-sighted and foolish and stubborn. We’re not good at saying yes to him, and maybe we need to leave more space in our prayers to hear what he wants to say to us.

Maybe our prayers have too many of our words in them, and not enough of his. The thing is, his words may not be what we expect or desire; they may run counter to our own plans. With that in mind, we can only give thanks now for Mary, and for her simple 'Yes' that opened the way for the Word of God to be born among us. So we see divine love take human form as Mary’s yes to God allows his yes to the world.

Doubting Thomas?

A sermon for the second Sunday of Easter . . .

So today our Easter story is the story of doubting Thomas. I’ve always had a special regard for Thomas, maybe in part because the first church I had charge of as a young curate was dedicated in his name. He gets labelled as “Doubting Thomas”, but I can’t help but think that’s a bit unfair. It wasn’t that Thomas couldn’t believe so much as that he was determined not to. When he says “I will not believe,” he uses the strong version of the verb. He’s not saying “I can’t”, he’s saying “I won’t” - so why is that, we might ask.

You see, Thomas wasn’t lacking in chutzpah or courage. It was Thomas who said, “Let us go also, that we may die there with him.” That was when Jesus decided to return to Judaea after hearing of the illness of Lazarus. Judaea was a very dangerous place for Jesus to go, people there wanted to do him harm - so Thomas doesn’t come across as a man lacking in faith or courage. It might even be that the absence of Thomas when Jesus appeared to his disciples on Easter Day was because he’d been out on the Jerusalem streets, rather than hiding behind locked doors like the other disciples.

So here’s what I think. Thomas wanted so much for his Lord to be risen and alive; and when at last he did see Jesus, he didn’t for a moment need to actually do what Jesus told him to do – place his finger in the marks of the nails and his hand into the wound in his side. His trust in Jesus was so sure and complete that he straight away falls before him and hails him as “My Lord and my God.” But his longing for Jesus to be alive was such that he dared not trust anyone else’s word for it - even that of his friends. What if they were wrong, what if it was all an illusion? That would be a disappointment too much to bear, and Thomas was not prepared to take that risk. His faith remained strong, and he wanted so much for it all to be true, but he didn’t dare take the risk of believing.

That’s what I think. For me, we do Thomas a disservice when we label him as a weak and wobbly doubter. Thomas would go on to travel half a world to take the Gospel to India, and to die a martyr’s death, or so the tradition goes. But his initial refusal to believe allows Jesus to say to us “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

So what about us who have not seen? What is the ground of our faith to be? I can only speak for myself. My own Easter faith rests firstly in the existence of the Church itself, built as it is on the foundation of apostles and martyrs. Had there not been people who knew Jesus and who knew that this man had been dead but had risen from the dead, it’s hard to see how the message of Jesus could have survived, or how the Church could have been built. His people should have been defeated, downcast, disillusioned, but something happened to make them lose their fear, and to fill them with joyful courage.

Secondly, my faith rests on the examples of people in whose lives the light of Christ has shone. Some of them I’ve known, others are people I’ve heard about, some of whom bear the title ‘saint’. Some have directly ministered to me, some have taught me, all have inspired me.

But thirdly, I find faith simply in the living of my own life. It may be that I am mistaken and full of illusion; not everyone I know s going to be convinced, but my own sense, from a life that’s managed to contain thus far some pretty impressive highs and lows, is of there being point and purpose and direction to my life’s journey, which leads me to have a personal sense of God’s call and challenge. I’m not a very holy or pious person. I’m not very good at praying, I don’t read scripture as much as I should. Why God should want me, I don’t know. But my sense is that he does.

You may not be convinced. Where’s your proof, you might ask. I have friends and family members who do not believe in God, and I’ve not managed so far to get them to see things my way.

But that’s the point I suppose. There is no proof, or perhaps I should say there is no empirical proof. There are perhaps two kinds of proof: empirical proof, the proof that scientists seek and work from, where you do the same experiment, you get always the same result, wherever and whenever you do it. But there is also what I would call experiential proof. It’s not repeatable for every different person and in every different place; it’s highly subjective, it’s to do with living relationship rather than scientific law – but it works for me.

Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe. Faced with empirical proof, you have no choice but to believe, unless you work really hard at continuing to believe in, say, the earth being flat, the moon being made of cheese, or Mars being inhabited by little green men who build canals. But experiential proof isn’t transferable; so how do we pass on the flame of faith to others?

The clue is in the phrase I just used – the flame of faith. Our faith needs to be a flame, something we pass on by our own burning. People won’t believe Jesus is alive unless they see him alive in us. People won’t believe that Jesus can be their good news unless it’s obvious that he’s our good news. And every little bit helps. Desmond Tutu said: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” The Easter message of Jesus risen and alive should overwhelm the world - what good news it is that love is stronger than death, and that within that saving love you and I are known and loved and treasured. So do we have, and can we share, that flame of faith?

Watching the Cars

A poem reflecting on my visit to Pelotas, Brazil some years ago . . .

My first impressions are of long departed glory,
of peeling paint and shabby doorways,
grass growing between the cobbles
on the side streets. Once
there was imperial majesty in this city;
a touch of that ancient splendour lingers on, here and there.

The main streets are busy enough:
trucks and buses snort and roar, as the
soft drink sellers and windscreen cleaners
dodge between them at the traffic lights.
I stand awhile in the midday sun
watching the cars. She too
is watching the cars,
a lady of uncertain years and layers of shabby dress,
bent-backed and bustling.
But she has the badge,
the authority to do what she does.
The papers in the plastic wallet
on its lanyard around her neck
permit her, or so it seems,
to stop the world in its tracks. So,
arms flailing, she halts a snarling and wheezing bus,
then guides a driver out of his parking space,
a space he will have entered only at her discretion.
A little money changes hands; dust rises.
And the world begins to move again.

I think the parking here is free, but surely
no-one would dare to park unaided
or leave their car unprotected. After all,
she has the badge,
the authority to do what she does,
the monopoly of parking in this square.
The vehicles continue to circulate in a haze of dust and oil;
I buy a bottle from the soft-drink seller by the lights
and search for shade under the shabby balconies.
In the fragile economy of this decaying city,
she holds on to her one small part, her toe-hold on the ladder,
the papers that permit her to spend her days
watching the cars.

My Sermon for Easter Day

It’s spring, whatever the weather might be doing. We have passed the equinox, the clocks have gone forward, and it’s spring.  And with spring come daffodils, and birdsong, and butterflies. There’ve been a few about already, small tortoiseshells and peacocks mostly.  These are butterflies that overwinter as adults, and sometimes we find them fluttering against our windows on warm days in winter. Now they’re seriously beginning to get out and about.

And soon we’ll begin to get some of the butterflies that overwinter as a pupa, and in a chrysalis. This is the stage between caterpillar and adult. Some of these butterflies aren’t as popular or welcome as small tortoiseshells and peacocks - one of them is the cabbage white. But it’s a small miracle when the dry, dead looking chrysalis splits open to allow a new and pristine butterfly to emerge and to fly. Not surprisingly, the imagery of chrysalis and butterfly is often used by preachers on Easter Day, and this address is no exception.

There’s clearly something chrysalis-like about the empty tomb attended by Mary Magdalene, and by Peter and John: when they get there they find just the shell remaining. The body that had been placed there has been triumphantly and wondrously released.  And the fact that the graveclothes and the linen cloth left inside the tomb - here is a sign that something new is happening here. Jesus did not come back to life on Easter Day. That’s what Lazarus did when Jesus brought him out of the tomb. Do you remember, he was still wearing his grave clothes, brought back to earthly life, to die again some day. Easter is different from that and new: Jesus is alive in a new way, Jesus has moved forward into a new dimension of living.

The chrysalis from which a butterfly will emerge seems to be dead, but inside it contains life. That’s true also for the other great Easter symbol, the egg. But it’s not true of the tomb in that garden. On that first Good Friday evening and through the day that followed the tomb contained no life.

The body laid within it had been certified dead. Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb, expected nothing to happen there; all he wanted was to do the right thing by this good man. Mary of Magdala and the other women with her, when they made their troubled way into the garden through the early morning mist, knew they would find only death in that place. But they needed to do what they could, so they came to anoint the body now that the Sabbath was over.

We shouldn’t be surprised to find there’s something mysterious and dream-like about the Easter stories we read in the four Gospels. Jesus shows himself to be the same man that died, that people had seen die, that people had laid in a tomb: the scars were there in his hands and feet, the gash where the spear had been thrust into his side.  And yet he’s not the same; he appears in a room whose doors have been closed and locked, and people who’ve known him well don’t recognise him when they first see him. What has happened is unthinkable, impossible, and it will take time for his friends to get their heads round it all. But also, this is not resuscitation, this is not “a conjuring trick with bones”; this is something new, not a resumption but a beginning.

One Easter hymn speaks of ‘the Queen of Seasons, bright with the day of splendour’. Something new has begun, and nothing is the same as it was. A man known to have died has been raised, and his tomb is left empty, the graveclothes no longer needed. Without Easter what would be left of our Christian faith?

Let’s imagine no Easter Day, no risen Christ. imagine the disciples making their furtive way back to their fishing nets, picking up the threads of their old lives, as the challenging things said and done by this carpenter’s son from Nazareth fade in the memory and are cast aside. Think of the cross continuing to be nothing more than the mark of shame and disgrace. Think of death continuing to have the last word.

But that isn’t what happened. Jesus continues to live in people’s hearts because on that first Easter Day people knew he was alive. Death does not have the last word. Jesus was not raised as a one-off. He wasn’t raised because he’s so good and so different from us that the normal rules don’t apply to him. Jesus is raised from the dead as God’s declaration that life is for all to share, that every one of us is born to inherit life and not death. For though we are made of the dust of the earth, we are made in the image of the God whose love for us stands for ever; we have within us the seeds of eternity.

Five words to take to heart, then, on Easter day:  ‘Make the most of life.’  You could interpret those words in a selfish way: please yourself, and don’t worry about the rest of the world, or even “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”   But that would be like being the caterpillar that wants to just stay a caterpillar for ever. The message of Easter day is that there’s more than that for us. The empty tomb, the grave clothes set aside, speaks of the love stronger than death in which we are known and named. And that it’s worth using and sharing what we’re given - loving our neighbours as ourselves.

To see a butterfly newly emerged from its winter shell is a wonderful thing.  The wings gradually open to the sun, the warmth gradually has its effect, and suddenly the insect is airborne, flying strongly, making the most of its new wings.

And we are offered the renewing and strengthening warmth of God’s love so we can make the most of the life that is his gift to us. God calls us to meet him not just on Easter day but every day, and promises that when we open our hearts to him we too can be transformed as his people. To be Easter people is about what we do with the whole of our lives, not just the Sunday bits of them. The world today desperately needs more Easter people within it: people who are living now the life that is eternal, people who are trusting now in the love that is stronger than death, people who are serving now our risen Friend and Brother by continuing his work of healing and renewing, befriending and blessing, bringing light into the world’s dark places. As we do this, so we shall be offering our own sacrifice of praise to the one for whom the cross became a throne and the grave became a garden - revealed in all its spring beauty when the stone was rolled away.

A Sermon for Passion Sunday

I'm preaching this Sunday at the chapels at Arddleen and Geuffordd.

There’s a richness of scripture in the readings set for this Sunday, the Sunday sometimes called Passion Sunday. I could probably preach a dozen sermons; time, however, will not allow me to! Between now and Easter Day in two weeks time, we journey through a heady mixture of glory and tragedy, and it’s important I think that we experience both of those things.

Of the many texts in scripture that spoke of a coming Messiah, it was to the servant songs of Isaiah that Jesus turned as the pattern for his life, as the programme for his ministry as the Christ. God’s chosen one, according to this scripture, would be a servant so much abused and so deeply wounded, a man so scarred and unsightly in appearance, that people would shrink away from him, that people would reject him and treat him with derision. Jesus spoke in plain words about this to his disciples, but it’s no surprise that they didn’t it, they didn’t understand or accept it. Remember how Peter insisted to Jesus, “This shall not happen to you!”

But all these things did happen to Jesus. The disciples were scattered in fear and alarm. Despite all that Jesus had tried to tell them, they could only experience his passion in terms of defeat and tragedy. And the tragedy of these events was only deepened further by the shame they felt at having let him down. They didn’t stand with him, they didn’t stand up for him; when trouble came, all of them ran off and left him alone. As we read the story we can’t help but be moved by poor Peter, sobbing at the cock-crow as he discovered how easily he had denied his Master, having insisted that he would stand firm with him and defend to the death.

We too need to feel some of that tragedy, for the cross is tragedy. Our sins are the reason why this man’s blood is shed. Ours are the hands which nail him to the cross. He loses his life because of what we have done, and because of what we have not done.

You may recall Mel Gibson’s film of the Passion of Christ, released in 2004, and the cause of great controversy at the time, including some charges of antisemitism. Incidentally, for those who like trivia, the fact that the film is voiced entirely in biblical languages has made it the highest grossing film ever made in a language other than English. It was quite a rigorous and brutal telling of the story, too brutal for many people. After its release, Mel Gibson revealed that the hands in the shot where the nails are hammered in were in fact his own, something he chose to do to demonstrate that no one person or group or race of people is to blame for what happened at Calvary. We are all implicated in the tragedy of the cross.

The cross was to begin with such a shameful sign that Christians used it only secretly. But it became a sign of glory. In other words, what began as a mark of disgrace and disgust became something that could take pride of place in churches of all shapes and sizes and traditions. Now here’s the thing. At any point Jesus could have turned from the way of the cross. But he is the suffering servant, the one spoken of by Isaiah the prophet: and he must therefore walk the whole road, he will be completely faithful, even though his own life is shattered; Peter and the others may scatter, but their Teacher will be faithful to death. And now we understand what St John teaches us: that it’s here on the cross that Jesus is raised up, and what seems like a place of shame and defeat is in fact the throne on which Jesus is revealed as King. And as Jesus says in John’s telling of his story, “When I am raised up I shall draw all people to myself.” Not raised up from the tomb on Easter morning, but raised up on Good Friday to jeers and spitting, mailed to the wood of the cross.

Peter, James and John had in fact glimpsed the glory that was to come before the events of Passiontide unfolded around them. When they went up the mountain with Jesus to pray, they had seen him suddenly too brilliantly white for their eyes to bear; and with him were Moses and Elijah, the two great heroes said not to have died but to have been taken up bodily into heaven. We remember this as the Transfiguration of Jesus, just a short moment of divine glory, before it’s over and Jesus is alone.

That experience meant that as they endured the tragedy of the cross, those three disciples, the inner circle, had seeds of glory already planted in them. In the light of Easter they would come to understand that Jesus had died not because they - we - had bound him to the cross, but because he had accepted it. On the cross which becomes a throne Jesus freely takes up the burden of our sins, he accepts the challenge of love and becomes our salvation.

And that cross is therefore the heart of who and what we are as his people. It is the ultimate and undefeated sign of love. It claims us forever as God’s people even though we ourselves can never do enough, can never be enough, by our own efforts. The deadening impact of a law we can never keep is transformed by grace. Today, Passion Sunday, we celebrate the cross as our sign and our glory; but between today and Easter, we need also to feel the tragedy of the cross, and to know our share in the hammer blows by which our Lord is fastened there. We can only share its glory if we also know its shame.

On the mountain Jesus met and spoke with Moses and Elijah. They were great reflectors of God’s glory, they were faithful labourers for the freedom of God’s people. But only in Jesus do we find the perfection of that glory. On Calvary we see the Son completely transparent to his Father’s glory. What he sets free on this tree can never again be bound.

As yet untitled . . .

A poem I wrote yesterday and read at the "Verbatim" open mic poetry session :-

A street or two away from the bright lights,
but a world away too,
you might just find him delving through the bins,
a piece of urban detritus, set adrift on another rainy night.
He does not know any more who or where he is;
his eyes see nothing of the world in which he used to live,
your world - for that was before the day he died,
the day the music died, that was
before the blood in his veins was turned to straw,
and his soul dried out and shrivelled.
Once he knew all the songs,
once he knew all the players.
A flick of his fingers, and the lights came on back then,
when his world was laughter, and cheers, and applause,
when there were still things
in which he could believe,
when there were still pains and pleasures he could feel.
There was a time when nothing could go wrong,
when he was the lucky man,
the man with the charmed life, blessed, indulged,
delighted in by his own guardian angels.
And then it all did go wrong, then
it all did go. Lost is all he is now; the street lamp
picks out a single feather, floating.
And there are no tears, only rain,
and the angels, if they are there at all, can no longer fly
in the cold and wet.

Trichomonosis

My nature notes column for the coming month . . .

We’ve been getting some very large numbers of finches visiting our garden feeders over the past few weeks, and numbers of greenfinches, chaffinches and siskins have generally been in double figures, with smaller numbers of goldfinches, a couple of pairs of bullfinches (bullfinches pair for life, so are usually seen as a couple), and the occasional brambling, the chaffinch’s Scandinavian cousin.

A greenfinch with trichomonosis (picture from a bird food supplier)

But then I noticed one greenfinch acting rather differently from the rest. Finches (and other small birds) tend to flock together through the winter, and a group of mixed species will move through the area visiting different sources of food - which is one reason why one moment there may be no birds at all in your garden, and the next it’s absolutely full of them. This bird, however, was not moving around with the flock but staying close to the feeders. It looked listless and sad, and its feathers were puffed up, making it look like a little ball of a bird.

Although it stayed close to the feeders, it didn’t actually seem to be using them much. This was a rather poorly bird, that much was clear. And probably therefore a bird suffering from the disease trichomonosis, which has greatly reduced greenfinch numbers in our gardens in recent years. I had been expecting to see signs of this disease sooner or later, so I’m sad but not surprised.

Trichomonosis is caused by a protozoan parasite, and affects the throat and gullet of the bird, preventing it from eating successfully. Affected birds may regurgitate food, and other birds may then consume it, which is a prime cause of the disease spread, as is poor hygiene at feeding stations, bird baths etc. This is the disease of pigeons known as canker, or as frounce when seen  in birds of prey. It has been known as a disease of cage birds for some time, but has been identified as affecting greenfinches (and other birds such as chaffinches and siskins) since 2006. The parasite cannot live long outside its host, which means that simple hygiene measures can meet with a reasonable degree of success. It does not affect human beings or other mammals.

So what should I do? I try to make sure I clean feeders regularly, but I could improve hygiene further by using an appropriate disinfectant product. It’s important to leave feeders to air-dry before refilling. Bird baths, also, should be emptied and air-dried on a regular basis. Ground-feeding birds are particularly vulnerable, so cleaning the ground beneath feeders (ours are on paving) will help - but, even better, move feeders around the garden; that will help prevent the build-up of contamination in any one place.  I think the RSPB recommends stopping feeding so that birds are forced to feed elsewhere at a lower density; in reality, though, they may simply move on to other garden feeding stations, where perhaps no hygiene measures are in place. So I shall improve hygiene, keep feeding, and hope for the best.

Refreshment Sunday

A sermon for tomorrow . . .

One of the traditional names for this Sunday, the fourth in Lent, is Refreshment Sunday. On this Sunday you were allowed to take a break from your Lenten discipline, and, I suppose, let your hair down a bit. The name 'Refreshment Sunday' reminds me too that we all need a bit of refreshment in our lives, and that every Sunday and not just this one should be refreshing. Modern Sundays may be entertaining and even exciting, but for me they’re often too busy and frenetic to be all that refreshing. A lot of people are so worn out by the end of the weekend that they’re almost relieved to be back in work on Monday morning. But in all the mix and muddle of a modern Sunday, churches perhaps can still offer the chance of refreshment.

Worship is more than a fill-up visit to the spiritual petrol pump before we drive off into the working week, but we should be refreshed and recharged by what Sunday worship provides. When we review how we do worship, as I’m sure we should from time to time, one of the questions to ask should be, “Is our worship spiritually refreshing, and fulfilling? Or does it take more out of us than it puts in?

Today is of course Mothering Sunday as well as Refreshment Sunday; household servants would be released today to visit their families, which is one reason for the name, but it also became a day when we celebrate our Mother Church. So perhaps we can reflect on what that phrase 'Mother Church' actually means. We could of course also reflect on the motherliness of God, but perhaps we’ll leave that for another time. But in what sense can we think of the Church as a mother?

Mothering is in part about providing refreshment; childhood memories for me include Mum providing endless cups of squash on the hot summer days we always seemed to have in those days. As we kids came rushing in from playing outside or down the fields, all hot and tired, there’d always be a jug waiting.

But of course, there's more to refreshment than that. Lots of things get described as 'refreshing' in our everyday speech. Drinks are refreshing, but so are flavours, mint for example, flavours with a sharp and clear impact on our taste buds. Water taken externally is refreshing, too, so we’re refreshed and relaxed after a bath or a shower. But people can say refreshing things too: think of a refreshing truth, or a refreshing idea. “It’s refreshing to hear someone saying such things,” people may say. Just the other day, someone said to me, “What a refreshing change!” To be honest, I don’t recall what that refreshing change actually was - but it's true that a change can be refreshing.

There’s a real link between refreshment and healing. Refreshment aids the process of recovery. That’s true when we’re healing bodies, and it’s also true when we’re healing minds and souls, and for that matter situations and communities. Healing can begin or be enabled by refreshing things: the truth being spoken, a new perspective or vision being shared, or just a caring hug being given.
But I can think of another place where I personally see the word 'refresh' quite a lot: on my computer screen. I often need to press the refresh button when things on the web get fouled or frozen up, or when the page I want doesn’t load as it should. When I press 'refresh' things should and often do start working again as they should. I’ve spent much of the past week trying to persuade my computer to work as it should; and sometimes my own life needs just as much work.

There are times when our Christian lives get fouled up and frozen, times when ministry and witness and prayer get stale. When our lives as Christians get tangled and deformed, Sunday and Mother Church should be refreshing us and kickstarting us, putting things right, sorting out the glitches, showing the way forward.
If it's doing that, then great, halleluia, praise God. If it isn’t, then that’s something to look into. Question: Do we step out of church on a Sunday with a spring in our step, or does what we do here feel like hard work? Does worship inform and inspire us, or is it more likely to patronise and bore us? As a minister I might not enjoy the answer to a question like that, but it’s still an important question to ask. There are times when church itself is in need of refreshment.

Church provides refreshment when it channels the refreshing power of God. So if a churches fails to refresh, then perhaps its connection to God isn’t properly tuned. We can sometimes be too churchy to be Godly - too involved in doing our own thing to be as plugged in as we should be to what God is wanting to do.

The alternative greeting at the start of the communion prayer (the one not printed in the books we use) is this: The Lord is here, his Spirit is with us. That’s the promise that began this thing called church, on the first Christian Day of Pentecost. God's Spirit is the Spirit of fellowship, if you recall the words of the Grace, and fellowship and refreshment are closely linked. God’s Spirit is given for our refreshment.  The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace; well, a long list of things in fact, but the list begins with these three.  How well do we do love and peace, and more importantly perhaps, how well do we do joy?

Christian joy is actually quite a deep and even (in a way) serious thing. All Sundays, even in Lent, should be joyful. And what motivates our joy is that we delight in our Lord, our living and reigning Lord, whose new life we share. One of the prefaces we use at Easter speaks about the long reign of sin being ended, a broken world being renewed, and we once again made whole.

It’s all right to quote from the Easter service because every Sunday, even in Lent, is in fact a celebration of our risen Lord, and so a time of joyful praise, as we praise God for his love, for the love which saves us, calls us and sends us.

And joy and refreshment closely connect together. A truly joyful church will be constantly refreshing and enthusing and enlivening those who worship as part of it. We're sent out from this service with joy, sent to take the good news of Jesus out into the world that so desperately needs to know about his saving love. At the close of this worship we are sent from Mother Church to share and continue the holy task of mothering, refreshing, healing, loving, in the places where we live and work, and in the name of Jesus Christ. Our world needs so much to be refreshed by what only his gracious hand can bring.

A Sermon for St David's Day

To be preached at Leighton tomorrow . . .

A few years ago I was given a copy of Michael Palin's book about the nations of new Europe, which he wrote to accompany a TV travel series, describing a journey that began in Slovenia, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, but haven’t managed yet. Palin went on from Slovenia to visit Moldova, Estonia and Slovakia among others. All of these are nations that did not appear in my school atlas. Some of them are quite small, and have been formed when bigger nations broke up; indeed, some of them show distinct signs of breaking up further into smaller nations still. Moldova, for example, which nestles between Romania and the Ukraine if I’ve got my geography right, contains two more or less autonomous republics neither of which pays much allegiance to the Moldovan government.

One thing Michael Palin discovered was that each of the small nations he visited had a strong sense of its own national identity, and religious faith was often an important factor in that. Even Albania, for many long years a Stalinist regime in which all religion was banned and churches and mosques were knocked down, seems to be rediscovering its faith, and within that faith its national patron saints.

Saints come in many shapes and sizes, but the patron saint we honour today was at least born and raised in the land of which he is patron. That’s not the case elsewhere in these islands: George of England was a native of Capadoccia in modern Turkey;  Andrew of Scotland was one of the Twelve apostles of Jesus; and even Patrick of Ireland was almost certainly either a Welshman or a Cumbrian. David certainly was a Welshman, though perhaps he himself would have preferred the title Briton. He was born of a Welsh mother, and schooled in the Welsh monastic tradition. And if we take the story of his life at face value he became nothing less than Archbishop of Wales.

How much of the story of David can be taken at face value is another matter, and the answer is probably not all that much.  David died in the year 601, and the very earliest written evidence about him comes from a hundred or so years after he died. And that does little more than mention him by name, though it does clearly inform us that he was a bishop. But by about the year 800 March 1st was being kept as David's feast day, and by the 12th century he was regarded as patron saint of all of Wales. The oldest sites linked with David are in fact all in the south of Wales, though. He's also claimed as a founder of the monastery at Glastonbury. To what degree was the real David ever a saint for Gogledd Cymru?

The problem with saints, and David is no exception, is that most of the good stories we have come from long after their own time. It's hard to give them much credence. So what do we really know about David? Probably he and his monks followed a strictly vegetarian diet, and it may well be true that David drank only water, so that he was known as Aquaticus. He seems to have based the monastic rule of life he established on that of the Desert Fathers of early Christianity.

We can also be fairly sure that David did attend the Synod of Brevi in around 560. The story goes that his preaching there met with such acclaim that he was made archbishop, and his monastery at Menevia (or St David's as we now know it) became the metropolitan centre for the Welsh Church; but that story is much less likely. The legends go on to say that David in fact travelled to Jerusalem to be consecrated there as bishop. Frankly that is extremely unlikely to be true. And of course, there is the famous story of how at Brevi the ground rose up in a miraculous way beneath David as he was preaching, so that all the crowd could see him. Suffice to say, the first record of that story comes from hundreds of years later.

But, as I’ve said, by the 12th century David had become the patron saint of this land; and in fact two pilgrimages to St David's were regarded as equivalent to one pilgrimage to Rome.  Among the many people of note and standing who made the pilgrimage to St David's was one William of Normandy, better known as William the Conqueror. Make of that what you will.

But why do we acclaim David as a saint when we know so little for sure about him? Well, the first thing to say is that he was celebrated very soon after his death, and that in itself indicates that this was a man who shone with the light of Christ in a specially attractive way. That's why people remembered David, and it’s also why they were drawn to compose stories about him that we may find a little hard to credit; behind those stories is the simple fact that this man had been what all Christians should aspire to be: a faithful witness to our Lord Jesus Christ, bearing his name and his cross.

So this man is a saint; but we also celebrate David as the patron saint of Wales. To do that says something about identity, tradition and rootedness. In this secular age, surveys continue to indicate that most people in Britain regard traditional values, including religious faith, as in some way important to them. A sense of national identity is part of this, by which I don’t mean the yah-boo nationalism that says 'We're great and you're rubbish', but simply a sense of who and what we are and where we stand and belong, our responsibilities as citizens and our responsibility as a nation. When nationalism is turned into fascism or extremism it becomes something poisonous and deadly, but nationalism doesn’t have to be like that. To know who we are and where we belong can help us build a stable and compassionate society.  For the people of Wales to take pride in who they are, what better base could we have but a man renowned for his service, simplicity and faith?

St David's Day this year falls further into Lent than usual, but it usually coincides with this time when our thoughts turn to discipline, prayer, and the forty days our Lord spent in the desert. Saints help provide a bridge to Jesus; David is said to have founded ten monasteries, and all of them would have used a regime of study and work, and of simplicity and acts of mercy to draw people closer to the example of Christ. A patron saint is not simply a badge to wear, a lucky charm behind which to seek protection. In David we find someone we can look to with pride and aspire to follow; a man who offered others a way to Jesus through an example of sacrifice and service.

Jesus said: To follow me you must renounce yourself and take up your cross. Whether in the former Soviet bloc or on the Celtic fringe, it may be that the small nations of Europe have a stronger sense than most of the cross, from their own histories of hardship, struggle and foreign domination. But what does it mean today for us to bear the cross of Christ?  David was first and foremost a missionary, a man who lived and shared his faith. That has to be our task too. May we be ready as David was to bear the cross, to offer ourselves in the service of our Lord, and to be together a holy nation sharing a call to live lives that make a difference, lives of mercy, compassion and care.

Seek the Lord

A sermon prepared for the coming Sunday, Lent 3, on the set readings for the day . . .

Seek the Lord while he may be found;  call upon him while he is near.

We live in an unsatisfactory world. We'd like to be healthy, but viruses and bacteria may have other plans for us; we'd like to be always surrounded by friends, but the realities of our human chemistry means life's not always that easy; we may dream of peace and plenty, but our dreams are often dashed by the tough realities of the world around us.  In such a world the way good and bad get apportioned out may often seem unfair. It would be great if only good things happened to good people, and only bad things to bad people. Even the opposite way round, while it might not be so nice, at least it would be consistent, I suppose. But it doesn’t work like that; it's a lottery out there.

People trying to get their children into the best schools, and people hoping to get the right treatment when they’re ill, can face what the papers call the postcode lottery. In one case a year or two back, Brighton and Hove City Council literally drew names out of a hat to decide which children went to which school - claiming that that was the fairest way. People who’d deliberately moved to up-market addresses in order to get the right post-code were outraged, of course. But that’s life; unfair, unsatisfactory. You can work and plan and prepare, you can even connive and cheat, but even then things may not go the way you hope they will. None of us can guarantee our future.

The Gospel reading today mentions people caught up in recent tragedies. On one occasion the Roman governor had instructed his soldiers to mingle in disguise among a mob who’d gathered to protest at plans to divert money from the Temple tribute to provide a new water supply for the city. The soldiers were supposed to disperse the mob, which they did so energetically that several people died.
And on another occasion people had been killed when a tower collapsed upon them. These were probably Jewish workers employed by the Roman governor on one of his construction projects, and some righteous Jews saw what happened as God’s just and righteous punishment for their collusion with the enemy.

Jesus told the people not to think like that. The fact that tragedy had befallen those people didn't mean they'd been worse sinners than anyone else. But he followed that with one of his hard sayings: "Not one of you deserves any better, unless you repent and turn from your sin."

Jesus tells us not to judge one another. When we do, and when I say, as I might, that "I'm better than him (or her)" I can end up thinking that I'm just as good as I need to be. Jesus told his disciples that they’d only one benchmark to aim at, and that was perfection. "You must be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect," was what he said, and that’s another really hard saying. For it's an impossible task; not even the saintliest follower of Jesus can manage to equal the example set us by our Lord. And until we grasp that, we’ll begin to understand what's truly distinctive and special about our Christian faith.

But here, in ten words, is what’s special about our faith: "Only by the grace of God can we be saved." And what that means is this: our sin is a permanent stain upon us that only God can wash away. Our sin! Most of us aren’t that bad, and in fact most of the time we're even quite good. But the truth about sin is that even the littlest bit of it taints us fatally. There aren’t big sins and little sins, there’s just sin: breaking God’s laws, going against what he wants from us. And none of us is so free from sin that we qualify on our own merits to escape destruction. But God remains patient with our weakness, and his grace washes that sin away.

The Gospel we believe as Christians is the Gospel of the second chance. It's not always an easy one to take hold of and live up to, so far as our own witness is concerned. We might find it quite hard to accept that someone who's tried and failed, and maybe caused harm and damage, still deserves to try again. Especially if it's us that got hurt or let down or abandoned; especially when the reason they failed seems to be that they didn’t try. Let’s think about a prisoner who’s served his time, and while in prison come to Christian faith as some do. Would we welcome him into our Sunday fellowship? Maybe we would. Would we let him count the collection after church? Or might we be tempted to doubt the truth of his conversion?  But God offers all of this to each one of us; as we read the Gospels we realise that God’s word to us when we fail, when we fall short, when we let him down, is that we still have a place, and we can still try again. When we come to our senses. When we know what we’ve done and feel the hurt of it. When we turn back, like the Prodigal Son, and head for home.

That brings me to the unfruitful fig tree in the story Jesus told. You’d plant a fig tree in a vineyard to provide shelter and wind-break for the delicate vines. But you'd want more than that of it, you’d like some fruit. This unfruitful tree was using up good soil to no great effect. In my garden my instinct is always to leave in place plants that aren't doing well, in the hope that with a bit of care they’ll do better.

And that's what the vine-dresser does in this story. It only goes so far, of course, this support for the unfruitful tree; if the fig tree continues to be useless then it won’t be kept. But for now there’s a second chance, and we discover that God is happy to use failures in his service.  Unlike, say, Louis van Gaal, he's ready to give another run-out to the team that messed up last time. The vine-dressers even prepared to improve the growing conditions, manuring, digging round and improving the drainage.

Grace is about real second chances, in which we're not just abandoned, or too readily rooted out. In Jewish thought, if someone was doing well and had a measure of success that showed God's favour upon them, it proved they must be doing what was right in his eyes. Someone in that happy state might well look across at less fortunate folk and say: "Things aren’t going well for them, so clearly God’s not pleased with them." This parable addresses that point of view: Jesus tells us, "Just because God is patient with you, don't assume he's happy with how you’re living."

Judgement is never far away in the stories Jesus tells. He promises a Gospel of the second chance, he speaks about the Father who goes on loving us, and deals with us graciously. But alongside the promise of the second chance is the threat of the last chance. If we go on ignoring God's call to us to be fruitful in his service, we risk cutting ourselves off from his grace. So the fig tree is offered, not unlimited chances to be fruitful, but one season more: one more chance to be fruitful, one more chance to multiply God's blessings. Rejoice in the grace of God, for without that grace we are lost. But don’t let that gift of grace go to waste - seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Amen.

The Lizard and the Fly

Previously posted I think, but I've repeated it as I've submitted it to the "Loneliness Project".

Adrift from the normal flow of things

he is watching the progress of a lizard

across the window pane.  Someone is speaking

as others listen, but he can find no way

to become part of their conversation.  Time

is running at a different pace in his mind,

in his heart,

and the essential geography is all askew.

The lizard (“Is it a gecko?” some part of him wonders)

is on the outside of the glass,

and on the inside there is a fly.

The lizard is stalking the fly, but cannot catch it,

cannot touch it, cannot understand why;  while the fly on its part

seems oblivious to the lizard.

The fly continues to buzz against the pane,

the lizard continues not to catch it.

People continue to speak.  And so the morning progresses,

this meeting at which he has to be present, even though

he cannot truly attend.  Only a fraction of his self

is even attending to the comic drama of gecko and fly,

which at least has the virtue of novelty.

“What is wrong with me?” he wonders.

What is wrong with me

is that I am still on the wrong side of the glass;

nothing I see is able to catch me, for I am not really here.

I left too much behind;

the beating heart of me is elsewhere, on some other continent.

I remain out of reach

and out of touch.

Blackbird

Walking down to town around dusk last night, I heard my first singing blackbird of the season, which for me is always a sign, maybe the definitive sign, of spring. It may still be cold and even wintry, but if the blackbirds think it's spring, that's good enough for me. Further down I heard a song thrush, too. These are both wonderful singers, by I think the song thrush is too repetitive, and  too fond of short bursts of stuff - the blackbird is a masterly singer, very inventive, and with a resonance and tone few other birds can match, probably none among our resident species.

The dusk chorus is almost as significant as the one at dawn, though less noticed. But I noted that the dawn chorus, although as yet a poor reflection of what will be happening come April and May, is getting loud enough to penetrate our double glazing, though happily no earlier than about a quarter to seven as yet. And the blackbird is, so far, its most mellifluous participant.

Cold As Ice

A poem from a few years ago, which I submitted today to the "Loneliness Project" . . .

Sunshine and traffic noises,

the world waking up from winter,

and I am cold as ice.

In a moment I shall go walking

among the celandines and primroses,

and I shall hope not to meet too many people.

So much brightness, so many smiles!

And I am cold as ice.

I have begun to run out

of jobs to do, of tasks to perform,

of helpful, mindless bits of therapy;

I shall have to start to think again soon.

That’s hard:  thinking takes energy

and I am cold as ice.

So I watch the tree-creeper

winding mouselike up the rutted trunk

of the pine across the yard from my window;

the bird flips back down,

a quick flurry of wings,

to begin again his climb.

I also have to begin again,

having come down so very suddenly

to the place where I now sit.

I also have to begin again,

but I am cold as ice.

February Morning

Grim, schoolmasterly herons are standing, regularly spaced,
in the tussocky field above the canal,
where there are usually sheep, but not today.
I am walking the towpath on a grey February morning.
I pause to watch, while the herons ignore my presence. I am too far away
to concern them; they have their assembly to attend to, as,
furling their dusty academic robes behind them,
they study the ground with the same fixed attention
as did my old teachers during prayers.
I suppose on this damp morning they may have some hope of worms,
maybe even a frog or two; a heron must take his pickings where he can.
I linger a moment more, listening to the early season’s birdsong
from the nearby wood - great tit and robin, mistle thrush,
still the winter singers at work, and
not yet the blackbird whose song always begins my spring.
I start, as the loud crack of a gun shatters the serenity, while from the tree tops
pigeons scatter, as well they might. And across in the field I see first one,
then all the herons lift into the still and drizzly air;
assembly is over - time, I suppose, for lessons. Well,
there are ducks at the lock, and I have some grain to throw,
so I go too.

Cross-shaped (2)

A few words prepared for this afternoon's baptisms at Leighton :-

There’ll be many a shepherd scanning the weather reports over the coming weeks, as lambing time continues, and as upland flocks lamb out on the hills. They’ll be hoping for a dryer spell of weather, after a winter that’s had a deal more rain than we’ve wanted. Where fields and fells are soaked and sodden, lambs are hard pressed to find any dry ground to lie on.

Sheep need to be marked of course, especially where flocks mingle on the open fells. Smit marks identify a beast as being part of a particular flock, belonging to a particular farmer. Sheep and shepherds turn up a lot in the Bible, and Jesus called himself the good shepherd, the shepherd who will give even his own life to protect his flock. One thing that’s done when a child is baptized is that he or she is given a smit mark that shows this child now belongs to Jesus. The sign of a cross is marked on each child who comes for baptism.

The proprietary marking fluids used on sheep come in a variety of bright colours; but the cross marked on us when we’re Christened is invisible. No-one can see it; it’s as if it wasn’t there. It becomes visible only when we make it visible.

We herd our sheep or drive them. We may use dogs or quad bikes, or a combination of the two. Last Sunday I saw a flock being moved very efficiently using children, which saves on dog food. In the Middle East, and certainly at the time of Jesus, sheep are led not driven; they hear their master’s voice, and follow. And it’s when we do that that the mark of the cross on us can be seen: when we listen, and hear, and follow.

When, in fact, we live cross-shaped lives, by which I mean lives that reach upwards like the upright of the cross, acknowledging God’s love for us and offering our love in return - and praying to God through our Lord Jesus Christ; and reach outward like the arms of the cross, where we love our neighbour, where we care for those around us, where we are there for others as needed.

How do we learn to live cross-shaped lives? We always learn best from example. Parents and godparents make promises when they bring a child to be baptized, and the heart of those promises is that they’ll set their child, their god-child an example of love and care, and of following Jesus. But all of us who say we’re Christian have a share in that promise. It’s our calling as Christ’s folk to make clear to those around us just whose mark we bear: a cross-shaped mark made visible in cross-shaped living, in the way of life that Jesus summed up like this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

Cross-shaped (1)

My sermon for tomorrow, Lent 2, to be preached on the set New Testament readings (Phil 3.17-4.1 and Luke 13.31-35) :-

“For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ”: words of St Paul from our first reading. Scholars suggest that Paul had a special affection for the Church he founded at Philippi, to whose members he wrote this letter. He knew they shared many of the problems and afflictions he was facing, he admired their resilience and endurance, and valued their love and support for him. Now he writes to them, from his own imprisonment, in terms of affection and fellow-feeling.

Philippi was a city of some importance, in Greek Macedonia, which is a part of the Roman world Paul had felt specially called to as a missionary. The small Christian church there was formed mostly out of the poorer folk of the city, and yet the people of that church had shown themselves to be both firm in their faith and open-handed in their generosity.

But they are surrounded by opposition; and we might well feel we’re in much the same boat when Paul uses words like “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.” Their end is destruction - I find my thoughts drawn to our sisters and brothers in the embattled Christian communities of the Middle East, and especially to the many Christian refugees fleeing from Isis and other hard-line Muslim forces. Their god is their belly - I find my thoughts drawn to secular society in which we have to be constantly entertained, in which the highest aim can seem to be to grab as much as you can get, and in which consumption and celebrity are prized and applauded.

Having said that, Paul was writing to a small new church surrounded by the pagan religions that dominated the Roman Empire of his day. There are similarities to our situation, but some big differences too, which I’ll come to later. But what Paul writes next is surely as appropriate to us as it was to the Philippians to whom he was writing: for he tells them that we are already citizens of heaven.

In saying that, what he means is that whatever other powers or authorities or cultural norms may seek to govern and direct our lives within the world in which we live, we are to be kingdom people, who always find our example for living in our Lord Jesus Christ, and take our instruction and command from God. Jesus spoke a lot about the kingdom: not as a far-off piece of wishful thinking but as something that was already present wherever he was preaching and teaching and healing. When Jesus talks about the kingdom it isn’t an area of land with geographical borders. Kingdom is what happens when we serve God as our King, when we think of ourselves as belonging to him. Where there’s love in action, changing and restoring lives, the kingdom is being lived it is present among us.

The kingdom is both present reality and future hope, as we read Paul and visit the Gospel stories of our Lord, there is always a sense of “now but not yet”. The kingdom is present among us when people are living and working and loving as disciples of Jesus; but the kingdom will not be fully established until, as Paul writes to the Philippians, Christ returns from heaven to make all things subject to his rule.

For now “many live as enemies of the cross of Christ”: now the Church is surrounded by people who challenge what we believe. In some places Christians are openly persecuted: they need our prayer and our practical support. Here we probably won’t face anything worse than ridicule or argument, or more likely, most of the time, simply apathy. “You live your way, we’ll live ours,” people say, in today’s pick-and-mix western society. Churches are mostly surrounded by people who think quite fondly of us in fact. People are generally happy to support us and even come along to the odd event. Maybe church is thought of as dated and quaint, not the sort of thing younger folk would want to be part of; but it’s nice that it’s still around, for all that.

But that could be the most insidious threat of all; and it points up the main difference between the church of today and the young church at Philippi to whom Paul was writing. They were young and unknown, and there was nothing of the status quo about them. Whereas we bear the weight of generations of faith and service and witness, and people have expectations and make assumptions when they look at the church, as to what it should be doing, and what role it should be playing.

A supportive one mostly; an institution of the establishment, and part of the fabric of society. Bishops sit in the House of Lords, and ‘living a good Christian life’ is thought of as much the same as being nice, a good neighbour, and a loyal and law-abiding citizen. When people tell me, as they do, that they don’t have to come to church to be a good Christian, that’s probably the definition of Christian they mean.

I’m sure all of us here can tick that box. For the most part we’re nice, we’re good neighbours and law-abiding citizens. But Paul would not have recognized that description as an adequate description of the Christian faith he taught. “Our citizenship is in heaven” he told the Philippians. Good citizens we may be, but Christians can never be uncritical citizens: our first allegiance is to our Lord, and we judge in his light what earthly powers require of us.

Our Gospel reading shows us Jesus setting his feet on the road to Jerusalem - not in order to take part in its government or to support those who do, but to face the death that is their only answer to his message. The way of God often runs counter to the way of the world; as we follow Christ, his cross is both our salvation and our example. He calls us to live cross-shaped lives, by which I mean lives shaped by the cross, and all that our Lord has won for us, and lives that, whatever the world decides or determines, reach upwards into fellowship with God, and outward into fellowship with our neighbour.

In his letter to the Philippians Paul is bold enough to offer himself as an example to them of what cross-shaped living is like. “Be like me,” he dares to say. In their lives, Paul and his companions have done their best to model Christ - in love, in self-giving and self-offering, in their endurance of all kinds of disappointment and opposition: in a fundamental change of mindset in which Christ is given in their lives the dominion they pray he will come to have on earth.

The easiest thing for the church to do in a society like ours is to be quiet and nice and unobtrusive. Church can then become just one more community activity among the many that people might choose to do. It’s a safe and comfortable place to be, but it would never have been enough for Paul. He urges the Philippian church to dare to live in a way that is new and different and truly Christ- and cross-centred. In him we find the truth we need, the sense we need of purpose and identity. “Life is ours to lose in the service of others,” someone once said. Paul would have okayed that, I think: Christlike, cross-shaped living. His message to us, as to those at Philippi, is this: we are citizens of heaven already - practise for heaven by living better lives on earth.

Robins and Dunnocks

My most recent Nature Notes article . . .

It’s quite enjoyable watching the antics of the various visitors to our bird feeders, and trying to work out the pecking order.  Larger birds take precedence, by and large, and obviously the sudden arrival of a magpie or even a wood pigeon will send everything else scattering, until they realise it’s not a sparrow hawk or anything else too threatening. Even magpies can only peck around underneath our feeders, though I have on occasions had jackdaws using them - in a rather ungainly way, but they manage it. The great spotted woodpecker is the largest bird that regularly uses our feeders, and no-one argues with her.

Of the smaller birds, the one at the top of the pecking order is clearly the nuthatch. Even the greenfinches give way, and they’re usually the big boys. Of the finches, chaffinches come bottom of the pecking order, partly because they are clumsier than most others; siskins are much smaller, but they are so acrobatic they can out-manoeuvre a chaffinch any time.

We had a blackcap that was very combative a couple of winters ago, but this year’s birds are content just to muck along with the other birds. Coal tits are definitely at the bottom of the pile, and don’t even try to compete, just making a quick dash to the feeder and back when opportunity arises, though they’ll stay longer if no other birds are around. They will take seeds and secrete them for later use, which is a good strategy if you’re where they are in the pecking order. They are also probably the main reason why sunflowers keep coming up in our hanging baskets!

Robins are always combative, feisty little birds, though some throw their weight around more than others. We have one currently that will perch on top of the feeders and face up to anything else that comes along. But he’s not so good at actually using the feeder, so once a mob of, say, greenfinches comes along he has to retire. Anyway, robins save most of their aggression for other robins, in winter holding solo territories (two overlap in our garden, which makes for some great robin fights). By this time they’ve paired up, so we now have two regulars who seem to be getting on all right - plus an interloper who stirs things up from time to time.

I’ve noticed, though, that at least one of our robins will fly the width of our garden to attack and see off a dunnock (or hedgesparrow). Postings on the net suggest that lots of other people have observed this antipathy between robins and dunnocks, but not much has been posted by way of explanation. Our garden can be full of other birds, but the robin will ignore them to focus on the dunnocks. They are of course a similar size and shape, so it may be that the robin is motivated by that - though of course dunnocks don’t have the red breast which is what stirs up robin on robin fights. Both species are mostly ground feeders, so I suppose there is a direct competition between them for food. Our local dunnocks always give in to robin attacks, but come straight back as soon as their attacker’s back is turned!

Lenten Thoughts

Lent is the season of forty days beginning on Ash Wednesday and lasting till Easter Eve or Holy Saturday. That's forty-six days really, but we don’t count the Sundays. The name Lent comes from the Old English word 'lencten', meaning spring, or literally the lengthening of the days.

Lent is a fast, whose origin lies with new Christians preparing themselves to be baptized on Easter Day. Still today some Christian sects baptize all their new members on Easter Day. Candidates for baptism would have fasted for a period, but probably of two or three days fasting rather than forty - reflecting the three days our Lord was in the tomb, rather than the forty in the desert.

The earliest mention of a forty day fast comes in the Canons of Nicea from 325 AD, reflecting our Lord's fast, and the fasts of Moses and Elijah. Forty is a special number in Scripture, often representing a period of temptation or suffering, or a time of being laid waste. The people of Israel took forty long years to journey to the Promised Land.

Lent for Christians is a time when we conscientiously imitate our Lord’s preparation in the wilderness. What sort of a fast should we keep? Centuries ago the Lenten fast was much stricter than it is now. Only one meal a day was allowed, to be taken towards evening.  The meal eaten would not include meat or fish, and usually also eggs and lacticinia (milk, cheese and so forth) would be excluded.  This is quite like the strict Muslim fast of Ramadan, when nothing is eaten or drunk by the faithful until the sun sets.

But those rules were slackened. By the 9th century the hour for breaking the fast had moved to three in the afternoon, at least for ordinary folk, and by the 15th century even monks and nuns usually broke their fast at noon, when the evening office of Vespers was specially said much earlier than at other seasons.

From the middle ages fish became regarded as a vegetable, and could therefore be eaten on Fridays through the year and generally during Lent. That’s why monasteries generally had large carp ponds. In time dairy products began to be permitted as well.

But why fast anyway? For Jesus this was so he could concentrate his mind on his Father’s will. But for us Lent became a time of penance in which to do something about what the Prayer Book calls “our manifold sins and wickedness.” In the early Church there was much debate about those who had fallen from faith in times of persecution, and who now wanted to return. Even if they were to be allowed back into church, clearly they couldn't just come straight back. So for them Lent was a time for making penance, and appealing for forgiveness. But it’s a time we all need; we all fall short, no-one is sinless.

And fasting isn't just giving things up, but also taking things on.  So Lent included extra times of prayer, extra times of study, perhaps even extra times of mortification. Pilgrimages might be made in Lent. When these days we think of Lent only in terms of giving things up, and often even then with our physical health in mind, rather than thinking about what might help us serve God better, we miss the point of the fast. Lent is a time to give up things that get too important in our lives, because and obscure the call of God; and to put in place things that are spiritually good and useful.

We do still use Lent as a time for studying and learning, but sadly most Lent courses are attended by only a minority of church members - it would be great if more came, and it would be great if those who didn’t some were reading improving books at home. In the past, candidates for baptism would learn what the Church taught about Jesus, about the cross, about the sacraments - so that at Easter they could say with confidence: 'Jesus is my Lord' and be baptized.

Lent used to begin today, on a Sunday. In medieval times it was extended back to Ash Wednesday to make up the full forty days, Sundays excluded. The ashes on Ash Wednesday come by tradition from last year's Palm Crosses. And ash is marked on the foreheads of the faithful with the words 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent, and believe the Gospel'. In those words at the start of Lent we are reminded that we can't do this on our own. We need what our Lord has done for us, and we need to dedicate ourselves to him.

Before Ash Wednesday we have some days called Ante-Lent. Ante with an e meaning before, but it could easily have an i meaning against, because with the coming fast in mind the last days before it began had an element of revel, over-consumption and misrule about them. Shrove Tuesday was a day like that, even though the word Shrove means penitence. Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, probably a better title; pancakes used up the butter and eggs in the house, making for a bit of a feast. Mardi Gras elsewhere in the world became a time of carnival and procession. Some local customs still exist that allow folk to go a bit mad on Shrove Tuesday. The children of a village might be given free reign to go through the streets extorting money, cakes and goodies from the residents; and some wild and  fearsome football matches still happen, like the one in Ashbourne that seems to involve virtually the whole town.

Many such customs had all but vanished in Britain by the end of the 18th century, but, sadly, so had the keeping of Lent in any really organised and sincere sense. But in the 19th century two things happened more or less at the same time: people rediscovered and sometimes invented local traditions; and the new Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church revived the keeping of fasts and festivals of all kinds, especially encouraging a more zealous keeping of Lent.

So that brings us to where we are today. My dictionary of the Christian Church tells me that 'Lent is now widely kept'. But it’s the 1957 edition, and our keeping of Lent is now much weaker. I’m sad about that. I’d like us to revive some of the old Lent customs and maybe to look at some new ideas, like pilgrimages with prayers and activities using sites within the church building (or Christian labyrinths as they’re sometimes called - something I tried in a previous parish). If Jesus needed time to prepare and to get right with his Father, so do we. So maybe it’s time for a new revival of Lent. Maybe that would make our churches holier places, more in tune with what God wants from us; maybe that would make God’s people more fit for service and witness to a world that needs all that we can give it in terms of prayer, holiness, generosity of spirit, Godly peace, and - with a nod towards today which is the Feast of St Valentine - simple old-fashioned love.