Epitaph (a poem)

22nd March - I've been working on these lines, and have decided to post a revised version:

When it is time to go

I shall hope to be remembered with smiles,

though I’d like there to be tears as well.

And I'd like to think there might be stories to tell

assisted by the raising of glasses

and maybe the odd eyebrow too.

When it is time to go

I'll hope to leave knowing

there’s a job well done, and a journey boldly made;

but maybe there might be a touch of frustration besides,

for I could have had a little more to try at,

might have found a mile or two further to walk; but anyway

I'll hope there may not be too much to regret.

I didn't get everything right, I know: I shall not hide from my faults.

The mistakes were all my own; I feel for every hurt I've caused.

But when it is time to go

I’d like to think they might be looked on kindly;

I hope I might be welcomed wherever it is I'm going -

with forgiveness and forbearance and maybe a little love.

For let this be known of me,

let this be believed, friends, when it is time to go:

I put my heart always into all I set myself to do,

always tried hard at love, and always hoped that in the end

I should have made more smiles than tears.

Psalm Sixteen

Another first draft of a poem . . .

On this grey morning

with the wind soft in my face

I am looking over the valley

from this path by a stream that chatters idly to itself

as it flows gently down under the stone slabs

of the old sheep bridge, sweet cold water splashing between

the new and hopeful greening of early spring.

You are down there somewhere,

I imagine,

doing something timely and important:

chairing a meeting, playing a violin,

hanging out the washing, waiting for a train.

I am for now outside the reach of time,

with nothing important to do,

and nowhere important to go;

but the wind blows soft in my face, and

standing where my eyes can scan the world,

just for this quiet moment

the lines have fallen for me in a goodly place.

For here I can feel it to be true:

that God is set at my right hand,

so that I can be glad, for safe held I shall not fall.

The quiet breeze and the soft grey clouds

seem alive with the Spirit, with the Creator’s presence;

the stream’s splashing motion sings

a constant litany of prayer and praise.

High on this hillside

each unspoken thought is laid open

to the mind of God;  and he hears,

for he is close by, he is close by.

Thou shalt show me the path of life;

in thy presence is the fullness of joy,

and in thy right hand

are pleasures for evermore . . .

. . . with the wind soft in my face.

Keeping the Fast

A talk prepared for this coming Sunday :-

I was cleaning my teeth the other night, and as I took the toothbrush out of my mouth and rinsed it to put away, I found myself suddenly thinking, “How on earth did my toothbrush get into such a state?”  There it was, all straggly and soft and with bristles sticking out in all directions.  As a means of cleaning my teeth it was no longer much good.

How on earth did my toothbrush get like that?  Gradually, is the answer.  Bit by bit and without me noticing, is the answer.  As with toothbrushes, so with so much else.  Things get tatty and run down and worn out without us noticing.

A friend of mine was complaining to me the other day that he was getting pins and needles and his hand was swelling up.  He was still complaining at work the following day and they sent him to casualty.  Turns out he’d broken his wrist, maybe a couple of weeks earlier taking a tumble on the ice as so many of us did.  He hadn’t realised and had just worked on. Quite often even fairly large problems and deficiencies go unnoticed because we’ve got other things to think about, too much else on our minds.

So here we are in Lent, and that’s what Lent is for.  We need times in our lives when we take a closer look at our selves, take a step back as it were in order to notice the things we otherwise don’t see.  What am I doing that I really shouldn’t be doing?  What have I stopped doing that I ought to still be doing?  What bits of my life, and especially what bits of my spiritual life, are getting saggy and worn out and really no longer quite fit for purpose?  And what am I going to do about it all?

In other words, let’s get back into shape, let’s get back into a disciplined way of living, let’s get back into touch with our spiritual heart, let’s get back in touch with God.

And of course, that last bit is the bit that’s most important.  Let’s get back in touch with God. Jesus directed the attention of his disciples toward those people, chiefly the Pharisees, who made a big deal out of fasting and praying. They anointed themselves liberally with ashes so that people wouldn’t be able to help but notice they were fasting.  They stood on the street corners to pray so that no-one would be able to ignore what they were doing.

Said Jesus - if you do what you do so that people will see you and applaud you, well, don’t be surprised if that’s the only reward you get.  That’s the one you were aiming for, after all.  The point of fasting is that it’s between you and God.  It isn’t what other people see, and what other people say, that matters.  This is between you and God.

A former colleague of mine who happens to be a Muslim used to take gentle but nonetheless serious issue with the way Christians do fasting, compared with the proper Muslim fast - as he saw it - of Ramadan.  During Ramadan, Muslims (as I’m sure you know) fast completely throughout the daylight hours, neither eating nor drinking, and they only break their fast when the sun sets.  Ann and I were in Istanbul one Ramadan, and we felt quite guilty really, every lunchtime, seeing as so many other people around us weren’t eating a thing.

So when my Muslim colleague used to tell me, “We Muslims fast properly, while even in Lent you Christians don’t really seem to fast at all” to be honest, I tended to find myself more or less agreeing with him.  I think I recall saying something about how sad it is that in this secular and materialistic age people here are no longer as serious about things like fasting as they used to be.  Mind you, that might all be changing now, with the news recently that the fasting diet is actually a very good and sensible way to keep your weight down, and maintain your body in good health.

Be that as it may, what I could have said to my Muslim colleague was that Christians aren’t supposed to make a big public thing about their fasting, not even in Lent.  If our fasting is saying ‘Look at me’ rather than ‘Look at God’ then somewhere we’re going a bit wrong.  Nonetheless, we should keep the Lenten fast as a fast, in some quiet but sincere way - because we really do need it.

We need it because we don’t notice as we should when we get slack about our praying or our Bible reading or our charitable giving or our care for one another.  And we need it because we don’t notice the ways in which other things, pleasures, possessions, ambitions, take too big a place in our lives, so that they become idols, little gods in their own right blocking our view of the one true God.  And we need it too because maybe at times our Christian fellowship together needs a little repair and refurbishment too.

But fasting isn’t about beating ourselves up just for the sake of it.  It doesn’t have to be a miserable time.  One prayer I sometimes use talks about the joy of the Lenten fast - and why not use that word?  Surely if we’re drawing closer to God then that should be a joyful thing!  Nor is it just about giving things up.  It’s also about taking things on.  If during Lent we give up a meal, and what we would have spent on that meal goes into our holiday fund for later in the year, that doesn’t seem very right.  If giving something up saves us money, then how we use that money is also part of our Lenten commitment.

There’s plenty about fasting in scripture.  Sometimes the people of Israel seems to have imagined that all they needed to do was to fast a bit and pray a bit, and all their woes would be reversed because God was bound to be back on their side now.  Prophets like Hosea told them in no uncertain terms just how wrong they were.  God isn’t bound to support you just because you press the right buttons, he told them.

In other words, it isn’t what you do with your hands or on your knees that matters, it’s what is happening in your heart.  Jesus knew that very well.  Do things in secret, he told his disciples, so that your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.  It doesn’t matter that no-one else sees what you’re about.

Solving my toothbrush problem wasn’t a problem.  They come in packs of two very often anyway, and the other half of my last pack was waiting for me, pristine and ready to brush, there at the back of the bathroom cabinet.  My friend with the broken wrist is off work for a couple of weeks, but by then he should have healed up OK, and he’ll be back in the thick of things.

I suppose the sort of things the Lenten fast is supposed to sort our might need a little more work.  If my biggest spiritual problem at the start of Lent is that I’m not praying as I should, then just giving up eating chocolate isn’t going to be the total solution.  If I don’t succeed I end up feeling miserable;  if I do succeed I may also be miserable, as life without chocolate isn’t much fun - but I may also be so full of pride that I’m tempted to boast about how well I’m doing.  And at the end of it all I’m probably still not praying.

So we do need to be purposeful about Lent;  sorted out and realistic.  What do I really need to do, for me to be stronger and more effective, better tuned in to the will of my Lord, better able to serve him and to praise him and proclaim him?  Giving things up will help, but only if I’m also taking things on.  And the right things, for me as I am.  Otherwise, it’s a bit as though I’m saying, “Oh, I see my toothbrush is getting a bit threadbare, I think I’ll buy myself a new hat.”

Now at this point you might be thinking, “Well, this is all very fine, but we’re already two Sundays into Lent, why is he saying all this now?”  Well, your Lent might be all sorted out, but it might not be.  Or you might even have given up.

At Lent as at the New Year, we make resolutions full of fervour and good faith, and then we trip up and don’t keep to them, and so we give up and say, “Well, never mind, there’s always next year!”  Fasting is too important a principle to be thrown out just because you missed to keep it on one occasion. I personally think Christians should always fast, and I know a very holy couple - no, I’ll rephrase that, because it makes them sound like the sort of pious head in the clouds types that are no fun, and that’s not them - I know a very jolly but also very prayerful couple who fast every Friday throughout all the year, in honour of Good Friday but also because it just brings them back to God in a firm but gentle way, it’s a way in which they remind themselves each week just who comes in at number one in their lives.

But that was to digress.  Not giving up was what I wanted to talk about.  Purposeful fasting is about making progress through Lent, drawing closer to God, mastering our rebellious selves, bringing ourselves back into line.  It stands to reason that we won’t always manage it first time.  High jumpers at the sports get three goes at the bar, at whatever height it’s set.  We get as many goes as we need, so long as we keep on trying, and with good faith.  We’re not disqualified, just because on this time or that one we didn’t manage to clear the bar.

I seem to be mixing my images rather today.  If you come away from this sermon with a mental image of a chap with a broken wrist trying to clean his teeth as he clears the high jump bar in an athletics contest then (a) hopefully it will at least raise a smile, and smiling is allowed, even in Lent, among God’s people;  and (b) well, sometimes it does seem as difficult as that to get it all right and to be good and faithful disciples . . . but Jesus never did say it would be easy, just that he would be there always with us, and that in the end it would be worth it.  Happy Lent!

What is it with staplers - or is it just me?

I self-publish my poems, printing up books whenever I have a reading, in the hope that some might sell - so last night I was busy printing and folding, as I was talking to a group a few miles from here.  A little while after we moved here two years ago I decided to invest in a new long-arm stapler, as my old one - the latest in a small succession of such things - was just not behaving.  Anyway, for a while all was well.

But not now.  This is I suppose the fourth or fifth long-arm stapler I've owned, and I've never bought cheaply, figuring that it would make good sense to invest in quality.  Quality?  My trouble is, none of them have really lasted the course.  This one was fine for about a year, but by last night it was skittishly refusing to properly inject the staples.  About every other one was crumpled and distorted, and not holding in place.  I want my books to look neat and professional, and so I make sure they are well laid out and printed . . . so you can imagine my frustration when it all gets spoiled because of one stupid stapler.

Yes, I am one of those people who get cross with inanimate objects.  I know it's silly, and I know we all find it so terribly amusing when we see John Cleese bashing his recalcitrant car with a stick in 'Fawlty Towers' - but no, I have to admit it:  after just one more distorted and useless staple messed up my handiwork last night, I became Basil Fawlty.  'The whole world is against me, and it's being channelled through you, you stupid b****y stapler.  Take that!  And that!  And that!'  It didn't do any good.  My stapler now hates me, and won't ever work for me again.  I had to give up making up poetry books (fortunately, I had finished enough to take to my reading).  In fact nothing moved forward in any way;  And if I felt briefly better for having vented my wrath, not even that  lasted for long.

Anyway, in the sober light of the next day, my question is, I suppose, is it just me?  I mean, are long-arm staplers just inherently flimsy and untrustworthy bits of tat, so that they always go wrong for everyone - or is it actually somehow my own fault?  No need to answer.  I'll buy another stapler, and see what I can do to treat this one with love and care.  And maybe, just maybe, it'll see me out.  One can but hope.

Disaster?

I was at work yesterday when my wife called in a state of panic from our new home.  Water was pouring through everywhere, and what could she do?  What could I do, I wondered, particularly as at the time she rang I had a newly bereaved family with me, who had come to view father in our chapel of rest.  Everything seemed to be falling down about our ears, all our plans and expectations in ruins, and we were helpless.

Well, we knew where the stop tap was, at least, not that that solved the problem instantly.  A friend who does some plumbing work was quickly mobilized and, bless him, dropped everything to rush over a help.  The central heating system was the problem - a combination of things, including, it would seem, the failure of safety equipment that should have directed excess water outside, rather than allowing it to fill the roof space. Damage has been done, though we think - and hope - not as much as we'd feared at first.

And we have to look at the positives.  That can be hard at first.  We'll not be covered by insurance, as they don't cover this sort of thing until the policy has been in operation for fourteen days.  Putting everything right will cost us three or four thousand pounds, not money we have readily lying around.  And we remain worried about things like electrical damage.

But I have to admit that it's better that it should have happened now, before we move in.  We'd expected to spend money on the central heating anyway, and at least this means that anything we get done will be "root and branch" rather than tinkering at the edges.  And getting it done will perhaps allow the house to feel more "ours" at the outset.

It's easy to be spooked into thinking about kismet, fate, to be tricked into a sense that this is a project doomed from the start by bad luck.  Such a way of thinking can become self-fulfilling;  but it shouldn't be.  I think I have a past history of just getting on with things when the going gets tough.  I do not intend to give in to anything, and certainly not to unfounded speculations about jinx or hoodoo.  Someone said (though I can't remember just who) that we're never given dreams without the means to make them come true - except that often the journey from dream to reality involves a lot of hard slog.

Transfiguration

The text of an address prepared for this Sunday, the last before Lent :-

Here’s a story you might have heard before, but I’m sure it’s worth re-telling, especially in a Presbyterian church. A bishop who was guest of honour at an event in one of the churches of his diocese found, somewhat to his consternation, that he was being followed around by a little girl as, sherry in hand, he made his tour of the room.  The little girl was the vicar’s six year old daughter - and every time the bishop looked round, there she was, staring at him.  Wherever he went, there she followed.  He just couldn't shake her off.  Finally, he could take no more:  "Why are you following me about, little girl?" he asked.  "I'm waiting to see you do your trick," she replied.  "What trick?" asked the bishop in consternation, not being much given to tricks.  "I’m waiting to see you do your trick with the glass," said the little girl.  "I don't do any tricks with glasses," replied the bishop sternly.  "Daddy says you do," replied the little girl serenely.  "Daddy says you can drink like a fish."

Really, my starting point for today is that people followed Jesus - and many of them followed him for reasons much the same as the reason why that little girl was following the bishop.  They wanted to see what tricks he was going to do - for he was, after all, the latest thing, and they wanted to be dazzled and amazed.  And I want to keep that image in mind as I think this morning about what it means for us as his Church and as individual Christian people to be followers of Jesus today. 

We’ve heard one version of the story of that remarkable event we call the Transfiguration - and we’ve seen how three of the disciples were so dazzled and amazed, up there on the mountain, that for a while none of them really knew much about where they were at all, or even whether they were waking or sleeping.

Not that they’d gone there with him expecting any of that. Not everyone was following Jesus just in the hope of seeing magic tricks and miracles. Peter, James, John and the others were following Jesus because he had called them. And, I suppose, because something about the things he said and the things he did burned in their hearts.

Here are four things I want briefly to say about following Jesus, looking at it from the point of view of, say, Simon Peter. First: If Jesus called people Simon Peter then he might call anyone.  He doesn’t call people of a certain grade, with established qualifications, with a certain measured quality of goodness.  Jesus called fishermen (and tax collectors, and all sorts), not scholars - or at least, not necessarily scholars.  He didn’t look for book-learning -  the one thing he requires is this:  that when he calls, we say yes.

So my second point follows on: all we need at the outset if we’re to follow Jesus is this - that we have an obedient faith.  Jesus said, "You are my friends, if you do what I command."  Doing what you’re told to do is the mark of a servant, but Jesus doesn’t leave us that way.  He says very clearly, "I call you servants no longer. You are my friends."

And that takes us to my third point: Following Jesus means learning from Jesus and growing like Jesus.  "Are you following me?" Those are words a teacher may say to her class, or a storyteller to the people listening.  And when Jesus asks us to follow him, he doesn't mean tag along behind me like so many of the crowds did, or like that little girl did to the bishop. He means come and learn from me, follow me as your guide in life; so that, as St Paul wrote, “we have the mind of Christ”. Let me complete that quote from St John - "I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I learned from my Father." To learn from a teacher is to grow like that teacher - the great Christian call and challenge is to imitate, to grow like, to grow close to, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fourth thing I’d want to say is this. It’s a point made by one of the cast in a very moving and challenging play I went to watch at Marton Village Hall last week, performed by the wonderful Riding Lights Theatre Company.  Jesus doesn't say to anyone he calls that following him will be a safe thing to do.  Quite the opposite, in fact:  it won’t be safe, or easy.  It can be tough, and it will be costly. But what he does say is that it’s going to be worth it. For another thing he says to his disciples is:  "I am the way, the truth, and the life." 

The Church is a community of people who’ve heard Christ’s call and decided to follow. Its members are people who as friends of Jesus are pilgrim companions together. Jesus told the disciples that the world would know the truth of his word when it saw how his friends loved one another. He laid down his own life for love of his friends, and for love, even, of those who hammered the nails into his hands and feet. And his one great commandment is this: love one another, as I have loved you.

So the renewal of our Church in mission and outreach depends on our obedience to that great command. If we’re to grow and thrive and make new disciples, we need to be renewed in unity and fellowship and love. If we don’t notice, encourage, correct and support our fellow disciples, if we let ourselves be divided so that labels like Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic mean more to us than the one that says Jesus, then we fall short of he calls out from us, and we short-change our witness to the world of his love. 

I’m not sure what right I have to say any of these things. I wouldn’t claim to be a shining example of discipleship. Nor would I dare to speak from any platform of ministerial authority; I stand here with no authorization other than that of fellow pilgrim. I am amazed to hear Jesus call me, but he does, just as he calls you. All I can do is to try and follow. And why? Because in Jesus I see a great man, and a fine teacher, and an example of faith and service. But not only that; there is more.

And that takes me on to reflect on just what it was that happened on the Mountain of the Transfiguration, just what it was that Peter and James and John saw there. Transfiguration means fundamental change, and we’ve heard how in their eyes Jesus was changed, how his clothes, his face, became dazzling white. And yet I don’t believe Jesus changed at all.

My take on what happened on that mountain side is not that Jesus was changed, but that the eyes of his friends were opened, or maybe their hearts, and just for a moment they were able to see him as he always is - aflame with the glory of God, shining out with the purity of God.

For this man is so closely joined to God, the Son and the Father are so closely one, that all the radiance of divine glory shines out in that human face. It always does. It did in the stable at Bethlehem, it did as that man hung broken and dying on the cross. For the most part its shining was hidden and unseen; but the miracle on the hillside was not that Jesus suddenly shone so radiantly, but that they just for a moment were granted leave to see it, to see him as he always is.

For in this man we see all the radiant glory, all the loving power, all the creative authority of God.  So to say yes to his call and to follow him is to join ourselves in to that closeness to God.  When we are friends of Jesus we can call God ‘Our Father’ and we can pray to him in a new way, with no need for intermediaries or special ritual, for priests and temples, but just as ourselves, in perfect confidence and trust. We can discover the truth of the promise made in Isaiah that God is with us and will uphold us if we pass through fire or water. Follow me, says Jesus, join yourselves to me, so that I am the vine and you the branches. Cut off from me you can do nothing, he tells us. But when we’re joined to him, when we follow him in faith, we too shall shine, as our lives and the life of our Church will bear the fruit of his love.

Home

We picked up the keys to our new home today.  We still live in the old one, and we'll be here for a while yet I think.  But our new home is now accessible to us, and for a period we'll be a bit confused, I suppose, as to which one really counts as 'home'.  We've lived where we are for two years;  it's a bit small for us but otherwise it's lovely, in a slightly ramshackle sort of way, and I'm sorry to be moving, although I recognise we have to go.

We made lots of changes to our present place, before we moved in and during our first, say, six months here.  So, although it is of course indelibly stamped with the marks of its previous residents, it also very much feels like 'our place'.  It may take a while for the new place to feel so much ours, I don't know.  It's lovely and it suits us, we wouldn't be going there otherwise, but . . .

"Home is where the heart is," they say.  Well, spring is a time for hearts and flowers, and maybe that'll help us to settle.  The garden will be a project to get our teeth into (or more probably our forks and trowels!), and I think I'll enjoy seeing the woodland behind us leaf up.  So I'm sure it will all work - but just at the moment I do find myself wishing I felt a bit more excited than I do.

Snowdrops

I'd just like to pay a little tribute to the humble snowdrop.  I was out and about today, covering some ground as I travelled from mid-Wales through Shropshire and into Worcestershire (and back) - and in quite a few places my heart was gladdened by little clumps, and in one or two spots huge drifts, of snowdrops.  It was good to see them, especially on a day that featured a fair dusting of snow and some cold winds.  Spring may be a little way off yet, but we're reminded that it is coming.

Most of the snowdrops we see in the countryside have been deliberately planted, but they naturalise well.  Except in my garden, that is.  Since it's a flower I really love, it's always been a particular sadness that for me they seem not to grow as they should.  I plant them, they flower, they disappear, there's no sign of them next year.  Why should that be?  Other people think of them almost as weeds, they get so many!  But it's such a special flower that I am determined to keep on trying!

February Baby

As a February baby - born, indeed, on the first day of the month - I've always tended to think rather proprietorially of this month.  It's a transition month, often - you begin to notice at last that the evenings are opening out a bit, and snowdrops and celandines, primroses, perhaps even a few early daffodils signal the spring days that are not too far around the corner.  The shortness of February was always a relief, too, particularly in the days when my income barely kept pace with our family expenditure.


February gets its name from the Latin Februa, the purification festival held on the fifteenth day of the month, as designated in the old lunar calendar. I presume that there is some connection between this pagan ritual and the Feast of the Purification (or Candlemas) which falls on February 2nd in the Church calendar and signals the end of the Christmas / Epiphany season.  It is possible there might also be a connection with fever (febris), and certainly this is a month when many of us find ourselves laid up with the flu!

A few years ago I prepared a talk about this month for one of our local ladies' clubs.  February is the month chosen to vary in length so as to correct the calendar, and I was able to discover and share some interesting facts about February's varying length - there have been, in various places, Februarys with anything from 24 to 32 days, as calendars were brought in line with each other. Normally, of course, the variation is between 28 and 29 days, and, as our oldest child was born on 29th February, this has directly impacted on us.  She had a decision to make, since her 'real' birthday only comes round every four years.  On the other three years, should she go for 28th February (and thus remain a February baby), or  opt for 1st March (which of course would be the full year on from her previous birthday)?  Wisely, she decided to go for both, reckoning that two substitute birthdays might atone for the lack of one real one.

This year, February started cold, then got a bit warmer - it's been quite mild here today - and, glancing ahead over the next few days, looks as though it's getting colder again.  There may even be a bit more snow.  But it's still light at tea time, the bulbs are growing in the garden, and I'm happy with whatever my little month sends my way.  Anyway, in three and a bit weeks' time, it'll be March!

Volunteers

I've had a busy day today.  I popped in to the Saturday coffee morning held every week in our local church hall.  Each week is organised and staffed by a different charity - this week it was the local Welsh Society.  After that I had a chat and a coffee with some friends and fellow members of the local branch of the Royal British Legion, to discuss arrangements for this year's Poppy Appeal.

After lunch I did a quick litter pick along the roads and footpaths between our home and the middle of town, including the hospital car park which we walk through - something I try to do each week as one of the local "Litter Champions" organised by 'Keep Wales Tidy'.  Then I spent  a couple of hours in Sainsbury's supermarket collecting for the Marie Curie Nurses, who do such a fantastic job in caring for cancer patients and their families.

In the evening I was part of the choir singing at a concert to raise funds for Hope House, our local children's hospice, and also for a local lunch club / day centre for the elderly.  It was a very well attended concert, with all those performing giving their services free, and it will have raised something in the thousands of pounds, I very much hope.

It's unusual for me to do so many different things with a charitable focus all on the same day, and I list them now not to draw attention to myself in any way (after all, in the main I was only playing a bit part in proceedings!), but to highlight how absolutely essential all those masses of people who volunteer are to our society and to each local community - including all those with whom I was in contact today.  So much caring work is done by volunteers.  So much vital fund-raising is done by volunteers.  And those who go week by week to events like our coffee morning also play their part.  Many of the people I met and chatted to today are, I know, involved in not just one but many different bits of charitable work (if you want something done, find a busy person, they say).  Probably, most people don't know just how much volunteering these generally unsung heroes do.  Well, I am happy to sing their praises here, and to hope that others will join them and make sure their work continues and grows.

Conversion

A sermon to be preached tomorrow in a little wayside chapel not too far from here:

Let’s think a bit today about conversion.  Friday last is a date kept by many in the church as the Conversion of Saint Paul, and because Paul was the man more than any other who took the Christian message out into the wider world, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is deliberately timed to coincide with that day - indeed, it always ends on 25th January.  Paul was the man who had the original 'Damascus Road' experience;  many others have had similar experiences of a dramatic meeting with Christ in a way that claimed them and shamed them and won them and changed their lives.  Their stories are always a great inspiration to me. But at this time of the year we reflect on the story of how Saul became Paul; how the chief persecutor of the first Christians became one of the greatest of the apostles of Christ.

My own background is rather ecumenical, Anglicanism, Methodism and a dash of Presbyterianism were all part of my upbringing, and for some of my ministry I worked as an ecumenical officer over in Telford. I was of course an Anglican minister for over thirty years, but I would not choose or claim to speak now with the authority either of the Anglican Church or of the ordained ministry, but simply as a fellow pilgrim, as someone journeying along the same road.  

And I'm certainly still on a journey;  still discovering what God is calling me to, what he wants from me, who he is . . . and to discover and discern the answers to questions like that is to encounter and to meet with Christ. I've not had a Damascus Road experience; there has been no sudden, one-off conversion that brought me to faith. But I do understand and want to use words like conversion; for conversion is part of the experience of every Christian pilgrim.

For me as for many of us, conversion has been gradual, made up of small events, small discoveries of God's love - not the tremendous, one hundred and eighty degree turnaround of the Damascus Road.  I have experienced my Lord chipping away at things in my life, nudging me from one path to another;  but he couldn’t reach Saul - Paul - in that way.  He had to break through, he had to be tough with this man.  So let's think for a bit about that event, about what it was that changed Saul to Paul - what happened to him, and why it had to happen.

Our first meeting in scripture with Saul of Tarsus is as a bystander at the stoning to death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Not that Saul was one of the people who  threw the stones - in fact he was there to look after the coats, or so we’re told - but we’re also told that he thoroughly approved of what was being done.  He was concerned, you see, for the purity of the faith.  For the young firebrand Saul this Stephen was a heretic and an enemy of God; and his people, followers of the Way as they were called then, not yet known as Christians, were a huge dangers to the faith Saul loved so much;  they were a scandal in the face of the God he was doing his best to serve.

A scandal that needed to be rooted out. Saul was determined to play his part in stopping these people polluting the faith.  This was his duty as a Pharisee;  this was his duty as a faithful servant of God.  For let’s affirm this about Saul, even before his conversion: this was a man of immense and unswerving faith.  This was a man who longed with all his heart to serve God and to please God.  This was a man who had taken a firm pledge to live faithfully under God, to keep his commandments, to do his will, to do always what was right under the law.  For you see, first and last, what you have in Saul is a righteous man.  A man who was trying to be good.

A strange way of going about it, you might think.  Well, I wondered, as I read again last week the story of how Steven was stoned to death - as this righteous man stood there watching Stephen die, did a small seed of doubt begin to germinate somewhere deep inside him?  What he actually did next was to embark on an eager and thoroughgoing persecution of the followers of Jesus, with full authorisation from the high priests.  But I wonder - was that his attempt to drown out a voice from deep inside himself that was already saying 'Maybe this Stephen was right.'  After all, he had seen how Stephen died, forgiving those who were stoning him;  so was Saul trying to stop his ears to the thought that such a man must have been a man of God?

I wonder.  I’ve seen how some people, once they've decided on what they believe, simply can’t begin to consider any new evidence that might challenge that belief.  I’ve heard of something similar happening in, for example, a criminal investigation:  once someone's in the frame, evidence that might point in another direction gets overlooked or quietly shelved. And in religion the line between firmness of faith and narrow minded, intolerant bigotry can be a very fine one.

So here's how I picture Saul who became Paul.  I think that somewhere deep inside himself he already knew the truth:  I think that he already knew, at a deeper level than he could admit to, that Jesus is Lord, and that a man like Stephen and those like him must have been truly serving God.  And yet Steven challenged all the things he held dear, the faith as he had been taught it from his youth up, the organisation he loved and served and was a member of.  He refuses to abandon his upbringing and his heritage, and so Saul stops his ears to that voice within himself;  there's a hard shell around this man as he goes zealously off to wreak havoc among the Christians in Damascus - a hard shell that nothing can break through.

Conversion is a continuing part of every Christian life, I believe.  We are called to be disciples, and disciples are people who are constantly being changed - converted - by the things they learn.  If we're already listening or at any rate open to the idea that God might have new things to say to us, conversion is a gradual process, a series of discoveries and disclosures for the person who is already searching. Often in quiet ways, sometimes catching us by surprise, the love of God, the good news of his love, breaks afresh into our lives.

But that sort of conversion couldn’t happen to Saul;  for Saul was refusing to listen.  I’ve heard people say that they’ve longed for a ‘Damascus Road experience’ - indeed, I’m sure I’ve said it myself:  the one moment that changes everything.  So it’s worth noting perhaps that the experience Saul had on the road to Damascus was in fact a terrifying event, something that quite literally knocked Saul for six.  You know the story - he was thrown to the ground, he was struck blind, he was left so helpless that others had to lead him along.  This was the only way God could break through to this faithful, stubborn man who was refusing to be changed.  He wouldn’t open his eyes to the truth, so he had to be struck blind.  He was proud of the power he had, so he had to be rendered weak and helpless.  He needed to be put in touch with the things his own heart was already saying to him, except that he refused to listen.  For this was the tragedy of Saul: he was a man whose one ambition in life was to serve God.  But far from serving God, he was persecuting him.

Two quotes that came my way the other day.  The first is something repeated by Gerard Hughes in his great and inspirational book “God of Surprises” - ‘Nothing so masks the face of God as religion’.  The other is from the internet - ‘I have no problem with God, but I wish I could say the same about some of the members of his fan club’.  Saul was a man full of religion, but he had yet to truly encounter God.

I remember years ago knocking on doors in preparation for a parish mission, and being told more than once by people sending me on my way that (quote) ‘religion is responsible for too much bad stuff for me to believe’.  Sadly, there’s truth in that.  Something of the same zeal that was there in Saul can be seen in young Muslim men going off to fight jihad, and in young American Christians training with their guns and honing their survival skills for the day of Armageddon. And for every wide eyed young zealot there are cynical political opportunists ready to exploit the power of religion for their own ends.  Anything that people believe in strongly and without question can be distorted and abused for bad ends, with the name of God used in vain, while the true God of love and peace is left outside in the gutter.

So I thank and praise God that he did get through to Saul.  And I praise him too for the experience of conversion in my own life and in the lives of others.  God is like Jesus - or, as Paul himself would go on to write, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”  In his love he never gives up on us, and that’s true even when we give up on him, when we wilfully go our own way.  We may not find ourselves struck down like Saul was on the Damascus road, but there is a message for us I think in the blindness that left him so helpless that he had to be led like a child into the city.  However the process of conversion happens to us, it is always about realising our own helplessness and resolving our own blindness.  We can’t do it on our own, we need to discover and God's saving love, and admit our need for his presence in our lives. 

And I do believe that all of life must then continue to be a conversion experience.  Faith is as much about living with questions as finding answers.  We don’t and we can’t know it all:  we continue to be disciples, learners, approaching our Lord with open hearts and minds.

And of course, coming to him with the desire to serve. Paul's deepest desire when he was Saul the firebrand was to serve his Lord.  That's why he was converted, and that desire never left him;  and God certainly had a lot of work for him to do.  Our own conversion and journey of faith may be more gradual, for nearly all of us it’s going to be a lot less dramatic - but the reason God is calling us and challenging us, the reason God wants to change us is not just for our own sakes but because he has work for us to do.  The God Saul so zealously tried to serve was locked up inside the laws and rules and customs of his religion, strict Pharisee that he was.  But the real God can never be contained in such a way;  he is wild and free, he is the breath of the Holy Spirit abroad in the world like wind and flame, and he is calling us to get out there with him, to cross boundaries and sail seas like Paul did. The world still needs apostles:  there still is a Gospel to be proclaimed, and good news to be told.  And the work that Paul began, God is calling and arming his people to continue today.

The Journey Home in January

Another first draft, some words written today:

Skeletons in silver grey, winter trees

that stand ghostly still against the snow-lit evening sky.

Mist shrouds their lower branches, as though the fields of snow

are rising up to take to the frosting air.

My vision is of a world without life;  it is as if

everything has forgotten how to breathe, as if

every pulse has slowed down to stop.

So there is only you, and me, in our metal box,

and the distant lights of another car ahead.

Nothing else is moving,

nothing else seems to have any substance.

We are surrounded by ghosts,

by the muslin rags and tatters of some ancient time, by the dead and gone.

We are the only survivors.

The red lights in front disappear from

this narrow ribbon of black snaking between vast snowfields,

with we now the only living souls upon it.

In fact I take this road nearly every day;  I drove it all summer - it is

part of the familiar currency of my life.  Yet tonight

I no longer know it, there is nothing here I recognise.

We are travelling across a different planet, betrayed and abandoned, left

to wonder if we will ever make it home.

Gone From There

A poem I wrote some years ago.  I have known a number of people who have made just this kind of journey, and have listened to the stories they tell.  To claim a common cause would be to trivialize their experiences - how can anything in my own life journey really compare with what they have travelled through? - but I can at least say that a chord is struck in my own heart.

It was not a journey undertaken in comfort.  The grey and ancient train

was frequently halted, sometimes standing for hours

in the cold of some remote siding, never picking up speed

even when the line was clear.  There were no occasions

for conversation between passengers;  no eyes would meet,

and no faces would be remembered.

Though the papers, of course, were all correct.

Beyond the grimy windows the air was full of snow,

a white carpet on each station platform, lit by the swinging lamps;

here a sudden clanging bell,

there, briefly glimpsed, a bored boy soldier toying with his gun.

At this stage one did not dare consider the border

and the destination beyond.  It was still too soon

for the risk of believing.

One might pray for people and places left behind

while, as the wheels sang against the dark rails, it was

enough to be moving south;  enough to be gone from there.

Sunday Morning

Another early draft of a poem . . . not a description of this morning exactly (for one thing, I did go to church!), but certainly inspired in part by today's snowy conditions:

Today the world outside is hard and cold,

a scene in black and white, as in the olden days.

Icicles spear down from the guttered roofs behind us, while

starlings re exchanging words in a language half-remembered from my childhood

from the skeletal top branches of the ash trees

that claw thinly up to meet the grey sky.

Often the sky as I see it from our hill seems to soar away,

it is open and blue, as high as the planets and stars;  but today

my gateway to the heavens has become instead a cold steel lid

to close in our little world.  Under its greyness the colours leach away

and our monochrome garden is as still as a photograph:

only a restless wind in the bushes beyond our fence

and the distant starlings exchanging branches

add any motion to this wintry scene.

It is Sunday morning, and across the valley below the town itself is still and quiet.

Its good folk will be mostly

tucked in bed I think, though perhaps a hardy few

might have ventured out to church.  I have not gone with them,

being not in the mood for candles and hassocks and prayers.

I turn away, look back, and the ash tree, suddenly, is empty,

its chatty starlings having found something else to do,

and gone away to do it.

The wind picks up a notch

and snow begins to flurry against my windows.

We are a distance into the New Year, but

any thoughts of spring, for now, remain securely locked away,

held back behind that flat grey sky.  I see a crow arrive

to march importantly along the pitch of the roof behind us,

while I, newly-made hot chocolate in hand, decide

I may just as well go back to bed for a bit.

And maybe - if the chocolate holds out - I might stay there

until the sky is open for business again

and the colours have returned.

Gates

I like bridges;  I said that already, a few days ago - bridges are about possibility, the chance to cross over to somewhere new, to continue your journey over new ground.  And I also like gates - I suppose the picture at the top of my blog makes that clear enough - for much the same reason.  Without a gate, the wall is entire and impenetrable;  but the gate allows you to pass through, and even before that, it allows you to see through.  I photographed the gate at the top of my blog a couple of years ago on Arnside Knot, a favourite place I don't visit anything like often enough, in Cumbria.  Let me add, below, another gate on the same height, but with such a special view:

Down below is the estuary of the River Kent, and the beginnings of the great sands of Morecambe Bay - and the railway viaduct crossing from Arnside to Grange-over-Sands . . . and then there are the hills and clouds beyond.  So many possibilities in that scene, so many possible journeys to make!  What temptation there is to pass through that gate!

Not all gates, of course, provide access.  Some lead to private and secret places.  Some, indeed, are more barrier than entrance, high solid things that have only messages of denial and exclusion for the passer-by.  "Keep walking," they say, "there's nothing for you here."  But some gates, even though you can't pass through them, do provide just a tantalising glimpse of someone else's bit of our planet.  Anyway, even when a gate is accessible you don't have to pass through it (in the end I didn't go through the one just above) - it's just enough to know that you could do, that those possibilities are there.

Here's a gate I saw, and photographed, in Tanzania.  There's nothing special about it, but a world of mysterious possibility (for me, anyway) if you were to pass through:

When it comes to the gates that are really barriers, it occurs to me that they are barriers in both directions, sadly. It isn't just that we can't look in, but also that the person inside won't look out. I am fascinated and thrilled by the possibilities of going from here to there, from there to here, of exchanging and discovering and befriending - and, I suppose, of personal refreshment;  and I am equally saddened by the mindset that says "No" to what's out there and that has no room and makes no time for the challenges and delights of the wider world, of difference and discovery, of relationship, debate and conversation.

Life is for living, and to do that you surely have to cross your bridges, and open and pass through your gates, and refuse to be trapped behind barriers and fences, particularly the ones you erect yourself.

Angela

This is the poem referred to in my earlier post below.  I began to write it ten years ago, more or less, in Brazil, and it was finally published last autumn:

To the east the dawn is breaking                                                                                           

while you and your children sleep on.                                                                                   

It is cool in the house just now,                                                                                             

and that old loose shutter sways gently in the morning breeze.                                            

Soon the rains will come.

Stirred from your slumber by the barking dogs                                                                     

you listen to your children, their little sleeping sounds.                                                        

How it came to be like this                                                                                                    

is still strange to you: the years since he left                                                                          

when the factory closed,                                                                                            

promising to send money, to send word,                                                                   

promising one day, soon, things would be good again.

Now the morning sun has found its way in,                                                              

igniting as it always does the specks of dancing dust,                                                          

as you hear the children waking,  trading playful blows.

You smile, and light the candle by the crucifix.

                                                                       

Of course, there was no word,                                                                                               

and you had no forwarding address. By now he could be anywhere                                               

or nowhere.  While for you there is today’s work to be done,                                              

your few hours' cleaning, and the bottles, cans you find                                          

and sort, and trade; alone, how could there be anything but struggle?                                 

Always, times are hard,

but there will be soup today at the mission.

And this whole favela, “Anglo” they call it, with its dust and open drains,                         

with its dirt yards and carts and rubbish piles,                                                                      

is your story told over and over,

translated into many lives,                                                     

your struggle shared, repeated through the heat of the day                                                  

and the night's silent hours; yet thank God that in this place                                    

with children and with friends around he gives once more

the dawn of a new day,                                 

and there will be songs to sing, and still somehow

a hope restored, the sun rekindling faith                                                       

that will not die.

Writing

I spent a happy half hour this afternoon chatting with a friend over a coffee or two.  There were important things we should have been talking about, but in fact we spent a good amount of the time discussing writing.  We both write, and we talked about what spurs us, about the process of writing (short stories and poems), and about the ways in which what we write impacts on who we are - including the way in which decisions we make about, for example, how a story might end connect with the decisions we make about our own lives and their direction or goal.

Not long ago I was reading about an author who takes a very disciplined approach to his writing.  It clearly pays off, in that his books are best-sellers - but I could never operate in the ordered and systematic way he described.  As, for the most part, a writer of poetry, I have to say that poems happen as they choose to happen, in my experience.  Of course, some are written to order - I have entered poems in competitions, and I have on occasions been commissioned to write - but most of my writing is done because I have something I want to say, and poetry seems to be how it must be said.

And then some of those poems arrive almost fully-formed.  I remember borrowing a pen to write on a paper napkin in the cafe in Aberdyfi where I was having my lunch a poem that had formed in my mind as I spent the morning walking in the nearby hills.  With very few changes, those verses won me first prize in a poetry competition.  Another poem, though, published at last in my most recent collection, has taken me more than ten years to complete.  It's a poem I burned to write, and yet it seemed to take forever to find the write words, and to make the right shapes with those words.

I think the reason why has something to do with the need to really inhabit the world of each piece of writing.  The first poem had grown directly out of my own experience;  the second involved me trying to inhabit the world of somebody I had met, but whose life was very different from my own.  I am now pleased with what I have written, but it has been a long journey - first, to manage to write the story of Angela (as I chose to call her) in words that felt authentically hers, and then to form those words into poetry.

And I think most poets, perhaps most writers, but poets especially, surely, would agree that it never really is "finished", this thing you've produced.  There comes a point at which you know you have to put it down, to say, "That's as far as I can go" - but it is never finished.  Nothing we human beings do or produce is ever perfect, anyway!  And if a poem is completed at all, surely that happens not when the poet sets down his pen, but when someone else engages with that work as a reader or listener.

For me, to write is a necessity.  It's not a lifestyle choice, it's something I have to do.  What I write is for the most part very much from my soul;  but in the writing it is released from me and is no longer mine alone.  All my poems have a pictorial aspect to them - I do always have a strong mental image of the scene my words describe, whether real or imagined - but I know that my words might evoke quite different images in the minds of those who come to read them.  To me that's all part of the excitement of writing;  it's much more fun not to know quite how the story really ends.

Bridge

I love bridges.  I love the variety of structures, from those that are the product of great and skilful engineers to those that were cobbled together by unknown workaday artisans.  Every bridge is a symbol of possibility and discovery, offering the chance to travel one from this side to the other, telling the story of our refusal to be held back by whatever it is the bridge was built to cross.  For me, it says something, does a bridge, any bridge, about human endeavour.

So cross over, see what's on the other side, find out where that road is leading you - be adventurous!

He Emptied Himself

The first draft of a poem I've been thinking about for a while, but finally got down to writing today, with this morning's set Gospel reading in mind:

He emptied himself

becoming like you, like me

just one more human statistic

in the arithmetic of creation.

And at the moment of his birth

a star may have shone

brighter than the rest

and one or two may even have seen it,

but no matter, not really;  he had emptied himself,

and he would not be found in the palaces and cathedrals

but down there with the common folk,

taking his place among all the cursing and rags.

A week after Twelfth Night

I watch the falling snow twist and settle between

the stems of winter jasmine.  This morning in church

we heard again how the rough-coated madman John found,

among the crowds who cascaded out to him along the Jordan,

the one man he had no need to baptize,

but who sought and required baptism none the less

declaring himself one with the crowd,

taking freely upon his own back

those sinful rags the rest of us never could set aside.

And as he came up from the water, a voice may well have said

“This is my son, my beloved”

even if only one man there could hear it.

And a dove may well have drifted down,

leaving a feather or two afloat on the water.

And in time the man will be lifted up where all may look on if they choose;

and today, already, he is on that road.

And in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth

every knee shall bow.

Movin' On

The title of my blog was very deliberately chosen.  Having been a parish priest for most of the past thirty-five years, I am now having to adjust to no longer holding that ministry.  This is difficult, for being a parish priest was not only the job that I did, it was me, who I am - who I was, anyway.  Now, for reasons that I don't propose to unpack or examine just now except to say that they have their validity in that every organisation is bound by its customs and disciplines, I can no longer play the role that for so long defined me.

The Church would I suppose still regard me as a priest, albeit one presently without the license to minister as such . . . but I am not sure that I do or even can still regard myself as a priest.  Not only can I not go back to what I was, I am pretty clear that I do not wish to go back.  I feel no great call to the altar;  I feel no great call to a leadership ministry. I suppose I never did feel those things, although I have always felt a more general call to ministry - and that is something I still do feel.  Throughout my ministry, I have always felt an immense sense of privilege when celebrating communion or doing other priestly things - but it was a privilege undeserved and perhaps even unwanted.  It isn't something I greatly miss.

So the past two years have been a process of moving on.  It's been a slow and edgy process, in part because it is in my nature to want to hang on to things, I don't like moving, I don't like change - these things frighten me, I think.  But I have reached a stage where I can at last loose my grip on bits of my past life and past self that need to be abandoned.  I think this is because I am now much clearer about who I now am and, if I am moving out (the other part of my blog title), what the options are for me in doing that.

Yesterday on a radio programme that happened to be on in my car as I travelled, I heard someone speaking about how important it is to learn to love and to care for ourselves - indeed, that our capacity to love and to care for others depends on it.  I am sure this is true.  I have spent quite enough time hating myself and neglecting myself, and the time has come for me to change things round a bit.  In some ways this year has not begun well.  I have felt physically ill and frail, having managed on New Year's Day itself to contract the 'winter vomiting' disease.  But at a deeper level I sense that I am much more at ease with myself and my situation than I have been up till now, and that I am beginning to find some solid ground to stand on.

People who lecture and advise on lifeskills are apt to say things like 'There are no problems, only opportunities' and 'Whenever one door closes, another opens'.  Such sayings can sound trite and are therefore easy to ridicule or dismiss, but of course there is some truth in them. If we always had such positive feelings, no-one would never need to say any of that stuff;  often, we feel more as though 'Whenever one door closes, another gets slammed in your face', and, yes, it has felt like that for me from time to time over the past two years.  But I am learning to be hopeful.  I am learning that no longer being a priest does not mean I no longer exist, or that my existence no longer has any point or value.  Vitally, I am learning that I am surrounded by people who have an interest in me, who care for me, and value what they see and find in me - despite, and perhaps even because of, the changes that have happened in my life.

These ramblings, by the way, are not leading to any great or notable conclusion.  I don't have any great plans for where next.  But I do feel as though I am at a beginning point, and not an ending.  And I am discovering that even if I am not what I was, I am still me, and it still feels good to be me.