Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Milestones and Invitations

Thursday 29th March 2007

Frantically busy period both personally and professionally.  It's hard to know where to start a more reflective process. 

Personally, I have reached some milestones.  Little and Large. 

Recently I've been invited to explore possible new directions vocationally.  Over the years invitations have formed a really important part of my own discernment process - so I take invitations as seriously as I can - and try to hear the generous and good intentions behind the person or people doing the inviting.  I find it hard to hear compliments and easy to hear criticism - so the hardest part is hearing that others rate me and believe in me.  I am the sort of person who tends to hear a compliment and then turn round to see who they are really addressing and I am not always being self-depricating - I don't find it easy to own my power and best-self!  I sometimes think I am pretty useless at most things.  It's always a bit of a shock to me - when I see that in reality I am not.  I guess we all struggle on with this at some significant level.

I have spent some time in recent weeks preparing for Holy Week.  We are following the theme - Being as God would have us be.  The Stations of the Cross and meditations that accompany them seemed to create themselves - and went off for framing.  I am bursting to see the finished product - but the guy who runs the frame shop didn't deliver the finished product ths afternoon so I remain in eager anticipation.

We have guests in at The Sanctuary next week and so Holy Week will be shared.  This is a great privilege and blessing - and we have all sorts of activities planned from a Temperament Indicator workshop through to a showing of the film Jesus of Montreal to shared reflections and the creation of our Easter Garden.  There are always a thousand things to get ready for a house party - but somehow it all feels worth it.

I'm also excited that our son will be home for the Easter holidays tomorrow.  I am attempting to curb of natural exhuberence and trying not to think up too many fun things to do.  Given half a chance our son would probably settle down with his computer games, a steady supply of food and drink - and rarely see the lght of day!  Great to have down time - but we also try and have some up time - the chance to re-connect. 

As it turned out the vocational invitation was just that - and the possibilities that would have been interesting to explore just didn't materialise.  I guess as this dawned there was a period when I felt quite hurt and rejected - on the level with a child who hears there's a big birthday party being held by someone she thinks of as a friend and gradually realises that she isn't going to be invited.  This image worked for me.  I had to smile - the little child in me was a tiny bit slighted - but I think the grown-up was relieved, and disappointed too, but mostly content - at a much deeper level than I had anticipated or acknowledged.  One of the people I have shared the possible change of drection with described me as beng a bit Zen-like about the possibility - and that was true.  The things that attracted me to the opportunity were that I would enjoy doing more of the things I enjoy and care passionately about now.  There's a clue there about the nature of calling.  Ironically I don't think it was the change of direction that was attracting me so much as the chance to root; in community as well as in place.

I love where we have settled.  It's the sort of place that gets under your skin and settles your spirit.  I love the idea of expressing belonging as service withing the community.

Slitty eyes, podgy persona and Diocesan Synod

March 18th 2007

It's our Diocesan Synod tomorrow.  As I settled down to read the papers sent by post some days ago, I quickly realised why they had been sent out so well ahead.  We have a fullsome agenda ahead of us tomorrow - and it needs careful, reflective consideration.  So engrossed was I in the topics I was reading about that I completely forgot to check out my diary for what was supposed to be happening this morning.  When the phone rang, my clergy colleague was enquiring if I was OK - I should have been with him working as a volunteer - I was horrified - I had let him down (personal beating up began immediately - but quickly passed).  It's moments like that when I feel a complete wuss.  He was disarmingly sympathetic about my fuzzy brainedness - and we have rescheduled for next week.  I am not usually this unfocussed!  His discription of unconscious overload was spot on.  I hate letting people down though.

On the home front, we have visited a possible school in Scotland for our son.  It is a gentle and loving place.  My son is flying home on Monday and will go down with us for his own viewing on Tuesday.  We watch and wait - it will be fascinating to see what his reaction is.  I would have given anything to have gone to a school like this as a child.  I was bullied for my piggy eyes and podgy appearance as a partially-sighted person with slight signs of thalidomide.  Children can be such monsters to each other.

We have the Secretary General coming to talk to Synod and work through with us the content of The Strategic Review.  This is a superbly crafted document which is aimed at beginning a Province-wide consultation.  What's so inspired about it is that it works at numerous levels - providing some important background about why we are as we are as a Church - but also encouraging all  involved in the Church to engage with complex issues.  It is informed; as neutral as any of us can be; and non-patronising.

We have a wodge of questions to reflect upon.  I am going to start my reflecting in blogs because I can think when I am writing, because I see it as a processing tool.  Jotting down ideas and reading them back - helps me to get things straight in my mind.  I think it's possible to respond to the consultation on a number of levels and I guess my particular interest is to explore the ideas theologically and spiritually - and then ask myself what is the inclusive and pragmatic out-working of this.

The questions are huge that he is inviting us to consider.

What do you consider to be the three main priorities on which the Church should focus at this current time?

Is the balance between episcopal leadership and, synodical authority, as currently perceived within the Scottish Episcopal Church, about right?

At what level, or levels, within the Church should policy be determined in relation to mission and ministry?

How is appropriate and effective diocesan representation on provincial bodies best enabled to happen?

These are not Just a Minute questions.  I will go to the meeting with preliminary thoughts, but my personal reflective process is best focused by first hearing the insights of Synod.  If I do too much personal processing and thinking before a meeting about things that matter a great deal to me, the danger is that I will want to push my own take on things and be too busy trying to formulate my reply to something - when I should be focusing on what is being said and really listening.  So at this stage I haven't so much got answers off pat - although I clearly have my own views - I have more questions I guess.

What do you consider to be the three main priorities on which the Church should focus at the current time?

We are the Body of Christ - so what I want is very secondary to what is life-giving to the Body as a whole.

What do we want?

Do we want to be bigger in numbers attending?

Or bigger in terms of our outlook and witness to the wider world?

Both?

Which is more important?

Do we want to feel safe and secure financially?

Pragmatically I think it's probably not three priorities we need to settle on - but just one.

My three at the moment would be:

- To celebrate our distinctiveness - there is nothing more attractive than a Church comfortable with itself.

-To choose to look outwards in preference to looking in.  (We gain confidence when we engage with others and feel we are valued).

- To be a Church which supports and nurtures people on their life journeys and always shows its appreciation through blessing and celebrating achievements.

I will write more when I have heard my brothers and sisters in the Diocese...

Episcopal Leadership and Synodical Authority?

Is the balance about right?

Call me old fashioned - but I thought it was Episcopal authority and Synodical leadership.

Synod frames the policy, but ultimately the authority to interpret and to some degree lead the Church pastorally and spirtually rests with our Father/Mother in God - the Bishop.

Mission and Ministry?  Who has the right to decide and implement - who does what?

I'd want to re-frame this - there's a lot of history and there have been traditional and not always healthy demarcation lines imposed in recent years regarding these agenda. 

Re-framed:  Mission and ministry is the life-blood of the Church - it is what we are here for.  We express the incarnational nature of Jesus by being his ambassadors and workers in the world today.  Those of us touched by Jesus at work in our own lives have a natural desire to see others experience healing and life.  If we argue about which has what or who does this or that - we risk at best stultifying potential growth of the Body of Christ and at worst, cutting off the supply to certain parts of the Body - there would be a threat of gangrene setting in! 

If there isn't a sense of calling in all parts of the Church, the Church as a whole suffers.  It will die, in time.

MIssion and a sense of ministry is hard to engender when we are looking inwards.  John Reader in Local Theology spotted this and developed a model of church growth based on a small faith community becoming actively involved in supporting the work, unconditionally, of the local history society.  Over time one so informed the other that they both gained converts - some to a hobby in local history and others - to become confirmed members of their local church!

Diocesan representation?

This is the big one in a synodically governed Church.  I would probably favour a liberation theology approach and look for small regional gatherings with every community representation to feed into Diocesan gatherings.  I don't think we talk enough outside the Central Belt - and this disempowers and causes fracturing within the wider community.  We need to be imaginatively engaged in topics.

We also need to make better use of technology.

Not everything is best achieved through a formal meeting which favours always the extrovert, articulate, experienced public speaker - who may not be the person with the best ideas or the clearest thought processes.  We have to think about how we access the giftedness of those God has blessed the Province with.

Enough for now.  It is red nose day - and there are things to prepare...

FEAR is a four letter word

6th March 2007

One of those days today when I just don't seem to have got done a quarter of what I set out to do.  I should be at the Gifford lecture in Aberdeen, but I am stuck in Inverness.  Entirely my own fault, I ran out of energy - and decided to cut my losses and not trog over to hear Stephen Pattison speak.

My fault I ran out of energy?  Actually that's not quite true.  I've had loads on in the last couple of weeks - and today it caught up with me before I had a chance to catch up with it and sooth my inner fevered brow, as it were.  I simply ran out of steam at 16:00 or thereabouts and coasted into the siding of a dog covered bed and Radio 4  burbling in the background.  I woke up an hour or so later.  Dogs barking.  Food!

I like Stephen Pattison as a Practical Theologian.  I find him interesting and his approaches often challenging.  I was personally very engaged by his book - Shame.  I am sad I haven't had the space to connect.

I hate it when this happens - I feel I am less than I want to be.  I have to stop myself rubbing salt into the wound made by my beating up of my psyche.  I think it must be wonderful to be the sort of person who isn't haunted by their mistakes!  I long to be able, sometimes, to turn off my reflective self - and yet I know if I ever did - I would feel as though I was incomplete.   

I am blogging tonight as a means of regaining perspective.  True, I haven't achieved some of the key things I wanted to do - popping in to clergy chapter at the Cathedral and going to the Gifford lecture - but I have done other things which in their own way were of considerable significance.  I claimed the space I needed which just now feels right and good.

Humph.  No it does ... really.  Put the emotional beating up tools down and walk away from your psyche - Jane.

My feelings of dissatisfaction with myself are useful.  They sometimes need to be shut down when they become self-indulgent or counter-productive, but in this case they have been valuable.  I am grappling at the moment with the part that fear plays in my life; in everyone's lives. 

It has come up for me personally in the decision-making around what to do for the best in supporting our son.  It has come up professionally in my academic research as I explore the part fear plays in our religious choices and projections.  It is coming up vocationally and relationally.

I remember many years ago conducting the funeral of a young biker in Ipswich.  Sadly I hadn't known the person before his death in a road traffic accident, but I did get to know his parents pretty well in the weeks and months that followed the service.  The young man was laid to rest in his favourite t-shirt.  On the front it read "FEAR is a four letter word".

I slept this afternoon - out for the count - and when I woke up - the thought in my mind; the address I gave at his funeral was that LIFE is a four letter word too.

There's a lot flying around just now and the fearful side of my nature is inclined to grab at the gossamer-like anxious thoughts as they waft past and try to do the intellectual and emotional equivalent of containing them.  As easy as collecting feathers during a pillow fight!   My mature self remembers and rehearses how little I need to control in reality  - especially those things beyond my personal influence.

Our appointment with our son's psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse this morning is a case in point.  We were given a professional and timely reminder that some things we cannot influence or control.  Our son's schooling may, at some levels, be one of these things.  Others have to assess what can and cannot happen for him - just as I - in other contexts have to exercise professional expertise and insight when I assess and make recommendations.  It was painful to hear.  The urge to protect a vulnerable pre-teen from further pain and anxiety is powerful.  The urge to protect ourselves too - is a fundamental and real motivator.

But control is only useful when it brings about life-enhancing decisions.  In the case of my son's schooling the most life-enhancing choice is to explore possibilities that are presented with open hands, hearts and heads switched to information gathering rather than analytical overload!

The same is true in matters of spirituality.  Fear is a basic human response, but if it is our only response - or it dominates and feeds worry or anxiety - it is of little creative use. 

Fear is often well disguised in religious terms.  Some people will talk about a view of God; their theological insights and their prayer life as in some way proper because it follows accepted approaches and draws on well-honed traditions.  Others will argue that authentic responses are only ever achieved when we face our fears and abandon the areas that feel safe in our lives.

Over the years I have embraced both approaches and recognise that as with most things, reality, at least for me, is somewhere in between.  If a practice is undertaken because we are frightened of the consequences if we don't do it, then maybe there is a need for further reflection to understand what is driving us to choose what we are doing and our reasons for refusing to explore or encounter alternatives.  If something is done simply because we are feaful of the alternative and comfortable in our own well-structured world, then, again, I would guess it could be - and has been for me - very valuable to explore whether the sky really does fall in when I try something different!  So far it hasn't - at least only occasionally - and the angels eventually pin it up again!!!

Where fear is useful is as a barometer for our inner well-being.  The person who is rigid and can do no other than to assert the rightness of their approach and ignore or ridicule another as a consequence is a fear-driven person.  I catch myself as that person when I start to imagine the darker consequences of not meeting the needs of my son.  Or imagine that I have a monopoly on insightfulness. 

A person who is caught, like a rabbit in the headlights, when aspects of their world are hostile or challenging is being seduced into thinking fear is reasonable and acceptable.  I can be that person when I have to make a big decision for myself - or let myself off the hook.  I find it much easier to be generous towards others than towards myself. 

When fear stops a person taking other perspectives and value-systems seriously - and teases a person into denying the truth - fear is gaining the upper hand.  I have been that person when I have met people who I feel are bullies or who I believe are denying the dignity of others.  I have allowed my projection on to them become the whole truth about them. 

Fear which makes a person pause, reflect and be-friend the hurt, pain or anxiety - is a healing and life-giving prompt to be welcomed and delighted in.

I have a card by my desk which I read as I start each new manuscript or major project.

"What would you attenpt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

I would live creatively with fear - embracing her and welcoming her promptings as if she were my best friend in the world.

As Helen Keller wrote:

"Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all."

Passionate Vocations and Pebbles

5th March 2007

Another weekend teaching on the residential component of the training course for those preparing for authorised Christian ministry.  The monastery were wonderfully welcoming despite being cocooned in scaffolding and busy with many guests.  Good soup, humour, gentle interest and practical concern made me feel welcomed, wanted and an appreciated visitor.  I took a copy of our Spirituality Module for the Guestmaster who had requested it after looking through it at our last residential.  Encouraging to think that despite our differences, Roman Catholics can be interested in Anglican approaches to spirituality - and vice-versa.  I wish we could have met and talked with the Roman Catholic Deacons in residence for their own course - past experience tells me we would have had much in common. 

These times, when we gather in community as a learning group, are periods of palpable spiritual and emotional growth for us all as we exchange our stories, challenge one another's current thinking, and embrace emotional and intellectual growth.

The business of preparing candidates for life-long ministry in the service of the Church is a very inexact science.  Although facts must be accrued and good practice assimilated, ultimately it is an alchemeic process.  A blending in intense conditions; connecting, honing, questioning, reflecting and being held accountable by others.

This weekend has been no exception.  We explored and meditated within a mini Lent.  We used pebbles gathered from the shore to become transitional objects onto which we placed our burden - the worries or anxieties we were ready to give up to God.  As the weekend progressed, we laid our pebble in a basket and we were invited to take a highly polished, smaller stone away with us, to home.  A symbol of future hope; of transformation; a physical manifestation of a prayerful desire that the burden we had off-loaded on to the pebble will be resolved by God, and that we will be moved along on our own individual pilgrimages.

I had the very great honour of returning the burden-filled pebbles to the sea.  As I carried them down to the shore this morning they felt like the sacred remains of the thoughts and prayers of our shared weekend.  It was a profound and moving moment when, as the high tide approached, I stood at the water's edge and threw each stone, in turn, into the sea.

These stones carry the secrets of your servants' hearts.  We return them to the elements that have held and honed them in the certain hope that you are present in our hearts and minds encouraging us to choose, always, the path of Life.  Amen.

I was caught by the symbolism.  A bright, glorious day.  The scent of Spring in the air, surely a good few weeks too early for its own good, but clear and true never the less.  New life in the air resonating with what we trust we will feel in our hearts.  The hope of all that is to come.

I had much to be thankful for this weekend, so found that, unusually for me, as one of life's talented worriers, I did not have a specific burden to give to my God or invest in my pebble.  This is as much a compliment to those who organised the worship as anything else.  Considerable care was taken that as a visually-impaired tutor, I would have everything I needed to participate and feel comfortable.  I was in celebratory mode as a consequence - it is not often I am so freed to worship.  I often have a sense, as many disabled people do, of being a part of someone else's burden - as they care for me.  Thank you, worship creators, for so gently and quietly making sure I was facilitated and included.  I travelled light - in the literal and metaphorical pebble department all weekend as a consequence.

Saadi says:

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.

Or, my personal favourite as a stubborn beastie of significant proportions who believes in the power of encouragement:

By a sweet tongue and kindness, you can drag an elephant with a hair.