Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Penetcost

Pentecost

Come, Wisdom,

Swoop and quiver on the wing;

'Til I catch your call

and halt; scanning the air

hearing your whisper,

longing to catch a fleeting glimpse:

to translate your insight into life-care.

Come, Intuition,

My heart's desire

And warm the emptiness of soul's love spent.

Thaw my meanness of spirit - fear

And guide me as I learn once more to repent.

JEWG

Dramatising Religion and Death

I have been re-reading the script of Once a Catholic.  It's a rather dated take on a Convent Education, but it still bounces off the page and made me smile.  I've never directed it, apart from a small junk when I still taught Drama at a gal's independent school in Cambridge.  It's hard to imagine me doing all that now.  Teaching in an independent school etc...  Still a woman's got to live!  I think the school must have been pretty desperate to have appointed me.  I wasn't very happy there - but some of the youngsters who came through the system were truly outstanding and the small GCSE group who performed a scene from this play were exceptional.  At least one has gone on to become a novelist.

Another life.

I tuned in this morning (any excuse) to a new comedy series set in a monastery on Radio Four. I had high hopes.  It may warm up in future episodes now we have established the characters, but it sounded a little trite on first hearing.  Very good to hear Roy Dotrice taking the lead.  He has an extraordinarily rich voice and can capture diverse emotion with his cultured inflection.  I'll listen again for him I suspect - but at the moment I won't be rushing out and alerting friends to tune in!

Couple of days to do housekeeping things and catch up with chores.  Caught an interview with Barbara Pointon while I slurped my porridge this morning.  Barbara taught music with her husband at The University of Cambridge. 

Malcolm developed dementia and Barbara gave up her own career to care for him.  I remember watching a very challenging documentary about their lives, coping with dementia, some years ago.  It was profoundly moving - and I think at that point Malcolm could still occasionally sit and play the piano even if so many other aspects of his quality of life were very seriously impaired.

Malcolm died last February.  At the time of his death it sounds as though a follow up programme was being made and in this documentary which is to be aired on 8th August, we will see Malcolm die on screen.

I knew them a little, in their academic life, as I was an undergraduate at the same college.  I am pleased and utterly supportive of Barbara's honest and at times, courageous campaigning not just on her husband's behalf but to raise society's awareness of the actual emotional and financial cost of dementia.  I am not sure I am so comfortable watching a person breath his last who has been unable to give his permission to be filmed.  I am not sure if I do think a carer has the right or can be given the right to make this decision on behalf of the person they care for.  It could be, and of course we are not privvy to this information in a short TV interview, that long before Malcolm became incapacitated, he made a Living Will - and his personal wants and needs as he approached death were fully complied with.  I am surprised the relevant bodies who monitor the ethical implications of such documentaries haven't had more to say.  Perhaps we are now happy to allow the media to decide on our social, emotional, spiritual and ethical values - and watching a person die who is no longer himself because of a degenerative brain disease is acceptable.  I am not entirely sure it is to me.

St. James and Work Avoidance

Do you ever have one of those days where you are caught out doing a thousand other things and realise it is after 4pm in the afternoon and haven't really started 'proper' work yet?  In the days when I was an employee this would be a day when I would be less focused and probably hoping for a knock on my door and a legitimate interruption!  These days when I am self-employed it is all too easy to start the working day when other things are done.  This is especially so during the summer holiday period with my son home too!  Today I took my husband shopping for clothes.  Something we both hate doing and I shaved the Newfoundland - bottom half (horizontally not vertically).  Now waiting, literally, for the tide to come in at the bottom of the garden so that she can go for her skin invigorating swim!  Now I've settled down to work - what do I do?  Blog!  Has this woman no personal discipline?

St. James' Day today.  Fishermen have it right - intense periods of work and then time...  for family; the mundane business of maintaining boat and equipment; for self.

I always imagine James as a man of few words, but I read that his martyrdom was partly in an effort to shut up the evangelists proclaiming faith in Christ - so if the words were few they were certainly effective!

Mary Magdalene

Today is the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene.  It doesn't get much more encouraging that St. Mary M.  Caught up in an image of herself as pretty much worthless; used by men; outcast by society, she is transformed by the Carpenter turned Teacher who shows her that she is worth more than a quick grope for a few shekels.  That love is more than sex and that she is worthy of love, respect and esteem.  She is to be placed in the highest position and awarded the most sacred of tasks.  Her vocation is to proclaim the greatest mystery of all. 

I love the words introducing her in Exciting Holiness:

She was privileged with the first appearance of the risen Lord, who sent her to take the good news of the resurrection to the other disciples.  The commission earned her the title "Apostle to the Apostles" in the early Church.

I wonder what she'd make of Church today?

I wonder how transformed ministry would be if we saw it as a sacred privilege to proclaim the most profound of mysteries in the Universe.

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...

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.

Dreams, Discernment, Belonging and "Bruce Almighty"

23rd February 2007

I had a recurring dream last night. 

The first memory is a smell.  I don't often smell in dreams, I don't think, but I am sure I did in this one.  It's the smell of Tooting Market in South London, as I remember it as a child in the early 1970's.  Rotting vegetables, Asian and Carribean spices, and the pungent, chemical smell of the shoe mender.  In the dream it felt as though I was in very familiar territory and I was pleased to be back.  I enjoyed looking at various stalls.  I can remember one with batik and brass tea light holders.  Another loaded with cheap jewellery - which had existed in reality.  There were lots of tassles.  (Freud would have a field day.)

As I walk round the market I'm aware that some stalls have moved from their usual, familiar places.  This is fine.  I am quite pleased they are still there though.  Don't know why. I think I would have been sad if they had gone.  Then I start to look for something.

The picture changes.  I set off purposefully and suddenly new routes open up.  The first new row of stalls I find quite exciting.  I didn't know that was there, how brilliant feeling.  Gradually, no matter which way I turn, I feel I am in unfamiliar territory.  None of it in this version of the dream is threatening - just a little disconcerting.  I wasn't expecting to find so many new twists and turns.  I woke up too soon.  I was intrigued, I wanted to know what was round the corner.

My husband wonders if it isn't about what's going on inside me - but more about my thoughts concerning external things.  I recognise, just as I did in the dream, the familiar things - how to start off - but not the out-working of where I go with what is available to me.  At the moment there is no clear line or ultimate finish. 

This is a fascinating interpretation and makes sense to me.  At various times in our lives we need to discern our next step in life.  Discernment is a toughie.  When is it just a question of my ego/will wanting something - and wilfully seeking it - and when is it a process of discerning the will of God/our deeper soul-centredness; the part which best reflects our divine spark - made in God's image?

Within myself I listen hard to the rhythms of my inner dialoguing but I have also learnt over the years with some gifted spiritual directors - and life experience - that I must also listen to the message behind the words and images; listen to silence, when words and pictures, colours, memories, feelings - cease.

Discernment for me is partly about energy.  If an aspiration saps my energy or appears to wear me down, then I question why I am forcing myself on.  Is it a question of how I am approaching the task?  Am I setting my self-expectation too high and constantly beating myself up when I don't achieve my own exacting (impossible?) standards?  When energy loss is derived from within me and the way I re-run my own inner scripts about myself and how I imagine (often wholly inaccurately) how others see me, then it is time to re-frame not only the task - but my self-sabotaging techniques.  The energy loss is not caused by the inappropriateness of the occupation but the methods I am utilising when I approach it.  Often, once I leave out the inner dialogue (that sounds like a particularly over-bearing school mistress) from my head - I suddenly find I not only have an energy surge (not another name in this case for a hot flush) but also a clearer vision of how I want to go on.

There's a different kind of energy loss which is caused because the choice is inappropriate - and is, in essence, life-sapping.  Matthew Fox, a contemporary writer in Creation Spirituality, talks a great deal about making life choices which are essentially life-enhancing.  The opposite is something which is death-promoting - which encourages me, at the deepest levels to be insensitive, shut down, uncaring, manipulative and destructive. 

As I've got older I have learnt to identify some of what psychotherapists would describe as my drivers - the prompts deep in my psyche - learnt in my earliest years from carers and family.  These are very different for each of us.  One of drivers, having been born a thalidomide baby, growing up and being normalised in mainstream education, has been a deep-seated desire to belong.  Many people share a similar need.  When I make a choice which encourages a sense of belonging, promoting self-regard and acceptance, I know I am making a choice which will bring me life.  If I love myself - I can give love and life to others - but not always quite so open-handedly when this self acceptance is not in place.  Equally, if I choose paths which result in a sense of alienation or marginalisation - I am feeding an image of myself first planted in my head probably by the playground taunts of the bullies at infants school.  Of course, as an adult I can over-ride the impact of the connections that not-belonging has left on the child Jane, but I can only do this at a conscious level; the resonance remains - although thankfully less powerfully present in my adult self than in my child or teenage form.

Discernment, if it is about energy, is also about the divine interplay with God.

I don't have a strongly interventionist view of the Creator as my personal care assistant einsuring I make it across the road (actually, that would put Rainbow, my guide dog, out of a job).  I do see the process of claiming insight into the Divine Purpose as lying in the space where words cease and my mind is less cluttered.

I watched the movie Bruce Almighty with my 12 year old the other evening - a film he recommended.  The story concerns a man who becomes so self-pitying that he challenges God to engage with him - directly.  God hands his (in this case it is a he - but he was black and a very gentle, humorous sort of a god) power over to Bruce.  Just like all good Miracle Plays, Parables and Myths - Bruce spends quite a lot of the movie abusing his new powers to achieve his own rather dubious ends.

Bruce eventually returns to God in desperation when he decides, because he is in overload, to simply say yes to all the prayers everyone asks him to answer.  The consequences are disastrous and Bruce is taken by God to see some of the outcomes.  God admits, and I paraphrase, Now you understand about Free Will.  I have to deal with this all the time.

I don't believe in a God (and I collected this quote years ago and keep it in my commonplace book - but can't now attribute it) who is my personal superhero:

"There is something exquisitely luxurious about room service in a hotel.  All you have to do is pick up a telephone and somebody is ready and waiting to bring you breakfast, lunch, dinner ... whatever your heart desires ... That's the concept that some of us have of prayer.  We have created God in the image of the divine bellhop.  Prayer for us is the ultimate room service, wrought by direct dialing.  Furthermore no tipping, and everything is charged to the great credit card in the sky..."

I believe in a God who speaks through my deepest heart's desires and through the wisdom and insights of others.  I hold on fiercely to the belief that God's incarnation was that God is with us - not God is with me.  So, for me, an important part of discernment is to quieten the voices in my head who insist they all know best; to address my fears and deepest longings, and then - because only then can I honestly say I am being truly open-handed and attentive - to listen to the insights, perceptions, wisdom and hopes of those who share the pilgrimage of faith and life,

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

When the dust has settled,

What will there be to remember?

That I worried too much?

Laughed far too little?

Procrastinated with fear?

Clung to shame when forgiveness was given.

From dust I came.

When the dust has settled,

The mark of the cross on the forehead of my life;

I long to be recalled

For dancing as the sun goes down,

sharing the time of day with roses in full bloom.

Living life in the moment for the shear love

Of all that is shared, given and Divined.

To dust I shall return.

Red Stole Arrives!

The most wonderful gift arrived today.  A red stole for St. Columba's Chapel - here at Alturlie.  It has the most beautiful celtic crosses.

It is a symbol of Ordination.

Palm Sunday will soon be upon us and I will delight in wearing it.

Jubilate Deo - and thank you to the giver.

The words of Dinah Maria Mullock Craik:

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort - of feeling safe with a person,

Having neither to weigh thoughts

Nor measure words -

but pour them all out - just as they are,

chaff and grain together - certain that the faithful hand

Will take and shift them -

keep what is worth keeping -

and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

St. Valentine's Day, Oban and the Primates of the Church Meet

14^th February 2007

St. Valentines Day

Favourite Valentine’s card from The Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton range:

Big picture of a love heart with the words Somebody thinks I’m gorgeous written underneath.

Followed by the words:

Cut this out and stick it on your HEAD – then everyone will know what I think of you*

*But please don’t blame me if you get some funny looks.  People can be WEIRD you know.

I am just setting off for Oban – by car.  A wonderful treat as my husband is driving and my son has come for the ride.  The lure of the latest computer game was almost too great for him (and me)!  It’s a surprisingly bright and still day – at least on the East Coast.

I feel as though this is a pilgrimage day – although rather a cushy number in the car.  We all have expectations.  I am off to meet a colleague to plan a lecture in May.  A colleague I have known for years but in a different world.  I am looking forward to touching base.  My husband and son will disgorge Rainbow, my guide dog and me at our destination and travel on to view Dunstaffnage Castle.  We will meet up later and no doubt share news of our respective afternoons.

Work that doesn’t feel like work is always the best work to have, but we aren’t all so fortunate.  Sitting in the car typing this on the laptop feels like bliss – with the odd peak at breath-taking scenery all about me. 

I was struck this morning, hearing the latest reports on the radio that some of my brothers and sisters in Christ in the Anglican Communion are in for a period of demanding discernment as the Primates of the Anglican Communion gather.  Not comfortable work and likely to cause hurt and misunderstanding whatever the outcomes.  They are meeting in Tanzania this week to discuss what is to become of the Anglican Communion. 

Anglicans all feared we would divide some years ago over the Ordination of women.  Remarkably, some would say providentially, we held it together with varying provisions being rolled out for those who felt that they could not adhere for reasons of ecclesiology and conscience to the admission of women into the priesthood.  A further moment of division emerged as the legislation came into being which permitted women to be elected Bishop.  Now we face the challenge that may shatter us. Our Bishops must discern the most authentic and efficacious way forward.

The election of the first openly homosexual Bishop, living with his partner, in the USA caused a storm of controversy.  African and Asian Provinces called foul – and the Church of England saw it pretty much as an own goal.  It has had a much wider impact than I suspect those who sought the election of Gene Robinson could ever have envisaged.

As a Christian I cannot believe that the intention in Bishop Robinson’s elections was to cause schism.  I suspect the majority of those who supported him saw his election as a profoundly just moment when the Church could claim significantly more authenticity than it had done before.  I suspect they believed it was prophetic gesture that would ultimately bring healing to the Church.  The actual impact has been, in the short term at least, quite other.

I am utterly supportive of a vision of the Church as welcoming all people irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation or disability to its ranks both as members of the denomination and as authorised ministers.  But, and this is a big but, I do believe we are a Church which places significant emphasis on our corporate nature across cultural, social and economic divides.  If one part of the Body of Christ acts unilaterally over an issue which has been discussed widely and is known to be highly controversial and divisive, then the rest of the Communion is right to take time to reflect on how it must proceed from this point; what the consequences will be.

We are at variance with each other.  Just because it feels as though we have been here before over other issues does not mean we can ride the rapids with relatively little damage this time.