Heathen's Regress

Yesterday the American memorial service for John Stott was held in Wheaton, Chicago. Stott, who many would claim put evangelicalism back in touch with intellectual rigour, famously recommended that Christian preachers should hold a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

The Guardian's Comment is Free section is - in my view - becoming a leading site for thoughtful public debate on a variety of issues, with a wide variety of contributors and a lower-than-usual proportion of brawling and trolling in the user commentary. A few days ago Julian Baggini wrote this piece as part of his series, "Heathen's Progress." In it, he's interested in the question of whether it's possible to debate between belief in God and atheism, for instance, without all such debate getting bogged down by the inconvenient fact of mutual incomprehension.

I've said more than once that I find myself attracted to the purest forms of atheism, on the grounds of a heroic willingness to stare down the abyss. I'm not thinking here of the fundamentalist wing - Dawkins cronies, whose contortions in defence of their hero's dismissal of philosophy in its entirety now that the pendulum in this discipline has started its return swing from adventures in ultramaterialism (the idea that there is no valid meaning beyond mere description, or that all 'why' questions must either be given a 'how' answer or be considered meaningless) would be amusing if not for what's at stake. But in the more intellectually credible accounts lies much I find attractive, if ultimately unconvincing.

But I digress. The sentence that stuck out in Baggini's article was this:

Maintaining, for instance, that it is naive to read the gospels as literal history is – or should be – to maintain that the events it describes did not, or need not, have literally happened.

The syntax could be more helpful. (And yes, kettle, I do know I'm a pot!) I hope this is a faithful re-statement:

If you don't believe that the gospels are literal history, then you can't also insist that the events in those gospels took place.

This sounds fair enough - common sense, surely. But even an amateur philosopher like me will say, "if your argument rests on common sense, you had better either prove it logically, or at least demonstrate that the vast majority of people would agree with you."

But actually, it's nonsense: logical nonsense, factual nonsense, historical nonsense. I stress this not because it's a stupid statement, but because as any logician knows, starting from a falsehood you can prove essentially anything. And the point has nothing whatsoever to do with any understanding of religions in general or Christianity in particular.

So why is the statement nonsense? Let's get there in a few steps.

You're told that a warehouse has been robbed. There's CCTV footage showing a clearly identifiable person - who has now been arrested - breaking in, and later leaving with a large and clearly labelled box.

In this cut and dried case, the literal evidence of the CCTV is compelling. But if an expert convinced you that, contrary to appearances, what you were viewing was not in fact a faithful record of the events of the night in question - well, if this was the only evidence you had, you had better release your suspect. So far, so good.

But now suppose that, instead of CCTV footage, we had several eyewitness accounts of events. They agree at many points and vary at others, and no single account covers the full sequence of events.

Now ask yourself, is any one of these accounts 'literal history'? What about the collection? Or an account constructed by an investigator who had access to all the statements?

So, Julian, your "knock-down" argument fails at the very first hurdle. The key term, "literal history," is extremely hard to define. Ask me, "are the Gospels literal history?" then whether I answer "yes," "no," or anything else, it's hard to be sure what either the question or the answer might mean, harder still to be sure if your definition and mine would line up. And on the basis of your insistence that unless I answer an unequivocal "yes," then I must concede that I can't hold to any event of those Gospels, every court conviction resting primarily on multiple eyewitness accounts should immediately be quashed.

But all this is more than hypothetical. In my experience, hearing a leading question like, "do you believe that the Gospels are literary history?" is rather a common debating gambit. Of course it is!

• If I say, "yes," then next comes a bombardment: every discrepancy of detail you have detected or suspected between two Gospels, or indeed between two ancient copies of a single Gospel. Or else I'll be told I'm a fundamentalist - I just believe what I'm told, and that's the end of it.
• If I say, "no," then I'm judged to have conceded that the events of the Gospel - and in particular the central points that Jesus lived, was crucified, dead, buried and rose again - ain't necessarily so
• Any other answer, and it looks like I'm shiftily evading the question, or trying to trade a simple discussion for obscure technicalities 

Now, I'm not accusing Julian Baggini of doing this. But as someone commenting specifically on the communication (and miscommunication) between atheists and Christians, his faulty logic on the point I highlighted makes me think that he might want to re-examine his sources. 

The heathen's progress should, perhaps, go back just a step.

Clear Your Desk!

Luke 16:1-12

“Clear your desk!”

Those are words to knot your stomach. We all want to feel irreplaceable, but in business it can’t be so. Do you think the manager in Jesus’ story saw it coming? Was he lazy or greedy, dishonest or incompetent? The boss isn’t happy and this time it’s the chop – he just has time for a handover of the paperwork.

And there, that time for a handover, there’s just that little bit of wriggle room. “I’m losing my job, my income, my home. There’s no chance of a reference; there’s no safety net. I don’t have the muscles to be a builder, I don’t have the talent to be a busker and I don’t have the humility to be a beggar. But I need a pension plan, like, now.”

He thinks fast, he plans fast and he moves fast. Grabbing the file of invoices, he calls in all the debtors – everyone who owes something to the boss. In they come, one by one. Here’s the man who works the olive grove. He owes a share of the output – thousands of litres of extra virgin olive oil. At £4.99 a litre in Tesco’s that’s a tidy sum. “Tell you what,” says the manager (because he still is the manager, even if not for much longer), “Tell you what: I like you; you like me; we understand each other. You work hard, and maybe we’re asking too much. So here’s the deal: you can pay half, how does that sound? OK, we’re agreed. Yes, I’d love to come round some time for a meal. You can thank me later, I have a really busy morning.”

And so on through the queue: worried faces coming in, happy ones going out. He’s spent these last few hours when he’s meant to be putting the books in order buying favours by spending his boss’s capital. It’s not exactly stealing: he can’t be accused of having his hand in the till. He’ll be out on his ear, but he won’t be out in the cold, not with all those smiling friends who’ll be glad to see him, all those people who now owe him a big favour.

The boss gets wind of what he’s been up to and hauls him in. He’s been taken for a ride, but for whatever reason he decides to grin and bear it. “Well done,” he says to Mr Dishonest. “If only you’d been half as sharp on the job…”

And do you know? – because here’s the Sunday School teacher in me kicking in – God’s a bit like that.

What??????

Thank you, Maggi, for inviting me here tonight. You asked me to speak as the ‘ordained entrepreneur’ I call myself, and gave me the chance to look at what you and I agree is an outrageous story. It’s definitely one I need to make sense of, because I really want to know if I’m going God’s way.

If you’ll forgive me, I’d like to start by telling you some of my own story.

I’m a reluctant Christian. I was a happy atheist before I ran out of reasons to disbelieve that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. That was in my first year at Oxford, and it took me to nearly the end of my third to actually do something about it, to add a consenting heart to an assenting head.

I’m a reluctant vicar. I spent very nearly 20 years running away from a clear sense of calling to ordained Christian ministry before I became raw material for one of the vicar factories in Cambridge. And even then, I jumped off the production line leading to house and income and went ‘self-supporting,’ becoming unpaid curate of St Martin’s and keeping my family fed and housed by throwing myself into the business startup scene here at a time when our finances were rock bottom and the economy was subterranean.

But I am a happy entrepreneur. I love knocking down doors and opening up opportunities; spotting gaps and jumping into them; putting people together and seeing what happens; taking risks I think I can manage better than other people; celebrating the successes and bouncing back from the flops. And I fit my own definition of entrepreneur which is: someone who finds what they need to do what they want.

So if I am an ordained entrepreneur, most of my ministry is well off the beaten track of churches and the churchy. I’ve chosen to live with everything – faith included – at risk. And, getting back to the story, I’m bound to identify at least a bit with the opportunistic manager, if not in his ethics, certainly in his weighing up of a situation leading to rapid action to seize the main chance.

If that dishonest manager gets a thumbs-up from the boss, maybe I do too. Although I need to remember he got the sack, so I have to be a bit careful of getting smug.

Is God a bit like this boss? Well, there is something of grace about him – cheated by his outgoing staff member, he chooses to appreciate rather than incarcerate. When Jesus explains the story – OK, that’s an exaggeration, he leaves enough of a puzzle for generations of scholars and wearers of odd collars to sweat over – he says that “the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

So this is a story for a mixed economy. There are “children of this age” who are thoroughly worldly and at home in the here and now, and there are “children of light” who are in a way visitors to or voyagers in the world as it is, who look to the world as it could be, to the world as God willing it will be. Thinking back to the Christmas season, we recall how in the birth of Jesus Matthew tells us that “the people living in darkness have seen a great light.” Those who respond to this light become children of light. They now shine in that same darkness with the reflected glory of the one true light – that’s not their job, it’s a kind of spiritual physics.

So is Jesus really telling us that shrewdness is a no-no for his people? Here comes the great reckoning, how’s your eternal balance sheet? Shrewds to the left – no credit, all crunch; prudes to the right and amply justified bonuses all round? No, I don’t think so. This parable comes in a block of teaching that begins a chapter before: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”

Jesus is offering a new perspective on living, and it’s the pious who don’t like it one bit. Those who take their religion so very seriously think Jesus is like the cross-eyed teacher who has no control over his pupils. He has absolutely no respect for them, and no apparent scruples. There he sits, surrounded by the faithless rich and the faceless poor. If a person is known by the company they keep, this Jesus is just another crowd-pleaser, careless of the rules. At best he’s misguided, wasting his time, talents and teaching.

And so Jesus tells this story. And it is meant to provoke that response of, “What??????” It’s a challenge as direct as you could want to the complacency which so easily sets in to all of us who start to think that when we become Christians we hand over responsibility to God and cover ourselves in an insulating layer of respectability. It’s not that we don’t want to see others find what we’ve found, of course. I’m sure they’ll see us, pillars of respectability, and some will be inspired by our radiance to become just like us.

Just think what’s been put into our trust: the riches of heaven, to know and be known as friends of God, and perhaps material prosperity as well. And what have we done, what are we doing with all this that has been entrusted to us? How are we using all we’ve been given? Secretly, as a private hoard, stockpiled until we need it? Perhaps we’re pooling our resources, sharing with others who are like us. Perhaps we even take the risk of putting this wealth on display. 

But the call to follow Jesus is different. It’s a call to risk being misunderstood – especially by Christians. It’s a call to meet people as they live in the misery of the world’s broken promises, and to greet them not with words of condemnation but with words of hope and friendship. It’s a call to trust God that if he should be calling us to give up all we have, whether riches or reputation, then we will be welcomed into eternal dwellings – welcomed into a new life that is not merely endless but boundless.

This story is outrageous because the Gospel is outrageous. It’s a reminder that faith is a risk. Gospel lives aren’t safe, but they are secure. They aren’t stable, but they are anchored. And Gospel goods aren’t for keeping – we need to act to share what’s been lavished on us or else either it or we will be spoiled. Gospel clothes are worn with humility: they are always worn at the knees. Gospel people are always ready to move – and always ready to be moved.

This Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels, is a chancer, seizing the moment. He’s a risk-taker, putting everything at stake when that’s what it takes.

I wonder if one day you may hear his call as I have? It’s a call that thrills my soul just as it knots my stomach.

“Clear your desk!”

Given at Robinson College, Cambridge, Sunday evening 21 February, 2010

Ordained Entrepreneurship

Matt Jamison, impressively confident and capable radio presenter at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, on his Easy Sunday programme today. I was there for an interview about being an ordained entrepreneur (Thanks, Matt! Thanks, Heather! Thanks, Vanessa!).

A short while before there was a piece about churches dealing with the challenges of buildings to maintain and assets to protect. Or the opportunity of bringing the community into the church and finding everyone's best ideas of how to make best use of what we have to offer...

I'm hoping that kind of challenge and the stories of churches that have tried different approaches will be exactly the kind of thing we'll be featuring on churchcafe.org.uk, the free national podcast series launching in September. Not so much from people with ideas, but from ordinary people (including ordinary ministers!) who've tried things that have worked and things that haven't.

I'm also hoping to connect with someone as passionate as I am to give Cambridge entrepreneurs an opportunity to connect with the entrepreneurial Church (and that's the only kind we've got, however often we forget it).

Posted via email from JDAP posterous

Faith as risk

I've been training towards C of E ordination and a full-time paid curacy. Now that's in question. Here's the story, or its bones at least.

Selection is understood as a process of discernment - the object being to understand if the sense of call to ministry is experienced by the individual and recognised as appropriate and timely by the church.  My call came in 1984. How it came and how I was on the run for over twenty years is a whole other story. Buy me a beer and I'll tell you.

Right in the middle of the selection process, as a family we decided we were going to move to Cambridge. Our timing couldn't have been worse in so many ways: it was a costly move in a lot of ways, but also one which we experienced as totally right. This felt like a calling too - and not just to me individually this time.

It meant a jitter in the selection process, but Ely Diocese (Cambridge is part of Ely from the C of E's point of view) put me back just a couple of steps, not right back to the beginning. I was selected, and accepted at Ridley Hall (theological college) and by Sidney Sussex (matriculating college), hallelujah! 

Also costly, though. A couple of years of minimal (but still generous - who else pays people to train these days?) financial support, another tranche of downsizing. But we knew, at least, that at the end would be a curacy which would provide a family home and an income (stipend in church-speak - money paid to enable ministry, not technically a salary).

A seismic moment came last July, when I learned that that curacy wouldn't be in the Diocese. On reflection, this was an opportunity to rethink things that might have saved some trouble. Oh, the joy of rear-view mirror vision! However, after a couple of false starts I found and agreed a curacy: if you're on our Christmas card list you've had the details.

And now, after serious reflection and what I would again describe as call we have now agreed not to take that up. It's possible that something else will come up that meets our circumstances, but it's an unlikely possibility.

Where does that lead? Very probably it means finding work outside the church for the near-term. Lots of wise friends and associates are contributing to that decision; the key choice is something we'll have to make this month.

I'm excited and alarmed in roughly equal measure. I have strong marketing credentials and a passion for business, but now isn't a great time to be getting back into the market, especially after a two year break. 

My thinking at the moment is that I'll rebuild my portfolio career - combining work with small and startup businesses with projects for larger businesses in the technology space. And I know there's a great deal of risk in that. So here's my own challenge of discernment - is embracing that risk together with the risk of faith in Jesus Christ where God is calling me?

Somehow even the thought is energising, nourishing. And, yes, scary. Not very much like the comfortable talk of 'living on the edge' in lecture rooms. That would be a good thing.

Putting this on my blog feels like a big risk in itself. Because we've swapped tracks from a route where things are clear and safe from any outsider's point of view, to one that has a whole lot more questions than answers. Honesty is potentially rather costly.

So if you're the praying type, do feel free to adopt the Parsons family as a cause to place before God. And if not, well, say one anyway, what harm could that do?

Requiescat in pace Mark Autherson

Remembrance Day

The bell rings for remembrance. We obey
Its call: we reach with hands of faith to touch
Lost fingers of the fallen so they may
Receive this next instalment from the much

We owe to those who went ahead, whose blood
Was spent for good, for ill, for its whole worth.
Now frayed and faded images in wood
Are bone-by-bone mute witness under earth.

Mark’s blood betrayed him. His remembrance day
Is poppy-studded, wears its suit ill-pressed,
Finds tears choke words of love we long to say –
Until deep laughter helps recall him best.

Under that plain cross on light-dappled wall
We hear his song: “God is my all and all.”

For Mark Autherson, 1971-2008

Some Consequences of the Doctrine of the Assumption

A century ago it was well-known

That all was well, was well, was very well;

That all that now was hidden would be shown;

That we would, building heaven, banish hell

For Man (and men it was) stood up to night

And reasoned that his reason so would wake

To flood its gloom with new-created light;

To fill the earth with all that he would make.

Entrenching tools turned acres into tombs.

Beware him who forgets what he assumes.

Dreaming Spires

Being in theological college provokes all kinds of questions.

What’s it for? Why do you study for two (or one, or three, or four, or seven) years?

One question I have as a Church of England ordinand is: why, when these days most of us enter training with a significant amount of post-school ‘life experience’ (not my phrase, and yes, that mainly means we’re oldies), is the philosophy to treat this as at best an occasional inconvenience, at worst a positive barrier to effective ministerial formation. I do not mean this question flippantly, and certainly not disrespectfully.

One part of the answer is probably crude economics. It’s cheapest to train a relatively undifferentiated group in a relatively undifferentiated way. And I marvel, in the case of the college I know best, how far the five loaves and two fish go towards feeding us all; yet the biblical parallel fails, as there are no crumbs left over.

But this is crude economics. To the extent that we comply in suppressing rather than expressing the knowledge, skills and experience of whatever portion of life preceded training – to precisely that extent we are buying into a questionable model of priests (presbyters if you prefer, same root word) as not merely specially set aside for service, but as specially set aside from life.

With the people I know best here, I know some of their story and some of their talents, of course. But I also see those stories being condensed – in them and in me – into another volume. And if this were not true at least in part, something would be wrong, because we must learn to be different from that past self and to do differently. And yet...

We have offered our whole selves. I must learn to say simply, with Jo recalling her sacrificial offering of hair,

“I took a last look at my hair while the man got his things, and that was the end of it. I never snivel over trifles like that. I will confess, though, I felt queer when I saw the dear old hair laid out on the table, and felt only the short rough ends of my head. It almost seemed as if I’d an arm or leg off. The woman saw me look at it, and picked out a long lock for me to keep. I’ll give it to you, Marmee, just to remember past glories by, for a crop is so comfortable I don’t think I shall ever have a mane again.”

And then,

“It’s only the vain part of me that goes and cries in this silly way.”

Being a Guerrilla Christian

It's a work in progress. With hindsight, in spite of every good intention last year, far too much of my time and attention went into the lovely but limited circle of the theological community. My new (academic) year's resolution has been to make sure that spare energy - and most especially that which I'm tempted to devote to attempts to reform things here at Ridley - goes outwards.

So here are some of the things I am determined not to put (much!) time, effort or brainpower towards:

1. The antediluvian administrative structure for students, which guarantees a lack of teamwork on community responsibilities, ensures inequality in the division of labour and creates that special combination of inefficiency and near-effectiveness that prevents the resource that is our joint time and effort being available to respond to need and opportunity


2. The Common Room's indifference to the administrative burden and intensified financial hardship (to the college) of a new payment regime for students


3. Our shared failure to take an interest in the student world beyond our own Victorian walled garden, whether in theological or general academe, and learn from their experience and practice

That list-making needs, then, to be the end of my musing on these three topics. The first and best of what's freed by this resolution needs to go to my family, who inevitably bear the lion's share of the burden of our change of circumstances as a result of a call to ministry. And the next in line is The Outside World.

The first flowering of this latter is being put up as the 'older and wiser' head on a panel for a 'grill a Christian' evening. I can guarantee 50% achievement on this measure, at least. And I am of an age when making a complete fool of myself is absolutely no deterrent, so as far as I can see the worst that can happen is that someone asks a clever question to which all I can answer is 'wibble,' while the upside is if someone can argue me out of faith I can give up this life of giving up and go back to consultancy, holidays and money.

If you have a praying disposition and are reading this on the day, do keep me in mind this evening. It would be great not to be the scaffolding that spoils someone's view of Jesus.

Colliding hadrons, Batman!

So, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has its first beam completing the 27km circuit, soon the opposing beam will be going the other way and collisions will start. This may be the end of the world, or not - probably not, but I'm hardly qualified to pass judgement. With a bit of luck, assorted wise heads have looked at this and decided the risk is infinitesimal.

The popular reaction seems to be wonder at the majesty of science, rather little comment on the two incontrovertible points on the scientific enterprise that this shows:
The state of physics and of its mathematical underpinnings in particular is weak enough that it's necessary to build this quantum rollercoaster

The problem of two incompatible scientific theories, each by definition practically effective in its home territory yet provably incorrect, is a big head-scratcher for scientists

I regard myself very much as a scientist by instinct. My first degree was Maths at Oxford, and I try and keep in touch at least with pop science. I don't claim great expertise in any field of science, but nor do I find myself struggling with basic concepts in any field that has introductory literature.

So it's frustrating, to say the least, to find that when it comes to God, some people seem to want to apply a standard of proof far beyond that applied to science before giving the big ideas of faith credence. I'm not especially thinking about Richard Dawkins' wild venturings in this area - he has so far and so furiously overstated his case that he is not seen as a serious commentator in the area of theology (or atheology) any more than I am in respect of the putative Higgs Boson. But a de-frothed version of his outlook is increasingly the norm in certain areas.

So, just for a moment would you please suspend your disbelief about belief?

Science is at least as uncertain as theology.

Allow me to prove that for you.

First, let's be clear what 'science' is. The definition must include:

1. Description - an area of science addresses a topic that must be clearly and objectively identified
2. Observation - the topic must be capable of observation, even if only indirectly
3. Prediction - the scientific enterprise is to make successful predictions
4. Comparison - it must be possible to compare results of experiment and theory and reach conclusion about the relative success of different ideas
5. Duplicability - experiments must be capable of independent repetition and the scientific method requires consistency

Description is problematic. As any fule no, there's a world of difference between saying 'banana' and defining one with precision. As science has progressed, there is both increasing scope and refinement, but also increasing co-dependence and circularity of definition.

Observation is problematic. Much measurement is indirect - the LHC is not really expecting to see a Higgs Boson but traces of its predicted decay products; refined measurements are rarely direct and generally bounded in accuracy (for instance Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle demonstrates why at the level of the very tiny it's not possible to know both where something is and where it's travelling). Probability comes in at every level.

Prediction is troublesome in some fields, for instance in some areas of biology it's impossible to examine most theories except in retrospect - you can't simulate a thousand or a million years in the life of marsupial mammals.

Comparison has severe logical difficulties. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem puts serious limits on logic. There are true things that can't be proved, false things that can't be disproved. That's not conjecture or handwaving, it's proveable mathematical fact.

Duplicability is also limiting for all sorts of reasons, practical (we can't have another Big Bang), financial (how many particle accelerators or Hubble Telescopes will there be?) and so on.

Overall, science is great, and we need to carry on investing. But that's in a context where progress relies on an element of trust, and where most of the money invested will prove to have been wasted - outweighed, we hope, by the benefits of the tiny proportion of successes.

But we will never be able to predict the moment that the next drop will fall from a dripping tap.

Never, ever.

So please don't tell me that science gives a complete view of reality. It doesn't. It can't. It won't.

Christian theology doesn't either. My contention is that - ultimately - it will. What we see today through a scanning electron microscope subject to revision, we will come to experience directly for ourselves.

Mission is possible

Four of us have been on mission in Ely Cathedral this week. Not 'a mission' but part of the ongoing mission, working as day chaplains and talking to anyone and everyone who ventures in or near the building.

Ely is a small city with a big cathedral, thanks to the Saxon Princess Etheldreda, who founded a double monastery (for men and women) in the 7th century. It became a place of pilgrimage, leading to the building of a great Norman Abbey with Etheldreda's shrine, and the establishment of the cathedral and its diocese.

The cathedral church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity suffered a setback in the 1300s when one of its towers collapsed, but this led to a great symbol of resurrection with the building of the Octagon and its lantern that draws a quarter of a million visitors a year to the former swampy island.

The Victorians carried out major refurbishments, opening the inside of the building into one glorious sweep, installing the beautiful stained glass windows and building a beamed and painted roof that draws gasps from all but the fussiest (and most historically naive!) visitors.

More recently, refurbishments to mark the millenium included restoration of the Lady Chapel, a new enclosed processional walkway and a range of sculptures around the building. Well over a thousand years of praise and prayer are in the foundations of this church (buildings and people).

So much for the history. The present is the 'nerve centre' of Ely diocese, which includes Cambridge and Huntingdon alongside the many fenland towns and villages. Until a couple of days ago, that was my diocese: my 'sending church' is a Cambridge church, Holy Trinity, so I came to train as an Ely ordinand.

Ely isn't exactly short of ordinands, and I now know I'm not one of the privileged few who will remain but one of the large majority who are 'exported' - so my hunt for a curacy somewhere starts here. Or it will when we're past the grieving stage. Meanwhile, back to the week of mission.
Four of us - Jamie, Nick and Stefan and myself - donned cassocks and badges and met between us lots and lots of people. Our job in a nutshell was to offer prayer to and for all who felt in need, and to help all our visitors to relate the buildings and their history, Jesus whose story is told by those buildings, their fixtures and the daily pattern of services, and their own life and story. Not in a ramming-religion-down-your-throat kind of way, just being available, friendly and taking a few risks. It's genuinely a privilege to meet so many people from so many places near and far.

Looking up in the octagon there's a 14th century statue of the crucified and risen Christ, showing (assisted with Victorian paint and beams from every age in between) one hand raised in blessing and displaying the wounds that mark the brokenness he received from us and took into the very heart of God for us.

His blessing offered freely and his voluntary suffering are always the beginning of the Gospel. For our own issues we receive not always relief, not even an explanation, but always that loving, wounded hand reaching out to take ours.

Time flu

He looks like I felt. Flu was the story of my Easter holiday, and as someone who isn't often ill I'm a lousy patient.

Not good for reading, revising or writing, sigh.

(In case you're wondering about the picture, Doctor Who came to town - assorted monsters, at least - for Science Week.)

So this, the traditional time for lazy pursuits, needs to be the term when Jack is a very dull boy indeed. Hence I suspect I won't be a-blogging much or often.

I thought I was fully recovered at the end of last week, but here at the end of this week I realise that I was still a long way off form - so maybe there's a bit of post-viral pain still to come. But with that reservation, at last I'm back somewhere that I can get excited about what I'm reading, hearing, seeing, doing.

One sign of that is that I need a little time to digest what's exciting, usually through another activity like cycling, poetry or photography.

For several reasons I could have done with a free morning, but I'm very glad I made it to Michael Green's lecture.

21 years ago, it was in his study that I turned my back on the clinical atheism of my teenage years and the trendy agnosticism of the start of my twenties, and got set on the path that got me here.

Twenty years late, maybe, but perhaps even this dry old stick may bud and blossom.

Wholly Weak

From a busy end of (teaching) term to a busy vacation - assessed essays to write, Greek to get back on track.

It's at this stage of the course - next term has a few teaching weeks then exams - that lots of us are thinking about the tension between learning and developing for ministry.

If only we knew what, from all this, will be useful, what we'll forget and regret, what we'll look back and wish we'd taken better advantage of the opportunity to explore.

I take great comfort from generations of ordinands who have completed courses like ours and lived out fruitful lives of ministry; I take note with humility of the statistics for stressed-out and demotivated clergy.

Please pray for those in training, especially those going ahead, this year's leavers who will very soon be heading off to parishes around the country, longing to be as Christ to those to whom they are send, offering their weakness and seeking his glory.

Liminality

Well, I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've used that word.

A time of transitions. For Cambridge ordinands, term began last week, and I have now completed two 'Federation Intensives,' namely Race Awareness (excuse the dated sounding name) and Godly Play.

Having worked in the Caribbean, and been had similar corporate training, my expectations for this course that is compulsory for all at some stage were a little mixed. The issue of racism is clearly a live one, but it is all too easy to end up with a less than useful guilt-fest, exposing authentic and imagined guilt.

In fact I both enjoyed and, I believe, benefited from this course, given a light touch but in no way superficially treated by Bev Thomas. What did I learn? Probably the most valuable outcome for me was finding a few new ways into understanding the issues from a more rounded perspective than I have had access to before.

One piece of that was the well-known-to-many-but-not-me "Blue eyes/brown eyes" exercise. If you know it, read on. If not, grab this link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Next came Godly Play, looking at and working with a specific system of religious education - OK, that makes it sound deadly, which it wasn't - and introducing the topic of spiritual development in children. This topic seems to stir up strong feelings one way or another, although because the term sounds rather generic it's hard to know how directly people have experienced what we saw, which was an environment, methods and resources (related to the Montessori tradition), not simply a way of telling stories.

We were led by Rebecca Nye, an academic turned practitioner who first brought Godly Play here, and had a great time, mostly at floor level getting a child's eye view of the process.

I could go on, but I'm more inclined to direct you to the Godly Play UK website, and do a little more reading and reflecting myself. I will say that I was impressed by what I saw, and the approach made sense of some of the joys and the frustrations from my own experience working with younger children in a church context.

(Oh, and frustratingly I used some response time in our complete session to start a poem on journeys, but I think I must have left it behind, bah, I need to go ahead of the admittedly weak - sorry! - 'Turkey.')

This blog also proves that my 'new' laptop seems to work. The old one has a serious problem with its screen, and it turned out that a second hand laptop was more viable than a repair. This one came via eBay, and I confess to a little nervousness, but so far so good...

The normal teaching timetable starts tomorrow, so this is the calm before the storm. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

It's all Greek to me

Quite a day. Not exactly typical, but thoroughly enjoyable.

First to chapel for morning prayer, after which I forgot to sign up for lunch - again :(

Fortunately I'd brought in some tiffin I made last night, so all was not lost. (And OK, I went home for lunch. But that's later)

Morning prayer mainly follows Common Worship: if you want to see today's service in full including the psalm for the day, readings appointed in the lectionary see this link. Sometimes these services feature music and sometimes not, although there's music in the poetry of the Psalms and the Canticles.

We've been following through a passion narrative: this reminded me of my first attempt in a long time to rediscover my joy in creative writing in 2003, which is gradually becoming part of my life again. It's exciting to me that quite a few people here at Ridley have a real interest in reuniting faith and the arts.

Next off for the first lecture in Church History, which was very enjoyable, making some helpful connections between events in the Roman Empire and in the first days of the Church.

In the afternoon we had a staircase football challenge.

I'll admit to mixed feelings about football. I love to play though, as with singing, I bring rather more gusto than skill.

Unlike singing, said gusto then fades rather rapidly, to be relaced with resigned yet dogged determination to survive.

We at 'H' made achieved a glorious first round exit. (Then a draw.)

Then I had agreed to referee a later match, and somehow found myself playing instead. This old body didn't take so kindly to 20 more minutes of football... Great fun, though.

To quote the original DNA001 (clue! clue!) I felt like a military academy - bits of me kept passing out.

Then home, before we headed off again to see that once every three years Cambridge treat the Greek play - Medea performed in Greek with surtitles.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially as our seats were on stage so we had the action 'up close and personal.'

My New Testament Greek is at a pretty early stage, so I was delighted to find that I was picking up words and phrases and felt my ear was tuned in. Anna came too and enjoyed the experience, though a fun-filled-feelgood-family-feast it isn't.

Continuing the Greek theme, we stopped by at the very nice Greek takeaway for falafel and chips. Then chatted over a glass of wine with our very kind neighbour who babysat. And so to bed.

The Poem What I Wrote (when I should have been doing Greek)

IF(with apologies to R.K.)

If you can spring from bed when every neighbour
Thinks Morning Prayer's a crazy thing to do,
If liturgy's a herculean labour,
Yet still you treat the Canticle as new,
If you can don and doff surplice or cassock
Or do without liturgical disguise,
And sit on chair, then stand, then kneel on hassock
With look most beatific in your eyes:
If you can bellow hymn then in your best sot-
-to voce breathe prayer only God may hear;
Raise hands at Ridley, thurible at Westcott,
With tact and grace and always most sincere;
If you can bear to hear both pop and chanting
And follow either path to praise your Lord,
Or hear the preacher wiffling or ranting
And never once betray that you are bored:
If you can mine the gold that's in the scriptures
And never merely bend them to your will,
And turn your hard work into felt-tip pictures
For nine year olds who never can sit still;
If you can study dusty books by Germans
When others to the pub have long adjourned,
And, knowing none of it will help your sermons,
Yet be resolved to keep what you have learned;
If you can talk to drunkards, dons and dustmen,
To students who weren't born when you left school,
And turn to each a patient ear and just, when
You'll come across as one more Holy Fool,
If two hard years of work leave you believing
The word of life's good news for Everyman,
You'll have deserved the honour you're receiving,
And -- which is more -- you'll be an Anglican.

Jeremy P

Reflections - Noughth Week

OK, Cambridge doesn't have a noughth week as Oxford does, but I can't think of a better way to describe it.

So many faces, so many impressions, so many hints and happenings...

Let me offer you just a sketch of life and events here.

First, some basics.

One important focus of Ridley life is the staircase. We live in, study in or are otherwise attached to one - in my case, it's the second of those options, sharing a study with Toby, another married ordinand.

So this morning, for instance, we had morning prayer on the staircase. Christina led, and as this is the day for alternative approaches she chose an Iona-influenced style, simple and reflective.

I wonder whether I'll find more time and space to write while I'm here... In any case, the following brief verse came to me while we were choosing and reflecting on a single word in prayer.

***

Feed

In hope and expectation we arrive.
Our hearts cry out to you our deepest need:
Pour out your love that we may grow and thrive.
In stillness hear the softest voice: "now, feed."

In joyful expectation we are sent
Into the field where you have scattered seed
And some grows strong; and some is bruised and bent.
In stillness hear the softest voice: "now, feed."

***

Some time I'll put something about our first foundation lecture, which also included a time of commissioning. It's quite personal, so you'll have to wait until I've digested more thoroughly.

From today's, though, I heard something from Jeremy (another one - there are several of us here!) that struck me as the starting-point for ministry. I won't have his words exactly right, but anyway, in the context of what it is to receive the grace of God shown in Jesus Christ, he said something like this,

"Sometimes people talk about grace and faith as if it boiled down to presents
we receive or will receive from God. Well, we get bored of gifts.
But we never get bored of someone who loves us."

So, back to the much more mundane, but still important, topic of food. Like most prizes of great worth, this treasure is guarded most fiercely as you can see here.

Everything hinges on getting used to signing up in advance for meals. There is a superficially simple system involving index cards, plastic boxes and paper clips: these can be dealt with on previous days, or at latest by breakfast time. (I have got the hang of breakfast, by the way :) )

Like chess, there are a few basic moves to the game, but the appearance of simplicity is exceptionally misleading. Novices like myself fall prey very easily to the subtleties.

There is grace in the system, though: the end of the queue, behind those successful signer-uppers, is a place of optimism that is generally justified.

Suffice it to say that I now regard the advanced players with great esteem.

Well, that was maybe not a very structured reflection. But then, it is noughth week (to me, at least) and so life feels a little chaotic. By a couple of weeks hence, the regular timetable will have well and truly kicked in, and everything will be relatively neat and tidy I'm sure.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my time more than I can say. I am so grateful for this opportunity to be trained for full time ordained ministry, and delighted to find myself in the company of such an interesting and varied group of people.

The next few days will be quite busy, as there are events and functions to do with college. I'm rather looking forward to matriculation - my first chance to wear that MA gown, which I'm amazed but delighted to find has survived the ravages of time.

As a slightly older student, it's rather reassuring to see that the rhythm of University life is drawn by the same force. The tides ebb and flow, regular and predictable in an overall sense, yet close-up there is never the same pattern left on the sands by stones that are washed up and exposed, then washed out and disappear from view.

My new home from home

It's great to be settled in. Past the half way mark through the first week seems like a good moment to gather up some first impressions.

The overwhelming sense I have of Ridley so far is of a genuine and warm feeling of community. The student body is very mixed in terms of age, experience and background and in some contexts I can imagine that leading to all sorts of awkwardness, but I see every evidence to the contrary here.

Of course, we're still in a slightly artificial time. Our term has begun, as has some of our teaching, but the typical pattern of life is still a week or two away.

We had the Federation introduction session today. This was hardly the first time we've mixed as a Federation - the New Testament Greek introductory course has plenty of people from all around, for instance - but it was the first time we've gathered specifically to meet one another.

We all (as far as I could tell) co-operated by mixing like mad. My report is: there are plenty of people at least as odd as me, we're all oozing goodwill and ecumenism, and if we keep it up there's a very real danger we'll catch a glimpse of the one holy, catholic and apostolic church.

If we do, we may well get to change the world.

The calm...

Cambridge must now be at its very quietest: definitely the calm before the storm.

There's lots of painting going on everywhere you look. New pubs, bars and restaurants sprout on every street, full of hope that they will prove to be this year's 'in' place.

Even King's Parade is peaceful. That grass looked pretty good yesterday; it will look pretty good tomorrow and more or less all the time except when it's recovering from the BBC Outside Broadcast Unit.

It's pretty much the same cluster of bicycles, just a single tidy row, no need to scramble and search through a heap. The shops are full and neat, hoping for an influx of unaccountably guilty-feeling parents, wanting to cheer their progeny (or themselves) up with an impulse purchase.

And here it's the same. Life is changing in so many ways, starting any day now. I'll get the key to my shared study on Sunday, and then it starts. Two years that will, I suspect, feel like two weeks.

We all know in theory what the change means, but there's the theory and there's the fact. How will the children adapt to the change of routine? How much will I miss the school run (school cycle, that is)? How will we carve out time to be a couple in this new, exciting, alarming phase of our lives? Where will we be this time two years hence?

"Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things
of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! As the heart grows
older it will come to such sights colder by and by, nor spare a sigh though
worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie. Yet you will weep, and know why.
Now, no matter, child, the name: sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth
had, no, nor mind, expressed what heart heard of, ghost guessed: it is the
blight man was born for: it is Margaret you mourn for." GMH

There's a little mourning to do for what's past; there's an 'unleaving' we have chosen. But we believe that we are following one who will not fail us. If sorrow's springs are the same, the springs of hope and joy lead also to one single source. It is in order to climb in pursuit of that source that we have set out, both to be refreshed ourselves and to bring its crystal water to others.

Tuesday...

...dawned bright and glorious. Enough chill in the air to invigorate, not enough to make one's throat dry while cycling.

So cycle I did. And here are some highlights of my journey to fetch the paper (and today's free book, from the Horrible Science series).

St Andrew's Street Baptist Church has an exhibition from Stop The Traffik, which is trying to rally public opinion and action against the continuing scandal of people trafficking.

This is an important year, marking the bicentenary of the passing of the Act of Parliament that outlawed slavery and slave trafficking throughout the British Empire, and effectively throughout a large part of the world as British sea power was such that it acted as something of a global policing service.

There are issues for us Brits as we contemplate the age of empire, but this is one area where we can be unreservedly proud of our contribution in the past.

That should also inspire us to get out and do something - just signing the online petition is a start - to bring that great work to a conclusion.

Here's proof that I was being responsible, carbon-wise, in my perambulations.

I'm not a great fan of this little corner of Cambridge. After the wild exuberance of King's College, it's a bit derivative and lame. But I like the lettering on this doorway.

You're never too far from a stack of bicycles here. Unfortunately, a favourite pastime of some late night wanderers is mild or major vandalism of bikes. I only noticed today that someone has kindly removed the handle of the basket on the front of my bike.

Thanks.

After my comments about looking up, here's another delight!

It's the gold leaf that makes this one particularly thrilling, in my opinion at least.

Now here's the answer to the puzzle picture. I'd have accepted, "it's a car park!"

I've never yet had occasion to use the Park Street Cycle Park, but I'm glad it's there. (Maybe I should use it more often. Fewer petty vandalisms.)


Back, now, to looking up. I'm very fond of Cambridge's many and varied crosses. They're particularly stunning on such a clear day. Carved stone against an azure sky is a wonderful thing.

So here's one...
...and here's another. (Admittedly this isn't against the sky, but the composition might tell you which well-known church building we're at.)

So there you are. It's great being forced out in the morning!

(And a bit later too: Ruth and I took the opportunity of a stop in Costa Coffee en route to Sainsbury's, to shop for this evening's meal.

There you are. Bang up to date. Must go: stock's a-bubbling.

The Last Weekend...

Well, here I am at the start of my last week before starting my course. A good time to reflect on where I've been and where I'm headed.

I am especially looking forward to:

• Meeting and getting to know all the Ridley folk
• Getting established in my shared study in college
• Discovering theology as a shared activity rather than a solitary 'pastime'
• Kicking off this new phase of our family life

There are inevitable moments of, if not panic then mild alarm. This is a big change. I've occasionally - more than occasionally, let's be brutally honest - griped about the demands of corporate life and of consulting. But I enjoyed it a lot too; I still can't resist daydreaming business strategy and critiquing the marketing I see.

What I'm going into is both more predictable and more unknown. The general shape of my next 25+ years is now possible to sketch out in a way that would have been laughable in a regular job. But there's a fractal quality to the picture as I try and zoom in to the actual months, weeks, days and hours.

Hence the occasional rushing feeling. I'm heading uphill and will be going over the top to jump off; by the time I'm there I hope and expect that I'll have, and know how to use, a hanglider!