I'm sure there has been a programme with a title like that recently.
I am going to spend some time tomorrow afternoon describing my journey, but for me more important is to talk of what it is that makes being a Christian a vital and dynamic thing - not so much where I have been but why I am heading in this direction. I could have said that last sentence more simply by using the word spirituality, but that can have connotations of simplicity and contentment, and I am rarely either of those things.
I guess object number one would have to be my guitar. I got one for Christmas when I was about 16, and then I got a second one some time afterwards. I played guitar hours every day for years - it must have driven my folks up the wall, but I think its the only bit of my teenage existence neither of them has ever complained about. Bizarre.
Once the guitar is introduced I will sing something, and probably intersperse the story with songs. All the songs would be worship songs - it became apparent relatively quickly for me that I was never going to get a call from Zeppelin or Floyd seeking my talents to fill in for a missing superstar. I will think about what songs to sing over the next 18 hours or so.
I also need to decide whether these things are to be in chronological order or some order of importance - chronologically guitar is first.
I need to think about how I introduce family. I know that is going to sound a bit cliched, but F and the boys are immense at keeping my feet on the ground, and their acceptance of this bonkers thing I do is quite amazing. I love the way they make me laugh, and how the boys in particular are more than happy for me to share their lives and friends.
Other items would have to include (if I can find it) my old maroon coloured copy of Celebrating Common Prayer which travelled round Europe with me for 18 months or so as I wrestled with being called and found some comfort at least in the rhythm of praying the Offices.
I would also have to add the copy I have of Rublev's Trinity which speaks to me of invitation and acceptance. I could take the DVD as well of Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev - the film doesn't speak to me of invitation and acceptance; more of the Russian spirit which somehow created beautiful icons (and a bell) out of the mud, filth and depravity of medieval feudal Russia, and which is a wonderful metaphor for God's working in me.
I ought, I suppose, take in a theological book too. I'm not sure I can select a single book or even author who, for me, sums up all theology. There are several important strands in this. A book like Middleton and Walsh's Truth is stranger than it used to be perhaps points to those moments at college when I began to understand why I found the culture of Church within which I grew up so strangely baffling, and a book like Rowan Williams' Arius which opened up the whole idea of the richness of the early centuries of the Christian faith (I know Arius was wrong, I mean the sense of the thinking and argument which came from an assuredness that somehow God could be understood more, and that there was a clear sense of a better understanding which came from rejecting the ideas which were based on squashing God into contemporary intellectual categories, as Arius did). There are a couple of other books I have come across but lost track of - I would love to include something about the amazing Cappadocian Fathers, but I probably need to read that stuff again as it has got too hazy in my recollection.
A fairly cheap chalice and paten I picked up in a conference centre gift shop would be in there too. I continue to wrestle with the Eucharist. I can't dodge the sense that it is foundational to worship, but neither can I shake off the certainty that the way we do it is no longer fit for purpose - too rigid and individualistic, too much emphasis on comfort and repetition.
I can't find an easy way to take my blog in. Blogging gave me a way of finding a voice and expression of some really strange ideas - or at least that is how they felt to start with. The best symbol for this I can come up with might be a Moleskin and Lamy pen - writing.
The last item will probably be a dog collar. Being a Priest does mean a lot to me; a calling and responsibility to seek to find and be part of building the Kingdom of God. I don't see this necessarily as doing Church, and in our situation perhaps the Kingdom of God might best be served by a deal of undoing of Church; a stripping back to basics.
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