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The quieter path

An utter privilege this morning to walk out of the house and onto the farm, off the footpaths and bridleways for a change. After a busy few days I needed it.

I listened to the distant woodpecker as I ambled in whatever direction a break in the nettles and brambles would allow. We saw our first swallows yesterday evening - no sign of them this morning. No distinctive honk of the raven that inhabits these woods either, nor the cuckoo we've been aware of for the last week. I did startle a deer and send a muntjac careering through the undergrowth. Walking regularly helps to establish those seasonal sounds in the things to listen out for.

I should have been at a day long meeting today. It had been in the diary for ages, but about which I had heard nothing. I checked with colleagues who forwarded an email with the day's plan. I hadn't received this - how could I be left off the address list? Then I realised I had not RSVPed to the invite months ago. I spent a few minutes wrestling with whether to go anyway, or take the time to be away. FOMO kicked in, briefly, but then I reminded myself what a gift a clear day always is. I opted for the quieter path.

Therefore, I found myself walking in the woods.

I did wonder whether I might find a suitable stump that I can adopt as my outdoor writing station. That might be a cool idea for the summer.

Finding the quieter path is the ultimate aversion therapy for FOMO. I realise this applies irrespective of whether it is FOMO socially, or the FOMO which brings about repeated scrolling through social media or YouTube. Both act to disrupt and disturb.

In Avila we visited the Monasterio de la Encarnacion where St Teresa began her life as a Carmelite. She would eventually move out of here and found a new Convent across the city - one which was far more austere - and it was there that she wrote probably her most celebrated work, The Interior Castle. However, it is her original monastery that has a small courtyard garden with a circular labyrinth inspired by Teresa's work. A circular route following the path inward.

I don't find "steps" or "systems" that helpful, but walking quietly in the woods or on the lanes is the perfect tonic.

 

 

 

Time in the Wilderness: a reflection for Lent

I gave this reflection as part of a recent Clergy Chapter meeting, referencing some of my MA studies.

We returned to our house on the Farm at Christmas 2021. I was done. 18 months of lockdown had taken a toll, but I had arrived at the start of COVID already feeling at an end of something and knew it was time to move on.

So, January 2022 would find me walking - mostly on the farm, but walking - usually, going over moments from my previous 19 years in Parish ministry where I thought I had failed. If only I’d said this, if only I’d done that. In some ways I felt a bit like I was in the wilderness. Being a Parish Priest had been part of me for two decades. Even though I knew I had needed to stop, it still felt the loss - loss of a sense of meaning and loss of a sense of who I am. With hindsight, I realise I had thought I could out-organise and out-energise any obstacle and this was me reaching the end of myself with more of a crash than should have been the case. I suppose you could say I was in the wilderness.

But in Lent, surely, wilderness has to take on an altogether more positive meaning. Despite the reality that a wilderness experience is uncomfortable, disorienting and dislocating, throughout my MA studies, I keep going back to the 4th C theologian and desert monastic Evagrius. He was at the Council of Constantinople in 381, having been made a deacon by Basil the Great, but he seems to have had some sort of liaison with the wife of a powerful man in the city, and so Evagrius had to flee. He relocated to Jerusalem and stayed at a monastery under the leadership of Melania the Great. By all accounts he was a bit of a pain in the cassock! Bragging about his achievements in Constantinople and showing off his fine clothes until he seems to have had some sort of breakdown (mental or physical is unclear). Melania ministered to him and, eventually, he confessed his affair and was restored to health. He then moved to the Egyptian desert and wrote one of the first handbooks on prayer, as well as becoming the sort of humble and wise counsel sought out by people from near and far. But this lifestyle in the desert was not in the confines of an established monastery. Rather, an extended network of like-minded hardy sorts who met weekly, but probably spent most of their time alone, in prayer and doing the hard work of surviving. Living in the wilderness as a lifestyle choice

In Lent we find Jesus propelled by the Spirit into the wilderness immediately after his baptism, and being tempted, and the way this story is written in the Gospels is a clear re-enactment of the Exodus journey through the wilderness. I want to offer three ideas about the wilderness for our reflection this Lent.

Firstly, for the Israelites, the long journey across the desert was a time of discovery. Deut 8:2 says

“Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments”.

The theologian Ulrich Mauser argues we translate this text slightly incorrectly. The Hebrew is unclear about who comes to know the results of the testing. Is it God - who presumably knows the hearts of the people already? Or is it in fact the people themselves - that through their testing and repeated failings they are able to know their own hearts more clearly?
The stripping away that takes place as part of entering the wilderness should lead to us knowing ourselves more fully and accurately - warts and all. Wilderness strips away any pretensions.

Secondly,  for Jesus the wilderness is thought of as a place of temptation. Mark 1:12-13

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

The Gospel writers relate Jesus responding to the temptations by going back into Scripture, but we need to remind ourselves that in order for those things to have been temptations for Jesus - the choice being offered had to be really tempting. Clever short-cuts to achieve some of what he was called to do, but to do so without any of the pain and heartache of the Cross. And the three listed strike to the heart of who Jesus was.

Henri Nouwen describes the three temptations in a way that challenges us as ministers. He says that the temptations subtly played towards

“the need to be relevant, the need to be significant, the need to be powerful.”

Jesus needed to dig into the Old Testament to be able to verbalise the clarity of his purpose and, through this, to be clear about what he was resisting. The temptations Jesus resisted in the wilderness teach us that we can only find the clarity of our vocation through the same process of allowing the wilderness to strip away, and then to discern through Scripture the subtle ways our heart would lead us too readily back to comfort. This allows us to be more clear about our ministries and ourselves, as we pay attention to ourselves and what is going on within and immediately around us. Later in the Gospels Jesus repeatedly returns to the wilderness not to be tempted, but to find the space to be close to God in prayer.

And thirdly, for Evagrius the wilderness was the place where he actually found his home. He was to spend the rest of his life there, and for him the stripping away was fundamental in his learning about stillness , attention, and withdrawal. Each of these values is quite profound.

Last May, partly to explore some ideas about solitude for my MA, I walked the West Highland Way. As I walked alone I had a lot of time to seek stillness, despite the activity, but I soon realised what the Desert Mothers and Fathers taught about stillness - it is not about getting away from the noise, but about discovering and dealing with the sources of the noise within us. I recall walking along the A82 at the mouth of Glencoe. This is the main A road into Fort William, and there is quite a bit of traffic. After a distance, the path turns right, away from the road and ascends the mountainside. The noise of cars decreases, but so the noise within me seemed all the louder; thoughts, irritations etc.

And attention is needed in the wilderness. My longest day was 19 miles across Rannoch Moor - a bleak and empty landscape in the drizzle of the day I walked there, so my attention was on the steady tread of my feet, how my legs were doing, was there any sign of a blister, did I need to stop for some water or a bit of food? Attention paid along the way was important to protect myself for the whole journey. Walking made me aware of the need for attention on just what was in close proximity around me. I could enjoy the landscape and the hills in the distance, but my focus only had to be just the next couple of steps.

Withdrawal for me meant intentionally careful about what I carried in my pack. Waterproofs and camera gear, snacks and water, and a first aid kit were a given, just the things that were important for that day. I didn’t think I would so relish being out on the moor with my backpack and in my waterproofs, cocooned against the drizzle! Withdrawal like this helps us establish clear boundaries around ourselves - that which is rightly and comfortably our outer perimeter

With hindsight I am really glad of my wilderness time two years ago and then my MA studies since which have allowed me to find a meaningful shape to that, and, indeed, a desire to find myself in the wilderness more regularly.

May we each be blessed with a wilderness experience which teaches us. Whether that is to know our weaknesses better, or to recognise where we minister to meet our own false needs
to find stillness
to pay attention
to withdraw

Tempus fugit

Wow! How time flies.

December 5th 2023 marked the second anniversary of my ending the season of my ministry that was centred around full-time in a parish. It was good in many ways, but it was also good to move on. In the whirl of caring for my Mum in the last month of her life I can't recall exactly what I was doing on the 5th but it probably involved driving to Bristol and visiting her in Southmead Hospital.

In August last year I was appointed as the Area Dean of Andover in the Diocese of Winchester, which has been a really fruitful and satisfying new piece of ministry I had neither sought nor anticipated, but getting to know and serve the varied Parishes of the Deanery has been rewarding. I love being able to lead worship in the villages, and having the capacity during the week to support some of the outreach work in the urban setting, particularly the CAP Debt Centre.  

In December I completed the second year of my MA, although some of my second year deadlines flowed over into this year. I signed up for this MA in some ways as a means to ensure my brain remained active, but the learning has been profound for me. I have loved being able to use important new insights as I have preached and led contemplative times, but the learning has also allowed me to process some of the more complex issues from Parish life which were, sadly, left unresolved. The reading and writing has been hard, at times, but so enriching and I wish I could trade in all the Clergy training days from the last two decades for the quality and depth of learning on my MA. Over the past twelve months I have written about the Desert Fathers and what we can learn from their endurance to address stress (which involved walking the West Highland Way), and another assignment based on Narrative Psychology considering what we can learn pastorally from a person telling us their story for which I was very grateful for a TED talk by one of the screenwriters of Toy Story. I am now beginning the long haul of 18,000 words for my final dissertation which is scheduled to take me through to February 2025. 

Obviously, saying goodbye to Mum was a big deal. Over Christmas it felt like one of us was driving over almost every day, and then gradually daily on the phone to the nursing team at St Peter's Hospice. She knew she was dying, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last February, but the last few weeks hit us very quickly and Mum was in quite some pain for days at a time.

It was good to have a Memorial Service for her at St Chad's, my old Church in Patchway, as they had welcomed her in and made her part of the Church family there for the last 3 and a bit years of her life. She wanted her ashes scattered in the woods near here where she used to walk. We'll do that in due course.

Lessons from baking bread

I have been seriously baking bread for three or four years now. Other than the odd blip, we are pretty much self-sufficient. I have grown to love watching and kneading the dough - learning to feel when it is ready, rather than relying on a timer. I love the variety of things which can be made from the simplest of ingredients; flour, water, salt and yeast - bread and pizzas - and then slightly more complex variations; sourdough and breads based on enriched doughs, like these hot cross buns. I also realise there are some lessons from baking bread which apply equally to leading a church.

I love enriched doughs, especially for brioche loaves. When I first started the mess was awful - dough splattered up curtains and several early attempts ended up being scraped into the bin. The problem is that the initial dough is easy to knead (I don't have a stand mixer, so it is all by hand) but then you come to adding the butter. At first all seems well and the baker feels brimming with confidence, but then there is the dawning realisation that the butter has barely incorporated into the dough, and the kneading has merely resulted in the butter being pushed out the other end and smearing across the working surface. Patience is needed and the experience to know to trust the process. A different kneading strategy is helpful (slap and fold) which encourages gluten development without losing control of the sticky blob in front of you and the temptation to reduce the stickiness by adding a bit more flour needs to be resisted. Patience and confidence to look past the mess and see that the dough will come together are vital here.

Unlike using instant yeast, a sourdough loaf is very different. Although the actual hands-on time is the same, the time from start until taking the loaves out of the over is something like 20 hours including the overnight feed of the starter. (At some point it would be worth re-reading some of the Biblical references to leavened bread and yeast with sourdough rather than yeast powder in our minds). There is a balance required with the sourdough process; one the one hand it is important to leave sufficient time for the bulk fermentation, for example, to take place but on the other there also has to be the confidence to know when the dough is ready enough. When I want to bake sourdough I know that I need to get the starter going last thing on the night before. If I do that then I will be mixing the dough first thing the next morning, say 7am, and then there will be a couple of stretch and folds required over the next couple of hours. I know that I will shape the loaves and leave them to rest around lunchtime before placing them in the banneton baskets and then leaving them to prove with a view to baking around 4pm. Many external factors play a part here, not least the temperature in the kitchen. It can be frustrating to start the process and then have something come up which cuts across one of these key moments. A degree of experience-learned judgment is needed in order to know how to modify the timings on the hoof. In other words one needs to have got it wrong and worked out why frequently enough to be able to then know the right changes to make.

Dough needs both salt and yeast in order to give a flavoursome and well-risen loaf. Ironically, salt is detrimental to the efficacy of the yeast. In a normal yeasted loaf the salt and yeast would be measured and then placed at opposite sides of the mixing bowl, keeping them apart for as long as possible. When I make sourdough I hold back a tiny fraction of the water and add the salt to that, setting aside for half an hour whilst the more delicate sourdough starter can begin to work. It is also counter-intuitive that very dry flour seems to be able to resist the presence of the water. Time is needed for the flour to become fully hydrated, a process known as the autolyse. Therefore, care is needed. Not all the ingredients mix easily and some even need to be held back for a short time - even though their presence is vital for the final loaf.

It seems a bit strange to learn that it is important to let the gluten in the dough rest, especially after some work has been put in. A lot of loaves require a pre-shaping (getting the loaf in sort of the right shape) and then 20 minutes or so of resting before the work involved in finishing the shaping and creating the surface on the dough which will become the crust. If you only shape once then you can feel the resistance and the dough pulling back, especially when making a pizza base! In order to get a soft workable ball of dough which can be stretched out to carry all those beautiful toppings I leave my dough to rest for 2 hours. Sometimes it is as important to allow the changes brought about by shaping to rest and relax in order for the next stage to work best. 

Even after all the essential care has been taken there is still the moment of chaos as the loaves are placed into the hot oven. A visually satisfying loaf will have some oven spring and some crusty edges. In order to allow the chaos of the spring to take place but within some limits, it is crucial to score the loaf - a razor blade slicing into the top of the loaf to give some outlet for the expansion. The exact scoring is entirely personal, and can add to the beauty of the finished article, but the chaos has to be channeled slightly to let the energy out in some way.

This might sound complicated, but when it works a hand-made, home-baked loaf fresh from the oven is second to none. Likewise, bringing about change in church can be messy and chaotic, but there is no sight better!

I'd love to know if there are any other parts of baking that apply to church leadership that I could add.

Enough is enough...

I was chatting to a Kiwi early this morning and we briefly got onto the overnight breaking news about their PM, Jacinda Ardern. She is not as popular over there as she seems to come across from the view from here, apparently, but I want to give her a round of applause for her brave, yet vulnerable, admission that there is nothing left in the tank.

We have too many leaders who aspire to be "world king" (or similar), for whom the gaining and holding power feeds something insatiable within them, and so to have the public acknowledgement that, sometimes, the demands of leadership cannot be sustained forever is important. At the risk of getting too political we also need to acknowledge that those who do not display this honest vulnerability do not necessarily do a better job, in fact they may do a deal more long term damage, because keeping the grip on power is the most important metric for them. I'm not sure I trust Dominic Cummins any more than Boris Johnson, but according to a report in the Independent referring to the handling of COVID

‘Chaos isn’t that bad - it means people have to look to me to see who is in charge’ PM allegedly said

I rest my case.

End of year report card

Sadly (or maybe not), I don't get an end of year report to take home from where I am studying for my MA. However, as I have just passed the first anniversary of stepping back from full-time ministry, I want to try to make sense of these last 12 months.

The first thing that became obvious was the loss of a sense that people understood what I was doing. For all the misconceptions people may have, saying you are a Parish Priest conveys a meaning. I am just starting my first book post-final assignment hand in, and I came across this sentence

There are no easy routes to self-realisation; it begins, ironically, with self-abandonment.

I had carefully prepared my CV as I finished last December, and have used it as I have applied for PtO (Permission to Officiate is the somewhat nebulous term to indicate I have the Bishop's permission to minister and that I am up to date with things like safeguarding training and so forth). Having relinquished, I realised how ironic it was to be a bit piqued not to be given a range of plum little projects to work on which would have sounded so impressive as I explained them to people. Instead, as I seem to have found more than once, the path to fruitfulness usually begins by heading in the opposite direction. What's the point of relinquishing stuff if it doesn't stay relinquished?

I continue to preside and preach out in the sticks, trying to listen and discern the health of each as they work to appoint a new person in that Team, and I have become involved in the CAP centre locally. I have been very busy sorting out my Dad's estate after he died suddenly back in February, and I try to keep tabs on my Mum.

Studying has been a most unexpected blessing. There is the roller-coaster of emotion excitedly starting a new module, then the low points of realisation the vast amounts one doesn't understand, rounded off with the immense relief and sense of satisfaction actually handing something in. I have engaged with issues I would not have had any reason to go near had I not been doing this MA, and this has given me a lot of new insights to use in preaching.

As the photo shows, I continue my discipline of walking with my camera and have just started a plan for a substantial walk next year which is both exciting and a little daunting. I have so much to reflect on and am looking forward to more learning in the year to come.

...because we left the taps running for a hundred years...

I had this song in my head as we drove around some of the rural areas in northern Uganda 4 years ago and saw shreds of plastic in the roadside, in the rivers and in the bush. What have we done? And what are we allowing to continue to be done?

I don't have high hopes of COP27, sadly, although I am praying I am proved wrong!

As we trash the planet, look at the real damage being done to people by the current economic policies (e.g. the number of people in the UK without any significant savings to carry them through austerity) and hold on anxiously to observe the threadbare state of democracy in the USA I can only hark back (irreverently) to one of the key political watershed moments of my teenage years....

 

Worship in a time of mourning

I have been learning a lot in the last six months as I have served some of the local churches. In full-time ministry there was always a strong sense of connection between the responsibility of leading at the front on a Sunday, and being part of the life of the church family for the rest of the week. In my current role I lead services in a number of churches but play no part in their on-going life for the other six days. This has certainly made me realise the sense of absolute privilege of leading, particularly in a place where up until that moment I was an unknown quantity, and also for me the degree to which there is a deep and rich joy to be had in leading and preaching.

Tomorrow, I will be leading and preaching for the first time in a new place (for me) and also for the first time in this period of mourning for the Queen. For the last 24 hours I have been wrestling with how to set the right tone and catch the mood so as to lead appropriately. I do not feel that by tomorrow I will be anywhere near able to adequately reflect on the multiple elements in the emotional eddy and flow I, for one, am experiencing; the loss of someone whose dignity was a source of reassurance in troubled moments, the historic significance on the end of the longest serving British monarch and the steadying hand on the tiller of Government that she brought, and her regular witness to her Christian faith in her Christmas broadcasts. There is too much here for me to make sense of and encapsulate in meaningful words as we still try to process events and emotions. 

Six months ago I took my father's funeral. If you have ever had to speak in public on such an occasion then you will probably recognise the sense of turbulence of emotion and you will understand my relief at being able to say what needed to be said with the right amount of emotion (hopefully, enough for people to know that I meant what I said, but not so much that it became awkward or distracting for those in the congregation). I had been given sufficient time then to process and write (and edit and re-write) - a month, as I recall - and so the words I spoke publicly I can look back on and still regard them as saying what needed to be said. It is worth remembering that it is better to honestly acknowledge the incompleteness of the time for processing (and in doing so giving people the permission also to not have finished processing events for themselves) than it is to use words that are not yet sufficiently formed as to serve their intended purpose.

We will certainly incorporate some of the suggested prayers of thanksgiving and allow some silent space for reflection, and leading a church family in worship during a time of sadness is at least as important as at any other time. We will also pray for our new King, Charles III.

Immediacy vs the long view

It is now nine months since I left full time Parish ministry. I had to complete an official document recently and one of the questions caused me to stop and think - full time employed? no, part-time? no, unemployed? not really, student? hardly, so I ticked home-maker. 

For twenty years my life was marked by the need for immediacy; multiple deadlines and balancing several different diaries (home, church, schools and so forth). There is a lot to be said for that productive busy-ness brought on by competing demands. Eugene Peterson is right to warn us to the danger of being "the busy pastor". We should regard this, he says, like we might think of "the embezzling bank manager" - it is simply not right. I don't think he is saying we shouldn't have lots to do - the problem comes about when our busy-ness defines us and we find our egos being boosted by the lack of empty space in our calendars and how many people have come to depend on us in some way.

For nine months my life has not had such pressures. I have been ministering a couple of Sundays per month in local churches (and it has been a joy getting to know some of the smaller villages around and about). However, one senses one can easily be the cause of "a disturbance in the force", as it were, so there is much to be said for holding back a little. A few weeks ago I was in a Church getting ready to lead and so I checked with those setting up what "the norm" was. There was a helpful list of things, one of which was the they say the Gloria. I announced at the start that I was going to lead the service as closely as I possibly could to how I understood they did it most weeks, no boat rocking from me, but when we got to that point and I announced that we stand to say the Gloria, an older lady on the front row in a wonderful stage whisper asked, "Why aren't we singing it?". I smiled some days later when I came across a paragraph in the Rule of St Benedict concerning allowing members of the clergy in to join the monastery. 'If an ordained priest asks to be received into the monastery, do not agree too quickly'. Wise words indeed.

I have just handed in my second MA assignment. I picked up the first book to prepare for this in the middle of April, and so I have spent four and a half months concentrating on one or two questions concerning the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have been excited and then baffled, been exhilarated by new insights and left despondent by realising how little I knew (more than once) and then wrestled with getting all that into the word limit. This feels a very different learning experience than the couple of times per annum CMD days offered by the Diocese. Certainly, this concentrated learning is having a far greater impact on my preaching output and reflection than the innumerable training days I have had, but which now have all blurred into one.

I have a week to pause and let my brain run free before the pre-reading on my next module, and so I am reading about tides and rock pools and enjoying the long view.

Fruitfulness

Six months ago to the day, on a dark December afternoon, we marked the end of my time in north Bristol with a tea party. I was glad of the chance to celebrate together, especially after the confinement of lockdown, and was touched by the lengths folks had gone to - organising the tea and inviting some special guests. We had asked for some plants to go in containers on our patio; an acer and a fig. Being the coldest and darkest time of the year, and as a result of the recent poor weather, both these plants were bare of foliage. Obvious jokes were made about fig trees being barren.

Six months later and a lot has changed. We are excited to see fruit on the fig and elsewhere in the garden! But this has got me thinking about fruitfulness, not just for fig trees but also in ministry.

There is always sadness looking back - the mistakes made, but more so those moments when people weren't able to make the step needed to receive a healing etc, and things were left unresolved. Ministry is also hard and there were many occasions when I had to echo the words of Habbakuk 3

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not blossom,
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.
¹⁹ God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    and makes me tread upon the heights.

So there is the first piece of fruit - learning to allow the failures and frustrations to drive you into the arms of God rather than into cynicism or self-pity.

For a variety of reasons I have found myself twice in the last month driving through some of my old haunts and just as it was fun driving the familiar streets (and knowing the short cuts and parking places), so too it was good to be able to offset some of the memories of hard times with happier ones combined with a sense of compassion for people that stands the test of time - to be able to pray for them as you pass their house. So that (for me at least) is the second piece of fruit - that sense of being opened up by effort spent caring for others. I was struck by something I had read by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that

Jesus' 'being-for-others' is the experience of transcendence. Only through this liberation from self, through this 'being-for-others' unto death, does omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence come into being. Faith is participating in the being of Jesus...Our relationship to God is...a new life in being 'there-for-others', through participation in the being of Jesus. Transcendence is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the neighbours within reach in any given situation. God in human form.

which is an important counter to the idea that transcendence is about me, now, my experience and feelings.

The fruit in this present time is different; space to read, study, explore and learn is invaluable and the luxury of being able to see what turns up - to enjoy the invites and chance encounters.

I look at the figs growing on the fig tree most days and marvel at the miracle of fruitfulness taking place so shortly after the barrenness of the winter months.