Monthly Archives: May 2017

Loosing The Way

A room full of silence. Each one of us lost in some way, with our own thoughts and emotions. Fifty days may seem a long time to some but actually 49 of them had passed very quickly and most of us were still raw. There was denial, shock and anger still gangling about inside and between us and no one really knew what to say.
I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall looking toward the small window. Outside the sunset had just got to that point when it seems the sky is on fire. I watched the fire rage and then burn down low as the sun finally sank below the horizon.
What next? He had said we should wait and wait we had. We were still waiting, not all of us graciously. Arguments flared up, things were said or not said: it was a mess. Only Mary his mother looked at all calm. She was waiting as he said and we did our best to wait like her.
There was plenty of time, plenty of time for thoughts to weave back and forth. It was impossible not to relive the past. There was the trauma of his death of course, but I could slip back beyond that sometimes to the green hills and valleys, the blue lake, even the dusty road. There had been good times as we’d listened and learnt and travelled together. He had shown us a way. It had been extraordinary. Not religious in the confined sense of obligations but in a joyous sense of freedom and new discoveries. Each view of the landscape linked to a thought or action, each meeting together a crucible of anticipation. Change had travelled with us, welcomed and exciting. The call to justice was strong; to live in peace, to be merciful. We all wanted those things and he had awakened that longing in us, with his stories, the prayers and most of all the silence.
‘Wait’ he had said and in a few hours the sun would come up on the fiftieth day. Would it be different to the previous 49? Would we, feeling that we had been loosing it all this time, finally rediscover The Way?

In our life and our believing
The Love of God

For churches in Yorkshire and beyond, who are struggling to find The Way again: Pentecost 2017

Prayer for a dying friend

The tide is going out,
The sand is smooth,
The rock pools isolated.
Standing on the shore,
The horizon joins the sky
At the edge of the world.
How often have we stood like this
And hoped to stand here again.
But the waters are moving faster now,
Tugging, pulling, more insistent,
Determined even, leaving:
Is there still time to visit the rock pools?
The treasures they contain,
Reminders of others days,
And memories to retain,
Until the next tide.
Our fingers touch, our minds too:
Can we let go yet?

God of the tide and the shore,
With your Spirit in us,
May the letting go and the loss
Be possible this side of your horizon

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Still bearing the wounds of the cross

Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
How long will ours last?
We want grief over and done with,
Our injuries healed and pain taken away.

Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
In this stillness, wait with us,
As the women waited at the cross.

Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
As we recognise in each other our shared wounds,
Help us to bear them together, holding fast to the light.

Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
That were so life changing for us all,
Be with those who bear unfathomable changes, give them life.

Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
May we your cross-wise ones, following in your way,
live your wounded life together in love, and may your kindom come
On earth as in heaven.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

A prayer for Ascension

Avoiding the Bulls of Bashan and other advice from the psalmist

Sometimes when you are reciting the psalms in worship like Benedictines do, you come across something odd like the Bulls of Bashan. Now I’ve no idea who or what they were but I’m pretty sure that webmaster Bob will google it quite quickly and put a footnote to inform us all.
But actually I think I may have met one today. When I say met one I actually made quite a lot of effort to avoid him. It was on the way back from Byland Abbey that the first sign on the footpath warned me of his presence. At that point he was about three fields away with his harem. The nearest I got to him was him bellowing and roaring, just like in the psalms, on the other side of the fence. I took a different path, up a hill. Turned out to be the same field, who could have guessed. Who comes around the cornerstone old grumpy and his gang. By now I was at the top of the hill and pretty soon over the handy stile.
So whoever the Bulls of Bashan are or were, my advice is, like the psalmist, to give the plenty of room.

As the Bulls of Bashan roar,
So the hare runs up hill.
Follow her!

A short time after writing this I had a fall off another stile and had to attend the Malton urgent care unit for some stitches in my left hand. Patched up now and back in Huddersfield with Bob.

In our coming and our going
The Peace of God

These stones would shout aloud

I grew up on the architecture of England. It was my father’s contribution to my general knowledge, complimenting my mother which was the common flora and fauna. As a result I can name seasonal wild flowers, birds and insects but I also know a Norman arch from a Gothic one.
Standing at Riveaulx the stones make me gasp. I saw it last summer but standing here again it was no less impressive.
It’s easy to imagine they prayed and sang in this lofty, now roofless sanctuary. I wonder what Henry VIII would have made of it all these centuries later after his greed and bad leadership laid waste to these holy houses of the North.

The trees clap their hands
But it is in the woods around Stanbrook Abbey that I find my true sanctuary. This enormous woodland cathedral, its green roof meeting across my path, letting in beams of sunlight, is a wonderfully restoring place.
A hind leaps across the path ahead of me. She also knows the value of this sanctuary. At this moment it seems to be the calmest place on earth and I know I need to store it in my core memory for later days.
Insects hum, birds sing and wild garlic makes a strong pong from ramsons deep as snow drifts. The light filters in catching small puddles and making the shine like jewels, giving the green leaves many different shades.
From time to time others pass by. Not many but a few who have also found peace here. They remark on how beautiful a place this is, a constant doxology, and walk on. The birds join in the refrain and the trees clap their hands, as the psalmist says.

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As the hind rests peacefully in the wood
So may I rest peacefully in God.
As the birds sing joyfully in the branches
So may I praise God daily.
As the light flickers through the leaves
So may I pass each day in the light.
As the flowers carpet the ground
So may I hold the earth gently and honour the Creator.

In our coming and our going
The Peace of God

Prayer in a meadow

Here’s a meadow, here’s a may tree
Here’s the roots, twisted, brown.
Here I sit by the may tree
Here’s the meadow, all around.
Hear the birds singing skywards,
Walking forwards in the sun,
See the blue sky stretched above us,
See the Creator’s love abound.
There’s not much signal in this meadow,
Of the sort on which we rely,
But everywhere there is a signal
Of how the love of God comes near
Touches us in dark and night.
Keep on walking across the meadow,
Keep on walking into light.

When I heard about the bomb attack in Manchester I was on Retreat at Stanbrook Abbey, Wass, North Yorkshire, where there’s not much signal. In some ways it is a world away those events. Shock and disbelief are understandable emotions: not having words to express how we feel.
Wherever we are now, keep walking in the light.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

A house of pain

The Church has become a house of pain because our Church is sick with deep forgetfulness of our deepest identity: that we are missionary, that we are a Church “called to come out of itself” …the biblical tradition of lamentation teaches us that denial of our pain and sorrow is not an option. Every biblical lamentation ends in hope: hope for rebirth, hope that the Lord’s love has not been exhausted.
From Divine Renovation by Fr James Mallon

Calling One, has your love been exhausted?
Mine has, in so many ways and places.
I only seem to have a little left
and in itself that is painful to me,
when I remember all the love filled times and places
and compare them with this pitiful situation.
I am sad, and have been for some time:
Sad enough to be sick, and sick of sadness,
But unable to leave sadness behind.
I have left the church of my youth behind me:
I opened the doors and stepped outside.
Although I was called ‘a breath of fresh air’
I heard the door bang shut behind me.
I am exhausted from lamenting all of this:
My love has poured out onto hard ground,
Soaked into the parched cracks and is gone.
It is not just my eyes that weep,
but every part of me feels heavy;
my guts twist and turn, my back aches from the load.
How I wish I could put down this sorrow and leave this pain behind.
As I go out each morning, ready for each new encounter
I know I am fortunate to meet those who yearn to know you.
A child comes running towards me,
A youth begins a conversation
And each time my heart takes a joyful jump.
When we sing together or remember the stories,
Then my heart glows warm again.
Calling One, your love has not been exhausted;
I rejoice that it is new every morning.

In our life and our believing
The Love of God

(The initial quote is one of the daily quotes I receive as a Seeker in the Lay Community of St Benedict)

JAL:17.05.2017

By the rivers of Babylon

By the rivers of Babylon
We sat down and remembered
Zion,
How can we sing God’s song in a strange land?

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By a small stream trickling off the Derbyshire moors, I sat down, and remembered.
I remembered the story of the One who lived and loved and lost and lived again.
I remembered the route, or some of it, that I had taken to follow that Way.
I remembered my companions, the living and the dead.
I remembered the communities with which I had retold the story and tried to follow the Way, the living and the dead.
I heard the water moving over the rocks, singing its own song, to an age old tune.
I heard the birds singing their song in the trees and I heard the breeze moving through the branches.
I remembered that if Christ’s disciples are silent then these rocks, this water, this air will all sing aloud and praise God;
And the fire will be lit again in my heart, and I too will praise God.
I will continue on the living Way, whether the land is strange or well known.
I will remembered the songs and stories that have sustained us.
I will listen and give voice to new songs and stories as they come to me in the air.

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In our life and our believing
The love of God

Etherow Park Lodge

Also know as Bill Sowerbutts garden…

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If Swallows Wood is a bluebell cathedral then this is more a quiet monastery with its many rooms and cloisters. Here you find both natives and newcomers quietly standing sentinel or rocking slightly in their tops in the gentle breeze.
Yes, there are bluebells here, but fewer and in small groups, still and silent, not so stirred up. They are found both in shade and full sun today. As are primrose and ransome also side by side. Rhododendron that flashy incomer is also coming into flower.
Trees too are native like the massive beech, horse chestnut in spike, and new additions like the swamp cypress. They grow here in monastic companionship and in their turn drip bits and pieces that make the floor springy to step on.
There’s evidence of husbandry, an old coppice beech hedge now out growing its earlier training and some felled trees, I am assuming diseased in some way or even dead.
The pond is quiet and ‘peace comes dropping slow’ as it reflects back the trees and the sky and quietly praises the Creator.

In our coming and our going
The peace of God

At the bottom of the mountain: words for Brian Neville

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Opening prayer
Gathering God,
Gather us in, embrace us all
Bring us together
To remember and celebrate
A life lived and a life loved.
Guiding God,
Guide us onwards,
That together we may forge new directions
In love and service.
Generous God
Equip us all
By your Holy Spirit
That the Gifts we have by your Grace
be released to bring new life and hope here and everywhere.

Prayers of intercession 
We pray for the courage and imagination to pursue complex research projects, the empathy and understanding to support the children and families who use our services, the openness and respect to encourage our colleagues in the days ahead and for increased awareness among ordinary people of these needs of children with epilepsy and their families.
In your mercy, hear our prayer

Bible reading: Mark 9:14-29

Sermon: At the bottom of the mountain
I first met Brian Neville in a lift in Guys hospital in 1984. He said ‘I hear you are interested in language and the brain’ and I replied ‘I’m interested in much more than that’. One of the things I was interested in was a collection of texts about 2000 years old about the life and ministry, death and resurrection of one Jesus of Nazareth, a portion of which we heard read.

Here are some of my sermon notes about that text:
1. A 2000 year old text, epilepsy is an ancient condition, a word from the Greek, meaning ‘seized with surprise’, and some see the origins of stigma associated with epilepsy today to be found in these ancient sources.
People with disabilities have found marginalisation and discrimination in texts like these, texts the church has often used to preach restrictive and confining theologies and impose views of faith and healing, rather than liberating theologies based on the lived experiences of disabled people.
So can such texts be redeemed? Let’s see shall we.

2. Doing RB (remembering the Bible), interpreting with those on the margins, children and those with communication difficulties. Another way of interpreting that is contextual. Can children interpret the Bible? They do it everyday. Some Stories of interpretation
A young man with cerebral palsy told me how he imagined it would have been to be a disabled person in the crowd on Palm Sunday ;
A teenager with dyslexia summarised the Easter story in three words: Jesus is back;
A 7 year old carrying the processional cross in a strong wind, declares carrying the Cross makes your arms hurt.

      For every story of inclusion there are others of exclusion:
      The parents of a child with LKS wanted to take him to church but found they were not welcome when he made sounds others couldn’t interpret;
      A young man with a communication aid was told not to play with his toy in the service
      A boy with autism climbed over the members of the congregation who impeded his path to the front of the church: what about developing a climbing wall in the church for him and the community? Too many unused vertical spaces. Too many closed in holy huddles that need opening outwards.

A boy, aged 16, says my favourite part of the gospel is…..
So pause for a moment and think, what is your favourite part of the gospel? That’s your remembered Bible.
His favourite part of the gospel: when Jesus was baptised by John and he got the Holy Spirit and God said ‘this is my son, I am well pleased with him’

3. Our interpretations today take us to the heart of the life of this family. I don’t just read this text, I live it. So do you, you know this child and this family even if,  in the words of one boy with epilepsy, ‘He Don’t Talk’.
In some encounters not talking is a problem:How to proceed? How we started in the old Newcomen Centre, or the shed as we called it,  with bubbles and bowls of water and progressed to the Wolfson centre, just another shed, and the Aristocats video via the patella hammer and ophthalmoscope.
Some professionals would say:
‘You just tell them what they want to hear’, which used to puzzle me.
The aim of any encounter is to listen so that understanding develops.
The cry of the father in the story was ‘I believe, help my unbelief’: a cry not just for help but for partnership. So what is faith like in the second decade of the 21st century? Certainly not uniform or one dimensional.

4. Some ask me: Did Brian speak of faith? My answer is Yes and No.
For example, he asked me about my understanding of Communion: ‘Isn’t it just sharing bread, feeding people?’ His was a down to earth faith.
But also No, he just got on with it, because that was faith to him. Don’t need to talk about it, do it, wear it like a coat everyday, not to hide behind but so that it wears thin at the elbows, becomes a series of patches.

5. The Faith we live by everyday, it’s full of questions, doubt, uncertainty as much as anything else. Prayer, also mentioned in the text, is a breathing space that gives faith time to activate, like yeast. So what about prayer? Did we pray? I never stopped doing it everyday, bringing time and space for reflection and silence onto the clinic room.
But I’ve stood beside him in the chapel at Guys and GOSH, in both formal and informal worship, and we’ve sat in silence together, like the morning after my daughter Hannah when a toddler was admitted to GOSH with a spinal abcess. Prayer is not a placebo, but a piece of genuine work, of holding and listening.

6. Living life at the bottom of the mountain, is also the turn in the route that takes Jesus downhill to Jerusalem.
Understanding epilepsy is like being at the bottom of a mountain.
But we are not alone there.
After his mountain top experience, with Moses and Elijah, the two greats of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus came back to the bottom of the mountain, to the everyday lives of ordinary people like this child with epilepsy and his family.
Depends which voices we listen to, what we hear. Whatever our clinical or research work or theology it must amplify the voices of those silenced by their condition, or service limitations, or discrimination they encounter.
When others were speaking of Brian’s hopeful outlook this morning, to me that was the living Gospel in him.
How did this child and his family remember and retell the story afterwards? That brings me to making the Bible up, with which I’m sometimes charged and which I often do.
(there’s an example in Word of Mouth page 109).
And to Brian I would say, ‘It’s like Communion, real bread, living on scraps, enough to feed everyone’.
Jesus went onto Jerusalem, you know the rest of the story: passion, suffering and new life. And the family, what happened to them? You meet them everyday. Listen then if you have ears.

In the chapel at GOSH, there’s a sculpture shaped like an eye, in the centre of which there’s a small family. This image inspired the words of this blessing.

Blessing

In God’s eye, today and everyday;
In Christ’s footsteps, today and everyday;
Blessed by the Holy Spirit,  now and forever;
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

These words were from the service to celebrate the life and work of Professor Brian Neville held on 3rd May 2017 at St George’s Church, Queen’s Square. They are notes only, not a complete script but hopefully make sufficient sense.