Category Archives: welcome

Live, create, offer

Last weekend I took Bambi to the Northern regional meeting of the Lay Community of St Benedict. It was in Wolverhampton. It’s OK, we will get them further north eventually (there were people there from Torquay).
I’ve been a seeker in the Lay Community since last autumn, and last weekend made my first formal promise of membership in the community. The words include the promise to ‘Live Holy communion, create Holy space and offer Holy service’. It’s likely to take a lifetime to unpack.
I’m grateful to my fellow lay Benedictines for their welcome. As a wandering loose canon for a while now, it’s good to feel some connection again.
Bambi played her part: others came to visit, to look, talk and share. This small beginning confirmed me that Bambi can be a space for communion and service, amongst other things.

Everyday we are held in God’s gaze,
On right or wrong days,
Through wide or narrow ways:
God is eye to eye with us
Holding, confirming, loving.

South Shields

There are angels in the north,
Arms held wide to welcome
The cross carriers and thorn bearers
Both the first and the last.

I met my first two wall walkers, an American couple, at St Peters Basin, a marina East of Newcastle City Centre. After that there as a small glut of them for a bit, they having left Wallsend a hour or two ago, about the same time I left the city centre.
The river was quiet, only gulls as a background, calling like they do. Here and there a bankside activity, a factory still in operation or a building site for a new development. There were plenty of ripe blackberries on this section of the route.
The rain started just before Wallsend. There a small detour off the track to the bath house that was uncovered more recently. The best thing at Segedunum is the viewing tower which looks out over the whole site and shows how it has changed in two thousand years.
I decided to go onto Arbeia, the Roman fort in South Shields. Taking local advice I took the metro from Wallsend to North Shields. Then a short walk to the passenger ferry across the Tyne. The rain was more persistent but I got to Arbeia, where it is thought a company of Roman Arabs from Iraq were originally station in what was a storage fort for supplies for the rest of the Wall.
As it was rather wet by now I got a taxi down to Sandra’s mum’s house, where I am stopping tonight. A warm welcome awaited me of course. A total walk of 9 miles today: I am pleased with that.

In our coming and our going
The Peace of God

Durham

The Surplus to Requirements Summer Adventure starts today. First stop by train from Huddersfield is Durham. This world famous city and World Heritage Site is a very fascinating place with its narrow historical streets and buildings.
First call in Durham is Bells, fish and chip restaurant, housed in buildings dating from 15th to 17th centuries near the market place. The fish was a crispy fresh and welcome as ever for the memory of my fish selling ancestors. It’s certainly busy and popular with both locals and global visitors.
A little further on in North Bailey, St Chad’s College offers guest rooms in the summer and very nice it is too, if you get the right room key. If you don’t it’s doubly nice as you get the free work out on the stairs as everyone tries to help and eventually discover you have been given the wrong key.
Outside my window I can see the small wooden college chapel. A list in the entrance tells the visitor that of those listed on the WW1 Roll of honour, four were serving as Army Chaplains.
I had heard a lot about Treasures of St Cuthbert and had bought a ticket. It didn’t disappoint. The coffin of St Cuthbert and the things that were found in it are quite remarkable. The Anglo Saxon embroidery was not something I’d heard about before.
Although I’d been to the Cathedral before I didn’t remember it all that well. It truly is an awesome place. I started in the Galillee chapel where there is the tomb of St Bede, and walked through the nave to the place where St Cuthbert’s tomb is behind the altar. A small boy was fascinated by the crucified Jesus of the Pieta that was there. He venerated it by sliding down the shiny outstretched arm.
There were many things that interested me: the cross from The Somme in the Chapel of Remembrance to the Durham Light Infantry, the embroidery at the altars dedicated to St Hilda and St Margaret, the story of the Scots POWs kept in the Cathedral in 1650 after the Battle of Dunbar, amongst others. Although it was busy, there were many quiet places.

In our coming and our going
The Peace of God

All the baptised

I read a tweet that said ‘Church unity is the responsibility of all the baptised’.
Great, I thought: another one to add to the church this afternoon when we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism for Jacob, who is 5 years old.
I’ll suggest he joins a Church Unity Commission straight away.
That’s the problem with unity; it has a musty smell and is reminiscent of stale biscuits. More 5 year olds doing Christian Unity would be a great thing. Too much of the time we think these things are just for adults.
This is a false idea. The church is all of us. It’s not about waiting until some of us are more grown up before we take our place. We already have a place: remember that.
The children and young people with whom I work are the Church now and for most of them these division in the Church and ‘different sorts of Christians’ is unfathomable. They just get on with following Jesus where they are alongside each other. To most of them denominational labels have less meaning than the sort of biscuits they prefer.
This afternoon, I shall ask him ‘Do you want to follow Jesus?’ not ‘and shall we dress like this, and meet at these times and say these words only, and let only these people do this, and exclude these ones and make these rules and so on and so on and so on. I realised years ago that once again I’d ‘gone native’ with them. But it makes sense to me too. The wide appeal of Messy Church points to it: make it messy, keep it simple, welcome everyone.
We are doing Christian Unity already, every day. As usual its taking the adults a while to catch up.

In our life and our believing
The Love of God.

Sun rise

Talk about the sun rise with your children:
Of how the colour creeps from pinky-grey
To orange, the sky parting, pushing back
Streaking, cracking, leaking an artist’s palette
Greeting, breaking, welcoming, soft at first
Then louder, brighter, bolder, calling out,
Shouting, the world’s awake, the day’s alive.

Talk about the Son rise with your children,
Of how the dark dewy garden seemed serene,
The smell of earth, the sounds of birds,
The light coming creeping across the grass,
The shadows being pushed back,
The sorrow clinging to the branches,
Waiting to be challenged,
dispelled by a gentle footfall.

Talk to your children about the Son rise with the sun rise:
Affirming, confirming, ascending,
Father-wise, Spirit-filled, Welcome One,
The kiss of hope, nudging away reluctance.
May we greet you Sun-wise One,
Who greets us every morning,
That we may share the truth
Of the Word alive in us.

In our life and our believing
The Love of God

Mary’s story

Over twenty years ago a friend of mine, called Mary was detained by Border Control Officers. This is her story as I remember it.

Mary was my friend, a black woman I understood to have been born in Britain some twenty-five years previously; she worked in the local social security office. We went to the same church and sang together in the choir. I had known her about two years when she and a fellow member decided to marry. She asked me if she could borrow my wedding dress (I’d got married about 6 months previously) as she didn’t have a dress. That was fine: it fitted her, we were the same size.

About a week after the wedding, she was detained at work and taken to a detention centre near us. We visited her regularly and her husband often stayed with us too. A different story emerged that Mary was from Tanzania and in the UK illegally according to the Border Agency.

During a visit to see Mary one afternoon, she told me that she had indeed been born in Tanzania and grown up there. In fact she had a daughter who lived there with her parents. She had come to UK via Germany, first as a student and had then overstayed after her visa expired. She had made up the story of begin born in Britain. She was crying and apologising for not telling me the truth.

She was deported back to Tanzania. Before she left UK I gave her some money and bought her a new pair of shoes as she asked me. Mary was the first friend I had who this happened to. Although it happened 20 years ago, it’s still happening now to more people like Mary.

I was not angry with Mary. I was angry that the situation we were both in had her as a migrant and me as not a migrant. Mary was my friend and she had worn my wedding dress. This is the time to think of Mary’s story, that the poor be lifted up and for us to show mercy.

In our coming and our going

The peace of God

Advent and Solstice: a contemplation

As we slip gently into darkness again;
the street lights caste their halo,
the park gates close early
and the last of the unhelpful leaves clog the gutter.

Far off, someone starts a spark:
a beacon on the beach,
lit with imagination for the suffering
of a distant besieged city .¹

We have reached that season again,
when light and dark tussle
for the lives and souls of the population
of a small island groping for good news.

So bring in the yule log,
strike up the band,
sit a merry Santa on a sleigh
and keep future uncertainty at bay.

Because, we who age, limp and scar,
who look down the tunnel of our own existence
to a mean spot with confining walls
and machines that bleep out the beat;
We, who seek to preserve yesterday
because we cannot hope in tomorrow,
who have put the ‘f’ into prophets,
so they are reassuringly fat;
We who shun addictions and abuse,
yet indulge our socially destructive habits;
We who wall ourselves up against the world
and yet demand rights to global markets;
We who hover between life and death,
who have every choice for last rites;
how can we embrace the dark-light way,
and live as winter people today?

Last night, in darkness,
I traveled a high street ²
with its seasonal cheer hung out
and crowded pubs and bars.
For each shop front garlanded
others were boarded up,
still bearing the marks
of a relentless river in spate
that came and went almost a year ago:
the two economies of cheer and grief
existing side by side.

This then is a way to navigate the season;
where darkness drapes itself around
and we search for quick fix lighting
to lift our plunging spirits.

Hold them both then,
one in each hand,
balancing concerns;
weave the two paths together
with honest acknowledgement
of the place of both
in your life and community.

To the Solstice say welcome dark night,
grey day, heavenly movement.
To Advent say welcome small spark,
weak flame, heavenly moment;
for dark and light are both the same
in the heart of heaven, ³
where we are called only to live honestly,
not off of the backs of one another,
but with open hearts and doors
to welcome all who appear in this season.

In our life and our believing

The love of God

Advent Sunday 2016

¹ Aleppo of course #StandWithAleppo

² In Calderdale,West Yorkshire, which was flooded on 26.12.2016

³ Psalm 139, verse 12

Chapel+BFG=Fun!

We had a return visit from the BFG today. One pupil in year 5 said I thought the BFG would be bigger than that, which is fair enough, although if he was much bigger we might have had trouble fitting him in.

Since his last visit we have all been trying to find him a country in which to live since he doesn’t want to live in Giantland anymore. Each class was assigned a country to research and had to present their findings to the BFG so he could choose a new country. I just wish it was as easy of that for children looking for a new country today.

After all the countries were allocated, Scotland was left over, so I got Scotland which was fine with me because I love Scotland and think it would be a great place for the BFG to live. After all, Scotland was created by the female Giant, Beira, who according to legend created the mountains and lochs and stirs up the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. Scotland has been home to many giants and some still live there, including the Giant Pandas of Edinburgh Zoo and Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.

Scotland is a place of early memories for me: the rain in Ullapool, the beware of the Adders sign in the Cairngorms. Most of all Scotland is a place of deep spirituality, a cradle for Christianity in Britain at Whithorn and Iona. These have been described as thin places: places where the distance between heaven and earth is narrow and the spiritual domain palpable.

Actually when you have the BFG in your Chapel then it feels like that there too as we had fun together. Not that Chapel is just about fun but on World Mental Health Day it is an important dimension of life worth celebrating for all young people, and a time to remember those still looking for a country to call home.

Tweeting in Chapel

Today we had opportunity to BYOD to Sixth Form Chapel to take advantage of the new WiFi network.
Over the summer, what with blogging and wotnot, I’ve been doing a lot more tweeting. I’ve found it has helped to calm me down at times. At other times it has been very informative and motivating.
There’s a number of strands to my tweeting: the natural world, peace, prayer, social and community action and of course humourless . It has also helped me to stay in touch with more friends including @FPFoecumenisme in Paris.
The best link has been to @Dangerouswomenproject.org based in Edinburgh which has been tweeting about lost, forgotten or overlooked women and women’s issues. It has been brilliant and very uplifting. I’ve even submitted a couple of items including one about Madge Saunders, Jamaican pioneer of intercultural ministry.
So this morning Tim, our senior chapel steward, spoke about the Duke of Edinburgh Award and Alex, senior student for antibullying spoke about working with the Diana Award. I spoke about the campaign by UNICEF, #childrenfirst.
In the 90years or so that chapel has been there this was the first tweeting service. We hope to have some more.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Giant at the Chapel door

It was wonderful to have the real BFG visit chapel today. It was such fun.

The BFG is looking for another place to live as he’s a bit lonely in Giantland. He got a giant welcome. The children loved interacting with him. At the chapel door they wanted to hold his hand or give him a high 5 (or was that a 4?)

The jokes came thick and fast and the adults enjoyed it as much as the children. It was a Chapel for Juniors but some visiting members of the Sixth Form also enjoyed it.

There was time for a final chorus of Happy Birthday before the BFG was off for a lie down on the cricket pitch. He said he’d come back. We’re already looking forward to it.