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?

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.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Etherow Park Lodge

Also know as Bill Sowerbutts garden…

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

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.

Swallows wood

Somedays, Swallows wood is under the flight path. It’s also on someone’s plan for a long delayed bypass. Today I can hear the birds and the breezes.
Last year’s leaves still lie where they fell. The breeze stirs them up from time to time making a sound like tiny pattering footsteps. But this year’s branches are well on with their greening.
Approaching the Bluebell Cathedral there are some cowslip and wood sorrel to light the way. A few bluebells come out as a welcoming party. Near the West Door, I meet a couple who say ‘We’ve never been here before’ and ‘It’s awesome’ and ‘You don’t see this in many places nowadays’.
So make the most of today’s main service: choral birdsong with bluebells.
I enter the nave, a path into the heart of the sanctuary. The bluebells get thicker in the chancel. Thickest still by the high altar, where you can also hear the local lambs.
All on an April Sunday, sitting here in the bluebell cathedral, listening to lambs and birds, I thought of the love of God, the green blade, and the rising.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

In secret

In secret
The kindom of God is like a woman, who takes some yeast and mixes it with forty litres of flour and the whole batch rises

We are all doing it in secret:
Stuff we don’t tell anyone,
Making tracks we cover up.
We are all doing it in secret:
Unsure what to say
Or how to care for ourselves.
We are all doing it in secret:
Emotional work holding things together,
Yet feeling inadequate to the task.

So too, the yeast, works in secret,
Makes no sound or declaration.
We see the eventual effect
But we do not know how the kindom comes.
May it also come in us.
Whether secretly or openly:
May we know the rising.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

JAL: 27.04.2017

Full of holes

What are those for? This has been a recurring question since I left home to take part in the Easter weekend in Wales with the Lay Community of St Benedict. No, not what are Lay Benedictines for, but what are these wooden trays full of holes for, that I am carrying?
It seems that Communion trays, which is what they are, are not a common sight on public transport in these parts. But they are an interesting talking point, both in the Lay Community and beyond.
I brought the Communion trays from school for the Easter Sunday service which was described on the leaflet as Ecumenical.
I was cheerfully told that the Sunday morning service on these occasions was usually chaotic. And that was before I started.
We did some RB, remembered Bible. We made a table into a tomb with a black cloth. We talked to each other about what it might have been like to go to the tomb early in the morning. Some of the things mentioned were
It was women that went first and we were not surprised;
When the men followed, they had a race;
It was warming up outside but it was cold inside the tomb – this was a physical thing we’d notice;
When we saw the tomb was empty we were surprised, fearful, confused and had ‘other feelings difficult to put into words ‘
We all came to look in the tomb. I’d noticed that LCStB liked to move around in worship so I shouldn’t have been surprised when most got up to look. A little girl called Mary went inside and reported that the cloths she found there folded up were very soft.

Later we had a second bite at RB when we thought about left overs. Could we remember any stories from Jesus’ ministry about left overs? If course we could – loads.
The most common one was feeding the five thousand and the baskets of left overs.
One person suggested the catch of fish. First there were no fish and then the second time there were more fish.
The syrophonecian woman was remembered for her remark about the crumbs under the table; a remark showing the faith of an outsider, or one left over.
Turning the water into wine reminded us that the best had been ‘kept until last’.
The parable of the barns, suggested that rather than keeping lots for ourselves we should give more away in the first place.
In the Passover story we remembered that there were to be no left overs, and in the wilderness the people were not to keep the left over Manna. This was interesting as Jesus’ last supper was about making a new story from the left overs of the old, using the left overs from the Passover meal to make a new meaning of his body and blood.
All this and more came out from our shared RB.
Towards the end we heard that the rejected and left over stone became the new cornerstone: Christ himself. At his Ascension we became the left over people charged with the mission of taking the message to all people. For this the left over people received the left over Holy Spirit: my Spirit I give you.
Our task to be left overs, is to be scattered in our communities where it seems, Jesus thinks left overs are enough to feed the world.
During our sharing many members of the community, young and old, women and men, found their voice and became theologians. Someone asked Is it the homily? Call it what you like, we did it together.
After that we shared the bread we’d made and the small cups from the communion trays. For some this was the first time of celebrating Communion in this way.
The whole thing was fairly chaotic and certainly full of holes, but it seemed to feed us all and send us out with more to share.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Through the wood

My suggestion that we take a clergy selfie before the Good Friday service was only partly in jest. We certainly are a team even after this short time and it is quite an experience to be guided and supported by Father Ian and Father Aloysius.
Understanding my concern at not having taken part in such a service before they kindly and gently walked me through it before we started. After what we’d call a vestry prayer with the servers we began.
There’s a lot of movement in the service, much more than in your average one of the sort I’m used to.
We began face down on the floor. It was for me to determine how long this lasted and then get up, which was the challenging bit.
During the reading of the Passion Narrative I read the part of Jesus. There were some bits to add to my remembered Bible, like the first time Jesus was struck on the face and asked the one that had struck him to point out to him how he, Jesus, had caused offence.
The other part that moved me whilst I was reading it aloud, was when Jesus said ‘woman, here is your son’.
I said a few words about remembering the Passion at school, recalling particularly the Good Enough Friday which was an earlier blog post.
Then we brought the cross in. It was the one the young people had carried here from south Wales. Two of the young people held it upright in the middle of the hall as each person came forward to venerate or acknowledge it in some way, most with kiss, some with a touch of hand or head, all prayerfully, even the very youngest. It was during this part that I thought about ‘through the wood you call us’ and even ‘I’d like to make the world a sign/a manger or a cross/ from birth to death the way life goes/for gain or even loss’ (the song I wrote for this term).
At the end of the service the cross was left standing alone as we quietly left the hall.

Roles and rolls

Getting started with the Lay Community of St Benedict (LCStB) couldn’t be easier. You pitch up and say you’re new and folks introduce themselves. There are lots of roles which are shared about amongst the participants women and men, young and old. I walked around a bit with Father Ian to take in the countryside and learn about the liturgy.
At the Maundy Thursday service, Ellen received her medal as an Altar Server. She made some promises: ‘with God’s help, I will’ she replied to each question. And so say all of us. ‘She was like a Bishop’ said one priest about Zoe, one of the servers, who clearly knew what she was doing.
Feet were washed and the Eucharist was celebrated and shared. Later Tom spoke to the young people about adoration. ‘It’s just like Jesus was sitting beside you’ he explained. So that’s like every day at Silcoates School then.

In our life and our believing
The Love of God

Housework

If sweeping out endless rooms looking for lost coins was not enough, here we go again. We the anonymous and silent Passover Preparers are at it again as we move soundless to ready an upper room for a meal we may not serve. We can’t even do the directions. It’s a young man who carries the water jar who they follow to find the place. If men can carry water jars, why don’t they do it every day?
Well, the room is spotless and the table ready, the bowl and towel set in place and the food prepared. They’ll be here soon so we’d better go. Back later to clear up the left overs.

In our coming and our going
The peace of God

Muddled daze

‘The fig tree you cursed has died’

I don’t know about you but this bit of Holy Week is something of a muddled daze. I take my remembered bible along with me and bits pop out of it from time to time: widows with mites, parables and questions from all comers and the whiff of heavy perfume following us everywhere.
I once used the Kenning ‘fig tree curser’ in an RB session, to describe Jesus in Holy Week. The recipient of the card, a computer user, was baffled as it was not a curser he’d heard of. Such can be the fun and chaos of RB that makes it ideal for muddled daze.

Anxious days make me muddled.
Searching for peace neath vine and fig tree
I find the one you cursed has died;
one of the most puzzling events of this whole week.
Setting out on another ordinary day,
not whole, but quite weak,
I can only listen to the stories,
keep time with the footsteps,
and breathe in the wasted scent.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

Walking back……

On my way back from the village (now there’s a fruitful word of RB for you) a child waved to me from the doorway of a house. ‘Hello’, he said: ‘This is my Tigger.’ He held up a faded stuffed orange creature which might once have had stripes. ‘That’s a lovely Tigger,’ I replied and waved back.
And then I realised I’d misplaced my Tigger. If anyone comes across it in these muddled days, please do send it back. ‘Let the children come to me. The kindom of God belongs to them’.

Notes from Chapel

a blog from Silcoates Chapel