Inner Farne

St Cuthbert died on Inner Farne and there is a small chapel dedicated to him amongst the seasonal migrating seabirds:

Strong stomached were the saints
Who to Inner Farne for solitude came.
Annually their congregations would increase
With raucous crowds of visiting terns.
Today the pilgrims brave the seas,
Salute the seals, gasp at the maid’s brave route,
And gently tread their way to the chapel door.
Mindful of the egg strewn path,
Where Cuthbert still cradles Oswald’s head.
On the rim of the font in the yard,
An artic tern, an epic voyager,
catches my eye before soaring skywards.
Try it, you might like it, it seems to cry.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Inner Farne 23.05.2018

At Bamburgh

Today’s prayers are from a visit to St Aidan’s church, Bamburgh, where Aidan is said to have died. There is a memorial there to him who came from Iona and founded the first monastic community at Lindisfarne. Bamburgh was also the place of birth and death of Grace Darling, hero.

Shrouded in mist and emerging from memory we remember the saints of the North, who in charity, fortitude and hope kept the faith in their own day that we may have it to pass on in ours.

For the example of Aidan, the faithful:
Lord have Mercy
For the example of Oswald, headless of his own safety:
Lord have Mercy
For the example of Grace, courageous and selfless:
Lord have Mercy

Whatever faith you have, use it like Aidan.
Whatever purpose you have pursue it like Oswald.
Whatever strength you have deploy it as courageously as Grace.
Whatever life you have live it fully to the Glory of God.

As the fog shrouds the coast in mist and gentle rain waters the land, remember, whether you can see them or not:
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep peace of the shinning stars to you,
Deep peace of the Son of peace to you

(traditional blessing)

In our life and our believing 
The love of God 

Bamburgh 22.05.3018

God is our refuge

Today’s prayers begin with a bit of a remembered psalm:

God is our refuge and strength, a present help in trouble

At the first refuge box

As the tide rises
God is our refuge.
As the tide falls
God is our strength.
As the posts mark the way
God is present, our companion.

See the small pools and the mud:
God’s own for the world.
See the posts and the pilgrims:
God’s own for the world.
See the way and the footsteps :
It is God’s way and we will try to follow it.

In the boiler house chapel of St Cuthbert

It’s still OK to take stuff with me
From the tradition in which I grew,
It’s still OK to travel onwards,
Explore, be challenged, encounter new.
It’s still OK to leave stuff here now
In this warming tiny cell.
It’s still OK, someone may want it:
Hear the echo: All is well.

Back at the refuge box

Across the sands the seals sing
By the bridge the Heron stands
Keeping pace with the tide times
The pilgrims cross the sands.

Be still And know that I am God

Now in this small refuge,
God is close to me,
Encouraging my resting,
Still as the flat calm sea.

On Holy Island,  21.05.2018

Holy Island Retreat

This is my first retreat in Bambi. I’ve come back to Holy Island where I took retreats earlier in my time as Chaplain.

Some say it is a thin place
Where heaven and earth come close to meeting.
For me, that can be any place at all
If you tune into the sense of it.
Flat salt marshes, wavy dunes,
The detritus of the tide and
The light falling as the sun sinks westward.
Above the sound of the east coast main line rushing on
A linnet sings.
Then the Greylag geese fly in,
Calling to each other companionably.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Sheep whispering

‘I know you won’t be able to do anything, but can I just talk to you’, were the words of a student who came to see me this week.
She’s right in so many ways. So often doing something is not an option.
It was a bit like that when we came across the Ewe yesterday on our walk in Derbyshire. We weren’t the first on the scene. Another walker called us over. The Ewe was on the ground and a dead lamb was protruding from her rear end, its eyes pecked out by crows. How long she had been labouring we didn’t know. The other woman went to the nearest farm for help and I sat down on the grass by the ewe’s head to keep her company while we waited. I dripped some water from a bottle into her mouth and her grey tongue emerged to lap it up. She opened her eye, a milky yellow and gave a quiet bleat. For the next half an hour I sat like that, giving her the water, patting her neck and talking to her gently. From time to time she’d flex her front legs or bleat as another contraction passed along her flank. There was nothing else I could do. For all those times I’d seen lambs delivered on TV programmes I’d had no direct instruction and wouldn’t risk a wrong move.
Another couple came by with some relevant direct experience. He examined the Ewe and with the help of his companion pulled the lamb out. Holding it at arms length he bought it round to the head of the Ewe so she could see for herself the outcome. She sniffed it and bleated. A small pile of placenta and poo steamed on the grass.
We waited a bit longer. The first walker came back from the farm with less than good news. The Ewe was owned by someone else. The other two walkers were more local and knew a farmer across the valley. They rang him and he promised to contact the owner. ‘A sheep will drop down dead anytime it likes’, said the walker who had delivered the dead lamb, as he wiped his hands on the grass.
The Ewe was trying to stand, and two people helped her to her feet. Her back leg was injured and she put it down carefully, tested it and the walked gingerly away. We also left leaving the local couple to wait in the field.
As we resumed our walk Bob asked me what I’d been thinking. Of Jesus saying ‘Feed my lambs’ and of being a good enough shepherd. Just being there, listening, lapping up the love of God.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Growing faith through a school Chaplaincy

On a walk in the Yorkshire Dales, a boy aged 14, told me ‘You can’t believe anything you read in the Bible. I don’t believe any of it’. Are you surprised by his statement or does it fulfil your stereotype of 14 year old boys?
Another 14 year old boy told me, as Advent began one year: ‘Advent is about repentance, why don’t you preach about that?’
Boys of 14 are as varied as any other section of the population.
I meet adults who tell me they stopped attending church when they were about that age. Mid teens is an interesting time for faith, for identity and pretty much everything else in life. And that’s where the church comes in or rather it doesn’t. ‘Losing heart’ was a report last year about how churches were becoming less confident in their ministry to young people. Importantly, they were failing to answer the questions young people asked. More recently the Church Army (https://churcharmy.org/Groups/295770/Church_Army/ms/Young_Adults_research/Young_Adults_research.aspx), the Church Times (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/19-january/features/features/why-i-left-church-in-my-teens) and others have published reports and articles (https://jamesballantyneyouthworker.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/what-role-do-young-people-play-in-your-church-youth-group/amp/?__twitter_impression=true) on young people and faith, what it’s like, how to nurture it, how it goes, what hinders it (for example, http://discipleshipresearch.com/2018/02/losing-my-religion-millennials-and-faith-loss/).

As a school Chaplain they have interested me. They seem to point to the need for denominations to do a costly new thing if they are really going to encounter young people where they are. And that it seems is the problem.

Imagine if you can, a small school on the edge of a city in the north of England affiliated to a small, dwindling and ageing denomination. In that school a chaplaincy, open to all, touching the lives of more than just the students through staff, family, friends and former students. It’s there for them in the ups and downs of life, promoting good mental well being, giving, respect and how we might all ‘become peacemakers and builders of justice’, interpreting the Bible together, praying.
For five years this pioneering ministry was supported by the regional branch of that ageing and dwindling denomination, until about 4 years ago it decided that this particular expression was surplus to requirements.Upsetting and incomprehensible to those of us involved in the school and chaplaincy, we have now moved on to live and thrive in the school for the last two years.

Essentially two questions about resources and practice dominated the review of the chaplaincy four years ago. How much it cost financially and how it was taking potential ministry away from more traditional expressions of church. None of the reviewers addressed the faith development needs of the children and young people in the school, clearly indicating that, at the time they were of less value than the ageing and dwindling members in the traditional local churches. Retaining small numbers of older people, and the buildings they huddled into, was the mission of this kind of church. The prophetic voice was ignored, silenced and unwanted as it was uncomfortable.

What if we consider a different situation for a moment? Vincent Donovan, Catholic priest and missionary, tried to explain his experience of working with rural people in East Africa in the 1960s. Against the preferred way of operating advocated by his order at the time, he began to narrate the gospel in local villages. Eventually he asked those who had gathered to hear him, through the local village leaders, if they would choose baptism. When he received a positive reply, he tried to moderate the response, using his priestly eye to sort the wheat from the tares or the sheep from the goats. When he did that, he was gently but firmly reminded that he had invited everyone to be baptised.
The story illustrates both the costly and random nature of human response to the gospel. We have little if any control over the response, although the church mostly tries to do just that.

Yorkshire in 2018 is not East Africa in the 1960s but some of these observations hold true. The church still wants to regulate the gospel, who gets is and whether they have a right to it for example. Chaplaincy, which is open to everyone, is often rejected by the church: too costly and outside the church’s direct control. It includes too many people who will not have passed the church’s test for inclusion.

In the ageing and dwindling local churches faith issues will likely be different. The marks of faith in older people, the questions and resources needed to answer them are not necessarily the same as those needed for several hundred children and young people. The chaplaincy is a faith community that changes by up to 90 students every year and in which everyone moves on to new challenges and responsibilities in the same time frame. No one keeps the same role for forty years. Everyone learns something about their potential for leadership and what it means to ‘serve God and each other’ daily. In some ways it is monastic in its qualities. Daily work and regular worship side by side.

As the pioneer minister in the post it has been a difficult time. Challenging personally, in my own relationships, to my sense of call and identity and to my own adult faith development. Fortunately, outside the ageing and dwindling denomination, the Holy Spirit moves quite freely and there has been much evidence of energy transfer between disciples of all ages through the chaplaincy in this time, as we have ministered to each other.

Four years later, we begin to emerge differently. Like most of the young people, as far as I can tell, I no longer feel owned or obligated to the denomination that set me there and then abandoned us. So is this still part of the church? Again, as far as I can tell, it has the marks of a faith community. It experiences success and failure, people grow in their faith, worship appears relevant and reverent, God inspired, Spirit filled and Christ and focused.

In a school Chaplaincy everyone gets to hear if they wish to listen. And they do: needs are responded to, people are valued. Nearly a dozen people of all ages from 6 to 55 have asked to be baptised in the last 8 years of the chaplaincy. Did they pass the test? There was no test.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

JAL 01.03.2018

The feast of St David, missionary, preacher.

St Issui’s

On the day for Ashes,
Memories of last night’s firelight
Bright behind our eyes,
We tentatively pushed open the old door
At St Issui’s.
It was a welcome haven
After several miles of twisting, muddy lanes,
The path bordered by nodding snowdrops.
The simple chapel, its wooden beams pegged safely together for several centuries
Was shelter enough for these pilgrims.
Inside, signs of worship for many generations,
The oldest font in Wales by the church door.
Now twice a month the feast is celebrated here
And rural folk give thanks for renewed blessings.
Our visit over, rested,
We stepped back through the lych gate,
Passed the well
And back into real time,
Ready to reset our lives in the next forty days.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

On the Solemnity of Saint Scholastica

On a day of listening,
Remember that Scholastica listened;

On a day of conversations,
Remember that Scholastica conversed;

On a day of humour,
Remember that Scholastica had a sense of humour;

Lord have Mercy
Christ have Mercy
Lord have Mercy

Where Scripture says ‘and a little child will lead them’
Believe it possible that child could have Downs Syndrome, or additional needs in some way.

Where Scripture says ‘You knew me in my mother’s womb’
Believe it possible that God knows every gene, every chromosome in every individual.

Where Scripture says we are each the temple of the Holy Spirit
Believe in the possibility of each unique temple.

Lord have Mercy
Christ have Mercy
Lord have Mercy

Glory to God, for the diversity of creation;
Glory to God in Christ for the diversity of human beings;
Glory to God, Creator, Son and Spirit, for living and celebrating diversity in the Godhead, now and forever.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

10th February is remembered for Saint Scholastica, sister of Saint Benedict


The Christmas sausage roll

‘Great assembly about the sausage roll by the way’, said a Muslim student after Chapel today.
It was a celebration of Greggmas, a bit later perhaps but held over from the end of last term when I had been ill and had to cancel it. Now we’d had our respective celebrations and maxed out on Christmas adverts so it seemed a good time to invite reflection on it all.
I am not insulted by a sausage roll in a manger, I said. I can’t speak for everyone, or for all Christians, but I am not insulted. Each morning in chapel I stand in front of the cross, a far bigger insult to God than misplaced baked goods. To take the baby and, even though now grown up, crucify the Son, that was an insult. Being born is still the most dangerous journey in the world.

In our life and our believing
The love of God