Losing Rowan

Being Principal of a Cambridge College is obviously a much less prestigious and challenging role than I had imagined. Recently The Independent carried what turned out to be a report of the appointment of a new Master of Emmanuel; the report appeared under a headline announcing the Director General of the National Trust was ‘standing down’. Last week it carried an article about the appointment of the new Master of Magdalene; the article spoke of the post as ‘quiet retirement in academia’.

Meanwhile, there are two parts of the ‘bigger picture’ which this almost universal level of reporting doesn’t touch as it swings into a focus on the betting odds for the appointment of anew Archbishop.

First, at the political level, it is quite possible that this summer the Church of England will very narrowly fail to agree to have women Bishops (a goal prized by liberals) and quite clearly decline to enter into the proposed new Anglican Communion Covenant (a goal prized by conservatives), thus failing to do two things which the present Archbishop of Canterbury had urged it to do. If this does happen, his resignation will have removed in advance the need for any speculation about whether his position then becomes untenable or whether in fact he is uniquely well equipped and well placed to help people see where to go from there. It is a new Archbishop of Canterbury who will be the one who has to pick things up afresh from there - if ‘pick things up afresh’ is a reasonable way to put ‘try to be the sort of focus of unity even a man of Rowan Williams’ rare qualities was not able to be’.

Secondly, at the philosophical level, the Church of England continues to exist on the knife edge between the liberal danger of such pliability in the face of the insights and norms of the world that it no longer holds the faith and the conservative danger of such ossification in the face of the traditions of the church that it no longer makes sense in the world. Another later post might spell this out more fully; the point here is simply that Rowan Williams sees this clearly, that most of those who criticise him within and without the church do not, and that we would be lost if a new Archbishop does not.

The Archbishops of Canterbury appointed in my life time had all first been appointed Bishop from a post as either a Professors of Theology (Ramsey and Williams) or Principal of a Theological Colleges (Coggan, Runcie and Carey), with Catholics with degrees of liberal or affirming hew (Ramsey, Runcie and Williams) being interleaved with Evangelicals with degrees of openness (Coggan and Carey). Some may expect it is the ‘turn’ for an evangelical, and with the increasingly evangelical nature of both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, this would make some sense. Twice the new person was there sitting in office as Archbishop of York (Ramsey and Coggan) and once as Archbishop of Wales (Williams) but twice not (Runcie and Carey). Williams’ appointment ‘from outside the Church of England’ was much less of a break with this pattern than people think (given that he was ordained in the Church of England and served in it until he became Bishop of Monmouth). But, given that the present Archbishop, with all his skills, may have found it impossible to hold the ring, it is difficult to think that anyone else from this sort of pool or outside it likely to be able to make a better fist of things in the next ten years.

Debt free

I have just read that a man called Rick Ruzzamenti donated one of his kidneys to a stranger. By doing this Rick made sure someone received the transplant he needed to live. It was a costly thing to do. It involved Rick having to undergo an operation. It means he will have to live the rest of his life with only one kidney. It was an extraordinary act of selflessness. But this is not why the story is so good.

What happened next was the niece of the person who received the kidney was so impressed that she donated one of her kidneys to a stranger as well. Then this second stranger’s ex-boyfriend was so moved that he donated one of his kidneys to a third stranger. And this happened thirty times down a chain. A twenty-ninth stranger received a kidney, and his sister was inspired to donate one of her kidneys to a man called Donald Terry.

Donald is hugely thankful to the women who gave him a kidney. He is also thankful to Rick who set off this cascade of generosity thirty transplants earlier. It is the longest chain of donations like this which has been recorded in the USA.

Most of the time when I give a present I know that in due course I will get a different present in return. When I give something away it is usually something I can afford to do without anyway. But deep down I know that costly giving without expecting anything in return can be what changes the world. Just imagine a society in which the mutual interchange of generosity was a way of life.

There is a link with the Lord’s Prayer. In the language in which the New Testament was written we read Jesus telling us to pray ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive those endebted to us’. If I keep a careful record of exactly what each person owes me back, I am in a trap. When I give and receive with no expectation of return, I am free - which is how God wants it.

It is at least seventeen years since I last wrote a week’s set of six 150 word reflections for the Scunthorpe Telegraph, and now I’ve got back on the treadmill with this my first of 350 words for the Cleethorpes Chronicle. It is the introductory part of the material I used for our parish Lent Group last week, and the sense that God’s purpose is one in which we are free from obligations to him and other people is one to which I wish I paid much more attention.

Meanwhile, something is shoving these piles of earth into the vestry at St George’s, and we can’t work out what and how. New ones arrive as fast as the Churchwarden clears the old ones. It isn’t a mole hill as there is no hole in the concrete beneath the pile of earth. It appears to come through where the floor meets the tower wall at the top of the picture but we assume that the tower wouldn’t still be standing if its foundations didn’t go somewhat deeper than that.

Renew

The new Bishop of Lincoln is taking two initiatives. One is to review the central services and costs of the diocese; I’d first heard about this from a couple of people on the diocesan staff concerned about their jobs, and it has now been formally announced in the most recent mailing to clergy. The other is to have a programme to deepen discipleship, for which there will be major ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ events in the Cathedral; I’d first heard this referred to by a couple of people active at deanery level, and I’m sure an announcement and programme will be coming to us in due course.

The Bishop spoke about these two things at the Cathedral Council last week. He is aware of good heart and faithfulness in the diocese, but also of a rate of decline in attendance and a rate of financial giving which do not compare well with other dioceses. Part of the result of his review may be to liberate some money to be spent in parishes rather than at the centre. Part of the result of the discipleship initiative may be things ranging from increased giving to more vocation.

This all seems very worthwhile, although I wonder whether these things take sufficient notice of what I think of as the demographic unravelling of our present patterns of operation; the decline which is becoming increasingly visible is not so much people ceasing to attend and give as the coming home to roost of the sharply different rates of recruitment and Christian formation of the people born in the 1920s-50s compared with those born in the 1960s-90s, something about which I have posted before.

On the surface a review of central services and costs makes a lot of sense. The 2012 diocesan budget indicates that just short of 40% of expenditure (£3.8 million) is in these areas while just over 60% (£5.9 million) is in the local deployment of parish priests. But it is not quite as simple as that. Over a third of central expenditure (£1.4 million) is on deploying Curates in training posts in parishes and in deploying ‘sector ministers’ such as Industrial Chaplains in local areas. And a further £0.8 million is our payments to meet fixed national costs, over half of which is for training clergy. If the review was to result in a cut of one third in the remaining £1.6 million of central expenditure that would only free up enough money to deploy 0.75 of an extra clergy post in this deanery (whose budget meets 6% of central costs), which would be welcome but actually quite marginal in a process which has halved the number of filled posts within ten years from about 16 to 8.

And on the surface a systematic readdressing of our discipleship would also be very fruitful; a Catholic member of the Cathedral Council spoke about the impact of the Renew programme when she lived in the diocese of Arundel and Brighton a number of years ago. I am reminded of the Recovering Confidence and Missionary Congregation ideas which were fresh when I was on the diocesan staff fifteen years ago and about which I’ve posted from time to time: taking one’s eyes off the immediate planning and retrenchment to focus on deepening our Christian distinctiveness and engagement. This level of faithfulness and renewal of dependance on God is probably the only way to open up new confidence, mission and possibilities, but perhaps not if in our heart of hearts we go into it simply hoping it will be a magic wand to preserve our present failing structures.

The pile of shopping at the back of St Michael’s yesterday was an impressive response by people in our churches to an appeal the previous Sunday to help restock the North East Lincolnshire churches' Community Larder which had been emptied by the distribution of 79 different gifts to those in emergency need during January and February.

Village websites

Bradley village has a new website established by the Parish Council. It is at http://www.bradleyvillage.co.uk/ and quite apart from anything else, opens with a beautiful photo of St George’s. It has put up historic information based mainly on the material I put together for it and posted here a short while ago. It has also put up some news from the church for February for which I am grateful. It did put up information about activities at Bradley pitches on the edge of the village, but has now taken this down again, I guess because members of the Parish Council are very unhappy about the way this facility has been allowed to develop and be used and therefore don’t want to give it publicity. I’ve tried at various times to encourage those in the village who take different sides in this dispute to be generous in relating to those with whom they disagree so sharply, but I’m not sure such intervention has been welcome, and it is sad that this dispute has also led to different people leaving the Parish Council at different stages. Personally I shall also be sad if the new website doesn’t become home to open information about all activities in or on the edge of the village whether originating from church, Parish Council, pitches or anywhere else, but I will have to be sensitive with those who don’t agree with me about that.

There is another Parish Council at the other end of our ecclesiatical parish, and the Great Coates Village Council also has a well established website at http://www.greatcoatespc.com/ (through which information about St Nicolas’ can be accessed by clicking on the electronic version of the village newsletter). Sadly, exactly the same pattern of internal disputes, and excatly the same pattern of some members leaving the Village Council, is going on here; the issue is whether or not the Council should take a substantial loan to build a new Village Hall. I haven’t been able to engage here because I’d look like an interested party since the proposal does spike the guns a bit of our ambition to develop St Nicolas’ to meet some of the relevant needs. The opening page of the website has a link to the results of a formal Parish Poll in which 40% of the registered voters turned out to vote 87 to 377 against the proposal; there is what could be misunderstood as a disingenuous reference to the turn out at the last parliamentary election (63%) rather than local authority election (33% in the relevant Ward).

I took the photo this morning in Great Coates churchyard. The crosses mark the graves of Canon Quirk (further away) and Canon Barber (nearer) who between them were Rectors of Great Coates between 1892 and 1954. Quirk’s immediate predecessors were non-resident, and Barber’s immediate successors were also incumbents of Aylesby, so their sixty-two years was a brief high point in the ideal of committed long-term residence in a single small community. They were both highly respected and probably much better than me at judging how to help villagers relate to each other well, although last week I did visit a parishioner who is more than a hundred years old who recalled Mrs Quirk’s negative reaction to being refused a little girl’s curtsey at some point in the 1920s.

Half Term walk

Hermit Crab Poetry

Poetry translation requires taking forward not just the content but also the form of the original - in the same way that the body of many a creature is just a lot of rotting mush if it does not have its exoskeleton.

This was the case put by the poet Ian Crockatt in a lecture at Nottingham University which I went over for last week. He is working at a much more professional level than me on the poems of Earl Rognvald in the Orkenyinga Saga, and he shared some striking examples of versions which he has produced which reproduced the same skaldic form as the originals (right down to the place and nature of rhymes and half-rhymes in alternate lines); I'll be glad when some are in the public domain to explore further here.

Nevertheless, it was hermit crabs I thought about on my way home. This may just be a defensive reaction, a self justification for the more amateur attempts I have made to give the poems both new words (not the Icelandic originals) and new structures (not the skaldic originals, which I admit would have been a much more difficult task). It seemed to me that to take new language and to borrow a structure / shell from somewhere else might be equally legitimate things to do.

The first of Rognvald’s poems in the Saga is the Grimsby poem which was the first I attempted to translate (and which I posted on 11th September):

We’d wasted five weeks waiting,
our feet festering in filth.
mired in mud in the middle
of Grimsby, grimly grounded.

Now, let loose, we laugh aloud
on the gulls’ moor’s mounds, mounted
on elk-back, bounding breakers,
our bow’s beak set on Bergen.

This has seven beats to each of the eight lines (rather than the skaldic six beats), and where there are internal rhymes they are accidental products of a very English verse approach to alliteration (rather than any deliberate use of the skaldic pattern). And none of the three later poems I posted on 29th December follow even this form - only one even has eight lines - so are several steps further away from the skaldic form.
 
He has made me think. Perhaps the very elusive quality for which I look is not content (although a quite accurate correspondence to the original seems important), nor form (although a poetic structure which means the poem can be proclaimed aloud seems important), but character (catching something of what the original might have been meant to make one feel).
 
In this case, the original has the word megingrimmar (which the critical edition gives as mightily grim) in the second line and meginkaliga (mightily merry) in the sixth, so I’d venture that one essential feature of any new version must be the transition from being depressingly stuck to being joyfully free. If so, even a quite prosaic translation which captures this might be a good poetic translation. And even a skilled skaldic form which doesn’t convey this (perhaps because the search for rhyming words has allowed different pictures to infiltrate) might not be. At least, that is where I’ve got to at the moment.

Advert appears

The absurdity of many adverts for clergy posts was pointed out to me a long while ago by someone who suggested the simple stratagem of mentally reversing the redundant phrases to reveal things like lazy priest, with a poor track record, a tentative hold on faith, and an marked indifference to both young and old, sought for a contracting and unsupportive parish in an unattractive part of the country.

We had hoped that our own suggestion of The parish is waiting to explore with appropriate applicants the gifts and vocation they can bring that will complement and surprise its well established ‘Shared Ministry Team’ would strike a different note, not rule out a good candidate who didn’t happen to fit a detailed person spec we'd prepared, and place us and any candidate in a genuinely vocational discernment process.

But necessary and important consultative processes meant that, somewhere between the Bishop’s desk, the diocesan communication department and the Hospice’s HR department, this got turned into The well established Shared Ministry Team in West Grimsby collaboratively serves a number of diverse communities... a Team Ministry open to compliment and be surprised by the gifts and vocation which the person appointed will bring which, among other things, manages to edit out the discernment idea.

We were offered this on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis (‘the advert is about to appear but we could pull it altogether if you don’t like it’) and the only response a Churchwarden was able to slip in included pointing out the spelling mistake. Meanwhile, the diocesan communication department (which, it turned out, hadn’t seen the advert earlier either) did suggest the advert be pulled, and offered a rewrite (rightly retaining the Hospice’s preferred style) for consultation.

This appeared to give us an opportunity to respond, which included me pointing out again the spelling mistake and championing our own choice of words about what we would like to explore with candidates. The re-drafted advert then appeared on Friday exactly in the form in which it had been sent out for consultation without a single amendment. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

My wife encouraged me to do the first but conjuring up a picture of affirmation-starved candidates coming forward on the basis that we had promised to compliment them on their gifts. But I’m afraid I did the second faced with the truth that things have moved in the diocese to the point where a Team Rector can have no influence over the accuracy of, or wording about the parish in, an advert for a colleague. I am only grateful that I stood back from being Rural Dean eighteen months ago so only now having to encounter this sort of truth on a more occasional basis.

Anyway, the advert is out there, and, as the Bishop pointed out to one of our Churchwardens, those attracted by the Hospice half of the post will learn where the parish is coming from in relation to the other half when they receive the background papers about the job.  No potential applicant worth his or her salt (to return to my opening paragraph) should take the exact wording of any advert too seriously - and so perhaps I should be more relaxed about it as well.

Meanwhile, I took the picture last week in the open porch at the front of the empty Vicarage concerned.