Peter Mullins' Blog

Community First Panels

2012-05-28T12:39:00.000+01:00

I didn’t notice there was to be a public meeting to begin to recruit a Community First Panel for the Yarborough Ward (which is most of the area served by St Michael’s), but now learn that only five people attended it, so I may well not be the only one who missed the relevant announcement in the local paper and the local authority’s website.

The Panel is still in formation, but the first members have established some priorities for the Ward - recognising that this was a holding operation ahead of a funding deadline and that these priorities might change as there is wider community engagement in setting them and in developing a Community Plan. The four priorities are: activities for children and young people; creating safer streets and neighbourhoods; helping older people live more active lives; and getting more people involved in community activities.

The very small amount of funding available (an initial grant has been made to Brownies in the Laceby Acres area) may not be that important in itself if in fact this proves to be the catalyst for filling a major gap in the local authority’s Neighbourhood Development strategy by having some sort of representative forum (or ‘Forward’) for the disparate communities of this particular Ward; it is difficult to think of the credibility of a Community Plan without such a body. Following some of this through, I see elsewhere on the local authority’s website that 'the function of Neighbourhood Forums' is spelt out as 'far more than just being a user group for service providers, nor is it just about holding service providers to account - its function is collaborative, so that all parties round the table can contribute to achieving best outcomes for all parts of the Ward'.

It is getting on for a year since I blogged about what was then called Neighbourhood Management
(http://petermullins.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/neighbourhood-management-concerns.html) and it would be really good if this was taken forward. I'll go along to the Panel meeting int he middle of next month and see. I find that Voluntary Action North East Lincolnshire (VANEL) has got even further stuck into supporting these sorts of development by hosting a new platform at http://yarborough.inandaround.org.uk/ on which it hopes a whole picture of the Ward, Community First and Neighbourhood Development will accumulate, and I ought to look into how to contribute to tht as well.

Meanwhile, Freshney Forward continues to flourish in the neighbouring Ward (most of which is the area served by St Nicolas’) and was able to act as the body to appoint members of the Community First Panel there for which there were more applicants than places. The five priorities there are: to provide sustainable activities for the full range of residents with particular emphasis on young people; to promote social well being in a safe and secure environment; work towards improving and promoting pride in the local environment; to reduce health inequalities; and to increase the cohesion of the diverse communities within the Ward, thereby improving the economic well being of all. VANEL’s new platform has been established there as well at http://freshney.inandaround.org.uk/.

We spotted this inscription about earlier forms of community involvement when we were in Stoke-sub-Hamdon the other week.

A thousand splinters of moon

2012-05-21T11:58:00.001+01:00

A thousand splinters of moon

By moonbeam-barricaded
bedsides, shards of crafted light
wait to pierce our naked soles,
yet look left, just off centre
as the heart is, in chaos
a star cluster spews, sprouts, foals,
cloudy-edged, joyous, required
confusion’s wild scattering;

the still pools, the perfect bowls
of your imagination
have been, the moon says, the snare
for jigsaw habited souls:
a thousand splinters of moon
won't piece back together whole.

After Chenzin Jiang’s literal translation for The Poetry Translation Centre (http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/282/14_•_metaphor/literal) of Chen Yuhong’s poem.

When Ian Crockatt spoke about poetry translation at Nottingham University earlier this year (http://petermullins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/hermit-crab-poetry.html) he not only put emphasis on reproducing the original structure of the poem (so that the new reader experienced something of the force of the original) but was also very sniffy about those whose primary focus was instead on a literal rendering of the original words. At the time I was a little wary of the way in which, for example, the choice of the English rhyme words demanded by the structure could lead the translator too far from the original ideas of the poem (so the new reader heard too much of the ideas of the translator). But I saw his point more clearly when I came across the Poetry Translation Centre’s website’s literal translations (adjusted and polished by a panel or poet) which are clear and faithful but which, at first reading, seemed to lack some of the poetic sense. So, for what it is worth, my version of Chen Yuhon’s poem has been an attempt to give one of those literal texts a more English poetic structure while aware of the dilemmas involved in doing so.

Having heard Simon Armitage at Lincoln Cathedral a couple of weeks ago, I have been revisiting his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He draws attention to this dilemma in his Introduction. His example is the lines about Guinevere The comlokest to discrye / ther glent with yyven gray (the loveliest to see / seen by gray eyes) where he would see a literal translation as only giving ‘the cold facts’ of her beauty. Instead he takes a hint from a reference to the ‘best gemmes’ in the previous line, and bows to the demand of the alliterative structure, by giving But not one stone outshone / the quartz of the queen’s eye, although the words beginning with q don’t appear in the original. My spews, sprouts, foals (where the literal translation only has a sense of process), and my the still pools, the perfect bowls (where the literal translation does not spell out any content for 'your own confused imagery'), both of which are partly squeezed in to meet the demands for rhyme at these points, are the only places where I’ve named something which Chen Yuhon had not already named, and I hope benefit from ‘the Armitage defence’ despite my wariness.

Meanwhile, the pictures of the mediaeval dovecote at Stoke-sub-Hamdon come from a lunchtime stop there when going down to take services for my Aunt in Yoevil Crematorium and South Petherton Parish Church in the week; we had a five hours drive down there before lunch, and a return journey the following day to be back for my new colleague's licensing in the evening.

New to me last week

2012-05-14T13:40:00.002+01:00

A campaign is under way to bring this mediaeval chess piece (which was discovered in Habrough churchyard, a little north of here, in the 1980s) to the museum at Immingham. It was striking to learn that it exists and how beautiful it is, and I’d really like to think it might be roughly contemporary with Rognvald jarl Kali Kolsson (who died in 1158) the first and second of whose poems in the Orkneyinga Saga which I’ve been trying to translate boasts of his chess playing prowess and tells of his being stuck in Grimsby on a trading trip. The archaeologists who worked at the back of St Michael’s, Little Coates a while ago told me that most work for people like him isn’t on major projects but is simply done following those digging a pipeline, and it turns out this is exactly the circumstances in which the Habrough piece was discovered.

The only surviving copy of the mediaeval text of an alliterative Morte d’Arthur is held in the Cathedral Library. It appears that a fifteenth century Yorkshire squire copied it, one of his descendant’s husbands gave his manuscript to Durham Cathedral in the hope of preferment, and a Canon of Durham brought it with him when he became Bishop of Lincoln; it isn’t the only work which would not have survived but for his copy. The opening of Simon Armitage’s new translation of it, about which we heard him speak when he came to talk in the Cathedral Library in the week, includes lines which I think would do well as a prayer at the beginning of my next sermon there is due course, and I look forward to reading further into it:

May words trip from my tongue at this time,
not hollow and vain but in honour of Him,
and which profit and please every person who hears them.

Hearing Armitage speak about translating poetry prompted me to spend part of my Day Off putting some of the things I’ve tried to translate and write in order, including having a go at creating a new haiku:

Half the blossom falls
half clings to the Spring branches
making a lace tree.

David Hockney remarked in a documentary about the way in which the invention of metal tubes for paint (patented in 1841) changed art. He said that Constable (who died in 1837) did most of his work back in his studio taking a long comfortable time trying to represent clearly what he had seen, while the Impressionists (who exhibited in the 1870s and 1880s) were able to paint in the open air and thus worked faster. I wonder whether art historians also speculate about the way photography was becoming common at exactly the same time; a sub-conscious reaction might have been that, since exact reproduction could now be done as it were automatically, art should move to a more atmospheric approach. I like the way that factors in the 1840s and 1850s which were quite divorced from painting itself might have been what shaped its development.

New Scientist reports the discovery that, say, 2.5 million years ago a human genetic mutation which doubled a particular gene happened to enable the brain to make far more connections and thus made modern humans possible. Reading this with my brain, it seemed disconcerting to be discovering something about this previously elusive step, as well as to know how much is richly new to me every week as a result.

Kay Mullins

2012-05-07T12:51:00.001+01:00

I’ve been trying to write a piece about my aunt, who died last week, but, re-reading the first drafts, it is obvious how contrived it is and how badly it scans, so I’ve put it aside.

The central Jubilee conceit of the piece was that the new young Queen’s expressions of sympathy at the time of the Harrow Rail Disaster bound her to a sixty year task of repeatedly expressing her nation’s grief for Aberfan and Zeebrugge and all the places in between, while the loss there of her husband of sixteen months (an earlier Peter Mullins) set my aunt on a parallel sixty years of working out the implications of such losses in active widowhood; that she would have been widowed that long come October takes some comprehending.

But ‘active’ is by far the more important word than 'widowhood' - from many years of district nursing to commitment to her large local church in Bexhill including such things coordinating its pastoral care scheme. During over twenty years of retirement in South Petherton she has continued at the same pace - for example, the Community of St Francis (who until recently had a house near by at Compton Durville) has been remembering ‘her support, friendship and her wise and practical help’.

By good fortune we were able to call on her only three weeks ago when we were staying at Malmesbury, and we noticed then again a subtle Franciscan virtue: knowing for some years that she must be near the end of her life, she continued to divest herself of her possessions. On a previous visit I came away with her husband’s childhood photo albums. This time quite a bit of the best furniture had clearly vanished from her tiny bungalow (she spoke with affection of the person to whom one piece had gone) and we were given to take away a book stand he had made and a brass pot which had been my grandmother’s.

We give thanks for every remembrance of her. There will be much sadness, story telling and rejoicing over the next few weeks of funeral and thanksgiving services. I'm sorry I can't capture more of it in what I write.

A new MAP

2012-04-30T07:48:00.000+01:00

A new Mission Area Plan (MAP) for the deanery dropped through my letter box on Wednesday. That was a bit of a surprise, although we were asked to provide some basic material about this parish a while ago to contribute to some reflection on the existing MAP. It appears the Deanery Synod’s Standing Committee has taken to itself the role of the MAP Group (which hasn’t met for nearly a year now, but which did use to have representatives from each parish). The covering letter anticipates discussion and approval at clergy Chapter and then Deanery Synod next week.

The surprises don’t stop there. The only new element of the MAP is a half-time Parish Development Adviser post - which, it says, has already been filled (albeit only for an short initial period). The Standing Committee actually has skills in this area I did not have; when I was Rural Dean it proved a protracted and obstacle strewn process to get the diocese to authorise the appointment and payment processes for posts even when they had been through the then required layers of consultation and Pastoral Committee approval.

Other than this new half-post, the new MAP simply sets out the present pattern of clergy deployment - which is the existing MAP developed by incremental changes over several years. This is a further surprise because this is the one thing the Bishop of Grimsby challenged us not to do. We had a surreal experience last November when all the local clergy were called to his house to ‘share ideas for the future mission and ministry of the church across the [two North East Lincolnshire] deaneries’; the Bishop spoke for five minutes as we stood round a crowded room, funnelled us through for a buffet lunch and then sent us home. The one thing he did say then was the approach of making cuts by incremental steps within present groupings of parishes has gone as far as it can and we needed to move on to a more radical approach.

The new MAP also floats the idea that an increase in parish giving could be considered to fund a further half-post promoting Fresh Expressions in the more socially vulnerable areas of the deanery. I suspect some special expertise in this area would be appreciated in all parishes. The money may in fact already be there. The new MAP capitulates to the diocesan policy of budgeting for all planned posts rather than all filled posts which has and will mean that on average each year we return at least the cost of half a post to diocesan reserves; I think there would be more of a revolt if I had not failed so badly as Rural Dean in conveying the fact that this is equivalent to about £1 in every £7 paid by each parish as Parish Share going unused.

My guess and hope is that this is all a bit less strange than it appears to be at first sight. Most parishes probably have a member of the Deanery Synod Standing Committee, or have been consulted by someone who is, so knew how far a process had got and may even had the opportunity to contribute ideas to it. Most Deanery Synod members next week will probably simply welcome the support the new post holder can give without thinking a great deal more about it. Her quality and work might well be exactly the thing which prompt us towards developing the sort of more radical MAP the Bishop requested. Most parishes will simply continue unaware of the damage diocesan policy about budgeting for all planned posts does to our mission potential. Nevertheless, I’m sorry to have just briefed two of our District Church Councils in detail about where we’d need to be developing and thinking next unaware that a new MAP was going to drop through the door a few days later and not to have been able to tell them that a new deanery developmental colleague was already in post.

Oh, and the new MAP also thinks that lay ministry should ‘compliment’ ordained ministry, so this spelling may now be becoming normative among those who take leadership in providing and implementing fully worked out plans on our behalf.

Meanwhile, we heard Prof Warwick Rodwell lecture at Barton last week, and he pointed out that the two largest stones at eye level here at St Peter’s, Barton are actually hollow - portions of mediaeval stone coffins cut up and reused.

Inside St Nicolas' again

2012-04-23T09:40:00.001+01:00

I have just found this postcard view of the interior of St Nicolas’, Great Coates at about the time of the First World War. It is much clearer than the slightly earlier image which I posted with commentary on 8th July 2008 (http://www.petermullins.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/inside-st-nicolas-great-coates.html). The shape of the east window, the nature of the hangings along the east wall and the details of the false chancel arch (none of which survive today) are things I haven’t seen before.

The picture must have been taken after the work authorised by the 1900 Faculty (because the present pews are in place) but before the work authorised by the 1925 Faculty (because the present wooden backing to the altar is not yet in place), and it is interesting that the lectern (in a new position but with the same decoration on it as in the earlier picture) has not yet been replaced by the present brass First World War memorial lectern.

I can now see that I was wrong to suggest that the present semi-circular step in front of the altar was part of the work undertaken in the 1920s. The metal altar rails in this picture clearly curve (it is easiest to see this on the left / north side), and, now that I look at this again, I see there are repair marks in the stone evident today to show where this altar rail was once fixed. I would now suggest that it is may have been part of the 1865 restoration; the pulpit and the artificial chancel arch may well date from 1865 as well.

It is the chancel arch, of course, which is most striking. As far as I can see from the small amount of this arch which shows up in the earlier photograph, it appears to have been painted since the earlier photograph was taken.

Malmesbury Poems

2012-04-18T11:29:00.000+01:00

Almost accidentally, I’ve developed part of a sort of sub-George Mackay Brown cycle of poems based on the details in each of the carvings on the south doorway of Malmesbury Abbey. I suspect I'd need to go back to collect a whole set of pictures, and then spend proper time with them, to develop the cycle any further.

The Creation of Adam
(picture posted on Monday)

Still life-less man,
God draws you from the mud
your feet as yet unformed.

Adam and Eve hide from God
(I have no picture of my own - but see http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3944474517/)

Naked, almost skeletal,
you crouch to conceal yourselves
and double up in shame.

Adam and Eve are given a spade and a distaff
(pictured on Monday)

Free and winged one,
fix their fear and hands
to delving spade, to spinning staff.

The Annunciation

Long sleeved Lady,
are you calm or fearful
with an angel by your chair?

The Holy Family

Rest now, Lady,
beneath the bed spread’s fold and fall
for Joseph watches the child.

The Crucifixion

Closest to him
almost touched by his fixed arms,
you echo the squirm of his body.

The Burial
(pictured on Monday)

Bent, intent in grief,
with your delicate fingers
gently lay the body down.

The Resurrection
(pictured on Monday)

Risen one
gazing ahead, moving forward,
your banner streams behind you.

Malmesbury at Easter

2012-04-16T09:39:00.000+01:00

Discovering Malmesbury Abbey was one of the highlights of a few days away last week. Only a quarter of the original building remains - on the left there should be a west front where windows are now open to the sky, and on the right there should be a central tower with a tall spire and then a whole chancel to the east.

The graceful lines and inclinations of the figures in the twelfth century carvings within the south porch are famous. Only St Peter on the right (clean shaven and tonsured like the monks of the Abbey) has suffered significant damage: his feet have been hacked away to stop people kissing them.

But it was the series of heavily eroded biblical episodes round the opening of the porch which entranced us most, and almost best of all is this still lifeless Adam being drawn by God out of the mud with his feet not yet fully formed.

Here a central angel gives expelled Adam and Eve a spade and a distaff - an unusual image to be echoed a couple of hundred years later in the Peasants’ Revolt’s ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?’.

And then, almost most exquisite of all, further round we came to the gentleness and grief of these figures in this representation of the entombment of Christ; one can almost believe there are tears in the eyes of the right hand figure.

After which, for Easter week, there is this purposeful resurrection scene, with the risen Lord's banner flowing behind him .

Less water, more trees

2012-04-09T10:00:00.000+01:00

A hose pipe ban has began, and the reason why is clear from this pair of pictures of Kingston Wood by the water tower on the edge of the parish. The top picture was put up on this Blog on 19th March 2010 when there was concern that the rising water table was damaging the area. The bottom picture was taken last week, just over two years later.

Meanwhile, a contributor to Rod Collins' website has found this old postcard image of St Nicolas' (and of the Grange next door). This is clearly number 3 in a series of which the image of a monument in St Michael's churchyard put up on this Blog on 13th March 2010 was number 5 (so I'd dearly love to be able to find numbers 1, 2 and 4, and possibly numbers 6 onwards). The bottom picture is the 'same view' yesterday.

Signs of the Kingdom?

2012-04-02T12:28:00.001+01:00

The Lent gatherings in the parish having produced some creative reflections. We had a Mental Health Chaplain and an Industrial Chaplain to share what they had discovered through their work, and a couple of us from within the parish offered something similar ourselves around the issues of debt (outlined here a few weeks ago) and from involvement in the Heavy Metal scene.

The volunteer who has been developing and hosting a new parish website has put up some of this at http://www.westgrimsbyteam.org/2012lent2.html

from

I have played a small part in helping her remember who she is, what she values, and that she herself is of value. ‘Good news’, although we have not mentioned God’s name once in our conversation... It lies at the heart of my job to remind others that those with mental health conditions are people (people with a bipolar disorder, people with anxiety, and so on). They are a person first who has a mental health condition. The condition does not define them; it is not the total sum of them. Even the most difficult person who spits and shouts and lashes out is still a person. Kindness and care for the individual goes a long way. When Jesus heals the Gerasene demoniac, he does not make his healing a spectacle but takes him aside, asks his name, has him unbound, and sends him back into his community. He deals with the person.

to

Jesus taught about God’s kingdom breaking in around us, and led us to pray for its coming here as much as in heaven. We were reminded of the language of a foretaste - catching something of the flavour of a feast we are not yet at. We were reminded of the language of birth pangs - the labour pains involved as a new life is brought forth. We wondered whether the things we had been exploring for five weeks were telling us about the character of God’s kingdom, about savouring the hints of what it is intended to be, about how the moment it begins among us can be as traumatic as a difficult birth. Those who live among or minister with people with fractured mental health, in situations of debt, in the Heavy Metal scene, and at the work place had been reporting and reflecting on what this had meant to them. What we heard about were signs of God’s kingdom breaking in around us.

Meanwhile, the pheasants in Great Coates churchyard normally squawk away long before I get out a camera, but this pair were so intent on harassing each other that they didn’t bother about the potential threat from a human being very close by.

Fresh eyes

2012-03-26T07:53:00.000+01:00

We announced yesterday that the Revd David McCormick is coming in May to work with us as Team Vicar and with St Andrew’s Hospice as Chaplain. David was brought up in Grimsby and returned to be Team Vicar of St Hugh’s in our neighbouring Great Grimsby Team Ministry before moving ten years ago to work full-time in the diocese’s training team, so we are looking forward to welcoming him back.

In my twelve years or so here we haven’t worked with an external work consultant in this Team Ministry (at one point the Bishop offered to try to identify one for me, but nothing came of that, and it is a serious fault of mine that I haven’t ever pursued this), so it will be particularly interesting and valuable for me and us this summer and autumn to engage with what he will be observing about and reacting to my and our established approaches.

Meanwhile, last week the newish Priest-in-Charge of the Great Grimsby Team has very kindly sent his neighbours the terms of reference for the review of that Team parish, including a quite thorough assessment of the role of the Minster there and of his role as Area Dean both serving the whole of North East Lincolnshire including this Team parish. He won’t know that nine months earlier the Deputy Chief Executive of the diocese wrote to me on behalf of himself and the Archdeacon to say there would be consultation with the Deanery Pastoral Committee about these terms of reference, but even at the time we didn’t imagine that was actually going to happen.

So there will be fresh eyes in both neighbouring Team Ministries, and much opportunity to engage constructively rather than defensively with what they see.

The other over view of at least part of this parish at the weekend was provided by going up the towers of St Michael’s (which I do quite often) and of St Nicolas’ (which I have only done once before). There is a report and ten much better pictures at http://www.rodcollins.com/wordpress/inside-a-church-tower-and-the-view-from-the-top. The top picture here picks out a spiral of flowers on the north side of St Michael’s which wasn’t there last year. The bottom picture of two ships passing on the Humber hints at how unexpectedly close Yorkshire is to St Nicolas’.

Losing Rowan

2012-03-19T07:56:00.000Z

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 Professor of Theology (Ramsey and Williams) or Principal of a Theological College (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

2012-03-12T11:20:00.001Z

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

2012-03-05T11:22:00.001Z

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

2012-02-27T14:56:00.001Z

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

2012-02-20T09:49:00.000Z

Hermit Crab Poetry

2012-02-13T10:18:00.000Z

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

2012-02-06T09:26:00.002Z

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.

The undeserving poor

2012-01-30T14:06:00.000Z

Clergy have strikingly more liberal views about the causes of poverty than members of their congregations. And the views of churchgoers don’t differ markedly from those of non-churchgoers.

The national British Social Attitudes Survey gathered information from 3500 people, 500 of whom identified themselves as at least monthly churchgoers. The Church Urban Fund and Church Action on Poverty then asked identical questions of 209 clergy at their periodic deanery ‘chapter’ meetings - and last week they sent out spam to our e-mail addresses to tell us about this.

Three quarters of the clergy (74%) thought poverty was attributable to injustice in society, but only a fifth of churchgoers (22%) did so, not that much different from non-churchgoers (20%). 1% of clergy (that would be two of those at the meetings) agreed that laziness or lack of willpower was a cause, something a quarter of churchgoers (23%) and non-churchgoers (27%) thought it was.

Clergy were half as likely (16%) as either churchgoers or non-churchgoers (both 38%) to say poverty was an inevitable part of modern life. Clergy were twice as likely (78%) to think there was ‘quite a lot of child poverty’ (the Government's own figures suggest four million children) than churchgoers (37%), whose perception is very similar to non-churchgoers (38%).

So what should I type?

This vindicates the policy of having parish priests living in each community and having their antennae out among the most vulnerable around them. But it is pretty damning about the ways in which we share insights with and help the Gospel form the consciences of those in our congregations.

Or

This challenges the policy of having stipendiary clergy who don’t have to earn a living and become detached from the objective realities which are self evident to their congregations and parishioners doing business in the real world. And it is good that our naivety washes over most of those to whom we preach.

Or

I’d better not let me kid myself into being self congratulatory: far from my beliefs, values and behaviour about most things being so much more Gospel-sourced than even those in our congregations, most of what I think and do is almost indistinguishable from the norms in the community around me.

Or

A sample of 209, especially collected in a context in which peers were present, is a very poor base from which to draw any conclusions.

Meanwhile, North East Lincolnshire Council is working along local roads pruning back the trees, as these two pictures at the gateway to St Michael’s (taken two days apart last week) show.

Obvious ploys

2012-01-23T12:37:00.000Z

Radio Humberside’s presenters doesn’t appear to be happy if their interviews fail to include a little twist - it can certainly makes them more interesting but I suspect they sometimes deceive themselves into thinking it demonstrates more journalistic insight and probing than it really does.

Last time I appeared on its Sunday morning programme it was to talk about the appeal for a new heating system in St Nicolas’. I’d got across the few prepared sentences to carry the message I wanted (they aren’t the only ones who labour their way through the predictable ploys in these interviews) when the presenter finished by asking me what I was giving myself. He obviously thought this was the killer question, and I don’t think he had the first idea what a proportion of the regular and special giving particularly in some small churches actually comes from the hidden pledges and gifts by clergy and their families which they do not trumpet.

So, yesterday, I wasn’t surprised when an interview about the previous day's celebration of the ‘faith in action’ of the North East Lincolnshire churches finished with what the interviewer may have thought was an equally incisive question but which probably showed that he didn’t think listeners would really believe the churches display faith in action. He asked ‘But how easy is that relationship between church and community to keep the church up to date with what is going on, to keep it in touch with the community and what it needs?’. ‘Doesn’t everything I’ve just said answer that question?’ was the answer I’m grateful to have had the restraint not to give.

The annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity event was a whole market inside Grimsby Minster with at least a dozen stalls each supplied by one of the church-sponsored organisations in Grimsby or near by which is responding to the needs of the community around us. From Harbour Place (the initiative of one Catholic nun years ago still feeding at least thirty homeless people every day) to the Rock Foundation (the initiative of an independent church recently to provide worthwhile activities and work for those with learning difficulties) it would appear there is quite a lot of evidence that we do have our fingers on the pulse of the changing and pressing needs of the community.

To be fair, those of us on the Executive of Churches Together put on the event because we were not sure people in our churches fully appreciated the cumulative impact on our community numerous such organisations are making. We invited along the new Bishop of Lincoln and the new Chairman of the Methodist District, along with one of the Catholic Vicars General and a senior independent church representative, to give messages of encouragement (and to be impressed by what we are doing - our ploy and motivation being as transparent as that of any Radio presenter), and the picture is of the Bishop speaking at the event.

St Nicolas' South Aisle

2012-01-16T12:52:00.001Z

This is the extent to which the south aisle of St Nicolas’ (on the right) has moved away from the tower (on the left) made visible again last week when the recent failed repair was scrapped out by an investigating engineer. We don’t know how much of this movement is recent - he could detect at least two earlier in-fill repairs which might indicate that this is a very old and/or a very gradual shift, but he has placed lots of measuring points round the area to monitor whether there is any movement over the next few months. The outward angle of the south wall, and evidence of vertical cracking at the naturally weak point roughly level with the bottom of the windows (again, some of which show signs of earlier repair), are also indications of the shift which has been going on over some time.

Meanwhile his attempt to dig down to foundation level to see if there is anything going on there failed when it hit this concrete apron round the building (a twentieth century drainage channel - we can't work out why it continues underground here). He’d like to get a digger in to do more investigation if his monitoring does show continued recent movement. In these circumstances he would also like to investigate inside where the south aisle roof beams meet the main body of the church to make sure they haven’t been pulled out so far that they might cease to provide support. Our hope is that neither of these further investigations will prove necessary.

A new Team Vicar?

2012-01-09T14:46:00.000Z

We don’t know what we are looking for in a new colleague. This is a deliberate step. Being too sure of what we want may limit who will apply. Apart from anything else, this is likely to be dangerous as there are not usually many applicants for jobs in this area. We’d quite like a surprise, and pray that it will be a God-given one.

So the Bishop may be about to advertise the post (half Chaplain at the local Hospice and half Vicar in this Team Ministry) left vacant when the Revd Terrie Stott left last year.

The draft text of an advert which may appear soon says:

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’.

The draft text of the background papers for applicants says:

We’ve carefully decided to take the risk of not to over define what we are looking for but wait to see where God may be moving. We’d like to find out what potential applicants for the half-time Hospice post have to offer, and how these might add to or complement what we already have. The gifts and vocation of the person appointed will determine the post.

Meanwhile, the accidentally artistic photo was really an attempt to capture something of the red sun falling through a plain window in St Nicolas’ last week.

Looking both ways

2012-01-02T12:38:00.001Z

Pictures of Janus inspired the small group which gathered in St Michael's for the Last Saturday Thing on New Year's Eve to produce our own images of looking both back and forward, and in the dim lighting for our prayers at the end the processional cross appeared to be doing its best to join in. By then I'd adapted my trite title for the evening ('Old Year Sorrow, New Year Hope') for us to have mixed views and mixed prayers about both past and future.

Poetry progress

2011-12-29T10:46:00.001Z

David Overton, a local musician, has set my words from the Orumulum (posted here on 6th January 2010) as an anthem, which the choir at Grimsby Minister sang for the first time at a mid-week Evensong before Christmas. It has a lovely mediaeval feeling lilt to it. David’s father was Organist at St Michael’s for many years and I remember visiting him in his Abbeyfield House room soon after I arrived here. David’s own credits include arranging music for James Galway, and he is himself a member of the Minster’s choir.

Meanwhile, I have got about half way through my project of re-telling the three dozen or so poems of Earl Rognvaldr from the Orkneyinga Saga (begun with the Grimsby poem posted here on 11th September 2011).

For example, Prof Judith Jesch’s literal “Here I’ve raised a high cairn to a strong minded ghost in dark Dollsteinshola; in this way I look for rings - I do not know who among the pushers of wave-skis [a kenning for sailors] will go later the long and ugly way, the route across the broad lake” has become

We pile up stones to mask our fear

and keep the cave’s strong ghouls away
who in the deep of Doll’s dark hole
maintain their grip on rings of gold.

We pile up stones to mark our feat:
perhaps some men will skim the sea
and then on this our awful route
will find our cairn already built.

Her “I hang a snake of the bridge of the hawk [a kenning for arm-ring built on a kenning for arm] made round by the hammer on the gallows of the tongs [another kenning for arm]; we reveal the drink of Grimnir of hanged ones [a kenning for poetry built on a kenning for Odin] - The fir-tree of the gleaming-voice of the Gautar of the cave [a kenning for women built on a kenning for gold built in turn on a kenning for giants] has gladdened me so much that I play with my hollows of the backward-bending feller of the lagoon [a kenning for oar built on a kenning for hand]” has become

Hands which swung felled-trees through water
stroke the gold that snakes in loops
where the hunter’s hawk last rested,
stroke the gold once executed
by such hammer wielding hands.

Drink with me, great God of all fate,
sing of one tree-tall-slender,
sing of her bright treasure-bearing,
delight with me at all her splendour,
sing, and to her beauty drink.

And her “Einarr said that he wished to entertain none of the followers of Rognvald except the jarl himself; the roaring sea of Gauter [a kenning for poetry] comes to my palate – I know that [the one] not amiable to men overturned his promises; I went in where the fires of Yggr [a kenning for swords] burned late in the evening” has become

In my speech the storm surge sings
of Einar set to lure me in
at whose farm the forge fire flames
with burning swords and twisting claims.

History of Bradley

2011-12-22T12:28:00.002Z

A little while ago, I did a sheet for St George's with a paragraph for every century for the last thousand years. This week the Chair of the Parish Council asked whether I had anything similar for the village itself. I didn't realsie how much I'd picked up over the last twelve years, but, with a little help from books on my shelves and the obvious places on the web, I was able to come up with the following initial draft. I took the picture is the churchyard cross this morning.

Before 1000. We don’t know when the first settlement took place here, but the name (perhaps‘broad wood’ or ‘wide clearing’) dates from before the Vikings came and established or took over a port at ‘Grim’s by’.

1000s. In the Domesday Book, Laceby (apparently the Manor centre), Bradley and Scartho are listed together. Anglo-Saxon Swein, Erik and Tosti held most land, one of the Conqueror’s brother’s had taken some, and nearly a hundred others (‘villans, bordars and sokemen’) had tiny bits. The Manor had some interests in Grimsby, Clee and the Clee thorpes.

1100s. The name Bradley was used as the name of the meeting-place for a wider ‘wapentake’ (roughly a ‘weapon take’ - the administrative sub-division of the shire from which things like military service or tax could be required). It is just possible that the stump of a mediaeval cross in the grounds of the present Manor house is associated with this.

1200s. Ralph of Bradley was paid for materials for building the King’s castle in Grimsby, that he later killed a man in Grimsby, and that his son Geoffrey was at the siege of Lincoln. (References in the Gillett History of Grimsby.)

1300s. It is likley that the Black Death dramatically reduced the population of the parish, and there was evidence of an old village site in the fields south of the present Manor site.

1400s. The Borough of Grimsby owning the Manor of Bradley, on which Lord Wells had claims, and which the Wright family was to ‘wrest from them’. (References in the Gillett History of Grimsby.)

1500s. There is no real evidence for the well loved story that Henry VIII hunted boar in Bradley Woods when he stayed at Thornton Abbey in the 1540s. From the 1580s a James Wright was systematically buying up the Manor and lands (at that time divided into nine parts), some of it known as “Lord Well’s Manor”.

1600s. Hustwaite Wright buys a further two portion of the Manor in 1626. He sells the whole Manor to Richard Nelthorpe in 1633, and both are held criminally responsible for depopulating the village soon afterwards. The Nelthorpes (of Scawby) later acquire things like the woods and the patronage of the church, and the family owned the land for nearly three hundred years. The present Manor House is built in the 1680s (although it contains some features of an earlier house).

1700s. The land was formally ‘enclosed’ (parcelled together into fields suitable for modern agriculture) at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but only eleven families lived in the parish in the 1720s. (References in Ellis & Crowther’s Humber Perspectives.)

1800s. Modern census returns finally bring all the villagers to light. In 1851 there are nineteen houses (two uninhabited). Apart from five farmers (William Phillipson had most land, Samuel Gooseman lived at the Manor, and there was Robert Richardson and both a John Kirk and a Thomas Kirk) and a number of agricultural labourers, the only other ‘heads of household’ are the Rector (ecclesiastical reform had just led to the building of a new Rectory for a resident parson in 1849) and a Grocer.

1900s. In 1914 the Nelthorpes sold their 1 500 acre Bradley estate for £35 500; the Borough Grimsby bought what is now Bradley Playing Fields (at that time it wanted the land for a future cemetery) and Bradley Woods (for public use). First residential developments were at ‘Bradley Hollow’ (along Laceby Road) and this part of the parish (along with the whole of the parishes of Little Coates and Scartho) became part of the Borough of Grimsby in the 1920s. Most of the sixty or so houses in the remaining village have been built since then - even in the 1940s the arrow on the road pointing ‘to the village’ on a plan of the churchyard points south, and the suburban developments along Bradley Road and the first part of Church Lane are post-War.