Ponte Vecchio

The only bridge to survive Allied bombing.  The shops are one thing, but the best bit is the enclosed ariel corridor running from one palace (the second picture shows this best) to another across the river, having to loop round a  mediaeval tower on the way (the thid picture shows this).

Barncacci Chapel

From Hotel Bedroom Window

Hopes and fears

It is a over a year since we returned from our sabbatical term in Jerusalem - and we miss it.  A year in which everyone’s attention has been held by repeated instances of extremist or radicalised Israelis or Palestinians killing others, and of the personal and structural retribution meted out as a result mainly on individual Palestinians and Palestine but also on individual Israelis; a year culminating on Human Rights Day in the tragic army dispersal of olive tree planting in part of Palestine designated as soon to be inaccessible to Palestinians.   

 

There is a feature of our stay about which we talk but which hasn’t yet appeared in this Blog.  Whenever we were in a group which visited a Christian community off the beaten track in the West Bank (which isn’t a claim at intrepid travel – the area is small and we were there for three months), the people we visited always began a welcome by expressing at length disproportionate thanks for our having come to see them.  They clearly felt that Christians on hurried visits to the holy sites simply bypassed them.  They clearly imagined that any news we would take away, for example, about the restrictive implication for them of living near Israeli settlements would inevitable fuel effective international demands to change the situation.

On this last point, I don’t know how right they are.  Perhaps the sudden flow of European parliaments expressing the wish to recognise the state of Palestine indicates they are right.  My own experience suggests they are wrong.  Expressing their situation and concerns is as likely to provoke a hostile reaction as a supportive one.  Even setting out those two opening paragraphs as carefully as I can will be viewed by some neutral readers and most partial readers as being loaded against the state of Israel and its need for security simply for having not yet named them.  The fact that I haven’t begun ‘a year in which everyone’s attention has been held by the Islamic fundamentalist take over in Iraq and Syria and the related persecution of Christians there’ would be cited as some as evidence of priorities skewed by latent anti-Semitism.

There are those whose attention to the communities of the West Bank is not as casual or fleeting as ours.  Some are Jewish and/or Israeli Human Rights organisations which can hardly be anti-Semitic.  Others externally include  ‘ecumenical accompaniers’: ‘ international Christian volunteers to the West Bank to experience life under occupation, provide protective presence to vulnerable communities, monitor and report human rights abuses and support Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace’.   It is  perhsp telling that the General Synod’s expressing explicit support for this programme in 2012 resulted in a degree of rupture in relations with formal Jewish bodies in England.  These bodies  and other critics of the programme see it as politically naive or slanted (hence the rupture in relationships) - while in turn many Palestinian Christians, including many promoters of non-violence, fear that their plight is actually an embarrassment to those seeking to keep inter-faith relationships in good repair elsewhere.

Which relates, but only tangentially, to another aspect of this whole complex situation about which I have been thinking but which hasn’t yet appeared in this Blog.  Those in church leadership in liberal western Christianity are likely to be aged 55-75 and are thus likely to have studied Theology in the 1960s and 1970s.  Their (our – just, I am 54 and began a University course in Theology in 1979) theological formation is therefore strongly orientated by awareness of just how anti-Semitic our tradition has been and how strangely neglectful of the essentially Jewish roots of Jesus and the New Testament.  From the shifts in teaching of the Vatican II (1963-5) to the publication of Geza Vermes’ classic Jesus the Jew in 1973, a whole new perspective emerged; a perspective centred on essential repentance for the anti-Semitism deeply, disturbingly and destructively embedded in most of the history of Christendom; a perspective centred on the obvious but somehow airbrushed, concealed or forgotten kinship with Judaism.

This is a perspective which flavours what we teach all the time (for example perhaps, provoking visits to concentration camps in Germany and to places marked by blood libel in England, and ensuring awareness of everything from the Jewish shape of Jesus’teaching to the Jewish heritage of our own town).   Such a perceptive is obviously not incompatible with support for Palestine - but it is really messy (emotionally, theologically and politically) unpicking why this is so.

Money, sex and power

Those most likely to convert to Islam in England are white working class women in their twenties.  This is what Grayson Perry suggests.   He has included one of them (Kayleigh Khosravi) among the portraits we saw last month at the National Portrait Gallery , also featured then on his television series ‘Who are you?’.

One has to keep this in perspective.  The most recent request I’ve had for a certificate recording her Baptism as an infant was for a young woman who needed it as she prepared to be received into the Catholic church.  And the numbers given for English people converting to Islam each year are a fraction of the numbers who are confirmed in just the Church of England each year.

Nevertheless, I was fascinated by what emerged when he asked ‘What does Islam offer to a young white woman in her twenties?’.

The answer, I found, appears to be a refuge from the nagging consumer pressures and constant, often sexual, scrutiny of women all pervasive in western society.  Conversion also offers a strong and supportive sisterhood within the congregation of the mosque.

What I found particularly striking about this was how it relates to a reflection which I first posted here over six years ago.

Deuteronomy 17 warned God’s people that if they had a King he should not be allowed to have too much gold, too many wives or too many horses.   I take this to be awareness that given total freedom this man might want to monopolise the available money, sex and power whatever the detriment to others of his doing so. 

One of the few African absolute monarchs today is known for spending more on his private jet than the country’s health service (too much gold), to hold annual half naked parades to select a new wife (literally too many wives) and to sack judges who make judgements against him (too much power, or, figuratively, too many horses). 

Is a purpose of monastic life a radical experiment to see what human life is really like when the distortions of our appetites and their consequences are removed?  So to take vows of poverty (no gold), chastity (no wives) and obedience (no horses) must in part be not so much simply to be disciplined about these dynamics but to be curious about what happens when they are removed?

Not ‘I’ll be responsible about the use of my wealth’ but ‘I’ll not allow the acquisition and use of money to motivate me at all’?  Not ‘I’ll be responsible about sexual morality’ but ‘I’ll not allow any sexual possibilities to influence my relating at all’?  Not ‘I’ll be responsible about the decisions I make’ but ‘I’ll not insist on making the fundamental decisions at all’?   

What Grayson Perry heard Kayleigh Khosravi say to him was that she found in her new faith an alternative to our society’s consumerism, sexualisation and loss of any meaningful sense of interdependence - allowing purchase power, sexual attraction and competition to shape us. 

The sad thing for me, of course, is that she didn’t suspect that the Christian church would be the place where she’d find this critiqued or resisted – where sacrificial generosity and the forgiveness of debts (a form of mutuality as much as a vow of poverty), marital fidelity and the honouring of each individual (a form of integrity as much as a vow of chastity), and love of neighbour and a bias towards the marginalised (a form of solidarity as much as a vow of obedience) would be normative.

Timothy Smithson's Will

I have now received a copy of the Will of Timothy Smithson, and it turns out to provide an interesting encounter with one aspect of Grimsby history.

So, first, the historical context.

In the eighteenth century, Grimsby, although it had Borough status and returned two Members of Parliament, was no bigger than a modern village and no bigger than the other tiny market towns of north-east Lindsey such as Barton and Caistor.  What soon became known as the 'Old Town' clustered around the church and the Riverhead.

At the very end of the century, two major developmental initiatives were taken to kick-start something bigger, but, in the end, neither managed to do so.

First, a dock was built along the mainly silted up Haven – today this is the portion of Alexandra Dock between the Riverhead and the A180.  The enabling Act was passed in 1796 and the first use was in 1801.  But those who financed the development, which included all the major landowners in the Wolds, did not have sufficient supplies of goods to export and proved to be naive about what the quantity of trade by others would be.

Secondly, from 1800, the common land immediately east of the new dock was parcelled up and initially leased and then sold for building development –  this ‘New Town’ occupied the land which today is between Alexandra Dock and the railway line.  The population of Grimsby doubled (to over 4000 people by 1831) but actually far fewer of the plots were developed than had been expected and many ended up being used as market gardens.

It would be more than a generation later, in the 1840s, that the development of Grimsby took off with the completion of agricultural enclosure and improvement and with the coming of the railway, but that is quite another story.

Back to Timothy Smithson’s Will, made in 1816, three years before his death.  Although he describes himself as a Farmer of Great Coates, almost all of the document deals with an extensive portfolio of property  - including ‘all my nine freehold messuages or tenements with gardens and appurtenances situate in Great Grimsby in a certain street or place called Flower Square’ (some of which were let to tenants). 

Flour Square (the contemporary spelling is twentieth century) is at what would then have been the northern end of the New Town, on the marshy coastal strip of Fitties rather than on the Common proper, and is today just north off the Lock Hill roundabout. 

Smithson allocates the nine properties in turn to his eight oldest surviving children; the daughter married to a joiner (Charles Hudson) gets a property with a joiner’s shop.  His youngest children, by his second wife Mary, were still under age, and he makes provision for Mary and these children to have income from property trusts.  His ‘dear wife’ also gets ‘my two best beds, half of my best chairs [and] also my mahogany dining and tea tables’.

Of additional interest for me are the names of the two much younger farmers (aged in 1816 39 and 44, as against Smithson’s 66) to be the trustees.  They are ‘my two good friends’  Richard Taylor of Great Coates (whose memorial and grave have featured in this Blog before) and Charles Nevill of Little Coates (about more of whom in a moment).  

There is obviously something of a community among these more substantial tenant farmers, each managing the largest businesses in the two villages; they formed part of the sort of class prosperous enough to take advantage of new investment opportunities in neighbouring Grimsby.

The earliest surviving gravestone in Little Coates churchyard is that of Charles’ grandparents(from 1781) .  His parents’ gravestone also survives nearby, and a picture from it has appeared in this Blog before.  

Charles’ sister Ann married a Joshua Chapman, and they were to be the great-grandparents of the Joseph Chapman whose fortune was made when  Grimsby’s growth and trade eventually really did take took off and whose legacy paid for the building of most of the present St Michael’s, Little Coates almost exactly a century after Smithson drew up his Will.

Skint

We all rather dreaded the potential traducing of Grimsby by Channel 4’s Skint – and we still await Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Grimsby next year for similar reasons – but the consensus after the first episode seems to be that the town itself wasn’t set up for disparagement in quite the way we feared, indeed the opening sentences did say that areas like the one on which it focussed could be found in most apparently pleasant large towns.

But the programme wasn’t about those who try to live on the minimum levels of income.  It was simply about three individuals – it is difficult to tell, but at least one had a significant alcohol problem, at least one a drug problem and at least one a mental health problem – which made it seem more akin to the outing to see those imprisoned in Bedlam rather than a genuine attempt to understand areas of particular deprivation.

Best of all, of course, was that the positive work of the Shalom Youth Prohect was highlighted several times.  It wasn’t clear that it was the work of one of the two local Parish Churches which was being praised – although those alert might have guessed from the name and from the way that the non-clerical collar wearing spokesman (who was in fact the long-term Vicar) was introduced as ‘Canon John Ellis’.

John got his sound bite: he spoke about the need to model mature adulthood in a community in which many male role models were often immature.  For those with ears to hear, he was heard to be spot on: one of the things which both the men focussed upon had in common was the moments when they exhibited a childish wish for praise for minor acts of consideration.

We’ll have to see what next week brings.  Meanwhile, a new wood is being planted across the road from St Michael’s today.

Thy Smiles I court not

Things are going well for the Littlecoates Community Centre since we let the St Michael's-owned building to a specially created arms-length community group.  There are enough volunteers to keep on top of things like the grass.  There is increased use so rents are covering the normal bills.  And grants have just paid for this new kitchen and for new windows like this.  It all depends on a group several of whom are church members but several of whom are not.

Meanwhile, my attention has bee  drawn to this gravestone at St Nicolas' - one of the earliest surviving there.  I wonder who bothered putting the broken pieces back together when so many other such stones were lost?  And when?

I've discovered it is the grave of Timothy Smithson, whose mother may have been a Garness, and Martha Coldwell, who were married in 1778 aged 27 and 17, and that the youngest of their children was baptised the day after Martha died.  I've also discovered that Timothy's Will is in the Lincolnsire County Archive, so I've ordered a copy.  The poem was what particularly struck the person who drew my attention to it.

Sacred

[To the] Memory of

[TIMOTH]Y SMITHSON

[Who Depart]ed this Life

1^st day of April 1819

AGED 69 YEARS

Also of

MARTHA SMITHSON

Wife of the above: who died August the

24th 1801 – Aged 41 years.

Fare wel vain world.  I’ve had enough of thee,

And now am careless what thou say'st of me:

Thy Smiles I court not; nor thy Frowns I fear.

My Cares are past; my head lies quiet here.

What Faults thou saw’st in me take care to shun,

There’s quite (?)  enough within thee to be done. 

Book announcement

A book of my poems (many of which have appeared here) is being published on 24th November.  The formal launch is at the new Arts Centre at the Grimsby Institute at 7.30.  Skint begins on TV at 9.00 but I hope that the quality of life in Grimsby will be better represented at my event.  The book is beautifully illustrated by Emily Connor, a student from the Institute, and proceeds from its sale will be for St Andrew's Hospice.

Parochial Welcome Home

A family has just returned to St George’s, Bradley a pair of Bibles from among those given, as the bookplate of this one indicates, to those returning to the village at the end of the Second World War. 

From among the illustrations in this particular volume I’ve picked out ‘Idolatry’ from the Old Testament and ‘The Conversion of St Paul’ from the New Testament simply because I enjoyed them. 

Of additional note is the signatures of the Churchwardens - a Tickler (the Jam Factory family, from the Manor House next door to the church) and a Dixon (the Paper Mill family, from the more modern country house called The Gairs, complete with its Gertrude Jekyll garden).

Measuring discipleship

Old ground?

It is over twenty years since I joined a newly re-shaped diocesan mission and training team, with the radical approach of it being led by a member of the Bishop’s Staff.  Bill Ind as Director found creative ways for parishes to express their knowledge and outward looking service of their communities.  John Cole, who had been a diocesan missioner, promoted Robert Warren’s developing Missionary Congregation approach (which was then published in 1996) with its emphasis on being distinctive and engaged – rooted in both faith and locality.  Joan Butterfield, who had been adult education officer, championed lay development which was not just about eventual ministerial recruitment.  I, as the new Clergy Training Adviser, sought to help clergy see new ways of working.  Together we and others shared commonplaces such as ‘pilgrim’ being a better model than ‘family’ and about building ministry around the gifts available rather than simply around the needs perceived.

Last month a newly re-shaped diocesan discipleship development team was commissioned, with a member of the Bishop’s Staff leading it, and a new Continued Ministerial Development Officer also came into post.   I attended a training day which one of them put on last week – and the paragraph above is actually a result of my playing a version of Bingo when I got home (once I’d updated the Robert Warren reference to Healthy Churches Handbook published in 2012).  I was much less disturbed by the absence of corporate memory than by reflecting on the ways what I had once taught and now attempt to practice hasn’t really made the difference in our parish which I would have innocently predicted twenty years ago.

Anyway, the new team is now ready to lead the diocese’s Year of Discipleship 2015, with a Lent Course and a new parish Discipleship Development Programme as the flagship provision, and details are being known in places such as this training event.  I would so much love it if the Lent Course bore less similarity to the sorts of material with which we have actually been seeking to energise people’s faith and commitment in most recent Lents.  I would also so much love it if the Discipleship Development Programme didn’t appear to require us to go back to the beginning of the process in which we’ve been fully involved for a while (awareness of context, Mission Statement, Parish Day, immediate goal statement, and specific limited action plan).  I would really love it if instead someone could come alongside what we are doing and help us see its strengths and weaknesses and suggest genuine creative next steps rather than take us over what may actually be the same ground again.  But I’m repeatedly told to guard against being so negative.

New ground?

There was mention of a fresh element (at least to me) in the Lent Course – something about which I’ve been thinking a lot since.  Each participant is to be asked to score (literally, on a scale 1-10) six features of his or her own discipleship.  This is to be done both at the beginning and at the end of the course - and (the new feature to me) the cumulative picture produced is to be fed back to the Church Council to give the parish a strong indication of where scores are low thus indicating which areas of preaching and resourcing need tackling next. 

The rub could, of course, be exactly how one defines the constituent features of discipleship, mature faith and thus healthy churches.  In the same way the recent list in the Church Times of the one hundred most important Christian books is both an enormous help but also provokes cries of ‘how could you have [failed to] include that one?’, I’d find it very hard to draw up my own definitive list but very easy to suggest ‘improvements’ to someone else’s (which I hope is an indication of engagement rather than simply further evidence of my terminal negativity, but who knows).

The Course’s selection, we were told, will be: the level of factual knowledge and intellectual assent to faith; the level of public and private religious practice; and the level of impact this has on one’s religious experience and on one’s lifestyle.  So that this won’t look too abstract or obscure, specific examples are given helpfully in these six areas (each followed by an ‘etc’ presumably to indicate strongly that they are simply illustrative and not definitive): knowing facts about the Bible and Christian belief; believing that Jesus walked on water; going to church services and groups; praying and reading the Bible privately; having felt the presence of God and heard him speaking to you; and having faith affect your lifestyle, spending and voting.

I’d buy engaging with the Bible, praying and having faith affect lifestyle every time.  Nevertheless, I wonder whether not being sure about biblical miracle stories, not being member of a specific church group and not feeling one hears God speak directly are such sure indications of Christian immaturity or ill health?  Might a Church Council given a steer about low scores here be tempted to take remedial action to create certainty rather than confidence, more fellowship rather than deeper faith and emotion rather than joy?  Or perhaps I simply reveal why engendering church growth is so elusive for me and it is in fact precisely the provision of robust teaching, close shepherding and exuberant worship which my tradition lacks but which is actually required.

For what it is worth, I’d have put in bids explicitly to include feeling fundamentally secure even when faced with difficulty, doubt and failure, the practice of giving and receiving forgiveness, and the whole range from loving service of neighbour to working for justice and peace – confidence which is trusting rather than certain, faith honed as much in external as in internal encounter, and joy which is discovered to have been the surprising quiet surreptitious infection of God and God’s ways.

Meanwhile

The self-seeded ash which, especially in full leaf, obscured the view of the east end of St Nicolas’, and a branch of which may have recently been responsible for knocking the cross skew there, was felled last week.  At Matins this morning, I noticed from inside how crisp and clear the colours of the east window appear now it is not shaded from the outside (although I actually regret that I have been party to destroying an accidental phenomenon which used to entrance and feed me).  And outside the roofers had arrived to re-fix the cross - which they said to me looks like an easy task as it is held in place by a copper pipe which they may even have straightened by now.

Changing perspectives

I’ve enjoyed ballet music as light background music and I’ve watched the occasional ballet as a sometimes enjoyable spectacle but I’m not sure I’ve really seen the point.  Why would men want to dress from the waist down in the next thing to being naked but be heavily costumed from the waist up?  As undoubtedly clever balancing and revolving on one’s toes is, why would one want to watch variations on the same circus turn repeat through a whole evening?

But our latest 'Live Stream' experience was to see the Royal Opera House’s Manon including just enough commentary to alert us, for example, to the way a pas de deux between the principals in each act demonstrates their developing relationship.   And it did - from the ‘two people as a single body’ early on with the female principal apparently as light as a feather to her being convincing both as floppy as a rag doll and as a dead weight at the end.  I'm sold.

Saturday’s Independent had an interview with Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, once described in the Sun as ‘the most dangerous woman in Britain’ by a journalist who, following his subsequent sacking, now has a case against his former employer in the Court of Human Rights in which Liberty has intervened to support him.  ‘Everybody loves their own human rights’, she comments,‘it’s just other people’s that are problematic’.  Delicious. 

Today’s Grimsby Telegraph has an item about a speech by Rob Walsh, Chief Executive of North East Lincolnshire Council, which brings into sharp focus a recent post of mine.  ‘In two years’ time the council will have 40 per cent less money than two years ago... We spend 62 per cent of our money on protecting the vulnerable and safeguarding children... [and] I can’t see that amount changing...  Local authorities need to be the strategic enablers of growth... enabling and facilitating, not necessarily intervening.’

I’m neither sold on nor savouring this, but nevertheless it is really helpful to be so clear about it.  His main focus was on the infrastructure for economic  growth, especially with the potential of the renewable industry locally.  My focus is on waiting for the report due now on the implications of all this for the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector.

The place of the Nunc dimittis

The cross on the east gable of St Nicolas', Great Coates has suddenly started to topple, although it is held in place by a significant metal spike.  It is possible that it has taken a knock from a branch of a neighbouring tree - a tree we planned to fell in the next few weeks.  Ah, well.  The area around the east end of the church is now taped off.

Meanwhile, my rare 'turn' to preach at Cathedral Evensong came yesterday, at a service formally attended by members of the recently re-formed Lincolnshire branch of the Prayer Book Society.  I habitually preach from notes so any readers of this Blog are usually spared lazy posts which simply consist of my reproducing my sermons, but the Cathedral often asks for a full text so I had to type it up.  I wouldn't read much further if such a service is not your thing.

"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.  Amen.

There is a poem from about the year 1400 which only survives in a single manuscript, one held by the Library of this Cathedral; the opening prayer for this sermon is Simon Armitage’s translation of some early lines of that poem.

But, for a text, let us look to the words of this service in the Book of Common Prayer, the words of Luke 2.29: Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.

If I say that there is a decent word for Lord in the Greek New Testament but it is not the word which Luke uses here, that there is a decent word for servant in the Greek New Testament but it is not the word Luke uses here, and that there is a decent word for depart in the Greek New Testament but it is not the word which Luke uses here, I hope that is sufficiently intriguing.

But first, a step backwards.  I hope the members of the newly re-formed Lincolnshire branch of the Prayer Book Society and those very familiar with Prayer Book Evensong will forgive me for going over very familiar ground for just for a moment.

The early chapter of Luke’s Gospel includes three songs. 

First, in the mouth of Jesus’ pregnant mother, responding to the greeting of her cousin Elizabeth, there is the song beginning My soul doth magnify the Lord, known to us by its first word in Latin as Magnificat.

Second, in the mouth of John the Baptist’s father when his tongue was freed at the naming of his son, there is the song beginning Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, known to us by the Latin title Benedictus.

Thirdly, in the mouth of the prophet Simeon as he takes the new born Jesus in his arms, the song beginning Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace and known by its opening words Nunc Dimittis.

In the monasteries of developing Christendom these songs were sung every day.  A ‘Gospel Canticle’ was at the centre of each of the main services.

At Lauds, the nearest equivalent to our Morning Prayer, it was the Benedictus which was sung.  At Vespers, the nearest equivalent to our Evening Prayer, it was the Magnificat.  At Compline, what for us is Night Prayer, it was the Nunc Dimittis.  So the three songs became associated with prayer at certain times of day - and, given they were sung in Latin, this is how they came to be known by the Latin names we still use.

Part of the genius of Thomas Cranmer in creating what we know as Prayer Book Matins and Evensong was to re-use and re-shape this tradition.  He placed a reading from the Old Testament and a reading from the New Testament in both services.  And he placed a Canticle as a response to each.

So at Matins, the Old Testament lesson is followed by a translation of the non-biblical Latin hymn Te Deum, and the New Testament lesson by the Benedictus, while at Evensong, the Old Testament lesson is responded to by the Magnificat and the New Testament lesson by the Nunc Dimittis.

Cranmer stripped out all complexity and the vast majority of non-biblical material.  There is a non-biblical chorus in the service beginning Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, and this comes up several times in the opening responses, after Psalms and after Canticles.  But otherwise, through the first half of Evensong in particular all the others words are from scripture.

The opening sentences are from scripture.  The Psalms are scripture.  The readings are scripture.  And, as we have just seen, the Canticles are scripture.  It has been said that taking part in the service is like being ‘pickled in scripture’.

So, I’ve got there now, every day at Evensong, the reading from the New Testament is responded to by the words of the Nunc Dimittis beginning Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.

There is a decent word for Lord in the Greek New Testament but it is not the word which Luke uses here. 

The word for Lord is kurios – and those who take part in choral worship actually know this because it is one of few New Testament Greek words which are still sung regularly; kyrie eleison means Lord, have mercy.

But the word which Luke uses is despota – from which we get the word despot, which already gives a different flavour to it.  Where both kurios and despota are used together later in the New Testament the usual translation is Lord and Master.

There is a decent word for servant in the Greek New Testament but it is not the word Luke uses here.

The word for servant is diakonia – and this is the source of our word deacon for a sort of ordained servant.

But the word which Luke uses is doulon – which is the word for slave.

So less Lord and servant than Master and slave.

Then, although there are a range of decent words for departing, going and dying in the Greek New Testament, Luke uses a particular word. 

The Greek word luo is to untie: there are many things which the New Testament tells us are untied from donkeys and sandals to graveclothes and chains.

The word Luke uses here is an intense form of the word luo – apo-lueis.  It is the word for release - for release from prison, for divorce (because that is release from marriage) and for being set free.

So we have Master you are freeing your slave.  It is an act of manumission with which we are dealing.

If we were to try to put this into modern English - and I realise in present company that this is a dangerous thing to suggest – members of the Prayer Book Society might like to put their fingers in their ears and say ‘la, la, la’ to themselves for seven seconds...

If we were to try to put this into modern English it is almost true that the best form of words would be  Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!

So there may be a quite unexpected rhythm to Prayer Book Evensong – one which Cranmer can hardly have intended.

What at first might seem to be something to do with a depth of continuity – pickling in the sense of preserving – Nunc Dimittis conveying a flavour of beginning a well deserved retirement...

... may actually be about transformation – pickling in the sense of taking what would otherwise soon rot and changing it so that that it will remain useable – Nunc Dimittis conveying a flavour of being set free from bondage.

We are invited to hear the Old Testament lesson and then to respond with a recognition of the range of possibilities which this opens up - as the Magnificat makes it clear that the proud, mighty and rich must give way to the humble and hungry – I’ve not touched on that.

We are then invited to hear the New Testament lesson knowing that we will respond to it each and every time with a shout that all these possibilities are now actually opening up in front of us.

We are invited by the constant round of reading and singing scripture to be pickled in it so that our priorities and attitudes change.

We are invited by each and every specific reading of scripture to ask ourselves in what particular way this passage frees us and might free others.

Regular attentive participation in Prayer Book Evensong may be one of the most radical things in which it is possible to be involved."

Cast a cold eye

Seeing Calvary last week has sent me back to other literary and theological sources, which is an unusual feat for a film, and I’m not just picking up the title’s signal that we are dealing with hills at which good Christian sacrificial death takes place.  I apologise for a post which won’t make much sense to those who haven’t seen the film.  I’d like to know much more about how John Michael McDonagh, both screen writer and director, developed it.

 

For example, the cross between The Power and the Glory and Father Ted seems quite explicit.  The Brendan Gleeson priest could walk from Calvary into The Power and the Glory without breaking his stride, and his whiskey, his in-part-abandoned daughter and his fate are just some of the identity he would take from one to the other.  It is almost as if McDonagh was asking how The Power and the Glory might look in a post-abuse-scandal Ireland rather than an anti-Catholic Mexico.

The David Wilmot priest with whom he shares a Clergy House, however, could be parachuted into Father Ted without anyone spotting the join, so much so that I suspected that this was a knowing joke.  This priest is one of the stock characters presented as a foil for the Brendan Gleeson priest.  Others seemed to be there simply to represent everything from appetite for adultery and atheism to appetite for murder and post-abuse scandal suspicion - and then disappear again.

More than that, several appeared to be there to voice one aspect of the New Atheist / problem-of-suffering debate - in some cases before they simply disappeared again as well.

And still more than that, the second star of the film appeared to be Ben Bulben, the distinctive mountain never referred to but often visible as the action takes place under it.  Since Under Ben Bulben is Yeats’ final poem, was McDonagh picking up some of Yeats’ characters (‘Sing the peasantry, and then / Hard Riding country gentlemen, / The holiness of monks, and after / Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter’)?  Or his commission (‘Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk / What his great forefathers did. / Bring the soul of man to God, / Make him fill the cradles right’)?

This is probably only half of it, so it is all very exhausting before one tries to follow through other strands such as the suicide theme or ask ‘Who did kill the dog then?’.

The picture is a further one from Alton last week.

Alton: cross and texture

Not much blogging

During the siege of Leningrad some of the soldiers who had helped evacuate the artworks in the Hermitage to safety many mules inland were given guided tours of the paintings: the guides lovingly described them as the soldiers stood before the empty frames.

There has been too much going on in the last couple of weeks and I shall be in retreat for much of next week, so this picture from our trip to Blenheim a short while ago and this thought from a 'live streamed' film about the Hermitage more recently will have to do for the moment.

Family history again

Last week's Church Times turns out to include a photograph of my great-grandfather, the Revd G. Henry Mullins - third from left in the back row.  The graves of his parents, parents-in-law and four of his children have featured here recently - along with a picture of him with his family.

Brocklesby Church tomb details

Some Launde Abbey windows

Two in the Chapel and one from the bedroom in which I spent a night last week.

I've also been working on a prayer to use at a Methodist District Safeguarding Conference at which I am due to speak.  I used it at the beginning of a session at the Bishop's Council residential meeting, which is why we were at Launde.

O God, 
you know our stance is perilous, 
fragile as pottery: 
safeguard those we endanger 
as we carry your richness 
within our frailty.

It obviously draws on my recent attention to 2 Corinthians 4.7:

We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.  
 
It is also developed from a sixth century prayer (here in Latin, in a literal translation and in the Book of Common Prayer version):

Deus, qui nos in tantis periculis constitutos, pro humana scis fragilitate non posse subsistere: da nobis salutem mentis et corporis ut ea quae pro peccatis nostris patimur, te adjuvante, vincamus.

O God, you who know that we, set in such great dangers, are not able to hold out because of human fragility: grant us health of mind and body; so that, you helping us, we may vanquish those things which we suffer on account of our sins.

O God, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations.