Ready to be anointed

 

On Sunday, I re-visited the hymn ‘Ye that know the Lord is gracious’.  A passage of scripture being read was the one on which it is based. 

The line ‘kings and priest by God anointed’ looked as if it would connect us to the Coronation – but this turned out to me being ‘too clever’ as the phrase isn’t there in the scriptural text.

I’d newly discovered that the hymn writer (Cyril Alington, Dean of Durham from the 1930s into the 1950s) had Lincolnshire roots.  His parents were married in Spilsby, where his mother was from.  His father was brought up at Candlesby Rectory and went to school at King Edward’s, Louth.

Alington actually came from a more privileged set than this might imply.   He married a peer’s daughter, was Headmaster of Eton before going to Durham, and had a daughter who married the Earl who went on to be Prime Minister as Sir Alec Douglas Home.

The hymn runs like a thread through my ministry.  I picked it for my ordination as a deacon, and have gone on picking it for each parish welcome and farewell service since.

I still appreciate much of it.  It begins with grace before our own efforts to build on it.  It finishes evocatively with us finally being ‘in tune with heaven’.

But I’m not sure I’d pick it now for a major service or as a deliberate thread through ministry.  It is just that little bit too stridently confident, speaks of a process which feels too easy. 

Can we simply claim that building on God’s grace by proclaim our story will mean the weary earth hears and the whole creation finds itself in tune with heaven?  Perhaps that is how the privileged ruling elite saw religious and political progress at the time of the last Coronation?

At the time of this Coronation, the middle of the road parts of the church are not as good at attracting general population (let alone the young).  It is mired in conflict about how inclusive it can be.  This week, it has another abuse story emerge (a story which again includes the way it has been mishandled). 

Meanwhile, mainstream England is aware our prosperity has been at the cost of planet, and that we have less shared will to tackle it than we need.  We find war in Europe can still happen, and human exasperated famine elsewhere.

So I explored the other two readings instead as equally reliable guides to our call to discipleship in the sort of church and world we inhabit.

It was a little bit of a shock to think I’ve read the first part of the Gospel in public more often than any other.  I’ve taken over a thousand funerals.  The passage beginning ‘in my father’s house are many mansions’ will have been read at hundreds of them.

Thomas is told there is a lot of room, and that he knows the way there.  ‘No I don’t’, he responds.

My much repeated ninety second take on that is ‘even one of Jesus closest followers wasn’t instantly reassured and had to be encouraged to trust beyond what he could see – probably like most of us at an occasion like this’.

Sunday’s reading went on to have Philip respond in a similar way.  ‘Stop all this poetic speech - just show us the Father, that would be all we need’, he says to Jesus. 

Jesus’ response is ‘Have I been with you all this time and you still don’t get it?’.  I can hear a teacher in my ear ‘Mullins, we’ve gone over this for half a term, you really must concentrate’.

So perhaps a really great twenty first century hymn would need to capture something of that.  We haven’t fully grasped it.  We’re not possessors of the answers.  We’re pilgrims stumbling along behind Jesus’ promises, trying to keep up.  A bit like the first apostles.

The first reading was from Acts, a book which does explode with confidence and stories of the growing church.  Stephen is one of those recruited to cope with the extra workload.

Immediately before our passage, he is on trial and makes a long even provocative speech – telling the tidings of his new birth, of a new creation.  The result is that he is battered to death with rocks.

It feels for all the world like Vladimir Kara Murza.  Russian opposition leader influential in getting foreign sanctions against individuals in Putin’s government.  A Human Rights Prize winner who has somehow survived being repeatedly poisoned.

Three weeks ago he was sentenced to 25 years hard labour, something he is hardly expected to survive.  He too made a defiant and equally provocative speech at his trial.

Our country will open its eyes and shudder when it realises the crimes committed in its name... I know the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate, when those who unleashed this war, rather than those who tried to stop it, will be recognised as criminals... This day will come inevitably as spring follows on from the coldest winter.

So perhaps a really great twenty first century hymn would need to capture something of that too.  Those who have been most conspicuous in articulating the challenge of Christian living have often paid the highest price for it.  A bit like the first martyr Stephen. 

And a bit like the ten twentieth century Christian martyrs whose statues stand above the west door of Westminster Abbey – the biggest change to the building since the last Coronation.

Perhaps it is simply a gift to me that we have all three readings lined up together, three quite distinct images of Christian discipleship.  Tentative and confident.  Confused and clear. Deeply compromised and with consistent integrity.  Disastrously persecuted and well rewarded.

And we can sing everything from eighteenth and nineteenth century doggerel which smuggles in inadequate theology and voice newly composed insight which echoes heaven itself.

As I Peter 2.5,9 and Cyril Alington almost say on a Coronation weekend:

We are all living building blocks, interlocking with Christ and each other, placed by God in a specific time and place.   We are all kings and queens, divested of any pretensions to receive God anointing.  Can we do anything other than try to explore and live out his grace, trusting him to deal with the messes and successes which result?

The picture is of the Roman memorial stone reused as the foundation stone of St Mary-le-Wigford in Lincoln.

Forest Stations

 The picture is the Dalyson tomb in Laughton Parish Church, placed there by Judge Dalyson (whose grave site in the Cathedral illustrated the last post) in memory of his father and oldest brother (who had died within a short time of each other); he repurposed the brass of an earlier Dalyson for the top of the tomb.

I wasn't able to spend time with the Forest Stations in the Cathedral on Good Friday yesterday (it was closed to those not attending its services) so I spent time with them on-line instead, in the end shaping this:

I, II and III   Condemned, weighed down and collapsing

‘Relics of the true cross show it was made of ash, beech, cedar...’ (Twentieth Century satire)

Here are lacerations of makore, padouk, purpleheart, sabrianne, sapele, sycamore and walnut.

Occupying power capitulates,

loosing every mob’s rule of lynching lust,

jostling, crushing hope beneath the cross beam.

 

IV, V and VI   Mary, Simon and Veronica

‘Felled from the forest’s edge, ripped up from my roots, I saw his hasten eagerly’ (Anglo-Saxon poem)

Here vero-icon true-image is English sweet chestnut.

Yet love still echos through each fleeting grasp,

hope is hinted as each embrace shifts weight,

truth is imaged in each engaging myth.

 

VII, VIII and IX   Collapsing, weeping and collapsing

‘If they do these things when the tree is green, what will they do when it is brown?’ (Biblical text)

Here the guards are Indonesian ebony.

Until, a corner turned, the stake in view,

foreboding and playing is for ourselves,

while he, still jeered, is falling at the last.

 

X, XI and XII  Stripped, nailed and dead

‘At the last through wood and nails’ (Twentieth Century prayer)

Here the background to death is English oak split.

Everything he stood for is stripped right back,

all that remains stretched out, strained and displayed,

all that is crafted faulted and fractured.

 

XIII, XIV and XV  Taken, buried and gone

‘Beautiful tree, each crimsoned bough shouts your shame is gone’ (Sixth Century hymn)

Here is a single final piece of English elm.

Until there is only a dead weight left

quickly to be wrapped and hidden away,

an absence radiating a future.

Revisiting Ann Askew

 

It is twenty-four years ago (when working on a new calendar of saints for the diocese of Lincoln, being prepared to match the introduction of the national Common Worship services) that I last read about Ann in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.  I’ve just re-read all he says about her, much based on her own record of her interrogations.

A friend to whom I mentioned this knew who she was, but hadn’t realised she came from northern Lincolnshire (Stallingborough and South Kelsey).  The one thing which stuck in her memory was the damage done to her on the rack had been so severe it meant she had to be carried in a chair to the stake at which she was to be burnt.

The Constable had refused to go any further, so the Government ministers inexpertly turned the screws themselves.  He ran from the Tower to the King to report what was happening and gain pardon for disobeying the ministers.  He saved himself, but not her.

I’ve rediscovered that she was being racked after she had already been condemned.  She was caught up in something much bigger - they wanted her to name the members of the household of the Queen (Catherine Parr) who were of 'her sect’ so they could move against them and her.

I’ve also rediscovered her confident polemic: if nothing of bread is left after consecration, she says, communion hosts would not grow mouldy if stored for months, and her God does not grow mouldy.  And all her other witty, clever parrying of trick questions.

I’ve been reminded how young she was: just fifteen at the time of her forced marriage; just twenty-five at her execution.

My reading came because last week the University here had a talk to launch an American novel about her (Prize for the Fire, Rilla Askew) which has been an impressive read this week.

And yesterday, a local drama group presented her story in a clever and interesting manner as well.

At the events, a question came as to why she was willing to die for a fine point of theology.  Another about who might play her if the book was filmed.

It doesn’t feel to me that her opinion about the nature of the Eucharist was in itself the one determinative thing for her.  Instead, it was the one things on which her accusers chose to focus.

She had access to an English Bible.  She found there that a lot of what she had been taught by those in power wasn’t actually true.  A conspiracy theorist couldn’t be more determined not to be contradicted as a result. 

Her forced marriage, the restrictions on her access to the Bible text, the threat of being burnt (‘I don’t find that Jesus or his disciples burnt those who disagreed with them’ she tells her accusers) were all things against which she then spoke out.

So I thought Greta Thunberg might be a good model.  Fiesty (the American author used the word ‘sassy’ several times when talking of Ann), caught up in a message those in power fatally fail to take seriously, able to speak both to crowds and to the United Nations assembly.

Then I thought Malala Yousafzai might be an even better model.  Or any girl in Afghanistan today saying ‘the plain reading of the Qu’ran doesn’t seem to me to justify the restrictions power imposes in my choices about marriage, my access to education or on the nature of my modest dressing in public’ and going on saying so despite the possibility of death for doing so.

Which is a reminder that we've been the Taliban. 

Finally, and much less importantly, I’ve noticed how few gentry families there were in northern Lincolnshire in Henrician times who held the manors, got embroiled in the Lincolnshire Rising, went to Parliament, acted as Sheriff, and so on.  So it seems inevitable that they all seemed to be related to one another.

My past work was on the family of Christopher Hildyard who held Little Coates at about this time.  I find one of Ann’s grandmothers was a Hildyard, aunt of that Christopher.

My present work is on the family of the Roger Dalyson who was Precentor of the Cathedral when William Byrd was appointed, and the site of the burial of whose nephew William (a judge) is marked on the floor there.  After William’s death his widow quickly married Ann’s brother Francis.

I want to go back again to the superb monuments of the St Paul family in Snarford church, especially Thomas and Faith St Paul lying in state in what looks for all the world like an six poster bed.  It seems extraordinary that this married couple, almost cousins, had mothers who were Ann’s sister in one case and step-sister in the other. 

And it is even more extraordinary to find this couple's son's monument near by, with his wife, who is then also represented with her second husband Richard Rich, grandson of the Richard Rich who tortured her when the Constable of the Tower refused to continue doing so.

Democratic deficits?

 

 

I remember discovering that the Duke of Wellington feared that passing the Reform Bill in the 1830s would reduce the country to ‘a mere democracy’.  For him, I suspect, ‘people-power’ sounded more like ‘mob-rule’ than ‘consensual-decisions’.  The Reform Act did not give any say to most of the people anyway. 

And, even with the universal adult suffrage which has developed since, we have a Government for which only 29% of registered voters turned out to support being able to pass legislation to require a Trade Union to act on a particular matter only if they can muster the support of more than 50% of its eligible voters.

There is the ‘West Lothian question’ about MPs from areas of the UK outside England with forms of devolved Government voting on matters which only apply within England where no devolved assembly exists.  There is the unnicknamed question of Scotland having decisions made about its non-devolved issues by a national Government which is represented by only six of its seventy-seven MPs.

It is in Northern Ireland where the term democratic deficit is in particular use at the moment.  It applies both to the present non-operation of devolved Government and to the extent to which our trading partners can apply their own law about such trade.  But there are other issues which are more overlooked.

From a Unionist point of view, a single Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) used to be the one public voice until some who feared it was compromising broke away to form the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which grew to outstrip its support. 

Once the DUP was perceived by some to be compromised by its level of power sharing, a new Traditional Unionist Vote option began to appear on ballot papers.  In the 2017 Assembly elections the DUP had 28% of the votes and TUV 3%.  In 2022 the DUP had 21% and TUV 8%. 

The DUP’s rigorous position on the Windsor Framework can only be understood with this in mind.  If it is seem to compromise further it fears that it will simply lose power for doing so.  Few in England perceive this.

From a Nationalist point of view, there is a different perception of a democratic deficit.  Those who are elected to represent Sinn Fein (SF) in the Assembly are able to take their seats there by making a comprehensive declaration about operating democratically. 

Those elected to do so in the UK Parliament are not – they must instead declare personal loyalty to the Crown.  Few in England are aware that seven UK constituencies have an MP who has not taken up his or her seat in part for this reason.

Most English voters might well feel instinctively that the DUP is culpable in sabotaging the operation of devolved Government, and that it is SF’s look out if their constituents are not represented by a voting MP at Westminster.  But the dynamic needs to be understood.

Leaving Northern Ireland aside, I went to a meeting of those in this City who want dealing with the climate crisis to be a much higher priority for the Government.  It was sold as being a place at which we’d hear about new possibilities, but actually it was merely support for a major march on Parliament which was being solicited.

Before we had finished, discussion was running into the sand about unlikely possibilities sucha s proportional representation and people’s assemblies.  What I really heard was people, some of who had abandoned extreme Extinction Rebellion tactics, simply desperate at not feeling they had a way to have their voices effectively heard.

Afterwards I engaged in a thought experiment imagining I was, say, a nurse who wanted his or her serious loss of living standards to be taken seriously, and the peril in which it put patients. 

I could vote – although, not having money for a car and a foreign holiday, I’d allowed my Driving Licence and Passport to expire, so new legislation means I’d be turned away if I simply turned up with my poll card and NHS identity card.

I could protest publically – although if I did so in a way which might upset a couple of people I could now be in trouble with the law.

I could go on strike – although this may soon be made illegal for me.

I could get desperate and do something dramatic just like the Suffragettes who chaining themselves to fences – although I might soon find myself electronically tagged and restricted as a result.

And the biggest democratic deficit of all when any well meaning  rebalancing of any of this shifts things in unexpectedly more difficult ways?  It is probably that a large proportion of the ‘demos’ don’t try to engage with the ‘kratia’ at all.  If it was mob rule the Duke of Wellington feared, he can rest easy.

Meanwhile, the photo is from a walk with a friend at Moor Farm Nature reserve near Woodhall Spa.

Displaced clergy

 

The settled policy of this and other dioceses is that a newly retired priest should not be given ‘permission to officiate’ for six months.

The idea is, I’m sure, that facing the reality of a loss of role, status and utility should be fully experienced rather than softened or denied by a rapid accumulation of things like liturgical leadership and feeling useful.

Those of us who may have had even as much as forty years in which our only experience of Christian community has been one of influence and visibility (to put it no more strongly) could well be a liability suddenly disturbing the quiet power dynamics and/or collaborative structures of a new place.

‘I am not sure who I am,’ I’ve written to a few friends, ‘so it must be working’. 

I find I remain hungry for priesthood (which is a good discovery, I think) and deeply suspicious that I’ll simply revert to type when the six month sabbatical comes to an end rather than become freshly servantful (which is a troubling discovery, I realise).

Offers have already come for me to have Canon Emeritus status, to join the Trustees of a local educational charity, potentially to assist in some diocesan training, and to begin to develop a provisional agreement about a minimum level of ministry in the Parish Church I now attend – and I am still only four and a half months in.

With some time on my hands I have found that exploring and writing up things that interest me has come to the fore.  Just some of this (parts of my relating to the neighbouring art gallery and museum, exploring local countryside, and making use of my Ancestry subscription) have made it into this Blog.

And now I’m spending time with stories of other displaced clergy – those given small pensions as they were ejected from dissolved monasteries in the Sixteenth Century.  It is research about one in particular which started me off, but it is others who are the focus of my attention now.

A 1554 Exchequer survey of all those being paid these pensions is the rich seam.

Canons of Thornton Abbey / College (which interested me so much when I lived nearby) pop up as the incumbents of neighbouring parishes at Barrow, South Ferriby and Wooton, and only a little further away at Louth, Welton and Withcall. 

The displaced Dean of Thornton himself had a pension of £50 p.a., and was bringing in another £37 p.a. as the Rector of both Haxey and Laceby, where he was paying former Thornton colleagues just £6 (a sort of minimum liveable wage) and £1 6s 8d (one and a third pounds, or one pound and half a mark) to act as working curates on the ground.

But it is the smaller stories which are most touching.

Two north Lincolnshire pensioners were married to each other.  Anne Castleforth was the former Prioress of tiny Gokewell Priory near Broughton (the Priory site is on the edge of the Scunthorpe Steelworks), and has £4 p.a.  Robert Stayton had been the priest of a chantry at Althorpe eight miles away, and has £2 9s 6d.  He was now serving as the Curate of Broughton itself for £6. 

William East had been priest of a guild in Louth now with a pension of just £1 p.a.  He was ‘celebrating from time to time’ (covering services in local churches) for fees of about £4 p.a., and working as a weaver. 

John Brampton had been a monk at Bardney Abbey now with a pension of £1 6s 8d.  He was married and ‘said not to be in holy orders and working as a tanner’. 

Meanwhile, having mentioned the Amarna Letters in an earlier post, the picture is of one of them in the British Museum which I searched out when in London overnight a few weeks ago.