Feast of Covfefe Transferred

Since today is Corpus Christi and the Feast of the Visitation, we're going to have to transfer the First Anniversary of Covfefe to Sunday.

The Festival of Faculty Reversal

A modest proposal.

The good people of the Trim Valley are celebrating their Faculty Reversal Day this week. A day when they can quietly undo everything their last vicar encouraged them to do to improve things.

Now the Trim Valley has a very relaxed attitude to clerical censure. Not for them panicking that a Diocesan Registrar might write a sarcastic letter.  The Mothers ' Union may declare  that they are cancelling Pagan rites. But, without making it to the church Magazine,  even now a pin-pierced wax effigy of the Archdeacon is being cast into a barbecue.

But what about other more law-abiding churches, struggling under the yoke of an over-enthusiastic incumbent with plans to change the world? Because you know how it is. There will have been a number of well-meaning changes from the go-ahead vicar. All of which will have been approved by the PCC but grumbled about behind his back. With three people leaving to go to a different church with every change.

I would like to suggest that every parish, in every vacancy, gets one special day. The Festival of Faculty Reversal. It would start at a nominal "sunset" - 6pm. And for 24 hours the parish would have the chance to do everything it could to put absolutely everything back to where it came from. No faculties, no snotty letters from the Registrar, no annoyed Archdeacons.

The timetable might be like this:

17:50 -  A reflection on Ecc 3: There is a time for bold new innovations, and a time for reversing them. A time to move with the times, and a time to defy them. A time to make a more accessible, flexible worship space, and a time to put the pews back.

18:00 - The Shifting of the Nave Altar down into the Crypt (where people will claim in 12 months' time that "it's always been there.")

19:00 - The Invention of the old Pricket Stand. Accompanying replacement of battery-operated tea lights with proper candles.

20:00 - Midnight: The Return of the Pews from sheds, pubs, and back rooms in the surrounding area.

Midnight: A meditation on Psalm 134: "Ye who work by night in the House of the Lord."

01:00 - 03:00 - Combustion of the Common Worship Books (a more recent liturgy, replacing the traditional Combustion of the ASB)

03:00 - 06:00 - Introduction of a load of random moth-eaten vestments, later to be claimed "that was given by my aunty. She'd turn in her grave if priests stopped wearing that beige fiddleback."

06:00 - 08:00 - Removal of the Drum Kit. Carefully timed because what's the chances of the drummer being up?

08:00 - 08:15 Morning Prayer (BCP, missing out the first bit)

08:15 - 11:00 -  Re-installation of the Rood Screen

11:00 - 13:00 - Jumble Sale

13:00 - 16:00 - Removal of the Modern Stained Glass

16:00 - 17:00 - Addition of the photo of the departed incumbent to the others in the vestry. Everyone may say "we thought he was great."

17:00 - 18:00 - re-laying of the battered old carpet that was pulled up as a trip, fire and hygiene hazard.

18:00 - Evening Prayer. Meditation on Job: "The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away".

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Trinity Sunday - Preaching Hints

I love Trinity Sunday. One of the best weeks of the Christian year. My chance to thoroughly lapse into tritheism for the day. Just chucking in the odd "one substance" to keep you out of Athanasian Jail. But for those struggling, here's a few hints and tips.

1. Any analogy you use will almost certainly be heretical. Since 50% of the congregation won't be listening, 25% are effectively Arminian and the other 25% are only there because their nan was married there in 1924, this may not be as much of a problem as you think.  But please not the eggs. 
2. Preach the text. It won't directly mention the Trinity so away you go.
3. Do not confuse grammatical and real-life gender. If you don't know what I'm trying to say - consider that a female cat does not gain testicles as it crosses the Rhine from Offenburg to Strasbourg.
4. Everyone's seen the St Patrick thing now.
5. Don't speculate about what angels and Doctors of the Church could not understand.
6. And certainly don't be sure about such things.
7. God is love. This is both true and worth saying. Don't break the spell by explaining it. And don't start talking about the "DNA of the Church".
8. Perichoresis does not mean what you think it does.
9. Keep it simple
10. The Athanasian Creed really is very long, isn't it? Personally I'm not convinced you have to get this exactly right to avoid Hell. But feel free to preach on that if you don't want a congregation next week. Unless you're a pastor in the Quivering Brethren.
11. If you don't understand quantum mechanics, don't use it as an analogy. Just because you don't understand two things doesn't make them alike. If you do understand quantum mechanics, remember nobody else does.
12. Feel free to use the Rublev "Hospitality of Abraham". But remember Fr Fred did last year. And every year since it was painted. And use a projector. If you try and use the real one, you'll get in trouble.
13. Modalism isn't a capital offence any more. But maybe it should be.
14. God is love. Did I mention that? 

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Liturgy for Queuing Behind the Person with the Giant Water Bottle at the Water Cooler

How long, O Lord?
How long must we wait in this queue
While this person who has the world's giantest drinking bottle
fills it with cold water?
After all the working day's only 8 hours long.
Or nine, if we're trying to impress the boss.

I mean, just how big is that bottle?
It is so wide that the seas in their boundlessness could not fill it.
If all the floodgates of heaven were opened
yet the bottle would only be filled slowly.
If the fountains of the deep were broken up
they would barely fill it to the "10am" line.

In vain we queue across the kitchen
Waiting for just one plastic cup of water.
The women from Merchandising pass out in the heat
and the men from IT sulk, and wish they had any communication skills
for then they could share with their friends how much their thirst bites
if they had any friends.

And now I am fifth in the queue.
And my tongue cleaveth to the roof of my mouth.
I pant like the hart that longeth for cooling streams
Even for the Wadi of Egypt or the Great River.
But behold what do I see?
You must be having a freaking giraffe.

For behold the bloke at the front
Now has pulled out a bottle the size of Nubia
The Queen of Sheba could sail on the surface of the water in that bottle.
The Leviathan could sport and play in its deeps.
If poured out, it could wash away the King of Egypt's armies.
You could drop a couple of Noah's Arks in it, and nobody would be any the wiser.

So I shall hie me to the chocolate machine
and pay a quid for a can of Tango.
The sugar sticketh to my teeth
and I don't like the taste of orange.
But at least I won't be crumpled on the floor of the office kitchen
Like Mandy from Accounts.

Selah

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Bonfire of the Details

In celebration of GDPR day, we'll be holding the Bonfire of the Details on Saturday at 4pm in the orchard.

There's a rumour we may accidentally lose a few invoices as well. Obviously that wouldn't be deliberate.

But. Could happen.

That Final-24-Hours Desperate GDPR email

We realise you've probably never heard of us.

And that's because we've just realised it's GDPR Day tomorrow. And we've got a load of emails we just found on a server. And it's SPAM TIME!

So please please please click that magic subscribe button. Or a kitten dies.

Not just an ugly kitten. A nice one.

And we'll be moderately horrible to a Shiba Inu. That's how we roll.

But stay with us and think of the fun we could have. The workshops you can get invited to. The exclusive cocktail parties in a skyscraper overlooking the Thames. The book offers.

Of course this is just the "general comms" button. In a moment you're gonna get another email just like this one, from the Marketing department. And another from the Education department.

And one from Envisioning. He sits in an office on his own. But he's building his own empire. And he's copied all our files. I know he has.

Then Brand Awareness. And Re-engineering.  They're all going to be rushing in with their own GDPR emails. I know. I've seen what's lined up on Mail Chimp.

But I got here first. So surely you'll want to stay in touch with me?

Only I get so lonely. It's just me in this office. I used to have a team. I loved having a team. But what with downsizing and outsourcing and decentralised cloud-based things, I'm on my own.

Yes, Envisioning is down the corridor. But he scares me a bit.

So please click on that button. Or the hamster gets it.

Did I mention the hamster? He's so fluffy and lovely and trusting.

And so innocently sitting on that shredder.

Go on. You know you want to stay in touch.

Yours in love

Bishop Bernie

You're not hovering over the "Spam" button are you?

Westworld: If you don't like it Should You Stop Watching It?

Yes.

There you go. Saved you reading hundreds of words.

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

A Good Wedding, and a Good Marriage

The BBC shouldn't publish items like this, should they?

"I’m 24 and I think marriage is pointless – and have done my whole life. It’s just an excuse to have a really expensive party."

Yeah, you see what you've done there - you've confused marriage with a wedding. A good marriage lasts 40 or 50 years and consists of growing together having made a commitment that fundamentally says you will continue to love one another - in the old, Christian sense of love - whether you're in love with one another or not, through thick and thin, through fallings out and making up and even if one half of the party decides watching 2 hours of  "Last of the Summer Wine" every evening is reasonable behaviour.

Whereas a good wedding is one that ends with the police being called after one new spouse's aunt has hit the other new spouse's father over the head with an empty Prosecco bottle because he won't dance to "Agadoo". A bridesmaid has broken her ankle hurdling over beer cases in the car park. The Ring-bearer has kicked the best man in the shins because he keeps calling him "Bilbo".  And the page boy has thrown up after eating his own weight in trifle and then spinning round in circles.

I don't quite see how the BBC allowed this article to be published. Because it's obvious the author doesn't know the difference between two very different things.

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

A Levelled Churchyard

If you can, imagine the scene as you pull into St Pancras Station, on the East Midlands tracks which run past - on the right - St Pancras Churchyard. The Churchyard that Hardy was partly responsible for flattening, and tidying up the gravestones of, as part of the work to create the station. Just a few gravestone are scattered around. Although these are the posh people's. Mary Wollestonecraft, for instance, has a monument here. Although in fact Mary herself isn't here. She's in Bournemouth. Her grandson moved her remains 60 years later.  But mostly, it's a flattened, mown-grass, tidy little patch.

And now you've got that in your mind I'd like to introduce you, if I have not done so before, to the poem "The Levelled Churchyard" by Thomas Hardy.

"O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones! 

"We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
'I know not which I am!' 

"The wicked people have annexed
The verses on the good;
A roaring drunkard sports the text
Teetotal Tommy should! 

"Where we are huddled none can trace,
And if our names remain,
They pave some path or porch or place
Where we have never lain! 

"There's not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final Trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some local strumpet! 

"From restorations of Thy fane,
From smoothings of Thy sward,
From zealous Churchmen's pick and plane
Deliver us O Lord! Amen!" 

1882.

The levelled churchyard is tidy. It's well-kept. It's low maintenance. It's a place where the dead have been erased for convenience and easy management. It'safe. It's sanitised. It's dead.

"The Hardy Tree"

The River Fleet used to flow through Old St Pancras churchyard. But it got smelly. And it used to flood when there were storms on Hampstead Heath. So they stuck it in a pipe. Nice and tidy.

The levelled churchyard for me is an analogy of where a church ends up, if its aim is the convenience and safety of its members. Nothing new, nothing unexpected, no unsafe gravestones toppling over, no trip hazards. But no unexpected wild flowers in a corner. No long grass where wildlife can hide. No change, no movement, no spirit, no adventure.

The young Church could have settled for a quiet, happy life. Jesus is alive. Isn't that great. Jesus goes back to heaven. Well, let's stay in the Upper Room, quietly praying. We're a disciple short. Let's get the committee structure right - and they elect Matthias. No need to do anything. Did Jesus say something about preaching the Gospel to the nations? Yeah. But that's a bit ambitious. Let's have another pray.

Then on the Day of Pentecost. 50 days after Passover. 50 days after Easter Sunday. They're quietly having their morning meeting. And fire falls from heaven and a rushing wind fills the room and they're blown out into the streets to praise God. And they're finding new languages to praise God - and as the commotion grows the people of the streets rush round and find that they're hearing God praised in their own languages.

And Peter stands up and tells them that this is because Jesus - who was dead - is alive. And these are the end times. Pentecost is the beginning of the end. And nothing is going to be the same again.

And the Church now will have all sorts of problems to deal with. Samaritans believing in Jesus. Gentiles being filled with the Holy Spirit. Persecution. Opposition. Martyrdom.

It ain't tidy. But it's where God is.

We can light our tea lights. Make a quiet space. Let people feel comfortable.

But the disciples had to come out of the Upper Room. Had to give up the safety of those closed doors. Had to share their experience of a Living Christ, fired into them by the Holy Spirit.

You know, all the images we use for the Holy Spirit involve movement. Water - flowing water, or springing up out of the ground. Rushing wind. Fire. You can listen to the still small voice of the Spirit - like Elijah did - but you'll still end up being pushed out to confront the world, to make plans, to go where the Spirit leads you.

Three English people - three different ways the Spirit worked.....

On this most royal of weekends, I was thinking about St Thomas Beckett. The King's side-kick, Chancellor of England, a great administrator. Henry II made him Archbishop of Canterbury, thinking that he'd have his own man keeping the Church in line. Instead Thomas seems to have had some kind of a conversion - saw the seriousness of his spiritual role - stood up for the Church and wouldn't let the King dip into the Church's money to fund his wars. Sure, Beckett had no diplomacy. He probably caused the crisis that led to his martyrdom. But when he took his faith seriously, he found a depth and meaning that went past the safety of being the King's man.

John Wesley - a good, safe Anglican. MA of Oxford University. But he couldn't rest in his family's clerical comfort. He looked for more. Found his heart "strangely warmed" by the story of salvation and turned the religious life of England upside down.

Christina Rossetti - quiet, posh, restrained, apparently a bit scared of the idea of marriage. And yet God gave her the ability to write for me the greatest, most theological of all Christmas carols, "In the Bleak Midwinter." Within a quiet, constrained life, then through terrible financial difficulties, yet through the Anglo Catholic tradition the Spirit gave her mind the restless power to produce so much beauty. The Spirit blows into all our ways.

As long as the Church is open to the Spirit we'll need new languages to tell out God's glory. New ways to know God's love. New excitement that Jesus is alive. It can be scary, messy, challenging. But it's the only reason why the Church exists - to be filled with the Spirit, and faithful to Christ.

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Quentin Letts Himself Down

I know of an Anglican priest who worked in a school as an RE teacher.  He taught children aged broadly 11-13. And he used to beat them up.

When they misbehaved. Not all the time. But children that age do misbehave. And if they know the teacher is actually incapable of controlling a class, and they might send him over the edge, they'll go for it.

He bashed someone's head on the desk while holding their hair. He pushed people's arms behind their back. And everybody knew about him. Everybody knew he was a danger to the children.

He taught there for about three years, before he had to leave.

After all, he was a teacher. And a priest. Highly respected, both those professions in those days. Who'd believe a snotty twelve-year-old with a patch of hair missing over a priest who was a teacher?

Which is why Quentin Letts really shouldn't have, should he?

Tried to be funny about child protection, I mean. In an article in the Mail.

Obviously, the headline is already wrong. Not all church volunteers are obliged to take an abuse prevention course. Certain are. Those who work with children and vulnerable adults. Clergy. Other people in a position of responsibility. Quentin Letts is apparently a "deputy churchwarden". I'm not sure if that's an official post in the C of E, But presumably it comes with the sort of responsibility where children and vulnerable adults may be involved. So safeguarding training seems reasonable.

Quentin Letts lives in Herefordshire, I presume. So I imagine he went to the Hereford Diocese training, which means his making the trainer anonymous is a bit pointless. He tells us that she is a former police officer - as if, in the eyes of the Mail, that could be a bad thing. (Where has the Mail sunk to?) He tells us that the training lasts 4 hours. Most diocesan websites say it's between 2.5 and 3 hours. You can be the judge of who's right there. Maybe the 4 hours included 90 minutes of Quentin Letts telling everyone what a waste of time it all is. I don't know. I wasn't there. Just guessing.

Incidentally, judging by the picture in the article, Quentin Letts attended his training in Wells Cathedral. That's a heck of a schlep from Herefordshire. Maybe that's why he was so grumpy.

Not a small church in Herefordshire

Apparently what was outrageous was that "Wendy" told them that they should be alert to the signs of abuse in their community. I'm not sure what is so wrong with that. Quentin Letts thinks that noticing a child turning up with signs of bruising, and considering it might be best to point this out to the authorities if it looks like a pattern of abuse, is akin to what the Stasi did.  Looking out for other people, protecting the vulnerable - isn't that the sort of healthy community self-protection that the Daily Mail would be in favour of? Each looking out for the other. And informing the police of any criminal behaviour might be going on. Best of good old Britain, I would say. Wouldn't the Mail?  Use it for any  other alleged or suspected crime  and see if it works - "I was running a  crack den and someone called the police. Is this 1984?"

Quentin is next outraged about the idea that an organisation that potentially has children visiting it, should adopt a safeguarding strategy. In fact, might even go so far as to pin up the "small print" on the church notice board.

Frankly, stuff the small print. Make the cover of the safeguarding strategy bright fluorescent green, with the title in 6" pink letters, and put that up on the notice board. It sends a simple message - we take the welfare of our children seriously, and if they are in this building they are protected and watched. You may be able by doing so to inform the parishioners of their responsibilities. You may even make a potential offender go away. They'll go somewhere else, sure. But hopefully that somewhere else is equally robust. I know which parish Quentin Letts has advertised as being not too bothered, however.

The centre of Quentin Letts's sheer wrongness, in my opinion, can be summed up in this statement:

"But others, in the politest way, started to bridle. The Austrian countess told me afterwards, rather perplexed: ‘I thought the English believed in minding their own business.’"

So listen. There are abusers in the Church, as there are in all walks of life. The Church, because it often has children associated with quires; uniformed organisations; as servers; in Sunday Club, is attractive to some abusers. So are other organisations that serve or involve children - sports clubs, schools, the Social Services. In the past all of these organisations, including the Church, have let children down. Some of this has been the misguided putting of the organisation above people. "You can't investigate that - it will give the Church a bad name." Well guess what. Not acting has given the Church a worse one.

But Quentin Letts cleverly links two ways to protect offenders into that little central whingette. The first is his (repeated) identification of one of his fellow delegates as an "Austrian Countess". The Austrians are by and large very nice people. But "Countess". Why is this important to Quentin? Because it suggests she is beyond reproach. A member of the aristocracy. And not one of those nasty British Lords who keep making the Government think about Brexit. A faded aristocracy from a republic. A well-meaning person who maintains noblesse oblige, or whatever that is in German. Why should such a genteel person be soiling her noble mind with such thoughts of vile behaviour? The sort of vile behaviour that could not imaginably happen, apparently, in the rolling acres of the rural backwaters of this green and pleasant land?

Well that's why assorted vicars and quire masters and other offenders have got away with it, isn't it? The "Father Knows Best" routine - also practised by evangelical church leaders in parts of the world. The vast vast majority of church leaders are of course innocent. But the ones who got away with it did it by assuming the mantle of holiness. "Old Fr Bernard? He could never do that. He's so nice and always talks to Nan about the War.  I couldn't believe it of him."

And then the classic old Mail "The English are the best" trope. "I thought the English believed in minding their own business."

Yes they often did. And that was the bloody problem, wasn't it? When Jimmy Savile's caravan was rocking with his latest teenage victim inside it - people minded their own business. When Rotherham schoolgirls were claiming rape, people minded their own business. When the NHS, the NSPCC and local churches noted signs of abuse in Victoria Climbié, they minded their own business.

 When "Wendy" tells them all that she believes no-one, as an ex-copper she's in about the right place. If someone comes to say they are being abused or suspect abuse, take it seriously. Report it. It's not your job to judge right or wrong. Not unless Quentin Letts is on the PCC with an Austrian countess, a centenarian, and Miss Marple. When someone tells you they definitely didn't do it, or when someone else tells you someone else isn't that kind of person - don't believe them. Again, it's not your job to believe them. It's not your job to investigate.

To summarise - using another paragraph from Quentin Letts:

"I know several PCC members in our diocese, including a churchwarden who is a pillar of the county, who intend to quit rather than succumb to any safeguarding course."

A "pillar of the county". Like Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall were pillars of the BBC. Like Bishop Peter Ball was a pillar of the church. Being a pillar of anything is irrelevant if you're innocent - which most pillars are. But if you're not, being a pillar of something is an opportunity. A chance to use your power against somebody who won't be be believed because they're that famously "loose" girl, that trouble-making boy, that child of a single mum, that person with special needs who could be making it up.

Why would you quit rather than succumb to a safeguarding course? Because you're too good? Because your pillarness of the county makes you immune to suspicion? Then your threat to quit is a symptom of the problem. Not a heroic reaction to oppression.

Full marks, really. Quentin Letts has written one of the worst, smuggest, most ignorant, wrongest columns I have ever read.

Oh, and never use the term "kiddy-fiddling". It makes the crime sound so much less important that "child sexual abuse", don't you think?

Oh and yes, Quentin Letts. You want an Archbishop to promote Christian values? I'd go right back to Jesus. He liked kids. And he wanted them protected. What do you want, exactly?

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Scare Your New Curate with "Writes of the Church"

As we near Petertide, you may be wondering what to buy as an ordination present for that soon-to-be-Curate or about-to-be-priest in your life.

You could buy them a wonderful serious book on their future ministry. But then they've had 2 or 3 years being serious. Or you could get them a Bible. But then who doesn't?

Alternatively, you could decide to get them a book to scare the wits out of them. In which case what you really want is "Writes of the Church" - a book to tell them what it's really all about.

If you don't like to support "The Man", can I recommend purchasing from The Bible Reading Fellowship shop. On the other hand, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you can get a copy at a very competitive prize from Amazon at the moment.

You may think that this was a bit late, and you should have got them the book ready for their BAP. And you may well be right. But still. Better late than never!

Anyway, thanks for this. And it'll go back to an advert at the bottom of the posts again.