Grandpa was also an Anglican priest, and discovered early on in his ministry that he had a gift of healing when he prayed with people. He went on to develop this gift, but I had no idea of the range, scope and meticulous care that went into his research.  (You can read the booklet he published, Redemptive Healing, on this blog).

There are pages – whole books, made by him, handwritten – of Bible references. Up until now I had not associated Anglo-Catholic priests (which was the preferred spirituality of both my father and Grandpa) with such serious Bible study, but Grandpa looked up every single reference in the whole Bible which had anything to do with healing, starting from Genesis and finishing with Revelation.

He also read the Church Fathers on the subject, and seems to have got some secretarial help in noting the page numbers in each author which dealt with healing. He must have become one of the foremost authorities in the country on the subject of Christian healing; or, as he called it, Redemptive healing.

It is not possible for me to keep every scrap of paper, precious though they are: most of his notes are written on the backs of other things. He was very poor for much of his life, and wartime made it even more important not to waste paper. Much of it is faded and crumbling, but it is with a great sense of privilege that I untied the string that he had fastened round bundles of letters and opened the books covered in faded scrawl.

I will post snippets from his papers from time to time. Everything he writes is touched with a radiant spirituality and love for Jesus which blesses me even this far down the years, and his friends were of similar calibre.

Here is an extract from a letter sent to him on the eve of his first ordination as a Deacon, dated Whitsuntide 1917. The writer is an Arthur Anderton, elderly at that point. He says:

‘(a) When a man is admitted to the Priesthood, he is only at the setting out and not (as actions so often seem to imply) at the summit of his ministry, and has very much to learn. Truth is many-sided, and there are Christian consciences and convictions other than one’s own, which ought to be scrupulously and reverently respected. The gift of the Holy Spirit does not make a man there and then a sort of infallible Pope, but is bestowed to be cherished and cultivated (2 Tim 1:6). We need humility more perhaps than anything else, in these self-assertive days.

(b) Hold The Faith (and hold it unflinchingly, of course) – but hold it in love. Is it not true that people are more readily won by consideration and sympathy than by intemperate contradiction?’

Advice Grandpa followed all his life.

 

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied,

‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God.

That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.’

A happy and peaceful new year to all my friends!

‘Sheep like stones
in silent fold,
snow like ash
settling cold.

Walk a world
bereft as dream,
birdless wood,
standing stream.

Bethlehem:
the children whine;
travellers
wait in line.

Tired men ring
the courtyard fire,
tethered mules
crowd the byre.

Stumble through
the cattle-pens;
overhead
roosting hens.

Spread with bales
the reeking floor;
birthing bed:
sacks and straw.

Trim the lamp;
bemused and numb,
watch and wait:
soon, a son.’

And talking of sons, mine is arriving this afternoon for Christmas. Yay!

(winter in Brasov)

I miss Romanian Christmases now:  they enjoy it all so much more simply than we do.  Carol singers are still very much in vogue, and every Christmas a choir would visit the block of flats where we lived and sing outside our door.  The majority of people would go to church and the Christmas services were packed, almost always in snow and ice (with no heating in the churches!)

It was a lovely time and made even more so by Romanian friends who always invited us to eat with them on Christmas Day.  We were never left on our own.

For a taste of a Romanian Christmas carol sung by a choir, with images of that beautiful country, try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvytYYn-i5Q

It is the Madrigal Choir singing ‘Oh what wonderful news’, a very popular carol.

Mary was visited by the angel to tell her that she was to be the mother of God’s Son. Her final response was ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.’

‘Mary is the archetype of such surrender. If Jesus is the symbol of the gift itself and how God gives the gift, then Mary is the symbol of how the gift is received and treasured. Whatever God gives is always experienced as totally unearned grace, and never as a salary, a reward or a merit badge. In fact, if you do experience it that way, it is not from God and will not expand your heart, mind or soul.

There is no mention of any moral worthiness, achievement or preparedness in Mary, only humble trust and surrender. She gives us all therefore, a bottomless hope in our own little state. If we ourselves try to “manage” God, or manufacture our own worthiness by any performance principle whatsoever, we will never bring forth the Christ, but only ourselves.

Mary does not manage, fix, control of “perform” in any way. She just says “yes!” and brings forth the abundance … This is really quite awesome.’

Some questions for reflection:
how can I receive instead of ‘managing’ life?
Does ‘managing’ give me a sense of importance?
How does receiving give me a sense of unimportance?
And what is importance, anyway????? 

From Richard Rohr, ‘Preparing for Christmas’, St Anthony Messenger Press 2008)

“One of the slogans on the posters and banners in front of St Paul’s Cathedral has been ‘What would Jesus do?’ This started life in the US some years ago, with people wearing wristbands with WWJD on them. It’s one of those things that looks wonderfully obvious, a quick way to the right answer.

Well, an archbishop is hardly going to suggest that it isn’t a good question to ask! All the same – the idea that it somehow provides a nice short cut to the truth needs a bit of challenging.

For a start, Christians don’t believe that Jesus is there just to give us a good example in every possible human situation. The Jesus we meet in the Bible is somebody who constantly asks awkward questions (especially questions addressed to religious people, moral people and rich people – all the sorts of people involved at St Paul’s…) rather than just giving us a model of perfect behaviour. Faced with what looks like a simple challenge about whether you pay taxes to the Roman Emperor or not, he famously shrugs it off, saying, ‘Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give God what belongs to God.’

In other words: don’t just imitate me: think. What’s the exact point at which paying taxes to the Empire gets in the way of serving God? What’s the exact point at which involvement in the ‘empire’ of capitalist economy compromises you fatally?

It may not be easy to answer this straight away, so don’t expect to become a hero of conscience overnight. And, just to rub it in, there are other places in the Bible where Jesus prods us to ask ourselves about our motives before we embark on grand gestures. Are we doing this for the sake of the real issue – or for an audience?

What matters about Jesus isn’t that he always tells us simply what to do. What matters is that he is there – claiming the right to probe our motives and stretch our minds. Faith isn’t about just his teaching or his good example but his whole life, his whole being. That whole life expresses a committed love that won’t go away whatever we do, and so has the right to ask the awkward questions: the questions posed to us by his birth in poverty and his childhood as a refugee – and the still bigger challenge of his apparent failure and his death.

And that challenge is: what if all your standards of success and failure are upside down? Christmas doesn’t commemorate the birth of a super-good person who shows us how to get it right every time, but the arrival in the world of someone who tells us that everything could be different.

WWJD? He’d first of all be there: sharing the risks, not just taking sides but steadily changing the entire atmosphere by the questions he asks of everybody involved, rich and poor, capitalist and protester and cleric.

Christmas tells us two big things. First, what changes things isn’t a formula for getting the right answer but a willingness to stop and let yourself be challenged right to the roots of your being. And second, we can find the courage to let this happen because we are let into the secret that we are in the hands of love, committed, unshakeable love.

I hope that something of that great secret will find its way into your celebrations this year. Happy Christmas!”

This year we had our Bishop come to give them a ‘wee word’ – he was great, charging up and down the aisles helping kids make christingles, and helping to wash up when the workers had a well-earned cup of tea. That’s the sort of Bish we need around here!

 

The kids were ever so good, and we have got the whole thing down to a fine art now, so it’s all organised well in advance. The best moment is when every christingle is lit, and 400 kids sit in silence. Magic.

 

 

I shall miss this next year!

(NB I have permission from the schools to publish these pictures)

A reporter for the Independent, Liam O’Brien, spent the night with the protesters. There are 250 tents pitched around the cathedral, and two (disgusting) portable toilets. Most people head home every other day to shower. Contrary to what has been reported – ie that most of the tents are empty at night because people go home to sleep – almost all the tents are occupied at night. The cathedral bells chime every 15 miutes which make sleep impossible. There is a lot of kindness and some homeless people are fetching up there as it is their best option. However, many protesters are employed, and are taking time off work in order to support the demonstration.

At first when the protesters set up camp, the cathedral authorities welcomed them and refused to allow the police to move them on. Occupy London is protesting against ‘a crisis we didn’t cause’ (Peter Vaughan, a volunteer for the occupation). ‘Libraries are closing, services are being cut, young people are unemployed because there was no proper regulation of the financial services …’

Canon Giles Fraser, who was Chancellor at the cathedral, is on record as saying ‘I remain firmly supportive of the right of people to protest peacefully … the Christian gospel is profoundly committed to the needs of the poor and the dispossessed. Financial justice is a gospel imperative.’

Well said, Giles. So far, so good.

But then the cathedral decided to close. Health and safety reasons were given: potential gas safety, compromised fire exits, danger of fire from naked flames, sanitation and food hygiene issues, ropes attached to trees, bollards and lamp posts possibly causing injury, etc.

However, many suspected that the real reasons lay elsewhere, and people were quick to point the finger at the cathedral authorities, accusing them of siding with the rich businessmen in the city. This has been strongly denied.

It left a lot of questions, even so. Was it really necessary to close the cathedral? The protesters were peaceful and had made sure there were pathways between the tents for people wanting to visit, and there was even a wedding held there last week. So what is really going on?

The crisis deepened this week when the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, and the Dean of the cathedral refused to rule out forcibly evicting the demonstrators. They own the land where the protesters are camped jointly with the City of London, and are in discussions with the City about a legal challenge to move them on.

Behind the scenes, the cathedral staff are divided. Giles Fraser has just resigned, telling the Independent “The red line for me is that I am not able to sanction the use of force in the name of the Church to move the protesters on …” One of the chaplains has resigned too, for the same reason.

A number of people are quick to claim that Jesus would have taken this side or that. Many would say that we are more likely to find Jesus in the camp with the protesters than in the cathedral with the religious institution. Although he respected the religious institution of his day, he also challenged it where he found hypocrisy, and appealed most to the poor and dispossessed. So they might have a point, except that Jesus welcomed everyone who was interested in his message, both rich and poor.

This event does however shine an unflattering light on the problem of the Church of England. It is there for both rich and poor, and should not be taking sides. It has a useful role in challenging what is wrong in society and speaking up for those who are not able or don’t know how to speak up for themselves. But what I think of as the ‘establishment’ side of the church, the unacceptable and unpleasant side, where people seem to be more anxious about keeping in with the rich and powerful than in standing up for what is right, is somehow emasculating us as a church.

It becomes a fussy maiden aunt, peering anxiously at the world through the net curtains of incense and ritual, welcoming you to tea and cake, meeting well-bred friends for bridge, but not getting out there in the cold and the wet and getting her hands dirty.

This always makes me angry. It betrays the hundreds of thousands of Anglicans all around the world and in this country, who are deeply involved with people and their problems at every level of society. Not only Anglicans – all sorts of Christians. I have never been an establishment sort of person, and have always run a mile from situations where this attitude prevails. I don’t want to know. I don’t care if it means that I won’t ‘get on’ in the church. I find that attitude nauseating. I want to follow a Lord who spent his time teaching people to love God and love their neighbour, and laid down his own life while doing so. For me, the church establishment is a very secondary allegiance.

The cathedral is named after St Paul, who was a tent-maker. Before his conversion, he was a leading member of the religious institution. What’s the betting we would now find him outside, giving advice on how to mend the tear in your tent, than inside, being prissy with the maiden aunts?