Extreme Wisdom

I'm reading an interesting book by an Australian song writer and palliative care worker at the moment. Bronnie Ware has written an unusual reflection on her life as a creative artist and a carer of the dying. Called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying its subtitle gives a clue about the real thrust of the book - A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. In an individual blend of autobiography and narrative from the lives of her patients, Bronnie shows how living with those who are dying has brought unique insight and healing to her own life. The most common regrets expressed by the dying, she says, are to do with being not yourself, working too hard to the exclusion of other things and not staying in touch with friends and family. Quality of relationship and expression of whatever is most important to you lie at the heart of being able to accept your own death with equanimity. Simplicity, being present in the moment, and receiving as well as giving are three key values which she explores through many telling illustrations from her own life as well as through the experience of her patients. Often these patients shared their wisdom with her in the express hope that she would allow it to change her own life and also share it with others. To die knowing that you have passed something significant on, even just to one other person, can be very healing. 

I found this book particularly powerful because the author writes about many conversations from the final days of people's lives. It's always seemed to me that life is incomplete without the stories and perspectives of the dying - it is perhaps only at the very end of our lives, if we're given the grace of time to reflect, that we finally understand what is truly important and what is of little value. As the book shows, profound learning and real changes can occur even when there is little time left. 

Compassion is the golden key which unlocked much of the wisdom in this book. Displayed over time it melts the hardest hearts and allows people to change no matter what they have done or how harshly they judge themselves and others. 'Life is over so quickly…appreciate the time you have left by valuing all of the gifts in your life and that includes, especially, your own amazing self.'

The Sunday Times bills it as 'heart-rending' but I would say 'heart warming, life giving and full of hope.'

Published Hay House UK Ltd, London 2011

Bronnie Ware is a Singer, song writer and writer as well as a palliative care worker. To see more of her work visit  www.bronnieware.com

Music At Midnight: A Review

While on holiday I read one of the most absorbing books I've come across for a while, John Drury's biography of George Herbert entitled Music At Midnight. It's much more than a biography as it traces Herbert's development as theologian, poet and pastor in great depth and introduces the reader to a wide range of verse from Herbert's pen and from other contemporary sources. 

Herbert's brother, Edward, wrote, "Retire into yourself and enter into your own faculties; you will find there God, virtue and the other universal truths' (De Veritate). Drury remarked that this was a more congenial stance for him than for his younger brother, George. Starting from his childhood, Herbert's life comes across as a struggle to hold in balance the poetic, academic, political and pastoral. He was one of those individuals as much shaped by outward exploration as by inward reflection. Being of a similar temperament, I found the book fascinating.  Here is a study of spiritual development that depends on outward engagement exercised in parallel with withdrawal into the inner depths of the soul. A striking example of this occurs in the story that gives rise to the book's title. The story comes from from Herbert's time as a priest in Bemerton when he used regularly to walk into Salisbury to play music with a group of friends before choral Evensong. One day, he encountered a man whose horse had fallen under its load. He stopped, took off his coat and helped to unload and reload the wagon, getting the horse and its master under way once more. On his arrival in Salisbury his friends remarked on his unusually dirty and dishevelled appearance (Hebert was normally very neat and known for unusual cleanliness for his time.) His response was that recalling what he had done that afternoon would prove 'music at midnight…for if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, I am sure that I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practise what I pray for.'

So often externals such as pastoral involvement appear to distract us from the interior work of the soul; attentiveness and creativity diminish, and the impulse that then drives one inwards leads to depression and loss of true perspective rather than illumination. In fact the spiritual life consists in the challenge to allow time and space for both orientations. Herbert's life is the journey of a man struggling to find this balance and, fortunately for us, laying the struggle bare in his poetry so that all can see. In these pages we meet a sojourner of enormous breadth of interest and complexity of character. During his all too short lifetime, Herbert manoeuvred himself into a prestigious academic position he coveted, made political speeches, grew tired of the academic life, agonised over whether to be ordained, composed and played music, sympathised with the pastoral concerns of his family and parishioners, preached sermons 'precisely targeted' at various groups in his congregations and wrote poetry that has the ring of 'lived theology' and makes the English language sing in the service of the subjects he wrote about - 'words of the right sort to ask about the Divine.' He prefigures Wordsworth in using everyday, sensual language to conjure vividly abstract experiences and ideas.

Joy, delight, disappointment and grief are central to Herbert's experience of the Divine and these emotional forces shape his spirituality. His masterful ability in manipulating poetic form and rhetoric serve his lifelong exploration of what it is to be human in relation to the Divine in ever more revealing ways.
Drury provides fascinating analyses of many of Herbert's poems. The catechetic echo-poem Heaven (p.335) and The Pulley (p.349) are two examples of poems that express powerfully the paradoxes of faith and soul's struggle to come to terms with them. As Drury points out The Pulley contains the 'co-ordinates and contradictions of experience' while recognising the psychological truth that depression and 'uplift' can be connected through the pressure of the restless creativity implanted in the creature by the Creator. In this poem we meet again Augustine's intimation of the true state of a human soul - 'Thou hast made us for Thyself…and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.'

Being someone who finds profound expression of the soul's longing for the Divine through making as well as listening to music, I was intrigued by the final chapter of the book 'Music At the Close'. Although in some ways the chapter initially feels a bit like an add-on, there are revealing allusions to Herbert the musician throughout the book. How sad it is that his compositions have not survived. He was a friend of the composer Thomas Tomkins, so we might imagine that his music sounded not dissimilar in style. Apparently, Herbert rose from his sick bed the Sunday before he died to play his lutes and sing. As the chapter progresses, we discover how profoundly the intertwining of musical and poetic insight provided Herbert with some of the metaphors that give his poetry such power to fathom the depths of spiritual truth. From his earliest youth where, in his mother's home, he met the likes of William Byrd and John Bull, music had always been at the heart of his life and he was an accomplished musician. This passion reflects what we find in his poetry, namely a desire to express through the material what lies beyond the material and is 'heavenly in origin and distinction'. Music, perhaps even more, certainly as much as poetry, was for Herbert 'a comforting accompaniment to the soul in transit from earth to heaven, waiting at the threshold of death.' John Drury suggests that, in his music-making as in his poetry, Herbert wanted to be music with all his being.'

Herbert's God, his Master, is the central love of his life. Throughout his poetry he is realistic in describing the nature of this love and the relationship in which he found himself caught up and absorbed. This love causes him pain and longing as often as it gives him pleasure and delight. The object of Divine love feels cast out and struck down, bewildered and pulled about, caught between the sweetness (a favourite word of Herbert's) of welcoming hospitality and the searing pain of fiery judgement (or often self-judgement.) But ultimately this mysterious, sweet love of the Lord wins through because it is unchanging and the poet realises that only in the reciprocity of love exchanged between the Lord and the believer lies the way of life.

This is an un-put-down-able book if you love God and poetry. It is a book to be highly recommended to the jaded spirit. The splurges of sun tan oil and sloshes of chlorinated water now adorning my copy bear testimony to this. It brings you into the presence of your own soul's mortality and the Divine outreach. 

Music At Midnight; the Life and Poetry of George Herbert is by John Drury and published by Allen Lane 2013 and Penguin 2014

Women Bishops, Malala and Mary Robinson

On the day that Ban Ki-moon appoints Mary Robinson as the special Envoy for Climate Change and Malala celebrates her birthday by reminding us 'let's show the world that we are stronger than violence', it's great, at last, to see the vote to allow women bishops by the Church of England's Synod. An amazing amount of energy has gone into this debate over the past 20 years. 

To me, it's all astonishing! I was brought up in a family where my grandmother was a deacon in the Congregational church and my mother was an elder in the URC. There were women ministers in the Pentecostal churches of my youth and teenage years, many of them wonderful characters, ministering in ways that brought hope in tough, tough places. In my extended family, we had women philosophers, doctors and musicians. During my childhood I met the most amazing Ghanaian women leaders and business women who were friends of my parents. It was the Church in Wales and Church of England that introduced me, as an impressionable young woman, to the idea that women could not be teachers and leaders. This has been one of the most psychologically damaging influences in my life. Yet I also found the catholic and reformed theology of the Anglican and Lutheran churches life-giving. While posing many unanswerable questions about the nature of a God who, I instinctively felt, encompassed the feminine as well as the masculine, it spoke profoundly of relationship between the Divine and human beings in ways that helped me to live my life as a young woman involved in the care of the dying. Despite having great respect for Roman, Coptic and Orthodox theology, if you are young and female, it's really quite difficult to understand how preaching, sacramental theology (especially around marriage) and governance that come exclusively from a male perspective are life-giving and transforming. My patristics tutor  once countered such a question with 'well there's always Mary'. Yes, Mary is a wonderfully inspirational character but about as ambiguous as it is possible to be, if you are a woman. The Gospel ('good news') is about finding life in the most unexpected places and welcoming transformation; it seems to me that the inclusion of women in the whole life of the church is key to this becoming a reality for all women in both society and church.

In my early twenties, I used to organise ecumenical summer play schemes for children; I have very fond memories of summers spent in Aberystwyth, Bermondsey and Byker (Newcastle). Always, we worked with the local Roman Catholic priests who, even in those days, used to say, 'the Roman Catholic Church will ordain women one day.' Some of them graciously invited us to participate at Mass. As a young lecturer for the Cambridge Theological Federation, I was truly inspired by a female Orthodox colleague who, I think, struggled greatly with the attitude of her own church to her as a teacher yet clung on to the belief that women had an, as yet, unsung and significant contribution to make to Orthodox theology, digging out the riches that are already there. Over the years, working as a priest, I have had a rich partnership with Jewish colleagues, some of whom have been amazing women Rabbis and others of whom have helped me unlock the strong but often unrecognised vein of female insight that runs throughout the Hebrew scriptures.

For younger people who look to the future of the churches, the Church of England's decision today opens up new potential. Many of us will be truly glad that our daughters as well as our sons will now grow up expecting spiritual and theological leadership to come from women as well as men. We will celebrate the healthier balance that brings; given the shocking revelations about sexual abuse in society and in the churches it can only be healthier that, in future, there will be bi-gendered leadership.

I know from personal contacts and experience that the fact the Church of England has taken this step will be a tremendous encouragement to women in other parts of the world. It is really important that we acknowledge the lead taken by the churches in Aotearoa, Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, Canada. South Africa, USA, South India, Cuba and Ireland. And equally important that we empower and support women in churches where they find themselves powerless, uneducated, voiceless or constrained by customs that undermine health, well being or ability to earn.

For older women, it's important that we don't resort to either bitterness at lost opportunities or an attitude that wants to control what happens next. Let the Spirit be free! My mother never felt at home or truly welcome in the Anglican Church because of its refusal to ordain women; today she would have joined my father (an Anglican) and me in celebration. And probably she would have said, 'What took you so long?'! But I know she would have thought, 'What's important is that the leadership of the church is strengthened to communicate and encourage everyone in discipleship of Christ.' 

Today, I am just delighted that we have taken one small step in the direction of marking women's experience, voices and contribution to theological, social and political life. 




    

Lord Falconer's Bill

Unusually, in the assisted dying debate surrounding Lord Falconer's Bill (to be debated on July 18th 2014), I find myself lining up with those who take a more conservative view. Since this is not my natural territory, I've been reading contributions to the debate all the more avidly. I'm trying to put my finger on the source of the unease I feel about the Bill.

For one thing, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of evidence-based research supporting the need to change the law. Rather there is mainly anecdotal evidence. I'm cautious about any argument that's based solely on individual experience, especially where that experience is based on just one case. It's possible to find heart wrenching stories that both support and undermine the approach being taken in the Bill. Those who work with people who are dying can think of cases where there was suffering they would have done anything in their legally constituted power to alleviate. But they've also looked after patients who have changed their minds about a clearly stated desire to die or to not be resuscitated as the circumstances of their illness have changed. Others have relatives who, sadly, make them feel that they are a burden with the utter despair that accompanies that. Still others are in a condition, in their last 6 months, that  makes being faced with choices about whether or when to end their life simply unendurable. Choice around the point of death can be deeply distressing as well as liberating. Asking a person to choose whether to control their own death can be experienced as unnatural and very disturbing. Not all patients have supportive families and some families will be deeply conflicted and divided in such circumstances, with the result that irreconcilable demands are placed on vulnerable patients. 

There's talk about the Swiss, Dutch and Belgian contexts where, despite assisted dying having been legal for many years, assisted death has not become normalised. These countries have different systems of health care within subtly different cultures from the UK. In the 1980's, resuscitation was not routinely discussed with all patients. Today, to ask a patient whether they wish to be resuscitated is a required part of the system. Some patients welcome this, others find it a frightening or distressingly unanswerable question. I cite this as an example of how far and how quickly the NHS has moved and because it shows how contextually regulated doctors' behaviour is in the UK. My concern about the introduction of choice about assisted dying is that, over time (and indeed not much time), a Bill such as Lord Falconer's will lead to a situation where doctors are required to ask patients whether they would like to consider if they wish to terminate their life. Some will obviously not be able to respond, others will be clear and still others will be in that grey zone where it is debatable whether they have sufficient mental capacity.To reach the point where everyone is required to consider this question would be to reach a completely different situation from the one presently laid out in the Bill, but it is the logical end of what is proposed. I believe the Bill will have more far-reaching consequences than many people realise in terms of changing our culture from one where assisted dying is a rare, humane occurrence to one where each person with the mental capacity to do so is required to consider the question and the question has to be decided for those without mental capacity by others. It's unclear where those without the mental capacity to engage in this will eventually stand.

I'm also uneasy about the effect the Bill will have on the relationship between doctors and patients. Frankly, I want my doctors to be the sort of people who recoil from ending someone's life. Unless they are, it's a degree or two more difficult to trust my loved ones or myself into their care. If I or my loved ones were disabled or had limited mental capacity, I would be even more wary. Many of the articles I've read in support of the Bill seem unrealistic or uninformed about the way things happen around people who are dying. Everything is a process, a journey. Few factors are black and white, needs and desires change all the time - sometimes in the course of a day. Relationships with family can be complex; communication and certainty about what has been communicated can be extremely tricky. Even when a particular course of action has been discussed and agreed, the patient or a family member can suddenly begin to express regrets or a change of mind as physiological, emotional, spiritual or social circumstances change. I don't know how medical staff could, in every case, be certain that the correct, irrevocable decision had been made to help someone end their life. The burden of living with this responsibility, especially if it were placed on staff working in palliative care, could be intolerable. And the Bill does not lay out the processes by which assisted dying can take place. 

So I find myself agreeing with Jenny McCartney in her article in The Spectator The Terminal Confusion of Dignity in Dying when she says that the conditions laid down in Lord Falconer's Bill allowing State-sanctioned ending of life are too arbitrary. The logic underlying the Bill is that it leads to a position where the State will eventually sanction assisted dying for all who can demonstrate their capacity to choose it. The conditions set out in the Bill reflect what are thought to be the current limits of toleration in society for the sanctioning of assisted death. These limits will change over time and that is why many people with disabilities or very incapacitating chronic conditions or dementia or abusive family members fear the Bill.

I attended a lecture given by Debbie Purdy a couple of years ago. She was invited to speak to a legal, medical and clerical gathering. There must have been 70 or so present, representing the three professions and with widely differing interests. I was extremely impressed, not to say swayed, by Debbie's moving situation and her very coherent argument that to legalise assisted dying would prevent early suicides in cases of chronic illness as well as offering a humane way to choose to end intolerable pain. In the ensuing debate, many diverse perspectives were put forward. It became evident just how fraught with difficulty it is to create a law allowing maximum freedom of choice and, at the same time, maximum protection for the vulnerable. In the end, most people concluded that the law as it stands maintains the delicate balance between exceptional need for release from unendurable suffering and a requirement to protect the interests of extremely vulnerable people whose circumstances and families (or lack of family) may place them in situations where their lives may be taken from them against their will.

The law is not subjective and it must hold the balance. Lord Falconer's Bill is not, in my opinion, the right bill. I support the need for further, more nuanced debate. I support Debbie Purdy's plea that patients be allowed to discuss what suicide would entail with a doctor without fear of the doctor being prosecuted. I support the position, which I believe to be the current one, that anyone who can demonstrate that they were acting in accordance with a person's stated wishes in assisting them to die would be treated with a leniency that did not lead to prosecution. However, I do not support the withdrawal of the ultimate sanction that it remains possible to bring a case against a person who has helped someone else to die. I am not arguing that to take one's own life and to ask someone to assist is wrong in every circumstance, but I do believe that the State ought not to legislate to permit the taking of life. And, whatever the outcome of the vote, I support the need for people and institutions to continue to act within the law. 

There will be further research and debate about these issues. Much more evidence is needed for the probable effect of changing the law and there needs to be an in-depth and statistically significant study of attitudes among  

• the dying. 
• those who have been recently diagnosed with dementia. 
• the residents of nursing homes.
• family members of the deceased. 
• health care assistants and nurses.
• doctors. 
• people with chronic conditions who have changed their mind. 

Lord Falconer's Bill does not seem to be predicated on extensive research findings. 

The Joy of Communication

June has been framed by two welcome and delightful communications from different friends. Last week, I arrived home from work to discover a letter waiting for me. Not an official communication, not a card, but a real letter with sheets of crisp white writing paper in an envelope addressed by hand. The moment I saw the handwriting, I knew it was from a school friend I'd last seen about twenty years ago. That writing took me straight back to chalky classrooms and English and Biology classes where we sat side by side inventing ways to make the day more interesting - possibly not the way the teachers would have described our activity! It has given me so much pleasure to receive this letter. Of course, it was just lovely to hear from my friend, but the fact she wrote a letter opened up so many avenues of layered, nuanced communication - seeing her hand writing was one, the way she wrote about intimate things only a few of us would remember was another and the feeling of being able to savour it and mull it all over before replying was another. She had written to re-establish contact and to give some very specific news; I was struck by how very differently it would have come across in a tweet (terse, less personal, possibly public and certainly something I might have missed) or on Facebook (demanding a fast response with half a mind to public comment and engagement.)

There is something, today, that is very special about receiving a letter. It slows the communication down, it re-introduces the senses of touch, smell and even hearing (the rustle of the paper, the drop of the letter through the letterbox) and it allows the memory to engage in particular ways. It matters that the person sending the letter has actually handled it. Perhaps, above all, there is a sense of spacious intimacy, an assumption that communication will take a little time, allowing for reflection, and that it will be only for the eyes of the one it is addressed to.

When my mother died three years ago, my aunt handed me a bundle of dog-eared air mail letters. I read them in a sitting, absolutely enthralled. They revealed a five year correspondence between my aunt and my mother; Mum was a young administrator working in Ghana and my aunt was an even younger student nurse in Manchester. Had they communicated by e mail and Facebook, who knows how much of the exchange would have survived. What survived might have been a wonderful expression of the externals - photos, comments by friends, brief descriptions of what they were doing and places visited, topical jokes. But I think the sense I had of being inside my mother's head, at the heart of some of her experiences, sharing the interiority of her life would have been lacking. Reading her letters 60 years after they were written, I felt I was meeting again the woman I recognised as my mother and being drawn into conversation with her once more.

Those of you who know me will realise that I'm not unhappy with digital communication, in fact I readily use Twitter, Facebook and blogging as means of keeping informed and in touch. This brings me to the second lovely surprise of the month. A friend I hadn't seen for ten years but with whom I had been in touch through our common enthusiasm for blogging tweeted from the USA to say she was coming to the UK to give some lectures. Without a lot of thought, I immediately tweeted, 'Let me know when and where.' Not only did she respond, but she suggested a meeting with three of her other friends for some conversation about theological issues and the future of the church, something she knew we would all be interested in. The upshot was that five of us met up for a wonderfully stimulating day in Durham, having arranged the whole thing in a matter of days on Twitter. Without Twitter, I'd not have known that she would be in the UK and we certainly would not have had time to organise a meeting that involved finding a mutually convenient date in 5 busy calendars.

So, two signifiant and joyful communications - a letter and a tweet resulting in enormous pleasure and new opportunities. I have found myself reflecting on the importance of identifying the optimum method of communication for the person, the moment and the message. It's partly about knowing how others like to communicate and what they will respond to. It's also about capturing attention and imagination and taking a moment to mull over what you want to achieve by your communication. Do you want to evoke or create a memory? To pass on vital information? To explore whether there might be sufficient grounds for deeper communication? Is speed of the essence? Or depth? Our communications are a bit like arrows that have to find their way to their target; some do, some come close by, others miss entirely.  With the wide range of media now available to us, the skill is in discerning the target and how to strike. How best do we appeal to a particular person so that we capture their attention? What parts of their psyche are we appealing to - memory, intuition, imagination, emotion, motivation, reason or the part that requires accurate information? Communicating successfully is like finding small pools in the river of another person's mind into which we lob a judicious stone that creates ripples leading ashore to a landing place of recognition and engagement. There are many kinds of place and types and degrees of landing!

Jesus used just about all the media available to him - sand, touch, saliva, everyday action, reworked words from other sources, drama and stories. He spoke to crowds and to individuals in normal meeting places and in highly unusual ones; he sometimes allowed people to eavesdrop and he sometimes ensured intimate space. He spoke in highly original parables and aphorisms and also quoted or re-worked the words of others. He knew how to turn ordinary actions into drama and how to create memories that chimed in with the collective consciousness of a tradition. He brilliantly engineered moments (taking bread and wine while speaking of His own body and blood hours before his death) so powerful that we are still talking about them two thousand years later in every culture in ways that speak of His continued presence among us. Perhaps most potently of all, he did this in the presence of people who opposed him but also of others who would remember, interpret and record - not, I think an accident. He is described as 'the Word' in the fourth Gospel and he is understood, in the Christian tradition, as demonstrating the interiority of a God who communicates constantly and who holds in being a desire for reciprocal communication in all its many chameleon colours. This is the true heart of all relationship.

Tonight, I'm celebrating the joy of letters and tweets, memories and fresh challenges and friends who persist in communicating down the years, generously sharing the riches of their lives and the gift of their interests and empathy.

A Holy Week Thought

'Now Mary took a pound of very costly spikenard ointment and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair.'

This was the last week of Jesus' life and he visits the house of His great friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary at Bethany. Perhaps this was His last 'evening off', His final chance to relax and enjoy Himself privately, away from the public glare, in the company of just a few close friends. As the evening progresses, Mary decides to anoint and massage Jesus' tired feet.

Anointing and massaging with oils was much more common in Jesus' society than this practice is today - though in the hospice movement we use it frequently to engender relaxation and comfort, to communicate that a person is deeply valued and signify the hope of a healing that goes beyond mere removal of symptoms. On this night, Mary is concerned to show her love for Jesus, to help Him relax and prepare for what is obviously going to be a tough week ahead in Jerusalem. Perhaps she half senses the danger He is walking into. At any rate, she seizes this rare opportunity to demonstrate her care and concern in a very practical and personal way.

When we love someone we should seize each opportunity we have to show them that we love them. As Jesus points out, you do not know for how long you will have a person with you. Whether Mary sensed it or not, this was to be the last chance she would have to use the precious oil she had saved on Jesus before He went to the cross. Seize the moment! Do not let us take those we love for granted. Acts of love can seem extravagant and apparently wasteful at the time they are committed, yet such acts live on in our memories and warm our hearts years after they are carried out and that is their true value. As Jesus says in Luke's version of this story, 'Her action will be remembered wherever the Gospel is told.' Jesus is never recorded as saying that of fine words or preaching or a dramatic healing or a good story. When all is said and done, a simple act of love is what will be remembered as being of the greatest value.

Jesus knew and Mary perhaps half knew that her act was prophetic. 'Let her do this against the day of my burial.' When Jesus was taken down from the cross the sabbath was beginning and no work could be done. Most especially, the handling of a body was not seemly, so He could not be anointed for burial. That was why the women were going to the tomb so early on the first Easter morning - to complete the anointing of His body which they had not been able to finish on the Friday evening. Jesus interprets Mary's action as an anointing ahead of time for His own burial. Isn't it true that those who are closest to us sometimes know intuitively what we are going through? Mary couldn't have put it into words, but she knew that something deeply significant and very dangerous was about to happen to Jesus, something that would take all His courage and sap all His strength. This was the only way she could think of to say, 'I'm supporting you in this, whatever happens, I'm for you.'

This anointing represents a parting of the ways. Finally at this meal on this evening, Judas decides to oppose Jesus and betray Him - who knows why? Maybe for financial gain and status in the eyes of the ruling classes or maybe for his own complex psychological reasons. In contrast, Mary decides to side with her friend and not only 'prepare Him aforehand for His burial' but stand with Him, whatever He faces - and she does not yet know that her love will be called to witness His torture and agony on the cross. Occasionally in life there is just such a clear parting of the ways, a moment in which an irrevocable decision is taken and there is then no path back. Sometimes we cannot sit on the fence and choose both ways. Occasionally we do not get a second chance to choose. It cannot have been easy for Mary to risk the disciples' misunderstanding and disapproval, but she knew she had to do it. It must have been agonising to stand at the foot of the cross, but she knew she had to do it. Judas made his choice and once the betrayal was completed, he felt there was no way back for him. There are some acts for which self-forgiveness is profoundly elusive.

As we engage again, this year, in the re-enactment of the familiar events of Holy Week, this little narrative offers us the same choice. Will we stand aloof and critical as we hear the story of Jesus' passion? Will we treat is as something from which we are detached by historical era or disposition or analytical thought?  Or will we dare to get as involved as Mary did? Will we follow our emotions where they take us? Will we allow Jesus' death and resurrection to move us deeply, to speak into our lives and to change who we are and what we dare? 

'Christ's bursting form the spiced tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way, 
His coming at the day of doom,
I bind unto myself today.' 
St Patrick's Breastplate. 

Pause for Thought

Two of the most shocking things I have read for a while appeared in the newspapers this week. The first was a report of Justin Welby's speech while attending a conference on violence in Oklahoma in which he asserts that, because expanding laws to allow gay marriage in line with the rights of other citizens in western countries has allegedly produced a backlash of violence in Africa, the church should be cautious about how it proceeds to accept the practice. The second was a report in the Independent that Mulayam Singh Yadav, the head of India's socialist party, and his colleague Abu Azmi had appeared to say, in separate speeches, that rape was just a common mistake that boys make and that if a man is to suffer the death penalty for rape (as he may do under Islamic law) the woman should also be executed as she is in some way guilty too. I had to read the latter article three times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding it. 

Both these stories, if true as reported, stunned me. At first sight they don't have much in common but actually they both show a disregard for the basic theological principle that all people are equally valuable in the sight of God. They show a distancing and objectification of the human plight of the gay or female person by those who are not of that orientation or gender and an overlooking of the God-implanted expectation of women and gay people not to be treated with flagrant injustice and not to have their need for justice sacrificed for them  by others in the service of those in positions of power who see violence as acceptable and necessary in controlling others. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the fight against slavery was massively prolonged by arguments that caution should be exercised by campaigners due to the plight of slaves who had not yet been freed and those who were free but could not earn a living. How many other slaves suffered horribly and died as a result? The only way to begin to remove an evil is to name it fairly and squarely as an evil and to commit resources to re-educate people where ever the evil occurs. To collude with those who persecute others over the existence of phenomena like gay orientation or the destruction of a woman's control over her own body and mind is never going to lead anywhere other than to the spread of violence and attitudes that deny some of God's people (in fact more than half the human race) a full and safe place in society.

I am not convinced that it is possible to connect gay rights in the West to the withdrawal of access to aid from populations in Africa or the use of violence against Christians quite as straight forwardly as the Archbishop suggests. I do understand that there are connections which will have some terrible consequences, but my experience of African culture is that it is far, far more complex than many of the more theologically conservative African church leaders like to portray it. Cause and effect are difficult to identify and predict. Loyalties are very subtly layered. Just as in the West, you find expressions of gay life styles all over the place including in African Islamic and Christian societies. It's obviously much harder for people to be open about it, but the idea that African society is overwhelmingly anti-gay is not correct - ask any health care worker. Unfortunately it is true that those who oppose expressions of gay orientation implacably are in positions of power and also under huge and complex pressure from their peers to conform to this view of sexuality. While the Archbishop is right in making sure that we are aware of the serious consequences the change in the law will have and reminding us that we must take responsibility to work in partnership to help those affected, it seems to me wrong headed to argue that, even were the Church of England to be minded, through its legal processes, to accept the principle of gay marriage, we must actively postpone moving in that direction because we are held under threat by the leaders of parts of other churches. I would also point out that when many of the women of Africa have repeatedly said that, for the Church of England to ordain women priests and bishops would greatly help them in their struggle towards equality, this plea has fallen on deaf ears. There seems to be a certain inconsistency here.

As for the leaders of the Indian SP, I can only say that if I were a woman in India I would be very, very fearful should anyone who holds such opinions come to power. Their remarks, even if partially retracted, show what feminists would call a profoundly unconscientized view of the relationship between the sexes. They call to mind the so- called texts of terror in the Old Testament such as Judges 19 and they remind us, horrifically and graphically, that for many women today, even in democracies, their daily life is subject to barbaric attitudes and customs that have no place in the twenty first century, but which are deeply ingrained in the collective subconscious. 

Canon Mark Oakley, in a letter to the Guardian (8th April), suggests that the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury work together toward the decriminalising of homosexuality in the Commonwealth and globally. Unrealistic as this may sound, it points to the heart of the matter. Until the leaders of the major churches screw up their courage to set their faces against all persecution, oppression and exclusion on grounds of gender and sexual orientation, the churches will continue to be major players in such oppression and to collude tacitly with the actions of those who use violence to support it.

Celebrating Margaret Spufford: A Reflection for Holy Week

Margaret Spufford, the eminent historian, died in March. She was an academic of note and, as an historian, wrote three books for which she is well known: Contrasting Communities (a fascinating study of three Fenland villages in the seventeenth century), Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth Century England (which showed that basic education and the ability to read was more widespread in the seventeenth century than previously thought) and The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapman and Their Wares in the Seventeenth Century (about the itinerant pedlars who sold reading matter.) She was passionate about her area of scholarship and made a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the seventeenth century. She was also a Christian thinker, a Benedictine oblate and the mother of a daughter born with the rare genetic condition, cystinosis. She herself suffered a great deal of ill health throughout her life accompanied, at times, by excruciating bone pain.  Andrew Brown, in the Guardian, says, 'She was a woman quite like a saint' see Margaret Spufford loved truth, loved people, loved to laugh

Published Cambridge University ~Press

I first came across her writing when I was a staff nurse at Addenbrooke's hospital, looking after haematology patients, some of whom were undergoing bone marrow transplants. Things have improved a great deal since then but, back in the 1980's, these patients suffered a lot. One of them described the total body irradiation that, of necessity, preceded the transplant as causing a 'pain beyond pain that takes you to an indescribable, eery, twilight place.' That was the prelude to the transplant. Once the patient had been given the new cells, we waited in trepidation: infection was one great danger and also the dreaded onset of what is called 'graft versus host disease' which occurs when, instead of the patient's body rejecting the transplanted cells, the transplant rejects the host body. In the case of a bone marrow transplant, this can involve cells all over the body. The mother of one of our youngest patients was reading Margaret Spufford's book Celebration. She introduced me to it one morning over breakfast following a draining night's vigil. I found it an amazing book. I can't say that it spoke to me then of hope - the overall impression it left was rather one of darkness. But somehow the darkness was richer and kinder and inhabited by people who shared these places of dereliction. It was fundamentally honest and, as always, the telling of truth illuminates the way for others.

It is the story of Spufford's daughter, Bridget. From the first year of her life, she endured an illness which caused her a great deal of pain and fear. The book tells the story of how both she and her immediate family found a way to live with Bridget's suffering that allowed for meaningful life to emerge, indeed a life that reached moments of profound joy and creativity. It's probably one of the most realistic descriptions of living with pain and what that does to you that I have ever read. She finds no easy answers, no relief for periods of suffering, no place to go to avoid the inevitable repeated return of the pain; yet she finds a way of being and a purposefulness that allow her and Bridget, not only to live their lives, but to be imaginative, hopeful, amazingly productive and to enjoy times of relative remission. There is never any sense, though, that the good times somehow 'make up' for the bad times or that they make the bad times easier to bear. That is false and those who have endured great pain recognise the merest whiff of this kind of falsity. Spufford's thesis is that your pain makes you who you are and shapes your life but not that it is of itself good; quite the reverse: extreme pain is a form of evil and we deny this at our peril. You cannot make something that is an evil into a good, you can only live your life as if the evil will ultimately not extinguish the good. These are the tiny daily moments of resurrection. 

Published Cambridge University Press

It's not a book to 'cheer you up'. I think that those who have not actually suffered great pain are often a little disappointed by it. Certainly anyone who is looking for answers will be. But those who have suffered a great deal find in the reading of it the recognition and comfort of truth telling. I suffered from endometriosis which causes excruciating abdominal pain such that you would gladly accept anything to put you out of the pain while it lasts. Doctors scratch their heads and disagree about the diagnosis while prescribing drugs that scarcely begin to touch the pain. It has to be one of the very few conditions that make the menopause a cause for celebration! Spufford's book helped me, not because it gave me any answers or solutions for all this pointless pain, but because it demonstrated that someone else could live their life with bouts of untreatable pain and make practical sense of a life blighted by it. At no point does she make light of pain or deny its ability to corrode and destroy, but she demonstrates a way of being that allows you to live through and round the pain to great effect. She shows how a personality can develop and flourish in spite of the constant debilitating set backs. You need this kind of faith to live through prolonged pain and also to be present to those who suffer pain. I will be for ever grateful for the resource her thinking became for me over the years both in helping me live through my own pain and in nursing others. 

Spufford's approach to suffering reminds me of Job's story. In the Book of Job, we are introduced to someone else beset by pain - physical, social, spiritual. In this case the story sets the situation up in terms of Satan persuading God to allow Job to be tested. Will his faith hold? What we learn from the 42 chapters that follow is that the philosopher's approach to suffering is useless. To ask the question 'why?' does not move the sufferer on one jot and, in fact, increases their mental anguish and leads to self pity and outrage at the injustice of their situation. Job ultimately breaks through to a place where the 'how', 'how can I live my life?' takes centre stage. For Job this involves a total surrender to the fact that he is God's creature and will not understand the counsels and ways of the creator. The key for Job is, I think, the point at which he begins to realise that faith to accept what life brings and live or perhaps simply to exist God-wards does not have to be corroded by the experiences that have been thrown at him: that decision rests with him. This is the point from which bitterness and outrage begin to fall away; this is the seedbed of the human spirit's ability to choose to respond more affirmatively to good than to evil. It isn't quite hope, but it is vigour, it is life in spite all the odds, it is resurrection. As Spufford showed so clearly in her book and, much more, in her life this is the place from which meaning and celebration emanate. 

A wonderful woman who joins the company of those who have influenced my life very much for good. Deo gratias   

Violence Against Women

Violence against women is something that pervades many cultures. From India to Bosnia, Riwanda and Congo to South Africa, Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, in Papua New Guinea and the USA and Britain too - there is no continent that is not affected by this pernicious evil. A recent press release from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime draws attention to the extent to which women suffer as victims of domestic abuse.
'Almost half a million people (437,000) across the world lost their lives in 2012 as a result of intentional homicide, according to a new study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Launching the Global Study on Homicide 2013 in London, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Director for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs, said: "Too many lives are being tragically cut short, too many families and communities left shattered." Globally, some 80% of homicide victims and 95% of perpetrators are men. Almost 15% of all homicides stem from domestic violence, however, and the overwhelming majority of domestic violence fatalities are women. "Home can be the most dangerous place for a woman," said Mr Lemahleu.'

Homicide and domestic violence are the tip of the iceberg. Sexual violence used to humiliate and control communities in war and the practice of Female Genital Mutilation touch the lives of staggering numbers of women. The Church Times this week features stories about the extent to which sexual violence against women is used as a weapon of war. The numbers of women who have suffered rape (some of them babies, others over 70) in war torn parts of Africa is highlighted in a graphic article by Tim Wyatt, First the Rape. Then the Stigma.  A 2012 report suggests that, in South Africa, over 50% of women can expect to be raped in their lifetime. The Today programme on Radio 4 has this week carried interviews with women in India who are working to change cultural perceptions of women and attitudes among men, following the horrific gang rapes in Delhi and Mumbai. Woman's Hour has recently highlighted the fact that not a single prosecution has taken place in the the UK despite laws to prevent FGM.  

William Hague and Angelina Jolie will be co-charing a Global Summit looking for ways to end Sexual Violence in London this summer. The summit, which will take place on 13th and 14th June, will concentrate on four areas for action, aiming

• to improve investigations/documentation of sexual violence in conflict;
• to provide greater support and assistance and reparation for survivors, including child survivors, of sexual violence;
• to ensure sexual and gender based violence responses and the promotion of gender equality are fully integrated in all peace and security efforts, including security and justice sector reform; and
• to improve international strategic co-ordination.

The Church Times has just put out a list of organisations working to help victims of sexual violence and change the cultures in which it is normative:
www.restoredrelationships.org/
www.wewillspeakout.org/about/
www.christianaid.org.uk/whatwedo/in-focus/gender/africa.aspx
www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/sexual-violence-in-conflict    

I can do no more than invite readers to look at these sites and to consider whether there is any way that you could give your support to some of the projects and ventures outlined. 

A State of Mind

Feeling your age? How's this for encouragement?

• In an article in the magazine Writing, I came across a little snippet called 'Never Give Up'. It's written by Prue Phillipson who says that she did not begin writing until she was in her sixties but had her 'real breakthrough' at 72. Since then she has had a novel on the go almost continuously and has had three published this year, her 85th! 
• It's also been immensely inspiring to listen to the 80 and 90 year old members of the House of Lords interviewed on Woman's Hour. Today it was the turn of the mere 40 somethings. One of them said she found it quite awesome to think that she might have 50 years' service ahead!
• George Bernard Shaw said, 'We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.'
• A few years' ago I heard an interview with a woman who wanted to train as a solicitor. She was 52 and had been told that she was too old to make such a life change. Her interviewer (I can't remember who it was) said, 'Well if you think of it like this, you need to train for 3 years and then you have at least 10 years working life left, it doesn't seem impossible, does it?'

And, of course, today we are all conscious of the contribution to intellectual and political life made by Tony Benn right into his 85th year.

Ageing is partly a state of mind. It's a physiological process too and our mind needs to accommodate our physical abilities which include our mental capacities. I like these stories and the quote from GBS because they remind us to be positive about ageing. When we are younger, we tend to write off the part of life beyond 70 and this can become a habit we carry into our 60's and 70's. Yet many people have a good 20 or 30 years of activity after 60 which gives them the opportunity to learn new skills and practice them to great satisfaction whether for remuneration or not. Many people find that life is constrained in some ways but, I think, are not always encouraged to look for the activities they can learn and develop. I'd extend GBS's quotation to include learning. Curiosity is another great life enhancer. 

In my daily work I see people with quite severe limitations of their physical and mental capacity who nevertheless find interest in life. The three words that spring to mind that connect such people are playfulness, curiosity and laughter. People with a degree of dementia can enjoy not only the music making aspects of singing in a choir, but the community that the activity creates. People who cannot speak or move their hand very well can create works of art if someone with the skills takes the time to introduce them to the right kind of projects. People who cannot write can speak their memoirs into a dictaphone or tell wonderful stories if the right kind of audience can be found. 

I don't mean to paint an unrealistically glowing picture of ageing. It's a struggle for most people. But the greatest enemy of a fulfilling old age is, it seems to me, isolation, or at least unchosen isolation. So much that is positive can be shared and achieved in a community of care where there is a fluidity and reciprocity between those who give the care and those who receive it. This week, I've learned about fish tanks from an 80 year old, silk painting from a 70 year old and received insight into one of my own concerns from a 92 year old (who wouldn't have known that she had given me that particular gift.) I've heard stories of memorable moments with grandchildren (who will probably recall some of them for life) and witnessed an octogenarian giving life-changing support to her own son. Can we become a society that knows how to celebrate old age and welcome it as the harbinger of the wisdom born of the long perspective? How much better this would be than than fearing old age it and talking down its potential, colluding with a spiral of unwarranted despair. According to psychologist Laura  Carstensen (Stanford University) emotional stability and happiness tend to be higher in old age. Being conscious of mortality, people show a tendency to value each each moment of happiness and  contentment. Read about it here 

©www.immortalhumans.com

Wisdom of the Shadows

I've been reading a fascinating book called 'Working the Shadow Side' by Gerard Egan, a professor of psychology and business management at Loyola University, Chicago. Like people, all organisations have their shadow side. The book shows that you ignore the shadows of your organisation at your peril. To get to know these shadows will not only enable you to weed out the negatives but allow you to be more creative and productive by utilising the positive energy that lurks in the informal, unacknowledged, maybe even unmentionable areas of your organisation's life.

What are the unspoken rules in your workplace? What are the taboos, the elephants in the room, the unmentionables? It may be as simple as two people not getting along with each other who 'can't' be put on the rota together, causing inconvenience and resentment for everyone who has to work round this. Or it may be as fundamental as the whole management style of the organisation preventing people from accomplishing things they believe they need to accomplish for the good of the organisation and its mission. I guess, in the health care world, there's something around the handful of conditions we each secretly know we most fear contracting ourselves. These probably have a subconscious effect on what and who we avoid and what we say in clinical team meetings. Then, what are the protest behaviours in your organisation? People taking longer lunch breaks or not turning up for meetings? Putting off essential long term planning? Coming up with every excuse under the sun to avoid required changes in working patterns? Egan explores what goes on in the shadows of an organisation, looking at the covet, undiscussed and undiscussable things which may be driving the organisation as much as, or more than, publicly acknowledged mission and policy. He shows how these often deeply buried things lead to loss in terms of human and economic resources. A good manager will get to know the shadow side of their organisation as well as the faces that are presented to the world and will learn to handle shadow behaviours with tact, caution and purposefulness.

You find obvious examples of this kind of thing in churches, too, where the 'official line' is so tightly controlled that various groups have either rebelled or gone underground. These groups then instigate all kinds of subversive and creative activities  -  unofficial Friends groups, Bible studies in pubs, liaison with local tourism groups, slightly wacky prayer groups, teas for the elderly that clash with important meetings. Vicars  (who are not managers but sometimes need or are forced unwillingly to behave like managers) fall broadly into two camps - those who feel threatened by such behaviour and those who recognise in such behaviours creative potential and so learn to work with eruptions of the shadow in church life. That's not to say that such things don't sometimes need to be controlled or stopped when they undermine the central values of a faith community. 

The message of the book is don't fear such things, don't bury your head in the sand and deny them but learn to be fascinated -  observe and take sound judgements about the shadow side of your community. Root around behind the scenes and learn what the unwelcome behaviours of your church community are telling you. Without such knowledge, true wisdom about what is needed to grow and sustain the mission of your organisation or your church will not emerge. What will emerge are superficial and ultimately damaging activities and relationships that have in them the seeds of their own undermining. The aim is to know and acknowledge the hidden parts of a community's life so that they can be named, pruned and brought into the service of the whole. The book is full of practical examples drawn from the world management but illuminating for more organic organisations too.

Take, Eat...

The letter printed today in the Mirror and signed by 27 bishops, Methodist and Quaker leaders here reflects fairly, I think, experience on the ground. Anyone who helps at a foodbank will know that demand seems to be increasing. Those who are there regularly  are sometimes shocked by the stories they hear which are more reminiscent of Charles Dickens' portrayal of urban poverty than anything you would expect to find in 21st century towns and cities. Rural parts of the UK are also affected and poverty there is often exacerbated by lack of access to transport which is, of course, itself relatively expensive to afford.

The bishops' letter doesn't reflect the complexity of the situation. As the DEFRA report Household Food Security in the UK produced last June shows, the causes of poverty and sudden inability to meet the living costs of your family are multi-faceted. Contributory factors include job loss, job irregularity, sudden unexpected bills, withdrawal of of delay in receiving benefits (often without warning and time to plan), late payment of entitlements of various kinds. 

It would be helpful if the government was more transparent about what it is actually trying to achieve through reduction of welfare provision so that we know what we are up against. If it is true that they are actually prepared to push half a million people into hunger in order to force a situation where 'work pays' then honesty about their policy (much as I would abhor it) would help the voluntary sector to organise itself to cope. Church leaders are well placed to play an active part in doing this. If, however, the government is really unaware of the havoc its policies on welfare reform are causing, then serious re-education of MPs and Ministers is urgently needed. Church leaders are well placed to point this out and facilitate meetings.

Lurking behind all the party political point-scoring and the dubious analyses of causation is, I believe, a much more fundamental issue which, again, is very much the churches' territory. Food has become a scandalous problem in our society. It is a spiritual issue as well as a practical, political and economic one. How have we created an economy where we grow so little of what we eat, we pay farmers not to produce, we underpay some farmers for what they do produce and we allow supermarkets to control the markets and, worse, to scrap prodigious quantities of food every day? How have we become a society where sharing food is so ridiculously complicated? Families don't eat together, let alone regularly and normatively invite neighbours in to share food. Health and safety regulations mean that left over food cannot be shared and the ability to cook simple, cheap nutritious food from raw ingredients is almost dying out.

In some societies, when there is a shortage of food, people come together to cook and to eat. Preparing and consuming our daily intake of food is now such a privatised and individualised activity in the UK that we are finding it difficult to organise ourselves effectively when sections of society don't have enough to eat. I recently visited a home where there was food from the foodbank on the counter in the kitchen. The family, demoralised by anxiety and depression, didn't have the means to heat it or, really, the knowledge to make it appetising for the children. Next door, their neighbours were having similar problems.  

We have so lost the values that support social cohesion that we are slowly undermining our ability to do the fundamental thing of eating together, whether as a family or as a community, in times of stress and difficulty. This is a deep moral dis-ease. It is not by accident that a meal, the eucharist,  is at the heart of the Christian faith and the church's existence. To eat together, to share, not only food, but social contact is what makes us human in the image of God. What are we doing to ourselves when neighbours go hungry, millions eat alone and the answer to hunger is to hand out tins and packets (I'm not belittling the importance of this, but it is somehow a rather sterile action speaking of utility more than emapthetic compassion and the goodness of God's natural provision.) 

Last October, I wrote a post called 'End Go-it-alone Eating' here  At the time, I wasn't as aware as I now am of the crisis in food poverty. I was thinking more of general sharing and of our personal experience in North Yorkshire and Greece. But I think what I said captures the nature of the deep crisis we have over food - producing serious hunger in one of the most affluent countries on the globe.

Will you join me and thousands, or hopefully millions, of others in the End Hunger Fast this Lent? Follow the link to read about it on their website or follow them on twitter @EndHungerFast 

And I don't often say this, but well done the Mirror!  
    

What Are You Glad for?

This question may appear Pollyanna-ish but it contains a profound psychological truth. One of the most wonderful things about Jewish liturgy is the way in which the community and the individual are encouraged (nay, commanded) to bless God in every circumstance. A blessing is to be pronounced over food, land, descendants, homes, children, the future. In every conceivable circumstance, regardless of whether a person might feel like blessing God or receiving God's blessing or giving thanks, a prayer of blessing is to be pronounced and acceded to by the family or community. This is a sacred duty. 

If you read some of the blessings found in Judaism and then think of the circumstances in which they have been prayed, you cannot but be moved, and your soul opened up by the extraordinary generosity to which they witness. This is as true of the psalms as of the prayers offered up during the Holocaust. In these prayers, we see a human generosity that is reflected back from the very heart of God. And that is the power of blessing, isn't it? It opens us up psychologically. Think about it. I may be in any kind of circumstance yet there is God-given power to respond in the way I choose. I cannot sincerely thank my brother or pray God's blessing on my sister and yet hold bitterness towards them in my heart. Truly to bless another is an act of extraordinary power which sets the other free and also sets me free. Priests bless in a symbolic way, but all sorts of other people - mothers, fathers, guests, hosts, siblings, outcasts - bless too. If you cannot forgive someone, to read prayers of blessing and to acknowledge before God that you would like to be able to forgive may be a fruitful way toward release from your sense of injustice. But the power to choose the way lies with you.

So what is blessing? Do you recall an occasion when you were so overwhelmingly joyous that you could have included everyone, forgiven anyone and still had love to spare? That is the dynamic of blessing - that is how God looks on us. Blessing over-spills and runs into the meanest corners of our lives like a raging torrent. And so I come back to my question, 'What are you glad for?' What can you bless God for? For what would you like to be thankful? What are the deep sources of gratitude in your life at the present moment? Because, acknowledged, or overlooked, these are the sources of life in all its abundance.

I've been struggling quite a lot lately. The struggle to bless God or to feel blessed has pointed me to so many things I take utterly for granted on a daily basis. Had I been born 150 years ago, I would have been almost blind. I'm so short sighted I depend on contact lenses and glasses from the moment I open my eyes in the morning. I bless God for the miracle of sight. In another generation, I would not have been able to have a ministry as a priest because I am a woman. Whatever the difficulties, I bless God for that opportunity. Everyday I hear the stories of people who are approaching their death with courage and honesty and I bless God for their example and everything that I receive and learn from them. 

What are your deep sources of blessing? 

David Keen, on his blog Opinionated Vicar has encouraged us all to spend Lent being grateful rather than critical. This is very much within the Judaeo-Christian tradition of 'shalom', wholeness. To be profoundly grateful, even when there is only a little to be grateful for is, I believe, the key to life and love. It might seem naive, but it is, in fact, profoundly world-changing. 

End of Life Care: Ministerial Survey

Clergy and Lay Ministers please help!

A colleague is currently undertaking a research project for Saint Michael’s Hospice, in Harrogate. This piece of research seeks to build an understanding of the levels of expertise, training and confidence that British Anglican clergy and Licensed Lay Ministers (Readers) have in dealing with issues around dying, death and bereavement. The outcome of this project is to assess whether these groups have any training needs in the areas mentioned above and, if so, understand the training that may be needed.

As part of this project we are directly seeking the views of as many clergy and lay ministers as possible through a questionnaire. If you fit into either of these two categories, it would be great to hear from you.

Taking part is easy. The questionnaire takes just 12 minutes on average to complete. You can do it online by clicking on the link below:

Saint Michael's Hospice Clergy & LLM Survey

We know this area may be of interest to many of you and we would welcome any additional feedback on the project. You can get in touch by emailing jsingh@saintmichaelshospice.org or jhenderson@saintmichaelshospice.org 

Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Thank you!

A New Reformation

In Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale, the Pardoner's job is to travel around selling 'indulgences' - assurances that, for a sum of money, people's sins had been forgiven and their entrance to Heaven smoothed. At one point in the tale, he says that actually he could not care less whether 'their souls go a-blackberrying in Hell.' It was outrage at this kind of moral corruption that fuelled the Reformation and gave rise to the need for the Roman Catholic church also to reform itself at the Counter-reformation.

A modern woodcarving

Are we in a pre-second reformation place today? Robert Warner, in his article Why Young People Turn Their Backs on the Church here tells us that research shows that young people (a good number of whom would identify themselves as Christians and people of prayer) experience the church as as morally corrupt as Chaucer's medieval audience did. In a society where living together before marriage, the use of contraception, acceptance of gay and bisexual life styles and questions about end of life that challenge traditional values are all seen as normal, responsible moral stances, what does the church have to bring to the table?  'Senior clergy want the church to be more engaging without softening its traditional moral absolutism. One recently described modern Britain as 'floundering among meaningless anxiety and despair.' That is one interpretation of the revolution we have seen over the past 50 years. Another might simply be that' 'People have embraced a new morality and it is the church which is now considered immoral.' This is true even for many who consider themselves Christians. In a nutshell, the moral convictions espoused by society at large and 'new paradigm Christians' radically challenge some of the church's moral teachings and values. The church has been found wanting not only in these teachings but in its own failure to live up to them in profound, structural and persistent ways even when such behaviour is repeatedly uncovered and pointed out.

I was invited to speak, yesterday, at a meeting about the position of women in the Anglican churches in England and Wales. Having listened to an informative and well-reasoned presentation about the latest proposals for women bishops in the Church of England and the plans to accommodate those who will not accept them, I did my usual spiel about how extraordinary it was to be having such a conversation at all in 2014 in Britain. One of what looked like 3 women under 35 in the audience then commented that her generation find the church's apparent difficulty with women offensive. Young women today are not brought up to think that they will be barred from doing things because of their gender. Any organisation that attempts to do this ought to have a convincing rationale for its stance in order to have even a modicum of credibility and, in this respect, the churches specularly fail. An example might be the Armed Forces' arguments for the exclusion of women from some jobs; although some do challenge this, most can at least comprehend the arguments. Women coming newly into the churches, then, are  going to be brought up short by a massive shock (one described it as a 'body blow') when they realise there is a hidden agenda that constrains their role and contribution simply on grounds of their gender. I've heard this story time and time and time again over the past 10 years. It was certainly no surprise to see from Linda Woodhead's latest set of statistics in the Church Times this week that there is currently only 1 ordained woman under 25 and 19 under 30 in the Church of England. See Not Enough Boots on the Ground

So what does this new paradigm Christianity look like? What manner of reforming fire is sweeping through Christianity? At the Reformation 400 years ago and in the counter reformation that followed, it was a fire that destroyed or refined assumptions about the church's role in controlling sin and forgiveness (justification), about the place of the sacraments in that process and about the interpretation of scripture. The reformation that is gathering momentum today seems to me to be a fire that will radically redefine (if we let it) the church's role in controlling human relationships especially around birth, death and sexuality. These are essentially questions about our creatureliness and it is perhaps no coincidence that they are emerging so strongly at a time when our understanding about our relationship to the planet is also undergoing a revolution.

For some these changes cannot come quickly enough. For others there is great apprehension, not to say a sense of anxiety about major shifts in paradigm. Coming, myself, from a tradition that takes scripture very seriously and continuing every day to rejoice in the treasures found there, I see in the Biblical texts huge resources that fuel this refining fire. Not, I hasten to add, in particular passages cherry picked and strung together to support sociologically-driven arguments. But in the witness of the whole narrative of scripture. Over a 5,000 year period we do indeed find 'texts of terror' (whose function is more to describe an historical social order than to tell us anything direct about God or theodicy) for women, gay people, people of the 'wrong' ethnicity or clan or family. But we also find among the people who follow God most passionately an amazing range of relationships based on personal integrity - and the losing and finding of integrity. Courage, respect, patience and willingness to stand against the social norm when required to do so characterise these 'rainbow' relationships. Think of Jacob and Rachel, Ruth, Naomi and Boaz, Esther and her people, Jonathan and David, Mary and Joseph, Jesus and John, the beloved disciple.We also find people whose relationships break down (Joseph and his brothers, David, Michal and Bathsheba) but who do not thereby cease to play a significant part in the purposes of God. In the New Testament and especially the gospels, we have the surprising fact that relatively little mention is made of the place of marriage in the lives of those closest to Jesus - and this is a culture where family life and the bearing of children were highly prized. Instead, around Jesus, we find all kinds of friendship groupings - brothers and sisters, single and married women, single and married men, small groups of women and men friends for whom Jesus Himself is said to have felt differing degrees of friendship and love. 

Picture taken from the Baylor Proud website, 'Helping Churches Welcome Kids with Special Needs'

What leaps out from the pages of scripture is that relationship with God, the courage to be true to oneself, and the wisdom to do this in the social setting in which one has been placed so as to bring good and remain true to God's purposes are what matter. Unless the churches of the twenty first century rediscover this, they (we, I should say) will wither on the vine and struggle to bear fruit. Unless we respond to the spiritual and moral evolution around us we will increasingly be accused of hypocrisy and immorality by younger generations who have been touched by revolution that is already far advanced.