Walk for Water

Care International are inviting us to walk 10,000 steps every day for a week between 18th and 24th March. In many countries countries women and young girls have to walk further than this simply to fetch water for drinking and cooking. The idea is to try to walk the equivalent of about 5 miles every day for a week in solidarity with them. At the same time you can raise funds to help provide clean water for more communities. If you tramp hospital wards each day, you may find that in fact you could double this target. If you register on the site below, you can order a tee-shirt and pedometer or simply register your intent to take part.

I thought I would give it a go, maybe finding a place I need to go each day and walking rather than driving. Other suggestions include volunteering to walk someone's dog, walking to work (my brother-in-law walked nearly 22 miles to work a couple of years ago starting out in the middle of the night!), taking the stairs, buses and trains (this can clock up a surprising number of miles) or organising a friends and family walk in your neighbourhood taking in a local fun spot/beauty spot. Share your ideas!  

Or you can join the official International Women's Day walk on 8th March. For the details, log on here

Care International

Woman's Touch Not Welcome

My name on Wikipedia comes up with (among others) Philip North, soon to be consecrated Bishop of Burnley. I don't know Philip, we have never met. Nothing I say here is intended to reflect on him personally and I wish him well in his new ministry.

However, this tenuous internet connection puzzles me because my life has been dedicated, among other things, to the quest for a theological and social understanding of the equality of men and women, an equality I believe to be demonstrated in the Gospels and the teaching and actions of Jesus.

Because the Archbishop of York and other bishops ordain women, it has reportedly been requested that they refrain from laying hands on the new bishop at his consecration. Jonathan Clatworthy here writes about this in the Modern Church blog.

There is a very old tradition in Christianity that Eve, a woman, was the first person to disobey God. Down the centuries, this story has been used to explain pain in childbirth (such that some nineteenth century Church of England theologians taught it was contrary to God's purposes to relieve a labouring woman in pain.) It has also been used to justify the belief that women are temptresses and more sinful than men. The impact on social attitudes to women down the ages and, still, today has been incalculable, leading to the persecution of women in many societies. It seems very clear that Jesus flouted and undermined such attitudes. He socialised with women, allowed them to touch Him, accepted their gifts, debated with them and let their words and actions shape His thinking. Finally, He accepted them to the extent that His resurrection was first witnessed by a woman. 

Those who oppose women's ordination appeal to arguments about the necessity for a purely male succession from the original male apostles to today's priests and bishops. It may seem to some a small concession to make. It is not.

A white woman's labour got into serious trouble. The on-call obstetrician was black. When she arrived on the labour suite, the woman's husband said, in very offensive language which I will not repeat, that he would not have his wife delivered by her. Events took over and the woman and baby were safely delivered. The obstetrician gave the husband her hand and he broke down in tears, thanking her. 

What do we have to endure or say or do to get across that it is deeply damaging to have bishops who cannot be touched at their consecration not just by women, but by men who have touched women in consecration? Again, you may be tempted to say that this is a rarified churchy argument. It is not; it emerges from a whole belief system that pervades many societies and puts women down, claiming they are second class, more sinful, to be ruled by men and to be kept within certain boundaries. The impact of this teaching was powerfully brought home to me at Christmas. I listened to a sublime recording of a Kings College Carol Service from the 1950's. The music was wonderful. The first reading was given by a young choirboy who solemnly read the words,

'And the Lord God said unto the woman, 'What is this that thou hast done?' And the woman said, 'Thou beguiled me and I did eat.'…….. Unto the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be for thy husband and he shall rule over thee.'  (Genesis 3 v.13 & 16, King James Bible.)

This was read without any explanation or interpretation by a boy of perhaps 13 - the sin of woman, clearly proclaimed as the reason for the incarnation (Christ's coming to earth). The story is understood by most people as an aetiology, in other words, an explanation, after the event, of the way things are. Scholars saw that women suffered in childbirth and looked for an explanation. However, in 1952, the whole message of the service was clearly that womankind is responsible for God having to rescue us from sin and this message was proclaimed to a mature and intelligent congregation by a thirteen year old boy. I guess that either you can or you can't see the connection between this and the treatment women have endured down the centuries.

It is really not acceptable for the Church of England or any church to go on teaching that it is OK to believe this. If you replace 'woman' with a whole range of other people whose genetic characteristics are different from some traditionally or socially defined 'norm', you may understand how outrageous this is.

I have seen women bleed to death after childbirth who could have been saved if their husbands had allowed them to go to hospital; I have taught English to girls deprived of education because they are women; I have earned three quarters of a man's wage because I am a woman; I have listened to stories of domestic abuse justified by leaders; I have been bullied by those who cannot cope with the reality of a woman doing the job.

I completely agree with the Archbishop of York  that the challenge of our time is to dismantle the massive imbalance in available resources between the poorest and the richest both nationally and globally. If you are a woman or a girl child, you are a great deal more likely to suffer from the multiple effects of poverty. I've recently been reading a book challenging the church to stop arguing over matters to do with gender and sex and to get back to an agenda that agonises and takes action over economic and resource-based injustices. Absolutely. This ought to encompass a priority toward the disenfranchised. Instead of saying, 'Let's sidestep the plight of women and concentrate on hunger/violence/clean water/disease control' (which is a fallacy anyway, as women disproportionately suffer these ills) we should be saying, 'Let's sidestep the requirements of those who see the touch of women as unacceptable in order to concentrate on hunger/violence/clean water/disease control.   

What is Tolerance?

Now here's a telling fact. More people took part in today's 'March Against Hatred' in Paris than took to the streets when Paris was liberated at the end of the second world war. (John Lichfield in the Independent.) I suppose the population is considerably bigger today but still, that's a resounding statistic. Three million people wanted to protest at the taking of human life, including the leaders of Middle Eastern, African, Asian and European nations. 

© Christian Today pic.twitter.com/qclgRHNiuv

What has today made me think? 

As a confessing Christian, I deplore the act of taking life to defend one's God; this has indeed been a misguided and shameful part of the church's history, but Christian, Muslim and Jew can surely join together in affirming that love of God is an empty concept without love for the Divine being transformed into love of one's fellow human. And however much you disagree with a person or struggle with anger or jealousy or outrage at what they say, that means upholding the value and sacredness of their life.   

Freedom of speech, freedom to try to express what you think is most true, tempered by the freedom and right to life of another, is the basis on which most Western democracies are built, that, and the requirement to act within the law and challenge it only by non-violent means. To participate in a democracy means living by this code.

I read yesterday of the massacre of possibly 2,000 people by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Moving as it was to see the leaders of the world march arm in arm through the streets of Paris, why do we Europeans not work as hard to show our outrage at the loss of innocent life in other places, on other continents?

The probability of increased sectarianism, racially motivated tension, right wing  extremism and a clamp down on the movement of immigrants and asylum seekers seems to have been immeasurably increased by the events of the last few days in Paris. What can we do to promote open debate between every section of our communities? The responsibility lies with every citizen of whatever cultural, ethnic or religious/non religious background - speak to your neighbour. Find out what they think, what is important to them?

In a secular and religious society how do we live together? I'll give the last word to Voltaire, that champion of freedom of religion and freedom of expression, tonight. 'What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.' 

Leadership Means Partnership

It's been an interesting time to reflect on leadership. While I'm currently in the middle of an MA in Hospice Leadership, the Church of England has produced The Green Report  (nothing to do with ecology!) about senior leadership in the church. Given the coherence and creativity of approach toward leadership training I experience among my hospice peers why, I ask myself, has the Green Report met with such an outcry and so much criticism?

Michael Sadgrove (who has the wisdom of one who's been Dean of two Cathedrals with significant growth) writes a measured blogpost here in which he welcomes the new work that's being done to identify and develop church leaders while being cautious of some aspects of the report, especially its approach to spirituality.  Martyn Percy, long time Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and newly appointed Dean of Christ Church Oxford, writes in a more critical vein at here about the lack of any systematic theological approach to the matter.

The objections are mainly around what many see as the wholesale adoption of management-speak and the lack of theological and ecclesiological depth. I have  sympathy with this, but let me first say I'm heartened by the fact the Church of England is at last beginning to take the need to prepare leaders seriously. Some of us have been articulating the need for this for over two decades. I've been involved in setting up various leadership programmes and facilitating the only induction available for archdeacons, all on a shoestring/non-existant budget and mostly woefully inadequate. This has happened without any forum for co-ordinated discussion about what kind of leadership the church actually needs. The £2m budget over 2 years with £800k set aside annually thereafter recommended by this report does not seem unrealistic for an organisation the size of the Church of England if it wants to continue to have impact.

My concerns about the report are largely to do with process.

I have no objection to insight drawn from strategic and operational management contexts as long as it's not confused with leadership itself. The role of a leader includes understanding what is required for good management but leaders should not attempt to undertake direct responsibility for the details of its provision. Leadership requires you to spend your best energy in other directions, taking key decisions about where to invest attention and resources for maximum impact. Leaders interpret context, understand the flow of information inside and outside the organisation and use influence to shape finance, funding, governance and accountability structures. They set direction and tone rather than become over-involved in detail. I'm not convinced the report shows that this is understood. Talk (for example) of bishops being involved in the detail of Ministry Development Reviews and even of archbishops participating in the leadership training modules on a regular basis makes me wonder if the authors really understand the relationship between management and leadership. 

The process of training described in the report worries me because it takes an isolationist approach. There's really dynamic thinking about leadership beyond the world of the church but, apart from a non-specific allusion to a 'content supplier' for the proposed modules, the report says little about partnership. It gives the impression of being unaware of the many institutes, universities and companies that promote discussion between leaders and research about leadership. It gives the impression that theological and spiritual insight is the prerogative, primarily, of the leadership of the church; this is far from the case.

A few years ago I attended a Bayswater Institute course on complexity in organisations. It was attended by delegates from all over the world leading public, private and voluntary sector organisations. The sense of vocation to their role was palpable and spiritual issues were very much on the agenda. On the final day, delegates offered seminars in their own field. Almost every person on the course chose to come to a seminar offered on approaches to life after death. This said something to me about the profound degree to which all good leaders do what they do out of a very personal engagement with ultimate values.

The MA in Hospice Leadership I mentioned earlier began with a module on personal mastery which explored the interiority and being of the leader. Leadership wells up primarily from who you are; what you know and what you do follows on. The module gave us experience-based and academically rigorous opportunities to think about our vision, values, motivation and purpose. We spent time meditating, listening, being. 

I'd like to see the group who eventually put together the church's training engage with sectors beyond the church to evolve their thinking about leadership. They should avoid a dualism that correlates church with spiritual and secular with non-spiritual. The report falls into this kind of dualism too often, for example, in the section where it polarises 'professional wisdom' and 'the wisdom of Solomon' or 'God-given wisdom'. Christian theological reflection on society is what the church distinctively offers and its leaders ought to be excellent and persuasive at this. But to develop these skills in isolation means that the church will never have much cutting edge. To contribute theological insight you have to be in conversation with other leaders who will challenge and interrogate you. It's important to resist any tendency for the church to talk to itself. This already happens a lot with so much leadership energy going into the synodical processes of the church which, while very worthy, do not engage the popular imagination or interest.

This report is a beginning. The attempt should be applauded. It's all too easy to criticise, and criticism can stifle the implementation of change. However, I would ask those responsible for acting on its recommendations to

• get into partnership with organisations and enterprises that are already far ahead in terms of equipping people for leadership (not management).
• avoid false dualisms like 'lay talent and ordained talent' (talent is talent), 'spiritual/nonspiritual' (spirituality exists wherever there are people), 'professional wisdom/God-given wisdom' (any human activity can be suffused with God's wisdom).
• be clear about what leadership is and what it is for.  

The hospice movement offers an informative parallel with the church. Hospices are places driven by a strong sense of vocation, they utilise a wide range of skill sets provided by professionals and volunteers working together, they largely generate their income by inspiring people to give, they have a strong pull toward (a much younger) tradition and they are places where faith, symbolism, ritual and strong secularising influences are all in the melting pot. The movement is facing something of its own moment of crisis and opportunity. It was obvious a few years ago that, if the insights of palliative care were to influence the wider provision of health care, then the intentional identification and training of hospice leaders was urgently needed. These would be people who could drive the movement to contribute into the context of a rapidly changing demography, giving it new direction and a much more clearly articulated purpose. Changes in funding, the withdrawal of the Liverpool Care Pathway, greater patient involvement, funding streams and potential changes in the law about assisted dying were all factors demanding a new approach to leadership. Vital assistance and 'direction setting' has been provided by research done by Help the Hospices, now renamed Hospice UK which has commissioned a number of reports reflecting new thinking and co-ordinated and supported the training needs arising from these reports.

The Church of England needs something similar. I hesitate to call it 'Help the Church of England', but the archbishops need to commission some focussed, in-depth, coherent thinking about the future and how the church responds to the interests and needs of a rapidly changing population. Appropriate identification and training of leaders can only happen in a context where there is strong, clear, flexible vision. It would be very sensible to partner with other organisations. I think, for example, of the kind of work the Joseph Rowntree Foundation does in terms of investigating social issues. Hospice UK reports are reasonably readable (though perhaps in the 'could be better' category). The form and language of Church of England reports is notoriously indigestible. In particular, they have a habit of including every conceivable possibility when defining an issue of role. The Green Report falls into this trap; I'd like to see a slimmed down and shrewdly prioritised view of both role and curriculum but I don't see much hope of it emerging from this report. Some serious consideration needs to be given as to how the archbishops and bishops engage in the task of communicating emerging vision (and I sense there is some new vision and wisdom around) to their senior leaders and, through them, to worshippers and those beyond the church. I'm not advocating yet another group or working party - I'm thinking of a loose 'institute' approach with well articulated guiding principles and a number of projects and individuals working in different ways. 

Finally, I thought the little section on suffragans was very telling. This was a point at which some of the shadow assumptions with which the group were working slipped out. The report talks of 'cherishing the role' and 'privilege'. Leadership is precisely not about cherishing roles but rather about creating and developing the roles that are needed to serve the vision. If we think it's about privilege, perhaps we ought to read the Gospels again.

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