The Queen, Shakespeare, Celebs, and the fact of impermanence

2016 is only four months old and is already proving to be a remarkable year, giving us lots to ponder. Not only have disruptive weather events experienced here in UK and elsewhere been cited as yet more proof if it were needed of climate change and the ground shifting - literally - under our feet; but also we have heard announcement after announcement of the death of well-loved figures from the worlds of entertainment.

On the 400th anniversary of the shuffling of William Shakespeare, (at this point my concentration exited stage left for several hours in a Shrine that I know)(As you were), all sorts of epithetical temptations befall the budding blogger. Shall I compare thee, life, to a Chinese take-away? Life is but an English summer's day, full of sunshine and warmth and signifying that hail is just around the corner (and has now arrived).

We should, by now, be well acquainted with impermanence, with the sheer precariousness of life on earth. (Indeed with the extraordinary unlikelihood of it ever happening in the first place.) We are getting through our species at an alarming rate and, what with Climate Change (apologies if you're a denier), we soon won't need to rely on nuclear weapons to snuff everything bar cockroaches out. However, we do have this malady of treating the shuffling off of our celebs, already too many to count on a hand or two, which is where I lose it,  as our major sad losses, sad losses though they truly are. What we are really mourning is our memories and our perception that Nobody Does It Better than them. Which, if true, would have had W. Shakespeare so in awe of G. Chaucer that he would have joined the Civil Service. There's a sort of permanence for you. 

The joyous occasion of Her Majesty the Queen's 90th Birthday is rightly to be celebrated for all sorts of reasons. She is a rock. But even rocks eventually slip below the waves, eroded. I, for one, think our Constitutional Monarchy is a great institution and has a lot of legs left in it, let alone three successors to the Queen lined up in succession. It's survived because it has adapted. That's the point of this blog, I think: continuity, adaptation, renewal all within the fact of impermanence.

I am betraying my simple-mindedness. For me this, the fact of impermanence, begs the cosmic question facing our apparently grown up era that sees no need for God. Where has the mighty thread of creativity in all the arts and sciences come from if not from the continuity of hope, enquiry and exploration that have joined up our thinking ever since cavemen first joined up the word 'boundaries' with 'let's push out the'? (Ed: source for this?). And what's the cause of creativity if not a Creator?

Maybe one of our celebs could tell us. If it's not too late.

The Present as Future, Future Now

Monday 28th April 2014

I'm trying to be in next Monday as I write on this one, Easter Monday. Next Monday I'll be just back from a four day working retreat called Cursillo, or to give it its full title, Cursillo de Christiandad (sp). - literally a short race through Christianity.  By then, I and another priest and fifteen lay Anglicans will have served a dozen pilgrims with an attempt to demonstrate the sheer loving-kindness of God. We will have worshipped him together in sundry ways, given and heard about fifteen talks about faith in him, and done a lot of laughing and some crying together. We aim to all grow closer to Christ through the weekend, and to have fresh impetus to go on serving him.

So I will be fairly spaced out next Monday.

But at least I'll be getting my feet done. I have an appointment with Stuart, our local NHS Chiropodist, or Podiatrist as they say these days. It's long overdue, as the hard skin on the balls of my feet is painful, but I'm grateful for the care that I'm given as a diabetic.

Then, Canada awaits. Canada in England, that is.  John and Eileen, who are English but live in Canada, come back to Blighty every year and spend two weeks or so in Teesdale, where I live. I think it may be three this year. We meet to eat and drink, share joy, love the Lord together, and John and I meet in TSOSB (The Shrine Of St Bruno) in my back garden for votive offerings.

So that's what I'll be thinking about on Monday 28th. I'll have been busy preparing for Cursillo last/this week, so may not have written any new poems. On the other hand I may have done, as part of preparation. It's a funny thing, the present as future, future now. You never know what hasn't happened, and what has happened isn't quite what will be. Or whatever.  Sometimes this living lark isn't very simple, is it.

Now I'm confused.

So as I was saying

, whatever that was.......

Does God like Caramel as much as I do? I'm writing to him via his PA, Rev Keef, to find out.

Meanwhile,  after decomposing in the winter, I am now composing poems again, composting in the garden,  and generally combobulating.

It's good to be alive! It's good not to be applying for jobs, as my job is not to have one. The Govmint told me so and generously said that I can do without Benefit after twenty seven years as I'm not fit for work. Yes, that's what they said. Because We're All In It Together.

I use the Food Bank of home. I get by. God provides. I was able to buy cigars for the first time in many months.

I feed my mind. It was very wasted. My Kindle app brings me much pleasure, except when I have to read very poor Theology because my pal asks me to.

I have loved reading The Eagle of Spinalonga, Jane Austen, Robert Harris, Brennan Manning, Dan Edwards, George Herbert, John Donne, Pru Phillipson.

Poetry has flowed this, that and the other way out of me.

I am inspired by Keef.  Well, is that really the right word?

I have preached, prayed, celebrated the Holy Mysteries, Glided at Durham Cathedral and Trained for Cursillo.

I shall stop now, because I can tell that Keef is going to Kanonise me. 

Writer's block

Strange thing, writing: you flow, you stop. Deadlines may apply but not in many cases. Some of us do not have editors to cajole, love, threaten or otherwise move us into working.

Writer's block. Now that is something.

I have months of inability to compose (poetry). Usually because my psyche is decomposing. That is, my mind is gripped fast by anxiety and depression. Worse, the legacy of guilt which Evangelical Legalism and the Protestant Work Ethic strapped onto my soul and dug deep into it not long after I accepted the unconditional love for me in Christ and began my journey of discipleship. I had nothing to lose but my liberation, in some ways, in those years. The scars persist.

Recently God brought to my mind other psychological events: the fall-out of a pastoral intervention when I was a Vicar. There was a crisis in my church involving a man whose behaviour was abusive and tyrannical and, due to the fear he inspired in others, had garnered to himself key positions of lay leadership. His wife came to see me (and my wife)  in the dead of night while he slept, saying she would leave him due to his abuse and neglect. I said I would call next day and tell him to resign and out his house in order. By the time I got there they were equally in denial and vitriolically aggressive to me.

I did sack him, but he took his time to hand over his jobs. In the end the church was liberated into fresh growth, but as they frequently attacked me in public and I felt unable to disclose confidentialities, I went downhill, eventually into breakdown and out of ministry.

One night of sleeplessness, several months into illness, I wrote down a phrase which buzzed round my mind. Like tissues out of a box, words kept coming which formed my first poem.

Twenty five years on my poetry still flows - and stops. So much depends on where I am on the illness cycle as well as other contingent factors. But the fresh water rule applies: allow water in and water will flow out.

I am at the moment in a highly productive phase of poetry, and I thank God for all that I am learning as I write. It gives the lie to a joke a son once made, that you have to be dead to be a poet. My vocation is to be priest/poet, a pastor and theologian who uses words to explore beyond words. I agree with the saying that poetry is saying more in less, though earlier generations were prolix at times.

I offer you these reflections because they are flowing out of me, and I need to read them.

Thoughts on being a Cathedral Chaplain

I've been away from it, on Crete in blazing sunshine and welcome heat. Jane and I saw Knossos and the museum but were often content to laze around the swimming pool and 'be', and read. (Jane unfortunately had a virus for three days which knocked on the head a five hour walk in Samaria Gorge).

I read the whole of A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel's wonderful novel about Desmoulins, Danton and Robespierre. I also re-read (backwards!) Fr Dumitru Staniloae's first of six volumes of Dogmatics, The Experience of God, and learnt much to my blessing.

So I've been away from Chaplaining for a short while. This is a good thing. I'm so looking forward to being back. I always think that a Chaplain, when (s)he is there is God's person for the task. But so what? God has other people too. It doesn't matter who is there so long as someone is who is going about the task, being on pilgrimage, and not too full of self.

Chaplaining is an -ing as well as a -cy. It is service in motion. You need to expect to be changed by it, and come back again and again to be refreshed as well as to serve. You need to expect the unexpected each time, the serious, the funny, the sorrowful, the uplifting, the (let's face it) boring, the   alerting of spiritual antennae, the willingness to love right through the day.

For me, starting at the Feretory and often continuing round different stations is vital. I know that others have their own important places within the Church. But we must be on pilgrimage, whether it's on our own or in the company of others who happen to be there. The Vergers, Stewards, Guides, Bedespeople (have I forgotten anyone? Oh the Canons Residentiary and the Celebrants) are all your ministers as well as people to serve. I learn so much too from the ad hoc conversation, no matter what depth it is at.

I've been Chaplaining for very nearly twenty five years, and am still practising. The Church continues to amaze me, and come up with new revelations. Visitors, Pilgrims, Congregants likewise.

I'm writing this because I need to read it and remind myself of what a blessing and privilege it is to serve God and his people in this way.

On Those Who Stand In The Way

16^th December 2012

On Those Who Stand In The Way

They were the brave,

they were the few

who held up the skies

in fast and frail craft

while evil carved across Europe.

Falling, falling, the survivors now,

but always remembered.

They were the brave,

they were the few

who spoke up for victims and

sheltered and saved them

from hate’s discriminating atrocity.

Falling, falling, the survivors now,

but always remembered.

They are the brave,

they are the few

who stand in harm’s way

to shelter and save the innocent

from abuse and pain and brutality.

Fallen, fallen, the heroes now,

but always remembered.

In liberty’s chaos and freedom’s choices,

who are the brave, who are the few?

Are we not all the many,

to speak up for justice

voices for goodness in a bedlam of shouting?

Rise, rise, be heroes now

and always remembered.

Advent Reflection

13^th December 2012

Advent Reflection

The purpose is not the stress

of the ever more demanding holiday,

but the straining,

the straining of the sense

of waiting, watching, expecting:

all the senses alerted

and put on notice,

looking out,

staring into night for the first glimpse of dawn.

So,

like a man sucking at a dry pipe

before it is filled and lit and savoured,

I am waiting and preparing,

taking steps to be ready

yearning with longing for the eternal,

a hallowed nostalgia

for the already here but partially recognized,

familiar in the handed down knowledge of mystery.

I’m staring into night for the first glimpse of dawn.

All in the mind

It's all in the mind is a phrase I've seen used a lot recently, on subjects as different as:

how to play the Indian spinners (Geoffrey Boycott, who knows)
how to be responsible about sex and guarding against abuse
how to be a young, inexperienced driver (though hormones play a part too)

Some critics of Christian faith also suggest that it's all in the mind.

Time to emphasise St Paul's words to the Roman Christians:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

St Paul, who is often subjected to vitriolic abuse himself, wrongly, has it right: living a good, acceptable and perfect way of life does depend on the grace of God which comes through renewal. Freedom comes through submission to Jesus Christ.

Remembrance

5^th November 2012

Remembrance

In hundreds, thousands and millions they died,

and some unknown in the lonely loss

of a blast-dissected body,

all alone, unrecognizable,

or drowning in the toxins of gas,

or the ice-grip of a monstrous sea,

but all remembered.

Some were burnt and fell to earth but rose up high.

Some, tortured and warped, dying by inches for us

(or our enemies).

Some live to forgive and some can not,

and there are minds and hearts so gripped by trauma

that they do not know where to go.

And the families, the families! I cannot comprehend their injuries.

But I will remember them all, and pray for

the hurt and the harmed

and the heroes and the cowards

and all the dismembered of the wars,

And still remember that I was made because of war.

Hair raising Fund Raising Stunt

Yesterday I had my hair and beard dyed in the Romanian National colours, Blue, Yellow and Red.

I emerged from Riley's Hairdresser in Barnard Castle multi-coloured, and braced for what others see and what I will not be able to except in a mirror or a photo. I plan to stay this way till Christmas, and to raise at least £500 for J.A.R.S., a charity in Romania which I serve as a Trustee. So grateful thanks to those who have already given so generously. 

The work of J.A.R.S. in Romania is among all sorts of people, but specially at the moment among Roma (Gypsies), proclaiming the love of God in Jesus Christ by both word and action. Your gift will make a difference and enable love to help poverty.
This link will give you further details. I am thrilled to say that I am already 66% of the way to my target, which I hope to exceed considerably.

https://my.give.net/davidgrievejars

Watch this space for updates!

Stoptober

In one of those strange flights of lateral thought (if such a thing is possible), I found myself musing on the latest mangling of the English language, Stoptober, and what it represents, a no doubt admirable service aimed at helping people to give up smoking if that's what they wish to do.

My immediate reaction was to plan a counter strategy, that is to smoke a cigar every day in October. I won't degrade the activity with a name such as Stogietober, so please forget that you just read it, if you have. But it is something that I shall simply have to get on with.

Meanwhile, I thought, there must be something that I can give up, and it dawned on me. I shall cease from, desist from, refrain from, quit and stop the foul, unhealthy practise of trying to read the entire edition of Private Eye in bed in one go on alternate Wednesday nights. No more dragging on Strobes or HP Sauce through to Yobettes till the whole organ is empty.

Oh! The new health that I shall enjoy! Or I shall be able to listen to the Shipping Forecast, or Church Bells at Bedtime. Or read another chapter of Who Murdered Chaucer?

I am not so self-righteous, I hope, to pretend that it will be easy.

But, from now on, Private Eye will be kept Firmly Down Stairs.

Think of me in my struggle.

No Added Sugar

Tonight, gentle reader, was the new season's first rehearsal of 'No Added Sugar', a choir of now mainly adult voices and mine (the students of Teesdale School in Barmy Castille no longer being paid for by David 'We're All in the Choir Together' Cameron). We met, as arranged and booked in the Scarth Hall, Staindrop, at 7pm, for our 90 minute rehearsal, bright eyed, bushy tailed and in superb voice, only to find that we were to be booted out at 7.30 by something called the Zumba Class which, village Politics decreed, has always met then and there and it Could Not Be Altered.

So (if you are still reading this, ignore it if you aren't) our wonderfully multi-talented Choir Mistress Jane Ford taught us to sing  a rousing Nowell in a Beer Garden sort of song, and we then repaired to the Wheatsheaf to carry out further research and practice, with different words coming to mind.

Back at the Scarf 'All, the She Canon had entered the premises with that bemused expression which she wears when she thinks she is in the wrong place on the right day, or the right place on the wrong day, and was gently diverted by Ms Ford to the Upper Room where Deanery Synod in all its Glory was convening. Crisis alerted.

Note the name, (chosen from the back of a cereal packet): No Added Sugar. We have sung with Inter Opera, we have sung with Concordia, we have had many gigs, we sing a variety of music from Madrigals, to Baroque, Sacred, Popular, You Name It. We have bookings with the Staindrop Fifties and Sixties and at the Bowes Museum, and our diary is full for the next six months. When we are famous - we are already infamous - remember that you saw it here first.

Humbling and Wonderful

To meet  so many people this past weekend who, facing huge and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to life and hope, are coming smiling through:

People with life threatening illness

People hated, rejected, ostracised and dumped because of their sexuality,
or addiction in younger life, or for the courage to ask the question Why.

People in wheelchairs who rise beyond my level

A young widower with little twins finding joy and purpose and a new love.

Politicians may yearn to make us believe in Green Shoots of Recovery.

This is SPRING

Our own faces we can not see

10^th September 2012

Our own faces we can not see.

The mirror flatters to deceive,

or alarms by telling more than is so.

Our own voices we may not hear

as others do. The shock of playback

pricks vanity and disorientates.

Our own gestures when in full flow

may distract all but self,

and drum to a contrary beat.

On our own we are never complete.

Solace can not be had in isolation

from all that makes us what we are.

Unafraid To Be

16^th August 2012

Unafraid To Be

Unless you have a connection with Durham, you may not know the name Ruth Etchells, who died there recently at the age of 81. Or it may be one of those names which ring a vague bell.

In fact ACW members and the wider church owe a very great debt to this lady, humble disciple and friend of Jesus, greatly admired poet and preacher, innovative English lecturer and theologian, adviser to an Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference, and first woman to be head of an Anglican Theological College. Generations of her students have been affected for good and for God. Universally loved, very highly respected, she was a witness to his truth and a force for change, bringing St John’s Durham from relative doldrums into the first class of achievement. She was also unafraid to challenge the status quo in church politics, whether to do with women’s ordination or lay people‘s own distinctive ministry, separate to and different from that of the ordained. Readers of her various books are also much the better for the treat, beginning from her trail-blazing “Unafraid To Be” first published in the early ‘70s, a look at contemporary literary giants such as Pinter, Osborne and Beckett, and how they deal with issues of life and meaning. But more than that, she taught that we can have confidence in the Gospel message as we weigh literature against it. Ruth was a humble person who gave others confidence.

On a personal note, she was also my friend and mentor as a poet. I owe her, under God, far more than I could ever say. We would meet at her retirement house overlooking the River Wear opposite Durham Castle and Cathedral. Always, before we got down to her kind but firm dissection of my early efforts in poetry writing, she would ask about me and the family. I was struggling at the time with the after effects of breakdown, my family coming to terms with a non-Vicarage way of life. In terms of mentoring she was what we all need, someone who will affirm and enable what is good and promising, and not hesitate to point out the flawed and feeble.

We need not fear true criticism of our work. We should be unafraid to be people with something worthwhile to say. We serve, after all, the Word himself, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

 

First published on the web site of ACW, the Association ofChristian Writers

Hmm

Well, after so much trouble trying to activate a blog with a similar service, this is as easy as could be.
So I recall a saying my father was so fond of, with a slight difference:

"If at first you don't succeed, try something different"

On Poetry Writing

In a sense I never learnt to write poetry. We did the usual things at school, and I was good at Eng Lit, but I couldn't really get a handle on rhymed verse, and metres and feet. So, for years, it passed me by. Doggerel was another matter. I could do that, which proved very handy in parish ministry in replying in kind to various 'oddes' (sic) composed by certain parishioners.

Twelve years in to ordained life I suffered a severe nervous breakdown which proved to be the precursor to retirement on health grounds, starting effectively twenty five years ago. Some months in, while I could not sleep one night a line that I knew I needed to write down would not leave my mind. So I got up and wrote it down, followed by dozens more till a prose poem emerged.

And so it started, my vocation to write, first as catharsis and therapy, now as ministry to many others but always, I think, a word to me first of all.

I had the privilege subsequently of sitting under the feet for ten years of a most accomplished poet and theologian who took me under her wing (if you can be in both places at the same time, that is). She corrected my many facile mistakes and ineptness, but never attempted to force me into a 'classical' form of style of poetry, rather to discover my own.

And what is my own? Oddly, I'm not sure! I do know that I have my own particular 'voice' and preferences in the way that I write. However, for me the way a poem is written depends upon its subject matter, which may not emerge till after I've begun to write. Often a phrase or an image occurs to me that I know I must write about  - now! So off I go and out it comes. I do some editing, of course, but usually finish very swiftly and follow the urge to share it immediately, which email makes possible. A poem is not complete until it is read, preferably heard.

The word poetry comes from the root 'to make'. It's part of the creative purpose that God has sub-contracted to us humans, so we do well to be delighted when we make a poem. That's not to say, naturally, that it shouldn't be critiqued, corrected, rejected as bad, if it is. Better to know than to be self-deceived! But if a poem can 'say more in less' to someone, even just one person, then it's done a job.

The poem (I call them pomes so as not to get ideas above my station) that follows, written after midnight today) is a good example of my writing.

6^th September 2012

Waning, then Waxing

The Moon retreats towards the blankness of its regulated rhythm.

Life here, on Earth, would be unimaginable

without her silent obedience

to her barren, lifeless calling to hang there

in the sky,

keeping us in balance.

God be praised who designs the chance,

knock-on effect of the collections of rock,

who spins such an intricate web of planetary interaction.

Mind in man, no accident,

rises through space and time

and is given the ability to choose,

should it so choose,

to commit to the astronomical risk of faith

in the one who became so frail

in order that it may make its way

to all that is impossible yet to grasp.