Moving On

The blog's author is moving to the Diocese of Llandaff in the Church in Wales. She will be installed as Dean of Llandaff Cathedral on Saturday 2nd March 2013. Llandaff's association with St Teilo dates from around 546 and the cathedral is dedicated to Ss Peter and Paul, and Ss Dyfrig, Teilo (whose tomb is situated in the presbytery) and Euddogwy. Llandaff is on the banks of the River Taff, about two miles from the centre of Cardiff.  Thank you all for reading Archdeacon in the Dales over the past two years. Look out for a new blog from Llandaff in due course!



A Celtic Blessing

On our hearts and our homes, the blessing of God.

In our coming and going, the peace of God.

In our life and believing, the love of God.

At our end and new beginning,

The arms of God to welcome us and bring us home.

                                                                                      The Iona Community, Shorter Evening Liturgy



Farewell Sermon

Farewell Sermon
Evensong, St Mary's Richmond
20th January 2013

1 Samuel 3.1-20; John 1.29-42

The Old Testament reading, tonight, reminds us that God can speak to anyone. Do you really believe that? God may call or stir the heart of whomsoever God pleases. The youngest person, the most unlikely, unpromising person, the outsider. Or, perhaps, just the reverse. God may call the person everyone expects - the one who has been trained or who has special insight or vision. With the story of Samuel, we have both. God speaks through a combination of a young, inexperienced boy who works in the temple and an elderly priest who has served God for many years.

Have you noticed how children sometimes get a bee in their bonnets about something? And then they go on and on about it...but often there's a kernal of truth, something that needs to be attended to. Here's a story about just that.

When David Shiffler was three years old, he and his family went on a camping trip to the new Mexico desert. He and his dad had been watching The Land Before Time, a cartoon adventure in which a group of children meet some real dinosaurs. So David was really keen to hunt for dinosaur eggs. He went digging with a toy trowel and found a green stone which he confidently told his father was a dinosaur egg. His father took the stone back home and put it in the garage with the rest of the day's kit. After David had badgered him about it for weeks, Don Shiffler finally gave in and sent the stone to palaeontologists in Colorado who told the family that, yes, the stone was a dinosaur egg. Not only, that, it was in fact the oldest meat-eating dinosaur's egg ever found in North America, twice as old as the earliest previously known specimen. The egg found by three year old David convinced scientists that these particalur dinosaurs, called therapods, had lived in the Jurassic age, something that had not been suspected. 

Like Samuel, the boy David had a persistant hunch that somethiong was important but he needed the adults to help him work out what it was.

Enthusiasm often comes from the young. Andrew, Jesus' disciple (presumably in his late teens or early twenties) rushes off to find his brother straight away when Jesus calls him. 'The Messiah himself has spoken to me! Come and see!' The enthusiasm of youth with its willingness to act! Wisdom comes with age (well somtimes!) The elderly Eli can discern the mark of God in what Samuel is experiencing. He has seen this kind of thing before. Samuel is not dreaming or hearing voices; God is disturbing his conscience until he stops running to Eli and listens.

God can and does speak to us all. Not very often, perhaps. Not as often as we would like, or when we would like, but God can speak to and through anyone who will listen. Anyone who will stop long enough to be attentive. And then, when God does speak, it may be that we need the help of someone else to interpret the message - the help of a wise friend or someone who has studied the ways of God, someone who knows the scriptures as Eli did. Or someone who thinks and prays a lot.

How does God speak? Well, in many and diverse ways.

Maybe through an idea or a hunch that won't leave us alone until we attend to it. Samuel got up three times to investigate where this strange voice came from.

Maybe God speaks through a trusted friend's advice or urging. 'Come on, come and see Jesus,' Andrew urges Simon Peter. Together they went, stayed the evening, and their lives were changed for ever.

Maybe God speaks through our sense of history or tradition, our sense of what is right and wrong within that. A profound knowledge of his tradition was probably what helped Eli to interpret God's word to him and his household through the message that Samuel delivered, and to understand that things had gone wrong and needed to change. 'He is the Lord, He will do whatever seems best to Him,' says Eli. It must have taken a great deal of humility and courage for Eli to take on board Samuel's unplalatable message and utter those words. Sometimes God challenges us in uncomfortable ways to face up to things we'd rather avoid.

Maybe God speaks to us through our knowledge of Scripture. Samuel probably knew what was already written about the House of Eli. God's call prompted him to warn Eli to take what was written in scripture seriously.

Or maybe God does speak to us directly, just occasionally. Perhaps when we are very far away from God or in great distress. James Ryle is a well-known evangelist whose life was transformed when he was in prison. Here is the story of how God spoke to him.

At the age of seven, James Ryle was put in an orphanage. His natural father was in prison, his step father was an alchoholic and his mother couldn't cope. It was a grim place, and, not long after his arrival, two boys ran away. James says, 'I can still hear the sounds of their protests as they were beaten for having run away. As I lay in my bed, I pulled the covers over my head and whispered a simple prayer to the God I did not know. 'I promise,' I said, 'I'll never run away.'' As the years went by, James got tougher and more  independent and, by the time he was fourteen, he had had enough of the orphanage. With two friends, he jumped the fence and ran away. As they ran across the fields, something happened which James really wasn't expecting. In his own words, 'The voice of the Lord spoke in my ear, stopping me momentarily in my tracks. 'You promised.' That's all I heard but it was enough. I was dumbstruck. My first thought was, 'I cannot believe that you would bring that up at a time like this.' That was the first time James heard God's voice. He carried on running. But years later, when he was in prison and heard the voice of God again, he remembered that day - the day he realised that God does speak to people.

There is nothing we can do to make God speak to us. We can only expect and hope that God might. We can hold ourselves open to hear and to act on what we hear. Or see. Elizabeth Barrett Browning  wrote,

'Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.'

I think the blackberries are a reference to Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale where the Pardoner says, in a throw away line, he cares not if men's souls 'go ablackberrying in hell.'

Samuel, Eli, Andrew and Simon Peter did not disregard an approach by God. They were ready to stop in their tracks, take off their shoes and listen when God spoke to them. They were willing, not only to honour God's presence, but to have their lives shaped and changed by what they heard and saw.

As an archdeacon you go round a lot of churches. I was at two this morning. An ecumenical gathering in Scorton to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and a Communion service at Brompton where the youngest member was about eight. I enjoyed watching her put her heart and soul into reading all the words of the hymns and singing enthusiastically. Those two churches were full of people to had trudged or driven through the snow, as you have tonight, beacuse they love worshipping God, or they need to worship, or they want to want to worship.

What makes our churches come alive and stay alive? What makes them indispensible to the communities in which they are set? Well, at the heart of every faith-filled church and at the heart of every Christian life is that direct sense of relationship with God. Some of us chatter away to God. Some of us find God speaks into our hearts and minds when we are still. Some of us think of God as our Father. Some of us talk to Jesus. Some of us  have that sense of God's Spirir searching our spirits and hearts. Probably, we all do most of these things some of the time.

We do what Samuel did and stop for a moment to attend, 'Speak Lord, for your servant hears.' Direct relationship with God.

For the sake of our churches, we ought also to do what Samuel did next and share what we discover with each other. Recapture the enthusiasm, even the excitement, of youth. Talk about what God seems to be saying to us. Often it is only through talking about an encounter with God to someone else that we begin to discover its real significance. An encounter with God, a prompting by God's Spirirt may be something for us and us alone but, often, it's more of a gift for others. 'So Samuel told everything and did not keep anything back.'

There may be some changes ahead for the Archdeaconry of Richmond and for our Diocese. Big changes if we join up with the Archdeaconry of Craven and the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield. Small changes happen all the time as people come and go, parishes join together, new kinds of church and new kinds of worship emerge. Whatever the future holds, keep in your sights the desire to have that sense of direct relationship with God. You can always recognise a person who listens and talks with God. You can always tell a church where lots of the members are engaged in doing this. It is the means by which God's Spirit renews the church and changes the world.

And now, to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or conceive by the power that is at work among us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all ages. Amen.  

A Sense of Place

Did any of you watch the programme in which Rowan Williams said Goodbye to Canterbury over the New Year? I think it was a BBC 2 production. In it, he took the viewer round Canterbury cathedral and spoke very movingly about what it had been like to live with the building over the past ten years. It is a place where you cannot but be conscious of history in the making, a place that reminds you that even the most seemingly permanent things change and a place of incessant pilgrimage. It looks two ways - inwards to Britain and outwards to mainland Europe and beyond. The most moving bit was, for me, when he spoke about what it does to you to have to preside at the eucharist in the place and on the date when one of your predecessors was brutally murdered. It must be difficult to live humbly and calmly with the spectre of Beckett's martyrdom yearly, if not daily before your eyes.

The programme set me thinking about what the buildings and places we worship in do to us. How do they shape what we focus on in worship, what we see as important (or perhaps don't see) and what we think about ourselves and our place in the order of things?  I was, for a number of years, Priest-in-Charge of St Patrick's church in Nuthall, Nottingham. Anne Ascough (of Fox's Martyrs fame) lived in the village for a while before her marriage. She espoused the Reformers' ideas and was said to have read scripture, in English, from the lectern in Lincoln cathedral.  She became a member of the Queen's court and a lay preacher but was eventually (aged around 24) tortured, tried and executed at the stake for her theological leanings in a plot that was really aimed to flush out Katherine Parr's Protestant sympathies and remove her from her position as Queen. Once I knew the story of Anne, I could never read from the lectern in Nuthall without thinking of her and what she and people like her had gone through so that we can read the Bible in our own language. I used to feel very ashamed of myself if I had not prepared my sermon properly in a way that I haven't quite done before or since. It seemed somehow deeply disrespectful to treat scripture lightly in the shadow of Anne's presence.

I think all the buildings I have worshipped in regularly over the years have had quite a profound influence on the person I have become. The fourth century foundation and early manuscripts of one church spoke inspirationally of the connection of our faith to its origins; the lack of imagery and the plain furniture and decor of another chapel focused me on the word, both scriptural and rational, and taught me not to leave my intellect behind when worshipping; the constant vandalism against the church buildng in another place focused the whole Christian family outwards to care beyond the bubble of church life and to campaign and work for social justice that was specific and tangible. My present job as an archdeacon means that I live the life of contrasts - one Sunday caught up in wonder by the possibilities of transcendence held out in the splendour of a vast building with a wonderful choir, another Sunday humbled and touched by the sincerity of a tiny gathering which materialises determinedly and courageously from the flood and fog-clad countryside. One Sunday, caught up suddenly in the realisation that about the same number of people would have been engaged in Prayer Book worship in that very church nearly 400 years ago, using the words we are using and sitting where we are sitting, gazing at the hills framed by the East window and a great oak tree. Another Sunday feeling the excitement of being part of a group worshipping together for the first time in a cricket club bar with the staff pulling pints and looking on in some puzzlement.

How does your church building challenge you and tangle with your life?  

Space at Ripon Cathedral

Ripon Cathedral is hosting a new series of full day retreats and monthly evening meetings to explore spirituality and meditation. These will run throughout 2013/4.

SPACE will offer a day-long retreat based on a particular theme such as Wonder, Compassion, Journeying. The day will involve stillness, reflection and guided meditation.

SPACE BETWEEN will be a monthly evening meeting offering time to explore, as a group, the meanings, values and beliefs associated with the theme of the SPACE retreat days. There will also be time for stillness and meditation.

Come to some or come to all - create your own journey. 

There will be a taster session for SPACE on Saturday 19th January 2013 at Thorpe Prebend House, Ripon HG4 1QR from 10.30 - 12noon. For more information
e mail SPACEripon@gmail.com or ring the Cathedral office on 01765 603583

A Walk Around Holy Island

 

Lindisfarne Castle and Harbour

Holy Island is one of those 'thin' places. In the words of Josiah Conder's famous hymn, 'Alike pervaded by His eye, all parts of God's dominion lie, this world of ours and worlds unseen and thin the boundary in between.' On Holy Island I am always so aware of the Communion of Saints. I recently led a retreat on Lindisfarne for Ripon Cathedral and several of us commented that, as we worshipped in St Mary's Church, we found ourselves praying about the living and the departed as though there were no difference - there was a deep sense that we were surrounded, joined and led by all who have in the past and do now follow the journey of faith.  

St Cuthbert's Island



St Mary's Church

Services take place each morning and evening at St Mary's Church, led by local Christians who make visitors very welcome. There are also Celtic Prayers at Open Gate Retreat House (run by the Community of Aidan and  Hilda) at midday and in the late evening. One of the pleasures of going to the island for a retreat or holiday is that you can dip into the daily worship of these two communities and you are unobtrusively but warmly welcomed - perhaps not so much welcomed as surrounded by those who draw alongside you, for a time, in prayer. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there are commemorations of St Aidan and St Cuthbert - in the summer months this involves a procession from the church to sites overlooking Cuthbert's cell and Aidan's statue. Lindisfarne is a very holy place and it is obvious not only that prayer has been continuously offered there in the past, but that there is still a constant stream of prayer being offered daily by God's diverse people - pilgrims and tourists, natives of the island, of the mainland and people from all parts of the world, Christians and people of other faiths and none. 

St Aidan

Holy Island is a wonderful place to go for a day's pilgrimage, a retreat or a holiday. I have benefitted enormously from going on my own or with family for holidays or with church and student groups for retreats. The history of the island both sacred and secular is varied and interesting, there is space to walk and explore quietly to your heart's content, expecially when the tide is in and most of the visitors depart. Last week we stayed for a few days and saw and heard seals and a great variety of birds. The Lindisfarne Scriptorium and the Christian Centre run by St Mary's Retreat House offer the visitor sources of inspirational artwork and Celtic texts. http://www.lindisfarne-scriptorium.co.uk   and www.marygatehouse.org.uk  

 

Cross and Monastery

 
From Adnabod (Knowing) by Waldo Williams, transl. Noel Davies

 

You are our breath. You are the flight

Of our longing to the depths of Heaven.

You are the water which flees from

 The wilderness of our anxiety and fear.

You are the salt which purifies.

You are the piercing wind of our pomposity.

You are the traveller who knocks.

You are the prince who dwells within us.

 

I always enjoy this poem which, like so many Celtic prayers, surrounds us with the mystery God, without and within. This is the God who is infinitely great and beyond us, to whom our soul reaches out and the same God whose Spirit dwells within us, as close to us as our own breath and more understanding of us than our own minds.
 

 

Beyond the Harbour and out to the Farne Islands

The Prayer of the Church of England

I was delighted to discover this new offering from the Liturgical Commision of the Church of England (the people who write the texts used in services.) It would make a very good Christmas present.

 

Church House Publishing 2012

The book's compilers have collected into one volume some of the most popular and enduring prayers of the Church of England, both old, traditional ones ( from The Book of Common Prayer and other sources) and the more recent prayers from Common Worship that have captured our imagination and are already loved by worshippers up and down the country. Many of these prayers express in a few words thoughts that are too deep for spontaneous utterance - you know the feeling 'I couldn't have put it into words myself, but that's exactly it!'  Many of the texts also make me think and challenge me - can I really mean that? I think this is the heuristic use of prayer - to pray something that is a bit more than you can manage but to feel that you would like to be drawn to that place of grace and understanding. This is prayer that stretches the imagination. A Roman catholic priest who taught me theology once said that the glory of the Anglican tradition is its Collects (short prayers which collect into a brief space complex and profound thoughts.) I predict that this will become one of the Anglican classics of the first part of the twenty first century providing, as it does, an insight into Church of England identity and spirituality. The prayers each have a short introduction to their historical context which helps the worshipper to dig deeper into their meaning.

 I'm sure we've all got our favourite prayers that chime with something very deep within us. One of mine is

Bring us, O Lord, at our last awkening 

Into the house and gate of heaven,

To enter into that gate and dwell in that house

where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light,

no noise nor silence, but one equal music,

no fears nor hopes but one equal possession,

no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity

in the habitations of Thy glory and dominion,

world without end.

Amen.

John Donne 1572-1631

 

 

I also love, for it's wonderful Kingdom theology, the post communion prayer which I think first came in with the Alternative Service Book 1980

 

 

Father of all, we give you thanks and praise,

that when we were still far off,

You met us in Your Son and brought us home.

Dying and living, He declared Your love,

gave us grace and opened the gate of glory.

May we who share Christ's body live His risen life,

we who drink His cup bring life to others,

we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.

Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us,

so we and all Your children shall be free

and the whole earth live to praise Your name,

thought Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

 

The culmination of the prayer sweeps the whole world up into the praise of God and this reminds me of Cranmer's placing of the Gloria at this point of the service, after the distribution of the bread and wine - it seems the right place to locate a peon of praise on behalf of all peoples.

 

 

The Fourth Age - Life Long Learning

We are used to hearing about the Third Age but lately we are beginning to hear about Four Stages of life. People are living to be much older and many are active into their 60's and 70's in ways they were not previously - I was speaking to one man on Sunday who is still working aged 78. It's also true that many people are progressing into their 80's and 
90's and looking for ways to find friendship and to go on engaging in the adventure of life, even where physical health, sight, hearing or mobility has deteriorated to some degree. The writer Ann Morisy puts it like this, 'For the first time in human history, our map of life consists of not three stages, but four. The suddenness with which this new shape to our lives has come about makes it unsurprising that we fumble for ways of making sense of this apparent gift of extra years.'  

Apparently anyone reaching 65 (which, for most people, used to represent the age of retirement or beyond) can expect an average of 15 years' further active life. This general expectation of a greatly extended period at the end of life is a relatively new phenomenon. I can remember my grandparents commenting on every obituary they read in the Times where the deceased had had more than his or her 'three score years and ten' - it was unusual.

So what are the distinctive qualities and tasks of the Fourth Stage of life? Carl Jung lived to be 87. His psychological theory placed great emphasis on the need for a person to pass through the process of individuation which often occurs in later life, certainly after mid-life. By means of this process, poeple work through earlier internal conflicts and losses to become more themselves. James Fowler noted that, in the final stage of life, people often discover how to become more comfortable living with paradox, recognising that two truths that appear to conflict can be accepted and 'lived' together so they make a larger picture of what truth is - 'I loved my parent/my parent was sometimes unkind to me'  can come to be understood in the wider context, 'My parent had a difficult life/my life has been valuable despite the wounds/I can both love my parent and acknowledge that they were unkind'. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross both portray the spiritual life as a succession of stages or 'rooms' through which we move, coming to stages where there is much perplexity, stages of comparative peace and stages where there is a deep yearning to discover more or to plumb the depths of our own psyche in order to look at the hidden places.

What are the implications of this for the churches?

Musings on Children and God's Kingdom

Jesus took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in His arms, He said,' Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes Me.'
(Mark 9.37)

And in Matthew's version of the same story, we read,
'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heave.'
(Matt 18.3)

What a great day for that little boy! Imagine being called out by Jesus the great Rabbi! You can just see the little chap stood there proudly, rushing back to tell Mum and Dad and Granny and Grandpa...and perhaps years later telling his own grandchildren about how Jesus, yes they one they say died on a cross and rose again, had actually called him out in front of the crowd to help with His teaching. Last week at Richmond, Archbishop Sentamu called 6 children out to help him with his talk; I overheard one of them telling his friend about it - he will remember that day for a long time!

Children feature a surprising number of times in Jesus' teaching and ministry - 12 times in the gospels. They are not just valued, they are given the highest place. We are told, unless we all become like little children, we cannot enter God's Kingdom. If we receive a child in Jesus' name, that is like receiving Jesus Himself. Why are children so important? What does Jesus mean when He says we should all be like children? I want to explore four aspects of the nature of childhood that might be relevant.

Wonder

Children have that marvellous sense of curiosity and wonder, don't they? They're discovering the world for the first time, seeing it all with new eyes. They're not jaded and cynical about what they see, but excited by it. Isn't it that sense of wonder and curiosity at God's world and where He has placed us in it that leads us into God's Kingdom?.

You don't have to be a child to retain a sense of wonder. I met living proof of that recently. I gave a lady a lift home from a church variety show - it turned out she is 90 in November. She had just been on stage playing the harmonica and telling caterpillar jokes. She told me that for her 80th birthday she had been up in a hot air balloon, for her 85th she had had a ride in a small plane and for her 89th (incase she did not reach her 90th!) she had ridden pillion on the back of a motor bike. That is surely retaining a sense of the wonder of life - and, interestingly, the children at the show had clearly loved her.  Despite her rather old fashioned manners and use of language there was an immediate bond between her and the children.

Perhaps we aren't all physically fit enough to go flying at 80, but the challenge is, what we can do to recapture a sense of wonder at the world about us? A sense of gladness that God daily provides for us. An enthusiasm that we can share with others with a shining face.

Justice

Children have a deep rooted and immediate sense of what is just and fair. Try sharing  a box of chocolates between them or refereeing a game when they know they rules better than you do! 'It's not fair, Miss!' In the words of the Lord to Zechariah the prophet, 'You are required to administer justice'!

Is Jesus saying that a profound sense of what is right and fair is a prerequisite for entering the kingdom of Heaven? And, accompanying that, so deep a sense of outrage at what is wrong that we are compelled to take action. In the gospels, Jesus does not often talk about hell. But He does speak of the flames of hell at the end of at least two parables. You remember the parable of Dives, the rich man, and Lazarus, the poor man at his gate whom he refuses to lift a finger to help? And the parable of the sheep and the goats where the goats are those who have not fed the hungry or given the thirsty to drink or visited the prisoner or the sick and so on. Jesus Himself displayed a great sense of outrage at life's injustices - that some had all they could possibly want and did nothing for those who had very little. That some thought themselves better than others or always in the right and were not prepared to be moved by the plight or the words of others in very different circumstances. Children want what's fair for themselves but they generally have a well developed sense of what's fair for other children, too, and will stand up for it.

A willingness to get involved

A very big difference between children and teenagers is that children can't wait to get started on an activity, can they? But as anyone who's worked with teenagers will know, they hang back. Will they look silly? Will their friends join in? What are the risks? The older we grow, the gretaer the temptation to think,' 'Let someone else do it' or at least, 'let someone else try it out first...if it works, I may join in.'

Jesus was fully engaged with those around Him. He did not necessarily hide from awkward or threatening situations (though sometimes he took evasive action), He took risks, He responded to whoever was persistent enough to come to Him. Perhaps one of the things that marks out members of the Kingdom of God is that they don't stand on the side lines and watch. They don't marginalize themselves or other people. One of the most moving performances I've ever seen of the story of Romeo and Juliet was by pupils of the Sheppherd School in Nottingham. It was an interpretation, in movement, of Juliet's sorrow over Romeo's death. You could feel the grief, touch the tragedy. This was performed by a group of young people with learning difficulties. I was struck by the way in which their teachers had encouraged them to get fully immersed in the story, to understand it from the inside of their own experiences of love and then to communicate what was in their hearts. From this emerged as eloquent a dance as I have ever seen about human loss and grief. To enter God's Kingdom, we need the ability to engage, not to stand on the sidelines as an observer, to give the things that come our way all we've got, even in the face of discouragements.

The ability to receive

Children love presents, don't they? They love to given something small from your house to take away and treasure. They trust the people who care for them. They are not too proud to receive help when they really need it. They know they are dependent on their parents and carers. Being childlike means returning to that sense of immediate dependence on God. Receiving from God thankfully and gladly. I have a friend who was recently working in Tanzania. He was very impressed by the way that the people he was working with literally got down on their knees everyday outside their homes and gave thanks for the new day. Not only that, they received every meal, every slice of fruit by the roadside, every journey safely completed as a gift from God that was to be remarked upon and prayed about with gratitude.

Become like little children! Retain or regain a sense of wonder. Love justice. Plung in and get involved. Receive everything as gift from God. Is this what Jesus meant when He said, 'Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God'?

Water, Water Everywhere

The water meadows between Hutton Conyers
 and Nunwick at lunch time today

As the floods subside a little in the upper Dales our thoughts are with the people of Boroughbridge, York and Durham as the water rushes seawards tonight. Our sympathy and prayers are also with everyone who has suffered flooding in Teesdale, Swaledale, Wensleydale, Nidderdale, Wharfedale, at Catterick and all over the area yesterday and today - farmers, homeowners and businesses.

A Payer as Night Falls

 

As the water gathers force and travels with awesome speed,

Be swift to protect life and limb, O Lord.

As the water engulfs, unwelcomed, our land and dwellings,

Invade our hearts and spirits to keep us uplifted.

Shaken, yet hopeful, may we know there is an end

To flooding and a new beginning as the torrent subsides.

Emerging in the cold silence that follows the spate

May we see not just devastation, silt and tears,

But courage, resourcefulness and true grit.

Grant us to know, in full measure, pressed down

 And running over, Your sustaining, warming presence

This night, in the morning, at noon and always.

Amen.

 

You can follow the expected progress of the flood water on the Environmental Agency's website. The graphs for each river give the anticipated height of the water at specific times throughout the next 12 hours.

 

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/default.aspx 

 



Caedmon

Recently, while on Lindisfarne, I came across the story of Caedmon which was new to me. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of those who think that life has passed them by. Or maybe those who have unfulfilled dreams. Caedmon was a cowherd who was illiterate and, by all accounts, not in the least bit musical. He was probably one of that unfortunate group whom primary school music teachers call 'growlers'. Certainly, legend has it, if, after a day's work, the villagers were relaxing by singing songs around the harp, Caedmon was so embarrassed by his inability to sing in tune that he would slip away, back to his cows.

One night, he had a dream in which an unknown visitor came to him and encouraged him to sing. Refusing to take 'no' for an answer, this stranger commanded him to sing about the creation of the world. (Do you remember the passage in the Narnia Chronicles where Aslan sings the world into being?) Eventually, Caedmon began to sing and a local farmer heard him and was so impressed that he took him to meet Hilda, the Abbess at Whitby. She must have seen (or heard) something exceptional in this poor, illiterate cowherd. She instructed him in some passages of scripture and invited him to set them to music. Before long, Caedmon returned to the monastery with a haunting melody to which he had set the scripture Hilda had given him. Hilda encouraged him to join the brothers at the monastery and pursue his new-found talent for music. Over time, Caedmon became well known as a poet and composer whose music was said by all who heard it to point the soul to God.

An inspiring story of untapped potential - and thank God for the Hildas of this world who can discern giftedness where no one else can and then follow it up by believing in the person and encouraging them to begin a new journey!

  

Refreshment

August has had a different feel, this year. I think, in the first part, the country was so taken up with the Olympics that no one was doing more than they really had to. There seemed to be a sort of collective, national relaxation even amongst those who were only following the progress of Team GB with half an eye. And then a lot of people went on holiday. We've been here all summer, having been away earlier in the year. So I've been conscious of a sense of empathy with people for whom it is not possible to get away on holiday. One church even runs a 'Holiday at Home' scheme so that people can have a break in their year-long daily routine and find company and fun without having to go away. There are daily activities, talks and entertainment at church and trips out to places of local interest, films and cafes.

 

 

Refreshment of spirit (not to mention the relaxation of body that comes with it) is something we all need. A break in routine, a chance to meet new people, an opportunity to be with those who make us laugh and help us forget ourselves. Although we've not been away, August has been a time of renewal. Inspired by the Olympics, I've enjoyed teaching myself to swim back stroke. I've also relished unhurried quiet prayer at the start of the day and time to choose, cook and enjoy the food we eat in a more leisurely way (so often my husband does this and/or we have rushed meals which are largely pre-prepared.) I know life will get back to a more hectic pace but, today, I'm just gratefully savouring the shalom of not having to keep to a tight schedule!  

Lammastide

Yesterday (29th July) Farm Crisis Network called for a day of prayer for our farmers. Thank you to Andy Rylands, our rural officer, who has sent this informative article which will help us to pray and think realistically for farmers at this busy time of year.

At Lammas tide, which on August 1^st, it is traditional to take a loaf, made from the first grain of the harvest season, to be blessed in church and to ask for God’s blessing on the ensuing harvest. This loaf is then used to celebrate communion. Given the extremes of weather experienced in the Spring and early Summer this year, it is unlikely that many farmers will be in a position to harvest their crops by this date.

Early in the year while the talk was of drought conditions and hosepipe bans, many crops started to suffer from lack of moisture. Then we experienced unprecedented and near continuous rainfall for several months. Week after week we have heard of new records for high rainfall being established; for the majority of us this has simply been inconvenient while others have suffered dreadfully through repeated flooding. For our farmers, who toil all year long to provide us with the food we need, it can mean disaster.

Mild and wet conditions are ideal for the growth of fungi which attack crops and potentially devastate the yield. This leads to a difficult and potentially poor harvest with grain prices on the increase. Sadly good harvest weather is not in sight as yet, so this is of little comfort.

In the meantime, high grain prices are pushing up feed prices for livestock farmers, who are also suffering at the hands of the weather. Thousands of stock-farmers had to bring their animals back indoors to prevent them damaging valuable grazing land in the wet conditions. Because of this, many are obliged to feed their animals with costly winter forage or costly bought in feed – and with haymaking badly hampered until the weather improves, there is little prospect of being able to replenish those stocks before this coming winter. Without such reserves, many are very worried about the welfare of their animals in the cold months to come. 

On top of all this, we see dairy farmers, many of whom are already trying to cope with the devastation of bovine tuberculosis among their herds, having to contend with draconian price cuts for their milk, bringing them to a level, which for many is totally unsustainable. There is a very real likelihood of many dairy farmers simply going out of business.

Farming has always been a risky business and farmers are well used to managing those risks. This year, however, is proving to be quite exceptional, bringing with it concerns of a much greater magnitude than normal. When these worries are amplified by the isolation of rural living and the sense of neglect felt by many farmers, increasing pressures can prove too much, sometimes resulting in tragic and devastating consequences.  

So this Lammas tide, take a moment to consider the plight of our farmers and their families. They have the burden of  helping to feed the nation while managing and caring for our countryside in such difficult circumstances.

Farm Crisis Network is calling for a day of prayer on Sunday, 29^th July for our farming community who everyday face the consequences of the uncertain weather and who often pay a much higher price than the consumers of their production.

The Right Reverend Donald Allister, Bishop of Peterborough, who is also an FCN Trustee, has composed the following prayer for use on Sunday:

Heavenly Father,

the earth is yours and the harvests are your bounty.

We pray for our arable farmers

in this year of extreme weather.

We pray for our dairy farmers

with supermarkets forcing the price of milk down

and with bovine TB in some parts of the country.

We ask your blessing on the harvest

and on all who work in farming.

We ask that farmers facing difficult times

may know your love

and our support.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Holy Land Pilgrimage

 Alison Askew and Michael Ganville-Smith are leading an 8 day pilgrimage to the Holy Land which promises to be the trip of a lifetime if you have never been, and a colourful opportunity to renew your acquaintance with this wonderful land if you have been before.

The pilgrimage will take in Jerusalem (including the Via Dolorosa), Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, Jericho and Caesarea.  You will sail on the Sea of Galilee, ascend the Mount of Temptation by cable car and visit the site thought to be the place to be of Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan. There will also be a chance to meet some of the local Christian community in Bethlehem.  The cost is around £1,455.

If you would interested in joining the group, and travelling in company with a group of Christians from North Yorkshire, please conact Alison or Michael.

alison.askew@btinternet.co
mglansmith@hotmail.com

St Mary Mgdalen (Leper) Chapel, Ripon

An Address for the Patronal Festival Civic Service

with the Mayors of Ripon, Knaresborough, Pateley Bridge, Richmond

and representatives of North Yorkshire County Council and Ripon City Council

Luke 8.1-3

What a contrast between this peaceful, holy little chapel and our cathedral! Many of us are used to going to the cathedral for the big events - civic and military services, services which mark the great events of our life as a community and nation or the great feasts of the Christian calendar. It speaks to us of the majesty and authority of God. But this little chapel, founded almost 900 years ago by Archbishop Thurstan of York, speaks to us of God's love for the poor and the forgotten, for those on the margins of our society and for us when we are at those places of abandonment we all reach at some point in our lives.

Like this chapel, many parish churches have, somewhere near the altar, a peep hole. Through this, the priest could be observed at Mass by the many lepers who were, of course, banned from entering the churches for fear of their spreading infection. Even here, at this hospital, lepers could not be admitted to public worship in the chapel. They were absolute outcasts.

Victoria Hyslop wrote movingly about the pain of exclusion for those suffering from leprosy in twentieth century Greece in her novel, The Island. Once a person was known to be infected with leprosy, they were banished for life to Spina Longa, an island off the coast of Crete. Hyslop tells the story of the wife of the boatman who takes supplies to the island. This woman contacts leprosy herself. Knowing that she will be taken to Spina Longa and never allowed to return, she has to pack hastily. She can only take a very few belongings with her. She chooses to take her place setting from the family's dinner service. Though she will never share a meal with her family again, she hopes that, at meal times, they will in each other's thoughts.

Leprosy cruelly cut people off from their families and loved ones and made them outcasts, feared and shunned by everyone. In some societies, it still does so today. Imagine how much this little hospital must have meant to those lepers who came here on pilgrimage or who lived around the city's boundaries - a place of welcome and rest, of fellowship and hospitality in a very bleak world.

It's appropriate that St Mary Magdalen was chosen as patron saint for this place. St Luke tells us that Jesus healed Mary, casting out seven demons. With today's medical insight, we might say that she suffered from a severe mental illness. Even today, people with such illnesses speak of stigmatization and a sense that they are not accepted or understood. Mary would have known how the lepers who came to this place felt. She responded to Jesus' healing and love as many of the lepers coming to this place would have responded to the welcome they found here - this was a place where they could belong.

This little chapel, at the heart of a community of hospitality has spoken of the power of God's love for the outcast and forlorn for nearly 900 years. It has been a beacon of hospitality for people most of us forget or would like to forget as we go about our busy lives. At times, it has fallen into disrepair or disuse, even being used to house pigs at one point in its history, I believe. So it's very good to see that, today, there is again a committed, regular worshipping congregation and a strong group of Friends who are not only caring about the building, but developing it so that it can continue to be a place of hospitality as well as of worship and witness.

St Mary Magdalen's chapel reminds Ripon and the surrounding areas of the power of God's love for all people. Today, there are many people living in this area of Yorkshire who feel marginalized - not fully part of society's opportunities and successes. There are families and single people who are glad of foodbanks to put food on their tables; debt counselling projects that report that anxiety about debt and actual debilitating debt is a growing problem; older, housebound people who long for company and a chat and people caring for sick relatives who would love to get out and have a few hours recreation. There are families who struggle to allow their children the opportunities for education and travel that many enjoy. The organizations that support people with dementia and mental illness are becoming cinderella services with need outstripping provision.

Yes, today, there are some who feel and indeed are excluded from mainstream society. Jesus spent the lion's share of His time with people like this, people like Mary Magdalen and the lepers and blind Bartimaeus. He was to be found, with them, on the margins, in the forgotten places with the forgotten people, in the homes and streets where a little love, a little attention, a little practical help would go a long way.

This quiet, holy place is one we treasure, in Ripon. As we draw aside and enter its doors, we are reminded that God is a God who sees and knows and loves those who feel themselves abandoned and forgotten, who struggle each day for even their basic needs. Perhaps, this morning, we might like to dedicate ourselves afresh to Mary's way of responding to God's love. She was so grateful for what Jesus had done for her that she decided to get involved in His ministry herself. She and a small group of women travelled around with Jesus and His disciples 'providing for them out of their resources'. Perhaps some were wealthy and gave money, perhaps others were there to work and to supply the day to day needs of the whole group. Can you imagine how that felt for Mary? She whom everyone had feared and shunned was now at the centre of this little group. She had friends, she had people with whom to share and, more than that, she was using her resources to help other people to a better place. She was caught up in the healing ministry of Jesus.

However little, however much we have to offer God in response to His loving kindness to us, we too can be followers of Mary's example, disciples of Jesus, public servants whose way of living includes especially those who need just a little help or extra attention or love to live their lives more fully.

A prayer for all who come into this chapel:

Father, we pray Thee to fill this house with Thy Spirit. Here may the poor find succour and the friendless friendship. Here may the tempted find power, the sorrowing comfort and the bereaved the truth that death hath now dominion over their beloved. Here let the fearing find a new courage and the doubting have their faith and hope confirmed. Here may the careless be awakened and all that are oppressed be freed. Hither may many be drawn by Thy love and go hence, their doubts resolved and faith renewed, their sins forgiven and their hearts aflame with Thy love.

From the Chapel Porch, Pleshey Retreat Centre; Oxford Book of Prayer no.487 

For information about the Leprosy Mission go to

http://www.leprosymission.org/about-us.html

For details of the whole weekend's activities at St Mary Mag's go to

http://www.riponcathedral.org.uk

Greetings to the Revds John Langdon and Jackie Fox and to all the members of the congregation and the Friends of St Mary Magdalen, Ripon. Our prayers for your fellowship and work and also for the dedicated work of all who serve in local government in this region.



Abiding in Hope

I've noticed a lot of articles (blogs and media) lately suggesting that the church is dying. The authors of these pieces are hand-wringing over the fact that there aren't enough resources to keep things going, bemoaning the fact that churches are getting caught up into 'management-speak' and chastising these churches for losing sight of gospel values. Yet death is perhaps the least surprising concept to apply to the church which, in theological terms, is the body of Christ - Christ who died and who rose again. It's certainly true that churches (individual congregations and whole denominations) do struggle and wither and die out or, more prosaically, get to the point of closure. But it's also true that, while some get weaker and die, others blossom and flourish for a season. It is also true that where a church loses its vibrant, lively faith in the gospel, it is indeed as though the body is dying and being buried, but often, from that body, there comes a new shoot bearing fruit in the shape of individual Christians who have 'caught' the faith in that original fellowship and gone on to live it out in other Christian communities.

When I look around me at the churches of this area and indeed in the city where I used to minister, I see two things. I see the 'death' of shrinking numbers and wearied congregations but I also see the renewal of fresh lives changed by meeting Christ and tired lives brought to a place of re-invigorated engagement through exploring with new communities of faith and fresh opportunities for worship. Christian communities are being re-shaped and transformed at the present moment. In the West, they are much smaller than they were but they are also much more open to exploring what discipleship is. Church-going is no longer synonymous with practice of the faith - there are many unconventional, non-denominational and experimental groups outside or on the fringes of the old established denominations that are returning to the roots of the faith. They meet quietly or noisily in public places or each others' homes, members are often few in number and they break up again to reform in new groups to accommodate new members. They often have questions about leadership and the place of the sacraments. Remind you of anything? This shape of church is surely much more like the shape of the churches we meet in the New Testament and for the first three centuries in the history of Christianity.

I'm not sure that 'Christian' and 'large', or 'Christ-shaped' and 'powerfully influential'  are pairs of words that go together well. Resources have often been meagre - at the start of the church's history, at times of persecution and at times before major spiritual awakenings. Size and the sharing of clergy, money and buildings are very human preoccupations. We all worry about our responsibilities and none more so than an archdeacon, I suspect! A more theologically significant question to ask is 'where is
this apparent lack of resources pointing us?'  When churches struggle and need pruning and show signs of dying, there is always, in my experience, new growth in the off-ing. It might be in the very community where there is death - people of faith begin to emerge in other ways in the life of the community. Small groups of believers are suddenly released to focus on what is important and to re-invest their energy. Or it may be that, where whole areas or denominations begin to struggle, new life is found in radically different communities of faith. I do know that where churches are growing, it is almost always true that discipleship is taken very seriously; this happens in all sorts of different ways in different contexts, but attention to the disciplines of faith and, above all, devotion to the person of Christ are essential, whether this is expressed through worship and prayer, teaching, service, fellowship, generosity or usually a combination. 

So I don't share the despair of some. The Johannine sayings of Jesus about abiding in Him, Jesus' metaphors of pruning and the parables about death for the sake of new life give me hope that what we are seeing are the birth pangs (Romans 8) of a, yes maybe smaller, but more deeply rooted Christian community in Europe. Perhaps a more honest and humble community of faith full of people who are determined to worship and witness and serve without huge resources but in the power of God's Spirit. Scarey, yes, but certainly grounds for hope.                    

An Unusual Read

I've just been reading an unusual novel. Called A Perfectly Good Man, it's a new novel (published this year) by Patrick Gale and it tells the story of a parish priest in Cornwall. That was the reason I picked it off the bookshelf in Ripon's Little Bookshop. It appeared to be about rural parish life in a mining community which is gradually losing its mining industry.  In fact, it's about much more than that. The narrative is very ingenious, moving through time, but not always chronologically, telling the story from the perspective of different characters at different stages of their lives over a whole life span. As I read, I reflected that this is the way parish priests who stay awhile come to know their communities - they come to understand the different view point of each generation and also how things that have happened a long time in the past shape the future for good or ill and mean that certain relationships are bound to be special whilst others will always struggle to thrive.

The book is about the life and ministry of a very ordinary priest and his family. While revealing to us something of the inner joys and struggles of life in a clergy household, it also deals with the ways in which our birth families shape how we relate to spouses, children and those with whom our children make relationships. It shows what being a partly public figure throughout a lifetime does to family relationships for good and ill and it explores faithfulness, doubt, duty and that illusive sense of transcendence pervading the ordinary.

At one level this is a book about the faithful but unexciting life of a priest and yet it deals with themes which bring us to the edge of some of the greatest and deepest dramas of life and death. This is its brilliance - Gale somehow manages to show what difference a perfectly ordinary priest can make in the tangle of human life. Sometimes his actions make very little difference, occasionally his actions or his presence make a great deal of difference, sometimes the very little he does (maybe simply praying) make all the world of difference. Every priest will identify with this. And this unexceptional man encounters on his way still birth, adoption of a child from another culture, the suicide of a disabled person, illegitimacy, political action, drug abuse, disinheritance, retirement, bereavement, civil marriage, his own arrest, media pressure and issues to do with the way in which people with criminal records and inadequacies look to the local church for support and inclusion.

The delight of the book is that each character contributes to our understanding of the community and of the priest's ministry - it is not priest-centric. We also see how prayer and the intangible things that priests do are of value - a value that many will never appreciate but, nevertheless, at the heart of a life lived with and for God. We see how the sharing of brief moments of gentle or profound spiritual insight help to shape the lives of some of the people he encounters as well as his own life.

It is a book about a human father and son, their relationship, their deepening knowledge of one another and their suffering. It is a book about God and His relationship with all  human life, our deepening knowledge of God through the heights and depths of our existence and the way God both withdraws and meets us in our suffering. But you could just read it as simply a story about people finding their way towards truth and a priest who doesn't think he is achieving much. The book is, at the same time, both modest and profound.

A Perfectly Good Man Patrick Gale, Fourth Estate, Harper Collins 2012.