Blagovest Ensemble at West Tanfield

I've just heard about a concert of Russian Choral Music at St Nicholas' Church, West Tanfield on Monday evening (5th September). What an amazing opportunity to hear an internationally known choir from St Petersburg performing both sacred and folk music from Russia. A treat indeed! The concert begins at 7pm and there is no admission charge, so just come! There will be a retiring collection. (And there's a very good pub nearby where you can enjoy pre-concert food or just a drink afterwards!)

The conductor is Olga Kozlova. The organisers of the concert write,

'Amazing Music

Once more we have a chance to hear the sublime voices of a talented Russian choir, the St Petersburg Blagovest Ensemble, whose performances enchant their audiences.  The intense emotion and spirituality of the sacred pieces they sing contrasts with the zest for life and the humour of the Russian folk songs, and they may include an occasional English pop song sung in their own distinctive style. They have won fans across the UK and are coming back to West Tanfield this September.  If you have never heard such music you have missed a memorable experience. If you think it not your taste, prepare to be won over, like many others. 

Based at the St Petersburg Conservatoire – the centre of traditional Russian choral music - the Blagovest Ensemble is noted for its musicians’ high professionalism and their unashamed passion for the music they love to share.  Their concert repertoire includes pearls of Russian choral a cappella music, both spiritual and secular.

 

Russian choral music, with its distinctive melodic patterns, holds a unique place in the musical culture of the world - due in no small measure to the Russian Orthodox Church, which allows only the sound of the human voice to praise God in worship and whose choral tradition goes back a thousand years.  Even a small ensemble allows an audience to feel the dramatic and melodic wealth which characterises this music. It fascinates with its beauty and strength and leaves nobody indifferent. 

Censored in Soviet Russia for almost 70 years, it is only in recent years that the masterpieces of Russian choral spiritual music have sounded again, thanks to the work of professional musicians like Blagovest, who are devoted to this wonderful genre. Today this music is experiencing a second birth, allowing us all to re-open forgotten pages of world culture.' 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lvQrfQQZkZA 

Peace

This holiday picture, taken in Bodnant Gardens, in the Conwy Valley, reminded me of a poem by Jones Very in which the soul longs for God's presence. Very was an American mystic and poet, a Unitarian minister and a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Prayer

Will Thou not visit me?

The plant beside me feels Thy gentle dew,

And every blade of grass I see

From Thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew.

Wilt Thou not visit me?

Thy morning calls on me with cheering tone;

And every hill and tree

Lend but one voice - the voice of Thee alone.

Come, for I need Thy love,

More than the flower the dew, or grass the rain;

Come gently as Thy holy dove

And let me in Thy sight rejoice to live again.

I will not hide from them

 When Thy storms come, though fierce may be their wrath,

But bow with leafy stem,

And, strengthened, follow on Thy chosen path.

Yes, Thou wilt visit me:

Nor plant nor tree Thine eye delights so well,

As, when from sin set free,

My spirit loves with Thine in peace to dwell.

                                                               Jones Very 1813-80

Outnumbered

Hooray! Outnumbered returns to BBC1 at 9pm next Friday. Beautifully observed and partly improvised, this is a comedy about three children effortlessly and expertly outwitting their well-meaning and politically correct parents, mostly by the use of what might pass as common sense and bald statement of truth, from their perspective. This will be the fourth series and, given the ages of the children - Ramona Marquez (Karen), Daniel Roche (Ben), Tyger Drew-Honey (Jake) - I suspect it may be our last opportunity to cheer them on as they wind up their parents, played by Claire Skinner and Hugh Dennis, to a hilarious pitch of bemused impotence. Come to think of it, Ben also out-smarted the Vicar when he took his opportunity, at a boring wedding reception, to quizz him about God's chosen method of atonement ('Couldn't He think of a better way than the cross?'). Earlier, Karen had gone through a phase of slightly self-righteous Christianity; as someone whose Christian parents worried that we might not choose Christianity, it was interesting to see it all from the reverse perspective - a secular mother, troubled by her daughter's espousal of Christianity under the influence of a fundamentalist teacher. The children have razor sharp minds, questioning techniques worthy of highly trained barristers (especially Karen) and the wisdom of those who are not afraid to state the truth. The series portrays what I Iove best about being with children - their ability to get straight to the heart of a matter and to ask the questions which adults avoid but which really challenge our understanding of ourselves and our social norms.

Written by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton of Drop the Dead Donkey fame, the series knocks spots off most of the comedies about family life seen over recent years. I am looking forward to Friday nights, this Autumn!

For a taster see

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fq31t 

     

Auschwitz Project at Henshaws

Henshaw's Arts and Crafts Centre, Knaresborough, is currently hosting an exhibition of art work produced by disabled activist, Di Lofthouse MBE. Working closely with artist Shaeron Caton-Rose, Di has created an extremely powerful group of works expressing her response to a visit to Auschwitz, last summer. Those murdered at Auschwitz, of course, included many people who were sent to the camp because they were deemed disabled. In this exhibition, Di expresses her reaction to what she saw in paintings, prints, sculpture and film through which she explores the theme of humanity in the face of atrocity. Her belief in the dignity of every individual 'whatever skin you live in' has long informed her campaigning and is a prime motivational force in this very moving exhibition. Part of the exhibition can also be taken on tour and is suitable for schools and other educational groups. It would particularly fit the history and PSHE curricula, dealing, as it does in a very powerful way, with issues to do with respect and human rights.

I have visited the exhibition and found it sobering yet hopeful. The Revd Elizabeth Sewell, the Team Rector of the Knaresborough Team of churches writes, 'This exhibition at Henshaws is amazing! Very powerful in its own right but also an opportunity (I think) to explore ability rather than disability.' It closes on 2nd September, so get over to see it this week if you can, especially if you think the touring version might be a resource for your school or church.

For information about the exhibition

http://www.henshaws.org.uk/arts-and-crafts-centre/events/2011/07/18/exhibition-the-auschwitz-project

Di Lofthouse, the artist

http://www.selfdirect.org/blog/profile21/di-lofthouse-mbe.html

in conjunction with Shaeron Caton-Rose

http://www.nyos.org.uk/Artist.aspx?id=208

A Pharmacist's Story

I've just received my summer newsletter from a friend who is working as a pharmacist in Vellore, South India.

'A cow lies happily across the main road, barefoot toddlers play by the roadside, a chicken is being waved over puffed rice by a tree shrine...the day begins.'

She has been there for a number of years now, helping to run the dispensary and organising training for the many medical staff. She routinely finds employment as a pharmacist in the UK during her leave in order to be able to finance her next year's work in India. The hospital where she is based is the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore which was founded in 1900 by Dr Ida Scudder in response to the suffering of the women of rural South India. Today, it is an inspirational place - one of India's leading hospitals with over 2,000 beds spread across its main site and a number of outlying sites. In 2010, it was named 'India's Most Socially Responsible Hospital'  in the Indian Health Care Awards and it was also runner-up in the 'Best Multi Speciality Hospital' category.  My friend writes that, this year, they have daily treated 2,166 in-patients and 6,180 outpatients from all over India, with doctors routinely conducting ward rounds in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali and English. The average daily birth rate is 45; every day 125 operations are performed and 1,540 radiological tests carried out. These are fairly staggering numbers by any standards.

Christian Medical Cllege, Vellore, India with PI Suresh David
crash2Ishtu.ac.uk

Many patients cannot afford the full cost of their care and the Friends of Vellore have a 'person to person' scheme. Donations go into a fund which doctors and social workers can access to help individual patients pay the expenses of their medical treatment and care. CMC does not distinguish between rich and poor or between those of different beliefs and creeds but treats every person who presents on the basis of their health care needs and so this fund is a vital support to the the work of the hospital. To give some examples of the kinds of need, a new born baby with neonatal sepsis was hospitalised for 20 days at a cost of £299; his family's income was £7.00 per month. A mother with severe anaemia required a Caesarian section and was hospitalised for 7 days at a cost of £199; her family's monthly income was £11.00. Both patients paid a proportion of their own costs, borrowing money to do this, but the hospital was able to make a substantial contribution through the person to person fund, reducing the loans these families had to take out to a manageable size. 

I find the story of this hospital and its sacrificially self-giving staff inspiring and moving. The Christian Medical College seeks to be a witness to the healing ministry of Christ through excellence in education, service and research. You can see more at

http://www.cmch-vellore.edu/

or find out about the person to person scheme on

http://www.friendsofvellore.org/person-to-person.html    

Yorkshire's Monastic Churches as You've Not Seen Them Before!

William Thackray, priest at Scruton, in this diocese, has just produced a book entitled Standing on Holy Ground; Monastic and Collegiate Churches of Yorkshire. The book contains photographs of all the monastic or collegiate foundation churches in Yorkshire from ruins to parish churches, from monasteries to cathedrals, from coast to dale, from urban south to rural north. The photography is breath-taking and this is a book to lose yourself in. During its production, he visited most of the churches throughout the different seasons and so the selection of photographs of many of the sites reflects the rhythm of both the natural seasons and the Christian year. The photographs capture the unique atmosphere of each place and, in many instances, communicate something of the essence of the communities who inhabit them today for worship, pilgrimage and celebration. Also included are brief histories of the buildings with stories of the communities who have inhabited them down the centuries, portraying the heights and depths of faith and folly. He has produced similar books on the churches of York city centre and the churches of the City of London.

If you are interested in seeing more, William Thackray is available to give illustrated presentations on the Monastic and Collegiate Churches of Yorkshire, the Churches of York City Centre and the Churches of the City of London. These talks last anything from half an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the nature of the group. This is an excellent resouce for schools, MU and WI groups, local history societies and other organisations who are looking for speakers. There is no charge. Expenses and a donation to the Chidren's Society would be welcome.

If you would like further details send a message to 

 william@the-thackrays.eclipse.co.uk  

  

The Faith of Girls

A friend recently drew my attention to this rather unique and recently published study of adolescent girls' spirituality and attitudes to faith. The Faith of Girls; Children's Spirituality and Transition to Adulthood looks at the experience of girls as they move from childhood to adulthood and is a must for anyone involved in youth work. Anne Phillips, the author, draws on psychology, sociology, gender studies and textual criticism of the many biblical stories of girls' lives, as well as on her own research into girls' experiences of God, church and growing up in contemporary society. It is a book about girls in transition, their developing identity and sense of self in relation to God. It will appeal to academics and practitioners, to those primarily interested in helping young people and to those primarily interested in theological or gender studies. It has been hailed as breaking new ground by critics.

An Oxford graduate in theology, Anne Phillips has been a secondary school teacher and, for 20 years, a Baptist minister. She is currently Co-Principal of the Northern Baptist College in Manchester.

The book is published by Ashgate Publishing, Abingdon. Sample sections of the book can be viewed at

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409421986

Children Are Welcome

Our children's Officer has been busy! Not only have Diocesan youth and children's team created a new pack of information, Children Are Welcome, which has been sent to every parish, with some really good resources, but Graham Richards, our Officer, has organised four evenings in September (before the clocks go back) to help churches think about how to use the resources. The evening will provide inspiration and information about how to get going with making children a welcome part of church life in your own localities or, indeed, how to refresh and improve what you are already doing. There is one evening in each deanery but you can go to any of them by booking a place on

Wensely Deanery, Redmire, 29th September http://www.wensleychildrenarewelcome.eventbrite.com/
Ripon Deanery, Ripon, 6th October
http://www.riponchildrenarewelcome.eventbrite.com/
Richmond Deanery, Richmond, 12th October 
http://www.richmondchildrenarewelcome.eventbrite.com/
Harrogate Deanery, Bilton, 13th October
http://www.harrogatechildrenarewelcome.eventbrite.com/

Archbishops, Riots and Police

You can read the full text of the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in the House of Lords on the Bishop of Bradford's blog, together with a comment from Bishop Nick who is on holiday in the USA, trying to keep up with developments here. 

http://www.nickbaines.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/just-say-something

I thought the Archbishop's speech was one of the more positive contributions I've heard to the debate - 'Seeking explanations is not the same as seeking excuses...'  He is so right to point out that education has become too 'instrumentalist' - striving for a narrow range of competencies and skills rather than to create character and the practice of virtue and good citizenship.  I also thought Archbishop Sentamu was good on Newsnight last night, avoiding the  'I told you so'  line and the woolly liberal line and managing to make some positive comments about how moral education could be different and about how we can generate among younger people a belief in a future to which they can contribute. Bishop Nick is right to say that it is really for the bishops of the areas affected to comment in detail on what happened during the riots themselves - they have the local information. Talking to friends around the country, what happened in each of the different cities and towns was distinctive. 

I agree with ++Rowan in wanting to thank the police for the courageous job they did in impossible circumstances, especially before the COBRA meeting could be convened. I am sure that mistakes were made in places but, had they gone in with greater force, we could have been looking at the loss of many more lives and, frankly, a much, much worse situation, escalating into widespread, deliberate violence against large numbers of people as well as property. Also, we should thank the fire and ambulance services for their courage in facing both threat from the rioters and danger due to the fires and damage to buildings.

Our thoughts continue to be with all who have lost lives or loved ones, those who have been injured or lost homes or property, and those who have to continue with their businesses and pay their staff while unable to open their premises as usual.  

(See yesterday's post Riots on British Streets (11th August) for more opinion.)

A Rural Debt Advice Service

Keith Tondeur, the national director of Credit Action writes,

'There is increasing alarm about the level of personal debt in this country. You may be asking,'What has this got to do with the church?' If so, you may be shocked to know that there are almost five times as many verses in the Bible about handling money as there are about either faith or prayer. Two thirds of Jesus' parables relate to money. Within in yards of your church and....often within it, there will be people struggling with debt issues.' 

A group of Christians from Swaledale and Wensleydale and the surrounding area has got together to do something about the problem of debt. They are setting up a rural debt advice service that will offer high quality professional help, free of charge. 'By standing beside our clients, we will empower them to help themselves out of poverty and be released from worry, fear and social exclusion caused by chronic debt.' The service will be known as Hope Debt Advice and will work in partnership with voluntary and statutory agencies, local churches and commercial organisations. The charity hopes to launch its services in the autmn and they are looking for volunteers to pray, to work with clients (after training) and to fundraise. There are plans for local centres in Richmond, Leyburn, Bedale and Masham.

For further information, or to volunteer, e mail charlie@hopedebtadvice.co.uk

Riots on British Streets

In some ways the riots of the last few days seem far removed from rural North Yorkshire. But we've been looking and listening and, like everyone else, trying to make sense of this startling and bewildering development in our national life. Several members of my family live in Nottingham where 5 police stations were fire bombed or pelted with bricks and missiles and where our friends, and especially some of their children, are now nervous about going out just to do everyday shopping.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-14472172

What are the reasons for the riots? It's too early to know which of several possible factors were the decisive ones in turning our streets into arenas for violence and looting. Tragically lives have been lost but the main focus seems to have been property. The reasons that are being given are

• criminality - but why? and why now?
• breakdown in family life and the morality and discipline that good parenting and schools provide.
• rampant consumerism - an attitude that pervades the whole of society and which says 'I should be able to have what I want now.'
• disenfranchised groups in society - people brought up in a consumer society with little opportunity to make choices and become legitimate consumers themselves.
• reaction against the police and against law and order - a desire by the voiceless  to take power by showing that they can break the law if they choose to.
• the atmosphere created by government cuts and the threat of the breakdown of our whole economic system which lurks behind our present lived reality. 
• the new era of tweeting, twittering and facebook and other forms of messaging which allows riots to be spontaneously organised with hundreds of people gathering in one place at a particular time - something that could not have happened until recently. This is the more sinister side of Internet democracy, perhaps akin to what we have witnessed recently in Middle Eastern countries. 

Probably, the true reasons for the riots are drawn from all these and from other factors that have not yet been identified. The court cases yesterday and today show that plainly this urge to violence and anarchy is not a problem confined to young people or to people who are unemployed or uneducated. Politicians seem to be falling into two camps - on the one hand, those who want to attribute it all to criminality, brook no excuses and deal with it through punitive measures and, on the other hand, those who want to find the social causes and who are fearful of punitive measures such as long prison sentences, stopping benefits and withdrawing housing as these will fuel discontent. I saw Harriet Harman on Newsnight vigorously trying to argue that both approaches are needed - a response that punishes lack of individual responsibility and a response that looks at the social forces that have made this possible and, for once, I agreed with her! 

Well, it is too early to make judgements about why all this has happened - summer madness of the most sobering kind. The worrying question is, 'Is what we have seen just the tip of a very ugly iceberg which now underlies the waters of normal social dealings in this country?'  Three things which have been concerning me for a while are not, I think, unrelated to what has happened.

Firstly, there is now greater disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest in Britain than in any other country in Europe. People are living in real poverty cheek by jowl with those who have vast resources. In the parish where I served in the early 90's in Nottingham, I can take you to places where teenagers live ferral on the streets, the care-home system, never mind their families, entirely unable to contain them, young children are so hungry they hang around the chip shop bins and eat discarded food, and homeworkers do menial jobs like assembling hangers - a house full of women working all day for perhaps £15 to be divided between them. These people are not lazy. Prositution and the drug culture are rife and are a normal part of middle class life but destroy the lives of those who are unemployed or poorly educated and who often service these habits. Within sight of parts of the parish are hotels where you can spend £800-£1,000 for a night's stay. Poverty was not the direct cause of the riots, but huge disparity between the resources available to people generates anger and lack of respect in different ways from different parts of society and the riots have played into this. The fact that groups within society are living with poverty, hunger and lack of opportunity that most of society does not acknowledge or appear to care about points to a deep degree of unhealthiness in our social order. It is wrong when we simply care about what we have got and whether we have got what we want, right now. The rioting and looting demonstrated that, in fact, this is exactly how some people from all parts of society think today.  

Secondly, in many familes and communities right across the social classes we seem to have lost the ability to exercise discipline with quite young children; the seeds of an attitude that says 'I am entitled to whatever I feel like...' are planted well before secondary school. At the same time, adults, apart from professionals who work with young people, often don't seem able to engage in conversation with and listen to youngsters - you have been able to see that in some of the interviews over the last few days where rioters and their supporters have been asked their opinion only to have it dismissed and shouted down. Where respect and real listening don't occur, problems cannot be solved. Even if someone has committed a crime, we have to try to understand what the world looks like from their perspective if we are going to take measures to prevent the same thing happening again. There is a worrying lack of willingness for different age groups to listen to one another and I think this is a growing phenomenon. 

Thirdly, we do not yet have systems of politics, government, law and order and communication that have adapted to the presence of the Internet. We do not yet realise the degree to which the Internet has changed, for ever, the nature of authority, democracy and control in society. People can now circumvent much of what formal education, politics and even the media have to offer and they can form local and global alliances which have nothing to do with recognised social or political structures; they can just as easily disrupt conventional alliances and systems. They can do this very speedily and in unpredictable ways. I suppose all this is one reason why I blog. I think it is important to learn, first hand, about the power of the Internet and of digital communication. We are all on a very steep learning curve to discover how power operates in a world where, if you just hit the right tone, you can bring 100's or 1,000's of people of all ages and backgrounds together to achieve something very noble or something very ignoble...and the outcome may indeed be frighteningly unpredictable.  
  

Florence Nightingale

On 13th August, the Church of England commemorates Florence Nightingale. She was born in 1820 into a very well-connected, upper-class family, Unitarian and Abolitionist on her mother's side, Anglican and Latitudinarian on her father's. Her family knew most of the leading Tory and Whig politicians of the day.

When she was 17, she had what mystics call an 'audition'; she heard God speaking to her, calling her into His service. During her life, she had four further mystical experiences, but this audition, at the age of 17, was particularly interesting since, at the time, she had no knowledge of the mystical tradition and, in fact, came from two traditions that are peculiarly averse to mysticism. In later life, she undertook a learned study of mystics like Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, but, at 17, she had little background to help her interpret what God might be asking of her. Later, she said that she had an idea that this call involved turning her back on the conventional expectations that she would marry and live a life of comfort. It was a call to search for active ways in which to serve God. She had a hard time of it! Years later, she wrote, 'I would have given my all to the church but she would not have it; she sent me to teach children, but gave me no training.'

Florence had a hard time with her family, too. She had to fight her mother to continue with her maths studies, deemed unsuitable for a girl. When, in 1844, she anounced that she wished to nurse, her family was horrified, as horrified, she later wrote, as if she had announced her intention to turn to fraud and embezzlement! Eventually, she won their agreement, if not their favour. On her way back from a tour of Europe, she stopped at Kaiserwerth, in Germany, where she trained as a nurse with the Lutheran order of Deaconesses. When she returned to London, she briefly ran a hospital in Harley Street.

In doing all this, she flew in the face of the received wisdom of the time, arguing with her family, achieving a level of education that was thought unsuitable for a woman and introducing the concept of training into the world of nursing, which was largely, at that time, a job carried out by untrained women of the lower classes and ex-soldiers. Undoubtedly, she beacme a very competent nurse by the standards of her time. In England, she introduced cleanliness, decent food, call bells, proper sanitation and individualised care. At Scutari, during the Crimean war, she managed four miles of beds, each 18 inches apart. In today's terms she was something like the Chief Executive of a medium sized hospital trust with all the attendant problems of supply and all the frustrations of constantly changing government policies.

History has sentimentalized her as the 'Lady with the Lamp', a dedicated nurse, smoothing the fevered brows of dying men. Florence Nightingale's outstanding achievement, in fact, was as an administrator and statistician, not as a nurse. Her great contribution to nursing during the Crimean war was to persuade the Generals, by means of detailed statisical research, that 6 times the number of soldiers died of infection in military hospitals as of wounds acquired on the battle field; and then to make use of her family's political influence to improve sanitation and nutrition in British military hospitals. It was through her pioneering work in the use of graphs to represent statisical findings that she made possible advances in sanitation at Scutari and, after the war, in Britain and India. She invented a particular form of pie chart, known as the polar area diagram, which she used to illustrate seasonal causes of patient mortality at Scutari. She was a friend of the mathematicians Mary Somerville and Ada, Lord Byron's daughter and she beacme the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. 

Historical biography has dealt her a poor hand in the way it has represented her solely as a nurse - the Lady with the Lamp who founded St Thomas's School of Nursing and lost her own health through overwork in the Crimea, becoming a chronic invalid and returning home to write a modest text book, 'Notes for Nurses.' She was so much more! A doggedly brilliant public health reformer, a deeply committed and devout, if unconventional, Christian and a considerable amateur theologian and classical scholar. In 1850-2, she wrote an 800 page work entitled, 'Suggestions for Thought to Searchers After Religious Truth' which includes her own theodicy, unique as a nurse's theory of evil and suffering. The work contains prophetic, radical and heterodox ideas. She believed passionately in education for all and in an educated electorate, predicting that, 'One day, women will take an active share in the affairs of state through parliamentary government'. She utterly eschewed the frivolous, leisured life of women of her class.

In 1850, she wrote in her diary, 'God called me this morning and asked me would I do good for Him? For Him alone, and without reputation.' When God called her, she did not vacillate, making plans haphazardly, saying 'yes' and 'no' at the same time. She single-mindedly sought out, found and followed her vocation. She trusted alone (and often she was very much alone) in God's faithfulness and in the 'Yes' of God that is found in Christ. She wrote, 'The promises of God are fulfilled in loving obedience.'