Brilliant BBC

Much blogging in church circles mentions frequently the poor reporting of the church, Christianity in general, and recently the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Some journalists have richly deserved the criticism which has come their way.  I thought Victoria Coren's blog hit the nail on the head about this - do have a look.

So having worked with the BBC in the last week on the live Pentecost broadcast and on Songs of Praise I just wanted to say very quickly - they have been an absolute joy to work with. Good people, working hard, with high standards.  I have always believed that the BBC is of immeasurable value, and the integrity and vision of the people who have come to the Minster have only strengthened this belief.

As with our Bishops, so with our media. If we want to tear a strip of them when they get it wrong, we have to remember to praise them when they get it right - otherwise we no longer have a relationship of mutual respect.

Huge respect from me today for all those who have been with us for the last week from the BBC - and go ++ Rowan.

Over simplification

After a week of reading blogs from angry people,  hurt people, disgusted people etc etc (with the possible exception of some balanced writing from The Church Mouse) following the revelations concerning Colin Slee and the selection of the Bishop of Southwark I just wanted to say a couple of things.

Firstly - just to make this clear - I do not support prejudice of any kind - and the lovely Very Rev Dr Jeffrey John should most certainly be a bishop by now. That withstanding....

We cannot pretend that the whole world is OK about gay just because nice middle class Brits have decided they are.  Many many people may rightly support equality and justice for all regardless of sexuality, but that does not change the fact that we live in a world where many many people cannot and do not accept this.  I believe that this gives context to the situation that the Church of England is in. We are not just an anachronistic institution doing something horrible in a lovely world where everyone else has moved on.  The internal struggles of our church truly reflect the struggles of our world with this issue, I believe. Ignoring this reality and simply berating our Archbishops for not living in a perfect Guardian reading "all right thinking people think like us" bubble is not fair and I'm not sure how it moves the debate in the right direction either.

People seem to have been devastated that in the meeting which is described by Colin Slee in the memo reported in The Guardian several people ended up in tears, that people were angry, frustrated, emotional.  As though our Archbishops, and Rowan in particular, should be behaving with detached professionalism?  I find this particularly worrying as a member of the clergy who is repeatedly told "but we're just human, you should let your vulnerability show." The proof of that pudding seems to be in the stringing up of our Archbishop for showing just such weak humanity.  Of course people were upset, so they should be.  These people were fighting with issues of conscience, issues which cut to the very heart of our faith in the nature of God and humanity, no doubt desperate to discern balance between short term evil and long term good - if in fact such a thing is possible.

I truly believe that our Archbishop is constantly seeking to discern God's truth while he balances precariously in an almost untenable position. I often feel too that those of us who see justice and equity as God's desire for all people regardless of gender, sexuality or any other categorisation might prove more successful in moving things in the right direction if we actually offered our Archbishop more support instead of waiting for him to mess up and giving him a good kick while he's down.

I live in hope of a much better day.

Giddy Kipper

I am excited! As if life wasn't fun packed enough as it is the BBC are coming to my church.  For some reason which still hasn't been explained, instead of broadcasting the Pentecost Eucharist from a big flash cathedral (apparently it's one of their obligations under charter - Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) - they are coming to my church.  For 59 minutes we will be live on BBC 1 on Sunday June 12th. We've known about this for about 3 weeks but now the planning meetings are starting it's sinking in, slowly but surely.  And my head is easily turned - when one of the technical crew started talking about how they rigged the Abbey for the Royal Wedding I was impressed. When he went on to talk about his lovely weekend working in Carlisle and how good Lady Gaga was - well that really got me!

I am staggered to find myself in the position of being a curate who is writing a sermon which will be broadcast live on national telly. I am trying not to be a dithering nitwit. I am failing.

.... here I go again

Though not exactly an up to the minute cultural reference I am inspired to write a little about Mamma Mia.  I recorded the film of this musical extravaganza on Saturday night, since when my 2 and 4 year old boys have asked to watch it 6 times.  Now I like the film (and I know a lot of folks out there who will be apoplectic with disapproval just on that basis ;) - but 6 times is quite a lot in less than a week.  I have ended up asking myself questions about said film musical which far out-weight the actual weight of the material. Questions about feminism, women's self-image, modern models of family and assumptions about marriage (not to mention the idea that an apparently C of E priest can turn up on a Greek island, wave his hands in the air and people are miraculously married!) 

I will say two things here - the first is that it needles me that an apparently competent and capable woman seems to have been waiting 20 years for some bloke to come back and validate her existence.  It's very Mills & Boon.  I appreciate the idea is that they are in love - and it's the love of their lives - and I'm OK with this.  I'm not so OK with the idea that he's gone off and done stuff and she has waited on a Greek island like a girl-myth for him to bring her back to life. (Yes, she has brought up her daughter, but other than the 3 flings on which the plot is based there is no intimation that she has had any kind of romantic life or adult relationships during that 20 year interlude.)

The second thing I will say is that every time I see Dancing Queen - sung and danced by women of all ages, shapes and sizes - lifting their faces to the sun and letting the joy flow - it simply makes me want to weep (in a good way).  It's a spontaneous moment (I know I know - highly choreographed spontaneity!) - it's inclusive, it's purely celebratory - and it's hugely powerful.  I think this may only be for women, and perhaps even women of a certain age, which I have obviously reached.

I told you 6 times in a week was too many times!

Let us pray.....

I had an inspiring meeting this morning with some friends from the Calderdale Interfaith Council's "Women's Group".  They have kindly agreed to help me with a children's workshop on Good Friday exploring how we look for God - how we seek contact with that which is beyond us through prayer.  The conversation moved round to the physicality of prayer - and how rubbish and English we can be about this in the Western Christian tradition.

I assume that the rubric suggesting we 'sit or kneel to pray' which is so often used was introduced out of a desire to be inclusive of those who found it physically difficult or painful to kneel.  It seems though that what it has done is tied people to their seats.  I've notice this with some of the children in our congregation recently.  We have some members of the congregation who sit throughout the services because of back problems and such like - but this seems to have suggested to others that gluing bottom to seat at 10.29am and leaving it there (save perhaps a desultory slope to the communion rail) - whether praying, listening to the Gospel, singing the Gloria - until biscuit time, is a good idea.

I appreciate this tells you quite a lot about my own tradition - but talking to my friends this morning - a fellow Christian, a Bahai and a Moslem - we all felt we weren't talking about rules in worship, we were talking about entering into prayer, into worship, with our whole selves.

I'd been looking at some physical prayer in Sue Wallace's Multi-Sensory Prayer (which I was amused to discover you can buy online from Asda Entertainment! - and why not :) thinking it might be a good idea for the workshop.  I now have a clear vision of how we can physically and visually represent the commonalities in our faiths using movement and prayer positions. Thank you ladies!

If God is a DJ

OK - perhaps a shallow chat this evening - but bear with me.  I am a big fan of liturgical structure.  My sending incumbent indoctrinated me with the belief that you can do anything as long as it has intergrity within the liturgical structure.  He used to put together great "charismatic liturgical" evening services - if I remember rightly mainly because the diocese needed to take people on the local ministry course to experience some charismatic worship and there wasn't anyone else doing it in a 'safe' C of E context at the time. Back then I used to get to be the one who stood by the piano warbling - happy days.

This evening though talking to my bass player (sic. husband) we came across Morrissey's Angel, Angel Down We Go Together and thought it would make a good addition to Changing Worship's Alternative Hymnal.  Then as I thought this through I started to think about liturgical structure and the way a DJ structures music on a dance floor - creating atmosphere, inviting people onto the floor with the fmailiar and the comfortable (but fun), building the tempo to that part of the night when it seems only the strange and disconnected are not moving and dancing as one - swept away by the rhythm and joy.

I am torn as to how I feel about this  - I've been to some terribly manipulative worship where they obviously really got the DJ thing.  But are we learning enough from those who can fill a dance floor?

Or if the strange and disconnected are marginalised by such experiences - how can it express the gospel anyway?

Thou shalt not..... some new commandments?

Recently a friend of mine posted on fb about how language works with children - namely that using negatives doesn't work, because the 'don't' or the 'not' isn't heard.  So for example when your child is hanging from a tree branch you shouldn't scream "Don't fall" because all said child hears is "Fall" - you should couch your advice in positive terms  - so it's "Hang on tight to the branch!".

With this in mind I have twice in the last week faltered as I have read the Ten Commandments as part of the Penitential Rite at the start of our Lenten liturgy. (I should note that the use of this particular material was at the request of lay members of our worship vision group!)  The first bit is OK, but then we get to the "Thou shalt not"s.  Each time I read I picture myself and half of humanity falling out of a tree.  So I began to wonder what some of those thou shalt nots might look like creatively and positively re-framed.  I imagine there are creative liturgists and pastoral practitioners up and down the land who've done this already - but here's my first two - and feel free to comment with some of your own ideas below.

Thou shalt not commit adultery - Live and love in trust and faithfulness

Thou shalt not murder - Honour and cherish human life