Littorally Speaking

I tend to take things literally. If you meet me and ask how I am, you won't get a polite 'fine, thank you' but the low-down on my current state of social physical or mental health.

The other day I received an email that had me going - I just HAD to reply. The originator of it was gracious when replying to my rant in pointing out that he had liberally spread his email with irony and sarcasm, and so trying to dig myself out of the hole I suggested that at least I don't make the mistake of taking the Bible too literally. His reply was that at times we ought indeed to read the Bible so.

I wonder if that stands for the liturgy too? What I have in mind is Holy Communion.

I had the privilege yesterday of hearing the words of consecration given over the additional wine poured because I had run out while assisting (a miracle!). I don't believe in transubstantiation, so when I'm handing someone the chalice and saying 'the blood of Christ, shed for you' or some variation I am not in my mind handing my Saviour's blood around.

However I do find it a joyful act. I smile, if only inwardly, as I take part in the act. It is for me a sacrament of love, shared with people I may not know but with whom I have come together in representation of Jesus' last meal. And it represents the great gift given freely, which just makes my humble part in it so much more fantastic.

So too the Peace which precedes the sharing of the bread and wine. It is for me rather more than a quick shake of the hands and move on quickly. If I happen to have found myself thinking rather poorly of someone and they are in the congregation, then for me their's is the first and most important peace to share. Further, the down side of serving at Communion is that I seldom get to share the Peace with everyone before I have to join the priest in preparing the elements.

Love is ever present in Holy Communion. And God is Love. So maybe transubstantiation is literally true after all.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?

The day after the end of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP15, I stumbled across the end of a radio adaptation of L Frank Baum’s classic “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Our heroes the lion, tin man, scarecrow, Dorothy and Toto have reached the end of the yellow brick road and found Emerald City in search of courage, heart, brains, a way home and some doggy chews respectively. Of course just as they arrive full of hope, the machinery of power begins to crumble and the wizard is discovered to be no wizard after all but worse than a politician: a humbug. His response when thus revealed is “But how can I not be a humbug, when people always want me to do things that everyone knows can’t be done?”

Of course the lion is found to have courage after all in his response; the tin man does have compassion by the bucketful; the scarecrow is endowed with reason; and Dorothy when she realizes exactly what she wants to find back home in Kansas gets there in the end. I suppose Toto finds some delight too, but my point is: just what did we ever expect COP15 to achieve?

The Book of Genesis was written at a time when exiled Israel’s own yellow brick road seemed to have led them nowhere. The allegory of Adam’s fall is surely not about pinning blame on wayward woman or slippery serpent, but to peg out for all to see that sin is ever before us and we are always having forbidden fruit handed to us. We cannot blame others, be they politicians or wizards, for turning out to be snake-oil salesmen. The way home is there for all of us, and courage heart and brains enough to see us through the journey. But it is our journey, for we not them are stewards of creation. The dark satanic mills of some remote industrial wasteland are not the cause of climate change: our desire for their shiny plastic output is to blame. Just click your heals together …

Chestnut Roasting

Two pieces of paper caught my eye today, bundled as they were in periodicals. The first was a parish magazine in which it was observed among other things that two years ago the UK Post Office’s Christmas stamps didn’t portray a biblical theme. A litany of actions to take included not buying un-Biblical stamps and asking the Archbishop of Canterbury to show some leadership. The second paper was wrapped up in that old faithful HBR (Harvard Business Review) and carried an article called ‘Let the Response Fit the Scandal: A step-by-step guide to tailoring your crisis response’.

Normally I groan at the old chestnut that the Post Office is deliberately avoiding Christian themes, as for many years their well published policy has been to alternate Christian and secular designs. But since this year’s offering includes stained glass windows, one from nearby Upavon, I thought I’d check (the wonder of the Internet). Lo and behold, the theme two years ago was angels: Biblical enough, I’d say.

Tybout and Roehm’s HBR article, which also frankly tends to make a mountain out of a molehill-sized idea, is as follows. One-size-fits-all responses will not work on a scandal, the dimensions to which may be manifold. Therefore you must tailor your response according to what it is you’re actually marketing – the brand. They suggest: look at the issue from the outside; recognize the problem, rather than lurching straight to solutions; decide a proportional response, looking at the cost to the brand; and then get on with treating the customers as adults.

What if the ‘scandal’ of non-Christian Christmas stamps was true: what ought we to do about it? Looking at it from the outside, I’d say fewer than half (a lot fewer!) of the cards I send at Christmas go to believers. Believers or not, probably 1 in 50 notice the stamp and then only because for the overseas recipients the design may be unfamiliar and therefore interesting. Actually, I guess more recipients would notice if I used an ordinary stamp, so maybe not buying Christmas stamps would make a point after all. I think the problem is, if our response to Christmas, as Christians, is to drag a Christmas tree and its pagan baubles into church, have candle-lit services to remind people of the good old days before electricity and concern for people’s eyesight, and offer crib services that mangle the Gospel reportage, then we’ve already devalued the brand. If we turn an angry face to the secular world, we betray the blood of Christ who died so that we could learn to love not hate.

I don’t mean we should meekly steal away from problems. But we are as imperfect as the world at large, and maybe we ought to care first about how we reflect the light of Christ in it before complaining of the taste a few stamps leave in our mouths.

Fitted for Shoes

I used to be a bellringer, and one church I visited used to practice on a Saturday night before adjourning to the local pub. Once I was so late that I decided to go straight to the pub, the lounge bar of which was in darkness 'set aside' for the ringers. The landlady didn't recognize me so only grudgingly did she turn the lights on and serve me a pint. When I turned and sat in 'Frank's chair', however, she positively glared at me. Clearly I would never measure up to Frank, still less ever step into his shoes, chair or whatever.

A group I've recently left have, bless them, missed me. It was not long however before someone else was found by the establishment and foisted on the group, some of which thought it insensitive that this had happened. Weren't they still grieving, after all?

My own impression was that it was a very sensitive decision, indeed one with more than a whiff of putting the orphan lamb with a barren ewe. Who better to look after a new arrival than a group smarting and struggling to understand the empty place?

Another perspective on such group dynamics is reported in Scientific American Mind, quoting a paper by Katherine Philips et al in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The upshot is that the effect on the group is disturbing, so they go out of their way to understand the different perspectives the newcomer brings. This effect is evidently most beneficial when the newcomer disagrees with part of the group's 'wisdom'. So a stranger in the pack can be most beneficial.

We are called to be disciples. We won't always be welcomed as such. Yet by daring to don a fresh pair of shoes we and the group to which we minister put ourselves in the best place from which to grow.

When the landlady scowls, however, be prepared to shake the dust off ...

First Aid for Beginners

I've quoted Peter Drucker's Managing Oneself before: that bit in which he says we need to play to our strengths rather than expend needless effort rectifying our weaknesses. He has this to say:

"Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong."

There seems to be a logical inconsistency: if we are not good at identifying our strengths (i.e. we have a weak ability in this area), why does Drucker tell us how to do improve?

Anyhow, I come to this piece with a 'strength' I now believe is a weakness. I have tended to think myself good at getting to the heart of ideas. If I try to discern objective evidence for such an assertion, I struggle. I can however discern counter-evidence.

One example of my imagining that I've understood something has to do with the concept of a 'wounded healer'. Having once heard the term I believed it to signify that one needs somehow to be wounded in order to be an empathic healer. That's not the whole picture, though: at least not in the sense that Henri Nouwen used it in his book 'The Wounded Healer'.

Nouwen's use is from a legend in the Talmud, in which a rabbi asks Elijah how he might find the Messiah to ask him when he is coming. Elijah replies that he is at the gates of the city, sitting with the poor and covered with wounds. What sets the Messiah apart is, the rest are removing all their bandages at once and re-applying them, whereas the Messiah is dealing with his own wounds one at a time. In this way the Messiah will always be ready to help others at a moment's notice (while others are preoccupied in re-bandaging).

But which wound to tend first? Or perhaps I should start by looking to the functioning bits between the bandages ... like reason.

Learn to Teach

Still with Avery Dulles (Models of Church), his first model is of the Church as Institution. Key activities in an institutional Church are, he says: teaching, sanctifying, and governing. He is careful to distinguish between a Church being institutional and institutionalist. The institutional Church is by its structure well placed to bring people together in mission. The institutionalist Church may well abuse its power.

For example, the teachings of an institutionalist Church may focus on its doctrine, handed down 'apostolically' as 'truth'. Indeed there might well be pressure on theologians in such a church to reverse-engineer interpretation of Scripture to match what clerics are saying.

Some people are perhaps already suspicious of teachers because of past experiences, not least that most of us meet those of the teaching profession in the authority-laden atmosphere of a school. In which case, if we use the insitutional model of church to analyse an ecclesial community we may 'discover' institutionalist tendencies such as didactic teaching that aren't really present, and thus disparage all the Church's educational activities. How can we avoid this?

In the closing pages of The Practice of History, G R Elton claims that there are three basic methods of teaching: the lecture, the seminar, and the tutorial. Yet to focus on these three methods is to avoid the two ideas in which Elton enfolds them. Firstly, teaching is always a two-way process (though Elton in the 1960s was dubious of any non-US student's ability or willingness to question a lecturer). Secondly, teaching is merely an adjunct to the work of a scholar, and almost a second-fiddle activity at that.

I interpret Elton's view as presenting teaching as a feedback mechanism. To teach is to give oneself a sounding board for ideas. It also has a democratic (non-institutionalist) feel about it, for the feedback comes about through exposing ideas to neophytes as much as to the scrutiny of peers or powers-that-be.

This seems like a healthy way to view teaching in the Church. Teaching in this form should surely be an activity of the exilic community?

My Word is my Bond

I began this blog with the observation that for some people church attendance can be an issue. That's because attendance is one of those "external realities that we can see and touch" as Avery Dulles (Models of Church) puts it, and hence for some an important way of defining 'Church'.

Dulles continues with a quote from Robert Bellarmine, who called the Church "a specific type of human community [. . .] brought together by the profession of the same Christian faith " inter alia. Dulles notes that 'profession' of true faith is understood by Bellarmine to be distinct from, and more verifiable than, actual belief.

I'm reminded at this point of a confirmation class I once helped take. We asked the youngsters present what confirmation would mean for them. Last to speak was the youngest and arguably the wisest, who thought it important to make promises to God in public "because there may be someone there who doesn't believe but who sees me making promises and then might believe too".

However for Dulles, Bellarmine's definition (of which profession is but a third) comes at a price. This is that the essential difference between the Church and other, secular, organizations - its mystery - is overlooked.

"There is something of a consensus today that the innermost reality of the Church - the most important constituent of its being - is the divine self-gift. The Church is a union or communion of men with one another through the grace of Christ."

So now to 'Sunday' worship. In a time when rural parish churches are lucky if they have one Eucharistic act of worship a month, where does the union or communion of men (sic) with one another most significantly take place?

When a friend left this parish some years ago, my absence from his last Sunday service and the lunch which followed was noted. In fact I was at a rally for trade justice, marching on the Labour Party Conference that year. That fact too was duly noted, and a few months later another member of the congregation joined in a similar rally at the G8 summit. I dare to suggest that between us we were more in communion with others in those acts than we would have been if nailed to our pews on those particular Sundays.

Funnily enough, she was never that regular in Church either.

Time Out

I took some time out today to browse through the latest Harvard Business Review: a rare luxury. It features an article (Making Time Off Predictable - & Required) in which is shown that Boston Consulting Group is "getting better results by experimenting with down time - even in this economy".

The authors say that their research shows that slaves to Blackberries and 60+ hours a week work can meet the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off. The company helps them by imposing a strict mechanism for taking time off even at the busiest moments; encouraging discussion on what is and what isn't working about the scheme; promoting experimentation with different ways of working; and ensuring top management buy-in.

The "designated periods of time that consultants were required to take off" was called by the authors 'predictable time off'. I hate to be an old whingeing exile, but isn't this what we used to call Sabbath?

Back to work ...

In Need of a Hug

There’s a Monty Python sketch which I still smile at long after I last saw or heard it. A mother and her best friend are admiring the mother’s son, something like this: “Ooh, hasn’t he grown? Can he talk? Can he talk?” says the friend, and the son replies “Yes of course I can talk: I’m Minister for Overseas Development”. “Oh he’s such a clever little boy!” says the friend, who then explodes.

I was at a feeding-frenzy of a workshop yesterday in which among other things we discussed brain development and then Attachment Theory. We in the audience were loving every minute of this feast of, for us, mostly new knowledge.

In the midst of a quick fire burst of video clips in which children were abandoned in varying creative ways after the fashion of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the lecturer said something that I only partly heard, but which caught my attention. What I heard was ‘I’d be very worried if a parent said “oh our child hardly ever cries” for that’s a sign of …”

I was on the hook, for throughout my life I’ve been the ‘clever little boy’ who while other children were demanding attention, according to my mother “oh, we never knew we had him”. But the lecturer was badly behind and couldn’t take any more questions until the end, so I sat patiently.

Not crying for attention, it turns out, is an indicator of ‘Avoidant Attachment’ (and as if anticipating my assumption, I was told that it’s just one indicator). Avoidant or Insecure Attachment is when children show few signs of distress at separation. In fact I can remember as a very young child sitting at the top of the stairs when my parents went out, waiting for them to return. I also remember getting lost on a beach and having the nous to approach a policeman, but resisting all offers of sweets to calm me down.

Then again, I also remember calling a teacher ‘mum’ and being embarrassed at the gaffe that this person was seemingly more approachable than my mother. It turns out Avoidant Attachment may also lead to children demonstrating no particular preference for either parents or strangers.

If I think that Attachment Theory holds useful clues to my adult behaviour, I’m going to have to wait on the help of an expert on the theory. Meanwhile, I think I need to watch out when I’m in a group that is so enervated by what it is hearing that some sort form of mass hysteria makes one grab at explanations without applying reason.

Metaphorically Speaking

Brueggemann (The Word Militant) has a few things to say about exiles. He starts by saying that “exile is a helpful metaphor for understanding our current faith situation” (he’s talking of the U.S. church). He then goes on to describe six interfaces of the circumstances of exile and scriptural resources. The first and last are, respectively: “Exiles must grieve their loss and express their resentful sadness about what was and now is not and will never be again”; and “The danger in exile is to become so preoccupied with self that one cannot get outside one’s self to rethink, reimagine, and redescribe larger reality.”

I rather think that when Brueggemann links the expression of sadness and then rage with Lamentations and Psalm 137 there is an inevitability that self-preoccupation will follow. Yet when he recalls the individualistic and countercultural nature of Joseph, Esther and Daniel as exiles, this seems to resonate with what Peter Drucker wrote about Managing Oneself. You have to place yourself where you can be if not at one with, then at least congruent with the values around you. In the case of these three they were able to serve their people under an occupying power.

Today’s readings (1 Macc. 2.29-48 and Mk. 14.53-65) are a stark reminder that suffering must be in righteousness rather than self-preoccupation. The two combined remind me of a prayer I once composed in which I gave thanks that there were people willing not to die for a cause but to live for it. In the west we seldom have to make such choices, but perhaps we ought.

Anyhow, this blog is named metaphorically and is I suppose both an outlet for me to vent my frustration at a breakdown in my path to ordination and, as all blogs are, a bit of self-preoccupation. Nevertheless I hope to be able to draw on scriptural resource (and wider I hope than Lamentations), and to find a new way of being part of the priesthood of all believers and so live for what is right. This I can only do by getting to grips with my gifting, hence my preoccupation with methods such as Drucker’s.

A Para Doc's

Hey, let's celebrate language: the beauty of poetry. Let's raise the bar on emotions in words. Linguistic dances and prances and elegy, metaphors all taking wing with the birds.

Let's call it (clunk) "National Poetry Day".

I'm no Stromboli

According to Peter Drucker (Managing Oneself, Harvard Business Review Mar-Apr 1999, p67), “It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.” This is not a happy thought.

He suggests that you need to use feedback analysis to identify the strengths on which to build. A glance back through my journal at entries for 9-12 months ago shows that I’m good at recognizing gaps in my capability but hopeless at following through. I suppose what Drucker intended in building upon strengths was that rather than treat myself as an incompetent planner and put inordinate energies into becoming a great one, I should divest myself of habits such as procrastination that inhibit real action. It is worth noting that as I sat down to draft this, I so nearly started up a computer game as a distraction.

The first implication for action according to Drucker is that having identified strengths, one should put oneself where those strengths can produce results. Since I didn’t write my journal 9-12 months ago with feedback analysis in mind, at least not overtly, I haven’t recorded key decisions in a ‘retrievable’ way. As such, believing myself good at this or bad at that is prone to challenge, but as a starter-for-10 I believe that I’m good at: recognizing other people have different viewpoints, even if I stupidly try to imagine what they are without asking; recognizing my own needs; seeing broad connections between different fields; creativity, when I let the juices flow; prayer; accepting criticism (eventually) and – arguably – creative writing. On further reflection I’d add to my strengths singing and, strangely, that if I begin the morning with ‘no computer games today’ I usually stick to it. So what I bring into my consciousness at the start of a day will normally last.

Where to place myself to capitalize on such strengths? Well the church for a start, with all the implications for that thorny question ‘what is the church?’ I don’t necessarily mean standing in a pulpit, in other words. There are lots of ways of being church ripe for my exploration.

Drucker’s second implication for action is to improve strengths. Some obvious candidates for action include listening skills, systems theory and practice, creative thinking, writing, and singing. With a little thought, I could probably combine some of these to bring about synergy. So for example I could write a meditation on listening.

Thirdly, Drucker advises the improver to look out for what Egan calls blind spots (The Skilled Helper). These are those things that we arrogantly believe we don’t need to bother ourselves with or which we studiously ignore. Off the top of my head, I’m not too good at affirming other people, as if I believe that they should deal with their own neuroses without me having to get involved. That’s not a good standpoint for someone currently training in pastoral counselling, as I am, so blind spot it is.

So we come back to bad habits, like er procrastination (and the ugly thought that writing a blog is a way of getting out of real work). I don’t use my organizer or the family calendar properly, and I’m pretty awful at tidying up after myself and others. This means that something my diary reveals is important to me – hospitality – is hindered.

None of this has helped me identify things that I ought really to leave well alone, but there is probably plenty. So my need to journal is strong and with it the need to record key decisions and to review them in order to hone my strengths.

Watch this space.

Looking in the Mirror

When I learned to drive, my driving instructor spent some time telling me how to make those little adjustments that help driving feel natural: getting the seat in the right position; if possible setting the driving wheel at the right distance; and moving the mirror so that I could see behind without having to move my head. He then spent some time telling me how important it was in practice to move my head when looking behind. For as he explained: it isn’t how effortlessly you look in the mirror that’ll help pass a driving test. It matters that the examiner sees the look behind, and she’ll never notice an expertly casual flick of the eyes.

Put this idea together with the suggestion that people have an innate bias towards prior held beliefs, such as ‘young driver: he’ll not be used to checking behind him’, and one can see how important it is to be obvious in how one does the things that matter (for more about bias, see Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science, especially the chapter Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things). When the driving test is passed, there’ll be a different set of biases to work against, especially if one drives a white van or has a Christian ‘fish’ sticker on the back window. But each moment has its own challenges to which one needs to adjust.

Like the recent accusation made against me that I didn’t turn up to church often enough (important if you happen to training to be a priest). People will tend to believe someone in authority who makes an accusation like that, and mere facts won’t make a bit of difference when held up against an inner ‘reality’. No signed entry in the register for the services at which you officiated or preached, and no tax return from the gift aid envelope you filled in as a member of the congregation will ever matter, for no-one - including me, if I'm honest - will wish to test their own assumptions for fear of finding them wanting.

Perception is all, and anyway most of us each in our own ways are "... foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear." (Jeremiah 5.21, NRSV). So I am resolved to "prepare my baggage and carry it by day and night" (Ezekiel 12), which is I think the nearest God gets to saying "be seen to look in the mirror". For all that I am disappointed that for now my journey towards ordination is curtailed, there is still a need to prepare for the Kingdom journey and perhaps to start digging at the city ramparts.