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.