help wanted

So, I’m building a new church web site.

(pause while regular readers laugh knowingly)

But wonderfully funny, occasionally outrageous, and pastorally astute Peacebang has offered some very useful tips in what we should be aiming for.

So, while I shamelessly steal her ideas, I need help from the congregation in Dunblane.

I already have one of our talented photographers working on the instructions ‘I want candids of real people doing real things’ — but now lets be more specific.

I want photos of H. mowing the lawn… of G kneeling in the midst of a pile of flowers preparing the church for worship…the craft group crafting… the teenagers helping at Radio Rainbow…  the girls cleaning the church…

And pictures of things people do in the community… of taking communion to the elderly (not posed — but maybe at the moment of laughing over a cup of tea before the communion set has disappeared from site), of planting flowers in the community flower beds, of helping a neighbour carry their shopping.

I wish I had had my camera on Sunday when an older, quiet, gentle man was sitting intimately with the child who was having A VERY BAD DAY.   So next time…

And then, I want quotations.  Lots of the things that were written on ‘The Waters that Sustain’ my first Sunday could be tweaked into something meaningful out of context, but it would be better to get things fresh.  Would you write to me, talk to me, talk to each other and listen for those memorable phrases:  what does your faith mean to you?  why do you go to church?  where do you feel closest to God?  How do you embody God for others?

Now, I suspect some non-Dunblane folk will want in on this, so do play in the comments.  But those of you who are local:  will you spread the word, get out your cameras, and write down those wonderful phrases to help me build this web page.

daily prayer

Tim Bennison has started an online version of SEC daily prayer.

It’s a huge undertaking and a great gift to the church.

You’ll find it here.

on Cranmer, Dix & Mayhew

as promised, and at long last…  (and at last, long…)

On the night of my institution, as I read out the legal bits required for my licencing, the bishop might just have noticed a small stumble, a choking on words, as I read aloud and remembered that I would have to give my assent to the prayer book.  It wasn’t quite as bad as the time when — as we processed down the aisle — the bishop of Coventry said to me “you know I’m about to ask you to consent to the 39 articles, don’t you?”, but still, I stumbled.

Each time this happens, I don’t have time to stop and think about the niceties of ‘consent’, ‘assent’, and the like.  And then, when it’s over, I banish the thought, only to get caught out again the next time.

For you see, while I can affirm the place of these documents in the history and tradition of the church, they were never part of my formation.  Had any of my DDO’s, PDO’s, selectors stopped me and said ‘you know you’ll have to agree to the prayer book, don’t you?’ I might well have hopped back on the train, or even the plane, and sought a life elsewhere.

I realise that may sound extreme.  But honestly:  if all we had were the 1929 prayer book, I doubt I ever would have considered ordination nor even found a vision of God worth living for.

Which is not to say that I think that the prayer book is untrue.  No, I’m not quite so foolish.  But I think it is terribly limited, and never more so than in the 1662 English Communion Office.

(oh dear… I can almost hear the shrieks of ‘heretic’)

The problem is that the 1662 rite — or rather, the 1552 before it– is shaped so very definitely in the crucible of Reformation wrangling.  Mustn’t risk anything that implies that there is a real offering here, lest someone mistake it for sacrifice:  so lets break the offering up into a thousand pieces, and lose any hope of a coherent shape to the liturgy.  Oh, and confession?  Well, it must be public, and frequent:  a bit of penance here there and everywhere just to be safe.

Truly, I am trying to find sense in it. 

school holidays

Waved the children of St Mary’s school off on their summer holidays today, then went to pray by the river while everyone else splashed and played.

In my heart of hearts, I believe we should all get three months off in the summer.*

I think God thinks so too.

*(yes, that’s what it was a child:  6th of June – 7th of September.  Ah, the glory days.)

domestic affairs

Many a blog post brewing on Cramner, Dix & Mayhew; liturgy and presiding; prejudice against rabbits in the blogosphere…

But it’s my day off, so this will be frivolous tidings of great joy.

Molly has settled.

Really.  She hasn’t hidden under the bed all week.  She can get through a whole school day without her eyes turning into saucers during play time.  She has chosen her spot for cloudy days, and otherwise goes from room to room to room following the sun.

On other fronts, I have found a teapot.  Exciting, I know.  I found one a few weeks ago, you see; and I liked it, but it was too small.  Let that not be said about today’s purchase.  This one speaks of God’s bounty.

See?

gratuitous cat photos below the fold.

introductions

What shall we call him?

silence or song

I read today that when we are happy our field of vision expands.  True enough, metaphorically, but apparently it’s true physiologically as well.

I’d always thought it was the other way round.  I remember distinctly the phase in my life as an undergraduate when I felt I learned to see for the first time.  I’m sure I’ve blogged about this and preached about this and bored you with this before; but it began with a prayer walk on the beach when I learned that even the sand above the tide line was damp in winter.  And it continued tide by tide, ripple by ripple, leaf by leaf  till the joy broke in flowering chestnut trees, and swallows soaring across a vast sky.  I believed that the seeing made me happy; but maybe it was the other way round.

I sat down to blog tonight, and was at a loss.  There are things I dare not say.  Things too fragile for naming, that leave my breath suspended so that I don’t know whether air or tears or laughter will come next.  It is all good. It is all familiar.  Yet it has been such a long time.

This transition is sending me right back to basics.  The customs and norms I find here, the particular life-journeys I am beginning to accompany leave the field wide open so that I find possibles in every direction: how will we engage deeply with scripture (how do we already, what needs to be broken open?) what is the shape of prayer, here, and how do we keep deepening it?  how does our worship express and form our identity?  how do we express different calls?

I know already (and others know too) it will not all be easy.  The very things I am most certain of in my vision of the the church, the liturgy, what it means to be a priest are the things that most obviously expose differences between my understandings and the congregation’s norms; they will provide the first conflicts and the first opportunities for growth (mine and theirs).

So, I’m reading Dom Gregory again.
And Ruth Burrows.
And Job.  (well, we can thank the CofE lectionary for that).
Then there is the story of Samuel and Saul and David that breaks my heart every time.
I suspect it will be Ephesians next.

Tomorrow is liturgy planning for a funeral, a wedding, the end of Young Church’s year; there are notes of a meeting I should have written up a week ago; and hymns to choose; and people to meet.  Thursday, the school show, then a funeral; Friday, a wedding rehearsal and much to do for the Young Church; Saturday a first meeting for a wedding, and then a wedding proper; Sunday, the end of Young-Church’s year, in which they will help lead the congregation in worship, and then a Barbecue on the lawn.

So I may not blog much.

I may (perchance) twitter.

But know that it is good.

role model

good things

Some good things I have learned today:

1. the rectory rabbit is not alone: hurrah. (I realise not everyone shares my joy)
2. contrary to rumour, we do indeed know ‘which Mary’ we are dedicated to.  It is right there on the wall:  ‘window given on the centenary of the dedication, 28 May, 1945′.
3. there is therefore good precedent for celebrating the Visitation on the 28th.  I shall take no more teasing about it from the Provost, and hereby declare it our Patronal (Matronal?) festival.  (apparently there hasn’t been one for a while??)
4. blue-tak is 99% reliable.  (sadly, there were about 300 blobs of it on the wall)
5. white-tak by UHU is better.
6. wedding season does end.  (actually, I still take this on faith; but the thought is happy)
7. Fat Rascals, sent kindly and humorously from Betty’s by Betty, survived a few days of negligence at the post office while I lived under the illusion that the packet was Inspires.
8. The flower arrangers are coming up with beautiful and creative solutions to the dilemma I created by the words ‘flowers don’t belong on an altar.’  This week we have gladioli, dogwood, and lots of delicate white froofy things that the angels  rejoice in and call by name: tucked artfully into window ledges, rejoicing from pedestals, surprising at every turn.

inter pares

Congratulations, +David, on becoming the new Primus.

(and commiserations to Kenny, whose life as Dean just became a lot more complicated)