Humming in the Spirit

I have developed a ministry of humming.

Humming is not the same as singing. It's normally quieter for a start.

I found myself doing it quite a lot this summer, especially in settings where singing in tongues was taking place, though I'm not aware of any biblical references to humming...(this was generally not during Anglican morning worship by the way; more in big Christian camping venues or tiny Welsh revivalist chapels).

Singing in tongues is an interesting phenomenon. For a more scholarly article on it see: http://www.pneumafoundation.org/resources/articles/rwgraves010.pdf

St Paul mentions it in 1 Corinthians 12 ('I will sing praise with the spirit but I will sing praise with the mind also') - it was clearly a feature in the church of the years immediately after Christ.

In practice it appears to function well within the context of extended, contemporary musical worship, as Peter Ward describes in Selling Worship: 'In charismatic worship the songs function (...) as the means to encounter with God' (p. 199). In other words, it comes with its own theology of the mediation of God's grace, which is quite different from (or perhaps not?) sacramental theology...

If you have a competent and more importantly, sensitive band, they can lead seamlessly from a known song into a more improvised time where people are encouraged to sing extempore, sometimes singing in their mother tongue, words or phrases that the Spirit inspires, often short phrases from the bible, or else genuinely singing in an unknown tongue, or 'glossolalia'. The effect can be, quite simply, beautiful.

But musically it all needs a bit of glue.

It needs to hang together harmonically. Sometimes the band will play a 'sostenuto' chord over which singers find harmonies; sometimes they'll play a more complex series of chords. 

People need encouraging to sing out in improvisation; tongues is the jazz of church music. Humming is a useful place to start and harmonically flexible. A chord is made up of three notes; usually the first, third and fifth. If you can hear the first and fifth, you can hum a third to hold it (glue it) together. If you can only hear a third and a first, you can hum a fifth. Its all about listening. When the chord has been established you can let the words come.

In fact it hadn't occurred to me with such force before that in worship we're required to endlessly listen. Obviously to God, but also to each other. If you are fortunate enough to be somewhere where there's ample leisure to spend extended time in God's presence, humming can glue the combined sound together, leaving your mind free to receive whatever God wants to say to you. I had all sorts of ideas and pictures while humming in venues through the summer.

Humming is invisible. Undemonstrative glue. Broken things often needs glueing together. 

Humming in harmony, adding to the praises of God's people, being a perfect picture of the symphony of the body, each person giving his or her own best, without being pushy. Or simply listening and receiving. One of the 'new (spontaneous) songs' we heard at New Wine this summer was 'Just simply be in my love.'

It has always been noticeable how much more frequent are people's stories of physical or emotional healing during this kind of worship. It's not even 'singing in the Spirit' - more 'singing the Spirit'.

Humming is background; it doesn't put itself up front...you can't quite pin down where it's coming from but without it things might start to fall apart a bit.

It's what a parish priest aspires to: presence as glue - effective but often unnoticed - a community often unable to quantify quite what that presence means but poorer without it.

I'm not sure what St Paul would have made of it, but here's to humming in the Spirit.

(This song (imagine no drums and just the chords) seems to lead well into improvisation: be patient, give it time; be open.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR;i-umeLhs)

What is Worship?

Compline at Binsey Church, Oxford

I sat in an ancient church with no artificial lighting the other evening and said Compline, a Monastic form of prayer for the ending of the day, along with seven other people.  It was divine. I am about to go to the New Wine (Christian knees up) festival at The Royal Bath and West showground, along with 10,000 other people. A bit noisier though no less divine.

What is worship? It's an exercise in my own preferences isn't it? It's what people do in church on Sundays while the rest of their life goes on completely unaffected, isn't it? It's just people singing or being silent. It's really just being in the quiet of an evening outdoors, looking at a sunset...Simples. 

Worship on the bridge at
Whitchurch on Thames?

It's possible do all these things and more without reference to God, though. But you can also do them all with God at the centre - in an intentional 'long obedience in the same direction' (one of the best definitions of discipleship I've come across) and that makes all the difference.

Adrian Plass wrote 'I must confess that I have both enjoyed and suffered an enormous amount of worship of many different kinds during my travels over the last few years' (Why I follow Jesus, p. 23). 

I know what he means. Is there anything more depressing than hearing someone say: 'I don't get much out of the worship'. Isn't there something suspect about this approach? At the same time, worship that is genuinely dull, unthought through, unfocused and boring is inexcusable. How can this supreme activity for which humans were created be less than properly spiritually nourishing?

At some point or another all of the following statements about worship have been said to me (or read by me) in varying ways by Christian and non Christian. You may agree/disagree or 'none of the above'.

a. Proper worship has to be spontaneous.
b. Proper worship has to have structure.
c. Liturgy constrains the Spirit.
d. Repeating songs over and over is banal.
e. Anything written before 2010 is out of date.
f. Victorian hymns have more content.
g. Songs in which Jesus is described as 'lovely' are rubbish.
h. Only subjective words can express our devotion to God.
i. Candles are more honouring to the Almighty than drums.

Candle in Ffald y Brenin Chapel

j. Organ music is not biblical.
k. God is primarily found in silence.
l. God is found in the 'intimacy' of 45 minutes of singing with a band.
m. Worship should be fun.
n. The only acceptable worship is social action.
o. Robed choirs who process divert attention from God.
p. You need to call down the presence of God explicitly.
q. God is already fully there when we gather.
r. You should not address the Holy Spirit directly.
s. You can sing 'Holy Spirit, we welcome you'.
t. My garden is my church.
u. I'm worshipping when I walk the dog.
v. Liturgy should be relevant to people.
w. 'Demotic' liturgy (= of the people) is lamentable.
x. Worship leaders must be 'anointed'.
y. You can worship best when alone.
z. Worship is corporate.

So what makes worship 'worship'? Adrian Plass cites two negative experiences of worship and two positive. Interestingly they bear no correlation to whether the worship

was modern, ancient, wordy, simple, up to the minute, spontaneous or structured, for a few or for hundreds, let alone what kind of building each occurred in. 

In one negative experience, he went to a church where everything seemed slick and organised, especially the overhead projected lyrics and amazing band; but underneath there were seething divisions within the leadership and poor relationships. In another, spontaneity was an excuse for lousy preparation; the leader was flustered and chaotic, but was 'letting the Spirit lead', so that was 'OK'.

In two positive experiences, a Cathedral Easter celebration, Prayer Book style, was sublime; in another, a Pentecostal service in an impoverished downtown area was simple but real, despite the cheap guitar and squeaky violin.

Defining 'acceptable' worship may be very difficult, even (perhaps especially) for those who have to prepare and lead it, week in, week out. Save that it be 'in spirit and in truth' (John 4) some questions which may be signs we're heading in the right (or wrong) direction:

Does it have heart and soul?

Is it welcoming?

Is it theologically deep? 
Is it real?
Does it connect with the rest of life?
Does it help me think 'Christianly' about what's going on in the world?
Does it warm my heart?
Does it challenge my preconceptions?
Is it welcoming to others?
Is there space for waiting on God?
Are we bringing our whole selves to it?
Are we smiling?
Are we laughing?
And, simply, is it God focussed?

You will no doubt have other indicators. At some point we have to take the focus away from our own preferences and onto what God might require (i.e. our whole lives). The vision of St John's 'Revelation' is of endless worship across all cultures with the Lamb at the centre. 

No Power Points that break down; no arguments about hymn books; no choruses in G that no one can sing or hymn number boards that no one can reach; no dirges written by miserable Victorians; no liturgical commission, preservation societies or someone up front with a massive mic saying 'I don't want the focus to be on me...'

Revolutionary thoughts indeed.

Number crunching the kingdom

Being a church leader can seriously mess with your numerical ability. For example, I used to think 30 (in church) was small. Now I would be delighted to preach to such an enormous number. Or 10 can be 'higher' than 20: I used to think a church of 20 adults must be in decline, until I read Fresh Expressions literature, where 10 adults who were formerly nothing to do with church, now gathering in a coffee bar to explore faith together, is perceived as a definite 'gain' on the 20 who've been weekly Sunday attenders for donkeys years yet have seen no one under the age of 50 join them for a decade. It all depends on the context.

There's safety in numbers. And anxiety in their absence. It's hard with a designated building (called 'church') to get away from the fact that it should be full of people. But it's context again. If I wander into the church midweek and discover one person praying there, I am delighted.

But one person at the main Sunday service and I would be mortified. Ten people at a midweek meeting might represent a third of the congregation of a small church, but a large church of 300 would consider 10 mid weekers a failure. 

And it doesn't help that well meaning (sometimes senior) people often give the impression that your job is to keep everything going as before, asking every time they see you 'How are numbers?' I am so tempted next time to respond 'oh, half the church have left since I came but the 12 remaining are really on fire for the Lord' (which is basically what happened when Jesus started talking about being the bread of life in John 6:66).

We live with the spectre of cutbacks and rural church closure. I have heard church closure lamented as the definitive end of Christian witness in an area. And I'm sure it is a crisis. But a crisis is not an ending. It might be the beginning of something else.

A peculiar form of mental maths goes on at the beginning of Sunday worship: which priest hasn't done some astonishing numeric leaps as they look out upon a church of largely empty pews, and calculate what a large number of people there would be if everyone who has come, ever, was actually there right now? And on being asked later 'how many did you have?' begins the answer 'well, if so-and-so, so-and-so and so-and so hadn't been on holiday/busy at work/having a lie in/recovering from the night before/preparing a meal for 27 cousins, there would have been......'

It's like that childhood game you played when you couldn't finish your plateful of food, only in reverse. Instead of pushing all the food up one end of the plate to make it look nearly empty, we spread out along the pews to make it look full. I think we need to have picnics instead - 20 people in a 'clump' on the grass, singing and praying will always be 'bigger' than 20 sitting in straight lines in a large building.

A quick trawl on biblical 'counting': David being reprimanded for taking a census of his fighting men to see how many he had (I especially think of this when asked to do my 'Mission Return'); Gideon who was told to slim back his men and keep only the keen ones and Jesus, who told of the shepherd with no numerical sense whatever abandoning the 99 sheep to search for the one. Perhaps the only evidence that more=good is the exhortation to pray for more labourers for the harvest.

Being about more than numbers, 'church growth' is hard to chart. Think of those anxious breast feeding mums whose babies don't put on steady weight along the percentile devised to measure bottle fed babies. Sometimes you appear to be doing all the right things (you 'cultivate an environment that releases the missional imagination of the people of God')* but still it's one step forward, two steps back. Because it's about people, their growth and their sanctification. Shared life, accountability, honesty about problems, holism and taking the long view.

I am trying to get out of the numbers mindset. I'm trying to resist the pressure to go for an indiscriminate 'more'. I pray for encouraging signs. Next time someone asks if the church is growing, I'll say we're working on the soil and leaving growth to the Holy Spirit.

*The Missional Leader, Romanuk and Roxburgh, p. 21

Either/Or Spirituality

My first significant encounter with Anglicanism came with an enormous dose of the Charismatic. Renewal had touched the Established Church via John Wimber of the Vineyard, USA, and was coming to a church/conference near you. I was immediately struck by the singing, which was intense and personal. To say I was bowled over would be an understatement. Power, intimacy and abandonment were not qualities I had honestly encountered in (non Conformist) church life up till then. 

Simultaneously discovering singing in tongues AND sung Eucharistic liturgy presented no particular problems at the time - I was unaware that later on in my life they would sadly come to be seen, or at least practised, as 'either/or' options. The tendency for some 'charismatic' worship, though, to settle for nothing more than endless repeated choruses eventually drove me to explore the depths of liturgical worship, and the C of E selection and training process would lead me along paths of settled prayer, silence, solitude and stillness. To the sacramental.

Sacramental theology had completely passed me by till the DDO* got hold of me. I read Baptists and Catholics. John E. Colwell's phrase 'no unmediated immediacy' stuck in my mind (after I'd spent a fairly long time working out its meaning). There was no means by which grace could be mediated to humanity save through outward, physical 'stuff'? It seemed like a good idea at first, offering protection from spiritual self delusion, but not everyone was agreed on what 'stuff' could mediate God's salvation. The Catholics said there were seven sacraments, the Anglicans two** - the water of baptism and the bread and wine of Holy Communion. I reluctantly concluded John E Colwell had never been in a renewal meeting lying on the floor while the Holy Spirit ministered inner healing directly to his soul. But each to his own (or was it?)

Sacraments, spiritual direction, silence, solitude, annual retreat  - all these became, not optional, but vital for spiritual/ministerial life. I was drawn to Ignatian reflection and two years on from ordination made a silent retreat at the Jesuit retreat house, Loyola Hall. http://www.parttimepriest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/reluctant-retreatant.html

There was no singing in tongues - surprise, surprise - but God was powerfully there in the steady, measured silence (though I was never fully convinced the Catholic hierarchy would have embraced the fact that half the retreatants were gleefully taking Holy Communion with less than a fully Roman view on what that really meant. So far, so divided).

Ffald y Brenin, Retreat Centre and House of Prayer.
Chael with domed roof (left).

But either/or spirituality is ultimately unsatisfying. Last year I read of a miraculous healing that a clergy acquaintance received at Ffald Y Brenin in Wales. She too had been seeking God through Ignatian reflection and almost stumbled across the retreat house whilst on holiday in Pembrokeshire. She posted a photo of herself standing in front of the remains of her now defunct wheelchair. http://tracingtherainbow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/an-unexpected-outpouring-of-grace.html

I sensed a pull. Set prayers were said four times a day in the tiny stone chapel. Miraculous healing AND a Celtic style rhythm of prayer? Streams of sometimes divided spirituality, united?

The earth is never far away, even in chapel.

I went. And discovered our Celtic Christian ancestors were right - God is not an either/or God. Yes, we said Morning Prayer (of sorts!) and Midday Prayer, and Evening Prayer...and there were plenty of long silences, waiting on God in worship. But there was also spontaneous, glorious singing in tongues, prophetic words and inner healing. One evening I went into the chapel at 5.30pm for Evening Prayer (30 mins) but nobody got beyond the first song...God's presence was so palpable, inhabiting the music, interrupting, and then bringing silence, like waves...I emerged three hours later to discover I had missed supper.

There perhaps remains an innate tension between the breaking in of the Spirit and set liturgy. But St Paul was right - order in worship is as important as the exercising of gifts. The Corinthian Church lacked order. Individually empowered members of the body were falling over each other to give a word, prophecy, sing/speak in tongues. If I'm honest I don't generally see that problem in English rural church worship. 

Pembrokeshire coast

The Spirit is like the wind, blowing where He wills, or like waves crashing on the shore one by one, with expectant stillness in between. He also grows in us the fruit of self discipline, though. It's not either/or.

And all through the worship the clear chapel windows let the hillside stream in and the Welsh wind said God is in the 'natural' and the 'supernatural'. It's not either/or. He's the God of creation and re-creation. And what God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
*DDO - Diocesan Director of Ordinands: medium-to-strongly scary person who prepares you for selection to the C of E training process.

**It seems to me that once you start counting sacraments, it's difficult to know where to stop. Either Christ is the only sacrament ('mysterion') or everything is 'sacramental'. Do we have to itemise them?  In fear of Episcopal discipline, however, I am, of course, perfectly happy with two sacraments. Love two.

All Curates great and small

Christchurch, Oxford, Petertide, already 3 years ago

It's been Petertide. In the Anglican church people have been getting ordained. It's nearly three years since 'my' cohort came through, and some of us are already moving on and leaving Curacy behind like a sloughed off skin. 

For a long while after I got ordained I used to get very nervous in and around large groups of clergy. Is this what we look like? How odd. Am I really part of this group? How on earth must we come over to outsiders? I'm slightly better nowadays, though I still maintain a possibly unhealthy desire to appear 'normal' at all costs, whatever normal is.

The shock of a female in a dog collar, such that the unsuspecting villagers of Dibley received on the arrival of the fictional yet iconic Geraldine Grainger, is wearing off.

Female clerics can still sadly be seen as 'problematic', though some traditional folk seem genuinely delighted with the development: once on being introduced in the parish to an older gentleman, I was given a visual once-over and greeted with the words 'ah ha.....considerably better looking than the last one'.

We come in all shapes and sizes these days. Eventually the media clergy stereotypes (elderly, male, ineffectual) will give way to something much broader and more interesting.  Beyond Belief; Barriers and Bridges to Faith Today, published by LICC, is already ten years old, and even their research indicated that the person on the street with very little church connection is aware of old churchy stereotypes giving way to something new and exciting. 

There is some statistical evidence that the Myers Briggs personality 'types' of clergy have traditionally been towards the introverted and 'feeling' end of the scale, away from extrovert and 'thinking'. Perhaps that is changing.

The recent media interest in Notts vicar Rev Kate Bottley (left) who joyfully led her wedding couple in a disco dance after their vows, perhaps wants to celebrate the face of young, female extroversion in the church, a church which is still sometimes ill at ease with what is perceived not to be suitably restrained or 'dignified'.

Splendid at Ascot

So we're extrovert, we're introvert; we feel, we think; we're idealists, we're pragmatists. Some of us are shy and retiring; some are loud; some are blonde and curvy; some are scatty and scruffy; some are, frankly, splendidly sartorial. Is there a place in the church for the distinctly eccentric? I hope so, but the selection process being what it is, I am not so sure.

I have been wondering about longevity in all of this. As colleagues get new jobs and map their calling and their (for want of a better word) 'careers' together in a complex theological and practical web, I wonder what we need to maintain joy and spontaneity at the core. One of the worst clergy stereotypes

Clapped out clergyman in Pinero's
'Dandy Dick'

 is of the old timer - world weary, been at it for too long without significant encouragement; seen it, done it. He (or she? less likely) is not a good advert for the church. One of the scary things about being a 'professional' christian is the feeling it all depends on you. It can feel a bit draining. And is probably completely misplaced. 

So I'm a Curate (still). But I'm also me. Ordinary. Entirely dispensable. And off on retreat tomorrow to prove it. 
Happy Petertide.

Pondering Priesthood

Two priests outside Church House on day of Synod vote on women bishops

I had two main problems with the call to ordination in the Church of England. Well, actually there were multiple problems - the course of vocation never did run smooth - but two main intellectual ones. And they were big. They kept me thrashing around in the bible and Christian tradition for about six months before I dared talk to anyone official.

The first was some formative church experience where women as teachers and leaders were at best absent and at worst disallowed. This reflected a conservative theological reading of St Paul where Eve's deception in the garden of Eden, and the perceived creation hierarchy, were cited as reasons women cannot hold authority over men. I needed to know if I shared this view or rejected it. With something of a tussle, I rejected it.

Second, and more pressing, was the problem of priesthood. If you are ordained in the C of E, after a preliminary year you will be a priest. What did this mean? Was it legitimate in terms of the New Testament's 'priesthood of all believers'? Could I come to an understanding of 'ordination' that felt, not  so much comfortably numb, but comfortably mine?

So much hangs on language. If you are brought up non Conformist it's hard to even say 'priest' with any real meaning. To my ears 'priest' sounded male and it sounded Roman Catholic. It also sounded Old Testament. The female equivalent was worse - cult-ish - in a bad way - priestess of the cult of Diana or Astarte or something. My meetings with those that prepared me for selection were all around this problem. 'What do you understand by priesthood?' To which I would mumble something about 'the priesthood of all believers' and the patient response would come: 'yeeees, but what do you understand by priesthood?'

And so I was stuck, grappling with something that was fundamental, and yet excessively difficult to pin down theologically, which has furthermore been the cause of so many divisions within the church. Only men can be priests. Only the priest can 'celebrate'.The priest is representative. The priest is one of the people. The church can do without priests. The church can't exist without priests. Anglican orders are null and void. There were no priests in the the early church  There were priests in the early church. Ordination is indelible. It's just setting you aside for a function. Only the Bishops' hands. 'Tainted' hands.

So, reeling and tripping like an amateur ice skater, I came to the night before Ordination. We were holed up in a small chapel for the final Eucharist. I must admit I found that last Eucharist as a 'lay person' very hard. It had an awesome sense of the Holy. In fact I had taken my shoes off. It's the only time I've ever taken the bread and wine in bare feet. It felt like the final ascent of a high mountain. The lower slopes had been manageable but I feared failing at the last few metres. I desired yet drew back from the summit. It was like when you can see the bank on the other side of the water and you really need to get over there but there's a huge jump.

Three years in and I am no closer to defining priesthood. It grows to encompass many things, but with an expanding breadth of meaning it tends to get diffuse. President, intercessor, conductor, enabler, sign, presence, shepherd, witness, leader, visionary? 

I felt decidedly weird on the day of

'Ontological instability'?

Ordination, but this had a lot to do with getting up too early, being nervous, being hot, being photographed a lot, being told what to do by multiple Church of England officials and being first in the alphabet. At the end of the day a friend wondered facetiously if I was suffering from 'ontological instability'. I thought 'how clever, it must be that'. But was anything ontological really happening, or was it more a rite of passage, with all the attendant  feelings of liminality, uncertainty and unique spiritual opportunity? 

Recently I was challenged by reading a former Bishop in Australia reflect on the phrase 'ordained ministry':  'The notion of the ordained ministry suggests an ontologically distinct order within the ecclesia into which certain persons are inducted. This generates the entirely fictitious idea that those whom the church calls to the office of deacon, priest and bishop, are, in the first instance, being relocated to a different metaphysical realm, that is the ordained ministry.'* 

So I don't know...My gender and background keep me from identifying wholly with a position which makes me 'Christ's representative'. Yet it has to be more than just the 'charism' of leadership taken to its logical conclusion. Maybe its

meaning will always elude me. Maybe it doesn't matter day to day. Maybe the more you focus on priesthood the less you remember you are still just an ordinary Christian trying to be obedient.

I suppose the bottom line is this is where I seem to have come, this is where I am now, and this is where, with God's grace, I'm going.

*Stephen Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, p. 21, my italics. 

Holding on. Lightly

It seems fitting that it's Robert Powell, aka Jesus (without the beard) from Roman Polanski's Jesus of Nazareth, that is holding on for dear life to the hands of Big Ben, Saviour-like, in the 1989 version of John' Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps.

Because holding onto things has strong resonances in the Christian tradition.

I'm no fan of John Lennon's Imagine: 'Imagine there's no heaven, above us only sky...imagine there's no countries...nothing to kill or die for...no religion too'. 

No justice or passion? People floating around in white drapes saying 'peace' when there is no peace? No thanks.

In contrast, Christians are encouraged to 'Hold fast to what is good' (Thessalonians) and to hold on tenaciously when things are tough. But holding on can also be negative. Holding onto people who need to be let go of; holding onto memories which need healing; holding grudges. Perhaps it's a question of what to hold tightly and what to hold lightly.

Holding on tightly or lightly is a conundrum for the selection process in the Church of England, but also for anyone who's ever needed a bit of divine guidance (you know, that nudging, that prompting, that hunch). 

Here's the conundrum: You think God might be calling you to do something. You approach your parish priest and they listen to you stumbling through a badly articulated explanation of a feeling, that might be a hunch, that might be a 'calling', say to Ordination, then they tell you to go away 'and when you're sure, come back and see me.'

But when will you be sure? Months, even years down the line, when you have started to articulate this feeling/hunch/nudge a bit more fully, they send you off to a BAP (Bishops' Advisory Panel) where for three days you are watched, assessed and 'interviewed' by various CofE 'experts', lay and ordained, to see if they too can 'discern' a calling from God.

The advice you are given by those preparing you for the BAP is 'act naturally'. Don't come across too sure. But not too unsure either. Great. No problem. 

On one level you must hold onto this sense of calling very lightly because if you don't, you're in for a tremendous disappointment when that 'sorry, it's a no' phone call comes through. Ideally you want to respond with a happy shrug and the words 'ah, no worries, I'll go back to teaching. Thanks. Byeeeee'. At the same time, how can you not hold tightly onto something that's so potentially life changing if, as it turns out, you had the right, as opposed to the wrong, end of the stick.

I had to go and see the Principal in my second year of Theological College. Turns out I was right about the original calling but I'd had a further hunch about my vocation and now wished to slant my training towards 'Pioneer Ministry', which was the new sexy at the time. By now I knew the kind of words to use: 'I've had time to reflect....just want to be obedient...'

The Principal had the nicest study in Christendom. The Principal was wise. The Principal was a good listener. He listened to my articulating how I felt drawn to be a Pioneer Minister. He said of my conviction: 'I think you have the right combination: you're holding it firmly but lightly.' So far so good. It wasn't in his gift, I knew that; but he would support my application. I continued to hold onto it firmly but lightly. Actually I didn't manage the lightly bit very well. At the end of the month my application was turned down. I was really upset.

And in ministry day to day I still struggle to hold some

things, some people, lightly. I don't have a problem with the tightly bit - I have a good memory for faces and names and can hold situations in prayer for years. It's the lightly bit. But when people get ill, when they die; when they move away, disagree, can't be bothered or are too tired, make mistakes and let you down; when our plans seem such a good idea and our programmes so very important to mission that we're thrown into confusion when they don't 'work'; that's when we have to learn to hold on. Lightly.