Lent for Extroverts 25: I have a hunch...

I have always been uncomfortable with the declaration, made by some that 'God told me to do such and such', but looking through the bible, it would appear that this is how many individuals did actually hear God's voice. In fact it's quite the norm for whole conversations of great detail to be recorded between believers and God, in which God is either listing the measurements of a new Tabernacle in minute detail (Exodus 25); itemising purity laws that run to greater length than an entire NHS manual (Leviticus 11), or sending someone to a specific address where a certain man will be for whom they must perform some service (Acts 9: Ananias going to heal Saul's blindness).

Opinion seems divided on whether it gets harder or easier to hear God's voice as you go through the Christian life. I understand the viewpoint that part of the maturing process is to experience the apparent silence of God, as it makes you more reliant on seeking God for God alone, and not for what He might be able to do for you. But it would appear to be unfortunate timing that just as you might be mature enough to take on leadership of some sort, you begin to find it more and more difficult to discern God's actual voice.

The more I read Old and New Testament accounts of how God spoke with individuals, the more detached they appear to be from my actual experience. I have never heard a long message from God which itemises everything in such detail as per bible accounts. It's been much more an impression, a hunch, a 'feeling' (oh, but you can't trust your feelings....) that maybe, it's just possible, that I might just think about considering doing such and such. As an option amongst other possible options, of course. 

You can imagine the chaos if this impressionistic, hunch-like feeling were all that the bible heroes had to go on: 

Moses: I've got this sort of hunch that maybe we should build a kind of building thing for God to be worshipped in...
Aaron: Could you be more specific?
Moses: Well, I think maybe we ought to use some, maybe, building materials...?
Aaron: Yesss.........what did you have in mind?
Moses: Well, I had a vague impression that maybe something that will last a bit longer than tents....?
Aaron (to himself: this is going to be painful...)

Or Ananias:
Ananias: I had a very small feeling this morning that maybe there's someone who needs my help out there...
Mrs Ananias: Yes? Anyone in particular?
Ananias: To be honest I can't really be sure - someone who's possibly quite nearby?
Mrs Ananias: Well, the maidservant's been very glum recently...
Ananias: Not, not her....Oh, I dunno, I'll ponder it for a few weeks and see if I get any clarity...
Mrs Ananias: Probably best; we are awfully busy these days...

Or for that matter: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King: 'I have a hunch....'

But maybe there's more to be said for the hunch than first meets the eye. I had one a few days ago. I thought it was probably just me, but I pondered my hunch and sent an email, in which I chose some words carefully, on a hunch. Which led to an impression that I should pray for someone. Which led to a conversation around a decision that needed God's guidance. Guidance that in His great kindness, He apparently wanted me to be involved in.

So today I am giving thanks for the hunch. It may not quite be divine lightning falling from the heavens; it may not lead to a huge new Cathedral being built round here, or someone being miraculously healed of blindness; but it may just be the still small voice that, especially this Lent, I need to hear and act upon.

Lent for Extroverts 24: Climbing trees

I had to rescue a kitten from up a tree today. When I say 'had to', it was a difficult call: it was the kitten's first tree experience, though she's been practising on a tall fabric screen in the study, so I knew her balance was already amazing, but the first time she went up that she couldn't get down either. 

She had no hesitation in shimmying up the apple tree - nice day, a bit windy, but Spring is on the way and here it was, right before her, a vertical brown object just perfect for digging your claws into, up you go fast, lots of smaller sticky out bits you can hare along too, amazing feeling, no one can catch me...until you suddenly discover the ground is rather a long way off and going down feet first is not quite the same exhilarating experience....in fact it's really quite tricky. So after going back up higher and back down to the same spot fifteen feet off the ground several times, you just stop and look at your owner with those big hazel eyes and start mewing helplessly.

If I'd been in less of a hurry to go to work I would have stayed and watched a bit longer but I began to anthropomorphize rapidly, imagining my little black dot was stuck for ever and needed her mum to save her (classic mother-knee-jerk response). One wobbly stepladder, several fruitless attempts at calling her name and tapping the branch and a desperate grab later, and she was in my arms and swiftly into the kitchen with the door closed.

She probably spent the rest of the day thinking 'I don't know why that strange being got me down from a most enjoyable romp up the vertical brown spiky object; I was having such a great time...beats climbing up those green swishy things that hang near the windows any day...'

The response to small inexperienced beings appearing to get into trouble is so immediate; one wants simply to rescue them. It's just as well we never really see what goes on when we leave our tiny tots at child minders/nursery/school etc. We'd probably never be able to watch what they go through in order to grow up, without wanting to intervene every ten minutes. When I first left one of mine at nursery, they would lift him up at the window to wave goodbye, but I would have preferred not to see his little face crumpling behind the glass. Maybe a certain amount of ignorance is bliss.

And God lets all sorts of things happen to us in order that we should grow up. There would be little point in him rescuing us from this and that, even if think we need him to come and take it all away; we'd never learn to stand on our own two feet if that were the case. Perhaps we are more often the answer to our own prayers than we realise. 

I'm going to need a lot more stamina to allow the kittens up the tree and let them make their own mistakes, whatever that means. Growing up is too precious to keep intervening. But I'll probably be standing under there for a while yet; worrying.

Lent for Extroverts 23: Stressing about stress

I've been thinking about stress lately, reading books about stress and assessing what makes me stressed. As part of my ongoing Curate's training, I was asked to read a long report on clergy stress, written ten years ago by The Society of Mary and Martha, a retreat House who deal in giving stressed clergy a break when they are undergoing times of upheval or burnout.

I was slightly stressed about having to read about clergy stress, along the lines of the self fulfilling prophecy: even if I'm not too stressed right now, I might well become more stressed if I imagine half the things in the report happening to me at some point in the future (overwork; burnout; marital breakdown). A couple of years ago I read Yvonne Warren's The Cracked Pot (also 2002), about how Anglican clergy were (or, crucially, were not) coping with stress. It's either an unfortunate or a very accurate title, but reading it a few weeks before my Ordination, I ended up feeling like a bit of a crackpot myself.

There were a number of 'Epiphany' moments during three years training at Theological College (like, 'oh, gin is quite nice; why have I never drunk this before?' Answer: wrong churchmanship; and 'actually, perhaps it's true that all people who get ordained are looking for ways to heal unresolved issues in their lives, i.e. we're all mad'...oooh, too deep; moving swiftly on...) 

...But one Epiphany moment that really sticks in the mind is a question that we were asked during a lecture on self care and finding suitable support in a job that lacks boundaries and which by its very nature, involves dealing with people at life's breaking points. After outlining all the ways self care should be attended to - observe your day off; find ways to recuperate and refresh; see a spiritual director; put time into friendships outside the parish; find a work coach or counsellor if need be - the lecturer asked this: 'And guess who it is who is responsible for finding all this support? You.'

That was the crucial thing. If you're already overworked and under supported, it is unlikely you will have the reserves to do all or any of the above. Finding a spiritual director who suits is not always straightforward; you will have to find a list; look up various phone numbers and contact them; drive somewhere and it all takes energy. Which you don't have if you're stressed and overworked. 

Which is why there seems to be an observed disconnect between the apparent emphasis on care in the Ordained Ministry; the lack of self care that some clergy practice, and the fact that not caring for oneself, and long term ill health due to stress can go for so long without anyone in a senior 'caring' position being aware of it, till it's too late. 

There are such things as 'accountable friendships', but it takes a lot of courage to ask your friend and fellow clergy person 'How are you doing spiritually?' and not come across as patronising. And clergy competitiveness (what? yes, competitiveness), English reserve and being too busy even to get together with such a friend mean that it really does seem as though the responsibility for not getting long term ill through unregulated stressed, as per the hapless clergy in The Cracked Pot rests with......me.

Lent for Extroverts 22: The mother of all confusion

One of the spin offs of the 'personalisation' of faith in these post Freudian times is the emotional/ecclesiastical complications around Mothering Sunday. 

When, in bygone years, it was simply the fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, ('Rejoice' Sunday) and a chance to revisit the 'Mother Church' (the main church or cathedral for your area) I doubt anyone leading worship stressed the day before about how many ways they might unwittingly upset people in church the next day, through forgetting to mention mothers; mentioning them too much; forgetting that some have lost their mothers; or never knew them, or were adopted or abused. Or by dwelling on gender stereotypes ('O God we thank you for our mums who always wash up')...Then there are those women who have lost a baby, never wanted one or who want one but can't conceive. If you're not careful, or are an over sensitive church leader yourself, not to mention also a mother, it can soon become a complete minefield. 

The glorification of motherhood may well be one of the reasons modern mothers are so stressed, minutely organising every spare moment of their children's lives until they entirely forget the importance of temporary boredom for the developing imagination. We want to have happy, healthy, competent and gifted children otherwise we feel we've failed. So feelings may be running high on Mothering Sunday, especially if at least one family have hot-footed it from the swimming lesson to get there for 11 am.

And if you, as a youngish Church leader, have a slip of the tongue, and call it 'Mother's Day' by mistake, not only will you greatly upset some older brethren but you will also fall foul of the more liturgically sensitive, whatever their age, with cries of 'Americanisation, blah blah; Hallmark Cards; blah, blah...civilization collapsing, blah, blah, blah....

Others are confused too. I know of one pub near here who appear to have thrown caution to the wind and who, either in a fit of utter inspiration or unintentional dyslexia, are advertising a special meal for 'Mothers Sunday' (no apostrophe).

And so to the refreshingly stark story of Hannah, in the book of Samuel, crying out to God for a baby, after barrenness has become her sad lot in life. When 'God hears', and baby Samuel is born (meaning 'God hears') she vows to give him back to the Lord, to live at the House of the Lord as soon as he is weaned. The parting of a mother and a tiny son in this way is unimaginable to us, but Hannah's perspective was wider than just a mother's. She had eternal perspective. Being alone in the House of the Lord with the elderly priest Eli would not be the sort of life we would envisage for today's toddler, but I like to think he was mothered by God instead.

So whether you're preparing to wear pink Laetare vestments, or to give your mum a bunch of pink flowers, or both, I propose a celebration of the non-stressy, non-clingy and eternally steadfast mothering of God.

Lent for Extroverts 21: Woodbine Willy

It's not often I weep into my muesli. I was preparing to led Morning Prayer today and found a poem by 'Woodbine Willy', aka Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, a First World War Chaplain whom the church remembers on 8th March (we also remember two Bishops, but given the choice between two Bishops and a poet...)

Studdert Kennedy got his famous nickname for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual help and solace to injured and frightened soldiers in the trenches. In 1917 he won the Military Cross for running into no man's land to help the wounded during an attack on the German front line. 

I do like the sound of Woodbine Willy, not least for his writing. In 1921 he wrote a book called Democracy and the Dog Collar which featured chapters entitled 'The Church is not a Movement but a Mob'; 'Capitalism is Nothing but Greed, Grab and Profit-Mongering' and 'So Called Religious Education Worse Than Useless'. You can see where he's coming from.

But it was one of his poems which reduced me to tears as I practised reading it out loud in a Yorkshire accent (you have to - it's written in dialect and sounds silly in received pronunciation). The poem is 'Well?' and in it the poet has a dream in which he appears before a figure we assume is Christ (described simply as 'Im'). He sees his life flash before him, particularly all the things he wished he hadn't said or done and the opportunities for good that were missed. In a poignant line, he recognises the face of his wife and children and of 'a London whore', and the figure before him says that whatever was done to each of these was done to 'Him'. The narrator feels terrible remorse and intimates that he should go to hell. Christ says, no: hell is for those who are not remorseful - instead he is told:

Follow me on by the paths o' pain
Seeking what you 'ave seen,
Until at last you can build the 'Is'
With the bricks o' the 'Might 'ave been.


The poet knows at last what he must do:

I's got to follow what I's seen,
Till this old carcase dies.
For I daren't face the land of grace,
The sorrow ov those eyes.

He concludes:

And boys I'd sooner frizzle up,
In the flames of a burning 'Ell,

Than stand and look into 'Is face,
And 'ear 'Is voice say - 'Well?

You'd be hard pressed to come up with a better picture of the loving judgement of Christ than that. Luckily, having made the muesli quite soggy, I managed to hold it together for my rendition an hour later at Morning Prayer.

Lent for Extroverts 20: Books for keeps

I'm not a great one for Home and Garden or Period Living, unless the perfectly designed and impossibly immaculate rooms feature a bookcase. Or preferably three. This World Book Day I have been holed up in the study trying to write. The design of this current study is either better or worse than our former study, depending on how you look at it: in this one the desk is nowhere near the bookcase. The desk in the other study was right next to it, so as you sat and pondered what to write you could get nicely and frequently lost perusing books instead and thereby do no work. As it stands, with desk over in the other corner of a very generous sized room, I feel a bit disassociated from the bookcase. One day I might look round and find it gone. Instead of this gorgeous conglomeration of well thumbed tomes, with their own ancestry and smell, there will be a small Kindle sitting on otherwise empty shelves, winking in silver, mocking me.

It's a bit like architecture, how books have built one's life. Francis Spufford wrote The Child that Books Built, which says it all for me (he has said some other rather wonderful things meantime, plus it turns out he's a believer; see his latest - Unapologetic). Or archaeology...the various strata that currently make up this bookcase start, for me, with these aged companions: CS Lewis; David Watson; AW Tozer (falling apart) and of course Mr God this is Anna, the best book on theology in the known world.

The next strata, representing a good few happy years trawling Christian bookshops, would look something like this: Rob Bell; Dallas Willard; Phillip Yancey; Richard Foster; Brian McClaren; ooops - a Joni Mitchell music book and some Revised Common Lectionary preaching tomes appear to have crept in.

I would have to add Joyce Hugget's Listening to God, The Four Faces of God, Bickersteth and Pain, and anything by John Bell, just to stir things up.

From here the strata get a bit more gritty as these appear: Exclusion and Embrace, Miroslav Volf and the slightly easier to read version - Other by Kester Brewin; Alister McGrath; a bit of Colin Gunton; then John McQuarrie and John E. Colwell for sacramental theology; oooops - here's The Rattle Bag, brilliant poetry anthology complied by Saemus Heaney and Ted Hughes; Your Church and The Law (yawn) The God Delusion (you gotta be fair minded) and of course any Lesslie Newbigin (watch that spelling).

Lastly the strata of contemporary fiction of course - too many to mention - but imperative so as not to become an utter and total clergy bore: plenty of Anne Tyler to keep your faith in humanity, and books by Joanne Harris so you can imagine Johnny Depp hoving into view in a small French town during Lent. And Faber; the gorgeous little slim poetry collections by Emily Dickinson, TS Eliot and Philip Larkin. And finally the Classics, which in our house are either all black ('His') or all orange ('Hers'). Either way they're old friends.

Can you get all that tactile enjoyment, that history of handling, annotating and cherishing with a Kindle? Call me old fashioned, but I think not. Happy World Book Day.

Lent for Extroverts 19: Letting go

Growing up is fraught with problems. I'll never forget when a friend visited me shortly after I had just came back from the hospital with son #1 and philosophised words to the effect that as soon as they are born someone's trying to take them away from you. I thought this was a bit over stating the case but after a while I realized she was right. No sooner was the feeding going really well then thoughts turned to weaning. We progressed from sharing a room to being in separate rooms. He learned to crawl, then walk so then he didn't need carrying. He learnt to say 'NO' and do his own thing at nursery then school. Six hours a day out of the home. That was a while back. Sooner or later he'll be leaving home; they all will.

Same with kittens. Our gorgeous cuddly new additions have reached the end of the molly coddling stage - it's time for the getting out into the big bad world stage (once the micro chipping is in place). We've had the 'hate wearing collars with an absolute passion' disastrous attempt today. I only want them to wear collars in case they get lost and a neighbour can then return them. Trying to control outcomes is hopeless though. It's about letting go. There's always risk in growing up: look at The Snowman - joyous dancing in Lapland one day; melted in a heap the next.

I've heard The Snowman mined for theological insights into the problem of freewill one too many times, but still it's persuasive: if you create something with autonomy you forfeit the right to control the outcome of the creature's choices. Something alive is so precious and fragile but keeping it locked safely indoors for ever defeats the point of being alive. We are made to grow up. As Mothering Sunday rolls onto the horizon, and clergy do their best to make it a joyful celebration as well as remembering that there is pain woven into so many things-parenting; maybe the best lesson is that mothering (parenting) is ultimately about letting go.