Still enchanted by God, (not so much with the Church, or religion generally), still learning, still travelling on
Author: Tony
Retirement is what I was born for. I love life-long learning, and finally this is my opportunity to read and study some of the things I never had time for when I was working. And sometimes blog about them. Proud husband, father of 4, grandfather of 10 (8 girls! 2 boys!)
It’s disconcerting in an age of instant communication of so many things (that often don’t even need to be communicated) when you come across a notice of something that happened several years ago, that you would have liked to know about sooner.
So it was this afternoon, when I opened the Winter Newsletter for alumni of my old school (Latymer Links: Always A Latymerian). Naturally I clicked on the link to the Obituaries page, as I find myself doing more and more often. And find that one of my cohort of 1960 joiners appears there.
Let’s call her J. At the most recent school reunion, in July, there was a special table for those who had joined the school 65 years ago. There were fewer of us than there used to be, though a number of ‘the missing’ were absent not because they’ve died, but because they were ill or just don’t like to drive on the M25 or A10 these days. J was one of the people I hoped I might see there, but she wasn’t there, and no one knew anything about her. And today I read that she died in April 2022.
I last met her at our 55th anniversary reunion in 2015 (the 60th in 2020 one was cancelled because of COVID…) and our conversation that day was a Blessing to me. Because, you see, for years I had had a bad conscience about J. Long ago, in our schooldays, I Did Her A Wrong. Back in the Sixth Form, I and some other lads took it upon ourselves, or maybe were asked to take it on, to edit the Sixth Form magazine. A scruffy and poorly-duplicated thing called i. J submitted a piece for the magazine. And we told her we would print it if she changed it. I can’t remember whether it was a poem and we asked her to put it into prose. Or a piece of prose and we told her it had to be broken up into lines of verse. The point was there was nothing at all wrong with her contribution. We did it solely Because We Could. It was the raw, posturing power of adolescent males. And I really really hope it wasn’t laced with the misogynistic possibility that we were doing it because she was a girl. (But alas, I can’t be sure of that.)
So the last time I spoke to J, I reminded her of what we had done, and apologized. I can’t be sure she even remembered the incident, still less whether for nearly 50 years she had harboured the seething resentment we richly deserved. Instead of that, she graciously accepted my apology and assured me I was (or had long been?) forgiven.
What I read in her obituary made me wish I had known her better… But of course 59 years ago I was terrified of the girls of my age, already women when I was some way off being a man. J had had a tough childhood, but she was a nice person, and went on to be a good woman.
Last week I saw a report on BBC News about a ‘lost’ masterpiece by the Flemish artist Quentin Massys, which had recently been ‘rediscovered’ by experts from the National Gallery. It had hung for many years behind the altar at Campion Hall in Oxford, the Jesuit study centre for research and learning, but has now been moved to the Ashmolean Museum on long-term loan, so that more people can see and appreciate it.
How could I resist? On Friday I went in to Oxford to visit the Ashmolean and have a look. The volunteer at the enquiry desk didn’t know about it… she asked the staff at the entrance… they directed me to Gallery 47, the German and Flemish Art gallery. And there it was: stunning, beautiful. Much brighter and cleaner than this image shows, as if it has just been cleaned and restored. Every detail is shining, crystal-clear.
If you’re near Oxford or passing by, this is well worth a visit.
The Authorized / King James Version of the Bible isn’t exactly known as a book full of laughs. But I got a chuckle from it yesterday, seeing something I’ve never seen or thought of before. In Numbers 22, part of the story of Balaam and his ass:
27And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. 28And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? 29And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee. 30And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.
Read it aloud, and it sounds as if, when the ass has started to speak like a man, the prophet Balaam started to speak like an ass. It would be lovely to think the King James translators had that in mind when they translated לֹא as Nay instead of just No. But I suppose it’s too much to hope for.
I’m currently reading the Bible in great whacks, using Grant Horner’s Bible Reading Plan It assigns 10 chapters of the Bible to read every day, each from a different part of the Bible: Gospels, Law, Epistles, Wisdom, History, Prophets. Professor Horner devised the scheme in 1983 as a new believer, wanting to learn as much about the Bible in as short a time as possible. It takes about half an hour a day, because the aim is not close study of each chapter, but rapid reading to get a good overview. This helps the close study that you can do later.
One of the things I love about it is the way a familiar verse can suddenly strike you in a way you’ve not seen before. Or can bring back memories of a significant time you read or hear it before, or listened to a sermon about it.
Just yesterday I came across the Angel Gabriel’s words in Luke 1.37: For with God nothing shall be impossible.
And suddenly I was taken back 60 years to 1965, when I was in the Sixth Form and took part (a very small part!) in two of the annual School Plays. I can’t remember what it was that induced me to do it. Perhaps there was some talk somewhere about how extra-curricular activities could enhance your chances of getting into university? It wasn’t so much the buzz of performing in front of an audience that attracted me, as the socialising in the Green Room while waiting to go on stage. Playing cards, or chatting to the girls. Things I might be ashamed of now (why wasn’t I trying harder to get a really good, big part?) but thought were pretty cool at the time.
The two plays we put on in those years were Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and The Government Inspector by Nicolai Gogol. In which I played the part of a Russian gentleman by the name of Rastakovsky, who has one line to say. It’s in a scene in which the townspeople are at a party in honour of the Government Inspector, when the Governor expresses a longing to be made a General. And the otherwise silent Rastakovsky interposes, “Nothing is impossible with God.”
When I delivered this line in performance, it invariably got a laugh from the audience. Which startled me, because I could never understand why. The line wasn’t funny in itself. I didn’t deliver it in a comical voice or with extravagant gestures (more on this later). I’ve sometimes wondered whether the teacher who directed the play had given the part to me because he thought – and everyone in the audience may have thought – that I gave the impression of being a pious bore who might start talking about God at a social gathering? If we had had school yearbooks back then, would I have been the person voted ‘Most likely to become a Vicar’? At 16, I may have been serious and a bit dull, but I wasn’t in any way religious, so surely that can’t have been it.
School Play 1965 The Government Inspector by Nicolai Gogol
Some time later, the school arranged a trip to see a performance of The Government Inspector in the West End. The only thing I remember about it is the performance of Rastakovsky, who, when he came to deliver the line, stood up, clearly as a very old man, gesticulated wildly, uttered the one line, had some kind of a fit, collapsed and was carried off stage. It got a much bigger laugh even than the way I did it. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that? Or maybe, been encouraged (by the director, or someone) to embroider it in some way like that? It was an opportunity which I simply didn’t have the experience, or the imagination, or the guidance, to take advantage of. Instead, I just sat there, and delivered it solemnly and po-faced. Maybe that was funny enough. But I can’t help thinking that (like so many other things I remember at this age) it was just another of life’s Great Missed Opportunities.
And do you recognize me among those aspiring Thespian teenagers? I’m the lad seated, 4th from the right, among all the young ladies…
Well it wasn’t exactly a Lenten observance, but something that grew out of a dissatisfaction with how things were. That’s kind of what Lenten observances are supposed to be about, isn’t it? But I’m referring, specifically, to my different computer setups.
Ever since I was the proud owner of a ZX81, I’ve been fascinated by computers and what they can do – and how to make them do it. I’ve lost count of the number of different devices I’ve owned. Back in the 1980s, most personal computers were too expensive for my budget. (Living on a clergy stipend!) But as the prices dropped and we became a little better off, it was possible for us to enjoy better things. Starting with an Amstrad PCW8256, graduating through a series of tower computers whose names and numbers I forget, to an Apple Macbook and other laptops. In the early years of the 21st century I began to explore Linux, getting it to work on various desktop computers and on my first HP laptop. I think I succeeded more because I didn’t know how many things could go wrong, than because I had any idea of what I was doing. Though it’s true that there were a couple of times when I managed to wipe my whole hard drive: once or twice without having remembered to make a complete backup of all my files beforehand. It’s a mistake you soon learn from. But essentially, it was the idea of Linux that appealed to me: the freedom, the open-source cooperation of the developers, and the ideology that went with it.
But newer technologies sometimes made it harder to continue with Linux. I loved the 12-year old ThinkPad I bought for the sole purpose of playing with Linux on it; but the sound and graphics quality were so poor I eventually let it drop. By the start of this year my principal devices were a Microsoft Windows laptop, and a Chromebook. (Not counting the iPad, Android mobile phone, Kindle etc.) The Windows laptop certainly had more power; but the Chromebook was often more convenient with its instant startup and web-based content.
But then: Lent 2025. I started seeing more articles and videos about running Linux on Chromebook. I gave it a try; but never succeeded in making a full Linux desktop environment work. Still, I got some of the old applications that I loved to work: vim, Emacs, command line working in the Terminal. These were enough to make me hanker for something more. I looked at several of the manufacturers who claim to make laptops that will run with Linux: Lenovo, HP and others. But somehow there was always a caveat: that you needed to check whether the various Linux distros were compatible with that particular model. In the end it came down to the decision to look for a laptop that came with Linux preinstalled.
After looking at all of them, I decided my Easter reward and treat would be to buy myself this attractive model from Entroware:
the Apollo, which comes with Ubuntu pre-installed.
Yes, it feels like coming home… to a more friendly and grown-up version of Linux, which has obviously changed since I last visited. There’s a lot to learn and relearn. But that also feels like it’s fitting in with the theme of the Christian Year: the new life that follows Easter.
Looking at the world news, I keep being reminded of these words from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:
‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’
Whether our world is in quite such a bad way as Middle Earth in its Third Age, when Sauron seemed on the point of regaining the One Ring To Rule Them All — that’s possibly debatable. Though to read some of the social media and opinion posts that I can’t help seeing, you might think the debate was pretty much settled. Things really are that bad.
There is so much anxiety, fear, hatred (doesn’t seem too strong a word for it) between groups of people who disagree about politics, religion, or simply, the truth about facts. We hate, because of what seems to us to be the extreme evil of the others’ beliefs, thoughts, words, policies, actions. When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet to discuss the future of Ukraine, without any reference to the views of the Ukrainian people who have so bravely resisted Russian aggression for three years… how can we not think of other times when great powers have simply partitioned and plundered smaller eastern European neighbours? When the UN debates a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the United States joins with Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against the resolution… how can we not feel our times slipping into madness and chaos?
The great danger of such times of anxiety, fear, and hatred, is that they cause us to dehumanize those ‘others’ that we disagree with. We believe the worst about them, which may be based on exaggerated reports or opinions, or even ‘fake news’ — just as their opinions of us may be. Maybe we even want them to be worse than they are, to be as bad as we suspect them of being, because that gives us better grounds to hate them.
I was struck today by some words C. S. Lewis wrote some 80 years ago in Mere Christianity, about forgiveness.
Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves — to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.
How would it be, if, instead of reading, and weltering in, and commenting on, and passing on all the negative comments and judgments about the people we dislike, we tried to forgive them? To wish for, and pray for, their good? And yes, that might mean praying for them to change, or be changed.
Of course, if we did that… and if they did change… we wouldn’t have any reason or excuse to go on hating them. Am I just imagining that that might be the real problem?
Christmas Night … and I had one of my recurring nightmares, that never fails to wake me up. I dream that I’m trying to crawl or squeeze or climb through a narrow place that I can’t get my head through. I’ve often wondered whether this is some deeply ingrained memory from a preconscious state, of the trouble and danger of being born. I’ve never heard that my mum had special difficulty giving birth to me. But she was quite little, and I do have quite a big head, so it wouldn’t be surprising.
Then I remembered, I had been watching the Christmas episode of Call The Midwife just the evening before.
One of the things I do remember about that St Albans diocesan clergy conference in 1971, was one of the small discussion groups I was part of. One of the chapters in the book of preparatory reading, included the thought that, in order to engage with contemporary culture, Christians would need to be ‘people of the borderlands’, as Jesus was. Bridging the gap between people who were usually considered to be ‘in’, and those who were considered to be ‘out’.
I was taken with this idea. So much so that in between sessions I was inspired to write a poem about it. Not only that, but also to share that poem in the small group session. (I now think that was a bit bold, maybe presumptuous, for a brand new curate. But maybe I was too young to know better.) The poem:
God’s Debatable Lands
We all are people who fight shy of borders: we want to life safe, deep in black, or white; are creatures of light or darkness, fearing twilight. Look how we build up fences against marauders, miles, miles of wire that shout mankind’s disorders in empty lands. There Love cannot alight — it is a frightened bird flung into flight, a beaten madman cringing from his warders.
Loving our brittle refuge better than God, we shun his country, the Debatable Lands. — But then, by brambly ways we never trod there comes to us, with broken, bleeding hands which hold out risk, and healing — not a rod — our Jesus, Christ, the Man of the Borderlands.
You’ll notice, maybe, that it’s a sonnet. Malcolm Guite writes more of them. And better.
In the course of nearly six decades of adult life, with numerous changes of address, most of them upsizing to a larger house, but latterly including a major downsize, we’ve acquired large numbers of books. Anyone who thinks ‘too many’ is clearly not One Of Us – for We all know there is no such thing as too many books. Nevertheless, there comes a time when downsizing means there will not be enough shelf space for all of our books… and certainly not enough for all the books we are bound to continue to buy. So during those six decades, we have not only acquired, but also from time to time shed books.
I’ve often wondered about the criteria for deciding which books to get rid of, and which to keep. Sometimes it’s easy enough: ‘I hated that’, or, ‘I’m never going to want to read that again.’ Sometimes you get rid of a book and later regret it and buy it again. In the worst case, you buy a book you think you got rid of, only to find the original copy is still there on your shelf. But that doesn’t happen very often. And sometimes there is something that makes you keep a book you haven’t opened for 20 or 30 years, because – well, what? Because it has some special significance in your life, because you feel it spoke to you or changed you in some really important way.
I was reminded of one of those books this week, when the Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent asks God to ‘grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries may … prepare and make ready your way’. It’s a reference to St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where he writes ‘Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they should be found trustworthy.’ (1 Cor. 4.1) The slender book on my shelves (only 88 pages) that takes its title from that verse is Stewards of the Mysteries of God, edited by Eric James, published by Darton, Longman & Todd in 1979 at £1.95.
It was a collection of essays written by a number of theologians whose names read like a Who’s Who of the Church of the 1970s. Richard Harries – not yet the Dean of King’s College, let alone Bishop of Oxford or Baron Harries of Pentregarth… Richard Holloway, not yet the Bishop of Edinburgh. But all of them, in some way, connections of the then Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Revd Robert Runcie. The book was planned as a preparation for the St Albans Clergy Conference in September 1979, but published as something of interest to the wider Church (as well as, incidentally, to help with the costs of producing the book and so save the diocese money.)
And the significance of that clergy conference, for me, was that it was the first major diocesan event that I attended after my ordination as Deacon just two months before. I can’t remember how many clergy attended – it must have been a few hundred – but we all travelled to the University of Kent at Canterbury, then a mere 14 years old. And there were all the things you would expect a clergy conference to include: worship, lectures, discussion groups, meals, drinks in the bar… Of which I remember almost nothing. It was 45 years ago, after all.
And yet. And yet. I believe now that the conference, and the book that I had (obediently, as a new young curate) read in preparation for it, represented a big turning point for me. It was perhaps not the first thing, but certainly one of the first things, that opened my eyes to the undoubted truth that there was more to Christianity than ‘Conservative Evangelicalism’ had to offer1.
So I took the book off my shelf and read it again, and find it does indeed have many insights which may not always have been part of my faith before then, but certainly have become important in the years between.
Concerning the importance of Mystery in the Christian faith, rather than certainty. The mysteries of God are not things that are secret or concealed, but things we could not discover by our own efforts, which God reveals to us. The ‘deep affinity between the mystery of God and the mystery of humanity’. Gabriel Marcel writes, ‘A mystery is something in which I am myself involved’. Patrick White’s epigraph to his book The Solid Mandala: There is another world, but it is in this one.2 I thought I came across this only years afterwards with the shock of recognition, ‘Yes, that’s true!’ but no, I first read it in 1979.
Vanstone, on the Church’s purpose: “The raison d’être, the responsibility, of the Church is to recognize what is happening in the world, and what is actually at stake in what is happening. What is at stake is the triumph or the tragedy of the love of God.” And on What God needs: (How radically daring it was, to consider that God needs anything!) “God needs only that which love itself needs — the response of the beloved other, without which love’s own work of giving remains incomplete.”
Richard Holloway, on the proper role of the Church, following Jesus, a ‘spiritual terrorist’, out of whose mouth came both the certainty of hell and damnation for sinners, and a gentleness and pity for us in our lostness: “The Church is really the trades union of the damned. … I have come to believe that it is always the Church’s task to plead with the divine anger on behalf of the divine mercy. I say this because I believe that this, finally, is the meaning of the mystery of Christ. … The final mystery, then, is forgiveness.”
And Richard Harries, arguing that the Church needs to take seriously the reasons for the radical unbelief of many in contemporary society. While remaining faithful to our own convictions, we must not immediately leap in to refute unbelievers, but listen and give full weight to the reasons for the unbelief that is in them. We must learn to be comfortable with inhabiting the space between faith and unbelief: “A person will therefore be a person of the borderlands, to use a word of Professor Donald MacKinnon.”
Listing some of those ideas now, they all seem so obvious. They make it sound like discovering Stewards of the Mysteries of God was a small thing. It wasn’t, at the time.
Oh, you noticed that none of the worthies contributing to the book came from that wing of the Church? ↩︎
This is often attributed to W. B. Yeats, but was actually by the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard who wrote, “Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci”. ↩︎
It’s that time of year again. When all the working clergy (God bless ’em. Who’d want to be one of them, just now1 ?) are planning for the annual influx of Christmas worshippers, and trying to think of different events and services to draw them in. Here’s my advice, guys: don’t bother with all those wizard wheezes for new and innovative and ‘relevant’ services. People will come anyway. They prefer the traditional, the tried and trusted, the things they remember and are used to from the last time they came, and the time before that, and every time they’ve ever come at Christmas. Listen, that’s what they come for.
It’s because Christmas is magic, miraculous. Even for the rest-of-the-year-round practical atheist or convinced agnostic, there is something about Christmas, the traditional so-familiar readings and hymns, that draws them again and again. And for some reason they tolerate all the extra stuff that the working clergy (God bless ’em) try to include in the services. Sermons (ugh) that are clearly meant to convert them into ‘real Christians’ who will come during the rest of the year. Activities. Film clips on the big screen. Sharing their thoughts with the people sitting round them.
It’s almost as if the clergy who plan such events don’t trust God, or the tradition. Trust them, brothers and sisters! The familiar readings really are the Word of God – so let them do their work. The traditional carols were written by people who were steeped in that Word: that’s why they work so powerfully. Let them do their work too: they don’t need endless commentary, and contemporary references laid on with a trowel.
Most important of all, please please please don’t refer to the extra worshippers who come at Christmas as ‘visitors’ or ‘guests’. If they are parishioners, it is their church. Calling them visitors or guests is already telling them they don’t belong; and I reckon part of the message of Christmas is that this is for everyone; that in God’s eyes, everyone belongs; that the angels at Bethlehem announced ‘good tidings, of great joy, which shall be to all people’. In the same way, don’t thank them for coming. They’re not doing you a favour, and that’s not what they came for. They came, for whatever mysterious, miraculous reasons, to meet with God. And they will meet with God, as long as there isn’t too much of you getting in their way.
And who knows? If you don’t stand in the way of other people in the Christmas services, maybe God will meet with you there, too. I’m certainly praying just that for all worship planners and leaders, and for all those who come to worship with you, this Christmas. In their church.
Actually, it’s one of the best vocations in the whole world. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. But I’m still happy to be out of it, and no longer to have the responsibility and all the pressures and demands laid on the working clergy. God bless ’em. ↩︎
Godspelled 