Storyteller's World

I didn't actually want to say anything negative in this blog about other Christian bloggers, and it does seem a bit hard to single out Jonathan as the first one who makes me change my mind; but Church, What on earth happened to you? somehow focuses something that's been nagging somewhere in the back of my mind about a number of things that are going around in emerging church circles.

I don't quite know how to put it into words. So much of it seems somehow kind of, well - pharisaical. As if we are the only people who feel any of this, while all the rest of the people who are not EC are perfectly happy with the church as it is, luxuriating in their complacency. It ain't necessarily so. There are hundreds, thousands of people in the churches that haven't come out yet (if that's the alternative to emerging) who know we haven't got it right, but are loyal enough to the church that has nurtured them to stay with the ship, foundering though it may be, and keep baling and patching and rebuilding until it either floats or lands on the back of a whale or otherhow arrives at the Land.

It's not fair or right or godly or loving to write off the faithful Christians who don't see it quite the same way.

Skimmy-dipping, n. The practice of skim-reading short passages from a number of different sources at once, usually for pleasure or refreshment. also skimmy-dip v. skimmy-dipper n.

I found myself using this word this morning when Alison asked me why I seemed to be reading a different manual or getting started guide about the ibook every time she saw me. "Oh, I'm just skimmy-dipping," I said.
If I have actually coined this new word, I'm really proud of it. Even if I only rediscovered a word someone else has already invented, I'm still pretty pleased with myself. If you like it too, use it! It's free.

This evening I attended the service of dedication for i-church, at the university church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. It was a strange mixture of setting up what is supposed to be a cutting edge form of church, with a celebration of the eucharist that included Mozart's Spatzenmesse, Missa Brevis in C, and was allegedly using the Book of Common Prayer. (It wasn't actually, it was Order One (Traditional) from Common Worship - but let it pass.) About 80 people there. I kept looking around wondering which of the strange assortment of people there might be members of i-church. Most of my guesses - the geek, the young man with blond highlights in his hair, the young woman with a figure you just kept having your eyes drawn back to - turned out to be wrong. I suspect that many of the people there who were actually members of the i-church community, were the more mature ladies and gentlemen. Just as the really interesting blogs are more likely to be written by people with a bit of life experience, rather than the mere youngsters.

The preacher wondered whether we were making history (in a church where history has so often been made before) or embarking on a foolhardy venture.
Perhaps the beauty of it is, that we just never know.

Wow, I was really pleased with this; though for those of you who know all about it, you'll have to bear with my enthusiasm.
While looking throught the Apple Works Getting Started guide, I came across a familiar piece of text I've seen in other computer books, about HTML etc.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
I suddenly thought, why does everyone use this text? Is it some modern gimmick. Not at all! I find out from Google that it's a standard bit of dummy text that has been used in printing and typesetting since the 1500's.
A great example of modern technology continuing the noble tradition.
Equivalents for theology on a postcard, please.

What happened to those two Cornelia Funkes I talked about?

I started with Inkheart, which was billed as the latest and greatest - at any rate until her new one which is only just coming out in hardback - and is 'soon to be a major motion picture'. It's the story of a girl and her bookbinder-father, who has the gift of making the characters in books come alive in the real world, when he reads aloud. At the same time, someone or something from the real world is exchanged back into the book. A particularly nasty villain has got out, and the bookbinder's wife lost in the book. The story tells of how they get this sorted.
It's an intriguing storyline, but something about the execution doesn't quite do it for me. There isn't much development in the plot, it just lurches from one extreme jeopardy to the next. Perhaps it's something to do with being the first of a trilogy. I should have learned by now, not to touch anything that calls itself that, with a barge-pole.

Then tried The Thief Lord, a story of orphan children in Venice, living by their wits and trying to avoid the clutches of unpleasant aunts and uncles. Pretty standard kids' lit fare, that storyline, but the setting, the humour, and above all lots more development of plot and character, make it a heaps better read.
Kind of a cross between Swallows and Amazons, and Death in Venice. Well no, that's not a good analogy. Swallows and Amazons, and something else set in Venice. Any suggestions, anyone?

Congratulations to Pete Castle and
Facts and Fiction magazine, on their 50th edition which arrived in the post yesterday. News, articles, reviews, and stories for telling. This edition includes The Firebird as its centrefold story.

Daniel's piece about denominations (NeoTheo(b)log: "Denominations are our downfall") reminded me of how it was when I worked in an LEP (Local Ecumenical Project, for those outside the British church scene) in the late 1980's. It was in a new town area on the west of Swindon (called, surprisingly, West Swindon), where 35,000 people were being settled on a green field site. Back then, and still today, for all I know, the mainstream churches believed that any new church-building was best done ecumenically, so we solemnly set up this LEP with Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, URC and - to a lesser extent, goes without saying :-) RCs - working together.

And it went like this. It was very much a mission situation. So we would work with people and bring them to some kind of Christian faith, and then induct them into church life by making them members of all the sharing churches. And when they asked what kind of church we were, we would say something like:
"When you join the church here, you become a member of the C of E, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church and the URC."
"How is that possible?"
"Ah, it's because we're an LEP."
"What's an LEP?"
"It's a church where all the denominations are working together."
"What's a denomination?"

And that was one of the main reasons why I gave up on the ecumenical movement. Because instead of moving beyond, or doing away with, denominations, it needed to perpetuate them in order to fulfil its purpose. A bit like a church that dealt heroin so that there would always be addicts to save. Ouch! that was a bit rough. Sorry, all you ecumenists, if that hurt. I speak as a man who used to believe in Christian unity but whose faith in it was shattered by the sheer institutionalism of it all.

Most of today I was too busy with other tasks to even open the new toy (and that's saying something.) But I did manage to download Firefox yesterday evening, via the Linux box, then transfer the zipped file to the ibook and unpack and install it there (here). It was astonishingly straightforward and easy to do. And there are things about the way Blogger works with Firefox, that it doesn't in Safari, that make me think I'll stay with Firefox as my browser of choice.

The ibook is a beauty and a joy. I look forward to finding out even more good things about it.

Yes, I'm just like the cat who's got the cream!
Today (day off) Alison and I drove to Milton Keynes to the Shopping Centre - which is not surprisingly now called the centre :mk
Went to John Lewis, where I found one last ibook G4 800Mhz going for £499 and snapped it up. (So there, maggi dawn! New Vaio indeed!) It would have cost an extra £300 to get the 200Mhz more of speed, so I thought I'd try and manage with less, and enjoy the feel-good factor of a Microsoft-free laptop. OK, it's not as whizzy as Tom's new PowerBook. But then, I work for the church of england, while he works for Barclays Capital. Get the picture?

This is my first post using the new toy, rather than my desktop. The Safari browser doesn't do all that Firefox does; let's see how we get on with this.

"Wow!" says Alison. "Did you see that e-mail? Katie's getting married."
"Oh, yes; I knew that already."
"How did you know that?"
"Jorj told me, when I phoned him last week."
"Then why on earth didn't you tell me?"
"I just forgot. It wasn't the main thing we talked about."

Unromantic? Or just an inability to multi-task?

Some of the thinking (sic) that I seem to remember reading about the weekday lectionary, was that it was being designed to be used also by people who didn't necessarily say the Office twice a day, or maybe not even every day. But since Canon C26 states that clergy have an obligation to say Morning and Evening Prayer each day - and they need a lectionary for it - whatever lectionary there is ought to make sense for that kind of use. If a once a day (or once a week) lectionary is required, it should be separate.

What is it with the weekday lectionary for Morning and Evening Prayer?! I don't know which bright spark(s) in the Liturgical Commission 'fixed' it for Common Worship, but it sure is broken a helluva lot worse than the ASB one ever was. As far as I can see, the theory is that for one of the daily Offices (currently, the Evening one) the OT reading is sometimes linked thematically to the NT, but at other times not. This means - for some not obvious reason - that we replay over and over again the same or similar OT readings that we have only just had in the morning. This week we are on bits of Joshua that we read in the morning last week. Next week we're going to be reading bits of Judges that we will then read in the morning the following week. Is there any rhyme or reason in this that anyone has been able to discern? Or are these people just clowns, who never say the Office themselves and don't actually see what they've done?

Yes, I do sometimes read the bumph. And just to prove it, here are two of the links from the latest collection.
British Food Fortnight - 18 September - 3 October 2004 (Anything to do with food can't be bad.)
And food for the soul from the Diocesan Spi-Dir network.

It's lovely, after an afternoon baptism, when the family invite me to join them for the party. It means they've enjoyed the service, appreciate what I've done for them, really want me to share the happiness.
It feels churlish that I usually make my excuses. "Thank you so much, but I've got another service to get ready for..."
The thing is that an afternoon baptism is usually one of four services that day, and it could be (it was today) that I'm preaching a full sermon at two of those. When there's that much spiritual energy going out of me, all I want to do after the baptism is have some time alone.
I'm only an introvert, after all.

---

I think there are some parish priests around here who only have one service on a Sunday. They are not the ones with country livings, who routinely take even more services than I do. But maybe they are all extraverts?

A young scientist is inspired with the vision of making the world a better place, by finding a cure for one of the diseases or conditions which still wreaks untold suffering on the human race. S/he spends years studying, gains a doctorate, fights through the jungle of academic life and underfunding of research, to be able to undertake that life saving work. Research of this kind involves some experimentation using animals. Existing legislation, and the researcher's own ethical values, mean that no cruelty is involved. In fact the animals bred and used for research purposes are usually loved and cared for well beyond what they would experience in a natural state.

Yet the scientist becomes a target of opposition and even death threats from people who might benefit from the work. Far from being appreciated and honoured, s/he becomes a hate object, from people many of whom are not giving anything to the community that nourishes and sustains them.

I wonder why anyone would bother to do this? Today the Observer reports how one of the leaders of the animal rights (sic) movement is actually calling for the assassination of research scientists, to 'concentrate the minds' of others. It's intellectual Ludditism of the most egregious kind. I wonder if, when these people's loved ones are dying in pain with incurable disease, they will be pleased with themselves that their stupid protests may have prevented the discovery of a cure?

(From the Oxford Mail, Saturday July 24)

In our recent report of the 50th anniversary celebrations at St Nicholas Primary School at Old Marston, Oxford, we described the Rev Paul Rimmer as the parish vicar.
Mr Rimmer is the former vicar. The present incumbent is the Rev Geoff Price. Our apologies for the error.

This kind of thing gives you a strange sense of identity crisis. As if the question, Who am I? isn't hard enough to deal with already...

How do you tell where legitimate protest, in a sensible cause, shades into madness? Today in town the animal rights protesters were demonstrating against the new animal research facility the University is building in South Parks Road. Surprisingly large numbers of these protesters look like people you wouldn't give a job to. Yet they are threatening major disruption to the building of the new centre, and violence against contractors and those who work in it. It's incredible the fear they instil. A research scientist - who did not wish to be named - said, "We face going back to medieval times where people die when they are 30 and children die at infancy - but if people want to go back it is a decision we have to take as a society. It would be disastrous for the UK and biomedical research if animal experiments were stopped - it would bring medical research to a halt."

There is something completely topsy-turvy about these people who get so passionate about animal rights that they are ready to murder scientists - like the anti-abortion campaigners who value life so much that they murder surgeons. It reminds me of the people who find fault with Jesus for sending the demons into the Gadarene swine - as if the life and health of one person made in the image of God were not two thousand times more important than the life of a pig. That's what Mark is saying.

The man with the dog returned yesterday, and by the end of the day had made some progress in filling in the hole, working upwards from the bricks that rest on the front of the new concrete lintel. He also took away the ladder at the end of the day, so that the children (!) couldn't get up and have a closer look, which my Inner Child, at least, always looked forward to. The girders that stick through the wall into Tui's bedroom remain, like the terrifying bits of metal that stick out of people's heads when their jaws are being reconstructed. And the Really Big Hole underneath, where the windows were taken out, remains, no longer closed with polythene, so that all we need is torrential driving rain from a northerly direction, to flood the dining room. This is not forecast, fortunately.

This article in the Guardian recently:
From your mouth to God's ears, Ben.

Last week's Church Times had the sad outcome of the story of the rector who moved a font without a faculty. The bit that interested me was the architect's statement:

The architect, David Slade, supported the Rector by saying that the previous position of the font had made it dangerous for various activities. He said that the canonical requirement that fonts be located near the principal door into the church “had not been observed for many years”.

No, of course: "Don't panic, dear, it's only a symbol!" It really doesn't matter where the font is; having it near the church door is only a symbol that baptism is the way in to the Church, the point of being baptised into the death of Christ, and rising with him to new life. And when the church of england® has removed all the symbols, and left us with only words and definitions and statements of faith and heresy trials - who or what will then lead us into all truth?

It's a funny thing, that I've been asked a couple of times in the last year or two about telling stories at different events, and have found various reasons not to (bottled out, in other words). What kind of a storyteller is that?

So this time that I'm invited to tell at Wallingford Bunkfest, I try and give a quick Yes answer before I can think better (worse?) of it. Then Dave asks me for 50-100 words about my storytelling, for the programme. What on earth to say? Well, here's my first draft:

Tony Price
With a name like that, and most of his kin living west of Severn, you would think Tony should have some Welsh blood; yet he's lived all his life in England, the last nearly 20 years of it in Wessex. He loves stories that make you laugh, or feel you are touching (or touched by) the Mystery of Things. Some of them come from his childhood in the magical kingdom of North London. Others are definitely from Somewhere Else.

Well, that was one of the worst organised meetings I've been to in a long time.

It was the Oxfordshire Religious and Faith Groups meeting on Community Cohesion, at the invitation of the County Council's Social and Health Care department? division? - just Social and Health Care. More than 400 invitations had been sent out to all the different faith groups they knew about. So we turned up at Speedwell House to be greeted with the now customary security arrangements: print your name on this slip, who you're visiting, time of arrival, tear off slip, insert in plastic visitor badge, wear this all the time while you're in the building. And then it's, Oh I'm sorry, I've run out of plastic holders, just carry it or put it in your pocket. (Naturally the idea of having a meeting with lots of people attending doesn't connect with making sure you've got plenty of badge holders at reception.)

Then the room's noisy and barely big enough, and the advertised refreshments, which in our case we have not got, until someone is sent out to buy a few packets of biscuits and bring them in with a trayful of cups and saucers and two thermoses of hot water for me and another Anglican vicar to make tea with a teabag in each cup, or a little twist of instant coffee.

Of course, it's not easy to know how many will attend from such a large invited number (though I'm sure I had filled in a reply slip to say I was going); and what a strange lot we were. Including a Buddhist lama with little English and a minder, two Unitarians (is that one short of a Trinitarian?) who naturally embrace and espouse this kind of thing, and probably invented it, a sensible representative of the synagogue, and Mogg who represents 'the Pagan Community'. Or I suppose, if they are a really cool post-modern faith group, the pagan community (lower case). Their concern, nationally, is that so many of their members have been wrongfully accused of child abuse (as in the Isle of Lewes and other rural, backward and 'redneck' (sic) areas); accusations which it's suggested have been orchestrated 'by another religion'. (We were too polite to ask, and he to name, which one.)

There were sad absences: no Muslim representatives, and very few Anglican parish clergy. Yet it's an important opportunity: how can people of faith get together to talk about how religion can be part of the solution, instead of (as it so often seems) part of the problem? Moreover, how can we ensure that this kind of opportunity isn't just hijacked by local government to further their own agenda? How can we prevent it consisting only of those who like this kind of thing and are already this way inclined, when the very ones who make religion a problem are not there because they won't talk to other groups? Hell, the problematic Anglicans won't even talk, or rather listen to, other Anglicans; and that must be mirrored in lots of other faith groups.

We decide to meet again, and possibly plan a conference next spring. Oh dear. No good deed goes unpunished.

No man and no dog turned up today. So no more to report; the hole in the wall stays just the same as in yesterday's posting. Grrr.

So eight men arrived this morning (with dog) and got the old lintel out and the new one put in place.

Sadly both these processes happened while I was away or not watching, and even if I had been there, I don't think I would have had the nerve (as someone who is well known to work only one day a week) to stand around watching or taking pictures of men at real work. So how the new beam/lintel got in place, without modern lifting gear, cranes or winches, will remain a mystery; our own domestic Stonehenge.
When I got back I said to one of the two remaining men (the other six had gone about their other lawful business), "I don't know how you got it up there." "It was heavy," he said. The restraint of the British workman, and his modesty about employing expletives in front of members of the clergy (who, as is well known, have never heard let alone used such expressions) is legendary.

(From Tales from the Supermarket)
It's part of the storyteller's role to collect traditional stories, myths, legends, folktales, tall stories, from locals he/she meets. So here's one I heard yesterday from an assistant in Sainsbury's about why they had no aubergines.

We haven't got any at all in stock. They are having supply problems with them, because they're changing from selling them by weight, to single price.

And that, O my Best Beloved, (believe it or not) is why at this very day there are no aubergines in the Sainsbury bazaar of Kidlington.

(More from the Edge)

When I was attending a storytelling school in June 2001, one of the leaders was a great teller from Manchester called Dave, with the most carefully cultivated and maintained Mancunian accent. And one of the course members, Briony, was a sweet, proper, refined lady from Cheltenham. I still smile when I remember Dave's comments about her during the final assessment session. "You've got a very strong regional accent," he said (and who would dream of suggesting he might have been winding her up just the teensiest bit?) Briony bridled and seethed, every fibre of her being seemed to scream, "Me?!"

I thought of this when I was enjoying some of the tellers at the Edge, especially TUUP and Peter and Gorg Chand. Fantastic stuff, with all sorts of ideas and themes and techniques that I would love to be able to use. But they work because TUUP is Guyanan and the Chand Boys have all the Punjabi cultural background which is so fascinating and enriches their telling. And somehow you don't have any of that when you're plain vanilla with an Oxford accent. Where's the distinctive and interesting cultural flavour of this bit of Wessex? There should be one; but it's just so familiar and close-up, that it's virtually invisible.

This is one reason why I want to work on Tales of the Parish. To stress the specific local-ness and particularity of this place, these people, the events that have happened on this soil. All these are every bit as real and valid as the culture of East Anglia, Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria, Scotland, Ireland, the Punjab, Guyana or wherever. It's just learning to look at it, and tell it, in such a way as to see and reveal the strange within the familiar.

No matter how many times you have the builders in, you forget the noise and the sheer impossibility of getting serious work done. So far, the fruit of all the banging is a hole in the back wall that has been getting bigger ...

and bigger ...

At the same time the work force has shrunk from two men (yesterday) to one man and his dog (today). Why is it that projects seem to trickle into the sand like this? Is it a natural law of building?
Howard came and was surprised to find the new beam wasn't in place yet. After a phone call from his car he returns to tell me eight men are going to be on site tomorrow to put it in.
What larks, Pip.

Katrice Horsley bounds onto the stage in her storytelling costume: black t-shirt and black leather trousers, under an ankle-length coat of vivid green. She describes it as Riverdance meets The Matrix. "Where else do you get Michael Flatley and Keanu Reeves in one 4 foot 11 package?" She's electric.

She tells a story of a young girl who lives in The House, where she works. "She cleaned and she polished and she polished and she cleaned." The Mistress of The House never lets her out to wander in the meadows or beside the river or in the forest. Why not? Because she may meet with the Green Lady, the River God, or the Dancing Boy, and this would be temptation for her. But in time the Mistress dies and Kate gets out and walks in the meadows, by the river, in the forest. She meets the Green Lady, the River God and the Dancing Boy, and they ask of her a flower, a song, and a dance. She is swift and willing to give them, and each of them blesses her: "A hundred flowers (songs, dances) for each one you have given."

And she is blessed. She finds a husband, has many children, and urges them, "Walk in the green meadow! Walk beside the river! Dance among the trees of the forest!" And may you be blessed, as she was blessed.

It disturbs me to the root of my being. I find myself asking myself: Am I a Master of The House? Does the Church I serve deny life, prevent people from finding the Blessing that God wants to give them, by binding them with rules and prohibitions?

Alison is home from Norway; I'm home from the Edge; for a short time our toothbrushes are side by side in the rack again. Aaah. A picture of domestic bliss and unity.

Cultural/historical note: The ergonomic and aesthetic evolution of the toothbrush in recent years has rendered obsolete the design of toothbrush racks that was current 30 years ago. Has anyone given proper thought or study to this development? Is it because toothbrush manufacturers also produce holders for them, and build in obsolescence in this way to increase sales? (After all, how many times would you buy a new toothbrush rack, if the old one was still working?)

Back from Festival at the Edge, and it feels like I have ventured into other worlds: the world of the Festival. The whole living under canvas thing (which in my case I did not do), wallowing in mud, mingling with ageing hippies in pony tails eating vegan food, walking in colourful village high streets offering crystals and palm-readings and exotic garments and other alternative stuff. People with tame birds of prey and others recreating Iron Age life (what the Archers was like when it began). Giants walk abroad.

You can see some of the pictures I took on my FATE page.

And not forgetting the reason I went: the stories and the storytellers. Some of them fabulous.

No more posts for a couple of days: I'm going to be at the Festival at the Edge, the 13th Storytelling Festival at the Edge, Much Wenlock, Shropshire. I've never been to this event before, so I don't know what to expect; but I'm hoping to pick up some new stories to tell, ideas, inspiration, encouragement from the example of the professionals.

I'm putting it down in the diary as Continuing Professional Development. If you're a Storyteller-Vicar, this is the kind of story you can tell.
Don't go away - I'll be back on Monday.

Once upon a time, before you were born, children, back in the 1960's, the church of england® thought it would be a good idea to sell its old vicarages for a few thousand pounds (mostly they are now worth millions) and build new ones that were just as ugly as all the other houses that were being built in the 1960's. If possible, they should even be hideous. This is called incarnating the Gospel.

Many of those houses are now falling down. In the case of our house, it's not subsidence that is causing the problem, but heave. Apparently a drain runs under the house (good idea, what?) and this had been broken by a tree root and the clay was getting sodden and swelling, thus splitting the house apart in the middle. Last autumn we reported our concern about the interesting cracks that were appearing all over the house, to the diocesan surveyor. After much head-shaking, a structural engineer was sent for. Howard is a romantic's idea of a structural engineer: flowing shoulder-length locks, and cowboy boots. More shaking of heads and sympathetic noises. Our home obviously had but a short time to live: it might be six months, it might be six days.

This was late November. Howard was clearly loving it: this was going to be the kind of problem that adds some spice to a structural engineer's weary days. How to get a 4 metre long concrete lintel made and installed above the long French window and adjoining windows. Even how to get it into the back garden in the first place (knock down a wall? hire a crane higher than the house? lower it from a helicopter?) was providing hours of amusement.

So I said, "I hope you won't come and do this work the week after Christmas. If you could wait till the New Year...?"

Today, they came to start the work.

I've been so surprised at being cast in the unexpected role of evangelist, that I thought I'd better get down to reading mission-shaped church. Sub-title: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context. (holy typewriters, batman! even the church of england's mission and public affairs council has had its shift keys stolen!)

It's obviously going to repay careful study. It starts by setting out some of the social trends of the past few decades, that have led to the fragmented nature of today's society and culture. But just as you're going along with the analysis it springs this one on you and you don't know if it's taking the mickey or being serious:

Although Western culture will continue to evolve (particularly through technological change) it has taken a shape that it is likely to hold for the foreseeable future.

As long as that, eh? I don't know about you, guys, but I can't foresee much more than the next second or so. But I don't suppose they really mean the shape of Western culture is likely to change in the next few seconds. Some things, it seems, don't change quite that quickly after all. Like our fascination for all things futurological (Old Moore's Almanac, novels about the Book of Revelation, etc.)

My Concise Oxford English Dictionary has a wonderful appendix of terms for groups of animals etc. Some of them for things you've never heard of or would never conceive of in a thousand years (a fling of dunlins?!) But though they suggest a superfluity of nuns (somewhat unfairly, since you can never find one when you need one) there's no collective noun listed for a group of clergy. A convocation? A disagreement? And so we are left with uncertainty even about what to call ourselves.

This happened recently with the local Ministers' Fraternal, the ecumenical clergy group which meets about once a quarter. When Diana, the newest member, turned up, it finally became impossible not to recognise the absurdity of calling ourselves a fraternal when I was the only male. I think I would have accepted the Ministers' Sorority, just to see how I felt, but they weren't having any of it. Likewise the Ecumenical Chapter was objected to (by some who were not there), on the grounds that it sounded too Anglican and/or Establishment. (I didn't like to mention that it was Hell's Angels I'd actually had in mind.) Calling ourselves by a different acronym each time we met was an attractive option. We could be MEMO one month (Marston Ecumenical Ministers Oh, something beginning with O), and the next time SLIM (Servant Leaders In Marston). Well, that debate is still ongoing.

In the mean time, we had a good old-fashioned Chapter meeting today. Just the Anglicans. Brothers and sisters. God be thanked for words that don't divide us by gender, at least.

It was weeks since I'd had a decent story. Ulysses was OK in its way, though according to some people the story could be told shorter: "A man walks around Dublin all day; nothing happens." That's not strictly fair. It has much more of a story than that, and every character has his or her own story too, which accompanies them like the eight-ninths of an iceberg that you don't see, beneath the surface. During the course of that long walk around Dublin, some of those hidden parts of the various icebergs reveal glimpses of themselves. But that's all it ever is, just glimpses. So it felt like weeks since I'd had a decent story.

I went down to the city, to the quarter they call Blackwell. Walking the mean streets to get there, I negotiated the usual seething mass of humanity. People are reluctant to look one another in the eye. You're too busy watching to seize the moment to step off the pavement and avoid being run off by crowds of excited teens, gabbling away in some foreign language. And if that happens you'd better watch out that you're not mown down by a car, a bus, or another one of those cyclists that's just run the red light. It's a jungle out there: no wild animals, but everything else is trying to kill you, one way or another.

Down in the depths of Blackwell, seedy-looking types lean against the walls, their heads bent, intent on scrutinising what they hold in their hands. One of them looks up and hisses at me. "Need a story, guv'nor? You look the kind of bloke who'd be interested in this. Look to me like you haven't had one for longer than you care to remember. Come on, one of these is bound to be good for you."

So I gave in, in a fit of desperate need, and followed him into Teenage Fiction. And came away with two Cornelia Funkes and a William Nicholson. I couldn't help it. And don't look at me like that. You'd have done just the same.

Sometimes I get to take the funeral of an elderly person, married for many many years, whose surviving spouse tells me, In all those years we never spent so much as one night apart.

Can this be true? Not even when babies were born? Even when Tom was born 26 years ago, it was still usual for new mothers to be kept in hospital for a week before being allowed home, and new fathers certainly weren't allowed to stay with them! But perhaps we're talking here about home deliveries (sounds like Domino's Pizzas, no?) where there wasn't any time in hospital at all.

Certainly in our life together there have been lots of nights apart as one or other of us has been away on retreat or at a conference or whatever. Missing your spouse can be a good feeling; it stops you taking each other for granted; makes you realise how selfish you can get if you don't have to consider another person and their needs. I quite look forward to it sometimes.

But now Alison has gone off to Norway for the PME Conference in Bergen. And once again I am amazed that the thing that first tugs at the heart and gives that sharp shock of temporary loss, is going into the bathroom to clean my teeth, and finding her toothbrush missing from the rack beside mine.

so Ive slogged my way through to the end of James Joyces great thick book hes written Ulysses he calls it though theres noone of that name in it not even any sailing on the winedark sea men thats just the kind of thing they think is so clever to show off all their knowledge they only want us to ask them what it means or have other men writing books about it but if it was all that clever why didnt his wife ever read it thats what Id like to know it begins in a martello tower and ends with affirmations Oscar Wilde might have said if hed read it but of course by the time it was published hed been dead 22 years what can you say about it It is the book to which we are all indebted and from which none of us can escape T.S.Eliot said which is about right you really do feel that the whole of human life is here and we have all learned that this really is the way we talk to ourselves in our heads the whole time its supposed to be the first classic of modernism but it also contains within itself the promise of postmodernism its a very funny book too though not as many laughoutloud moments as Jane Austen or for that matter Mr Terry Pratchett if you like that sort of thing I actually started at chapter 3 this time because the last few times Ive tried to read it I didnt get past the first couple of chapters and thats quite enough of that I said Yes.

If you haven't discovered Firefox already, this BBC Technology news item may persuade you to give it a try. It doesn't even need to be Firefox. For your computer's sake, for the security of your system, use anything other than Internet Explorer.

Just a few days after posting my blog about visiting Dorchester-on-Thames and finding ourselves in the middle of a film set, for the filming of the new Miss Marple series, I got an e-mail from Rebecca in Boardman, Ohio, who maintains the Geraldine McEwan website, who found that entry while surfing and was interested in any more details.

I didn't have my digital camera with me. But I was able to report:

Sadly, there's not a lot more that I can say. We drove to Dorchester (about 12 miles from Oxford) without knowing there was any filming going on, because Alison and I needed to spend an hour or two together. At first the only strange things we noticed were the no parking cones along the roadside; then a policeman controlling the traffic, and film crew in front of one of the shops. After we parked the car there were other strange signs of how TV companies film period pieces: modern street lights and signs removed, vintage cars and buses about the place, people (extras) walking about in period costume, what turn out to be artificial shop fronts along the main street, etc. It all looks very convincing. And immediately next door are the bits they don't film: the modern supermarket, etc.

We couldn't see very clearly what was actually being filmed: it seemed to be a scene in a butcher's shop, and I don't think Geraldine was involved, it looked to be younger characters. By the time we got there it was already threatening to rain, and very soon afterwards the thunder storm I described began, and they stopped filming for the day. I shall look for the film with interest when it's broadcast.

It's things like this that make the great wide world seem just like a neighbourhood after all.

I won't say it was greeted with thunderous applause, though it was nice to have a few visitors in the congregation from the local Changing Attitude group. A number of people didn't say anything at all; others that they didn't agree; others that they were glad I was addressing the issues. And some that they agreed wholeheartedly. I suppose that's not bad statistics. But my, it takes it out of you and you feel drained, even preaching among friends. No wonder bishops and archbishops, in the full glare of public and media attention, find it so difficult to say what they really think.

The text of the sermon is now posted. HTML or PDF.

Absolutely none!

Today we read that an absurd organisation calling itself Fathers4Justice - the same group who put our access to the democratic process in jeopardy some weeks ago by throwing a 'powder bomb' at the Prime Minister in the House of Commons - have disrupted divine worship at General Synod in York Minister, protesting that the Church of England has 'done nothing' to complain about the injustice they have suffered, by losing access to their children.

This is absolute bloody crap. Children are not possessions that you have a right to have, or to enjoy. Bringing children into the world is a serious responsibility. And it's a shared one. So if you don't want to lose the children you've made, don't lose the partner you've made them with. If you don't mean to walk out on your children, don't walk out on their mother.

It's yet another example of the irresponsibility of contemporary culture: the preferring of rights over responsibility, blame over accountability, falsehood over the keeping of promises.

No sympathy - absolutely none.

You can't help laughing. Today there was a Deanery Day on Practical Parish Evangelism, and I was asked to lead a workshop called Alpha, Emmaus, or What? An overview of some of the process evangelism courses that are available, and some of what's involved in running them. But I was also so excited about our Faith Sharing visit to Eastbourne, that I offered another workshop by me and members of the team on that.

End result? Out of 6 workshops, I was responsible for 2 of them. Giving the impression that we at Marston are well into, and good at, evangelism, when really I know I'm not that at all - I see myself much more as a parish priest and pastor. But both the workshops were so well attended, more than fully subscribed in fact, and both went so well, that what am I to think? Surely it's about telling God's Story; and when we tell that Story with energy and excitement, and enthusiasm and commitment (and what other way is there to tell it?) it is Good News.

For the Alpha and Emmaus workshop I used my Not-PowerPoint presentation, with the whizzy new data projector the church bought. It worked great! What let it down a bit was the slowness of the laptop, which was my grotty old one. Perhaps I will have to buy a new one after all...

It was a fairy story really. Before this, their national team had never even scored a goal in the European Championship; and this year they went on through all the first round matches and into the knock-out rounds, cutting a swathe through all the other teams and reaching the final, and then beating Portugal 1-0 to become European Champions. And it was a fairy story too, for our Tui to be there in Greece while all this was happening.

She is full of stories of watching the matches in public places, with crowds of local people shouting Hellas! Hellas! And every time they scored, Goal! Goal! (surely that can't be the Greek word for it? - and the Greeks must have a word for it) and the young men jumping on their mopeds and roaring round the town square sounding their horns.

Mopeds are everywhere, of course. Tui burned the back of her calf on the exhaust pipe of one of them, as she was crossing the road. Quite a nasty burn that looks like it may leave a scar.

Tui is home from Greece, safe and well. Sun-tanned, full of tales of Greek islands, watching Euro 2004 with crowds of jubilant Greeks, and the vagaries of boys.

Or at least, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I find, when I come to prepare my sermon for Sunday evening, that the set lessons for Evensong include Mark 7.1-23; Jesus arguing with the Pharisees and scribes about scripture and the word of God. It is such a contemporary issue, in the light of all the controversy about the Church's attitude to homosexuality, that I have to preach on this again. On why the traditionalists are wrong, and why the Church needs to change its attitude. How can we know that we are using scripture rightly, to understand the word and will of God? The answer, I believe, is that we never can know, with 100% certainty. All we can do is go on trying, wrestling with scripture and with life and what they teach us, and doing our best to discern God's truth. And being ready to change our minds if we come to see we were wrong - whatever our friends, or former friends, may say.

For those who are interested, the sermon will be viewable on my website.

Sometimes the weather mirrors your mood; perhaps it is even affected or determined by it. Like today, when between 4 and 6 in the afternoon there was torrential rain with lightning and thunder.

Alison and I were returning from Dorchester-on-Thames where we had gone for a drive to find the town transformed into a film set. It was obviously a period piece, from the vintage motor vehicles parked here and there, and the costumes of some of the people walking around. The shop sign outside Chipping Cleghorn Antiques gave away the cause: it was the new Miss Marple (starring Geraldine McEwan) that was being filmed for ITV.

... And then goes to a supper party at the Bishop's, with most of the other clergy of the Deanery (and some others from the other side of the city), and spends a delightful evening in excellent company, with excellent food and drink.

When we first started going to these events, after we first moved here, they were often daunting: all these gifted, clever, amusing and holy people, among whom we felt shy and inadequate. Over the years that we've got to know and like them all, those feelings have been replaced with great respect, and gratitude to be part of such a talented group.

It's time, or age, or something, that works this magic of growing confidence. The Church of England is well served by its clergy, I reckon.

... are the answers to the question 'What does a parish priest do?' This week's additions to those I wrote down a few weeks back include:

Visits a parishioner in hospital, who was not expected to live through the night this time last week, and finds him sitting up and much better. Learns new computer skills, including how to prepare and give a presentation without using PowerPoint. (Here's a clue: you use OpenOffice.org - it's open source, and it's free!) Has coffee with another parishioner and talks about that person's funeral instructions, to be handed to the solicitor who will be dealing with the estate, whenever the time comes. Gets the plumber in to look at the dripping waste pipe of the bathroom basin; isn't too surprised when the whole basin is condemned; tries (unsuccessfully, it would seem) to persuade Church House that what's really needed is a new bathroom suite. Encourages wife who is going off for an important job interview. (And feels very thankful he's not having to do the same.)

It all seems very quiet at home. Tui is still island-hopping in the Aegean: the last phone call yesterday was from Santorini. "Paint me a cavernous waste shore | Cast in the unstilled Cyclades" - how I wish I could see them!

Meanwhile Sun has flown to the US to stay with her friend Erin, near Boston. She e-mails:

Having a whale of a time. The fourth of July was perhaps the strangest thing I've ever experienced. Funny little americans. Hope you're all well x

I don't know what we've done to deserve a daughter who seems to think the proper prayer for July 4th is a prayer for the return of the Colonies (I'm sure there must have been one, in the 1776 Book of Common Prayer - for myself, I'm one of those who thinks they had the Revolution we should have had.) But then, look at them now...

One of these days, I hope to see both the Greek Islands and Boston (home of Ally McBeal).

Suddenly, unexpectedly, it seems feasible to get a new laptop. There are a number of attractive offers at present, and the old one is pretty decrepit. The trouble is, how can I even contemplate getting a machine that runs Micro$oft XP? And I've never seen a laptop with Linux installed, except at one of the Linux expos, where the real Linux boys hang out. I can cope with getting Linux up and running on my desktop here, but I think a laptop would be beyond me.

So that leaves Apple, and a Mac OS machine. And there the issue is one of cost. So maybe it's not that feasible after all. In the mean time, Alison encourages me to play with her old ibook, which is only running Mac OS 9. I managed, after several false starts, to connect to the Internet; but then it turns out only to have Netscape 4, which doesn't cope with Blogger it seems.

Fun and games.

On the one hand, there is the issue of whether parents may smack their children, and the attempts to legislate about that. Today the House of Lords have rejected an outright ban on smacking, which sounds more like a victory for common sense than for any reactionary or hidebound flog 'em brigade.

I'm not proud about having smacked our children when they were younger. I had a deal of anger in me back then (which maybe I've learned to live with better) and the stresses and strains of marriage and parenthood sometimes got the better of me. But though I now wish that I had found better ways of disciplining them, I'm pretty sure the motive for smacking was usually to reinforce our teaching about what was or was not correct behaviour in the family and society. And I hope it was always 'moderate'.

But the main problem is with any legislation that would be so difficult to enforce. Short of a 1984-ish kind of nightmare in which people denounce their neighbours, or children their parents - and then, what good is possibly served by the parents being locked up? - how could legislation work? The idea that laws influence social behaviour may appeal to legislators, but it's extremely naive.

And on the other hand, Slobodan Milosevic, surely one of the most evil men alive today, is likely to get off scot-free because he's not fit enough for his trial - which has already lasted two years - to continue. If it is abandoned now, the principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty will allow him to walk away, and presumably live out his last years in comfort, thanks to the millions he has plundered and no doubt salted away, like every other tyrant. Why the devil has the trial taken so long? It's supposed to procure justice for the victims of genocide, not jobs for life for the lawyers.

You can see why the psalmists so often cried to God for justice. I still can't pray Psalm 10 without thinking of how real and urgent it was at the time of the genocide Milosevic's Serbs were perpetrating:

Arise, O Lord God, and lift up thine hand: forget not the poor.
Wherefore should the wicked blaspheme God: while he doth say in his heart, Tush, thou God carest not for it.
Surely thou hast seen it: for thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong.
That thou mayest take the matter into thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; for thou art the helper of the friendless.
Break thou the power of the ungodly and malicious: take away his ungodliness, and thou shalt find none.

This July 4 Quiz may help clarify some of the issues on which the fate of Dubya is hanging.

Today's Observer has a short article on the advantages of sharing holiday reading with the loved one you are sharing your holiday with. It only means packing half the number of books; but requires a deal more of compromise than comes easily. Writer Rachel Cooke's advice includes: a) Don't allow him to take any books that are more than 600 pages long; b) No girlish whimsy; c) A list of certain excluded authors, etc.

I have to say Alison and I wouldn't do too well at this. As far as I can remember, the only authors we've shared in recent years have been Jasper Fforde, Paul Johnston, and Alexander McCall Smith.

Any of you doing any better?

At this morning's Family Service the theme was welcoming Jesus. ("Whoever welcomes anyone I send, welcomes me, etc.") I used this as an opportunity for telling one of my favourite stories, The Lord's Blessing. (The greedy woman who sees her neighbour's hospitality rewarded by the Lord's blessing, "Whatever you begin this morning, you will continue until the end of the day", gives Our Lord and St Peter hospitality in order to gain the same blessing, and ends up confined to the toilet all day long.)

It was well received, especially by the children. I'm sometimes nervous about these stories: how will young listeners distinguish between the story that we want them to accept as true (literally) and the story we want them to understand as fictional, and extract what is (figuratively, spiritually) true from?

What I should remember is what the Lord said to me during my sabbatical in 2001: Trust the Story! I've been trying to do this ever since; but it's hard for anyone who has ever preached, not to want to gild the lily from time to time. It doesn't seem golden enough, the way Nature made it.

Could be my last word on that institution? Shucks, no, probably not.

From the Bishop of St Albans' sermon at Jeffrey John's institution, reported in Paul Handley's article

The letters have poured in to me from all sides, from those rejoicing and from those who are hurting; and both sides — let me say as strongly and forcefully as I can — believe that they are acting out of the highest Christian motives and for the most serious of Christian reasons, which must mean, surely, therefore, as Christians, that we are in this not separately but together.

It seems impossible to envisage a Church where people might have this much respect for each other, and particularly for those of differing views. Sometimes it doesn't feel as if we really follow a Teacher who said things like, "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you." Ah, maybe that's where I've got it wrong. It doesn't say we have to pray for those whom we are persecuting. We never have done, so why should we start now?

.. when I was a curate there in the (very) early 1980's.

Simon Sarmiento has done all the work on blogging Jeffrey John's institution there, so go there.

Course, that protester's quite right. Jesus never did ordain sodomites. He didn't ordain gay people, either. Or heterosexuals. Or women. Or men. Or anybody. In fact, if the Church ordained only the people Jesus ordained, lots of us would be out of a job. Or did I miss something?

Last night I sent out a circular email to some of the people I thought might be interested in this blog, telling them the new URL. (Sorry, folks, if you're really not interested. And sorry, folks, if you are but didn't get one. It's not that I don't love you, either way.) I did one of those send to myself, with blind copies to everyone else, so as not to share too many possibly confidential addresses. And blow me, SpamAssassin filtered my own mail into the spam folder. With 36.0 points of spam-ness! I don't think I've ever seen anything get that many points before. If your system also thought it was spam, well - what can I say but, Sorry?

The Prince of Wales' income, from the Duchy of Cornwall, rose by nearly a fifth last year.

Cornwall is one of the ten poorest regions in Europe, and receives aid from the EU Regional Development Fund.

I wonder if these two facts are in any way connected?

I wonder why so few other people seem to be wondering the same thing?

I wonder if it's something to do with the injunction in the House of Commons to prevent Members from tabling questions on the Duchy of Cornwall?

See also this article by Andrew George MP on rural poverty.

Well, not exactly peace, more a kind of stand-off, or ceasefire, or state of armed neutrality while two sides glare at each other across the frontier.

The supermarket experience has been better since I resolved on some kind of truce a few weeks back. Not that they have mended their ways at all. There are still the same absurd issues of stock control - if that's not a misnomer when the whole thing is so chaotic that control is non-existent - I should say, what they decide to stock and what not. In some aisles you can have any kind of choice of product, provided it's weird and exotic. Thus you can get lemon and coriander flavoured nuts, forsooth, (at a price, goes without saying) but bog standard salted peanuts - no we're not stocking those. In the same aisle, however, there are shelves upon shelves of mega-packs of garbage crisps (prawn cocktail flavoured reconditioned potato snacks, or whatever) but almost no other savoury snacks. Elsewhere there isn't even a pretence at choice. Moist toilet tissues? It's Sainsbury's own brand, or nothing.

One reason I thought things were better, was that I seemed to have found a time when the store was quieter. It wasn't today. Maybe the busload of the slow and indecisive - those who creep past you as you're pulling out, then stop directly in front of you - had just arrived. There were a lot of them about, anyway.

But it's still worth persevering. The key thing is attitude. I must remind myself of why I wanted to do this. There was a character at the checkout that day who was complaining to his wife about everything: the store, the staff, the stock, the way they keep moving everything around and you can't find anything. Made Victor Meldrew look like a mild-mannered young lamb. I thought, "My God! That's what I'll turn into if I don't change my ways!" A kind of Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come experience.

The Church Times (I would make this a link, but you won't be able to visit it unless you subscribe) has an extract from Stephen Bates' book on the Jeffrey John affair, in which he interviews Rowan Williams about why homosexuality has become the divisive issue for the Church. Rowan says:

I think it is about a cultural challenge to the whole view of scripture. This is an issue which allows a clear line to be drawn in the sand. It's not something that affects many people, unlike divorce. It's a good rallying point at a time of cultural flux. If you're a Roman Catholic, there are other issues you can find as a marker - divorce, contraception - but Anglicanism does not have these.

The powerful politicisation around the issue makes it very much harder to have a discussion, and I don't think we are going to get a balanced debate going in the near future. There will not be a rapid reconciliation, especially in the U.S. Do we want some endless fragmentation of the kind that traditionalist groups are prone to, or some coherent strategy which will enable us to work co-operatively?

I think we need rather more attention to what really are Church-dividing issues. Many of us thought we knew what these were - things like the divinity of Christ - not splinters of interpretation. It seems curious to me that at a time when we need quite a lot of attention and understanding to be given to the big central shape of the story, border skirmishing like this is taking up so much of our energy.

Thank God for an Archbishop who speaks his mind and speaks truth. But are enough people listening? Is the reason the traditionalists (though I dispute their right to claim the title of being the true representatives of the Tradition, as I've said before) are wasting our time in 'border skirmishing', that they actually have no Good News (the 'big central shape of the story')?

Yes. On July 1st, 1979, I was ordained deacon in St Albans Abbey by Bishop (as he then was) Robert Runcie. Since then I've clocked up 25 years of exclusively parish ministry, which is a good bit more than most bishops and high-flying leaders of the Church, who tend to get fast-tracked out into universities or diocesan appointments. Yet the parishes are the heart and soul and roots of the Church of England. I'm proud to be a part of that.

Today I'm changing to Blogger to maintain my daily blog. For a trial period, shall we say? Well, we'll see.

Here's where to find my earlier postings, before I changed to Blogger.