Passing thoughts...

It was sad to read that Dan Hardy died on Thursday. I met Dan and Perrin a couple of years ago at a friend's 'Desert Island Discs' evening - we each took the one track that we would choose for our stay on the desert island. He was very gracious and patient about my ramblings about how I came to be about to go to a selection panel to see if I was called to ordination. He was just another guest, chatting over the buffet (and yes, there was quiche on the table). Later I discovered that he was the Rev Canon Professor Daniel W Hardy of Princeton and Cambridge Universities, and a theologian of some repute. I haven't read any of his books or studied his work - perhaps I will now. I just remember the person with a twinkle in his eyes and regret that I didn't get to know him better.

Achtung please...

They say that if you stand in one place long enough the whole world will pass you by. If you have an impossibly long life, perhaps... And wouldn't it be a bit boring after a while anyway? But maybe it is true.

Staring out of my study window this afternoon in search of inspiration for Sunday's sermon - featuring Edmund, King of the East Angles and Martyr, 870 (because he is one of our patron saints and it is his day next week) - I wondered if I was still in the deep Fens, miles from any recognised centre of civilisation. (And many miles from any coffee bar chain, more to the point. I have to go to Kings Lynn or Ely to get a Starbucks or Costa expresso fix. And to Cambridge for Cafe Nero.)

Why? Because past the end of the drive came a German police car, like a less racy version of car in the image. I know that we have many people living and working around here from ex-Iron Curtain countries like Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as from Portugal. The Polish language mass at the local Roman Catholic church is always packed out. Local information leaflets are in any language except English - but perhaps we Brits know how the system works anyway. And I know that the county's police resources are stretched to the limit and beyond. But is it so bad that the County Council has contracted in the services of the German Polizei...?

Or, more frightening thought, perhaps we are a centre for international crime? Which, worryingly, wouldn't really surprise me...

We will remember...

Took my first Remembrance Day service and Act of Remembrance around the war memorial today. It went as well as these things do. Producing a suitable sermon was a bit of a challenge. I know little about war although I suppose that I have lived through several, Vietnam being the first one I remember hearing and seeing anything about. That and the Cold War. Guess that I was about 9 or 10 years old when I lifted the telephone handset in the fire station and listened to the signal (a regular beep) that meant that we were not under attack and did not have to do all the things that the booklet on ‘What to do in the event of a nuclear attack’ said that we should do. Something like ‘Take to the space under the floor (a sort of metre high basement), tape over the air bricks with black polythene and make sure that you have a radio, water and food’ I seem to remember. Not that it would have done much good.

So what can I say that is of any possible relevance to those sitting there wearing their medals and memories? I don’t have any medals, not even my father’s – he sent his back in disgust… The Panorama programme shown this week on the BBC was a bit of a reality check though – the experiences of a camera crew and reporter in Afghanistan with a unit of the Guards. Rivetting viewing but I hope that is as close as I ever get to battle…

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
– Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can putter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen

Friends...

Nearly everyone has friends. Some have lots and do a great deal of socialising. Some have a few close friends and more aquaintances. I suspect that how many friends you have and, possibly, how much time you spend in maintaining those friendships depends largely on your personality, mainly if you are an extrovert (lots of friends and maintenance) or an introvert (not so many or so much).

A lecture in the Ethics module last year at college started me thinking about friendship. According to the lecturer, friendship requires some sort of equality between the two people concerned, especially equality in knowledge about each other, and in the relationship – you can’t be friends if one is exploiting the other in some way. At the time I was pondering over a new friendship that seemed to be uneven and wondering on how it was going to work out. (And it has worked out fine because it has evened itself up.) You choose to spend time with your friends and to get to know them, and they you. It is a mutual relationship, in which you each give time, attention and love, to the other. Most of my friends make me laugh too; joy in and with each other should be there as well.
But it seems that part of the process of friendship is being vulnerable to each other. That is something that ordinands are told about too, that being a priest or pastor means allowing yourself to be vulnerable. I think that I would worry about a minister who has no close friends – or perhaps whose only close friend is their ‘nearest and dearest’. How else do you learn and practise being vulnerable?

And here we come to a possible problem for those of us who are ministers living in parishes. How do we make new friends? Where do we find them and who are they? And how do you manage boundaries in such friendships?

Whenever I have moved in the past I have been pretty quick in joining a few things – partly because those are my ways of relaxing and partly because it’s a good way into a community. The advantage of having children, especially youngish children, is that you automatically find yourself drawn into the local community through them and their friends’ parents. If, like me, you don’t have children you have to make the effort. But finding time to do anything other than ‘work’ (and study for me) is not easy. I certainly spend more time and effort now on maintaining friendships I have brought with me.

After four months as a curate, I have got to know a couple of people in my community who I think may become friends. But they are also my parishioners which raises the problems of equality and boundaries. It is easier to separate parish and personal life and find friends outside the parishes and among other clergy. But doing that feels like a bit of a cop out. We are called to live in these communities and be part of them. At my sending church I was fortunate to find two very good friends in the curate and his wife. Looking back now I realise that was quite an unusual thing…