lurchersontheedge

I will be posting here occasionally…. but I am also to be found here: http://eccentricvicarandlurchers.blogspot.co.uk/

I know it is a bit confusing and complex. Then that is quite like me….

I have just posted this in the other place

I love Advent. I like Christmas.

I love the rhythm of a season that embraces both the fast and a rich sense of feast. With its focus perhaps on patriarchs, prophets, the Baptist, Mary of Nazareth and of course Jesus it is a sort of engagement with our family tree. I have a bag by my bed of photos my mum had saved over the years. There are some of me that I would rather no one else saw. But there are others of family and friends that I might have long since forgotten.

Advent affords us the opportunity to celebrate our family, warts and all.

There is also the option of explore Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, which usually are given a body swerve in favour of other themes.

They are topics that give us pause for thought… and before Christmas…. that might be a good thing.

That is why I will enjoy deeply wailing and singing longer songs with tunes that are a tad sober. They will help me enjoy December 25th when it comes.

Ailadrodd hanes. Mae’n rhaid iddo. Nid oes unrhyw un yn gwrando

Geiriau gan y bardd Saesneg Cristnogol, Steve Turner.

Dan ni’n byw yn y byd lle mae’n hawdd peidio â gwrando

Gwersi o hanes yn cael ei anghofio.

Today is Remembrance Sunday. It is a time for Remembering obviously. It is easy to think of who and what we remember.

Pwy ydyn ni’n ei gofio? –      a

elodau’r lluoedd arfog a chollwyd eu bywydau-

y rhai mewn profedigaeth-

aelodau’r lluoedd arfog a anafwyd, yn gorfforol, feddyliol neu yn ysbrydol-

dinasyddion, gan gynnwys plant wedi’u heffeithio gan rhyfel-

y rhai sydd yn gorfod ffoi heddiw-

teulouedd wedi’u rhwygo ymaith

y rhai a bywydau wedi eu dinistrio

• Members of the armed services who lost their lives
• Those who were bereaved
• Members of the armed services who were wounded, physically, mentally or spiritually
• Civilians, including children caught up in war. Those who are still forced to flee today
• Families who were torn apart
• Many whose lives were shattered

Beth ydym yn ei gofio? –

Rydym yn cofio sefyll I fynu yn erbyn draft arglwyddiaeth. –

Rydym yn cofio y gôst o hynnu. –

Rydym yn cofio y pris a talwyd gan llawer am ein heddiw, na fysa nhw ddim yn weld ei fory –

We remember standing up against tyranny?-

We remember the costs of doing so-

We remember the price paid by many that for our todays many would never see a tomorrow.

Perhaps the bigger question is why are we remembering? This firstly seems a strange question, perhaps a little off-beam. Surely we are remembering all because of who and what. That is true.

But we stand here in the place of Remembrance.

Mae Eglwys Sant Cybi yn lle i gofio

Mae eglwys yn yr gaer wedi gweld gwrthdaro

Here in this place: we gather week by week to remember Jesus Christ. The priest lifts the bread and wine and each time she or he says… do this in remembrance of me.

Nid ymarfer academaidd yw atgofio

Remembrance is not an academic exercise.

Indeed if Christian people gather and share in the bread and wine offered by Jesus and do not embrace the call to follow him, we are misremembering all that he stood for.

Similarly, if we gather here today, lay our wreaths, keep silence whilst stiffly stood, plant our crosses without a commitment to working to ensure that inhumanity towards each other is eradicated, we misremember those who have gone before us.

Dyma’r pam mae gweithred ymrwymiad mor bwysig.

This is why the Act of Commitment is so important

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount points us to this. The famous phrase, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ echoes down the centuries, although it has been occasionally misheard, not least by the scriptwriters of Monty Python for we forget that Jesus added for they ‘will be called children of God’. The purpose of his sermon was to build a radical community, wrought through with rainbowed colours of grace, inclusion and humility

To remember without embracing this is no remembrance at all.

To remember without the act of commitment risks today becoming nothing more than a pious feeling.

Mae Caergybi yn dre sydd yn balch o’i hanes.

Dre sydd gyda traddodiad cyfaethog morwrol.

Mae o yn derbyn y gwrthdaro sydd yn digwydd.

Mae o yn dallt fod angen I cofio.

Mae o yn dallt y lles o gofleidio Pawb sydd wedi dod o fewn y waliau. Hir fydd y parhaed

Holyhead is a town with a proud history

A town with a rich maritime tradition

It understands that conflict happens

It understands the need to remember

It knows the benefits of all who come within its walls. Long may this continue.

Not flesh of my flesh
Not bone of my bone
But still miraculous,
My own

Never forget
For a single minute
That you not being from my loins
Has made me into a different kind of man
And a changed human being

I mean by Church traditions what I might have meant by churchmanship many years ago.

I am extraordinarily inclusive when it comes to church traditions, except I have never been a liberal or understood liberalism. It does not seem to make sense in the way that evangelicalism ( whether open, conservative or charismatic) does or indeed Orthodoxy (as part of my ordination training, I spent 6 weeks in Greece at the Orthodox Academy in Volos. My England Cricket hat was mistaken for a mitre) or Anglo-Catholicism.

You see I grew up in St James and St Christoper, Shiregreen in Sheffield, whose theological tradition tacked according to the whim of successive incumbents. I thought it was the only expression of Christianity for a while, apart from the Elim Church, I occasionally walked to or youth groups in the same deanery, like T’others in St Peter’s, Ellesmere (another part of Sheffield). When I went to the London City Mission, which is a conservative evangelical mission (doing amazing work) I just thought that was Christian.

I did my ordination training at Queen’s in Birmingham. The Anglican cohort of 7 or 8 that I was in covered the entire spectrum of Anglicanism or so it seemed. No wonder the strapline was for a while: ‘learning at the place where traditions meet’. I wonder whether that it what Anglicanism, certainly the CofE and CiW are about at the past, places where different experiences of truth can exist and mutually flourish.

I think of Messy Church which has blossomed all over the world. It seems to have the knack of embracing differing traditions. I wonder whether they are beginning to disappear.

I may of course be very wrong, but perhaps in a nation like Wales where only 1% go to worship with the Church in Wales, theological tradition has become a bit of a luxury.