lurchersontheedge

It was a pleasure to share a platform with Albert Owen, my MP and Leanne Wood, the Leader of Plaid Cymru as we spoke against racism in Llangefni earlier today.

This in the speech I did not quite give. I gave a version of it, but the rain made the paper too sodden and my hands were beginning to turn blue.

Diolch am wahodd ficer Saesneg egsentrig i siarad.

Trwy fy mywyd dw i wedi byw mewn trefi. Mae byw gyda phobl o wahanol ddiwylliannau yn naturiol i mi.

Mi wnes i symud i Fae Trearddur, Ynys Mon o Birmingham, Lloegr yn mis Chwefror 2014, a Dw i’n  dysgu Cymraeg ers 18 mis. Mi fydda i’n siarad yn saesneg rwan.

I have spent most of my life in cities, latterly in Birmingham. People of different cultures coming together is normal for me. Sometimes there have been tensions, but usually scratching the surface, such has been caused by poverty and indeed personal personality clashes rather than by differences in race or religion. One of my son’s closest friends in Birmingham is a Muslim. I got to know Mr Hassan, the father of my son’s friend quite well. We disagreed about religion (I think the reasons for that should be obvious). Most of the time though we were more worried about how to parent children in today’s society, and about the decreasing opportunities for ordinary people. It was surprising how much we agreed on until we learnt to laugh with each other.

I can understand why people are fearful in this time of relative economic difficulty. There is something about human beings that sometimes want to resist change. My parents’ generation struggled with immigration, except they did not really. They embraced the Irish couple living next door and the Polish family on the side of their semi-detatched. What they were afraid of was difference. The Infidels and their friends want to prey on that fear. They do not want to give people the chance to meet and discover our common humanity. To realise that people sing about the same things, share common stories, embrace similar hopes and long for a chance to flourish. To deny another human being the opportunity to do this is both immoral and diminishes our own chances at flourishing too.

I can understand people being worried about the current displacement of people’s and the number of refugees coming into Europe. When people are fearful, the world becomes smaller and the shadow of the unknown hides many things. The current refugee crisis did not cause the events in Paris last week, and evil as those events were – and we should be unafraid of labelling the leaders of Daesh as evil; we cannot offer the people of terror the gift of refusing the hand of friendship to those in genuine need. Daesh wish to wreak havoc and implement darkness. People of goodwill the world over need to allow the light to shine in that darkness. I am going ask us to pause and keep a moments stillness as we remember the victims of Paris, Mali, Syria and beyond.

Tarnishing all Muslims with the same brush as Daesh is simply unintelligent. It is akin to assuming that as a Church in Wales priest am akin to a member of the Klu Klux Klan. I am not, I hasten to add.

The nations of the United Kingdom have by tradition always been welcoming. Not always, we should admit that. Welcome is not easy. It is costly. At a personal level it is demanding. But it is a price usually well worth paying. Not to welcome is to seal up our borders, putting up the sign ‘no room at the inn’, which comes from a story that I know well. This is not saying that we should not take appropriate measures to defend ourselves and our children; simply that to turn all away is to dehumanise ourselves. Those who do not want to support diversity recreate history in their own image, imagining a time when Britain stood alone and isolated; in my church in Holyhead there is a plaque to the Dutch Navy who defended these shores. Many of those soldiers settled in my town. Their contribution was vital to the freedom that was gained, and all the more welcome given that the Netherlands had been overrun by the Nazi State.

My late Uncle was one of the few, serving proudly alongside personnel from all corners of the Commonwealth. Never have such a diverse group been understood by so many as so few. We need to learn our history once again. Extending the hand of welcome is not unpatriotic, it is human and resonates with all that has made the different nations of the British Isles beacons of hope.

In Birmingham, I got to know someone called Steve (not his real name). He was from Zimbabwe. He was an officer in the Royal Zimbabwean Air Force, until he disobeyed the orders of Robert Mugabe. Steve knew more about standing up to facism and its costs than most of today. I am proud that he was made welcome in the UK.

For people to integrate fully, they need to be welcomed unconditionally. It takes time, even I know that as an Englishman living in the different nation of Wales.

As a Christian leader, I am also aware that the message I believe in, demands justice, integrity, grace, truth and worships a God who in Jesus was a refugee fleeing with Mary and Joseph for his life.

It was inconvenient to make room for that Middle Eastern family such a long time ago.

Our inconvenience today is nothing when compared to the journeys refugees continue to make to flee oppression. We welcome them. We are shaped by them, and we shape them; and the world is brighter because of it.

My poppy was multi-coloured.

Actually it was not, I wore a red one, which somehow doubled in size upon my arrival at Church.

I am happy to wear a red poppy because for me I acknowledge the sacrifice of the men and women of the armed forces. I also acknowledge the no lesser sacrifice of civilians. I am saddened if the poppy only means the former, and horrified if it does not include the fallen of our allies and indeed our enemies.

I would have been happy to wear a white poppy too. But the reasons for me choosing not to are also complex. I was too nervous. I also respect enormously the naval history of my new home, and red poppy is at home here.

Wearers of red and white poppies have been like two different sets of football supporters this week. The whites have claimed that the reds do not want to work for peace. This neglects the fact that the wearing of a particular colour may not be any sort of statement. Mavis (not her real name) wears one to remember Len (not his real name), Kevin (…) to remember Stuart (…). It also disregards the fact those wearing them are deeply committed to peace. Christians who wear them anyway owe their allegiance to a different kingdom 🙂

The Reds claim the whites disrespect history and courage. That neglects the fact of the countless number of conscientious objectors who went or were sent to the front serving in ambulance crews and alongside chaplains. These people also exhibited extraordinary bravery.

Had I known about the purple poppy I may have been happy to wear one too.

The key thing of course is not the poppy but the remembering…. and in the remembering to commit oneself to working for peace.

Arglwydd Dduw Ein Tad,
tynghedwn ein hunain
i’th wasanaethu di a’r holl ddynol-ryw,
yn achos heddwch,
er diddymu angen a dioddefaint,
ac er moliant i’th enw.
Arwain ni trwy dy Ysbryd;
dyro i ni ddoethineb,
dyro i ni ddewrder,
dyro i ni obaith;
a chadw ni yn ffyddlon
yn awr a byth. Amen

Walking with different partners now. Samwise and Ted are the new team. Pippin and Frodo were great. I miss them. They understood me more than I knew, and there was a sense that we had journeyed together. I enjoy walking with Samwise and Ted. It is though sometimes a chore, I think that is inevitable Samwise is 3 and Ted just 1, whereas the other two were older.

I am having to learn about the moods of my new companions and they have to learn about mine.

Then when I think a little more, Frodo and Pippin were new once. We had to learn about each other, and surprised each other until the end. Frodo went first of course, and Pippin later.

As with dogs, so too with people: learning about rhythm and pace, the smell and tastes of seasons enables you to walk together.

It enables silence and stillness.

That will come. For now it is doing together what we think we might enjoy and learning to linger together over different smells and not forcing the past to encroach too much on the present.

She saw a cat that was not there. I agreed that it was beautiful and asked her its name.

Mum, like many others, slips in and out of lucidity. Sometimes memories are fuzzy. She can remember my Gran vividly at the point where she was herself a child, and seemingly not quite figure out who I am. Then again it must be difficult to see a middle aged man and connect it with the child you carried and nursed.

As I drove around my home town on Tuesday, I think I realised I saw things differently too. I see Sheffield through the lens of my childhood eyes. The buses had changed colour (I remember going to town for 1p as a child. Good old Sheffield. I remember Blunkett and Billings: dream team, probably spent too much on the WSG… I had left by then and probably so had they)

The school had changed name too. As had the chippy, where we snuck out each lunchtime for a cob and chips. They were there the teenagers gathered around the shop, and for a moment it was Hancock, Gillott, Garlick and Walshaw (I even manage to fuse different names from different parts of my growing-up hood)

The Pub has closed… and the rickety-rackety shop (Joe Gould’s) has gone: where can you get a penny bag of wine-gums now?

The neighbours had gone too: how did I get this old?

I remember a different estate to the one that is there now: although there are commonalities: friendship, solidarity, community and stories.

Then again, maybe a remember an estate that was never there, as I just about stop at the red traffic light and feel the stares of those looking at me.

Yesterday, I posed the question should we always baptise? I began by saying as a loyal priest within the Church in Wales I never turned people away.

One of the comments made was by someone is becoming a very good friend of mine. She writes from her own perspective.

That almost made me cry. It’s a sad thing that Baptisms are just seen as ‘the done thing’. I will not Baptise my children for I am an atheist, it’s just an excuse for the family to have a knees up and I respect the Christian faith much more than that. My children will be educated and exposed to faiths of all kinds and I will leave the decision in their hands. Those who Baptise their children should do so because they wish their children to follow their faith, to be recognised by God as one of his, to follow in Jesus’ teachings and for the Godparents to guide them through Christianity. There are other naming ceremonies that are better suited to having a knees up with the family and placing extra responsibilities on favoured friends and relatives that do not take Christianity in vain. I think you should be allowed to say to people that they are not committed enough to Christianity to be eligible for Baptism. Perhaps then it can get back to being the sacred ceremony it should be and not just a fashion statement!

I write hesitantly, as I find myself in complete agreement with my friend’s comments. I realise now that I baptise to engage in mission. Baptism used to be as a result of mission occurring.

I am perhaps a little further away this evening from good baptismal praxis.

Many moons ago, I wrote a piece whilst training for ordination called Vulnerable Foolishness. It was 20000 words long. I was not doing any course. The Queen’s Foundation were very enlightened and allowed me not to pursue an academic qualification, given that I already had a PhD. That said, it meant I just wrote far more than I needed too.

I still think there is much in the work of a 21st Century priest, pastor or evangelist that is quite foolish or more pertinently in common with the Jester. At my best, I am able to speak up on behalf of those who are not listened to. It is about speaking truth to those with power.

I am not sure we are usually good at it, and an example of it not happening occurred during a recent state visit to Britain.

I am a loyal priest within the Church in Wales and have never refused baptism. I have done my best to prepare people well, and sometimes that preparation has gone well, and others it has been a real struggle. There is a real tension between what I think the Church believes about baptism and what those coming for baptism want.

That said, I enjoy baptisms. The picture is not of three I have baptised, but of three who have been to several of the baptisms I have conducted and who regularly help me conduct them: filling the font with water, anointing with oil (alongside me), giving the candle, and persuading people to put monies in the collection plate.

Periodically, I wonder whether we do the right thing by offering stand alone baptisms, and then then are put into the main act of worship which leads to a crescendo of complaints from those who regularly attend who sometimes cannot hear themselves think and misunderstanding from those who do not usually attend. The Church does not have a monopoly on long words, but it has more than its fair share of them, and most of them with quite complex meanings.

I recently asked some parents and godparents about the promises they were about to take and commitments they were about to affirm.

What does it mean to bring a child up to be part of the Christian faith? For none was it about being part of the church. This is a shock to those of us who want to make baptism the entry point to the life of the church community.

The question do you turn to Christ was a puzzle, but the one, ‘do you repent of your sin’ a mystery. What came back the question if you have never done anything wrong? This is simply illustrative of the gulf between Christian theology and what used to be popular Christian culture, which is now perhaps just culture. All of this made me ask why they wanted the babies baptised.

It is the right thing to do, said one, as others nodded. Every single parent and godparent knew someone who came to church, but none of them had invited that person to the baptism.

This particular baptism has happened. It was great. Lots of laughter with people leaving happy to have been in a sacred building. I was even offered a pint at the pub and have received a nice card with the question, ‘did you really mean it when you said you would pray for us?

Yes, I did. I do. I am just also praying I know if and when it might be appropriate to say, no, you might actually want something different to what I, as a priest, can offer.

I think about 18 months after a move is a good time to begin to reflect on what has happened. It is particularly appropriate as this week I have missed Bartley Green in Birmingham as they have celebrated the life of one of their saints. I did not always think he was one mind, but then saints appear in surprising places.

I did not appreciate the seismic shift there is in moving from one nation to another, although I have loved (nearly) every minute of learning the Welsh language and engaging in Welsh culture.

I perhaps did not appreciate just how different the Church in Wales would be from the Church of England. You would be surprised by how I might articulate that.

I was not prepared for how hard it would be to start again, and how achievements elsewhere would count for nothing in a new environment. I will think a fourth time before moving again to a completely new environment.

I was not prepared for breath taking natural beauty of Anglesey nor for rurality of urban Holyhead.

I did not expect to at one and the same time miss England, especially Sheffield where I have not lived for over half my life, or to feel as Welsh.

I did not expect to be as connected with the saints of old and yet feel so different from them. After all what have I got in common with Cybi, a stubborn, prickly man who annoyed people who was defined by his region, in his case Cornwall rather than Yorkshire?

I did expect to work hard, probably not this hard… and I probably expected it to be easier. Wales, I thought, would be easier for the gospel to thrive than in England.

… and I did not expect to feel so rooted and yet rootless….

But I am on the whole glad to be here.

Bendith

I am (quite possibly) an Evangelist.

That in and of itself seems to be a difficult thing to say both within the church and outside today.

I have in my time done street preaching: London, Rotherham, and Newcastle to name three places. I have done door to door visitation (and still love cold calling, although it is easier to do wearing a clerical collar). I like preaching with a view to persuading people to follow Christ more closely. I suppose I have a charism for it, as well as a quiet smile and I hope a willingness to listen.

I simply do not understand those who believe that evangelism has no place, and that somehow the call to follow Christ is one that it is too offensive to utter. I admit that the call offends. It must do. The call to change inevitably means just that.

I have never found though someone who is committed to something else is offended. A devout Muslim or Jew is more likely to take a live and let live approach than be slighted.

I am simply positing some questions. I really would like to know why evangelism which has always been the bedrock of church growth and spirituality is regarded by many as something beyond the pale.