lurchersontheedge

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.