lurchersontheedge

In keeping with my last two blogs, let me offer readers an alternative, if they do not wish to hear my ramblings about Frodo, my long-haired lurcher, who recently had a his right back leg amputated. The aptly named www.theblogofkevin.wordpress.com is a very worthwhile alternative read.

For the record, Frodo is doing well, and so am I. His canine brother, Pippin has also adjusted, and if you were to see them jostle and play fight, you might for a moment not notice anything had actually happened.

Sunday (30 December 2012) saw me do three dog walks. One with all three of us, one with Frodo trotting around Bartley reservoir and the other with Pippin on the Clent Hills. It was good to blow the cobwebs away. As Pippin ran, as mad as a hatter, after one leaf or another, I was slightly sad, noting to myself that Frodo will not be able to that again. That is in all possibility true, although there are number of things the vet decreed that he would not be able to do that he already has done. But it does not make him less of a dog than his brother, or less capable of enjoying life. That is a judgement that I make, not him.

I do need to be careful lest I ask him to do too much. He will do so. But he runs around the garden, greets people at the door, delivers letters to the post box, and was playing (with ease) with a Jack Russell by the reservoir on New Year’s Day. He still has the same eyes that can convince me to do anything. He does not know (I don’t think) that the cancer will return in all probability. For now he is the same, except he is not.

It seems to me that it is I who limit him. This is not in terms of walking and allowing him to play; but rather my mind seems to have developing a disturbing inflexibility as to what should be considered ‘normal’. Indeed, the first few times we walked together in the day-light, I was conscious of lots of people looking at us, and imputed lots of negative thoughts, which were in reality mine and probably mine alone. Most people do not even see that he has three rather than four legs. Most do not pass judgement on what sort of owner I am, although perhaps some do. It is the normal scheme of things that this is the case.

As, I think about Frodo, I am also aware about how many other things in life I have considered normal or decreed not to be. I wonder how to begin to address those things.  Then, in a moment or two inspiration, I am aware that my long-haired lurcher has learnt to live one moment at a time, and perhaps that will be a good place to start.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Continuing the theme of yesterday, if you struggle with self-indulgence you might like to try another blog. This one by a priest-farmer is very good: http://llanfach.blogspot.co.uk/

My reflections are based on the recovery of Frodo, my lurcher, from the amputation of his right back leg. He has ‘recovered’ comparatively well. This is because it would seem, to my human eyes at any rate, he has adjusted. He does not take on his brother in a race any more over distance; but can be there a shade quicker for food and to the end of the garden. Pippin, Frodo’s brother and my other lurcher, has also adjusted. Pippin and Frodo used to live for running, chasing the wind, leaves, raindrops, cobwebs, rabbits etc. At least, that is what I thought. They however I think were living to play in their doggish kind of ways, rather than to chase. They can not play in the same kind of way, but they still play. Or perhaps even there, I am assuming they cannot play in the same kind of way.

I have been reading on and off for a year, Stuart Brown’s book, Play: how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul. It is an amazing book, which I need to read properly. Brown studies play within the human and animal kingdoms. One of the key conclusions seems to be that in order to play, you need to be vulnerable. Such a conclusion does not seem to be earth shattering, for most forms of play require a range of people to take part. Certainly the two canine brothers seem to negotiate when running, chasing or even who is getting attention. This was the case before the trauma of Frodo’s cancer diagnosis. It is interesting that children play with very few problems. (As a parent, I know that there are the inevitable squabbles). Children also have few problems with vulnerability. An excellent book on this topic is David Jensen’s Graced Vulnerability: A Theology of Childhood.

Part of the ability to adapt in the way my lurcher has is to reassess. He knows there are certain things he cannot do, but also knows there is much he cannot do. Of course I have just humanised him. There is the point, for I am the one who is adapting. Frodo does not care what he looks like. He is bothered if I find it so difficult to look at the scars of the operation, which get less each day, that I cannot spend time with him. Dogs have a need to be loved and to be part of a pack. So long as he is in, he is fine.

I wonder whether I am much different. Frodo’s Way has begun to be a great journey. One that will surely be continued.

The next few blogs will be self-indulgent. Those who do not like such things should find another blog to read. Without reservation I can recommend, www.pilgrimpace.wordpress.com or www.thisestate.blogspot.co.uk should you need to escape from my thoughts.

The next few pieces (I cannot quantify a number) will use the recovery of Frodo, who is my long-haired lurcher dog. Frodo was found to have bone cancer in his back right leg. The vet gave us a clear choice: amputation or euthanasia. Frodo is recovering from the op, and can run relatively freely in the garden and by bartley green reservoir. It is harder given the waterlogged conditions of most places for a three legged hound to get around. Pippin, his canine brother and companion, just prefers not to go out in the rain and is waiting for me to turn off the rain.

Inevitably, Frodo is not perhaps as nimble as he was. He is though just as agile in many ways, he can jump in and out of the van; on to the sofa, push his way past his brother and navigate his way around the Lego Star Wars Death Star that is in construction in the Vicarage. He can still spot a feline personage in Vicarage territory, and still gives chase.

What I have noticed though is that he stops to sniff a whole lot more. Or perhaps the reality is that I allow him to sniff more, to add his own wee-mail to the assortment of smells canines leave behind. Indeed, he has caused me to change. A walk, when it is with Frodo, is now not a route march with the aim solely being getting from beginning to the end as quickly as possible. He cannot do that any more. Now we are going more slowly, I see and notice things more.  I see more people or rather people see my doggy companion and want to know what has happened. Together we are not going so fast that we miss things. That is not Frodo’s doing. I think it reasonable to assume that he would have been happy always to linger over smells and smiles far longer than I ever have been. It is perfectly possible that this dog knows more of how to be a dog than I know at times of how to be human. He is in his own doggy way challenging me to re-think what it means to be human.

It seems that at the heart of humanity should be vulnerability. This is not a new discovery. I hope because I have learnt this again from a loyal friend, I might have the courage to learn it deeply.

Such vulnerability involves walking slowly. Only in walking slowly will we be able to see fully and be seen at least partially. Time now for another walk with Frodo. For a couple of weeks after his operation, I referred to him as the three-legged wonder. That he is, but he has a name; for we are defined by who we are rather than by the perceived limitations of what we can and cannot do.

At least two things have caused me to examine myself very carefully recently. One of which is the season of Christmas that we are about to enter, and the other is my dog, Frodo.

Frodo is a brilliant and loyal lurcher. He lives to chase the wind and for that matter anything else that moves. It was a hammer blow to discover that he had bone cancer in his back leg. We were left in no doubt that the options were to remove the leg, because it would shatter should he feel the need to chase something or jump on or off the sofa, or to have him put to sleep. We were not ready to have him put down, so he went through an operation to amputate. Within an hour, he was stood up. He jumps in and out of the van and can hop, skip and jump around the garden after his brother. The two things I have learnt are both about me.

The first is that I struggled with what the dog looked like. Vets like fairly aggressive shaving, but I was unsure what people would think of him and me. In a year of paralympian greatness, here I was struggling with having a canine companion that has a disability. I was very shocked.

The second is more obvious, but equally as telling. Frodo still bounces up to me in the morning to greet me. As far as I know he has no particular angst as to what he looks like. Indeed most of the time, I am quite happily adopt a scruffy state myself.  Just as importantly, he still chases the wind and lives for the moment. I have much to learn from him.

I trust this Christmas time will help us all to look at ourselves, our opinions and where necessary re-examine them.

We all have our default images of what things should be like. When I was training for ordination, I spent much time at St Mary and St Ambrose Church, Edgbaston. The Revd Hilary Savage was the priest-in-charge. As part of my placement, she took me into school. In one class, Hilary explained that I was training to be a vicar just like she was. One little girl looked me carefully up and down, and asked a question that causes a chuckle to this day; ‘Reverend Hilary, how can a man be a vicar?’ The little girl had only ever experienced Hilary’s ministry, and therefore to a certain extent her imagination of what might be was not as free as it perhaps later would be.

Pontius Pilate, who were are all too familiar with from the Passion narratives and creedal statements seems to be someone whose imagination is not as free as it might be. Pilate would have had his own default image as to what a king was like. He would have seen how effective and indeed brutal the exercise of authority could be by Caesar. Pilate himself was dependent on the largesse or whim of his Emperor for his own position. A position that had been given, but just as easily taken away if Caesar was not content with how the procurator exercised Caesar’s power. Pilate had no power but that of Caesar.

The prisoner who was before him, Jesus of Nazareth did not fit any image of what it meant to be a king; and yet Jesus stood before Pilate because others claimed that Jesus had asserted that he was the king of the Jews. In the interchange between Pilate and Jesus it is clear that they are at cross purposes and only Jesus knows it. To the question, are you a king? Jesus tells Pilate that his kingdom is not of the world. His kingdom therefore does not conform to the default setting. Pilate returns to his question, are you a king? The limits of his imagination are confined by his experience; possibilities of ways of being a king are corseted and constrained. Pilate it might be said would stop at nothing to stamp out change. This clash of conflicting views of the world made the death of Jesus inevitable.

Not long after the resurrection of Jesus, early Christians looked for ways of understanding how Jesus could be described as king. A man hung upon a cross was not – and is not – the likeliest of candidates for being described as the ruler of the kings of the earth. Nevertheless, this is how the author of Revelation to St John the Divine describes Jesus.

How did this happen? First, their imaginations were engaged. They were part of a group who had experienced Jesus had been risen from the dead. In the darkest of moments, the resurrection changed – and still has the potential to change – everything. As my wife’s husband is fond of saying: ‘many things can make us look, but only experience can make us see’. Second their imaginations began to wrestle with the scriptures that shaped and sustained them looking for vocabulary to explain what had happened.

It was through this they came to book of Daniel, and with it the story of the one like a son of man being vested with power and authority. Daniel was writing to a group exiled and disenfranchised who found hope in that their champion was to exercise authority alongside God. Stories as we saw last week nourish hope and create infinite possibilities. A champion who was from heaven enabled those in exile to begin to see themselves as God’s people once again. The early Christians were able to explore ideas of the one who was given power and authority and speak of Jesus in that way. This in and of itself is incredible. However it was not the most important discovery and assertion that the early Christians made.

Those Christians not only believed that Jesus was the king, but that he had changed what it meant to be king; and enabled all sorts of re-imaginations to happen. This refashioning of what it meant to be king happened on a number of levels. It is there if we sit in the text of Revelation, this ruler of the kings of the earth is also the faithful witness or to make the Greek explicit the ‘true martyr’ and also the first born from the dead. In the Revelation, power is always shown through weakness and vulnerability. Instead of the roaring lion one might expect, the image thrown up is of the lamb that was slain. It is to this figure rather than Caesar than Christians owe their allegiance.

The kingdom that Jesus offered is one that is open to all regardless we might say of who they are or where they come from. It is a kingdom that is shaped by the early baptismal formula proclaimed as the newly baptised emerged from the waters: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. It is a place where Gentiles and Jews learnt to worship, minister and share life alongside each other, even though at times that was contentious and difficult. It is a place where slaves like Onesimus were useful to masters like Philemon, becoming family rather than possessions. It is a place where a woman called Lydia could minister and encourage a man called Paul, where Mary of Nazareth could teach the Scriptures to the Son of God; and Junia and Priscilla could exercise episcope alongside their male colleagues. It is a place where gifting, calling and vocation are more important than ethnicity, class, gender or academic achievement. This is possible because the kingship of Jesus was envisaged as being different. The imaginations of the first Christians were set free in the way they interacted and wrestled with both their sacred stories and the contexts in which they found themselves.

I wonder what our default patterns are today. Do they constrain us or set us free; do they give us life or crush our spirits. Do they give us room to imagine what might be and create hope?

As we enter into a week of mission, it is my prayer that we will have our imaginations stirred as to what might be possible, that we will delight in the company of fellow-citizens of the kingdom from around the globe, and we will take risks in terms of invitation and hospitality as we seek to follow the path of the servant king; knowing that he first invited us and made us welcome.

Archbishop Rowan Williams is, and probably always will be, more patient and tolerant than I ever will be. Tolerance, patience and grace are attributes that he has brought to the See of Canterbury in abundance. Whilst, I have not always agreed with his actions, I understand them to flow from principles and conscience that were always informed. I am not sure that those who voted against the Measure on Tuesday afternoon at Synod allowed their consciences and principles to be similarly informed.

This is not to say that I doubt that there were deeply held theological convictions that are underpinned by a coherent theological worldview or worldviews. I am not from the Catholic wing of the Church of England so I do not understand arguments of apostolic situation. Others do, and will respond along those lines.

I do understand the Evangelical constituency. There are those like Fulcrum who are understandably aggrieved by what happened on Tuesday. Leaders of other networks have also responded, for example John Coles and Ian Parkinson on twitter. Conservative Evangelicals for the most part will be content with what happened. What I write now is meant to be a challenge to them, although in the nature of these things, my little offerings probably will not be seen by anyone from that constituency.

The Conservative Evangelical constituency showed itself to be ill informed by its decision to lobby against the Measure in two specific ways, which show that it is becoming a movement that is increasingly shallow in its thinking and more detached from the rest of the Church of England.

There was nothing shallow about the theologies of a preacher of the ilk of John Stott of All Souls’, Langham Place. Even if you disagreed with him, you discovered his theology was shaped out of a love of Scripture and a desire to engage with the world. It was backed up by the desire for evangelicals to take scholarship seriously so that now evangelical biblical scholars are rightly heard by all sections of the church.

I make this charge on two grounds. First, the exegesis offered of Scripture was, to my mind, based on special pleading rather than on careful wrestling with the biblical text. The Revd Angus McLeay’s comments about the New Testament endorsing a view that the authoritative teaching role is to be male seems to me to be special pleading rather than one that takes account of the biblical witness as a whole. It does not take account of the fact that Paul endorses the teaching role of both Priscilla and Aquila to the preacher Apollos. It does not take into account that a female apostle is mentioned in Romans 16 nor that Lydia appears to be a leader of a Christian community in Philippi. It ignores the fact that Mary of Nazareth presumably taught her son the Hebrew Scriptures. More importantly, whilst McLeay roots all of this in the story of creation, the arguments advanced do not do justice to Galatians 3:28 which purportedly are the words of early baptismal formula, declared over those who had become ‘new creations’ in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The exegesis offered throughout the debate by Conservative Evangelicals also did not do justice to the teachings in the NT about working with those who hold different positions and walking the extra mile. To say to the rest of the Church, ‘we do not believe you’ with regard to the promises you are offering is for Conservative Evangelicals to put themselves deliberately out of fellowship with other Anglicans, which is something that needs to be repented of.

The second reason for making the charge is to my mind more telling. Evangelicals have prided themselves as putting proclamation of the gospel at the heart of our mission to the nation. There seemed to be no understanding that to work actively against the Measure would make the case for Christ less likely to be received. This would not have happened in earlier generations. Mission would have been the imperative, and leaders like Stott would have made friends within other traditions.

Conservative rightly to my mind love the scriptures. I do too. They rightly want to preach, even using words. I do too. The scriptures need to be wrestled with. It was by wrestling as well as by experience that enabled Saul of Tarsus to become the Apostle to the Gentiles. When we do not wrestle, appear not to listen or seem  ready to make connections with the world, then our words might sound like they are clanging gongs to a nation that already has begun not to listen.

I am hesitant about actually saying anything in the aftermath of the Synod’s defeat of the Measure on Tuesday afternoon. Many who are more eloquent than I have spoken about their anger, bewilderment and disappointment. And, in some measure I share all of that.

Some of the reactions, however understandable, have been a little jarring. I am not sure that the Church is recalled to reflect society. Nor, do I think necessarily the Synod’s position demands the intervention of the state and leads to disestablishment. I do not think disestablishment is to be feared, but could be embraced; however, to argue that the Church of England’s position as an Established Church is somehow compromised is to misunderstand the subtle distinction between a State Church and one that is by Law Established. I do not think either that the mission of the Church of (and in) England will come to a grinding halt. It goes on in some places hindered and in some places exactly the same. In baptism preparation yesterday evening, a good number of folks were clearly unaware of the decision of the Synod. This should not be strange the Church of England is relevant for most people  largely at a local level, which is why the Parish system is Anglicanism’s greatest gift to the people of England.

Finally, I sit (just about) within the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, although the Parish Church I lead probably does not sit there. What struck me most sadly about the Synod debate was the eisegesis (reading into) rather than exegesis (reading from) Scripture that was taking place. Until that changes, Conservative Evangelicals in particular will not be able to interpret the Scriptures in an Anglican (and indeed Reformed) way. That is a tragedy, for it is one of the gifts that evangelicals can bring. That loss will be more severe in the long term that the Synod’s decision.

I fear the Synod’s decision will be easier to reverse than the loss of biblical understanding that the evangelical contribution to Synod seemed to demonstrate.

A Church exists by mission as a fire exists by oxygen, said someone else, whose name has long since disappeared from my memory banks.

The Lee Abbey Team are almost here, and details are attached.

Lee Abbey2

Please hold the team, the congregation and those who will hear their stories in your prayers.