Specks and Planks: Gay People as the Scapegoats of our Generation

I've been a very busy bee over the last little while, however I wanted to draw you attention to this video from Diverse Church.

As I mentioned with regards my departure from Fulcrum, I'm an advocate of finding, making, being in a space where there is room for conversation, especially on the issue of sexuality.  Sadly we haven't been very good at making those spaces (understatement of the year). But the new kid on the block, Diverse Church, has managed to do something that other groups haven't. In short they've stated in all that they are and do that it's just not about YOU.

For Diverse Church they are entirely there for those young gay Christians who have found the courage to be who they are: lovers of Jesus and gay, finding these things not incompatible. But they don't have to *prove* that to you, or me, or any other person. They are about being disciples of Christ and encouraging others to do the same: encouraging others that it is possible. That God knows being gay is part of their story with God.

It's refreshing to watch the videos that Diverse Church have uploaded so far, you can see some of them here.

This new video comes with the tagline 'a simple man changed by an almighty God' and it is a creative joy, but also a lesson in planks and specks. So often gay people have to absorb the anxiety and self hatred that others bear towards themselves. They are the scapegoats of our generation. This new video places the source of the anxiety right back where it belongs.

It is an example of a new way of being part of the landscape in the conversation on sexuality and Christianity.  The rest of the conversation has been positional for so long.  Arguing for this or that position.  There is a place for that.  But for a good number of people, this is simply not the point.  It's about a Person, not a Position.

The sheer awful-ness of what the church has done to so many gay people has overwhelmed what is feeling like a rather ridiculous argument over genitalia.  It feels like we are having a completely different conversation.  There are numbers of paradigms in play and thus entirely congruent for some to gasp 'what planet are you on?' when faced with a convoluted doctrinal argument which zooms past the puddle of a person in front of them.

What DC reminds us by simply telling the faith story of a real live person, is that if you have a problem with gay Christians, it is your problem, not theirs.

I think I probably have to say that again.  If you have a problem with gay Christians.  It is YOUR problem.

Deal with your own thing.

Focus on your own story, stop trying to write another's.

Attend to your plank.

Well done DC, you've nailed it.

It's Not Me, It's You

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ²They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ ⁴Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. ⁵He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

 I recently found myself engaging with the above text in relation to my experience of Evangelicalism as a tribe, with tribal influence.  When it comes to assumptions made about the experiences, hopes, insights, dreams and beliefs of those of us who self-define as evangelical, I have found this to be a significant problem.

There are particular markers that are assumed non-negotiables of the tribe. That which is considered the culture, ‘the way we do things here’, or ‘what we think’.  The challenging of these markers is deemed to be beyond the pale and creates high risk of ensuring our ejection from this tribe.

Well, I never really got on with the idea that I would sacrifice thinking, questioning, challenging, truth-telling and wrestling with God, in order to be part of a club.

Actually, that’s a teensy weensy lie.

I’m a conformist at heart. Honest.

I was a good girl at school (except when I petitioned the headteacher because they stopped someone taking their exams and I thought it was just to do with league tables), I was excellent when I was a police cadet (although I had to report a police officer for misconduct), I was great at church (until, they started preaching that God hated some)

The thing is – I want to conform.  I really do, it honestly causes me a stupid amount of stress sometimes to do what a number of people seem to assume comes naturally to me. Stick my head above the parapet.  Point out that the emperor doesn’t seem to be wearing any clothes. Rock the boat.

But all through my life, that is what I have seemed incapable of not doing.

Why…why…I ask myself, am I HERE….again.

Why cannot someone else be sticking their head in this particular guillotine shaped hole?

I will be perfectly content to cheerlead from the sidelines.  I love pompoms.

And in actual fact, I like the club!  I don’t want to leave it.  It’s my home and it’s where I have been formed and being chucked out is not to be worn with a shrug of the shoulders and an ‘ah well, I’ll find a new place – here this bus shelter will do…..’

But I don’t half get frustrated with my evangelical siblings.  The strict control of what makes for acceptable discussion, surely makes for a kind of pseudo-community.  Where people tentatively, flicking their eyes at one another, suggest possible questions, but are quickly given the sign that some things are just not up for grabs.  This doesn’t of course mean that those things are not thought about.  It just means that there are a lot of people thinking things on their own in their head and choosing belonging instead.  I cannot think that this is a healthy state of affairs.  But it is understandable – belonging is a serious part of human functioning.  It is not just a nice fluffy feeling that we get with our friends.  It is how our identity is made up – because it is a measure of which relationships form us.  Belonging is high on the agenda of human need and flourishing.

So I do find myself torn sometimes.  I have a strong ‘cause’ streak that runs through me.  I am incapable it seems of choosing to avoid the conflict, if it seems to be that an issue of justice is at stake.  Or simply that ‘It’s Not Fair.’  I believe this is shown up by various ‘Personality’ type tools that I have done. But I could have told you it without them.  I could never cheat at board games as a child.

However, it does often cause me angst to stand where I stand.  And deep frustration.  How can we ever hope to have genuine relationship and understanding of what we think, when it’s at the risk of being sent out to the wilderness?

But the temptation of belonging does pull on me, and sometimes I find myself silent.

And this is where the Jesus encounter above sits in my heart.

If I am ever tempted by belonging over justice, over compassion, over love, then this is the text that jumps into my brain.

‘he was grieved at their hardness of heart’

Sometimes I find myself fearful of not having any tribal home in the CofE – I’m an evangelical, but often that seems under threat.  But I can tell you that the fear of having Jesus look at me and be grieved at my hard heart is whole magnitudes larger than that.

I am more than unwilling to ever stand before Jesus and have him look at me and be angry that I chose to harden my heart rather than risk being wrong for the sake of love.  When I say ‘more than unwilling’, I mean, I would rather risk everything and have a fleshy vulnerable mistaken heart.

A Metaphorical Cup of Tea: Interview with Maggi Dawn

Some of you will know that I was very privileged to become friends with Maggi whilst I trained for ordination in Cambridge.  She was, in fact, someone who had endless energy and insight for me, even when she was making big life decisions for herself.  A true priest...and friend.

Maggi and I left Cambridge at the same time (coincidental I assure you), me for the exotic climes of Harrow and she for the slightly sunnier shores of Yale University, where she is Professor and Priest.  So when someone at the WATCH committee asked if anyone would contact Maggi to interview her about her new book, Like the Wideness of the Sea, I jumped at the chance to get in touch.

An edited version of the interview is found in OUTLOOK, the annual magazine of WATCH, which will be published this week.  However, the full interview was so good that I asked if I could publish it in full on my blog here.

So, I publish it in full below, and I ask you to take a look at the work of WATCH, which works for the full equality of women and men in the church, and perhaps join us in this Kingdom work.

__________________________________________

1.      You recently published ‘Like the Wideness of the Sea’, a book on the Church of England’s wrangling over the place of women as Bishops: why write this now?

Quite simply - I was asked to! The Editorial Director of Darton, Longman & Todd, whom I’ve known for many years, called me the day after the November 2012 Synod saying that the feeling of shock and despair was palpable in England, not only in the Church but in the public sphere, and he wanted to publish a response within two months. The reason he asked me was that I knew the situation from inside, but now have some distance from it, so he was interested to know how it looked to me a year after I moved to the States. My intent in writing was to try to avoid simply rehearsing the same arguments again, and to look sideways at the problem, in the hopes of offering a fresh perspective, and some ideas to find a way out of the deadlock.

2.      The discussion on women in leadership is centuries old, are we fighting a losing battle?

The discussion is old, but the context is always new – from one century to the next, nothing stands still.  And in order to see the gospel lived out in every generation we have to allow ourselves to see the difference between the gospel itself and the cultural accretions that are added to it over time, so that we can rediscover God’s freedom and salvation in every generation. That’s not to say we change the truth to suit ourselves, but we have to be discerning enough to understand that the gospel has been interpreted with significant social differences at different times and places. Most Christians, for instance, no longer regard it acceptable that the scriptures were used to justify polygamy, or the crusades, or slavery. It is not only legitimate, but incumbent upon us to ask whether the long history of the Church in denying women an equal place has actually been a misinterpretation, rather than faithfulness to scripture and tradition.

This particular discussion is certainly causing conflict within the church (and not only in the Church of England), but despite that I’m reluctant to use “battle” imagery to describe it – because those who are entrenched in their views that women may not be priests or bishops are, nevertheless, our brothers and sisters in Christ. I would rather use language of hope and reconciliation.

Recently Alan Boesak visited Yale Divinity School, and talked about his involvement in combatting racism in South Africa. He preached a brilliant sermon, based on Genesis 25:8-9: “Abraham died… an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah.” Boesak pointed out that Ishmael was expelled from the family home half a lifetime before this event, and had not been heard of since. For all the inspirational things Abraham had done, this one event was far from a moment of glory, and had wreaked havoc on many lives.  For Ishmael and Isaac to be reunited to bury their father, Isaac first had to have the grace and humility to find and invite his brother, and Ishmael had to summon up enough grace and forgiveness to accept the invitation. If they were ever to recover from that one, dreadful episode in their lives, and find reconciliation, they had to bury their father together. One side cannot resolve a conflict alone, and one side “winning” doesn’t lead to reconciliation. The past has to be buried by both sides being prepared to face their own demons, and to work together towards reconciliation for the sake of a better future.

It’s a story that Alan Boesak retells out of his experience in South Africa’s journey out of apartheid, but as I listened to him I saw resonances for other kinds of human division, including that of the Church of England’s current conflict. If two sides of an argument are entrenched in their views, then resolution can only come if both sides are more intent on finding a way to live together than on insisting on their side “winning”. It’s vital that those on either side of the argument are honest about what will or will not constitute a just peace. But they also have to let go of any intent to “win” against the other.

3.      Would you be a priest in the Church of England if you knew then, what you know now?

In many ways, I think everything would have gone better for me if I had not been ordained in the Church of England. But vocational decisions are never simply a matter of choosing what’s “best for me” – if ministry does not involve a certain degree of self-sacrifice, it isn’t worth much.

The fact is that there are very few places in the world where women are received on an equal footing with men, so to some extent answering a call anywhere is going to present challenges for women. I had already been living out a calling for a long time before the priesthood opened to women at all, and women before me spent entire lifetimes doing the same. Currently I work in an ecumenical context, directing a ministry that encompasses people from more than 25 different denominations, as well as people with no denominational affiliation, and the complexities of disagreement are as much present here as anywhere. So in some ways living within the Church of England’s impasse has equipped me to direct this ministry with courage and creativity. Consequently, even though I felt I had to leave the Church of England for the time being, I remain tied to it by many threads of friendship, and with genuine gratitude for all that I learned through serving as a priest. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those who taught me, and those who trained and worked alongside me – even those who presented challenges to me in the process.

I also hope that in some small way I may have contributed to the Church’s discovery that ordaining women is just as important as ordaining men.

4.      Do you think our training processes for priesthood are ‘women-friendly’?

To some extent, but not enough. Although I think the wider point is that training processes need re-imagining for all kinds of people. Residential training is still largely based on the model created for training post-graduate single men before they got married – in essence, a monastic pattern that assumes the participants have no responsibilities outside the walls of the college. I dare say that worked well for 22-year old single men in the 19^th century, but present day Ordinands are at all stages of life, single, married, with children or ageing parents to care for, and a one-size-fits-all pattern of training puts excessive stress on all kinds of people.

The modular system at Yale Divinity School is quite effective. Some students live on site and some a hundred miles away, and single or married, with or without family, they are integrated into college life and able to co-ordinate a full working week with their personal lives. Each student can choose five working days with different start-times to suit their family needs or commuting pattern. Some opt to work three or four extended days on site instead of five. Every day classes stop for an hour mid-morning for the main Chapel service so no-one has to miss Chapel. It isn’t perfect, of course, but it does allow people to establish a full and thorough training pattern that is compatible with their personal circumstances.

5.      What advice would you give young women in particular who wonder if they should be part of the Church of England?

I tend not to “give advice” on issues like that; I listen to what an individual is thinking and feeling, encourage them to keep their eyes wide open to the whole picture, and wherever possible not make big decisions in a hurry, or in a state of distress. If people are considering changing Church allegiance it’s important to remember there is no perfect church; it might be right to stay, it might be better to leave. But while we can stand beside people while they make those decisions in the end the decision has to be made by the person themselves, not merely on the advice of someone else.

6.      Would you do anything differently in your own journey?

There are plenty of things I think I could have done better! But I always remember these words of wisdom - from a philosopher, and a singer: Kierkegaard once wrote that you can only live life forwards, and Piaf sang, Je ne regrette rien! None of us has the benefit of foresight, and we would probably all do some things differently if we knew back then what we know now. But it never ceases to amaze me that as we make peace with our own lives, the future opens up in new and surprising ways. I guess that’s in part what grace is all about.

7.      What is your first love?

I can’t help but think of that Sunday School joke where a class is asked a question, “What’s small and grey, has a long furry tail, and eats nuts?” – to which a child answers, “I know the answer ought to be Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel to me.”

The answer to this question has to be God, right? But if you mean on a personal, inspirational level, then leaving aside God and my family and friends, who are always the foundation of everything for me, the answer is music. I could sing before I could walk, and began playing when I was five. Music feels like my natural language.

8.      Who has been your biggest inspiration?

Musically, I go back and back to Daniel Lanois, Richard Thompson, Paul Simon, Neil Finn, Joni Mitchell – all really groundbreaking writers. For in-depth reading, Coleridge and others who write about him remain my big inspiration, and I’m returning to write about him later this year. Most of all, though, it’s personal relationship that inspires me – those people who have walked with me for many years through life and work and music, and still have the capacity to generate hope, laughter and new ideas.

9.      What has been your deepest joy in ministry?

I think daily joy comes from building great relationship with the people I work with, and I have been outstandingly lucky in encountering many, many people who have filled my working life with friendship and laughter. But that “deep” thing? Whether it’s while I’ve been sitting with someone on their deathbed, or creating liturgy, or playing music, or academic teaching, the joyful moment always comes when I see some connection happen that is beyond me: some sense of peace, a light going on in someone’s eyes, or the moment when something “clicks”. It seems to me that we can create context for others, and faithfully walk beside them, but when the true moment of inspiration comes it’s not something we can make happen – it’s the work of God. Sometimes, of course, we work for years with people and never see things come together for them, but now and then there we’re lucky enough to witness those brilliant moments.

10.  Have you enjoyed moving across the Pond?  Do you miss the CofE?  England?

I am genuinely glad I made this move, although it hasn’t been easy at all. Before I left England someone said to me, “it will take two whole years to feel at home, so be prepared to do a lot of hanging in there”. Sure enough, moving abroad was exhausting, lonely and expensive, but we are nearly two years in now and my son and I are both beginning to flourish in our new context. We have really loved cultivating a sense of adventure about this enormous country, being able to climb hills and walk within a few feet of wild deer or birds we’ve never seen before. There’s a lot to love about America!

The hardest thing about the move has been missing friends and family in the UK. Thank goodness for internet technology which does keep us connected, but a Skype conversation isn’t the same as a leisurely supper. Something I had forgotten from last time I lived abroad is that you miss the easy familiarity of knowing how everything works, and of being established in a community. I miss walking down any street in Cambridge and seeing 10 people I know, and being 45 minutes from London and 4 hours from Paris. It’s hard work starting all over again, but my son and I have determinedly kept our sense of humour, and we are gradually finding a new home here, and some new friends too.

11.  In your book you speak of being amazed by the productivity that comes from not having to question yourself constantly: what does that ‘look’ like?

I couldn’t have imagined how different this would be. It wasn’t until I went to work every day and did NOT find an underlying suspicion about whether I was competent, just because I am a woman. This is not a denominational issue; it comes from working in a University that has done a huge amount of work for 20 years and more to ensure that women are treated on the same footing as men in the professional space.

What it looks like is hard to describe, but I find that in many of the small details of my working day – such as writing an email, preparing a paper for a committee, speaking up in a Deans’ meeting, or giving directions to my team – I work faster on these background tasks because I don’t have to second-guess underlying sexist responses or misunderstandings. And I can delegate easily; people don’t assume I should be doing certain tasks just because I’m a woman. Consequently I have more energy and time for the work I am here to do – academic teaching, writing, creating liturgy, and working on the formation of student ministers in the liturgical sphere. At the end of a normal working day I am not drained and exhausted, and still have the energy to write or play music or paint. 

12.  Is the CofE going to run itself aground?  Is the deadlock fatal or is there really hope?

One of the difficulties the CofE faces with an issue like this is that institutional processes take months and years, so promises seem to be being shelved or broken, and meantime people are losing faith in the Church. I’ve worked in large and small institutions before, and I understand that processes run far slower when the bureaucracy is large and complex. All the same, there is a case, when an institution’s processes are threatening to strangle it, to find a way to cut through the red tape. Maybe this is one of those times. Institutions may be complicated but they are not powerless.

I do feel concerned when people say that we should just wrap up this issue and get on with “what the gospel is really about”. In fact, I think this is mistaken thinking. At the heart of this issue there is at least some degree of institutional sexism, which, along with all the other –isms and –phobias, is a matter of justice and freedom for real people. That is – in part, at least – what the gospel is about. The church’s institutional sexism urgently needs to be addressed, and it’s worth every ounce of effort to do so.

13.  How do you keep going in ministry when it’s tough?

First, I stop and breathe. Thomas Merton once said that working without stopping is a form of violence, and working without stopping is the biggest temptation for many clergy. One of my favourite gospel moments is Matthew 13:1 – mostly in the gospels we read that Jesus went of by himself “to pray” – but here he simply “went out and sat by the sea.” Sometimes even before you can pray coherently, I think you need to stop, and breathe, and listen (and, as I said in the book, by the sea is my favourite place to do that!).

Secondly, I fill parts of my life with things I love that are not directly part of ministry. One of the reasons ministers run dry is when we “run on empty” – and it’s so easy to fall into a pattern where we work all the time. The truth, though, is that we are stronger, more creative, and less likely to be overwhelmed by difficulties if to we are rested, inspired, and regularly filled with whatever makes us tick. For me, that is a long walk with my son, playing music, reading literature, or viewing art or theatre.

14.  Does our understanding of priesthood need to change?

I’m not sure it needs to change exactly, but it does need to be clarified, because without a clear sense of why the Church ordains anyone, it’s easy for false ideas to grow up around the priesthood.

When I was in my early 20s I joined a group of people in my parish who used to go and read to Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, whose eyesight was beginning to fail. He always argued that the simplest interpretation of the ordinal was the best one: that we are ordained to word and sacrament, nothing more, nothing less. We certainly are not ordained to be managers or CEOs or community leaders (even if we additionally bring some of those gifts to the church).  In particular he used this as an argument against lay presidency at the Eucharist, maintaining that the only legitimate reason to ordain anyone is so that they preside over the sacraments. We don’t need to ordain people in order to make them leaders or managers, nor even preachers and pastors – anything that lay people can legitimately do is not a reason to ordain, Newbigin argued, or it implies that ordination makes them more important than lay people who can carry out the same tasks. A proper understanding of ordination maintains respect for the sacraments rather than the priests, and places priesthood in its proper relationship to the “priesthood of all believers”, in the sense that the work of the gospel is undertaken by the whole church, not just the clergy.

15.  What is your message to our (male) bishops?

The book is the message, really. I pray for our Bishops, and keep in touch with a number of them whom I know personally, and I don’t underestimate the complexity of what they have to do. But I want to see them make good on their promise to include women in their HoB meetings, and have the courage to do what they are almost all agreed on – that we must, as soon as possible, resolve this issue.

16.  Will you return to us in the UK?

Yes! I long to come home. (Get the kettle on, Jody!) But for now I have a deep sense of calling in this new setting, and so I think I will be working here for a while yet.

England's Women

I wrote last month on a small part of the whole host of biblical background which undergirds the necessity of women bishops.  We are now another month on and I wondered about writing again on women bishops, surely we are all getting bored with people banging on and on about it.

And that's the trouble.  We are now just over three months on from the vote on 20th November that saw over a decade (and more, depending on where you begin your count) of work, reports, meetings, discussions and legislative consideration go down the drain.  It was crushing for those who had been part of those talks for a very long time, who had felt that the Measure that sank was the best that had come out of all the possible permutations that were available.  I have seen men and women with heavy hearts over the last few months.  Really.  This is not a joke. It can be soul-destroying. I have wondered myself, how these people will continue their work on this having received this door being slammed in their faces, a door that has been slammed before and which will, in all reality, be slammed again, a number of times, before women bishops become a reality.

The sheer drudge and monotony of keeping going is the reality of the life of the activist.

The sheen of fame, fortune and glamour that surrounded the issue last November has dulled.  The outrage has distilled. There are those who got a smack in the face and who wanted to sit up and do something, but three months on, stuff takes over, there are other things to do.  And that is right...there are other things to do.

But not for me.

And maybe not for you.

If that is so, then keep reading, for this post is for you.

Your heart is stirred, you feel that you have been caught up in a story so much bigger than yourself and you do not care that you may be a small part of that story, swallowed up in the bigger tale that will be told when, some day, in the future, a woman will don her mitre in this land as a sign and a symbol that the Kingdom of God is recovering its Image.

That a mitre on the head of a woman in the Church of England will be a mark of the restoration of all things, where women and men begin again to stand alongside each other as equal partners in God's mission.  That this future sight will mean that we no longer collude in the belief, worldwide, that women are a radically different type of human being to men, so much so that she can be privatised, beaten, sold, starved, deprived of education and medicine in order that the true human, men, can survive.

We live with the knowledge that this will be our shame throughout future generations, that we colluded for so long, too long, in the disfiguring of the Image of God: that women have been tortured and killed and men have been dehumanised in the process.

We work so that the time of our shame will be finite.  The calling is high, but it is a long, arduous and sometimes downright boring road.  It is a road filled with meetings and writing, reading and talking, synods and lectures.  Occasionally we will be part of historic moments, such as 20th November 2012, we may even find ourselves being interviewed or staging a protest...occasionally.  Mostly however it's plod, but it is plod with that image in your mind, ever before you: the mitre, as if tongues of flame, descending on a woman's head, in the CofE, this romantic heartland of Anglicanism, and the explosion as our shame is ended.

But mostly it is emailing and stuffing envelopes and intentionally behaving as if women should and must be bishops.  Boring perhaps, but if this is your calling, I can tell you now that you will not escape it, it has caught you up.

How do we keep going in this sometimes arid land?  When people think we are a little mad and we wonder it ourselves every so often?  I think of Wilberforce - yes I own our struggle in the same vein as that great activist, hubris perhaps, but I don't think that Wilberforce ever thought of himself as anything less or more than I have described above.  We are caught up in a part of the Christian story that is both ancient and new - the foundation story of our faith is that of the liberation from slavery, liberation to freedom.  We own the Exodus story, as groups and peoples have before us.  It is beyond and before Wilberforce's cause, and it will transcend ours, because it is God's.  We share the DNA of Wilberforce because it is about liberation and re-humanising ourselves in the truth of the equality of every human being before God.  Wilberforce worked for decades because of this truth that he held in his imagination.  But he was firstly a politician, and he was firstly a politician because he believed he could make things better.  It is a small suggestion perhaps.  Initially it wasn't to do with God, he was embarrassed by his fervent evangelical relations.  But soon the belief in his own ability to make things better, to know better how a country might be run, became infused with the desire to change the world, fuelled by exactly that embarrassing fervent evangelicalism.  Well thank God for embarrassing passions!

Wilberforce was fed by God's own imagination, if we rely on our own then we are doomed.  Our imaginations do not carry us far enough, they are not big enough, fast enough, broad enough and they do not let us be embarrassed enough.  God's imagination is playful, but it is also bright and hard as diamonds, it exposes the flaw and breaks the heart.  Once you have been infected by God, there is no going back, you cannot simply choose to imagine something different.  God's reality is burned into your mind's eye with a ferocity that can never be 'fixed'.  And are we not glad!

If this is you, then you will be drinking this up as if I have given you a long awaited glass of water.  Or perhaps a top up along an already well trodden path for you.  I think I may have lost some of you along the way, don't worry, we'll see each other again soon.

For those who are still with me - let's keep going, keep walking together, one day the tongues of fire will descend and we will laugh and embarrass our grand-children, who will not understand the story into which they are born.  We will send them off into a new story, ancient and new of course, where they will find their own God-given cause and perhaps recover our story in order to live theirs.

And if their story continues to be women bishops?  So be it.  One day there will be tongues of fire that descend on the beating heart of England's women.

Tinsel and Tat, Feast and Fast

Ho ho ho and Merry Christmas!

I absolutely love and adore Christmas, I love the tinsel, the tree, the mince pies, the feast, the brussels sprouts, the sparkly multi-coloured lights, the tacky tinny music I hear around me and the endless films repeated over and again.

But I do 'get' what gets up the nose of my good friend from Threads, Katherine.  In her post she unpicks the hypocritical sensual overload that we all experience at this time of year, which erupts into our shops sometime around September and rushes with volcanic force into our retinas and eardrums propelling us towards December where like a popped balloon it comes crashing to a halt on December 26th.

However, I have to say that I still LOVE Christmas - and that includes the way in which we celebrate it, with all its sparkle.  I love the British panto that no-one else in the whole world understands (and I particularly loved seeing Strictly's Craig Revel Horwood strutting his corset contained stuff this year).  I love that my tree does not look cool and does look tacky in every way (much to my daughter's disgust).  I love that people want to share food to the point of busting.  I love that strangers smile at each other in shops that are heaving  because there is a shared experience of Christmas time.  No, I do not like the debt or the greed, but that's not necessarily a 'native' part of the British cultural Christmas.  And all things have their alter egos.  The sparkle is not in essence the alter ego of the 'real' Christmas.

Those of us who can look at our neighbour's jollity as they celebrate Diwali, Chanuka or Eid and smile with joy at the fireworks, the special foods and the presents that mark that time, should not deny the markers that we have for Christmas can be wonderful.

I suspect that the roundabout argument that Christians go through (I love Christmas, I hate Christmas) is simply an indication that we have forgotten how to Feast and Fast.  The flat feeling that we have in January is attributed to the total high of Christmas and we can be mistaken for thinking, then, that the Christmas high has been bad somehow.

But Feasting and Fasting have always been part of the human experience and an integral part of what it means to follow God.  We know that there are cycles of life where there are joys and sadness, we cannot necessarily have control over when those seasons of life come.  But we are also given particular seasons to mark, which remind us that there is goodness in the rhythms we experience.  These religious Feasts and Fasts help us to deal with the natural seasons of life that we all experience and over which we do not have control.  These Feasts and Fasts teach us the skills we need for those seasons and simply the truth that they  exist in human life.  We must not avoid the Feast, because we are fearful of the Fast, for the Fast can bring as much joy, if different, as the Feast.

When January comes, enjoy it too.  Enjoy the frugality of that time.  Enjoy stripping everything back and knowing that God is still there in the plodding normality of life, as God is in the singing, feasting and sparkle of Christmas.  But do not avoid the Tinsel, embrace it and let it make you laugh at the cheerful tackiness of the thing.

It is stupidly ordinary, a sparkle in the midst of the dark winter.

Merry Christmas one and all!

The Sixth Thought

I really enjoy Jon Kuhrt and Jon Chilver's blog Resistance&Renewal and recommend you read their posts which are often insightful and refreshing in a Christian world that often gets stuck in various ruts.

sexuality is the unmentionable issue of evangelical christians

I particularly enjoyed reading Jon Chilver's post on whether the Church as lost her right to speak on the issue of homosexuality.  If you read the comments you will see that I had a conversation with another commenter on the way that we approach this issue.  I think that this interaction epitomised what I see as a fundamental problem in the discussions on sexuality.

It saddens me that to *even discuss* the ethics on sexuality is taboo.

Recently on Fulcrum forums, we have become stuck on this issue, sometimes the tone of the comments has become highly unkind and when I challenged that I was accused of not knowing Christ.

It tells me that people are really very insecure.  To not even be able to discuss a subject, does not speak of certainty.  It speaks of a desire to control and to hold on to a 'world' that is under threat.  I suspect that there are a lot of people out there who really want to have the discussion on sexuality but who are implicitly or explicitly being given the message that it is 'the issue that must not be named'.

I see it all the time, when this issue is raised, people are cagey, they don't even want to give the impression of an impression that they might even have given this issue a second thought.  To give the issue a second thought (presumably beyond the 'first thought' of 'euww that's just yucky and doesn't the bible mean I don't have to think about that...?') is deemed as irredeemably beyond the pail.  If you give it a second thought then you are on the path to the wide road of destruction.

Now think about that....a second thought.

A SECOND thought?!

We're talking about *human beings*, and we can't even get beyond our own comfort zone of belonging to give this our attention?!  We should be giving this the focus of not only our second thoughts, but our third, fourth, fifth and perhaps even our sixth thoughts too.  We at least should deem our fellow human beings that dignity, surely?  Let alone those who are brothers and sisters in Christ.  Of course some of the language I see and hear is that gay people are barely human, let alone flourishingly so within the love of God.

go on....admit it

But my observation is that my gay Christian friends have to turn to God for their identity and security and love and belonging so much more than other Christians who too often get it from conforming to the implicit rules of belonging of their particular Church community.  To behave as if this is not the case and to deny that they even have a relationship with God is simply deceitful.

The discussion on sexuality, in reality, leads people to a full spectrum of opinion.  But the sad thing is that we are having to do 'figuring this out' on our own, without the help of each other.  The only conversation that is allowed to happen is on the ends of this spectrum, normally throwing verbal bombs at each other across 'No Man's Land'.  There's no space for *any* recognition that there's a bunch of us who don't sit at either end of that spectrum.

I hope and pray for the day that it will be encouraged and tolerable for people to say 'I don't know' or 'I'm thinking about this' or even (as is my desire these days) to say that we will make decisions based on the human beings who stand in front of us and not who we imagine them to be in our head.  Maybe then we will be able to listen as we look at them, and hear, as the God who made both us and them whispers in our ear.

so...what is it you do, exactly?

happy new year! :)

hope you've had a fantabulous christmas and new year holiday. some of you will be back to work today, or up and out for the school run this morning in a jolt back into the harsh reality of normal life. my kids go back to school tomorrow and thursday (different schools), and i took two weeks off after christmas day, so return to work this weekend. my return to the rhythm of parish life postponed for a couple of days more.

and i'm glad that i did take these few days actually. nothing too deeply important being done, vegging out, returning gifts, that kind of thing. but i really didn't want to return to the parish , catapulted into an unthinking rhythm, just carrying on without having any time to reflect on the last six months. for six months of ordained ministry it has already been. half a year. i have learnt so much in that time, not least that i need regularly to remind myself what it is i think i'm doing, or rather, being, as an ordained person.

one of the books that kept me going whilst i was at college, which seemed to swim against the ever roaring current of popular opinion around me, was stephen cottrell's 'hit the ground kneeling'. i found myself this christmas having to remind myself of the gems of truth which he uncovers within the page of this (beautifully small) book. he is into myth busting when it comes to what leadership should be about and, as the title of the book intimates, wants to orientate us towards a type of leadership which is thoroughly embedded in the contemplative tradition. it is not about being anti management speak when it comes to leadership, but it is a blessed breath of fresh air for those who find leadership and management language a little alien and a jarring on the soul of what this ordained life is about. it is a book that is for christians of all hues (as long as they're open to it), and even for those with no faith. i'm glad he uses the term 'leadership', so that the language is not too alienating for those from a more evangelical tradition, who are used to this language, but it also talks about approaching leadership differently, and does challenge us in a world which is success and measurable outcome driven, to see these things through a different lens.

i think that the phantom of the measurable outcome haunts a lot of clergy, and comforts a few who see themselves above the line when it comes to this kind of success. it takes a large amount of courage to walk a different way and to see what we do in a rather different category to the world around us. as someone new to this life, i already see the possibility of fear in being asked the question 'what is it you do?'. well there are the obvious things, of baptisms, weddings and funerals - and depending on what kind of parish you find yourself in, these will be more or less part of your ministry. there's the school's work, the planning courses, the sunday monster to feed, the pastoral visits to do...

very easily these things can give you the sense of significance you might need to tell you that you are worth something, that what you're doing and who you are is of value. and those things need to be done and are the outward sign of the ministry you are doing....sometimes. but it is very easy for those things to become the 'end' of what you're doing. they become the purpose of you. it is those things that people want to see you doing, smile at you for, pat you on the back for the things that you do. this is all encouragement of course, and i couldn't do this kind of life without those moments. i'm not saying that it is bad for any of this to happen. but it can become a little bit of a co-dependent cycle for congregations and priests: the congregation want to see what their priests are doing-priests need some affirmation to do their job-priests do things that might show a visible outcome-congregations are comforted that their church is active. all is well.

of course we do need to do stuff and we need to be accountable, priests to their congregations and congregations to their priests. but the tyranny of the measurable outcome means that a lot of what 'accountability' means in our minds, is having something visible and tangible to show for what it is you do. and in the case of ordained ministers, this is actually an existential question - 'what is the point of you?'

if i'm honest this is a question that i see hovering around a lot of ordained people, myself included. and i think it's toxic. for me the joy of the book above is that it rejoices in the idea that, for God, *you* are the point of you. at the heart of good leadership (and for me, what priesthood is about is so much more than that word...) are those who are most authentically being themselves in the places that God has called them to. our time in those places may only be able to be measured by the fact of our presence there, in that place, among those people. we may do things, we should do things. but those things are marks of our presence in a place and it is always our presence which is the end of why we are there. after all, this is the end of God's relationship with us. not that we get to enjoy a free ticket to 'heaven', but that God is present with human beings. so it should not surprise us that, as those who 'lead' God's people, who stand in the liminal spaces sometimes, who weep with the sad and rejoice with the happy, who sometimes have to weep for ourselves and dance in the kitchen on our own, are simply called to be present with people and that for us the only real 'measurable outcome' is simply...

'i was here'

why you don't know what we really think

hello men (evo men in particular)

think of the ordained women you know who are evangelical. if you're an evangelical ordained man, ask yourself what you think that woman's position is on sexuality.

did you ever ask her? did you assume? either because she's an evangelical, she's conservative, or because she's a woman she's liberal?

one of the things that i overhear in the circles that i move in, when talking about evangelical women, especially those who are either ordained, or in leadership of some description, is that, on sexuality, they are 'probably conservative' or 'i assume she's conservative' (underlying reasoning being that she's never said she's not)

but do you really know? did you ever ask? and if you asked did you ever really get a straight answer?

of course, i'm exaggerating (slightly)

but the next time you're at a clergy or leadership event, mixing with evangelical women, look around and ask yourself if you really know what they think about this particular issue.

now let me tell you why i think you don't.

let's take the venn diagram. one scenario goes like this. A is catholic, B is evo. ordained evangelical women are B, but because they are not quite understood as 'kosher' in their own 'pool' (woman? fine. ordained? find. ordained woman? risky!) they find that most of their friends and their support network are from 'pool A'. and so they find themselves swimming in 'both A and B'. if they are conservative on sexuality, in coming out they risk their support network, the people who make them who they are, they risk part of their very identity. if they are liberal on sexuality, they risk being ousted from their own gene pool, the tradition that made them who they were, they risk part of their very identity.

it may be that you are in quite a different diocese or parish, where the lines are not drawn so fiercely, or that your area is mainly evangelical or catholic. so then the scenario becomes more intense and concentrated. if you are an evangelical woman who is liberal on sexuality and you find yourself in a mainly evo deanery or area of ministry, then you are B, your friends are B and in outing yourself as liberal you potentially lose your tradition and your friends. on the other side if you're an evo woman who is conservative on sexuality and find yourself in a catholic liberal parish, then you're B in an A pool, but you have friends, if you out yourself, you potentially find yourself isolated or backed into a siege mentality that is very attractive in evos, so i hear (that was sarcasm)

long and short of it, we are being taught that the only 'safe' positions for evangelical women is to be B and be conservative. don't give a 'sniff' of a clue to anyone that you are even 'thinking' about 'thinking' about what you might think about sexuality, because it will simply allow people to think 'i told you so, it's the thin end of the wedge, first women, then gays....'. as an ordained evo woman, if you even think of not towing the line on this one, then it's not just you, its ordained women, its women - you've let down the whole gender. you're a role model and you'd better stay clean.

this will be uncomfortable for some to read. and the last thing that i want to do is to pre-empt anyone, especially women, ordained women, having to declare themselves one thing or the other on the issue of sexuality. i'm not attempting to 'expose' people. i'm not saying that women are, or even tend to be, on one side or the other of this debate. but when you look at an evo woman and 'assume she is conservative', then you have constrained the debate to begin with. you've pushed her into a corner where she knows if she is conservative then she is not allowed to change her mind and still remain in the same pool. and if she's liberal or even thinking through the conversation, then the risk is too high to give you a straight answer.

the implications of discussing sexuality are so complex for evo women, especially those that find themselves straddling A and B as identity groups. i guess, on one level, i'm asking you to be kind.

diversity, collar wearing and generation y

gonna try to blog more regularly, but can't promise anything :)

long and short of the last few months of ordained ministry is that i'm really enjoying myself. woop woop i hear you shout. so i thought i'd tell you what ministry is like in this neck of the woods.

COLLAR AS PART OF THE CULTURAL DIVERSITY

the context that i'm in is incredibly multi-ethnic - harrow is the most ethnically diverse borough in london - this means that there aren't particular pockets of large groups of cultures, but that every other person is from a different place or culture. in this context you find yourself, as an ordained person, part of that distinctiveness, people are overwhelmingly positive about seeing you out and about, everyone is different - this is just another part of that distinctiveness within society. i wear my collar most of the time and i find that this is the positive thing that i had imagined it would be.

before i was ordained, i thought i would wear my collar a lot. but you never know what that will actually be like until you're there, wearing your collar whilst you're going to the doctor (who told me that in my job i should get the flu jab), or when you ask the guy on the platform if this is the right one for your train (and he tells you that as soon as he saw you he wished he could tell you that seeing a woman in a collar was really great), or the children who randomly say hi to you in the street, cos they've seen you in school (parents look slightly bemused).
in general being a visible sign that God is still somehow there and part of the conversation that is going on in your community, is experienced positively in my context. God is not thought to be dead, or irrelevant, people are not hostile or even indifferent to the idea of God. it's not that everyone is falling over themselves to be followers of the Jesus way, but it is relatively easy to talk about God - especially when it's on the agenda instantly through the medium of your chosen outfit!

GENERATION Y

last night i heard bob mayo speak on his research into generation y - the generation our teenagers are part of - and what i've experienced in my context is something that came up in the research. the young people we meet are not programmed to be hostile to God talk, and nor are they hungry for the spiritual answers that we think Jesus can give. they are happy for us talk about God, but they remain benignly indifferent to what that might mean for them. but these are the questions that they are asking 'what does this mean for me?' - the young people of today are asking what God is wanting them to do, not in the individualistic moral framework way that christians have offered to generations past, but in a moral framework that is asking for social activism and significance that goes beyond themselves. 'what does this mean for me?' and 'what is the impact on the world around me?'.

i'm not sure that this research should be restricted simply to generation y. just as i wasn't sure that generation x definitions fitted me perfectly, perhaps the insights that bob mayo and his wife have brought to us about generation y, go further than simply that generation. perhaps we are all impacted by the need to ask the question 'what does this mean for me?'

perhaps we are all invited to be significant.

so what are we doing in our ministries and lives to offer the significance that is offered in God to people that we encounter? people are not, generally, hostile to God - this is a myth perpetuated by a seige mentality that finds battle metaphors easier to engage with.

so in a culture of the peace protest, the need to be significant, what could we (the co-authors of the non-violent resistence movement) possibly have to offer.....

what happens if i push that big red button....?

i have some musings, so bear with me....

over on vicky beeching's blog, there is a post asking people for their opinions on the biblical roles of women in church/marriage etc. vicky decided to invite responses on this question stemming from the response she had to a facebook status that she posted a number of days previously. here is the status she posted:

'Anyone thinking the 'women in ministry' battle is over & done, we still have a long way to go. Complementarianism, even when delivered with trendy clothes & a cool haircut, is still merely the oppression of women. My heart aches to see younger women grow up free from this teaching, so they don't have to doubt their leadership giftings, their equality in the Body of Christ, or their equality within marriage.'

it caught my attention because it was such a passionate statement from a woman who is herself involved in leading God's people in terms of her musical gifting, and also because vicky herself is involved with new wine and leads worship at their summer conferences quite often, new wine is an organisation which, i've said before, i don't think knows how to be fully affirming of women in ministry. so i was interested and pleased to see this full on slamming of the complimentarian position from vicky.

but what was most interesting is that her fb status elicited 125 comments. she then wrote another status drawing attention to her previous status and this then elicited a further 127 comments. vicky, realising that this was a hot topic, then moved the discussion to her blog and in a matter of a couple of days had a blog post with 231 comments.

now, my quesion is.....why?

i'm not naive. i understand that women in ministry is a hot topic, but what is it that makes it such a button pusher?

i'm not sure that i think it is really about the bible or ethics or doctrine tbh.

it made me think about my experience on a retreat i had recently that was for ordained people. on this retreat there were people there from all different backgrounds, some disagreed with women's ordination and some were for it. however, from the pool of people who were against women's ordination there were different responses to the women who were there. there was one guy in particular who was lovely and we got on very well and i felt that if we were in the same parish, we could work together, we might even be friends.

on the other side of the equation, there was a little posse of people who, quite literally, couldn't bear to share air space with me, it seemed. it was all they could do to answer questions that i asked them in an effort to start a conversation.

so i have come to the conclusion that this is not about theology, it's pathology, it's psychology....and it is just damn rude....but it is NOT theology.

when i was at college, i really began to wonder if i was so fragile that i couldn't be in the space of these people at all. i was seriously worried about myself, because i knew that i was going into the CofE and that this was an insitution where i was going to have to be able to cope with all manner of points of view on my presence. but at college it felt like i wasn't resilient enough. however, i began to ask the question as to how resilient any human being should be expected to be? anyone, no matter how robust they are, needs to have a safe space where they know they will be affirmed, from which they can face the things and people that will threaten to dehumanise them. if someone is constantly being given the message, by implication as well as explication, that they aren't quite acceptable, then, in the end, that message will be imbibed. no matter how resilient.

in the end, it was the being treated as 'less than' that caused the damage, not whether they agreed with my call to ordination.

now, don't get me wrong. it's never 'ok' that someone thinks God doesn't call someone simply because they have a vagina rather than a penis. no matter how good they treat me, there will always be a reserve to a friendship over that barrier. however, i think we should, firstly, learn to call the difference between theology and rudeness.

but why is it that this topic in particular should push so many people's buttons that vicky got over 300 comments over facebook and her blog?

i think that it is more to do with the rocking of a world view. that this is why it generates rudeness to the degree it does. worlds are being shattered and that is threatening and genuinely frightening for the people who hold the power in those worlds. or whose identity is caught up in them knowing their place. even for those who are insistent that the proscription on women in ministry is not about value or worth or (this one always makes me laugh) equality, their view of women puts men in some way 'above' women, 'in charge' of women. and if your own sense of worth is, in any sense, based on this worldview, then a removal of this system is going to impact your own identity to its very core.

and when identity is threatened, then people get rude and aggressive, they really believe that they are fighting for survival. if they see any thread of hope that they will re-establish the old order, then they will fight to the death to hold onto that.

we have to understand that people are fighting for their very self.

collecting stories

WATCH is collecting the stories of women in leadership, asking them to talk about the way that they lead, what that looks like to them.

there will be new stories from now until next july, charting the course to that moment in the history of the church of england and its story with women bishops.

here is the link to my own contribution, please take a look, and also at the stories of other women in leadership as they work to be obedient to their calling, serve the people of God and remain faithful even in the face of prejudice, ambivalence and, sometimes, just plain rudeness.........

learning the art of watching and being entirely pointless

so here i am. ordained. there is a whole ministry stretched out in front of me and i don't have a clue what it is going to look like. this is good.

God is the God of suprises. i could never have imagined any of this for myself. in fact if i could have i probably would have run away....at least initially. as it is, this is the only thing that i can imagine myself doing. and yet the exact details are veiled.

at college the primary metaphor that was given to me about being ordained, was to be a manager. manage the services, manage the people, manage the parish. yeuch, no thanks. but there was also this lingering idea (i think it comes from the mission shaped church report) that as ministers of the gospel, we should be watching. watching for what God is doing....and then joining in with that. this is one of those phrases which is, to be honest, bandied around without anyone having the slightest clue what it actually means. i mean, what does it 'look' like...to watch for God?

simeon watched for God. was his ministry any less meaningful because he had to wait til the end of his life for the thing that he was watching for? or did the faithful daily completing of his work, day in, day out, give him the eyes that he needed to see when God did the thing he was waiting for?

i want to be the kind of ordained person who is patient and who can see what is going on, when what is 'going on' isn't necessarily on the surface, laid bare, clear. i'm not sure that i'm naturally a patient person, not when i can see what needs doing, but sometimes what needs doing is to wait and watch.

these are the things that are not taught in college. perhaps they can't be, perhaps there are things that cannot be taught. there's a lot of panic going on at the moment about fees and money and how the theological colleges will continue in this particular educational climate. personally i think that theological education is all very well, i definitely think that people presenting themselves for ordination should put themselves through a theology degree, but......

who will teach us the art of watching for God?

those of us ordained this petertide (that's this summer for those who don't speak in anachronistic language....) are now to go out into the world that needs God, in order to be those who speak 'God', who see God in the dark corners of our communities and point God out to those communities and have those communities point out God to us. but how are we to do that? where do we begin? how do we know what is God and what is our own minds, conjuring up the safest or most comfortable delusion about the God of our own imaginings?

the art of watching for God is not new. it did not arrive with the mission shaped church report. the art of watching for God is ancient.

it is called prayer.

in the climate of financial turmoil that the colleges are going through, whilst many are looking to diversify, building projects multiply and the next couple of decades are looked to be managed, will there be those who are part of the training of priests, who will teach us how to watch for God? teach us how to pray?

this is the moment! will they grasp it? i often said at college, that i really could have done with 2 years of prayer. being taught by those who pray. learning the art of listening. i know that it sounds naive. i used to joke about it. but i don't think i was joking. if i was teaching people to be ministers of God's people, ministers of the Gospel, i'd ask them to come having done their academic training, and then i would teach them to pray. for 2 years. at least.

so many young guys come to theological college having been in a career where they were quite successful and they are taught by people like them....and they are handed comfort blankets - ways to manage the congregation, the parish, the building project, the community partners. these are ways of saying that this is a 'job' that you just have to figure out how to do... and it's ok, because the tools are the same as the 'job' you just came out of.

i yearned for people to say, more often....at all?....that this is the most ridiculous job in the world and we don't know what we are doing...or rather we know what we are trying to do, but have no idea how to do it!

it is so easy, as an ordained person, to get frightened by the need to be doing, to be seen to be doing, and to be able to produce a product in order to be recognised as successful. whether your product is an ever expanding congregation, a new programme, a course or a very full diary. the pressure is on to have something in your hand to show what the point of you is.

so, at the start (which is really the middle), here i am....committed to learning the art of watching for God, stepping into the stream of the ancients who have gone before me, and perhaps being part of the story that will be told after me.

and so being willing to be unseen, willing to have nothing to show for my presence, and happily finding myself utterly and completely.....pointless.