Blessing true commitment

A lovely hot and sunny start to the week, good for washing bed linen as well as the regular house cleaning tasks. Before cooking lunch I completed this week's Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube ready for Thursday. In the afternoon we went foraging for blackberries in Pontcanna Fields. It looks as if a lot of picking went on over the weekend, as there were fewer large ripe blackberries to be found, but we came home with nearly a kilo between us.

It was good to hear that the Governing Body of the Church in Wales has approved a proposal by a large and healthy majority of clergy and laity to add a service of blessing the civil partnerships of gay couples to the church's liturgical library. About time too. Next step, the full wedding service for gay couples. If any couple, regardless of gender want to dedicate their lives to each other in lifelong union before God, I see no reason why it can't be seen as marriage. 

The traditionalist view of marriage as the unique hallowed context for procreation doesn't oblige couples to have children. Some exercise the freedom to choose not to. This is also the same for gay couples who may choose to have children or not to have children. Every couple has to think about their role in family and community life, and this is rooted in the loving commitment they make to each other. Faithfulness in all its manifestations is something to give thanks for, and that is the purpose of a blessing service. It celebrates the grace that God has already given the couple. As is true for all of us - by their fruit they shall be known.

I was surprised and not a little troubled to learn that the electoral college came away from their three days of meeting to elect a new Bishop for Swansea and Brecon diocese without a consensus on any candidate. Heaven only knows what's going on here. Will the Welsh Bishops now select and present a candidate for the electoral college to approve? If they choose another from the Church of England, what will that say about their confidence in the Church in Wales to raise its own next generation leadership?

Another fascinating programme this evening about the work of conservators at the Victoria and Albert museum in London. It not only reveals the secrets of restoring worn and broken objects, but also the kind of detective work that sometimes goes into establishing the provenance of particular objects. In the first of the first series, shown again tonight on BBC Four, a seventeenth century snuff box with a lid containing an enamel portrait of a noble lady was examined, to try and identify who she was. 

It contained no inscription, so one of the team set about looking through catalogues of portraits of noble ladies of the period - none of this information was in a digital database - and eventually found a match to a portrait in a stately home. The portrait painter or someone of their workshop was most likely responsible for the enamel, which was remarkably similar in likeness. It was not uncommon for gentlemen obliged to travel away from home for long periods to take a miniature portrait of their beloved on their travels with them, just as we may do with a photo on the home screen of the mobile phone. 

The disturbing Spirit at work

Pentecost Sunday, and the two regular regular Eucharists to celebrate. At Almuñecár in particular we are under time pressure from the service that follows ours, to complete in  no more than an hour. I'd be happier to lose a hymn and shorten the Gradual Psalm to achieve this, but I've been asked to make my sermon shorter. That's quite a hard request, as I try to pack in as much as I can into a twelve to fifteen minute address, aware of how few other occasions there are when church goers are getting live teaching. So, I made the effort to try and reduce the length of my text from 800+ words to 600, and this means concentrating the content I have to deliver, and that means spending a good deal longer on preparation, as would be the case if writing a script for broadcasting or publication. Nothing wrong with that. It's an enjoyable challenge.

Across Spain today it's local council election day. Recently we've had our fair share of election material delivered, and much of it I've been able to read and understand, thanks to the effort I've made to cram some usable Spanish into my brain, with the commendable Duo Lingo internet app. You get to speak and type answers with this, and the voice recognition routine works well most of the time, except that occasionally it leaves you no time to respond, or fails to pick up your voice unless you shout at it. This can be very annoying, but so can typos, and I make rather of lot of them, so any learning session can be an occasion for much grumpiness and swearing. It'll be interesting to see how much election news in Spanish I'll be able to follow on tomorrow's news.

Talking of elections, yesterday's Irish referendum on incorporating gay marriage into constitutional law was an astounding outcome, when you consider how socially conservative Ireland has been until relatively recently. Nearly two thirds of those who voted have declared their desire to treat equally all couples who want to pledge their lives to each other in marriage. Some interviewed spoke seriously about respecting the ability of others to remain in permanent loving relationships, and uphold family values, recognising that the nature of family life is more diverse and complex than tradition and social convention has been prepared to admit. 

There are few clergy or church leaders who cannot know the truth of this, but the doctrinal ideal along with liturgical custom and practice, fails to reflect it. The Archbishop of Dublin said the vote challenged the church to take a reality check. But where will all the churches go from here? Both the conservative and progressive ones. Will they listen? What will they learn? 

In so many ways, the difficulty Christians have had in coming to terms with contemporary changes in understanding sexuality and relationships, has contributed to many abandoning the church. It's meant that the spread of secular thinking at grass roots level in society has led the way to a paradigm shift in thinking, and not the vision behind Christian doctrine. 

It's fascinating how often secularised societies can place high value on family life and faithful loving relationships, albeit of a much more diverse and varied nature, than the religious ideal believes possible or worthwhile. How will religious people respond? I pray we're not going to see a reactionary backlash, but a widespread change of heart. And I pray that the media will refrain from turning any kind of exchange or dialogue into confrontation or conflict, but let people use their hearts and minds to recognise each other's values and conviction, and be reconciled with each other, in order to live together well with differences.