Re-opening horizons

Thank goodness, no wind today, but still unseasonably cold. My daily Morning Prayer video upload went without hitch and on time. There were eleven of us for the Eucharist at Saint Catherine's. It was celebrated by Archbishop Rowan, who now lives in the parish in retirement. It may be the first time he's done this since he and his wife Jane arrived last summer. I was charged with locking up afterwards, as Clive who normally opens and shuts was leaving immediately after the service for a funeral in the Cathedral. 

I collected this week's organic veg bag before sharing in cooking lunch. I went to bed too late last night and dozed off for an hour afterwards. Then Ashley rang, and I went out to meet him for a chat while he waited an hour for his second jab appointment. We had to walk around the streets, as no place is open where one can sit and have a drink. There will be outdoor places soon, but in such cold weather it's just too cold, even to sit on a park bench with a take-away drink.

It's good to note that covid hospital cases are still diminishing, likewise the general infection rate. As a result it means that next week's planned reopening of shops can go ahead, and likewise cross border travel between Wales and England. I was pleased to learn this afternoon that discussion about reopening Saint John's for worship is now taking place. It's stayed closed longer than the other two as it's been more of a challenge to meet the covid risk assessment scrutiny for places of worship, requiring a team of people to prepare and clean up and welcomers who will check in worshippers and take their contact details for track and trace purposes. 

The average age of the regulars and their aversion to risk taking may have something to do with this, but now that all who can be safely vaccinated in the higher age range has had at least their first jab, confidence is returning. Reopening is complicated by the use made of St John's for live streaming a Sunday Eucharist. There's no reason why regular services with a congregation shouldn't be live streamed, with a little extra equipment and someone willing to operate it as part of their devotions at church, but this requires thinking through if it's to be sustainable.

For some on-line worship has been invaluable in the crisis of church closure, for others unable to attend church because they are housebound it's been a new and unexpected blessing. And, it seems there are even more others who aren't church attenders, but they have come across services on line and started watching and joining on-line discussions and forums. How this will bear fruit once people aren't subjected to social restrictions and have more choices about what to do with their time, remains to be seen. I believe that in the long term, having an on-line service for the housebound is worthwhile doing long term. The question is whether this should be done by every parish all the time, or should grouped parishes in the new Ministry Areas agree a rotation of on-line services from different churches. Maybe a Ministry Area could invest in high quality kit and train teams of people willing to make local broadcast worship their contribution to the life and outreach of the church. Now we've begun to see what works and what's valuable to people, a fresh exploration of this issue will be possible.

Disembodied, and grief observed

Finally this morning, we woke up to a light sprinkling of snow, not much more than a centimetre. After breakfast an extended time of Sunday Prayer. I read through the Eucharist of the day, rather than watch on-line, as Clare did. That is, until the live feed transmission broke down, thanks to the introduction of a different piece of kit to the St John's chapel cum studio where the service takes place.

I can't quite put my finger on it yet but didn't have the heart to join her today. I feel fine at watching a broadcast Eucharist in any form with a live congregation. It's easy to join in. I've attended a couple of Euro diocesan services on Zoom, with eighty others in their little on-screen boxes, No sound of the group responding, or singing together. Not knowing anyone apart from the Bishops leading didn't help. I found it a bit strange, even though it was well thought out.  

I think Zoom could be tolerable at a Benefice or congregational level, because I would recognise faces in the little on-screen boxes. Our Benefice streams one service on-line via Facebook. The camera operator says the responses, and recorded hymns are played with the text displayed. I've watched Parish services with Clare before the Eucharist in church resumed, but today, I reverted to what I did in Ibiza, and read through Matins and the Eucharist. I miss receiving Communion but equally miss being in a group and responding to the priest together. 'We who are many are one bread, one body' is what we all say and that is what makes liturgy alive and life giving to me.

Watching passively even with Clare still feels disembodied - that's the word. Prayer for me is never just in the mind and on the tongue, but a physical and social action in which we carry each other. The truth of this came home to me after five months of social isolation, then returning to public worship, and then being separated from it again. In a crisis we have to do our best and make the best we can of our situation, and our clergy have certainly made an immense effort to make the on-line offering an enriching alternative. It's the passivity that leaves me feeling out on a limb, I guess.

For centuries before my time, clergy recited the liturgy at the altar and an assistant answered and maybe a choir sang, depending on the occasion. The laity were entirely observers, and the highlight for them was to watch the elevation of the Host and Chalice during the Words of Institution. But they were there together, and that mattered. Looking down the narrow channel of the video screen is not the same. In fact, I feel more involved if I just listen to a service on the radio, or recite a service aloud myself. Somehow it offers room for the imagination to work, not least in feeling connected to others who listen actively. Or am still missing something, or finding my own spiritual poverty exposed from a new angle? Time will tell I guess.

I went for a long walk in the park before lunch and a shorter one after. All morning despite clouds, the sun shone through. It was cold enough for the snow not to melt immediately. Children with their parents were having a lot of fun together while it lasted. It became overcast in the afternoon, but the snow by then had nearly all melted and the temperature stayed around zero and felt even colder. Very refreshing!

In the evening I watched the second episode of Finding Alice, in which the newly widowed quirky heroine organises a funeral at home and buries her husband in the garden without planning permission. I foresee trouble ahead. A DIY secular funeral ceremony echoed church liturgy, without text or context, featuring without explanation a cleric as mistress of ceremonies, claiming to be OK about doing humanist funerals as religious ones. No so far fetched in real clerical life. Was she a hospital chaplain running a bereavement group in the hospital mortuary suite featured earlier in the episode? I wasn't sure. All a bit odd, though not totally odd. It's been quite real in its representation of grief and grieving so far, but where next, I wonder? 

Older phone poorer memory

I woke up in good time this morning to upload the first Morning Prayer video I prepared on Saturday, after listening to 'Thought for the Day'. Accidentally, I posted it to an individual rather than to the Parish daily prayer WhatsApp group, but spotted the error before the upload finished and cancelled it. When I tried uploading it to the correct destination, my phone stalled and complained that it was running out of memory. It a problem I often have, as factory default apps I never use can't be removed from the phone. They take up too much space. I have to limit the number of apps I install, and not allow data that can't be installed on the removable SD card to accumulate in the phone's internal memory. Redundant data needs removing to avoid the kind of problem I encountered. I had to do this before successful in uploading the 50mb video file of the day.

This week's uploads take up 500mb of space on the SD card, but when files are uploaded to WhatsApp, copies remain in the WhatsApp / Media /Video / Sent sub folder occupying much needed memory space. It wouldn't matter if I had a newer phone with 16 or 32GB of internal memory, but why should I? I prefer to take photos and make videos with a camera, not with a phone. Normally I don't need vast amounts of internal memory as I haven't needed to make phone videos until last week. Receiving a lot of videos on WhatsApp causes the phone to choke up, so I make a regular practice of removing almost everything I receive once it ceases to be of use or interest, or storing it on the SD card. I'll have to make a check each day this week to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I had a short walk before lunch and a longer one after lunch, and spent time writing and adding photos to my digital collection of pictures stored on hardware I own and not just on-line. Then an evening in front of the telly, with nothing better to do. 

Wednesday friends re-united

St Swithun's Day today. At least it didn't rain!

After breakfast I had a phone call from my GP in response  to my email of yesterday. She's booked me in for an ECG next week, and promised to write to Mrs Cornish the surgeon as I had expressed concern about the need for at least an examination of my wound, as it's nine months since she saw me. Since the infection, its stability seems to vary widely from day to day, which makes me wonder if I am still managing it correctly.

Mid morning there was a socially distanced coffee morning in the gardens of St Catherine's held at the time we'd normally celebrate the midweek Eucharist there, and maybe will once more in a few weeks from now. It was great to see people for the first time in five months with whom I have kept contact via email, such a happy reunion. The church garden looks so well cared for and abundant with fruit and veg too! Last week there was a produce sale which earned £140 for church funds. When will be the next, is what people are interested to know.

In the afternoon I was called by a HSBC Safeguarding officer enquiring about the small trust fund I manage, as there's been no activity on it for several years. He wanted to know if it was still needed, as it was only intended as a 'holding account'. I was able to explain the situation to him satisfactorily, as I'm in the throes of handing over trusteeship to someone with a longer life expectancy. I'm of an age where it would be far wiser to relinquish such a responsibility, rather than leave this as a legacy issue to be sorted after my demise. Progress to complete the handover has inevitably been delayed by the pandemic, but the path ahead is now straightforward thankfully.

This evening I took part in a Parish Zoom meeting to review and discuss the future offering of on-line services. It's been popular and appreciated, and I'm very proud that Canton Benefice was one of the first to broadcast a live Eucharist. The challenge is how to sustain this along with the offering of public worship in churches, which will require so much more effort to prepare than ever before.

Unusually, I completed my daily 10k in three shorter walks today. It's proved to be not nearly as tiring. Interesting.

   

Communication paradigm shift

This morning's BBC Radio Four Sunday Worship programme was from Cardiff Baptist College, led by staff members and students. It was based around the Sunday Lectionary Gospel for the day, the Parable of the Sower from Matthew's Gospel, and was rich with insight from different perspectives.

After breakfast, Clare and I sat together and shared the on-line Parish Eucharist broadcast from Canton Rectory, also with an exposition of the Parable of the Sower from Mother Francis. She made use of Vincent Van Gogh's painting 'The Sower' as a basis for her reflection. Equally original and engaging. It's not one of my favourite Gospel passages, with its second half explaining the imagery of the first half, leaving less freedom to work it out for yourself. The imaginative way in which both renderings of the parable I heard this morning gives me cause to rethink how I deal with it, should I ever get asked to preach about it again. 

After the service Clare insisted on catching up on last Thursday's themed meditation, now a regular feature of the Benefice's on-line offering. Reconciliation was the subject. It was beautifully crafted in terms of content and visuals. It's so good that video tools now available for everyday use by non-professionals is unleashing such creativity. Many have taken note of how public broadcasters have presented religious themed material, and put this to good use. It's taken the pandemic crisis to empty diaries and open up the possibility of spending time making devotional and educational material that relates to the people and context in which all local pastoral ministry happens. 

Ibiza was tough going for me, having to produce on-line audio weekly, with help from just four people willing and able to record sound files of readings to use. As an outsider, not integrated into the church social network, not knowing who I could approach, persuade and recruit to help, what I could achieve was limited as much as it was by lack of equipment or expertise. Already, a paradigm shift in parish level public communication is occurring. It is capable of unleashing more creativity and collaboration between laity and clergy, and involving many more people in conveying the message of what life in the Body of Christ means to them. With a few more Sundays to be seen and get acquainted with church members in Ibiza, I could have done better. But this wasn't to be. It's a matter of learning by doing as you go along, and the timing wasn't right on this occasion.

By eleven for a change, I was out walking. Again the parks were busy with groups of people sitting and enjoying the sun, or else cycling, jogging, pushing prams or strolling. I overheard someone passing by say to their companion that they'd never seen it so busy.

Next Sunday, churches will re-open for worship. Heaven knows how this will work out, given the challenges of doing so safely, given the rules to be applied, slightly different in each building. At the same time, the value of continuing to offer on-line ministry of prayer and worship is understood and poses the question how it can be sustained, and in what form.

There'll be a Parish Zoom session to examine and discuss this on Wednesday this week. When I learned of it, I found my head filling with ideas, so I wrote a few suggestions to Mthr Emma in an email, for starters, so I can listen at the meeting and not say much. If what I wrote is of any use it'll surface at another time.

Four days ago, when I pondered in this blog over the likely end of my public ministry in prevailing 

circumstances, a comment appeared, attached to this posting, from Darren, a friend I made in my Geneva days twenty five years ago, who now lives and works as an academic in Singapore. He sees no reason why I shouldn't set up my own on-line platform for preaching, teaching and devotional material. But, I have my doubts.

Sure, it would be nice to have a continuing outlet for my creative energies in this sphere, but I shy away from it. Who  am I, but a servant of the church communities I have belonged to, which have honoured, welcomed my ministry over fifty years. As best I can, I deliver the message and point in what I think is the right direction for others to be met by God. It's not impersonal, but projecting my personality in the media has no appeal for me. My role model, for rather a long time has been John the Baptist - a voice crying in the wilderness.
  

Opening up, reaching out

Cloudy but no rain or wind today, with the promise of warmer weather to come. A great relief for me as when it's warm my stiff back muscles will warm up more readily. I learned from Clare that St John's Parish Church would be open for prayer from ten until noon today, so I walked down there to thank God that it was possible for the place to be open again.

Before I entered I put on my mask, as I feel obliged to in any enclosed space. I was delighted to see Emma and Benedict, half the parish clergy team keeping vigil there and was welcomed with smiles. So good to see priests at their proper job - praying and welcoming other into God's house. Normally there are too many pressures on clergy time for something as simple yet essential as this to be seen to happen. But as the 'new normal' evolves, who knows how things will develop?

I walked back via St Catherine's, and met Gareth, one of the church's pioneer team of gardeners that has transformed the grounds, both with the highly productive fruit and vegetable plot, but also with an attractive and colourful planting of suitable flowers and bushes all along the railings facing on to King's Road. Talk about neighbourhood uplift! It was good to see him again after five months.

Our GP surgery, nearly opposite the church, has acquired a canopy along the side of the building where people can queue before admission, as there's very little interior waiting room space to make social distancing possible. You mustn't turn up too long before your appointment, especially if it's cold and wet.

After lunch I took another walk around Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields. In one remote corner, two young women, walking two dogs, had stopped to pick up litter. A couple of days ago when out with the dogs they had seen a group of teenagers with bicycles turn up with bags full of drinks to party in seclusion. Next day they saw that a terrible mess had been left, and had now returned with bags to clear it up. I congratulated and thanked them. At the moment, my bad back hinders me from doing likewise, and these days I have to plan to take protective equipment with me rather than pick up discarded cans and bottles to take to the nearest bin spontaneously the way I used to. But I will get around to it again. 

On several occasions recently I had seen a parent with a young child heading across the park with a plastic bag and one of those long reach pincers aiming to collect rubbish. And there are older folk as well. The Council employs a man who works early mornings, collecting as much dispersed rubbish as he can and leaving near the usually overflowing rubbish bins, prior to collection. Clare sees him when she is out for her early walk and has learned that his name is Richard. It's good to think that there may be even more people these days willing to clear up the mess, than people who don't care and make the mess.  

Our Team Vicar Emma has sent out an invitation to join a Zoom conference next Wednesday about what will happen to on-line services once conventional public worship resumes, as the Parish's on-line has been well received and reached (hopefully) a wider audience than church based services. It will be an interesting discussion, and essentially it's going to be about outreach. I just hope it can be conceived and presented to a credible and consistent high standard. 

What's been achieved over months of services during lock-down using (I suppose) mobile phones and on-line editing suites is remarkable and creative, especially given that it's been a case of learning by doing throughout. With a little extra thought and slightly better equipment, available at fairly reasonable prices, more can be done in a credible and attractive way, and this will bring joy to those who remain housebound and unable to re-enter public worship.

Quarantine Cymru - day Five

Clouds, sunshine and a few early showers on this Day that the Lord has made. I woke up at five and thought it was later, as I felt refreshed, but I did go to be earlier last night, and am still sleeping well.

I said Morning Prayer, listened to the Sunday Worship service on Radio Four. It was a modern style service of the Word celebrating Father's Day (I'd forgotten), offering scriptural and personal reflection on fatherhood in a thoughtful rather than sentimental way. Then I read the Church in Wales Eucharist texts to celebrate being back home on a Sunday. 

It's the longest day today, and 95 days after imposition, the Spanish government Estadio de Alarma ends today. Powers to implement restrictions where these may be needed to control outbreaks passes back to regional governments, and free movement between regions is possible once more. Some parts of the country, like the Balearic Islands are almost virus free, whilst in others it persists, with new infections and deaths, albeit far fewer than a month ago. 

Now travel between EU countries can resume, there will be a slow influx of holidaymakers. German travellers are already arriving. Spain has conceded that UK travellers won't be obliged to self quarantine for two weeks on arrival, although they will have to if they return. No incentive here for short term holiday-makers unless they aren't returning to work. It will benefit Brits wanting to return to second homes and businesses, or to reunions with family members. 

It remains to be seen whether this movement of people triggers a second wave of contagion. Spain's hospitality industry is geared up welcome people with appropriate hygiene precautions. Let's hope visitors are equally cautious and not in denial about the possibility of a second wave. I wonder if local trace and track systems will serve when scaled up to cope with visitor influx, and contain any imported outbreak? Time will tell.

I'm not yet ready to dive into the Parish's Sunday offering of liturgy on-line, but  I could hear Clare singing along downstairs after breakfast. No, I'm using quarantine as a retreat, to adjust to being here where there's been a different approach to infection control. When I am free to go public in nine days time, I will indeed need to be alert to the differences.  I remember how I felt the first couple of times I ventured out legitimately during and after lock-down in Ibiza. It takes a little time to regain confidence. That's not a bad thing. It's a matter of looking out for others as well as yourself in the best way possible.

Finally, I started work on transcribing the travel diary Clare and I wrote on our first visit to Greece for a three week backpacking holiday in the summer of 1967. I took it with me to work on in Ibiza but never took it out of my suitcase with too many other things to think about. Now in quarantine, I have leisure and quiet. We were abroad for thirty three days. I had forgotten that ten days were occupied with travelling there and back by train and ferry. With good connections the same journey today could be done in two days, and ten hours door to door by 'plane. Will there be a return to overland travel with huge question marks over air travel post pandemic? I wonder.

I've had phone calls from Kath, Rachel and Owain today wishing me a happy Father's Day. It makes me realise how blessed I am to have such lovely grown up children and enjoy their company.

State of Alarm - day Forty Four

An episcopal encyclical arrived with yesterday's emails, detailing carefully the measures and safety procedures which will need to be implemented when public worship can be resumed. Already a few chaplaincies of the diocese in Europe have this prospect approaching quite soon. Sadly, not while I'm in Spain, I think. More than half of the chaplaincy members I won't get around to meeting let alone celebrating with, live in church. The state must first decide it's possible to manage a modest degree of free movement, and resume select business activities to get the economy moving, then conditions may be safe enough to start risk minimised public worship. 

Once congregations are given permission to gather again publicly by government and the Bishop, Churchwardens and sides-persons will have their work cut out to plan and make arrangements for a sanitized liturgical environment, complying with social distancing. What will hit congregations hard is the extreme restriction if not actual banning of collective singing, even in socially distanced environments. This is to minimise exhaled air vapour carrying coronavirus particles far enough for another to inhale them. Bio-security clearance certificates for worshippers wanting to gather is also contemplated, along with several smaller services with people more spread out. With many people getting used to watching on-line services, and finding they have a choice of offerings to suit their taste, deterrents to traditional forms of church service are fast stacking up.

Preparation for any church worship gathering will be a really big effort that no cleric could manage on their own. This was often the norm before covid19 when priests regularly took several services a day, supported by a minimum of church officers, either in the same or other venues, so the faithful could conveniently be served with Word and Sacrament. That's just how it was, the status quo coram plaga. It'll be quite a while before things could be the same again. Maybe they never will be the same again. The impact on how Christians worship and share faith is now changing at a pace unimaginable in the fifty years since churches worldwide were rocked by radical liturgical change and innovation for the first time since the Reformation five centuries ago.

At the same time we face again the same kind of issues as were current then. Fear of contagion even before law enforcement has prevented people from attending public worship and receiving Communion. During lock-down, watching services on-line has served as a replacement, and people have had to get used to the idea of receiving spiritual communion instead. That's how it was before the Reformation, watching services performed up in the sanctuary behind a screen from the distance of the nave!

Frequent reception of Communion may have started to wane when Christianity became a religio licita of the Empire in Constantine's day, and worship in public buildings on a big scale became the norm. Plagues happened in those days too, and Communion in the form of wine from the chalice began to be restricted or modified by using intinction instead, before eventually Communion from the Cup was limited to officiating clergy.  

Withholding the chalice from the laity may be less to do with the presumed assertion of clerical privileged status than an early health and safety precaution. At the Reformation, however, restoring the Cup the the laity was regarded by some as a key issue, along with restoring frequent Communion as in the primitive church. Changes in the pattern of worship to facilitate easier access to Communion in both kinds took place, but it didn't result in a resumption of the ancient church status quo, despite the exhortations of many reformers. 

Rather than celebrate the Eucharist with only a priest and maybe his assistant communicating,  a service of the Word became the Sunday norm for reformed churches. Several Communion Sundays were designated in the year, and these were made obligatory to attend by state if not church law.  This didn't work either. The idea of the sacrament expressing the 'sacred in the ordinary' which had been part of its Jewish origins had been corrupted by a persistent pagan idea of sacred things with magical powers. Biblical and historical scholarship made possible a return to ancient practice in the 19th century. First the Roman Catholic Church began an movement encouraging more frequent Communion, then Anglicans followed in the early 20th century with the introduction of the Parish Communion as the Sunday worship norm. After four centuries of delay the reformers' ambitions were finally realised. 

By the 1970s  radical demise of all services of the Word set in, not just due to the desire for more frequent Communion. Evening telly put an end to Parish Evensong, Matins was replaced by the Eucharist. Ironically, at the same time, decline in vocations led to fewer priests being obliged to take more Communion services. This is still the case, despite non-stipendiary and women clergy redressing the balance to some extent. The law of unintended consequences led us to a point where the church is over dependent on clergy expertise and sacramental liturgy.  

Now the pandemic has put us in a position where churches have to revert to services of the Word without sacramental communion being possible or just making people spectators of liturgical ritual, as happened before the reformation - as it may have been for maybe the greater part of Christian history. What a strange turn of affairs! Where do we go from here? If desire to attend frequent public worship and receive sacramental Communion is supplanted by habitual consumption of worship services on-line, where will this lead God's people? "In the 21st century" said Karl Rahner in my youth "Christians will either be mystics, or they will be nothing at all." I wonder what he would have made of internet consumer religion?

Well, pondering on these things and writing about them on a warm sunny day meant that it was gone three when I finally stepped out on to the terrace to start my day's walk. With more interruptions and an unexpected spell of snoozing mid-afternoon, it was after sunset before I finished. I hope I can summon enough energy to stay the course and get home. It's a bit like hitting 'the wall' when running a marathon. I've been there twice before. Glad it's forty years since then, and not my next challenge!

State of Alarm - day Thirty Four

Twenty one degrees today, sunny but cloudy, and there were rumbles of thunder in the afternoon. For the first time I noticed a procession of tiny ants along my daily walking path. That'll please the lizards I imagine. I've seen even more lizards around the place today, a dozen and a half, especially smaller, younger brown ones, agile and moving very quickly.

After breakfast, I edited together the audio files of the readings which I received for tomorrow's Ministry of the Word, and once the first half was complete, I re-recorded the half of the service that uses the words of the Eucharist, and got both off to Dave by early evening. 

I restated at the start of the Lord's supper that it's possible to let familiar words awaken prayerful imagination, when we are not gathered to share bread and wine person to person. I realise this isn't easy for some, and there are mixed messages delivered from online services. As there's no single model approach, there is a risk of confusion. 

In some cases a priest can broadcast a live Eucharist from home, or an adjacent chapel as they don't live alone. For others that's not possible, so a service of the Word is offered perhaps with prayers for making a Spiritual Communion. A service of the Word is effectively what I do too, except for using familiar eucharistic prayers slightly adapted, to guide listeners to where they can make their own act of Spiritual Communion in silence, rather than use an adopted formula. 

Churches and clergy everywhere are experimenting with this, as it's never happened before. I believe it's good for us to have to think and work outside the usual frame of reference. I'm so grateful to participate in this process, not just observe from the sidelines, as I would be if I was back home in isolation.    

This afternoon I finally got around to filling the house water cistern. This involves visiting the pump house 25m beyond the finca boundary to power up the machine which lifts up water from the artesian well and sends it across the garden through a heavy duty hose, rising over the garden path and into the cistern three metres up the wall. 

My first attempt was a failure, the machine was drawing power from the mains, but I couldn't hear it working, and when I returned to the house, could feel neither vibration from the movement of water rising in the pipe, nor the faint buzz of an electric pump. I texted Rosi, and she confirmed that I'd followed the procedure properly. 

I returned to the pump house and repeated the start routine, and this time, the ammeter needle displayed ten times the previous amount of power being drawn by the pump. Back at the house, I felt faint vibration in the hose, then the more energetic sensation of the head of water as it reached me and established a flow. Half an hour later the cistern was as full as the day I arrived. I was nervous about making a mess of it and being stranded without water, so this success made my day. 

I felt so grateful to look down into the full tank that I said a blessing prayer over the water. Well, it's the sort of thing that happens in Eastertide anyway, when remembering our baptism, so why not?