Reformation heroes

As I arrived at St George's this morning, on my way to celebrate the mid-week Eucharist, there was a crowd of three dozen youngsters flocking around the Cemetery gatehouse, just arrived with their teachers for a tour by way of a history lesson. Annoyingly, I'd left the church keys in my raincoat pocket, so couldn't open the church, so had to wait with the couple who'd come for the service for Rosella's arrival, as she had a set of keys. A little too late, I learned that the gatehouse manager also has a set of church keys. Now I know, for another time!

He and the school party followed me up to the church, and he gave them the introductory talk about the history of the cemetery, at first in good English, but reverting to Spanish when he realised that he was losing some of the kids. Then, I found it hard to follow him in Spanish as he spoke at normal pace, too fast for me. They were obviously having a good time, and several of them made an effort to greet me, and a few requested the whereabouts of the toilet, which was good Spanish practice for me. One of the teachers told me they were from a Torremolinos school, and that the class included a group of German kids on an exchange visit. Perhaps partly the reason for starting by addressing the group in English, as German teenagers would have more of a grasp of English at their age, as they'd have started Spanish later. Ah, proper education!

Today's celebration commemorated Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, along with William Tyndall, my cultural heroes of the English reformation, Tyndall because of his seminal Biblical translation work, Cranmer because of his liturgical translations and innovative thinking behind the creation of the Book of Common Prayer both in 1549 and 1552 versions. Both of them lost their lives, because of their invaluable contributions to worship in our mother tongue, both of them politically murdered, in my opinion. 

I made a point of using the Common Worship Eucharistic Prayer C in traditional language, as this is the closest CW gets to his original 1545 oeuvre. Throughout the service, I could see groups of kids outside, freely exploring and enjoying being out of the classroom for a change. I was amused earlier when one of the local lads asked me how much the church was worth. Son of an estate agent? I wondered.

The four of us attending the Eucharist stayed on for Bible study, then I had to make haste back to the apartment to eat lunch before driving to Velez Malaga for their afternoon Bible study. I only just succeeded in arriving on time as I needed to get some petrol on my way there. There were seven of us for this week's session, and we finished off in a cafe across the main road. I was charged with the task of checking documents for a Safeguarding vetting application for a churchwarden new last year, and the process had for various reasons been delayed. It's a not infrequent issues for office holders in expatriate communities, it seems.

Then back to Malaga, and a fresh attempt to find another of the routes down from the A7 autovia to the Paseo Maritime. It's good to know about them all, as there can so easily be traffic diversions or congestion in a particular spot. The one I found today descends into Pedregalejo, the next commune along to the east along the coast from La Malagueta. The last kilometre or so is down a winding and steep road to a set of traffic lights, so sometimes there can be long queues to get out on to the Paseo Maritime. Next time I go to Velez, I'll have to explore this route in the opposite direction, although it's not going to be quite as straightforward.

   

Finishing off, ready to go

We walked through the slush to St Catherine's for the Sunday 10.30 Sung Eucharist, for which I was due to celebrate and preach. The roof has sprung a couple of leaks due to valley gutters overloaded with melting snow. Surprisingly, given recent weather there were over forty adults and a dozen children. The choir of eight sang a couple of anthems, rehearsed at the last minute, refusing to let bad weather be an excuse for not making the effort. The change of pace this last few days with people either getting extra rest or additional activity out walking or sledging, seems to have contributed to a good mood all round. 

I had a late night call from Gail last night asking for help in supplying an extract of recorded music which Mike in a diary entry last year said he'd love to have at has funeral, as it was so serene and beautiful. William Croft was a seventeenth century English church music composer, who turned the scripture settings of the Book of Common Prayer Burial Office into a collection of choir anthems. One of them, I remember us singing at Holy Trinity Geneva twenty years ago: 'Remember O Lord not our offences', but the opening processional sentences which Mike loved, I didn't know, but well understand why he thought so highly of them.

Finding a suitable recording to use wasn't a problem, but acquiring it to burn to a single use CD was more of an issue. It's years since I last did something like this, using the free Open Source 'Audacity' sound editing software. I simply couldn't recall how to go about this, and needed to Google for vital instructions. It may be years before I need to do this again, and be then will probably have forgotten how to do it, or suitable software will have changed beyond recognition.

Today it rained, clearing much of the remaining snow from the pavement and roads. We even had a short sunny spell. The shops are struggling to re-stock, as the supply chain routine is still being disrupted by weather in other places. Any company that has over- centralised its warehousing on the grounds of cost saving efficiency must be questioning the ultimate wisdom of this, for if central hub or road network grind to a halt nothing can be distributed, and meanwhile, shops that manage to stay open are emptied of food. Bigger is not always better. Heaven help the country in any period of real prolonged crisis, with road and rail networks paralysed.

Owain came over to see us for a couple of hours this afternoon. As he walks to work, he was able to go into the office and carry on as usual. He always takes Mondays off and does his week's worth of work in four days. He's just been given another contract extension, and while he's relieved about this it doesn't prevent him continuing the hunt for a permanent job. He's been with DVSA long enough to be entitled to be considered for a permanent post, and while they'd find it hard to manage without him there no certainty that he'll be considered for one, let alone offered a job, as he's a specialist 'contractor' to the department he works in. 

The agency has a budgeted employment spend to meet set targets. Established employee numbers aren't enough to cover the workload, but there's a discretionary budget for hiring 'temporary' workers to cover the excess plus special projects, some of which are long term undertakings. All this policy achieves is to rob some workers of the security of a permanent civil service post, no matter how good they are. Public spending cuts lead to budget revision, regardless of workload - making bricks out of straw, I call it. This, in its turn, makes for added insecurity among the workers. Governmental sleight of hand I call it. Owain is philosophical about the situation. It's been like this since he graduated. Our children deserve as good if not better than their parents. How were we so short sighted to allow this to happen?

The evening was devoted to packing for my trip, but first, I had to finish the last two episodes of 'Before we die', another excellent ten part Scandi-crime drama series in the Channel 4 'Walter Presents' show-case. The way it ended seemed fairly conclusive, although there was just enough unfinished business to hint at a possible second series, if a budget can be found, I guess. 

It met mixed reviews portraying the complex relationships between a mother working in the crime squad and her initially wayward son, who is actually risking his life as an informant employed by a Balkan criminal family with a tragic history and ambitions to run Sweden's illicit drug trade. It's rather low key, understated, though there are occasional excitements. Most importantly, it maintains a level of dramatic tension throughout, due to the danger the son exposes himself to willingly to earn his mother's respect, without her knowing about it until half way through the story. 

I was motivated to complete watching the story before my departure, as wretched digital rights management restrictions make it impossible to view this channel for free abroad. Even so, both bags were packed and I was in bed early for once. Is this a record for me?

   

A visit to Carboneras, and a saint discovered.

I rose early, washed some clothes, wrote a St Luke's Day sermon for Thursday's sermon at  the Roquetas de Mar service, then wrote another one after lunch for next Sunday, around Cranmer's Bible Sunday Collect. It was one of the first Prayer Book Collects I ever learned off by heart, when I was a student. 

I became familiar with it in making bible study part of my Christian rule of life. Then in my last undergraduate year, a group at St Paul's University Chaplaincy church put on the play by Charles Williams entitled 'Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury', all about the man whose creative mind devised the English Book of Common Prayer, first issued in 1549. I had a small part in it. This particular Collect was quoted in the play, and I've remembered it ever since. Many Anglican Collects are his translation from the Latin, though some were original compositions for occasions not provided for by the old Roman rite. Anyway, it's nice to have an opportunity to make use of it in preaching as well as prayer.

At the end of the afternoon, I drove down to the Ermita de San Pascual which we use for Sunday services in Mojacar, to collect wafers and wine for the travelling Communion kit I must take with me to Roquetas de Mar. Looking at the church notice board on the way out, I noticed that the chapel is dedicated to San Pascual Baylon, something I'd not learned from Google Maps, someone I'd never heard of. 

I googled him when I eventually got back, and discovered he was a Spanish Friar, born in 1540 as the protestant reformation was sweeping through northern Europe. His family were poor peasants, and he struggled to learn to read to pursue a lie of devotion, while he was growing up as a shepherd boy. Eventually, at 24 he joined a Franciscan contemplative community, where he lived a life of prayer in ascetic poverty, dying aged 44. He's associated with the practice of sacramental adoration, and is patron saint of Catholic Eucharistic congress gatherings. There, that's something I didn't know when I woke up this morning.

I then drove on down the coast road in search of the next coastal town, Carbonera, signposted from Mojacar but with no indication of the distance. In fact, it's as far from the Ermita, as the Ermita is from the chaplaincy apartment, altogether 22km.

Sight unseen, this turned out not to be an easy drive. The road is safe, modern, well built and well maintained, but every kilometre offers its own surprises. It undulates, rises and falls 2-300metres, and is full of sinuous and sometimes banked curves, crossing ramblas and steep ravines, passing through high hills in deep cuttings. Most of the way, you drive through the Cabo de Gata - Nijar Parque Natural, reputed for its bird life and stunning mountain beauty. It's the latter that makes this so difficult to drive. When you're driving up from the shore, the line of the highway ascending so steeply make you wonder if you can succeed in the journey. There are few places to stop safely, and so much to see it's a constant struggle to stay focused on the road. Thankfully, out of season there's little traffic.

This is another region with a geological history of great turbulence, where different historical rock strata are fractured and mixed up like the inside of a marble cake. In some road cuttings, there were vertical layers of rock in pink, yellow and grey, with a softer adjacent bed of black slate so crumbly it looked like a South Wales Valleys coal tip. Hillside vegetation cover is rich in colour, and in the same area you see several different coloured soils exposed, similar colours in rocky outcrops also. These colours aren't vivid, but muted, in contrast with the more intense green, yellow and orange of vegetation. It's a road I'd loved to have been able to linger on and take lots of photographs, but there was no safe opportunity. There's no walking route on this stretch of road, to even consider a photo shoot expedition. I need to go again with someone else driving. 

Carboneras is a old fishing village transformed into a holiday resort, its long sandy beaches fringed with palm trees, with an unpretentious mixture of businesses and eateries across the narrow shoreline road. It has a world wide reputation as one of the places where the production team for the movie 'Lawrence of Arabia' was based. Several of its scenes were shot nearby. On the edge of the main plaza there's a bronze statue which resembles Peter Finch wearing Arab garb, plus a commemorative plaque. This experience is still well remembered by many of the older generation of the town's 8,000 strong population.

Beyond to the south of town is a small port with a fishing fleet and leisure marina. Beyond that, at the far end of the bay, a cement factory scars the skyline, and there's a ceramic works too. Also the town boasts one of the largest water de-salination plant in Europe. It's a place to visit for a quiet beach holiday, but while seasonal tourism is beneficial to the economy, mineral industries are still a mainstay, as in several other places I've noticed along the costas.

The Castillo de San Andres in the plaza opposite the ajuntamiento, dating back to the 16th century, at a time when the Moors rose up against the Catholic kingdom. In the 17th and 18th century, the coast of Almeria province was plagued by pirates, so this remained in use as a garrison fortress, protecting a thinly populated mountainous coastal region.

On the road north out of Carboneras are a several large urbanizaciones, and an impressive cliffside hotel complex under construction, though whether it will ever be completed is questionable, given the continued impact of recession on the Spanish holiday industry. Along the costas stand the ugly shells of many half finished construction projects, some contentious and illegally started. Nobody has the funds, either to complete or to demolish and restore the landscape. Beauty spots can be as blighted by failed products of the building industry as they can be by traditional industries which are still contributing to the region's economy.

The journey back was a lot easier as I knew what to expect, and spotted places to stop. Suffice it to say that I'm looking forward to another more extensive drive along the coast road, knowing there's so much more to discover.

   

Prayer Book reminiscences

This morning I celebrated the Maundy Thursday Eucharist at St John's Canton for a dozen people, thus setting the Parish clergy free to attend the Bishop's Chrism Mass at the Cathedral. This is an important occasion in the year for bonding between the bishops and their full time clerics, I'm happy to support them in this way, plus I get to use the 1984 Church in Wales equivalent of the Book of Common Prayer, the substance of which dates back to revision which began in 1966, just before I entered St Mike's. It's the traditional element of worship that defined my generation, one we moved away from in successive modernising revisions and return to for a sense of continuity. After a lifetime advocating modernisation and liturgical renewal, I still know it off by heart and enjoy being leading a congregation which is still at home with it.

As a student we studied the English Book of Common Prayer, the 'Urtext' of Anglicanism, translated first into Welsh in 1567. I got to use it once or twice a month in English for the first time after becoming priest in charge of St Paul with St Barnabas in Bristol in 1978. The other churches in the St Paul's area were already into modernising liturgical innovation when I arrived there, Advent 1975. Once I became Team Rector of Halesowen in 1989, I learned it by heart, having to use it weekly at the eight o'clock Communion, and other occasions. The classic register of liturgical English is as familiar to me as the modern. Likewise the language of the first post-Vatican II Missal of the Roman Church, from my days in an ecumenical university chaplaincy team over forty years ago. So many good experiences to give thanks for.

After lunch at home, I went into the office for a while before making my way on foot again over to St Germans for the evening Eucharist of the Lord's Supper. Having preached four times this week so far, ad extempore, I thought that I'd at least prepare some notes to contain my homily safely. After working on this for a quarter of an hour, MS Word crashed on me and the document eluded recovery - such an unusual occurrence, and I will read nothing into it - so I had to extend my extemporising run, although this was a little easier as I had done this in the morning Eucharist also. It's funny, I'm unused to feeling quite so unsafe when preaching. Trouble is, I'm far too used to vetting my own work before delivery.

The Eucharist was conducted with a full team of servers and catholic solemnity, with the sacrament in a monstrance for adoration for the Watch of the Passion at the end. This something I know is customary in some places, though not universally practised. It's certainly the first time I've ever had to do it, and I'm none the worse for that, although I felt tired afterwards, and left the others to set things straight after the stripping of the altars, and went straight home.