Bright St Agnes day

A couple of clear bright sunny days to start the week, perfect for walking, whether going out to do the weekly shopping, or enjoying the parks. Fr Rhys came on Monday evening to certify my passport photocopy ready for the Spanish police check application. I downloaded the Form 790 from the web, but found it worryingly different from a UK equivalent because of its legal terminology and structure that I'm not sure I'd be able to fill it in correctly to obtain a result. I think I need help with this.

St Agnes' day today, a fiesta with happy memories from my days working in St. Paul's Bristol, as Vicar of St Agnes Parish Church. It's the only one of the four parish churches in the area still open and active today, very much adapted to different circumstances in the forty years since I moved on.

This morning I did an hour long CofE on-line safeguarding training module, part of what diocese in Europe requires for renewing my PTO. It reminded me to enquire of the Bishop's Chaplain about the same for the diocese of Llandaff. It seems there are several in the pipeline. I hope they happen before I go away or after my return.

This afternoon, I was out just at the right time to catch a family of six red-wings out foraging in the avenue near the riding school, in exactly the same location where I saw them several years ago. Several families of long tail tits, plus a couple of coal tits were in the branches of the avenue of trees leading down to the Taff. There was a solitary missel thrush out in the middle of the football pitch to the north of the path, again where I've seen one several times before. 

The most wonderful sight was, however, several hundred starlings feeding closely together in the same area of grass in the middle of the same pitch. There were dog walkers circulating around the edge of the field, and every now and then the movement or sound of the dogs caused all the birds to rise into the air, travel a short distance and then settle again to feed in another densely packed area of grass. Once or twice, when the alignment of the flock was right, I heard the brief low hum of all those wings, a hundred and fifty years away. Exquisite!

The mystery of change

I was on duty in Catherine's again this chilly morning celebrating the eight o'clock Eucharist with five others, and then after breakfast made my way to St German's via Lidl's in East Tyndal Street, so that I didn't have to call in there later on my way home. Thirty of us celebrated St Agnes Day in style, and it gave me an opportunity to recall the work of the parish mission outreach centres set up right across the southern arc of Cardiff Bay during its period of rapid population growth and industrial expansion in the nineteenth century. 

Contemporary parishes have far fewer resources or wealthy patrons nowadays, to undertake so many ambitious community projects, more than a dozen in new areas of artisan dwellings. Today churches may still take the right kind of initiative, focusing on current areas of need and social vulnerability, but in partnership with local government and big voluntary agencies more often than not. It's a much more difficult task to bring to fruit. It's a great achievement that St German's parish hall can function as an elderly persons' day centre during the week, offering different services to people in the locality and further afield. This represents decades of imaginative hard work.

After the Mass there was a delicious three course festive lunch attended by thirty people in the parish hall, which I stayed for, a real church family affair. I was delighted Father Roy came along and joined us, as it gave us an opportunity to catch up on the news. He's still very much part of the church family here despite being retired nearly five years.

Someone asked me over lunch if I'd been at the Cathedral yesterday for Jo Penberthy's consecration as Bishop for St David's diocese. I had to admit that I knew it was going to happen, but didn't know when, until I saw photos on Facebook yesterday afternoon. All too often these days, momentous events in the life of the church flow past without me noticing. There's not much a retired cleric can contribute, without any voting franchise, power or responsibility, apart from blessing and approving good things when they happen. 

I suppose I might notice if anything seriously retrograde happened in the affairs of the church. There are always going to be minor set-backs. I remain stubbornly convinced that the evolution of the church in faithful response to the changing environment in each succeeding era will continue at its own pace, the pace the Holy Spirit sets. In my lifetime, a paradigm shift took place in relation to the participation of women in ordained ministry. I wonder if we're in the throes of turmoil leading up to another paradigm shift and change of consensus about the nature of the church, ministry and authority? One which can take us in new directions in seeking to realise the reign of God over humankind.  

There'll always be some believers who sincerely believe they have the whole truth and nothing but the truth before God. They'll cling to it and fight for it naturally, and risk becoming prisoners to their own sense of truth. I believe in the possibility of absolute truth, that all may get glimpses of it from time to time. I also believe the totality of truth is veiled from us, utterly mysterious, only as knowable as God permits us to be conscious of it. I believe we're explorers on a journey in which reality and truth keep on being revealed only as much as we're capable of receiving and using to grow in relation to God. 

All this, I believe, because of what God did for us through Jesus and the gift of the Spirit. We question what we know and trust of divine revelation, we question ourselves as the questioners too. It's how we get ourselves beyond illusion to the place of unknowing where the mystery of being and God awaits us.

    

Inauguration Day avoidance

I had a meeting arranged this morning at St Catherine's with members of a bereaved family, to prepare for a funeral there in ten days time. When I went to unlock and let them in, I realised that none of the keys on the bunch I'd been given fitted the lock. I had to apologise, and go looking for the correct key. An hour later, we met again and start again. The family asked for a choir to sing at the service, as they thought nobody in the congregation would want to. On a working weekday, this is a difficult request to respond to. Children in choirs are at school, and many church choir singers will beat work, otherwise busy in retirement with a kinds of assignment. After last night's concert experience I looked at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama website and saw they have a variety of singers and musicians for hire. So I suggested the family approach the College administrator to see what might be possible.

It's a reflection of the times we live in that there aren't enough people active in church music making to ask if they could be free to fulfil a request like this, for which four to six people would be needed. We are fortunate to have a musical centre of excellence in the city. Yesterday, the funeral director I rode home with from Thornhill Crematorium, praised the contribution made to a funeral he'd conducted of a young harpist from the College. I hope their musicians will be able to help us on this occasion.

After the meeting I returned home and prepared the funeral service and emailed it to a family member, for information, and wrote a sermon for Sunday. At St German's, we'll be observing St Agnes Day, as the Parish once had a mission church dedicated to her, and still has a chapel with a St Agnes altar with an image of her, which will take pride of place in the nave during the Mass. It's a celebration that also means a lot to me, as my first incumbency in the St Paul's Area of East Bristol made me Vicar of St Agnes Church. This parish was founded as a mission to the artisan community by Clifton College on the other smarter side of the city, which served as a centre for education and community service of great distinction in the late Victorian era. 

There's a similarity between the inhabitants of that part of Bristol and Adamsdown in the same period of history. Virgin martyrs honoured in the ancient Roman Canon of the Mass became, appeared in the dedications used in the outreach centres of the late Victorian church, as exemplars and role models of courage, dignity and faith, perhaps specifically directed to poor downtrodden women settlers in urban squalor, to encourage them to value themselves in God's eyes, and strive to make something good of their lives. And this was happening in the period that saw the rise of the suffragette movement.

For most of the day I avoided the news, and went for a longish walk around the park, enjoying the blue sky and sunshine, even more pleasant now sunset is nearly an hour later than it was before Christmas. I had no desire to watch the American Presidential Inauguration, being robbed of its inner worth and dignity by a man who has such contempt for the record of his predecessor and those of a host of wise and experienced people whose lifelong work has been in public service. They may not have been that successful at solving all of the many complex social and economic problems which have best the world over the past ten years of recession, but that's no reason to pour contempt upon them or dishonour them. Trump too will be judged by his record, and who knows what his disruptive unpredictable approach to governance might achieve for better or for worse in the coming years. God help America to survive with integrity and justice all that follows from here.

Urdu BCP discovery

This morning, the car was covered with a thick white frost. I drove to St German's for the midweek Mass without incident. We celebrated St Agnes' Day, a day early, one of the Parish patron saints, as it was the main church dedication of my first Parish in Bristol. No school class attended this week, perhaps because staff had experienced trouble getting into work on time, given how icy it might be out of town. It struck me this time how contemporary is the story of this fourth century teenage martyr. The prospect of a forced marriage, and what was from another angle the Roman equivalent of an honour killing, after she refused to recant her faith, or to marry as required. These are still themes that are being encountered across the world today. Civilasation? The human race is still lacks it, despite our pretence to sophistication.

Afterwards, I transferred to Hamid's phone a .pdf file of the Book of Common Prayer translated into Urdu Latin script for him to explore. It was something I'd found in Google's free digital text library, scanned from a hard copy in a California library. It really needs some editing to make it easier to navigate, and I must print out some of its texts for him to be able to read more easily. 

A more modern Sunday Missal in Urdu I have so far not succeeded in tracking down. But it's a start, and an important one, as the BCP is such a great milestone in the history of vernacular religious texts, available to everyone. I imagine it will read as more quainly and exotic than any contemporary biblical translation, but it its deeply biblical content says a great deal about Anglicanism as an expression of Christian discipleship, everyone needs to be acquainted with in some measure.

I then took the car back to the garage for checking, and walked to the CBS office to put in a few hours before returning home. At the end of the afternoon, Clare said the garage had been in touch and had reported a cylinder head gasket had gone. Not surprising given the succession of recent overheatings due to a leak I failed to deal with. She gave them the go-ahead straight away, but we will be without the car for several days, and it won't be a cheap repair either. Ah well, we made a decision to stick with the car for now, and the consequences are unavoidable.

     

St Agnes Day

I drove through slow heavy traffic to Radyr this morning to celebrate the midweek Eucharist at Christchurch. Before we started I told them something about St Agnes, whose martyrdom in Rome at the end of the third century the church celebrates this day. A young teenager, whose love for Christ and the Gospel led her to resist an arranged marriage to a pagan noble, at the cost of her life. It's 40 years since I became Vicar of St Agnes in Bristol. The story doesn't lose its relevance or interest, as it's about a girl defying the common assumptions of her age about the status and expectations of women. Several people commented about this at coffee after the service. The story of Malala Yusouf is still fresh in peoples' minds.

I arrived home, and got ready for the Ignatian meditation group, meeting chez nous today. It was my turn to lead, and I focussed on Discernment, and Russel's question last Friday: What am I meant to be doing next?  It's still the question uppermost in my mind. Apart from another spell of  locum duty in Spain after Easter I have no other plans or projects to focus upon for the time being. It leaves me feeling uncomfortable and restless. It's not that I need lots of activity, just a sense of focus to give an added structure and discipline to life.

My new 'geriatric' driving license had arrived in the mail, a quick and efficient turn around in just a week. Well done DVLA for being so efficient!