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!

Orthodox memories

I celebrated the Eucharist in honour of Saints Simon and Jude for the Wednesday congregation at St German's this morning. No school class present as it's half term this week. It aroused memories for me of starting work in the St Paul's Area in Bristol as Team Rector of St Agnes and St Simon with St Werburgh this autumn, forty years ago. This day was one specially observed in the Parish, as the benefice in post war years had absorbed the neighbouring parish of St Simon and there were still a few St Simon's people attending St Agnes. The redundant church had been given to Bristol's Greek Orthodox community, and I'd discovered this in my first year as a University student, as part of my ecumenical education. The impression made on me by taking part in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom for the first time was profound and lasting, a landmark moment in my spiritual journey. 

At that service I met Fr Nicholas Behr, newly ordained Russian Orthodox Deacon, just arrived in the city with a mission to grow a congregation among groups of Slavic speaking exiles. We became friends and over subsequent years the conversations we had about our different kinds of Christian tradition showed me how much I'd actually absorbed about Anglican Christianity, from attending church and listening to full content sermons from a priest who really cared. All part of my journey towards ordination.

Within years Fr Nicholas had acquired a church across the street from the University refectory and had grown a Russian Orthodox church congregation, which now has a couple of dozen nationalities among its members. The Greek church flourishes too, having survived the almost total devastation of its neighbourhood, due to the creation of a motorway junction right next to it. With its local parish population decimated, only an eclectic linguistic minority group was in a position to keep it open. The church spire lost its weather-vane and top section in the late eighties and was capped, giving it a distinctive profile in the town-scape, just south of the Ashley Road junction.

I rarely went to the Greek Church, even for social purposes, after I became Vicar, but I kept in touch with Fr. Nicholas and occasionally attended services and sang in his English liturgy choir. Once, I persuaded him to celebrate Vespers in St Agnes as part of our Unity Week observances. We had good relations with local Roman Catholics and local Methodists were partners with us in an Ecumencial Area of Experiment, as it was then called. We also had several afro-caribbean Christian groups in the area, and St Agnes occasionally offered them hospitality, also a tiny group of Latvian Lutherans, a legacy of wartime exiles in the city. It was a time of rich ecumenical and inter-faith experiences that was the richest of my entire ministry.

Recollection in Bristol

Another visit to St German's this morning to sing the Solemn Mass. Nice to have a late relaxed start to my Sunday. I was asked if I'd be willing to cover more regular duties during Fr Dean's absence, and said yes for three of the four Sundays of the coming month. October Sundays are already fully booked, though nothing beyond that so far.

We drove over to Bristol to see Amanda and James after lunch, and Owain came and joined us, which was delighful. He told us all about his visit to Bristolian artist Banksy's Dismaland Bemusement Park in Weston super Mare, and showed us photos he'd taken on his 'phone. He said how much he'd laughed, how much it made him think, with its hard-hitting satirical social critique of modern consumer society, ruthlessly mocking the fantasy escapist ethos of Disneyworld, and reminding the audience of the many horrors of injustice and violence which mar the contemporary world. 

We also reminisced about life in St Agnes Vicarage when Amanda came to live with us, Owain was a toddler, thirty five years ago and there were aspects of life in the St Paul's area that had some of the bemusing characteristics of Banksy's Dismaland. We drove him back to his place in Redfield on our way home, passing through the edge of St Paul's, down Ashley Hill. Superficially, it all looks less run down now than it did in those days, but looks can deceive, Owain suggested. 

It's thirty three years since we left the St Paul's area, for me to do the career break R.E. teacher training course, which made an adult educator of me, rather than a schoolmaster. Two years later, I bought my first home computer, and a decade before the internet became public property, slowly found my way into understanding the coming digital era and what it meant for society as well as science. 

Sixteen years earlier, as an undergraduate researching data to back my final year Chemistry project in Bristol University, I awakened to the important potential of the development of Information Science, then in its infancy, and the use of computers as its tools. The data processing mainframe computers of those days filled a large room, yet my Amstrad CPC 464 in 1984 was just as powerful, if not more so. How much further have computers and information technology come in the thirty years since then, and the world is such a different place due to what can now be achieved for better or worse through data processing of every kind.

Planning mishap

Last Thursday, we learned through a third party with local ecumenism at heart, that the Almuñecár Catholic parish council had take a decision to re-arrange service times to meet increased holiday season demand by an hour earlier start at the Fishermen's chapel Anglicans use, without considering the impact, or consulting us. The arrangement was made while the new parish priest was on holiday. But there's no guarantee that if he'd been there to question the change, he'd have remembered an arrangement that's been in place for the past twenty years, simply because he's new and not yet fully familiar with parish commitments. 

Así es la vida! Committees, like individuals, suffer from amnesia when there is no reason to recall the full facts on the ground. For a number of years there have been no Almuñecár services in August, but this year, it's July and August, with just a few days warning to allow us to avoid an embarrassing encounter at our usual time of meeting for worship. There wasn't enough time to do anything else. In due course, suitably dignified representations will be exchanged between church hierarchies to review and restore the status quo, but in the meanwhile, all that's possible is contacting Almuñecár church members to let them know what's happened and re-direct them to the noon service at Nerja. 

This is what happens when there's little or no social contact between the indigenous church and the linguistic religious minority groups that benefit from local parish hospitality. There are perhaps many points of contact between expats and their Spanish neighbours, but few of a religious nature, along which concerns of this nature might naturally flow. If it wasn't for the kind efforts of one Catholic expat of good will towards non-Catholic compatriates, there might have been a very awkward start to this Sunday's round of services.

My mind rolled back on similar situations thirty years ago, when a couple of the churches in the Saint Paul's Area Team Minstry in Bristol, which I led at that time, hosted black pentecostal congregations, either for occasional or regular services. They were appreciative, trustworthy, and left everything the way they found it - what more could one ask? But, every now and then, there'd be a special occasion when we'd need to use a church at a time when the other congregation would be booked in, and we'd forget ... There was plenty of mutual good-will, and we'd survive the awkward moment, but yet again there was little natural social contact between our congregations, and amnesia took over. Things like this will happen from now until the Second Coming because Church is a community of communities, still learning the real demands of that unity which Christ came to reveal.

So, this morning, no early trip to Almuñecár for a Eucharist. I enjoyed being able to walk to church after a relaxed late start, to find many of the Almuñecár regulars had arrived for the service. It was an occasion to commission several new Assistant Ministers of the Eucharist - entirely suitable that this should be done at an united chaplaincy service, by accident if not design.