Story of a street name

Much rain overnight and showers for much of the day. I went for my 'flu jab at the King's Road Pharmacy straight after breakfast. Mother Frances messaged me just after I got back, flagging up a strange anomaly in the Mailchimp distribution, with her personalised email addressed to Jesse, not to herself. A web-server glitch? Or a catastrophic mailing list database failure? No other complaints so far, or a simple data entry typo from some time in the past? Fortunately that's what had happened, I discovered when I examined the mailing list in detail. I couldn't edit the entry however, and ended up removing it, together with two other email addresses of people who have died, one of them a couple of years ago.

Clare bought a salmon for freezing from Ashton's in the market yesterday. While I was writing a sermon for Sunday, she cooked a lovely fish soup for lunch with the head and bones left from filleting. She had a flute lesson after lunch, so I went out for a walk. It started to rain, so I took shelter outside Cafe Castan and had a cup of coffee, waiting for the rain to stop, then walked to the other end of Llandaff Fields and caught a bus into town at the stop near the junction. The bus was crowded with students returning from college so I had to stand all the way into town.  

I visited John Lewis to see if there were any bargains to be had, and chatted with a young woman in the tech' section, wearing a Chromebook tee shirt and hovering around the display. She told me she'd not long returned from a year in Hungary as part of her business studies degree. Now she has the travel bug and is wondering where next to look for work. I think she was slightly surprised to learn I was an early adopter of the Chromebook over ten years ago. On balance, I use mine for everyday tasks more than I use my two Windows machines, which serve mainly for easy audio and video editing plus mailshots. I am thinking of buying a device with more RAM to use for running Linux apps, now that Chrome OS has been enhanced to make this possible, but before I do, I need to find out how feasible this would be. I'd certainly like to be able to use Linux again on a daily basis.

I caught the 25 bus to the top of Cathedral Road, then walked into the park before going home. There, I bumped into Peter and Jan walking their dogs, and we chatted for a while. Jan is a member of the Church in Wales electoral college which meets in the coming week to elect a new Bishop of St Davids. I wonder who will be elected? Jan says changes in electoral procedure are now in place that have improved the process, with preliminary briefing papers on prospective candidates available before a decision on nominating a voting short list is made. This is, I believe, intended to inform decision making and refine the selection of possible candidates with sufficient support to be electable in the ballot process. Let's hope it works as it's intended to.

Above, I mentioned Cathedral Road. Rufus told me yesterday how he learned about the origin of its name from Peter, who I met in the park this afternoon, when he was at St Mike's. Cathedral Road doesn't lead to Cathedral Road, and never did. It was named after the prestigious Victorian Welsh Presbyterian Church that still stands at the west end of the road. 

In the nineteenth century Welsh Calvinistic Methodism was a major force in the social development of urban industrial Wales, said whether true or not, to have enjoyed the adherence of half the population. This building was its most prominent in the capital city, but why call it a Cathedral when its pastoral oversight is performed by a council of elders, not a Bishop? 

French theologian Jean Calvin, caught up almost by chance in Geneva's independence struggles in the 1520's made a  major contribution to reforming church and society in the city state, advocating a new form of governance that didn't rely on episcopal hierarchy, but a council of church elders. Two centuries later his way of thinking was influential in the Methodist revival in Britain, and especially in Wales. Geneva's St Pierre Cathedral was one of only three churches which wasn't closed for worship at the time. It's a place where his memory is still honoured, a mother church of the protestant reformation. The road was named after the church building regarded as the Welsh equivalent of 'Calvin's Cathedral'. 

Sadly, in the last quarter of the twentieth century Welsh Calvinistic Methodism went into steep decline, losing almost all of its buildings. Ninety years after its opening in 1903, the congregation moved into the church hall and the main building was converted internally into three floors of offices. For fifteen years it was the headquarters of homelessness charity 'The Wallich'. It's now been acquired by Red Rose school, an independent special educational needs establishment. No longer a place of worship, but still very much in the service of vulnerable people, in the spirit of Calvinistic social thinking.

Clare was out when I got home. She'd gone to 'Amser Jazz' at the Royal Welsh College. I watched the news on telly, listened to the radio and waited for her to return so we could eat together. Then, this week's episode of Norwegian crimmie 'For Life' before turning in for the night.

Rehearsing in Llanilltud Fawr

Rain all day of varying intensity right into the evening. After breakfast we drove to Llantwit Major for a full rehearsal of the Fountain Choir concert we're going a week next Sunday, ten pieces of varying levels of difficulty, plus discussion of stage layout and acoustics and hospitality arrangements. Anna recruited a church member to look after ticketing and welcome arrangements. The programme should last about an hour. I'm still not utterly confident of myself, with so much Latin text and phrasing which challenges the habitual sense of rhythm, as it's early medieval music and some of the tunes are definitely dance measures. A lot more work to do then, in the next two weeks.

It was lovely to meet up with Father Edwin the Ministry Area Leader, for the first time since he preached at a funeral I attended in St German's a few years back. Having had a good long stint as a country Vicar, doubling up as Diocesan Director of Education, he's now pastor in chief of St Illtud's Parish Church, one of Wales' foundational sites, dating from the sixth century when Illtud established a monastery there which trained pastors for evangelising wherever they went within the travel reach of Celtic Christianity, in effect most of the western Atlantic seaboard Galicia, Britanny, Galway the Western Isles, if not beyond. He loved his involvement in schooling, and his eyes shine brightly with enthusiasm for the emerging potential of his remarkable everyday workplace. He's much loved.

Inevitably, with the retirement of Bishop June this week, the subject of electing her successor came up. He's one of the two electors I have known for many years. I made my pitch for choosing a candidate who is of the Church in Wales with a deep knowledge of our tradition and culture, both sacred and secular, not another import from the Established Church the other side of Offa's Dyke. The difference is an asset to be celebrated, and we're not short of people for the role in this time and place, women and men. In fact Edwin would himself be a suitable candidate, well known with a credible track record. But could he bear to part company with Llantwit, any more than Llantwit could bear to part company with him?

After the rehearsal five of us chatted over lunch together at the Two Swans pub, to far from the church. One Italian, two German and two Welsh, discussing the terms in respective languages for different coffee brews, after a remark about the appearance of lengthy coffee menus in some coffee shops in recent years. Well, the variety has always been there, but its systematisation in coffee bar menus is a phenomenon of the age we live in.

When we reached home there was nowhere to park the car in our street or in the wider neighbourhood. I ended up parking the other side of Thompson's Park with a ten minute walk in the rain back to the house. Any Saturday in the rugby international season the city is invaded by thousands of extra cars carrying fans and shoppers who would rather than than use the city's park and ride facilities use any space they can find in outlying residential areas. If you go out by car for a few hours shopping, you can expect to lose your space for the rest of the day, if not the weekend.

It continued to rain unrelentingly until late evening again, but I was determined to get some exercise, rain notwithstanding. I walked to Tesco's to get wine for the weekend, and then walked in Llandaff Fields for an hour. This required a change of rain gear, one lot sodden by the short walk to Tesco's, so on my second outing I used the free brolly received when I bought my latest pair of Ecco shoes. I've yet to find time to wear them indoors to find out if they fit as well as I thought they did in the shop.

After supper, I extracted the SIM and SD cards from my Blackberry and installed them in the new Moto phone. Both worked without issue. All that needed to be done was find my habitual ringtone and deploy it in the new phone to avoid any confusion at the moment of receiving a new call. I took me a while to work out how. Now Moto has replaced Blackberry and given me a fresh Android user interface which works well for me.

One surprise, on re-installing Duo Lingo on my new phone was a complete overhaul of the user interface, demanding that a rather lazy routine user like me face the challenge of learning new stuff and paying more attention rather than just going over new stuff. Now I know the big learning algorithm has been tracking me and found me out. It's rather fun, this kind of digital prod, especially as I ready myself for a spell of work in Fuengirola where I'll be able to get involved with the ecumenical social outreach work of Lux Mundi, some that that would be been unimaginable when I was last there eight years ago. Amazingly all things work together for good.

Disturbing church times

I walked to St St John's in the drizzle this morning to celebrate the eight o'clock Eucharist, rather than walk first to retrieve the car, parked in Greenfield Avenue where I'd been obliged to leave it overnight. On the journey, I collected a eleven pieces of litter, mostly cans and bottles, many of them discarded in the past couple of days. 

Meadow street was unusually full of cars over the weekend, with little movement in or out. This may have been a product of bad weather, and people watching the rugby internationals on TV at home rather than driving to a favourite pub. There was just one space free when I returned by car from St Germans some six hours later, after celebrating the Solemn Mass, followed by a baptism. By ten o'clock Monday morning eighty percent of the cars will have gone. Many working people live in our street and commute to work by car.

News that the episcopal election candidate Jeffrey John has not been included in the short-list drawn up for interview by the Bench of Bishops charged with making the appointment. He was two votes short of the necessary two thirds majority in the Electoral College vote, and the unanimous choice of Llandaff electors. I find this most disturbing. He seems to be feared by the Bishops as a potentially controversial candidate. He started ministry as a Llandaff ordinand, and the work he has done over the years marks him as an outstanding candidate. The fact that he is a celibate gay man in a committed stable civil partnership doesn't seem to have been a stumbling block for local electors, even though it seems to have been the reason for him being forced to withdraw from an appointment as Bishop of Reading, and passed over for Bishop of Southwark. 

The concern that he may not be acceptable as a bishop to a minority of traditionalist church leaders and faithful in Wales is one that can only be dispelled by making an appointment that challenges the reality behind the fear. In the past, traditionalist bishops outside of the UK have strongly objected to other gay appointments, and their threats to split the Anglican Communion over this issue, have been the cause of prolonged efforts at avoiding schism through dialogue. There is no formal schism so far, but many traditionalists continue loudly to denounce others who think differently from themselves, effectively admitting that living with differences of conviction is not their priority.

Jeffery is an outspoken liberal, and I wonder if he is quietly regarded by as being not 'orthodox' enough to be a mainstream bishop, as he's at risk of attracting allegations of heresy. It seems likely to me his views are no more un-traditional than positions held by many episcopal leaders, but it depends on who notices views expressed, whether in praise or condemnation. I wonder if fear of adding to polarisation between traditionalist and liberal tendencies is intoxicating the decision making of the Bench of Bishops at this time? How should the clergy and laity of the diocese respond if they think they have been disregarded? How can charitable behaviour prevail when the world, if not church members are sensing conflict in the air?
      

A day for protest and for prayer

After a slow morning start, I went to join a group of local people outside the Pontcanna Street local post office to demonstrate in protest at the impending closure of the Sub-Post Office, when the present license holder retires and the property is bought by the Co-operative. There were about twenty of us there and several people made placards and held them up for the Media Wales camera toting reporter who turned up to take pictures and interview local Councillor and spokesperson Iona Gordon, who'd organised the protest and is pressing for the Co-op to reconsider its plans. Planning permission has been granted for the premises to be extended, but retention of the sub-Post Office doesn't seem to have been mentioned by the developers, or considered by the Planning Committee, if I'm not mistaken. It is still possible for this to be amended before the place closes for refurbishment, so long as enough fuss is made by locals who rely upon this vital amenity.

It was only a brief affair, so the Clare and I returned for lunch. In the afternoon I walked to the Natural Health Clinic in Cathedral Road for an osteopathy appointment with Kay. Since my last longish walk last week, my knee has been giving me more trouble, so I was looking forward to this session. Kay did a thorough diagnostic on the knee joint and declared that the knee ligaments and meniscus cartilage were all in good condition, but given the persistence of mild pain in the knee joint and fibia, I should ask my GP for a referral to have the knee x-rayed, in case a cist was hiding in the back of the knee. She worked on the afflicted components. To my relief, walking home was less uncomfortable than walking there.

In response to an email round robin from Bishop David on Saturday evening, I decided to join a prayer vigil in the Cathedral, being held on the eve of the meeting of the Bench of Bishops, now charged with the task of consulting the church and making a decision about who should be the next Bishop of Llandaff, and in a situation where the electoral college seems to have only fallen short of a required two thirds majority by ten percent. I'm not going to add to the speculation or debate surrounding this issue. It's a difficult situation and I'm among the many who have written to the Bishops about this, though not to endorse any candidate as I have no right to do that as a retired priest, but simply commenting on the nature of the decision and reflecting on it from a perspective of change in the 20th century church. All in 300 words! 

All I feel I can do is pray that God's will is done through whatever the outcome and consequences of the decision reached, and that all will accept and welcome the person appointed with open hearts and minds, despite personal feelings about them, or the issues surrounding the decision making. There are many issues in the spotlight here, over the question how the church chooses its leaders, what sort of people they are and what we expect of them. 

Depending on the different expectations of church members of different 'integrities' there can be different ideas of the ideal person, both in the wider community of the faithful, and its episcopal leadership. If we had free and open debate about candidates before the Electoral College met it might be helpful, or might not. Whether decision making is in the open or in secret, coming to a consensus calls for reconciliation of differences. Sometimes this comes easily, other times, only after a painful struggle, and we've seen a good few of those in the church during my lifetime in ministry. Praying for reconciliation is the least I can do and try to do often but tonight, with the Cathedral open for silent prayer from eight to midnight. 

Martin dropped by and picked me up to save me walking, and give us a chance to chat beforehand. I was minded to stay an hour, but he couldn't stay as long as I could, so I walked home afterwards, and found walking was still much easier than expected. Sitting in silence in the darkened nave before a fifteenth century crucifix in a spotlight behind a stand of votive lights was all that was needed, but there were brief prayers offered aloud on the half hour appropriately chosen and beautifully read. I was there for an hour and a quarter. It was a memorable time, and I came away feeling refreshed, and connected to the church the diocese in a more intimate and immediate way than I sometimes feel at grand liturgies. Each is as centred on Christ as it can be, but in silence and darkness, there's nothing to get in the way.

Oh yes, just for the record, on my walks today I collected ten pieces of rubbish.
  

  

No change but a change of air

During the night I was conscious of the arrival of high winds, not just from the noise outside, but from a perceptible change of air. That sounds odd, but the coastal plain Cardiff inhabits suffers from polluted air when weeks pass without a breeze. It's got worse in recent years with increased traffic congestion. There are times when I'm returning home from a walk in the park, that there's a noticeable difference between the air out in Llandaff or Pontcanna Fields, and the air along Penhill Road, the penultimate leg, which reeks of diesel fumes from standing traffic. 

Cardiff Council's published pollution maps confirm from monitoring data what a healthy sense of smell detects. We're two hundred yards from Penhill Road and our street is very quiet. The scent of pollution isn't so obvious at home from day to day, but when a strong wind blows, the difference quite marked. I wish we lived in the country or near the sea, though I can't see us moving house again. We just need to get out and away more often, to take the air.

I went to St John's to celebrate the midweek Eucharist this morning but Fr Chris Lee turned up to take the service as well,due to a double booking error. I felt glad to sit with the congregation and worship. The only other times I've been able to do that for a long time have been on a couple of weekend trips to Kenilworth to look after Rhiannon. It's so good to be on the receiving end and be ministered to, and it was lovely to chat with Chris after the service.

Following a brief trip to the bank and to shops I returned home for lunch, and then went out on foot to make a bereavement visit at the west end of Canton Parish. As I wasn't sure of my street destination, I checked on Google Maps, which set me the quickest walking route. This proved misleading when, two third of the way through the journey, I was led into a side street, to get to the main road by a shortcut, whose only exit was closed off with a 'residents only access' security gate. One hears of this happening with sat-nav car directions leading to dead ends on country lanes, but don't expect it in a heavily built up area on a walking route! Anyway, it only delayed me by a few minutes, and then an hour later I was on my way home again.

Kath and Rhiannon had arrived by the time I returned. Kath returns tomorrow as she and Anto work this weekend. Rhiannon will end her half term and 13th birthday week with us. The Clare and I will drive with her back to Kenilworth on Sunday. I'll stay for a couple of nights, and Clare for the week to look after Rhiannon, as Kath and Anto have another busy week of Wriggledance touring gigs in parts of the country where next week is half term, not this one. Such is the life of an artistic family. We're just glad to be able to support them, and have time together with them in between engagements.

After tea we went for a walk down to the river Taff. Rhiannon walked arm in arm with me and told me all about her birthday pizza party the night before. It was heartwarming, despite the powerful chilling effect from the strong north wind sweeping through the region. The evening highlight of was watching 'Death in the Caribbean' on the telly, a rather old fashioned detective story reminiscent of another era. And despite our various efforts, none of us guessed who the murderer was.

No news of the election of a Bishop this evening from Llandaff Cathedral. The electoral college was unable to come to a consensus, nor to a 2/3rds majority vote. Nobody knows why, as participants are bound by an oath of confidentiality. Those outside, anxious for a result to gossip about, fantasise and joke instead in Facebook postings. If we have to choose a new father-in-God, this is I suppose as good if not better than any other ways. Public electoral campaigns are to my mind anathema. Discernment has been entrusted to trustworthy electors, themselves elected to office. When discernment fails everyone is bound to worry somewhat. If the electoral college fails, the Bishops meet and appoint someone. How long we have to wait for this to happen has not yet been announced, as far as I know. Let's hope it happens soon. 

   

Publication challenge

I went to St German's this morning and celebrated Mass quietly in the side chapel for a change, as the school is on holiday and no class was in attendance today. The OT reading for the day from the Book Ecclesiasticus extolled the practical dimensions of wisdom. It struck me that it applied to both electors and potential episcopal candidates. I wondered if the electoral college would be listening to the same readings in the Cathedral in their morning worship.

In the church hall after Mass, day centre manager Marisa appeared, all freshly suntanned after a holiday in Montego Bay. I found myself thinking about my study tour there back in 1982. She spoke about the sand being sharp, not just hot, and that sprung a memory from deep down. Some of those gold-to-white sandy beaches have, I believe, a high gypsum content. Its powdered crystals are more abrasive than common silica, and this you can feel, if your feet aren't hardened to it. 

The only time I felt this was when I walked barefoot on a beach in Jamaica on a fishing trip, helping to launch a large balsa wood longboat from the shore, in the company of a nephew of Charlie Smith my Jamaican curate in St Paul's Bristol. The island has undergone huge development due to the holiday industry since then, yet still widespread chronic poverty is never far away, as Marisa observed on her dream holiday, I'm pleased to say.

I came home with a little job to do. Peter wanted to create a template using an existing design of which he had a paper copy, as a frame for editable text for a publication he hoped to email out. He could cut and paste a copy to scan into a pdf by cut and paste, but the file was too big and refused to send. I started by telling him how to change the scan resolution settings, and end by taking the job home to see if I could produce what he wanted, and find out the easiest way to teach him how to achieve this for himself. Fortunately familiarity with a variety of tools for editing scanned images and using OCR made this not too hard a task. 

Nowadays I rarely use anything other than Libre Office, but realised I needed to produce an editable file to load into MS Word and not ruin the layout. I used MS Word on-line for testing as the computer I was using didn't have Word installed. But Microsoft's ODF file format isn't wholly compatible with the internationally recognised Open Source ODF format, and neither is their DOCX file format, so loading them obliges you to re-format work to be of any use. It's particularly onerous when working with text and graphics. Eventually, I switched to a machine which has MS Word installed, plus Libre Office, and confirmed the findings. Then I had an idea, and saved the Libre Office product as an old fashioned bog standard DOC file. To my delight, this loaded perfectly into MS Word. Libre Office has been able to create and to some extent edit PDFs for years. This has only appeared in recent version of MS Word. Previously an extra PDF plug-in was required for MS Word to match up to Libre Office, which is still evolving, getting slicker, more capable with each update thanks to collaboration within the global Open Source software programming community.

Several years ago the government administration of Munich converted to Linux desktop software and use of Libre Office. The majority of networks linking computers run Linux anyway, but this was a major step forward, destined to save tens of millions of euros. Since Microsoft decided to move one of its regional headquarters to Munich, the government has been debating the abandonment of this policy and is proposing to revert to MS Windows 10, at least optionally, no doubt supplied at a bargain discount. 

Major challenges to Microsoft's near monopoly of money making desktop software are bound to be met with moves of this kind. The competitive option, however, is to create free software which works at least as well as the paid version, and meets the actual needs of users rather trying to manipulate users into acquiring new needs, or even worse, forcing redundancy on to perfectly serviceable hardware by refusing to update drivers that are compatible with Windows upgrades. If it wasn't for open source software engineers writing or customising hardware drives Microsoft can't be bothered with any more, a lot more devices would fail to work, and the mound of electronic detritus would be even bigger. 

   

Waiting for news

I had a funeral yesterday morning at Thornhill crematorium to start this half term week the first of three. A retired steelworker in his mid sixties born and bred in Splott. The chapel was full to overflowing, with about 350 people, former colleagues and friends from the community in which he grew up. I gave an obituary on behalf of the family, and his two children also spoke movingly. When I got home I had a call about another funeral for two weeks hence. So it goes on. A funeral director said to me "I don't know how we'd manage without the help of you retired clergy." I don't know how the reduced number of full time clergy also manage at busy times like this. 

Today the diocesan electoral college meets in Llandaff Cathedral to elect a new Bishop. I hope that whoever is chosen is aware pastorally of the great strain funeral ministry places on clergy, and how this can dominate their work and missionary priorities. I believe it's still an important service to offer to the wider non-churchgoing public, part of knowing and being known, maintaining bonds of affection between church and local community. The fact that many non-churchgoing people still request a funeral in church, and that the building figures in different ways in family histories is important. Lay people are involved in welcoming and preparing for services but we need more of them trained and authorised as officiating ministers, as there aren't enough Readers and NSM clergy available. Will it ever happen I wonder? 

At lunchtime, I had my second funeral, this time in St John's, of a woman in her early sixties, and the church was full. Afterwards at the crematorium, the chapel was half full, half the numbers of yesterday, but that's still a lot of people. The family didn't want hymns, but selected some pieces of soul music and reggae to play. Each track was carefully recorded on a separate labelled CD, but none of the would play, as the tracks, presumably MP3s or WAVs were recorded to disc in data not CD format. I had warned them to be careful about this, but maybe I hadn't been understood. Thankfully, their nervousness about getting it right meant that one family member turned up with a laptop and extension speakers, and another with the same tracks on a phone, plus a Bluetooth Boombox. The latter was tried first, but it kept disconnecting and reconnecting with a robotic voice informing the world of its status. The same as happened at a funeral a couple of weeks ago in St Catherine's.

The congregation seemed quite relaxed about it, and thankfully the guy with the laptop quickly stepped in and stopped the whole occasion developing into a farce. I announced and commented briefly on each track, wondering if I sounded like a Radio 2 deejay doing a prayer sandwich. It all worked out in the end, and I found myself walking, first out of church and later out of the crem chapel, swaying gently to the reggae beat. It's actually easier to do that than walk against the catchy rhythm. It reminded me of being back in St Paul's half a lifetime ago. Several people noticed and commented with a smile. I was already remembering church processions in Jamaica and in black Pentecostal churches back here in UK where this was just the way it happened naturally. Ah happy days!

At the end of services which are painfully difficult, due to a perceived untimely death, I can feel some satisfaction abut my role, if I see people visibly relaxing and smiling as they walk out, even if they have tears in their eyes at the same time. It's an important moment of closure, a chance to draw breath before grief returns with a stinging sense of absence, and the loneliness often associated with it. Yet again I was glad that I had little else to do for the rest of the day, apart from go food shopping with Clare. And wonder how the electoral college was getting on. 

When I learned, late afternoon that there was no election news today, I thought about ringing my old friend Martin, to discuss the possible candidates but before I could, he rang me and said what I'd meant to send him in a text message - No white smoke today.