Preparing for Christmas

There is a strict order to the Christmas story; Angel and Zechariah; Angel and Mary; Angel and Joseph; Mary and Elizabeth; Bethlehem; Shepherds; Wise men and Herod; Egypt. We know where we are with that order and we happily play around with the ideas that flow from it. But... when something happens out of order, when there is a clash between the emotions we are meant to hold and those we find ourselves feeling, huge tensions arise.

I missed an element out of the cycle. It’s an element that is commonly missed because it is awkward and we don’t want to spoil the fun. It is called the “Massacre of the Innocents” (Matthew 2:16-18). Today we hear the joyful, tearful conversation between two pregnant cousins, Mary and Elizabeth. Their words ping off the wall with excitement and wonderful; what will my child do? what will he/she achieve? Parents ask these questions because they have suddenly been drawn into the amazing act of creation.

And then Sandy Hook, Newton, Connecticut happens. The natural order of things is not merely fractured but shattered. We ask where God is. The Christmas story tells us that God in Christ wants to share our lives. And sometimes our lives get out of order. When that happens, we struggle to make sense of things.

If you listen to the words of many of the carols, what you discover is that silence plays a huge part in this story. We cannot explain everything or discover meaning. We can only wait, pray and hope. 

Seeing things differently

I have just been out for lunch with friends from Australia. The husband is a wheelchair user. Not that it stops him - he works for the Australian Government which involves travelling all over the country and, indeed, the world. His stories of individual's and institutions' abilities to think through what it might mean to respond to the needs of someone with mobility issues raised in me all sorts of reactions; how do I think about what we know call "inclusion"? I sort of am aware of the broader issues - mobility, hearing, sight, mental health and learning difficulties. I could probably mouth the right "PC" words and argue for access for all... I could be, at that level, up to speed.

But being up to speed on the surface and for those concerns to penetrate the heart and convert the soul - well, that's different. The usual response of politicians and others, when pressed, is to say something like "one of my friends is..." which always comes across as shallow and unworthy. The fact is that we select our friends from a pool of people like us and, unless we are put in a place where we have really to engage in inclusion to the point where we cease to be conscious of difference, we always have to work hard to embrace diversity.

Meeting up with Martin again makes me want to explore questions about what is "normal", what is the measure I secretly and subconsciously use when I encounter other people? As a Christian, the yard stick we use, or should do, is Jesus and the gospels have stories which precisely point to the way in which Jesus failed to see the boundaries that culture and habit erect to allow us to treat people differently. The bar is set high. It requires both seeing and not seeing the difference; seeing, as in noting the whole person, and responding to him/her in that wholeness and not seeing, not labelling, not imagining all people of one disability are thereby the same.

Our Church school has a delightful pupil who has Downs. The response of the school is beautiful. The children and staff all learn BSL (British Sign Language) so that this pupil is included in conversation and learning. Watching the assembled ranks both sing and sign the songs in assembly is lovely. Because I don't sign, I end up feeling excluded, which itself is no bad lesson. It appears that each of us is dis-abled.

Back to School?

The truism of living in Britian in early summer is that the clothes shops have menacing adverts of allegedly happy school kids wearing smart new uniforms when the reality is the streets have exhausted students wearing tired clothes, desperate for the wheel to stop so they can get off the treadmill of contemporary education.

Today, in September, term starts. I have just got back from our school's first assembly. Quiet children sitting in ranks as the head talks to them; a story, a moral message (inevitably about listening and learning) and a prayer. I sat with the "top class", the Year 6s, which in England and in this borough in particular, face the exciting cycle of entrance exams for various establishments over the next few weeks. My own children went through this a few years back and now face the future of more exams themselves over the next few years....

All this raises interesting questions about what school is for and whether we offer our young people the opportunity for learning skills that will equip them for life. Talking to parents whose children have recently dropped off the far end of the educational treadmill and now face a bleak employment future, whatever it is that we try to teach our children, above all we must give them a deep sense of their own dignity. As a Christian, I would want to say that this is something to do with being made in the image and likeness of God. I realise that spirituality is a hot potato in education but unless we honour our children by sharing this truth with them, they will simply be pray to that contemporary view of consumerism that suggests that personal worth is defined by possessions. Those who oppose the place of religion and religious language in the discourse of education betray our children and condemn them to a life framed by the language of the consumer.

Swine Flu and Communion

I am receiving interesting reflections from folks about what to do at communion with regard to swine flu. Presently, our Diocesan is suggesting that sharing the peace is more problematic than sharing the cup. The wisdom of the Church of England does not reference the Peace. Maybe Church House thinks that the Peace is symbolic out in the provinces? On the other hand it is somewhat twitchy about a shared cup. Rather fascinatingly, the missive from HQ suggests that the pastoral option of just offering bread has its roots in fear of the plague - which sort of suggests that early medical science had something going for it.

The laissez faire option is to give people the option - cup or no cup. The great fear, I suspect, from those above, is that by suggesting that we should only administer bread is that a] it ups the ante regarding the fear of swine flu and b] in these days when those with influence as the future of the old C of E are celebrating 500 years of Calvin (God help us) any suggestion of communion in one kind could be seen as a rejection of the Reformation. Card carrying Calvinist Anglicans would not want to be the first to jump here.

Which means that given the choice between opting for a cautious approach (just breads) and the possibility of infection being spread but ones theological purity maintained, it looks rather as if the advice from the centre ends up being unsullied by Romanist tendencies.

May be we should go back to the days when receiving communion was done on a limited basis, post confession, though, with a post-Enlightenment spin on that, communion could be administered after a flu test and a good dose of tamiflu

Engaging Young People

I am just about to go to Greenbelt Arts Festival in Cheltenham. I am really looking forward to this. When I went to see my new curate in her theological college we were given a psycho-something or other test on our learning styles and, although you can be a bit suspicious of labels, I found that the description was pretty reasonable - I learn by doing, fiddling, having a go. So Greenbelt, which tends to the very hands-on (with mystical bits for that part of our brain which needs head space) suits me fine.