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All Along the Watchtower

~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

All Along the Watchtower

Category Archives: Blogging

Advent Book Week 4 Day 6. Other Incarnations, of course

25 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Advent, Blogging, Book Club, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Advent Book Week 4 Day 6. Other Incarnations, of course

Tags

Advent Book Club, RS Thomas

Other incarnations, of course

Other incarnations, of course,
consonant with the environment
he finds himself in,
animating the cells,
sharpening the antannae,
becoming as they are
that they, in the transparency
of their shadows, in the filament
of their calculations, may,
in theor own way, learn to confront
the intellect with its issue.

And his coming testified
to not by one star
arrested temporarily
over a Judaic manger,
but by constellations innumerable
as dew upon surfaces
he has passed over time
and again, taking to himself
the first-born of the imagination
but without the age-old requirement of blood.

To read this poem on Christmas Day is, in part, to think of the poet as heretic! There is only One Incarnation – the Word made Flesh, whose coming into the world we celebrate today. But as C451 pointed out yesterday, poetry can take us places where prose cannot. If we read this difficult poem in that light, it reveals some familiar Thomas themes – most notably the idea that God is in everything. If we read “incarnations” as “epiphanies” or “presence” we veer away from heresy into poetry – and that theme we have seen so often – that if we can but still our intellect, then we can find evidences of God’s presence everywhere.

In place of the morphemes and phonemes which are the building blocks of words, here we encounter God in the buolding blocks of things – in cells, in shadows in filaments. God adapts himself to whatever environment he is in. So, yes, that star over the manger in Bethlehem, but also in “constellations innumerable” where he has been, is, and will be. Born not, as the ancient Israelites imagined, of the blood of Jacob and David, but of our “imagination”. Again, read literally, there is a skirting with heresy. Is he saying we imagine God? In one sense yes, but not in the literal sense.

We encounter him in the crib, in the Magi moving towards it, in the shepherds, in Mary’s song of praises, the Magnificat. The Light came into the world and the darkness did not overcome him. Indeed, far from it, the Light is the light by which we see all things and are, in turn seen, therefore it follows that if we let ourselves, we can see him in everything. God is Ineffable, unknowable as he is, but discernable in all things if – another familiar theme – we would stop, wait, and take in this world he has created.

May you all have a happy and holy Christmas!

There is an #adventbookclub using “Frequencies of God” by Carys Walsh and you can support the publisher by buying it here: https://canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781786220882/frequencies-of-god. We’ll be running this club on Twitter and Facebook, and you are welcome to join in with thoughts and comments. Other folk doing this are https://grahart.wordpress.com/ and https://becausegodislove.wordpress.com/ so please pop over and read their thoughts too!

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End of year …

28 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Anglicanism, Blogging, Faith

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Pre-Advent

Remember not the former things, nor consider of the things of old

Thus says the prophet Isaiah as he prepares the way for the one who is to come and make all things new. But for those of us coming to the end of the church year, with the new one starting tomorrow with the first Sunday in Advent, it is hard not to remember the former things. Advent is a time of preparation, and part of that, for me, is grounding myself.

For all of us this has been a year of struggle, and struggle in a way none of us could have anticipated only a year ago. The very idea that we would have been wearing face masks to go into a shop would have been laughed out of court; now you could find yourself in court for not doing it.

A year ago I was still not sure if I would write here, or anywhere else, ever again. As some of you know, I had what is often referred to as a “breakdown”. It was more of a “burn out”. I had left nothing undone, which was part of the problem, sometimes your body needs a break, even if your mind is saying otherwise. I have always lived more in my mind and paid it more attention than I have given to my body. The spirit has always been willing, it turned out that it and the flesh disagreed, and the latter has its own way of making its view felt if it feels ignored. But, with rest, and help, about this time last year, I began to emerge from the darkness, a darkness so black that it has helped me cope with the current darkness. At least now I see a light – and know it is not the oncoming train.

I am one of those fortunate people who has never doubted that God exists and is with me. I have often doubted the version of him that is sometimes served up to me. What I have experienced by way of love and mercy does not cohere with the view of a Father who would condemn many of his children to eternal torment. That’s not a doctrinal claim for universalism, it’s more an inability to believe that the God who has been with me through the very darkest times is the same God as preached in some quarters. As I recently commented to one of our longest and loveliest commentators, Paul was right – we see now through a glass darkly – but one day we shall see clearly.

And that is what looking back at this juncture tells me as I sit in the silence of my room with just my Rosary for company. Breaking down is a way to building back up, and building better. Making time to be with God every day, recognising that assuming he is there is fine, and right, but the only person in this relationship who suffers if I don’t make time for him is me.

Prayer is a habit, and by ensuring that I pray Morning and Evening Prayer, and Compline last thing, and my Rosary between times, I have found something which I probably ought to have known, but didn’t. When I started it felt like me addressing God, thanking him for his mercies to me and putting my petitions for others before him (I have real trouble praying for myself, but am getting there), but as I have gone on it feels different. It feels like tuning into something that is ongoing all the time – and during this period between All Saints’ and Advent, I really have felt as though I was accompanied by a great cloud of witnesses.

The lectionary readings too, are well-chosen. Through this last few weeks we have been following Isaiah and the writer of Revelation. The darkness through which Israel passed has been vivid in my mind, and the horror of the vision of John has, at times, been disquieting and even disturbing. But the Collects and the Prayers of Thanksgiving have carried me along. I have come to love the Blessing of Light that I use in place of the preparation for Evening Prayer, and as the last contribution here before Advent starts, I shall leave you with it:

Blessed are you, Lord God, creator of day and night:

to you be praise and glory for ever.

As darkness falls you renew your promise

to reveal among us the light of your presence.

By the light of Christ, your living Word,

dispel the darkness of our hearts

that we may walk as children of light

and sing your praise throughout the world.

Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

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A Horror Story

31 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by audremyers in Audre, Blogging, Faith

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

St Peter

I am a child of the 50s. I grew up B movies – especially the spooky ones. They were great, even though by today’s standards they were silly and not in the least bit frightening. But for that time, we enjoyed them.

Here in America, the sole purpose of October first is to start the process to get to October 31st – Halloween. Americans are crazy for Halloween. There’s candy to be bought, parties to organize, foods to cook, costumes to get, music to find, decorations to be purchased … it’s a process; we love it. Oh! And don’t forget the decorations!

But of all the horror movies I’ve seen and all the horror stories I’ve read, there is nothing more horrifying than this: And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. And the Lord turned, and looked at Peter.*

That look. It makes me shudder thinking about it. That look. My horror of the Lord looking at me that way – I can’t even give it voice. This was Jesus – God with us. It would not have been a look of hatred or anger. It would have been a look of resigned affirmation; He knew what Peter would do – He even told Peter he would do it. But once again, we humans let Him down. Peter could have been a hero; he could have told those people who charged him with knowing Jesus that Jesus was his and he was Jesus’s. We can all say that but in the face of possible death, as Peter assumed would happen to him? I pray I never am put in that situation but I am not so ignorant of the world that I don’t know Christians around the world are facing that exact situation now – today.

I will, one day, see Jesus face to face. What will I see? Will it be a face of love and joy and welcome; or will it be that most horrifying, haunting face of all – resigned affirmation.

Good Lord, deliver me.

*St. Luke 22:60-61

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In the tares

27 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Anglicanism, Blogging, Catholic Tradition, Faith

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

pandemic, Prayers

Thinking about the parable of the wheat and the tares, it occurred to me that as a society and civilzation we are all in the tares.

Our search for that right to happiness which lies underneath and above the various ‘liberations’ we have had, seems to have led to the discovery of more chains upon us. As a woman I am liberated from patriarchy, but if I object to being described as a “menstuator” or as a “person who bleeds” I am trangressing against the rights of transgender people. As “rights” multiply according to our identity, we face the question of what binds us together as a society? Here in the UK, since Brexit, that has shown that what unites one part of us also digs a gulf between that part and another part. Yes, 52% was a majority, but when 48% feels desolate, saying, in effect, “tough” does not help, any more than the 48% banging on about it helps. There seems to be no health in us.

And then, on cue, comes Covid19, so there is, literally “no health in us”. The idea of “following the science” was a good sound-bite, but since “science” is no more capable of deciding how a government should proceed than it is of telling us what the purpose of life is, we simply end up more divided. In the public square it’s the most clamant voices we seem to hear.

Some, me among them, have adopted the tactic of cutting ourselves off from the public square; I don’t actually want to know. That’s not because I really do not want to know, it’s because I despair of knowing. The bias, this way and that, of the media seems so obvious that even I can spot it. I’ll do what Voltaire recommends in Candide and literally cultivate my own garden.

But no woman is an island. My other half does not have my luxury. I can stay at home and dig for victory and fill the house with the smell of freshly baked bread. My skills as a seamstress are sufficient to literally make do and mend, and I was never much of a one for shopping – except for books. But my other half does not have this luxury – there’s an important job to be done, Zoom meetings to attend, and trips to London when necessary. In that sense, I am not an island.

But even the community to which I have been closest since recovering from my breakdown – the local church – has changed. For months none of us could attend. For those, such as myself, who know that receiving the blessed sacrament is a critical part of our spiritual growth, even offering it up was not sufficient; the want of it hurt, and there were times I longed to receive communion so much that I would stand outside the church near to where the blessed scrament is reserved and pray. On reflection, that probably didn’t help my neighbours think I’d got better; but I didn’t care.

Now we are back, but separated out and masked. I can’t give or receive the kiss of peace (I know some of you are no doubt relieved, but I love it, so there), and I can’t linger for coffee, biscuits and a chat afterwards. I don’t know about you, but wearing a mask for an hour or so is wearing; but them’s the rules and I obey. I object more than I thought I would to receiving on one kind only – it’s the residual Protestant in me – but am so grateful that I just accept it with gratitude – it’s so much better than lockdown.

Yet, even in my seclusion, I hear if not wars and rumours of war, I get rumours of an escalation in numbers of cases of Covid. In the spring the weather was bright and even if I did not feel like walking, I am fortunate enough to have a garden in which I could sit and sip tea and say my Rosary. I felt then, for those who lacked such luxuries. I feel even more for them now.

Maybe it’s attrition? But with the weather wet and dreary, my spirits go in empathy – the poet’s pathetic fallacy no doubt, but more than that.

Individualism is not enough. It never was and never could be. The very word church comes from the Greek word for an assembly. However much our salvation is personal, its working out is communal. Here we work with the local foodbanks, and as it is school holidays, we work on getting free school meals to those who need them. Some complain that we should not have to do this, that the State should. I have no problem with the criticism of the State, the Government seems a disgrace to me, and not just on this. But as a gathered community, we work where the Lord has placed us, and I, like others, find some relief from the depression settling on us by being able to work as Christ wants us to, with others to bring relief to those who need it.

I am conscious, however, that this is material relief, and I don’t in any way downplay the importance of it. We are fortunate to be among the “haves” and it is our duty as Christians to gove freely. But part of me wants more. As I see hopelessness descend on so many, I wish I could do more to share the faith that, along with my other half, gets me through all of this.

I have found great comfort in this set of prayers from my Church and highly recommend them; the pattern for daily prayer is one I follow and it brings me comfort when I need it. The other prayer I find helpful, apart from my daily rosary, is the old eastern orthodox prayer which C451 taught me years ago and to which I return before bedtime:

Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of the living God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.

May the Lord bless us and keep us all.

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Saturday Jess: living for nothing now?

10 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Anglicanism, Blogging

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

saturday Jess, self

In the early days of this blog, I used to write a ‘Saturday Jess’ piece to strike a lighter note. I want to bring that back, but the more I pondered, the less light it seemed my thoughts were. I will go with the thoughts all the same and see where we get.

My father liked Leonard Cohen. Some of the lyrics stuck in my brain, one of which comes to me with increasing frequency. It’s from a song called “Famous blue raincoat”, and the lines are ‘I hear you’re living for nothing now, hope you are keeping some kind of record.’ I am not keeping a record, but there are times when the first part of the sentence occurs to me as a description of what I do.

From being a woman who defined herself by what she did, I am a woman who if she chose that definition would really be living for nothing. Long before the pandemic pushed many into enforced leisure, my own inability to cope with the pressures I put on myself had done that to me; or, I had done it to myself. Either way, ‘Othello’s occupation’ was gone.

The temptation was to transfer my measure of who I was to my marriage. At the risk of scandalising someone or other, I like being a housewife if that means staying at home and ordering my day by meal-times and what I want to do in between them: I like cooking; so I cook. I like making clothes; so I make clothes; and I really, really like cleaning; so I clean. But that’s not who I am, it’s what I like to do.

The other temptation was to define myself in relation to my other half. I have always like those who have an ‘Alpha’ character. I have found I fit in comfortably as a helper to those with ambition, charisma and drive; I like to help, they like me to help; it works. I could have done that in my marriage, but one failed marriage showed me, if it showed me anything, the danger of that. What do you do when they find a woman younger, prettier, sexier, more accomodating? It’s not a good idea to define yourself in terms of someone else, even if you love them to bits and they’re the most loving and wonderful person you ever met. It’s not fair to them, apart from anything else.

As I approach forty, quite fast now, I know that one of my dreams, being a mother, isn’t going to happen and I have accepted that. In this context, that means that I won’t be able to define myself in relation to another. Maybe I don’t need to define myself? What if I am already defined?

We tend to treat life as something we are given and in which we have to use whatever gifts we have to do the best we can. We all define ‘best’ in our own ways, but the urge to identify by what we achieve comes, I think, thence. Then it occurred to me (I know, I should just dye my hair blonde and be done with it) that life is a given thing, lent to us by God. That makes sense of all the parables about stewardship. God has already defined me, he knows me and if I follow him then perhaps I will get to know myself better?

I have found that regularly praying the Offices of the Church has changed my idea about why I pray. I always thought it was to thank God for all his blessings and to ask him for things. The more I do it, the more I realise that it is about providing a space where God and I can be together and I can learn more about what he wants from me. By being with him in the quietness and regularity of the prayer cycle, I begin to see who I am, not as others see me, but as he sees me. And I see, also, what it meanbs to say we are all children of God.

The sheer wonder of what God has done for us through Jesus sometimes overwhelms me. At those moments all I can do is stop and hear the beating of the blood in my ears. I don’t think I need to define myself, I am defined – by him.

So the love I have in my marriage, and the joy I have in my friendships, the quiet pleasures of the ‘common round and the daily task’ are all gifts from him and to him. It works for me – how about you?

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Slowing Down

04 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Blogging, Creationtide, Faith

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Harvest, Personal, Thanksgiving

Audre wrote (as ever) an interesting post the other day on the importance of being still. For many of us, the lockdown in the UK, and what has followed, has provided an opportunity for that – welcome, or, as the many who are suffering financially and health-wise will attest, unwelcome. At the very least it has provided us with an opportunity to re-think. For some of us, well, for me at least, that has come after being forced in that direction by our own failure.

By nature and habit I am obsessive. Work is a matter of honour, what comes in to me gets done, and it does not matter if it is ‘after hours’ or at week-ends. It also has to be done properly, so I won’t skimp. Yes, I know I could get away with doing this or that in a few minutes if I skimmed over the difficult bits and left it for someone else, but … . And then there is the e-mail. Yes, I know it’s after supper, but the e-mails have come in and I need to deal with them because they are there and there will be more tomorrow. Yes, I know it’s Sunday, but … . In the end it was ‘but nothing!’ I burnt out. Even before lockdown I had been forced to reconsider things.

At first I disliked what I was seeing. I wanted to ‘be well’ to get back to work. It wasn’t just that there was a living to be earned (though there was), it was a matter of who I was. I was that woman to whom my bosses turned when they wanted to find this or that document, or to run their thoughts past; I was that woman who was always there and always reliable. In short, I was the grown up version of that ‘good girl’ who always did the right thing.

Then I realised that I had become a stranger to myself. That was what the ‘breakdown’ (as the medics were careful not to call it) was about. I had tried to become someone else, and my ‘real’ self had, in the end, after giving me signal after signal in vain, signed out; she didn’t want to be the ‘good girl’ whose worth was measured by her value to others and by their opinion of her; she wanted to be the girl God made. I had thought that the two girls were the same; my health told me that I was wrong. I had to relearn.

As I walked the country lanes and the fields here, in this most rural part of England, I reconnected with Nature. Brought up in Wales, I had always loved the mountains, with their majesty and their views, but I had lost touch with nature, as with so much else. Watching the corn grown and be harvested; watching the hedgerows change colour; collecting the balckberries and the sloes; watching the landscape change through the seasons, I became aware, once more, of God in creation – and gave thanks. This morning at the Harvest Festival, our rector reminded us of what Moses said to the people of Israel as they entered the Promised Land – remember to give thanks, because any success is of God, not of you.

That was the biggest of my errors. I had thought it was down to me and had relied on me. I am God’s creation, and yet I assumed that I knew what he wanted for me without actually asking him. Yes, I went to church and I prayed and read and blogged on religious topics, but was I listening? I had been sure I was, but I had not stopped – literally. If I had read Audre’s post back then, I’d have agreed with it, but not have realised what it really meant.

That is one reason why keeping the sabbath is so, so important. One day devoted to nothing but God, to rest in him, to thank him and to meditate upon his goodness to me. At first it was hard, but one of the blessings of having a breakdown is that it really gives you no choice, and at the very least, keeping the sabbath gave me an excuse for being what the old me would have called chronically lazy. Then, as I grew into it, as the rhythms became comfortable, as I felt God’s closeness once more, I saw the purpose of the sabbath. I think I also saw the purpose of the breakdown.

I was treating my life the way we have tended to treat the earth. I was mistress of my own fate, just as we think we are masters of the earth. My job was to use every hour productively, just as we think we are to use all the earth’s resources without regard to sustainability and the future. Productivity was all, just as it is for us in terms of our working lives. Comfort was to be found in consumption, though in truth, as I discovered, my needs were fewer than I had imagined. What I discovered the hard way, we as a species are discovering the hard way – we cannot just keep going in a way that is not sustainable.

I was fortunate to have a few good and loving friends who stayed with me through the darkness, and who were kind enough to share their love, and other things, with me. Do I know what the future holds for me? No. I have had the opportunity to walk those fields and country lanes because at the moment there is no work in my areas of expertise, and even if there were, I am not sure I am upto it at the moment. My other half earns enough to keep us both, and I am happy doing the domestic things I was brought up to do but forgot when I was so ‘busy’. I love to bake, so I bake. I have rediscovered my love of cooking, so I cook. My obssessiveness has always found an outlet in cleaning the flat or house and tidying up – you never saw a place as clean as our house!

But I have learned, at last, when and how to stop. I follow a regular routine of prayer, starting the day with morning prayer and finishing at Compline. Whatever else I am doing, or think I ought to be doing, I stop and spend some time with God. Moses was right, whatever good things we have, we owe thanks to God. Although it would have once suprised me to find myself saying so, burning out was a good thing and I thank God for his mercy. It was, I think, Newman, who said that we have such hard hearts that sometimes God has to break them to make them soil in which his seed can be planted. I think I now know what he meant.

For all good things, O God, we thank you.

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The church’s banquet

11 Tuesday Aug 2020

Posted by JessicaHoff in Anglicanism, Blogging, Catholic Tradition, Faith, poetry, Prayers

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

George Herbert, prayer

quote-prayer-should-be-the-key-of-the-day-and-the-lock-of-the-night-george-herbert-13-5-0552

I hadn’t realised how long I’d been away, and if you asked me ever so hard, I’m not sure I know why now broke the writer’s block, but people have been sweet, so thank you. I think it helped with Audre here. Having another female Anglican voice was somehow comforting – again, don’t expect me to say why, it just was.

I’ll apologise here for the passive-aggressive tone in some of my early responses on Newman. I don’t mean to come across that way, and don’t know I do it, so thank you to Phillip and C for both, courteously, pointing it out. As I said to Phillip, I will try to be good rather than be good at being trying! I have been reading back a bit, and would like to thank Nicholas and C who have done a great job of keeping this going, as well as Scoop and others who’ve played a noble part.

Writing, and reading a blog, as I discovered, is either a routine you get into, or it doesn’t happen at all. Is that just me? I say that because I find the same is true of prayer. Prayer can seem an odd thing to outsiders. If God knows everything we need, why are we telling him? If God is omnipotent, why do we have to praise him and flatter him all the time? Such questions and comments fail to understand prayer, and I want to say why I think that.

Prayer is, for me, tuning into the God who is always there, and it’s about nurturing the relationship I have with him. That’s where church is vital to me, as the church is Christ’s. Routine helps me here in two ways. I pray the same three Offices every day at about the same time: Morning Prayer; Evening Prayer and Compline. It was C who recommended the habit to me and I am grateful. It helped me overcome two of my natural reactions to private prayer, one of which was that it was a bit of chore when I was tired or busy and couldn’t think what to say, and the other was an anxiety to try to be good for God and in some way win his approval. The words of Common Worship provide me with a text which I have come to love, and in the repeating of the words, I find they mean more to me; it is as though whatever ‘tuning in’ is happening deepens. It’s the same when listening to a beautiful piece of music, the more you play and listen, the more you get out of it. My prayer seems to me to become part of a bigger and ongoing prayer and the more I do it, the closer I feel I get.

And that’s where the bit about adoration comes in. When I say the Psalms or the Litany I’m not flattering God, I’m simply expressing my love for him. Prayer is who I am at those moments, it takes me deeper into the reality of Jesus. I feel as though I am stepping into an ongoing conversation. I marvel at God’s love and his glory. Its why I like that bugbear of some, icons. I look at him in my icons, in the same way I look at the Eucharist when, in church, I practice Eucharistic Adoration; looking is important. As some saint or other (someone here will know) once said about prayer: ‘I look at him and he looks at me.’

I love him and in those precious moments I can feel the love he has for me. I repent of my sins, but they pale because the overwhelming feeling is of his love and connectedness. I can set aside, because he has, my sins and concentrate on being in his presence, feeling his gaze on me, bathed in love. That’s the point I offer up my prayers for others, not because I think he doesn’t know, but just because being human, that’s the way I express my love for others too. And even though I am often alone in my room when I pray, I know I am praying with the whole church, here on earth and in heaven – so it seems natural to use ‘we’ rather than “I.’

Prayer is the way the church gives me to deepen my communion with Jesus, and I think of my beloved George Herbert’s poetry and want to finish this little piece with a poem of his which expresses all I just tried to say much better than I can:

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

 

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Women priests, Tradition and politics

05 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Blogging, Catholic Tradition, Faith

≈ 79 Comments

Tags

women priests

women discover an empty tomb

Sometimes social media can produce posts which prompt serious throught rather than a hurling of arguments past each other. One of my favourites, flying under the name “laudable practice” recently posted a High Church reflection on why he supported the ordination of women in the Anglican Church. In turn, this prompted the following interesting and incisive comment from a Catholic whom I do not follow, but probably ought to:

it astonishes me as an RC how a priest who celebrates Mass ad orientem with Missa de Angelis, etc, can hold such liberal political/social views. Just doesn’t happen here. Progressive views + serious liturgy seem to fit together better in Anglicanism than they do in the RC Chuch. I understand + respect your points but (speaking again from an RC perspective) when I look at supporters of female ordination, it’s hard not to see it as a Trojan Horse for demythologising, desacralising liberalism – flat, dull + stale.

Quite apart from the welcome tone of the dialogue, the other things which struck me was how it managed to combine this with a very firm exchange of views which remained courteous; would that such could become the norm!

The Anglican Church has spent longer addressing this issue seriously than any global Church. During the 1990s, as it became increasingly clear that things were going to move in favour of the ordination of women, some Anglicans, like myself, came, many of us reluctantly, to the view that in moving away from the common tradition of Christianity, it was deviating so decisively from ecumenical dialogue that it was leaving us behind. A few, like me, remained because, well because we did. In my case it was because I could not see the case being made could be justified by the historical and doctrinal record. The arguments used seem excessively secular in nature. Of course, I found myself saying to the wind, no one would want to argue that women cannot hold any job they like, but being a priest is not a “job” it is being in the person of Christ at the Eucharist, and a woman cannot be in that person.

Reading and rereading my history, and following Newman’s scheme for the discerning of the development of doctrine, I could not in good conscience, accept what my Church had done; but I loved it, and I could not leave it. It was only when I felt it had left me, and then only when, like Newman studying the Arian controversy, I discerned in the mirror that I was not orthodox in adopting the new Anglican position, that I moved.

What I can say is that politics played no part in it. I regard myself as conservative, and in the past I have worked for two Conservative MPs whose views and character I greatly respect, as Election Agent – successfully. I had no problem as an Anglican in being Conservative or that with a small “c”. In the Catholic Church, not so much so, as it seemed to me that political sympathies were to the left of my own. I paid it no mind, but it kept paying me mind in so far as the importation of American culture wars into the UK context did seem to predicate a binary divide in which those on the left were “Vatican II” sort of Catholics, and those not on the left were traditionalists. It seemed, and still seems to me, artificial in an English context; I am not qualified to speak of the Irish or Scottish ones.

But it is undoutedly true in the English Anglican context, that there are connections between High Church Anglicanism and social concern. It comes in part from the notable and the noble role played (and still played) by Anglican clergy in the poorer parts of London and elsewhere. This led some of them to embrace the economic nostrums of socialism, even if only in as far as they remained critical of capitalism. It seemed to many of them, as it seems to me, entirely natural that a Christian should be sceptical of political/economic systems, and my main disagreement with them in my own time was that I thought they were insufficiently critical of left-wing nostrums and over-critical of capitalism, neglecting the defects of the former and over-selling the defects of the latter.

What did strike me was Fr Richard’s comment that: “Many perhaps most of the women priests I know are deeply faithful to Tradition. And yes, I thought, that needed saying. I essayed a rare comment of my own:

Interesting as the arguments in the piece are, it is the work of women priests in the Anglican communion which is the most convincing sign of the work of the Spirit. I know, and accept, all the doctrine of my own Church, but the witness of the women is there for all to see.

This is not to enter into the argument in my own Church, whose views I accept absolutely, but it was, and is, to invite myself and others to reflect on what the experience of women priests within Anglicanism has brought to that Church and to move us away from the not uncommon view in my Church that advocacy of women’s ordination is a “Trojan Horse for demythologising, desacralising liberalism – flat, dull + stale.” The existence of women priests who are far from demytholgising or desacralising the faith, might escape the culture warriors, and the women concerned might throw up their hands in horror or shrug their shoulders. They don’t need validating by a man, and this, I hasten to add, is not that. It is a simple recognition of their ministry and the gifts they bring.

I’ll finish with a few recommendations which, if followed, may bless you as I have been blessed. For those who pray the Rosary, I cannot speak too highly of the Rev Cally Hammond’s series which can be found here. For a fascinating account of “Holiness and Desire” I’d recommend the Rev Jessica Martin’s book, here. Everything I have read by the Rev Angela Tilby has been a blessing, including her most recent piece onJ.I. Packer. One of the blessings of social media is that there are many examples there of women clergy who simply and effectively witness to their vocation.

What, you might ask, do I make of it? I take a delight in the blessings, and in the wonderful way that real life makes a mess of our desire to put things in boxes.

 

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Talent and inspiration

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by audremyers in Audre, Bible, Blogging, Faith

≈ 4 Comments

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Bible Project

1 cor

A few years ago, I started to hear a few people talk about The BibleProject. I found it online, gave it a cursory look and moved on. Looking at it now, I’m much more impressed and would like to share it with you.

First thing to know – it’s (basically) black and white animation. Don’t be deceived or write it off; we’re not talking Disney/Bambi/cutesy animation. This is animation for adults. I suspect people in their mid to late teens would appreciate it; it takes a little bit of adjustment for us older folks because we are so wary when it comes to depictions and overviews of the books and people of the Bible. When we begin to relax and go with it, it’s really quite good.

Second – I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but I don’t detect any denominational influence. This is the story of God and His people and you don’t need to have a denomination to appreciate the books and what God tells us about Himself and us.

https://bibleproject.com/about/

Third – nothing will ever replace actually reading the Bible. There is something profound that happens when we actually read the words. When I speak to someone who says they’d like to read the Bible, I always recommend starting with the New Testament. My thought is, Learn Jesus first, then go read how we got to Jesus. Work through the chapters, get informed, understand, get perspective. If you ‘get’ Jesus, you’ll understand God.

I picked this particular video because I thought the graphics – especially of the Pharaoh of the plagues – was done really well and would capture your attention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uf-PgW7rqE&list=PLVpri7vfPPtKUOaqAAjEtZR4C-bO5Y_XQ&index=8

Look – you’re tooling around YouTube anyway, right? Take five or ten minutes, pick one of your favorite books of the Bible and see what it might look like. I think you’ll enjoy the talent and inspiration.

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Grateful

27 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by audremyers in Audre, Blogging, Faith

≈ 8 Comments

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Blogging, Community

open-gate

I wrote a book three or four years ago. It is a collection of writing that I did for our church’s web site. The priest at that time was gracious to agree that it was my intellectual property and so I was free to publish it.

During that same period of time, I was studying to become a deaconess. In my denomination, a deaconess is a non-ordained position; it is a ministry to women and children, as well as being a helping hand to the priest as far as office work is concerned. I was on a spiritual ‘high’ and wasn’t at all tired even though I was working full time and teaching Sunday school with all its attendant prep work. I have rarely been so happy.

I did my year of discernment – read the mandated books, wrote the thought pieces required after each book read. The Board of Examining Chaplains allowed me, at the end of my year, to start my seminary classes. I took my classes, ‘distance learning’, through Logos House Theological Seminary in Maine. I did my practicals – offered Morning Prayer for women in the church (under my priest’s monitoring), I was already teaching Sunday school, and I took my Altar Guild training from a dear, dear woman at church. I graded well on my classes and papers and everything was moving along as one might expect.

Until it was time for the Canonical and the big exams. Under Logos House rules, I had to take a Prayer Book exam (1928 Book of Common Prayer), the Bible exam, and then the Canonical. I failed miserably. Not the fault of the seminary – the exams each had tremendous lists of items that had to be memorized. I had, but didn’t know, that I had reached that phase in my maturity that I could no longer remember lists of things. Four or five items, certainly; not a problem. But this was extensive memory work and I simply couldn’t do it. I failed so horribly, I withdrew from my classes. I simply couldn’t face the Canonical and quite frankly, didn’t want to waste the time of the Board.

At that same time, families in the church moved away and there went our Sunday school kids. The book lay like a dead thing on Amazon. Major turmoil and changes at work. Things a little scruffy at home. It was, indeed the perfect storm.

And I just stopped. All the zeal and desire and happiness in my most inner parts stopped. I didn’t write anymore, church bored me, and anything other than Jesus had my attention.

Then I found a web site in the United Kingdom. ‘Met’ new people – let me tell you right now, I am a hopeless Anglophile and I love the English! Wrote some comments that were received well and I slowly started to feel better. I met Neo on that site and in his kindness, he invited me to write on NEO. The juices started flowing. A little off but I was writing again.

My spirit lifted; I was in love with Jesus again. It wasn’t that I hated Him – I hated myself for failing Him. And then – thank you Heavenly Father – Neo suggested an article go to All Along the Watchtower. I was scared – no joke. He had pointed me that way before but the articles were so far beyond my abilities and the comments so sharp and intelligent, I thought, ‘no way’.

The first article burst the dam – I am free again. I can write again. I can write about Jesus again and share Him and how He moves me.

Grateful. To Neo, to Chalcedon, to the kindness of readers, to the Lord of my life. Grateful.

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reflecting my eclectic (and sometimes erratic) life

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Reflecting on sexuality and gender identity in the Church of England

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A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you ... John 13:34

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More beautiful than the honey locust tree are the words of the Lord - Mary Oliver

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A blog pertaining to the future of the Church

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To bring identity and power back to the voice of women

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