Another day .. another thought. This time it’s the controversy about assisted suicide which this week’s TV programme stirred. I do have strong feelings about this one. It seems to me that somewhere in the sitting and the waiting which is part of caring for somebody who is terminally ill there is space for healing and acceptance to grow. I feel little warmth about faux-solemn names like Dignitas – rather like Robert ‘get me out of here’ Kilroy-Silk’s late and unlamented Veritas.
Author: David
On your bike again!
Well what goes around comes around. It doesn’t seem all that long since Norman Tebbitt famously told the unemployed to ‘Get on your bike’ and look for work. And as the entire workforce of Woolworths – and many others – face the dole queue two weeks before Christmas, the government chooses to take a major initiative about getting the long-term unemployed back to work.
I suppose it’s an easy political target in tough times and a view that many of us would share. I’ve visited many a household in my time where a smart shove on the back of the bike wouldn’t come amiss. But several generations of unemployment … multiple deprivation .. poor diet, health and lifestyle … dependency culture. It will take a lot more than the kind of government initiative which is being planned to shift all that.
And, to be honest, as I worked my way round the more depressed areas of housing in my parish, I gradually came to the conclusion that government had decided that there was an irreducable minimum of long term unemployment which society could afford to carry with it. But maybe not. We shall see.
The other interesting theme of today is assisted suicide. But that awaits tomorrow’s Thought for the Day.
Wild Man
One of the down-sides of the bishopping life is a lack of continuity. One constantly drops in on situations and miss the deep-down continuity which parish/congregational ministry brings. I always feel that particularly in Advent and Lent.
So it was good to meet John the Baptist today in Kirriemuir. I doubt if his camel skins would have been enough to keep him warm this morning. His wild man bearing always challenges my desire to organise and strategise.
And Kirriemuir was a good place to be. I didn’t venture into the pulpit – which is one of our most vertiginous. But we had Nicola’s confirmation and a congregation of almost 60 on a freezing cold day. So there’s plenty of Advent hope around.
Pride and Privilege
Much chat in the salons of Perthshire at present about the three programmes on Glenalmond College – BBC2 Scotland only, I’m afraid. Feelings seem pretty mixed. But then I would say that since, as part of the College Council, I had a share in the decision to allow the programmes to be made.
My feeling is that the group who came out best was the staff. Pupils are more fortunate than they know to have staff around who don’t just teach – but do a lot of caring, nudging and encouraging as well. Our children went to Portadown College, our local grammar school – and local grammar schools in Northern Ireland are excellent. But as I watched the Glenalmond staff at work, I asked myself who did all that stuff with our children – struggling with the UCAS form, role-playing interviews, sorting out what they were going to do next? The school did its best. But we did much of it.
I think that in the end what I found disappointing was that the three programmes were trivial about important issues. No real exploration of what it means to use very loaded words like ‘Pride and Privilege’ .. about the range of different things which parents who choose Glenalmond or similar schools hope that their £24000 will buy. Some are simply buying the best and most rounded education they think they can have for their children. The shadow side – and there is always a shadow side – is that some may be seeking to buy access to privileged networks of ‘one of us’ contacts. And in the middle are those tangible but indefinable things which independent schools tend to bestow and state schools do not – the sense of independence, self-confidence and leadership. But they missed the opportunity and caricatured instead. Every time I appeared dressed in funny clothes, they said how traditional the school is – no exploration of the extent to which it is a faith school or of the real significance of the chapel and its life in the school – no challenge to the church about pride and privilege. Should we not be with the poor and the outcast?
Half my day will be spent at Glenalmond tomorrow. I find it a fascinating place and I admire much of what it does. I carry into it years spent serving on and chairing Boards of Governors in schools in Northern Ireland. I think particularly of Killicomaine Junior High School – where our children also went. The budget was 20% of the resources available to Glenalmond. The Governors were local people – parents, teachers, local councillors – doing their best to support the school community. Never anything like enough money. Struggles with a small minority of parents who made the school very difficult to manage at times. But take a look at their website and marvel at what they achieve with so little.
The heart of education for me is parents trying to do the best they can for their children. That is as true of Killicomaine as it is true of Glenalmond. But the issues raised by the differences deserve a more serious exploration than they received.
Brrrr .. ogstead
Well the weather is certainly making its presence felt hereabouts. -7C seems quite common at present and snow is forecast. The Blogstead stables are full of the sound of ostlers blowing on their fingernails and all that sort of thing.
One interesting interwoven dimension of Blogstead life is a slight problem with doorbells. At present if you press the doorbell in No 3, it rings in No 2 and vice versa. Hours of harmless Yuletide fun for all the family as this tendency extends to the phones, the flushing of the loos, etc., etc.
I’ve been pondering the issues arising from the Report on Haringey Social Services. The commentators yesterday were suggesting that the failures were typical of a form-filling, box-ticking and back-minding mindset in the public services – which means that people don’t actually see what is in front of them to see. And no doubt that’s true. But my knowledge of Social Services tells a story of pressure to deliver ever more on reducing budgets – and of staff who know that when things go wrong and [genuine] mistakes are made, they will receive little or no support.
Meanwhile I can see the same tendencies creeping into church life – and we seem to import both the worst and the best of practice from the secular world. Appointment processes become difficult. Sometimes because people struggle to come to terms with the need to use the best practice we can. Sometimes people’s view of best practice – imported from a particular sphere of secular life – makes the vocational discernment which is the heart of it almost impossible to achieve. I find myself increasingly cautious about making decisions – and this is often good. Which committee do I need to give its approval? Do I need to consult our Registrar [legal officer]?
Most of that I’m actually happy about. I don’t want the kind of authority which claims absolute freedom of action without accountability. I’ve seen enough of the damage which that does. But. I need to function out of a mindset which is scripturally and spiritually alive – otherwise we cease to be the ones that we say we are. And what use is that?
Kaleidowhizz
Just time for a rapid pre-Christmas visit to Dublin, mainly to gather up the older generation for a spot of lunch. The Celtic Tiger has of course become something of a flea-bitten ally cat so it was interesting to find out how things were. To which one of our friends responded, ‘Nobody knows what is happening’.
As always in Dublin, the nebbing is interesting. I travelled from Blackrock to Howth on the DART enthralled with a 30-something couple sitting next to me discussing their drinking capacity – as if that was the most natural thing in the world. And on Ryanair on the way home, a line of girls sitting in front of me explained to some random guy who was trying to chat them up that, ‘She and I have the same Dad and those two have the same Mum’ So unlike the home life of our own dear etc., etc.
Anyway, time to dig myself into the faithful Passat at Edinburgh Airport – now about to reach 170000 – and on to preach in St Salvator’s in St Andrews this morning. And then a really impressive afternoon event to mark the end of Inter-faith Week. I had a four minute slot. Pity it was badly supported. And on to the Daily Service from Edinburgh on Radio 4 tomorrow morning.
Calm?
They keep mentioning it – the apparent calmness of the terrorists in Mumbai .. who stood outside a restaurant and just fired in from the street .. the railway station .. the hotels. Hard to get your mind around that – particularly when one is constantly trying to avoid hurting anything .. like the deer that dithered in front of me in the dawn yesterday on my way down from Blogstead.
There was often a debate in Northern Ireland about whether one should attach ‘mindless’ to those whom one called ‘killers’. Does ‘mindless’ allow the idea to grow that those who shoot others in cold blood [why is it ‘cold’ blood, I suddenly wonder] can only do so if they have switched off their minds and are therefore not really responsible? But I remember carrying around in my mind the working hypothesis that something does die in those who can bring themselves to take the life of another – so that the second or third time it ceases to be as difficult?
I spent a while as a member of the Board of Visitors at Crumlin Road Prison in Belfast. I exited at the first reasonable opportunity because I found it very difficult as an outsider to have any real idea what was happening inside. But it did give me the chance of wandering through the prison and into the exercise yard and looking into the eyes of people who had planted bombs and pulled triggers. And what did I see? In truth, probably the product of an over-heated imagination.
But there was one – whose eyes stay with me to this day.
Small things update
Getting better. The answer wasn’t what I thought. Google – answer to almost everything – said that I needed to clear my cookies and cache and then delete my Google Calendar. And at last contact was established. Not perfect yet – slight tendency to produce double entries and once is enough for most things.
So I’m now in that interesting and terrifying area where I haven’t quite let go of the old to take hold of the new .. and my sermon for next Sunday on things apocalyptic begins to have a sinister relevance.
Meanwhile Companionlink once started is becoming unstoppable. Google to Palm .. it’s now moving on to synch the Mission and Ministry Board … to synch Poppy and Spice next door, etc., etc.
Small things
Just occasionally here at Blogstead Episcopi we set aside the simple living and high thinking which is the hallmark of Anglicanism … for what?
I’ve used a Palm PDA/diary thingy for about five years now. Let go of the paper diary long ago and only occasionally turn up in the wrong place on the wrong day. But the ‘search for the North-West passage’ among Palm users has been the question of how to get information out of the thing and into any other format. Until now – when Companionlink has produced software which synchronises pretty well everything into everything else – it may do denominational synching for all I know.
Anyway this has become urgent for me because I need to allow my Secretary/PA to get access to my diary on Google Calendar. But will it synch? No of course it won’t.
Delightful people over at Companionlink in Silicon Valley, California in the USofA. Nathaniel has been e mailing me telling me to try this and that. But will it synch? No of course it won’t.
Martin Luther King had a dream. But I have a suspicion that this all goes back to the Celtic Bishops’ Conference in some hotel in Wales … and the WiFi system was German and it would contact only the German version of GMail. Have I been captured by aliens?
Sue
Since Friday is cat-blogging day, I thought I would introduce you to Sue, my mother’s British Blue, who joined in the birthday celebrations yesterday in a characteristically restrained manner. Sue gets on quietly with her life – she lived underneath my mother’s desk for a number of years and seldom came out. Meals were delivered by room service. If cats were churches – which in a way they are, of course – she would definitely be Anglican. The British Blue website describes British Blues as being
Calm, alert and affectionate without being overly-demonstrative he is a soothing presence, unlike some breeds who are very much “look at me!!”
It goes on to say the breed is:
undemanding but displays an understated affection and loyalty
So no exchanging of the Peace there!