I’ve been debating with myself the ‘clean desks’ policy for the renovated Diocesan Office. At the moment it has computers but no desks and chairs. That really suits me. I used to believe that you could make phone calls faster standing up – maybe the same could apply to meetings? Tho’ to be honest, I’m having one of those phases when I can’t quite get on top of the administration. The residual clutter in my e mail Inbox won’t reduce below about 60. And ditto on my desk is obstinately present. It’s not a backlog. More a layer of stuff which doesn’t quite seem to know where it is going to – and it doesn’t go away. I suppose I should chuck it out and start clear. Nobody seems to be looking for it so it will not be missed.

Times are a-changing for our little community out here at Blogstead Episcopi.  Our good friends and neighbours at No 1 are moving.  So they are looking for a buyer with loads of liquid readies.  We are looking for new community members.  Like the SEC, we are into inclusiveness.  At 50%, we are seriously overweight in bishops.  So no more of them, please.   But some diversity in  gender, sexuality, race …  would shorten the winter for us all.  As with The Sound of Music and ‘I can do Anything’, we thought of auditions or the opportunity to make a short Powerpoint presentation on ‘What I could bring to Blogstead’ or ‘All I know about Continuous Aeration Plant septic tanks’

Tenth anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement yesterday.  I have ended up with conflicting views of it.  Through the last ten years of grinding movement towards peace, it survived all challenges and remained the ‘only show in town.’  People who might otherwise have died are alive today because of it.  But it was deeply flawed.  It strengthened the extremes at the expense of the centre – when one might have expected it to marginalise the extremes.  Gary McKeone, writing in today’s Independent, has a sharp piece: ‘The lesson of the peace process: terror works.’  His thesis is that the Agreement empowered those political parties which brought to the table the implicit threat of violence.

I have long understood that political agreements tend to be made by politicians of the right rather than by liberals.  That’s partly because those politicians make it impossible for more liberal politicians to do the deals because they are always being attacked from the right.  So now we have what are known in Northern Ireland as the ‘chuckle brothers’ – Paisley and McGuinness – apparently content to work together.  The irony is that the strongest conviction politicians on each side are the ones who seem prepared to make and operate an agreement based almost entirely on pragmatism.  A very strange world.

I’d forgotten what a good place the Lake District is – much more Alpine in atmosphere than Scotland.  But it is crowded in a way which makes one yearn for the wide open spaces.  I’d forgotten too how rich in the material of childhood it is.  Up the road is Coniston where much of Arthur Ransome’s story of the Swallows and Amazons was set – Titty tacking up the field to Holly Howe and Mother rowing across to Wild Cat Island with long steady strokes …  Beatrix Potter is nearby as well with all the childhood material of Jemima Puddleduck and the others.  And finally Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage – evocative not so much of Wordsworth as because it is the proper name of Blogstead na Mara.  I could happily retreat into all that, however nice these clergy are!

I’m off to the Lake District for a couple of days to do a retreat with a group of clergy in the first three years of ministry. I find that these events always leave me in a state of some confusion in my relationship with my own experience. Faced with the bright-eyed and freshly-minted enthusiasm of those who are only going round the treadmill for the first or second time, I sometimes feel like a tired old hack. On the other hand, one of the reasons why ministry becomes more difficult is that you become more aware of the challenges – you set the bar higher all the time – less aware of yourself and more sensitive to the context, I think. And of course, as a bishop I have the clarity of mind and purpose which comes from those who don’t have to chair the Easter Vestry/Annual Meeting any more.

Lines attributed for some reason by Private Eye to Idi Amin

‘Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee

I am the greatest, God bless me’

Still – if I find myself in difficulty, I’ll fall back on my mantra. Never a dull day in ministry. Lots of anguish, pain, distress, frustration. Much of it at the hands of the church. But never a dull day. And there is still the ‘lump in throat’ stuff – young couple at the Communion Rail this morning with their baby. It stood out all over them how much it meant to be there as a family – but neither they nor I could begin to put it into words.

Enjoyed Richard Ingrams in today’s Independent who quotes Malcolm Muggeridge’s suggestion that all Prime Ministers fall into one of two categories – clergymen or bookies. He cites Atlee as clergyman and Wilson as bookie. On that basis, I suspect that there have been more clergymen than bookies – Thatcher, Major and definitely Blair. Bookies – Home, possibly. Which brings us to the great bookie tradition of Irish Prime Ministers – Charles Haughey certainly – and Bertie Ahern who resigned this week because of the continuing enquiries into his finances by the Mahon Tribunal.

It is a tragedy that it should end like this for Bertie Ahern because his contribution to the achievement of the Belfast Agreement was immense. The fact that he left the negotiations at a critical stage early one morning to attend his mother’s funeral and returned to Belfast later that day won him immense sympathy and respect among people on all sides in Northern Ireland.

Ingram’s conclusion is that we are better off with bookies – quoting George Bernard Shaw who described ‘the worst of all political scoundrels – the conscientious high-principled scoundrel.’

Sadly, he fails to ‘go the extra mile’ by asking how many clergy [and bishops?] of our acquaintance are actually bookies … Father ‘Money just resting in my account’ Ted, of course. But not, I think, Bishop Brennan.

Forty years since the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.  I read the speech again this evening.  It is simply amazing – for me the essence of prophetic oratory.  As often, the bits which are not often quoted come as the greater surprise:

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: in the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

I was asked for a 50 word comment today on Tony Blair’s ‘Faith and Globalisation’ Lecture yesterday at Westminster Cathedral.  In some ways, he has it right.  The great conspiracy – difficult word – of the secular society is that religion has ceased to matter.  Plainly religion, for better or worse, is a major force in shaping societies and events across the world.  Right too in suggesting that, taking the sweep of history, one can point to immense benefit which people of faith have brought to social reform, the relief of poverty, the building of peace.  Considering his huge contribution to the Irish peace process – probably his greatest legacy – he doesn’t really seem to understand that the greatest danger of religion is not extreme religion – but the way in which religion allows itself to be subverted and distorted in the service of political and cultural causes.  So it was in South Africa, in Ireland and now in the Islamic world.  And over the whole lecture looms the unstated feeling that his decision to go to war in Iraq was a faith-shaped decision.  If you want a searching analysis of the too-rapid recourse to war, read Peter Selby’s recent article in the Church Times – Why war is never a final solution

No Martin Luther King, I think.

The preoccupation with numbers which has seized the media in the aftermath of Nick Clegg’s interview …. leads me to mention some other numbers which I stumbled across while cruising through Steven Croft’s ‘Ministry in Three Dimensions.’

Evangelical Alliance surveyed 3000 [evangelical] clergy in 1990 and got the following results.

7 out of 10 feel overworked

3 in 10 feel their families suffer because of their work

Only 2 in 10 have received training in management or leading teams

Out of a typical 60 hour week, an average of 22 hours is spent in administration

38 minutes per week are spent in personal prayer.

The last one is obviously the most shocking – the first thing to get squeezed by everything else.  And the cost of that is paid in all sorts of ways – for example I suspect that people are less likely to acquire the breadth or depth to move beyond ‘party’ or stereotypical responses to things.

Other ones?  I am not sure what ‘administration’ is in these terms.  I certainly spend more than a third of my working life sitting at a desk – and would defend it on the basis that good administration and communication is one of the foundations of ministry which is for sharing.  Overworked?  I certainly work too many hours – but ‘feeling overworked’ is occasional rather than common.  Too many hours means life out of balance and not enough time for family and being.

Training?  ’nuff said.  Time for bed.