Wave of Light 2023

Words for the Wave of Light service to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week at Christ Church Alsager, Sunday 15th October 2023.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

The loss of a pregnancy or baby is a particular bereavement. Excitement turns to sorrow, anticipation to anger, and joy to despair. Thousands of parents experience this bereavement every year, and yet it can be a difficult thing to talk about and come to terms with. It is hard to grieve a reality that didn’t come to pass: to lose a future that was full of promise, and yet so quickly came to nothing.

I stand on fragile, holy ground as I talk about this. I can share my own experience, and I will – but I cannot speak for you. I do not know your pain, I do not know your experience of this – how recent or long ago your own loss was – whether it was your body or someone you loved who could not bring small life to birth. But I know enough to share a few thoughts that I hope might be helpful. And forgive me for where my language is clumsy, or unhelpful – all of these words are contested terms, and what is right for one of us may not work for another. What I do know is that it is better to talk about it than not, even with the frailty of my words. Bear with me.

I lost two pregnancies after the birth of my first child. The first miscarriage I barely knew I was pregnant. I had missed a period, but it was a few weeks later, the day I finally returned a positive pregnancy test, that my body decided to expel the blood and tissue that had made a false start at life.

My second miscarriage was harder. I had known I was pregnant for weeks. I had a little bit of bleeding, got checked out, and was reassured things looked fine. I was booked for a precautionary scan the next day – a Sunday morning. Instead of taking a service in my parish, I lay alone on a hospital bed, counting the tiles on the ceiling as the ultrasound probed around, the sonographer silent. That silence lasted forever. Until it didn’t. I went to the scan alone – my vicar spouse Jim was also on duty and we didn’t want to cause a fuss by neither of us turning up to take services. We thought things would be fine.

They weren’t. I had been pregnant, but the foetus had died. Later that week I miscarried the pregnancy naturally, sitting at home with endless jigsaws to focus my mind on the immediate moment and stop the grief from crashing in too soon, too quickly.

I decided almost immediately to be honest with my church and community about what had happened. As I shared our story, others, too, sent cards or met with me over coffee to tell me their own traumatic, unresolved stories of miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth. Many were recalling losses from decades ago, from a time when these losses were not spoken of – when miscarriages were simply to be ‘got over’ with platitudes like nevermind – you can try again, and when stillborn babies were hidden away without opportunity for goodbyes.

And through these conversations I met a lot of unresolved grief, and a huge shared experience of loss among at least half of the women of my parish – and moreso, among the men who had stood by feeling so helpless, among the many more women and men who had lost unknown siblings, among those hoping to be grandparents – with that hope snatched away as they watched their adult children live through the pain of miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth.

One in four pregnancies ends in loss. The loss of a pregnancy or baby is probably the most common experience of bereavement among people of child-bearing age. And it felt like we, as a church, did little to acknowledge or recognise this.

So I planned in my own church, Christ Church Timperley, to install a memorial stone dedicated to lives lost through miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth. Alongside this I wrote a memorial service, which has become an annual event in Timperley and beyond beyond my time there as Associate Vicar . And, as you know from the work of the wonderful people here in Alsager, the idea has grown. I’m so thrilled that you, too, now have a memorial stone and service to mark these particular losses.

I want to say a little about the wording on the stone:

“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
In memory of the babies who were unable to share life with us
Known and loved by God

I came across two recurring questions in my conversations with those who had experienced this type of loss:

Was my unborn child a human person?
Where is my child now?

I know that if you’ve been through this, you may have asked these questions, and you will have asked other questions too.

But the wording of the stone sought to answer these two questions.

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

 

This is a quote from an ancient Jewish text attributed to a prophet called Isaiah. It more forms part of the Christian canon of Holy texts known as the Old Testament. The text is around 2500 years old, and is written as comfort and challenge to the people of God at that time. The quotation more fully describes the love of God as that of a nursing mother for her baby:

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast,
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

Isaiah 49:15-16

So far as God is concerned, God’s love for each life is such that even if a mother were to forget her child, God would not. Those lives, barely started, which we hold and grieve and miss and wonder about – if we do not forget them, how much less so does God not forget them?

We ask:

Was my unborn child a human person?
Where is my child now?

And God says:

I will not forget them. I have engraved them on the palm of my hands.

In the days and weeks after my miscarriage I crashed through emotion after emotion. Anger, shame, grief, sadness, despair. The guilt, especially, was unreal. At one follow up appointment I sobbed while the nurse reassured me that no, my using a hot water bottle in bed at night would not have triggered the miscarriage. I allowed the feelings to wash over me, and through it all, something held me. Something deeper, intangible, something that came both from within and beyond.

I know now, looking back with 10 years’ distance, that it was God who held me. The God who is love – the God whose love pulled me through, as we heard in the reading from 1 Corinthians 13 – with a power beyond me that bears, believes, hopes and endures all things.

God’s love never ends. In grief, in sorrow, in disappointment and hopelessness and despair. God’s love never fails. The gift of my loss was that it opened the door to so much love – so much shared experience that would otherwise have remained hidden.

The pain of baby loss, however isolating it may feel, is not a pain to carry alone. Together we come, together we mourn, and together we will find hope that these lives, so precious to us, are held in the arms of God. And that we too, are held and united together in faith, and hope, and love.

Being sent: A sermon for the women of Chester Diocese

The is the text is a sermon I preached this week at a gathering of female clergy on the Diocese of Chester. I wrote it also holding in prayer those not with us, including the many – lay and ordained – who have walked parts of the ‘being sent’ with me. I’m grateful for their encouragement, their boldness, and their laughter.

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As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff, for laborers deserve their food. Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

Matthew 10:7-15

I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week with new ministers – meeting new incumbents from across the North West, inducting new deacons from across Chester this diocese, and interviewing candidates for licensed lay ministry. Across these events I had several conversations about the hopes and fears carried by these new and developing ministers: the excitement of engaging in God’s work in their new contexts – a sense of having arrived.

But then the fear, of the expectations that would be placed on them by others, the anxiety of managing and ordering their own lives in Christ-like and sustaining ways – of becoming consumed by tasks that were demanding, perhaps un-doable, and of having to sustain themselves in new and different ways.

My own experience of being sent has often been deeply unsettling. Moving between parishes demanded an agility; each time a change of pace, perspective, and priority.

For 13 years I have taken seriously the advice given at my ordination retreat, that in order to talk about Jesus to our people we first needed to be able to tell their story in their language. It has taken me time, in each parish I have served, to learn the language, to hear the story, and to read the culture.

I have also learned that the priestly life is always one of nomadic wandering between the edges and the centre of a community – always translating between the one and the other, always going deeper into the story of that place and bring the story of the edges into dialogue with the story of the middle – and somewhere, in there, telling the story of Jesus.

As a parish priest, I’ve always felt a little like I don’t fit, like I can’t quite speak the language, and I think that’s ok. Because the instructions of Jesus to the twelve here are not: go and fit in. The instructions are to go, to proclaim, to cure, to cleanse, and to cast out.

We’re not called to fit in. We’re called to exercise a radical hospitality as guests and strangers in the places we travel to, telling the good news of God’s love, bringing healing and fresh hope, and shining light into dark places. We are sent to join, for a time, in the light-bringing, hope casting work of building God’s kingdom in that place.

And this can be intensely lonely. As we are sent, we are also unsettled. The instructions of Jesus continue. Go, proclaim, cure, cleanse, cast out. But, by the way – don’t take any money, don’t ask for payment. Don’t take extra supplies. Trust that you will be provided for. Trust that you will be given what you need. Oh, and by the way – some people will not welcome you, will not listen to you – there will be places from which you have to move on.

I’m going to pause for a feminist theology interlude…

My faith was transformed when I discovered some years ago the arguments of Mary Althaus Reid, a feminist liberation theologian who argued that women’s ministry is always enacted from a place of exile, because, she argues, “Christianity has been appropriated as a male religion” (quoted in Durber, 2007, Preaching like a woman).

I’m not going to unpack that more now, other than to say that the treasure within it, for me, is two-fold.

Firstly, it helps me realise that there are times when my gender means I have to work hard to find a sense of belonging. Reading Matthew 10 is one of those moments. We read of the twelve male disciples being sent – where are the women? Of course, the 12 are important to Matthew because of the Israel they represent, but I still read this passage with perhaps a little more distance than my brothers.

Naming this and owning it is enough to lift my eyes beyond the text, or perhaps through the text, to see beyond the God revealed through the whole of Scripture, who calls such unlikely people to do the work of the Kingdom.

And secondly, Althaus-Reid’s argument acts as a reminder to me that my own words and actions, the way I speak of God, will unintentionally exclude others.

These are my own moment of discomfort, of disillusionment, perhaps of exile from the text. Even the act of reading this text as women reminds us of that uncomfortable sense of not quite fitting in.

Interlude over.

To be sent is to be unsettled. Jesus instructs his disciples to take little by way of things to sustain. What comfort blankets am I called to lay down? How does God’s work expose the parts of me that I would rather keep hidden behind the bag I carry close to my chest? In what ways do I have to sit in that uncomfortable place, slightly apart, slightly left out?

These moments of displacement and disillusionment are important – they’re the shadows rather than the light – but they are the shadows from which we might learn and grow, if only we have the courage to do the inner work and ask ourselves the difficult questions.

And so we are sent. And we are disrupted and unsettled.

But then we are formed. And we are re-formed.

This account of the 12 being sent out can only be read in completeness alongside the end of Matthew’s Gospel, where the 12 are told to – “go and make disciples of ALL nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.

This is something of a coming of age story. In Matthew 10 the disciples begin to fledge – they’re sent out alone to do the work of Christ, but still to their own people. By the end of Matthew’s Gospel they’re being sent into all the world, to do this kingdom work. This isn’t just the story of those 12 men. This is the story of how the people of Israel became the vehicle of hope for the world. This is the story of how the church began, and it’s a story that each of us, gentile or Jew, male or female, young or old, working class docker or middle class home maker, are called into.

Because we are still coming of age. The Kingdom of God is built through our response to the God who tells us to go, to proclaim, to cure, to cleanse, to cast out – to make disciples and baptize.

And it’s tough, at times, but we do this work together. The one message I try and get over to the new minsters I train and work with is that they are not alone, however lonely and isolated this life might feel at times. Together with the 12, we are sent, we are disrupted and unsettled, and we are formed. We are always on the move, and always changing, together, to become more like the one who send us, who unsettles us, and who forms and reforms us into his likeness.

 

‘Though we are many…’ Safer community and the sanctification of a fractured body

Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

(Click to enlarge)
Holy communion predella by Francis Hoyland (1930-) Image Copyright © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. The Methodist Church Registered Charity no. 1132208.

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I invite you to stand with me, for a while, in a painful moment at the communion table. We are among friends and colleagues, gathered in prayer and together in worship. A quiet, special time, but one deeply fragmented – our brokenness about to become apparent in the second that some of us will take the bread and wine, and some of us will not. I break the priest’s wafer, and draw the broken pieces shakily back towards each other. I can never quite get those broken pieces to fit back together.

We break this bread to share in the body of Christ: Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.

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Working in a role that takes me across the Diocese means, unsurprisingly, I meet more people with whom I differ significantly on theological issues than I ever did in parish ministry. And never is this more acute than when I celebrate Holy Communion among those who, as a matter of conscience, cannot accept the consecrated elements from me because I am female.

This moment of fractured communion is always profound for me. Not because I experience it as a moment of rejection or sexism (I don’t and it isn’t), but because it serves as a reminder, at one of the most intimate and unifying moments of life in Christian community, that my very being as a female priest, and the theological conviction of a colleague or friend, are so at odds with one another that we cannot share fully in this meal, this sacrament. Having prayed and worshipped together, having shared peace with one another, and (often!) having spoken, learned and laughed together in the hours before, in this moment we are torn down the middle of our togetherness. We are not whole.

And that’s not ok, but somehow it is.

It’s ok because despite the moment of fracture, we still hold together. It’s ok, because the majority of those who do not recognise my priestly ministry still choose to graciously show up and gather with me. It’s ok, because we share so much more than bread and wine.

I have a deep and enduring love and respect for my brothers and sisters in Christ who cannot recognise my priestly orders or my vocation to leadership – and even more so for the many who feel able to address our theological differences together in undefended conversation. I so value the many moments we have asked questions of one another, and through respectful curiosity have managed to deepen in understanding of the other while holding to different views with integrity and faith. I have grown in loyal and faithful friendship with people who I can share a pint or a meal with, but not the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist. I consider it a profound privilege to gather, in difference, to pray and worship together up to the moment of distribution, and to pray for God’s blessing on those who choose to ask me for it in lieu of receiving the elements.

The Church must know, as MP Jo Cox famously said of her own constituency, we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us. United by scripture, creeds, and prayer, with water as our starting point and a dining table as our gathering place – we have more in common than the things which threaten to tear us apart. Water is thicker than blood, wrote Archbishop Stephen Cottrell just last month. It is our shared experience of baptism which holds us together in difference, even when conviction prevents us from sharing the meal table together.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

I realise as I write this that my dream of community is not that everyone I sit at the table with will eat the food I prepare. It is not me who cooks, who prepares, who hosts. I am just a guest – one among many – called as disciple, deacon and priest in the community of God’s people. The brokenness of the Church is such that some within this people will always refuse Eucharistic ministry from me. If my dream were that this could be otherwise then my dream is nothing more than a self-validating attempt at homogenisation. The only place this attempt can end is my existence as a community of one. I am aware enough of my fragility to know that my dream can only ever put me at the centre.

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If I do have a dream, it is not of what community might look like, but rather how community might live. We have always been a fractured church in a fractured world. Increasingly I am sure that one of the primary tasks of the Church in this generation, the calling at the heart of our discipleship, is to learn again what it means to live together in difference and disagreement.

Written like that it seems naive. There are elephants to name and failings to own.

The community of the church has many dark corners. Shielded by a human desire for company and togetherness many have used the veil of faith to cover significant harm and to perpetuate hurt. Words that make community, words like accountability and unity, have been weaponised to control and coerce; to keep the people of God from living fullness of life that God calls us to, and to instead hold us captive to a diminished and soul-suffocating imitation of the Kingdom.

Any of us with power who write about these words must do so with great care, from a place of humility which holds us to our place within a community. Always as one seeking to deepen in love for God, others and self. Always as one accountable to the whole. Oakley and Kinmond (2014, 92) have written about dangerous discourses – which seek to control or coerce:

A further discourse is that of unity. It is centred upon the idea that although people exist as separate individuals they are actually part of one body of believers and belong to each other and be responsible for caring for each other. However, within the experience of spiritual abuse the discourse can be used to control and manipulate behaviour. People can be effectively silenced from raising issues of concern or from sharing abusive experiences as this could threaten unity. This is a key tool in the maintenance of spiritual abuse as there is limited ability to critically consider behaviours or to share concerns in a manner which might lead to the exposure of abusive practices.

And yet they also identify (93 – 94) an inability to work alongside others as a key indicator of poor or dangerous leadership:

If individuals display an Inability to work with others – where they exhibit control, inability to take criticism and defensiveness when challenged, this is a danger signal.

Learning to live together, resisting division, is not just a mawkish idealistic dream, but an imperative for those of us who seek to build safer communities. Of course, when we gather then we risk harm and we risk harming others. Fear and anxiety, particularly of what is different, builds walls and isolates one from another. Self-protectionism and self-preservation become places to hide from the demands of life together, driven either by a desire for purity (they will contaminate my faith) or for safety (they will threaten my wellbeing).

Damage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: we think we are better, safer, purer, when we do it alone, or when we allow leaders to abuse their position to control or coerce without the proper checks and balances of a healthy, functioning community. When we do community badly, or when we replace it with division, we are simply diminished: a poor reflection of the fullness and diversity of life which God has made us for.

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Learning to live well together means learning to talk about power. Where relationships are, power is. Apart from relationship no person can enact power over another. Writing on the abuse of power in Christian communities, Poling (1991, 24 – 31) explores these relationships with the image of a ‘relational web’. The web is sustained where each person within it is able to flourish and grow because of the overall stability and benevolence of those within the web: the ‘erotic power’ generated from our deepest longings for togetherness and gathering:

Erotic power is the power of our primal interrelatedness. Erotic power, as it creates and connects hearts, involves the whole person in relationships of self-awareness, vulnerability, openness, and caring… Erotic power involves inner and outer worlds in a knowing that is multilayered and a causality that is multilateral and intertwined… Erotic power is the energy that produces creative synthesis, and is enhanced by the relationships that emerge from creative synthesis.

Brock, 1988; quoted in Poling, 1991, 25.

We use the word erotic most often to describe the sexual expression of this deep, primal longing for company and togetherness. But erotic power at its best is the growth and flourishing of individuals brought about by the health and sustaining of the whole community. Erotic power is about you and me doing life together so that you can be the very best you and I can be the very best me.

And yet all too quickly our longing becomes twisted. Expressed unhealthily, it distorts love and care into sexual or physical violence, abuse and control. Or we resist it: we shun gathering and togetherness because we fear becoming tainted by or overcommitted to the other.

But it is in our erotic power, our holding together, that our power becomes safer. A community in which each person is wholly for the others means challenge is not a threat but an opportunity for growth. As Oakley argues with Humphries (2019, 140 & 148):

When power remains unchecked or unchallenged and there is no sense of accountability, there can be ugly and harmful consequences. The key is to recognise the opportunity for power dynamics to create unhelpful and harmful imbalances… Creating a culture that invites, respects and learns appropriately from challenge and questions is a significant factor in combating coercion and control.

Life together is not just hard, it is an art. And in our fracturedness we have forgotten how to do it. We have failed to grasp the fullness of self-giving that is needed if we are to live well together. We must find a way: we cannot escape relational webs. We can only distort them. If we resist community then our life together becomes dangerous. If we embrace and build community, we might be able to find glimmers of redemption of the common life.

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Let’s go back to the communion table, where I am covering the empty paten and chalice. We have gathered around the table. Some have received the bread and wine, some a blessing. Some remained in their seats. Some chose not to show up at all.

The moment of fracture has passed, and somehow, we are still sent out together as friends and disciples: God’s people striving to love God’s world. Weak and trifling, perhaps, to us, but great and glorious to God. If Bonhoeffer was right, then in our brokenness and incompleteness, somehow, we are sanctified.

Lent 1: Power in the Wilderness

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Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written,
“One does not live by bread alone,
   but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” ’

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you”,
   and “On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’
Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
“Worship the Lord your God,
   and serve only him.” ’
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Matthew 4:1-11

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Power is all the more cunning because its basic forms can change in response to our efforts to free ourselves from its grip.

KOOPMAN (2017) ON MICHEL FOUCAULT’S UNDERSTANDING OF POWER.

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As we enter into another Lent, following Jesus into this wilderness text and finding ourselves surrounded by the dusty landscape of the Judean desert, I wonder what you notice?

How do you imagine Jesus? Spiritually empowered, perhaps, fresh from the ascetic discipline of the desert, coming as it did, after the high point of the waters of the Jordan, the dove, the Heavens falling open, the voice… Or perhaps famished, weakened by his fast and the solitude and ready to surrender to the voices within and without that tempt and beguile: it can all be yours…

Where is the power in this scene? A traditional interpretation might suppose that power features only in its rejection, as Jesus shuns the kingship of the world’s people offered in exchange for worship of Satan. This understanding of the text sees power crudely: a blunt instrument wielded by the powerful against the powerless. Power becomes the tool of the oppressor: unidirectional and maleficent.

While we must be alert to the abuses of power which operate in this way, with Foucault I understand power to be more complex than this. Power is diffuse, subtle, omni-directional and multi-faceted. Power seeps into relationships and organisations through cracks that we may not even be aware of. It operates between different people in different forms, and not always according to role or status, but also to the more delicate ways that power is held: through personality and character, volume and tone of voice, bodily presence, and social influence.

Where is the power in this scene? There are many agents here, with a complex flow of power between them. The power of the Spirit to lead Jesus to this place to begin with. The power of God as Father to the Son. How does the presence of all three persons of the Trinity here add to our understanding of the flow of power?

Then there is the power of “the tempter”/”the tester”, “the devil” or “Satan” (Matthew uses the three terms throughout his text) to tempt and seduce. But not to entice beyond goodness.

There is the power of ancient Scripture – Jesus cites the texts from Deuteronomy that he would have come to know as a boy – to resist that temptation and reassure him of his good power.

The power to create, to lead, to act, to excite, persuade, resist, rebuke, reject, to rest. The power to do good, or to do ill. The power of Jesus knowing who he is, and who he isn’t – emboldened by his knowledge of the scriptures and of God.

Where is the power?
It’s all over the page.

It flows around this wilderness scene as water around rocks. As you enter this scene can you feel this flow of power buffeting you around?

Photo by Brandon Hoogenboom on Unsplash

Much of my research is focused on spiritual abuse – the capacity of one person to cause harm to another through a lens of faith or spirituality – and how power becomes entwined with language of God to manipulate, control, coerce or otherwise harm.

As I come to this wilderness scene the flow of power around me triggers an awareness and sorrow for the abuses of power enacted on my watch, for my own vulnerability and my failure to see, to notice, to challenge, to resist. I come with an awareness of the power I hold and the capacity I have to do good or harm with that power. I come with a woundedness for the times in which I have been harmed by the abuse of power enacted by another.

And as we come to this place, we see Jesus. Not abdicating his power, not resisting power, but standing firm amidst the strong currents of power, flowing all around, and shaping the flow of that power to resist what is evil and turn to what is good. And not without cost – imagine the pain of turning down food, and fame, and earthly kingship – imagine the cost, in that moment, of saying no.

This would not be the last time that shaping the flow of good power would be costly for Jesus. Ultimately it was good power that led Jesus to the cross: ultimate submission, ultimate power.

Contrary to some interpretations, there is no renunciation of power here in the wilderness. There is no rejection of power. There is no giving power away. To preach this is to misunderstand the complexity of power and the potency of good power, and to underestimate the guile and deceit of dangerous power.  

Jesus wields immense power, but he uses it to do good, and not harm. He uses power not as an oppressor – not to dominate and grab and succeed – but instead to turn a horrific, pain-filled dead-end moment into one of hope and life and a future.

Those of us who hold power, whether in our workplace, our homes, our relationship, our communities, must always deepen in our understanding of good power, of safer power. It is not enough to pretend we don’t have power – we all have power and agency in some moments. The bases of power are further-reaching and more numerous than we might know unless we do the reflexive work of self-examination and prayerful repentance.

It is in deepening awareness of self, others and God, that we become wise to the shape-shifting of power. Just as in the wilderness, the power flows and changes form, channelled and shaped by the self-knowledge and faith of Jesus, so it is with us. Our prayerfulness, our close, repentant examination of ourselves before God, our deepening knowledge of Scripture, our holding together in community – these are what will enable us to shape good power and safer cultures.

Book Review: Listen, by Dr Kathryn Mannix

I spent yesterday with colleagues who are training for lay ministry in the Church of England: all of them experienced in and committed to the deep, tough work of listening. Those training for Pastoral Worker ministry reflect on listening in three spheres: listening to God, listening to self, and listening to others.

Yesterday wasn’t about listening. Yesterday we talked about the mission of the chuch: the work that each of us, as disciples is drawn into as we work for transformation; bringing integrity to that line of the Lord’s Prayer “your kingdom come, your will be done” prayed, as Grace Thomas reminded us, not in the future tense but the present.

Yesterday wasn’t about listening. Except it was. Time and again conversation came back to the reality of mission not as “doing to”, but “being with”: as Sam Wells has so helpfully expounded in his recent work.

The work of being with starts and ends with listening. And Kathryn Mannix knows this too, using in her recent book Listen: How to find the words for tender conversations, the same language as Wells to argue that we root our work for others not in “interfering”, but in asking first, and listening, “Being with, walking alongside: not doing to” (118).

Mannix writes out of her context as a palliative care doctor, and yet she writes not only for the clinical environment, but for those who might find themselves needed to engage in tender conversation – that’s all of us. Using a clear structure on which to hang both treasures of wisdom and anecdotes that ground them – as well as the encouragement that it’s normal to get this wrong sometimes, that we get better with practice – she talks her readers through how to create, shape and finish difficult conversations, likening the art of conversation to a dance: “forwards and backwards, sharing and preserving the space” (3).

There is much in Mannix’s writing that we can bring into dialogue with questions of power and leadership. I remain deeply moved by Rosie Harper and Alan Wilson’s reimagining of an episcopal ministry rooted in attentive, responsive listening in To Heal and not to hurt: their exploration of harmful culture in the Church of England. Towards the end of the book, they reshape the narrative of one survivor of abuse, imagining how a tender conversation may have brought healing rather than fresh hurt.

Al Barratt and Ruth Harley, in Being Interrupted, touch on the power dynamics of tender conversations through Nelle Morton’s ideas of ‘hearing to speech’: “speaking first to be heard is power-over. Hearing to bring forth speech is empowering” (137). Mannix draws this out in her anecdote about ‘Mr A’ and ‘Jake’: “By suspending all judgement and offering him a space for shared thinking, Mr A surprised Jake, who was expecting a disciplinary conversation” (54).

Few within the Church of England would argue that attentive listening to others is unimportant, or irrelevant for the mission and work of the church. So why are we still so bad at it? Perhaps because we parody the ministry of listening as a passive add on to be done by those who are calmer, gentler, less busy, less important, than me? Sure – listening is not glamorous and it asks us to shut up. Dedicated, intentional, attentive listening is hard work. But it’s not passive, and it’s far too fundamental to God, to a life of faith, to what it means to be a human being, to be left as an add-on to the Church’s ministry, done by a gentle few, while the rest of us get on with the important work of talking.

There is also something much deeper for us to hear. Mannix’s writing didn’t just speak to me about one to one conversation. I wanted to draw out what tender conversations might look like not just in the pastoral encounter, but in the interactions of a group, a community, an (can we still say it?) institution, as it engages with the world around it. What might it look like for the Church to hear God’s call not to be the dominant voice, the place of knowledge, the loudest shouter, but instead to be the one who joins (not leads) the world in tender conversation? The place not where answers and solutions are given, however unasked for and unneeded, but where questions can be posed, the unspeakable can be uttered, and comfort can be found not in words, but in attentive, loving presence?

Mannix’s approach to listening and problem solving has echoes of a ‘Third Chair‘ approach to spiritual accompaniment, or an Appreciative Inquiry model of supervision: “Each person is best placed to solve their own difficulties; the style we have adopted is one of curiosity and interest, being present as a companion and not as an expert or ‘fixer’ (94). And so what might this look like not just in one to one settings, but as the Chuch engages with the world; as communities of faith engage with the places in which they are set? “Where are the listening spaces?” asks Mannix (257) and I want to shout out in response “over here!” – but are we ready for that task?

Might it be that as we enter a listening space we become aware that we stand on hallowed ground? Might it be that as we commit again to collecting, corporate listening to others, we hear the still voice of God in the most unlikely of places? Might it be that God will find us, once we quieten down and stop our desperate noisy search for and signposting to God?

I’ve made this much more complicated than it needs to be. And that is why I am so grateful to Mannix for writing something so accessible, readable and simple. Reading her work is like being taken by the hand and guided through a rich woodland of wisdom and practical tips. And if you get lost on the way, it hardly matters: her Listening Style Guide acts as a helpful map to refer back to. No panic necessary.

So we need to start small and we need to start big. We need to practice, time and again, this most simple but profound art of conversation, It doesn’t mean never speaking. It doesn’t mean we might not sometimes be able to offer insight, wisdom, direction.

But we have talked too loud for too long. As we emerge from a global crisis, as we wonder how on earth we begin to rebuild and serve and find the strength to go again, might it not be an idea, both locally and nationally and at every place inbetween, to stop, to listen, and to rediscover the art of tender conversation? I suggest we start with listening to Dr Mannix, who might just have something to say to us about the art of listening well.

We need to talk about power

Last week, on International Women’s Day, I attended a virtual book launch for Gabrielle Thomas’ monograph For the Good of the Church. Gabby was joined by Tina Beattie and Paula Gooder, both of whom spoke about their experience as women navigating their ways through male-dominated spaces: the volume of the male-authority voice, the silencing of women, male fragility and guilt, the idealising of women including the pressure to ‘mother’, the requirement to dialogue in male ways rather than female ways, and the locking away of the authentic female voice, which is often neither heard nor understood.

Resilient Praxis: Prayer is not private

Resilient Praxis is a new series of blog posts here on Out of the Chancel, exploring “Pastoral Theology in the wake of a pandemic”.

In the middle of a crisis it is difficult to reflect effectively. We are learning and adapting in ‘real time’. There will be time, in the months and years ahead, to tidy up this work of reflecting and learning. To trim the edges and plump up the middles.

But for now, pastoral care is still happening. Ministry is still happening. In fact we never stopped. And so these posts will give some space for reflection on what has been, what is, and what is to come. Not tidy, packaged praxis. But praxis that is rough around the edges. Praxis that hasn’t stopped. Praxis that will get us through. Resilient praxis.

 

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O blest communion, fellowship divine,
we feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

Hymn: For all the Saints

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As places of worship in the UK are asked to suspend gathered, in-person acts of worship, we’re seeing the rise of a phrase I’d hardly heard before 2020.

“Private prayer”.

As in: “The church will be open for private prayer”.

I know what we mean by it. We mean that buildings are accessible for anyone to come and pray quietly. That the sanctuary and peace of these thin places is open to all who need it. And that the activity that takes place within will not be “co-ordinated”, or “synchronous”, or “organised”, or “gathered”. “Private Prayer” is a helpful shorthand for this.

But our language matters. And prayer is never, ever, private.

Resilient Praxis: Praying through trauma when you’ve never prayed before

Resilient Praxis is a new series of blog posts here on Out of the Chancel, exploring “Pastoral Theology in the wake of a pandemic”.

In the middle of a crisis it is difficult to reflect effectively. We are learning and adapting in ‘real time’. There will be time, in the months and years ahead, to tidy up this work of reflecting and learning. To trim the edges and plump up the middles.

But for now, pastoral care is still happening. Ministry is still happening. In fact we never stopped. And so these posts will give some space for reflection on what has been, what is, and what is to come. Not tidy, packaged praxis. But praxis that is rough around the edges. Praxis that hasn’t stopped. Praxis that will get us through. Resilient praxis.

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I’ve never been very good at prayer.

Well, not if “prayer” is kneeling by the bed. If prayer is rehearsed immature rhymes and tick lists of requests and begging and grovelling and words I don’t understand to a god I don’t want to know.

Thank God that none of those things have to be prayer. Not if they don’t work.

I’m grateful to a great spiritual thinker, John Drane, for the various conversations he invites on his social media pages about life. John is perceptive, wise, and real. And he says that there are some important questions for us to ask about prayer. Even if – especially if – we’ve never prayed before:

How should we pray?
Who should we pray to?
What should we pray for?
What if I get it wrong?

Resilient Praxis: Sing with me – An Easter sermon

Resilient Praxis is a new series of blog posts here on Out of the Chancel, exploring “Pastoral Theology in the wake of a pandemic”.

In the middle of a crisis it is difficult to reflect effectively. We are learning and adapting in ‘real time’. There will be time, in the months and years ahead, to tidy up this work of reflecting and learning. To trim the edges and plump up the middles.

But for now, pastoral care is still happening. Ministry is still happening. In fact we never stopped. And so these posts will give some space for reflection on what has been, what is, and what is to come. Not tidy, packaged praxis. But praxis that is rough around the edges. Praxis that hasn’t stopped. Praxis that will get us through. Resilient praxis.

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The following is a reflection written for the Parish of Timperley and shared on our blog, along with Easter Sunday worship resources. I’ve shared it here too, for readers from further afield!

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Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

POPE JOHN PAUL II

 

An Easter like no other.

History will remember these months as extraordinary. We will tell our children and grandchildren, for generations to come, about the year that we were not able to celebrate Easter in our church buildings.

I know we have had moments of despair at this thought. In my sad moments, I have remembered the joy of previous Easters here in Timperley. The egg hunts, the bacon sandwiches, the bucks fizz, the excitement, the flowers (oh, how I will miss the Easter flowers after the stark emptiness of Lent!), the marking and lighting of the paschal candle as a sign of ever-present hope, the joyous acclamation that “Christ is risen!”

Resilient Praxis: Chasing Rainbows – Pastoral Ministry in a time of Covid

Resilient Praxis is a new series of blog posts here on Out of the Chancel, exploring “Pastoral Theology in the wake of a pandemic”.

In the middle of a crisis it is difficult to reflect effectively. We are learning and adapting in ‘real time’. There will be time, in the months and years ahead, to tidy up this work of reflecting and learning. To trim the edges and plump up the middles.

But for now, pastoral care is still happening. Ministry is still happening. In fact we never stopped. And so these posts will give some space for reflection on what has been, what is, and what is to come. Not tidy, packaged praxis. But praxis that is rough around the edges. Praxis that hasn’t stopped. Praxis that will get us through. Resilient praxis.

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Rainbows have sprung up everywhere. Some scribbled in crayon, others splatted in paint, and still more printed carefully and geometrically on an inkjet. Signs of defiant hope and deep courage in the face of immense change and loss.

And how quickly we were swept along by change. Watching the evening news bulletins felt enough to induce dizziness and disorientation. “The world’s gone mad” seemed to be a common sentiment, as new phrases and words tumbled into our everyday use: social distancing, self-isolation.