Peace in the Church

The ruined Church of St Simon Stylites, Aleppo, Syria.

It's been comparatively quiet on the Church front these days.  Spiky Mike's went vacant in September so my Sundays are largely booked from here into next year when we sincerely hope we will get a new Rector.  The Anglican Communion is currently not too mad due to the retirement of such famed conservative pests as Archbishops Akinola and Jensen.  Their successors are currently less noisy, one because he's very new, the other because he was a Colonel in the Nigerian Army and keeping stum about an African military career is probably not a bad idea.  In the old days of course he'd have ended up as a Dictator rather than an  mere Anglican Archbishop - watching Dan Snow on telly tonight, I discovered that the legendarily corrupt President Mobutu of the Congo/Zaire loved Gregorian chant!  Their American buddies in ACNE (or something similar sounding) seem to be quiet after losing a lot of court cases on property (apart from the Texans, but Texas law is different which is why they seem to execute a lot of rather low IQ people).  The Welsh Woozer (aka Williams of Oystermouth) has obfuscated successfully to Michael Ramsey's old Cambridge College but I think is due to lurk in Edinburgh doing the Gifford lectures soon.  Archbishop Oilwelby  seems to be getting a grip and doing a pretty decent job and the new Pope is fairly putting a new gloss on an old song to great effect.

Doubtless there is both grief and joy in the Church elsewhere (plenty enough for all in Egypt and Syria).  My own little bit and the bits I look out at is all Quiet on the Western (Rite) Front at the moment.  The prayer from the Prayer Book seems to be apt: 

"O Lord Jesus Christ, Who said to Your Apostles: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you," regard not my sins but the faith of Your Church, and deign to give her peace and unity according to Your Will: Who live and reign, God, world without end. Amen."

Motes and Beams

The new RC Archbishop of Weegiedom, Dr Tagliatelle, has managed to get himself in much hot water prior to his enthronement.  First, the Grub Street hacks of the West dug out a video of him at a Conference in the august setting  of CS Lewis's old Oxford college where he suggests (albeit with enough hedges to make you think he was a Sussex farmer) that a fairly recently departed Labour MP who was a former RC priest and openly gay had somehow had his lifespan shortened by his lifestyle. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/archbishop-condemned-for-remarks-about-gay-mp.18248404  The fact that the gallstones and pancreatitis that actually carried off the said MP are not normally cited as a "gay plague" may lead one to suspect the said prelate is talking through an orifice not normally linked to the vocal chords.  Then they ran a stinker on a former colleague of his - indeed his former deputy and successor at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome, who had been disciplined for getting drunk and making a pass at another bloke. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/how-the-catholic-church-whitewashed-priests-homosexual-advances.18276120

This litany of foot-in-mouth may suggest that the it's the liberal "meeja" out to get the Church.  Or it may suggest that the media is targeting public institutional hypocrisy in the RC Church in Scotland.  either way, it's a startlingly inept performance from someone who has be the Scottish RC "Media Bishop" for the past 6 years.  I have much sympathy for the rebuked cleric whose lapse of judgement fuelled by alcohol has been put in to the public domain well after he doubtless hoped it was water under the bridge.  If he took the pastoral counselling offered and worked on his issues with drink and sexuality successfully, then my sympathies are all the stronger.  Occasionally one does think that the Bishops of all the Churches might reflect rather more on Matthew 7:3 before opening their traps.

Ascension Day

 

Here's a wee thought for Ascension Day:

"Some part of us is always in the process of healing... the condition of health is not a static state of perfect wellness; it is... a condition of ongoing healing. For example, a possible explanation for the cause of cancer is referred to as the "scanner theory. " This theory holds that various cells in the healthy body routinely become cancerous: but the body remains healthy because within it there is some... mechanism that scans the body for such malignant cells... and proceeds to kill them before they multiply into a growing tumor. What causes cancer then, according to the tbeory, is not a cancerous cell but rather the failure of the "scanner" to detect it... The theory is offered not because it is proven, but because it demonstrates the way in which physicians are increasingly coming to think about disease: that most disease may best be defined as a failure of the healing process."
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

At one level, the Ascension is the ultimate healing.  It heals the great division between the human race and the Divine will, symbolically recounted in the Fall narrative in the book of Genesis.  Yet it has never been a total or complete healing.  Even within the Church the wisdom has always been  "reformandus semper reformandum" - "Reformed and always in need of reform".  Again and again, the Body of Christ, the People of God  have needed healing.  The same is as true today as ever it was.  It needs healing for its attitudes to LGBT people/women/the mentally ill/the poor/non-Caucasian ethnic groups if you take the Liberal line.  It needs healing for its divergence from Scripture on morals and ethics if you take the Conservative approach.  'Twas ever thus!  and in all likelihood will be until the Parousia.  Living with the continued brokenness and dysfunctional nature of the Institutional Church is a pain and sometimes we find we can't put up with it anymore.

A modern collect for Ascension Day helps me to "Keep Buggering On" as Churchill put it:

"O God,

you withdraw from our sight

that you may be known by our love.

Help us to enter the cloud where you are hidden

and surrender all our certainty to the darkness of faith in Jesus Christ.  Amen"

(Janet Morely, as cited in Daily Office SSF)

The concept of faith in Jesus being dark is disturbing - but sometimes living faith is disturbing.  It takes us to encounter our own (and others) darkness.  And through it to healing.  The Apostles went from being Mates of the Messiah to being Friends of the Late, Dead Jesus before experiencing the healing of the Resurrection.  And then they went on to be the Gob Smacked of Galilee today and then the Babbling Linguists of Jerusalem and finally the Confused Council who hacked out a Compromise at Jerusalem. As it still sort of is.  The fact is the Church and Christians are never in "a static state of perfect wellness" - they are always in "a condition of ongoing healing".  That is our vocation.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Last night after work, I met up with a friend from my London days who was in town with the parish choir he sings with. They were doing the services at St Mary's (the choir being on post Easter break). So a very decent Italian meal in Bar Roma ensued: carapaccio of beef, risotto Della Oeste and Cassata Sicilliana (or ice cream in real speak!) for me, antipasti (that's cold meat in Scotland), lamb cutlets in Garlic and rosemary (the wife hates both lamb and garlic, so a wee treat whilst off the matrimonial leash!) and tiramisu for Tim! A nice guy (for a Tory) and a Yorkie, we ganged up together when working with the effete Southerners in Ealing.

This morning was an enjoyable Parish Mass at St Ninian's Comely Bank (covering for the Encumbrance), then up to Corstorphine, only to find my charge is oot with his family and there is hee-haw to do until he returns. Sunbathing with a coffee beckons!

Hearing the message!

Working in mysterious ways is what God, according to the song, does. Oh, indeed! The last couple of sermons I have heard seem to have been cribbed from my therapists notes. Which may suggest I am currently sitting in the right Edinburgh pew! And it just happens to be my taste in Liturgy. Hmm! And the hymn during communion? "Father hear the prayer we offer". Which I had at my priesting. "Not for ease that prayer shall be, but the steep and rugged pathway" - God heard that prayer obviously!! God really does try to get through to you when you stop moving long enough to hear and see and listen.

It was good news indeed yesterday when the mighty Blue Brazil beat the evil Dungbarton 3-0 at Fabby Pies Stadium on the Clyde. Suddenly we're in 5th place! (That won't last!). So it's time to go for a wee bit of exercise and enjoy the sunshine! Pax et bonum y'all!