the lament of mrs vicarage

And so it’s return was as good as I had hoped – a bitter-sweet tragi-comedy of awkward moments, insightful arguments and exaggerated characters that makes the BBC’s Rev so good to watch. Ricky Gervais, your domination of painful ‘real-life’ comedy is well and truly over.  

In episode 1 Rev managed once again to squeeze depth into it’s little band of characters, from the terrifying Archdeacon Robert to the amorous Adoa to the “we’ve all got one” Colin and the new slightly sinister Bishop of London. But most of all Adam himself.

No,  actually even more most of all, Mrs Vicarage herself, Alex Smallbone. When she went into her diatribe a few minutes in, I could hear vicar’s wives (and yes, vicar’s husbands) everywhere shouting at the telly – go girl, you tell ‘em!

Watch the diatribe here, or read below:

Do you know the last time I had a whole weekend with you Adam all to myself? Er, no neither do I because oh yes that’s right, it’s never happened!
I’m sorry, what’s the matter?
What’s the matter? I’m fed up with never seeing you, that’s what’s the matter. I’m fed up with your congregants saying what a shame Alex couldn’t come today like they’ve got some masters degree in passive-aggression just because I happen to have been busy at work. I’m fed up with coming home from work and only to make yet another mushroom stroganoff for some sodding church meeting of pedantic bores who want to sit around in my home discussing how to put in a fire exit or whatever. I want to have a child with you because I don’t just want to be a solicitor all my life but you don’t shag me enough…
Erm, I do… don’t I? Really..
No, because this house is permanently full of people making unceasing demands on your time because they’ve got nothing else in their lives…

As the role of vicar has changed beyond recognition in recent years, so has the role of their partner, and not just because there are now an increasing number of vicar’s husbands. There are also an increasing number who work full-time themselves; and an increasing number who don’t want to be seen as the ‘also comes with’ to the vicar, but as a person in their own right. So, if you bake, then bake, but not because you are married to the vicar. If you like having tea with old ladies, then do it, but not because you’re the vicar’s wife.

To me, the vicar’s wife or husband is the background hero of parish life, no matter whether they bake or host or do the traditional thing or not. It’s because they answer the phone and are expected to be the adminstrator, secretary and vicar’s GPS; they are expected to attend church and be friendly and know what’s going on and so often be the buffer between ‘the people’ and the vicar. And most of all because they love us, and have agreed to give up a ‘normal’ life for a definitely abnormal one, putting down roots and making friends in someone else’s community knowing the pain that will come when you are uprooted again and again.

For us, we have always been lucky. In the 2 parishes we have been in, the lovely Fran has pretty much always been treated as Fran, and still is. Thank you for that. I couldn’t do what I do or be what I be (!?) without her.

So Mrs (and Mr) Vicarage we salute you. We hear your lament, and we are sorry for all the times we put life before you. And Rev, may you continue to point out, with humour and pain and poignant conversations the mystery of life that is one lived in a vicarage.

…

Read the point of view of a real vicar’s wife on the Vicar’s Wife blog.

sacrificing jack

—caution: plot spoilers!—

He who was immortal became mortal, and it was his mortal blood that was sacrificed for the salvation of the world. Following the offering of blood in sacrificial death, there came resurrection. The man in question… J.. J… Jack. Captain Jack.

the trinity?

So Torchwood ended last night. Epic story telling from Russell T. Davies that we got used to in Doctor Who and that has been sadly lacking in the bite-size adventures of Stephen Moffat’s Doctor. Davies’ Doctor looked outwards with big stories about humanity, salvation and the power of sacrifice; Moffatt’s looks inwards to saving the Doctor and his friends from their Boy’s Own adventures.

Back to Torchwood. Yes, this series was nothing compared to Children of Men; disappointingly Americanised, way too long, too many pointless plot deviations, not enough emotional depth and as Gwen herself said, contained nothing extra-terrestrial. But the last 2 episodes were much better. And the ending at least restored some faith in the Big Story.

Big Story is important. Some call it meta-narrative. Story that helps us find our place, our meaning, that tells us about Big Things. This Torchwood ended as many of Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who stories ended: stories of personal sacrifice, of salvation, of resurrection. This ending particularly had so many echoes of the sacrificial death of Jesus. In fact, you can’t help but chuckle at Russell T Davies use of religious metaphor as the first words Gwen spoke after Jack’s blood saved the world: “Jesus Christ Almighty”. Then Jesus Jack came back to life. Resurrected.

Then there’s Jack’s words spoken to the most unlikely of characters, Bill Pullman‘s creepy paedophile Oswald Danes. Jack, for all his own moral ambiguity, tells Danes, “you’ve made your life so small.” Maybe in this Big Story, that even tries to find redemption for the paradigm of the most hated figure of our time, there’s an encouragement for us to live bigger lives, looking outside of ourselves and the darkness within  to look outwards and upwards, to the author and perfector of all things. In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.

What would we sacrifice, and for whom? Because we know real life. That begins before death. A bigger life. That is a real Blessing.

torchwood, but I wouldn’t

Wish for immortality, that is. Something that unknowingly, and without understanding it, so much of our society longs for. Easy immortality though, to be fair. We wish to be immortal at the best and most able part of our lives. Not to be immortal and be… old. Or… ill. After all, where would L’Oreal be if we didn’t age. 

*Caution – Torchwood plot spoilers!* 

I am a big Torchwood fan. The new series needs to do a lot to satisfy die-hard fans of a quirky Cardiff-based and very British low-budget sci-fi drama, and as the story goes so far, this is good. The basic premise:

Nobody can die. Death is not an option. 

Even those who should be dead are not. Something is keeping people alive despite accidents and illness; even severed limbs still contain life. The planet faces overpopulation within 4 months. Hospitals are full of people who are alive, but in terrible pain. Triage is reversed, there is no ‘golden hour’ for A&E patients during which their lives can be saved. They will not die anyway. Minor injuries are treated first to get them out of the hospital, whilst seriously injured wait.  Just… wait.

The miracle day becomes a terrible day.

jack in a (wooden) box?

With this simple but dramatic change, the tables are turned on attitudes to death. From fearing death, from death being the enemy and to be avoided at all costs, suddenly death is the old friend people desperately want. Our craving for constant youth and for constant life seems ridiculous. In an instant an entire culture in the West designed around real-life death-avoidance finds the ground it stands on disappears.

We who follow Jesus are not afraid of death. We welcome it, in fact. In theory. When we read the book of Revelation, for example, we can see that death is not to be feared; the early church certainly wouldn’t have seen it that way. But it doesn’t swing so far that way that we end up craving death, like so many seem to – the sort of ‘passport to leave this earth and get to heaven’ mis-reading of Scripture. Jesus came to bring life and life in all its fulness – in this life and the one beyond.

gwen will it all end?

So we do not fear death, though we may fear its consequences for those we leave behind.  We welcome death, in it’s right time and place, because we know life is not designed to be immortal. The weariness and loneliness of Dr Who and Captain Jack are windows into the world of those who do not die. Even Jesus died.

Our story is of a life that dies but that does not stay dead. Our story is of resurrection that conquers death and all fear of death. Our Miracle Day is not the day people stopped dying, but the day one man died and was raised to life. Our story is not immortal life but eternal life, that begins here and now whilst we are mortal.

In Torchwood through one life all crave death; in Jesus, through one death we all gain life.
Watch the Torchwood: Miracle Day trailer here…

olympic baptism bingo

There’s a new Olympic sport. Not as much of a guilty pleasure as beach volleyball, but good nonetheless. It’s called Olympic News Bingo, and involves watching BBC London (my local news) and seeing how many tenuous links to the Olympics they can make with an ordinary news story.

A bus has crashed – OLYMPIC TRAVEL CHAOS.
Famous person visits London – OLYMPIC HOTEL CHAOS.
Boris Johnson – OLYMPIC BORIS JOHNSON CHAOS.

Wenlock

You get the picture. 

Without wishing to cash in on such cheap journalistic techniques, I was thinking about how much the Olympic ticket lottery was a bit like many people’s attitudes to child baptism.

To get an Olympic ticket, you don’t have to be into sport, you just need to want to be there; you don’t have to know what it will be there – you may end up watching cycling or wrestling or hammer-throwing – but at least you will be there; you don’t have to make any long-term commitment, just give your credit card details, sit back and wait. It may work out, it may not. At least you’ve done your bit to try. 

Many people approach having their children baptised in a similar way. You don’t have to be into Jesus (or even religion), you just need to want them want them to get into heaven, though you don’t really know what that means and actually aren’t very interested in finding out. Like handing over your credit card details to Olympic organisers, you make the “renouncing evil” promises through gritted teeth. You don’t really know what you are promising, or where you will end up, but at least you are in shout for a ticket.

manderville

And the best thing? No long-term commitment.  Ok, the vicar goes on about the ‘baptism legacy’ being you and your child involved in your local church developing healthy spiritual lives… but you know as well as he does that you have no interest in a long-term legacy, just like getting an Olympic ticket isn’t going to make you join a gym. You just want a ticket and then to go home.

I know not everyone thinks like this. We are about to do our first baptisms at our church for years and our prayer is that in the same way buying an Olympic ticket might get more people involved in the wonderfully life-giving life-changing thing that is participation in sport, so our baptisms might get more people involved in the wonderfully life-giving life-changing thing that it participation in Jesus’ kingdom, in bringing heaven to earth now, not just for the future.

Only time will tell. I know I am convinced that no ticket will give me a better view of the Olympics then from my armchair. So there I will stay.

unnecessary beach volleyball picture

   

censored sensibility

Come-backs are still in full swing at the moment. As teenagers wear dodgy skinny jeans with 80‘s hairdon’ts, grown-ups of a certain age look back nostalgically at their youth and record companies say ‘ker-ching’ and so the bands of the 80′s and 90′s re-form (for better or worse) and stun us with their mediocrity. Quite how man-band Take That (whom I secretly love!) can win Best British Band at The Brits against Mumford & Sons who can tell.

When Jesus stormed the charts back in the day, he blew the current chart-toppers, The Pharisees, out of the water. They were like the X-Factor machine of their day, they had all the marketing bases covered for making sure everyone did the right things and behaved the right way. Namely, conforming. No-one was considered righteous unless they did what the Pharisees did. Which was to hang around each other patting themselves on the back for not being like ‘them’, the others, you know, the hoi polloi, the massed ranks of people. Think X-Factor auditions.

Almost as big a surprise to the ruling elite as The Streets were back in 2001, Arctic Monkeys in 2006 or Mumford & Sons in 2010, Jesus showed a new way, an original way, a much better way. Jesus challenged the Pharisees by saying (among other things) that separation from the tainted masses was not the way to be holy, and was definitely not the way to show love. In fact, for Jesus there were no tainted masses, there were no great unwashed. There were just – people. And he reserved higher condemnation for the hypocritical religious Pharisees than he did for the adulterers or prostitutes or cheating tax collectors.

Jesus took religion out of the white-washed tombs of respectability and plonked it slap-bang (pardon the expression) in the middle of the brothel, the drinking house, the messed-up marriages, the poverty-stricken abandoned widows and the dirty foreigners. So why is it that like the opposite of an indestructible 70′s prog rock band, respectability keeps on making a come-back. The church becomes so respectable, our faith becomes about being respectable. Of course when faith moves into the brothel we want the brothel to be transformed and changed – but not into a WI Knitting Circle.

Reading the story of Joseph (of the Technicolor Dreamcoat, not he of the pregnant fiancée) as part of the e100 Challenge it struck me how we even try to censor and make respectable the characters of the bible and the stories about them. Why, when the Bible doesn’t? The story of  Jacob & Joseph contains multiple wives, surrogate mothers, oppression of slaves and even rape; it contains sibling rivalry so bad it almost ends in murder and (only!) ends in Joseph being sold into slavery. And we expect our children to be well-behaved with this family as a role model?! No wonder Children’s Bible’s are so much smaller. They have to cut so much out.

What designer are you wearing tonight?

Of course we want to be changed and transformed. Of course we want messed up lives to be untangled and hopelessness replaced with hope. But let’s not pretend that that is anything remotely like coating ourselves with a veneer of respectability and hoping for the best. God looked at our Bible characters honestly, he judged them accordingly and guess what – by his grace he loved and nurtured and forgave and moved on with them, not without them.

Maybe this is a particular challenge to church leaders, of all denominations, when we so easily get caught up in being thoughtful intellectuals or organised managers or inspiring leaders and forget the primary calling to be real and to be immersed in our people and the messy lives that entangle us all. Maybe it is a particular challenge to followers of  Jesus who have been around the light so long we have forgotten what it is like to live in the dark and we expect so much of hurt and broken people that we frighten them away with our whispering about their swearing or our sssh’s to unruly children or we simply don’t give them the freedom to bring something new to our community that has become static and respectable.

Jesus went out there and mixed with the uncensored sensibilities of people the religious elite avoided. May we do the same. And let’s stop respectability making another come-back.

This comeback by take That, though respectable, was actually quite good – Ed

the elephant in tahrir square

There have been tanks in Tahrir Square, and horses and even camels… and a great big elephant that no-one talks about.

What has happened in Egypt has been momentous, and will continue to be remembered as a remarkable event. It brings back memories of the toppling of Eastern European communism in 1989 and Apartheid in South Africa in 1991 – largely peaceful, grass-roots revolution, which the powerful cannot simply ignore or suppress.

Other things can be ignored though. There were martyrs, of course. Could a largely peaceful revolution have happened without the initial violence and the torture of prisoners? We will never know. And then there is prayer. Prayer is notoriously difficult to report. I cannot imagine John Simpson talking about the power of prayer. And in a Muslim country with a small and largely oppressed Christian population, the prayers of whom?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787

This picture above (from BBC News) stood out for me. It highlights everything of interest, yet totally ignores the several hundred people praying. They are really quite obvious. Bloggers should never be considered more important than pray-ers.

This reminded me of another picture (below) that dropped onto my Facebook wall the other day, showing Christians protecting Muslims at prayer in the Square.

prayers, protests & protection

Prayer is the elephant in Tahrir Square and the elephant in the news room, that which cannot be reported because no-one understands it or wants to credit prayer with achieving anything. In such a deeply religious country as Egypt, with some of the oldest Christian communities in the world, this is an interesting elephant.

It’s partly our ‘secular’ news culture that avoids talk of things religious unless they are divisive, frivolous, controversial or gay (or all of them). And I think it’s partly our attitude to seeing Muslims at prayer. Christians at prayer in churches seems quaint, a little dull, irrelevant; Muslims at prayer en mass in the outside, to the frightened-of-Muslims public, looks slightly sinister, in their straight lines, all moving together; our paradigm of Muslims in the news is of shouting, fighting, and being angry. This breaks that stereotype.

Maybe that’s why it was ignored.

We pray now for a peaceful transition of power.

judging.unjudging

I remember soon after the tragic murder of Jo Yeates in December
that the media wanted it to end as quickly as an episode of
Midsomer Murders
so in true journalistic style I remember them seizing upon the arrest of the landlord
who by all accounts fitted the TV detective show model
a quiet, shy and retiring bearded academic
ergo loner, a mysterious recluse, definite murderer material

so i remember them seizing upon him and doing such a good job of
a character assassination
that it nearly jeopardised the whole courts process
and now it strikes me that as he was released on bail
and we never heard of him again
and that now they have arrested and charged someone else
that says something about the whole judging another person thing

and we can‘t just blame the media for because we lap it up
we love a good murder mystery
and forget there’s real people involved
and this seems a good example of why Jesus said that in this new world called the

kingdom of heaven

we try not to judge others unfairly
or even at all

because we also will be judged in the same way
and I don’t think we would much like that
and once we have judged it is very hard to unjudge
and every now and then we need a timely reminder.

i know I do.

many of horrors. many of love.

So Matt Cardle’s shabby soft-pop croony karaoke X Factor song is number 1. Some people will settle for anything. We really will. Pale imitations of the real thing. Either because we’re lazy, or don’t expect to receive anything better, or don’t realise there is better out there. Of course this can apply to lots of things, from Tesco’s water-filled chicken to cheap chocolate to, of course, music.

biff this

No-one expects the X Factor to work miracles; nobody really expects the X Factor to be about music – it is after all a pantomime entertainment show on which contestants and performers and judges are scripted, guided and if there’s a danger they might get it wrong, they are auto-tuned or made to mime. But it’s good fun (at times!), and it keeps people who made flashy lights and ‘cheer spontaneously now’ cards in business.

What really gets me though is the lack of effort at the end. The song is always, and without fail, awful. A damp squib, a pathetically lazy, badly thought-through pile of poo. What should be the climax of 6 months of being taught to sing by Sinita and to dance by an aerobics teacher ends up as the most bland and boring performance of the lot. It shouldn’t happen. After all the effort that goes into different song styles, into finding the ‘unique’ thing – shall we say the X Factor – of the winner, all they do is a cover version. This year at least the cover is of a decent song, but they might as well say Matt Cardle has won, now go and buy Many of Horrors by Biffy Clyro to celebrate. As soon as he has won, Matt Cardle is pointless. An irrelevance.

biffy clyro

Even so, maybe we can turn this into something good each Christmas. Maybe we can use the disappointment of a feeble unimaginative cover version every year as a reminder that Christmas isn’t about being feeble and unimaginative at all but is about wonder and beauty and creativity. Maybe we can even find ourselves at the point where we thank the X Factor for showing us each year that there is another way to live, another way to do Christmas; we can thank them for being all that we don’t want to be in order that we can be who we are meant to be.  Beautiful. Orginal. Unique. No pale imitations, no shabby cover versions. Us, and our creator God.

No longer many of horrors, but many of love.

Maybe, just maybe.

x-factory integrity

There are some things in life that wind me up that really don’t matter. Especially on the telly box. The Queen Vic serving food on an occasional basis for years despite having no kitchen nor any kitchen staff (until finally this week a kitchen appeared!). Newsreaders’ obsession with saying each others names twice at the end of each report. People entirely unqualified to judge talent contests managing to be paid to do it still bugs me. Katie Price. None of these things really matter, not enough to lose sleep over.

Some things do matter though. At least, I think they do. Those lucky enough to be in my company during the X-Factor shows know that I get a bit wound up sometimes. Yes, by lots of things that don’t really matter.  Pantomime judges with their paint-by-numbers clichés, OTT lighting, voice-overs and stage-managed ‘drama’, or covering over the worse singers with heavy backing vocals… These are the things that don’t really matter. It is just TV entertainment and secretly I quite like it.

striving at the cole face

Other things actually matter. I think it is a question of integrity that when you have guest acts performing live on a live TV singing talent show they must – must! – sing live. They don’t need a live band, it can be ‘live’ karaoke… but the singing and instruments must be live. And surely surely surely when one of the judges – who is a judge because of their singing career – performs her new single ‘live’ on the show she must sing it live. Surely?

Of course to many it doesn’t really matter. It’s just telly blah blah. But the X Factor has a huge influence on culture and on pop music, and claims to be looking to find the pop stars of the future (like Leon and Shane, for example). I think that the greatest test of whether a singer or band are any good is whether they can do it live, whether they can do their thing without hiding behind producers and re-takes. Not whether they can lip-sync to someone playing their CD in the background. We can all do that. And some of us do most every night.Or is that just me?

If you are to have any integrity as a producer of the show, or as a judge within the show, then live must mean live. Otherwise it is just pretending, or actually it is lying and deceiving, it is manipulating the public into believing something that isn’t true. There is a well-used cliché in my line of work, almost worthy of a Louis Walsh accent, that as a follower of Jesus and especially as a church leader you have to ‘walk to walk, not just talk the talk’. I cannot imagine standing up in front of my church lip-syncing to a sermon someone wrote for me earlier. I cannot imagine the music groups or organists in churches across the country pretending to play along on a Sunday whilst really miming to a CD. We wouldn’t stand for that. So why accept it on a TV show from the ‘professionals’?

People who are the supposed masters of their art must really be so. It’s the shock of Milli Vanilli all over again (!), yet this time there is no attempt to pretend the voices are real… is this ironic post-modernism, or lazy producers banking on an apathetic audience weaned on low-expectation telly?

pantomime cliches

Like it or not people look up to Cheryl Cole and others like her, and yet they know she does not sing live on a live singing talent show on which she is a live judge. Ergo, you don’t need talent to be famous as long as you look good. Ergo, shallow culture of fame-hunters blissfully unaware that not having a talent actually is a problem. Mind you, if they realised the X Factor auditions wouldn’t be such fun…

So, if you love the X Factor, make a fuss about it. If you love Cheryl Cole, make a fuss about it. If you love integrity, make a fuss about it. It probably doesn’t matter, it won’t change the world, there are more important things. But please, at least, notice. Then I’ll be quiet.

rev: ev(en)angelical angst

When a builder has a crisis of faith in building, it is not the end of the world. Just the building. When a banker has a crisis of faith in banking, it is not the end of the world. Just the banking. Building still exists. Banking still exists. Life goes on.

The final episode of Rev. highlighted one of the challenges for vicars/ministers. I found it deeply moving. What happens when we have a crisis of faith? What happens when we want to explore, express and question our faith, when people rely on us to be stable, solid and unwavering in faith and conviction? So many people think that church leaders are the solid types, the strong ones, that we are leaders because we are sorted. Some leaders like that. And some may well be. Many are not.

In fact, many are called because they are not - it was their sensitivity, thoughtfulness, depth and angst that was part of their calling and the very thing that makes them good at their job. And the very thing that makes it so hard, that threatens to pull at the very seams of life and faith and unravel the whole thing in a very public kind of way. Without faith, there is nothing left – no job, no home, no foundation on which your whole life and reputation has been built.

How would you respond to your (even evangelical!) church leader telling you they sometimes questioned everything? How would you respond to your church leader having some sort of meltdown like Adam Smallbone did? Is it just another ‘bi-annual wobble’ to walk through like getting caught in some unseasonal drizzle without an umbrella, or is it actually serious, a real questioning, a real doubt like an overwhelming flood? Is it ok to preach if you are doubting? If not, why not? Is our faith based on the strength of faith of our leader, or on the strength of our own faith, Jesus living in us and God mediated to us not through our leaders but through our own interaction with the Holy Spirit?

unravelling...?

Vicars and leaders need people who they can be honest with, who won’t panic, who won’t try to fix them, who won’t pray for deliverance from the demons of doubt, and who won’t send it round the prayer chain that they are having a wobble.  Most of us are incredibly sensitive and spend a lot of energy treading carefully around the sensitivities of others, yet as Rev. exposed, not always feeling the same sensitivity coming back.  And so sometimes we end up shooting our mouth off at someone like Colin or Alex who really don’t need it or deserve it, however satisfactory it seems at the time.

Watching Adam unravelling was disturbing, because I know how close to that some of us are sometimes; and it showed the consequences of allowing yourself to behave in an un-Jesus-like way. God bless Alex and vicar’s partners and friends everywhere for being so long-suffering, so patient, and sometimes giving us the (metaphorical) slap in the face we need. And sometimes the hug, the tea, and making us laugh when we disappear into our own navels.

They’d better commission another series of Rev. or I’ll lose all my (already slim) faith in intelligent telly.
…………………….