jelly

I am not a ‘cat person’. By that I don’t mean that some mistake me for being half-man and half-cat, though Lion-O from the Thundercats was one of my childhood heroes. But having had Smokey the Cat for about a year, I am beginning to see that if cats don’t actually rule the world, they are certainly in charge of the home. At least in their own heads.

Smokey the Cat teaches me many lessons. Some which involve a certain feline dexterity that I have no intention of learning. That is what the shower is for. But more usefully, we turn to jelly. Jelly is that stuff that chunks of cat food are coated in, that Smokey is far more interested in eating than the actual food. If desperate, if she hasn’t caught enough moths and flies to complement her jelly diet, she will deem it necessary to eat the actual tuna, duck, salmon or whatever else the chunks claims to have once been waved at on their way from sheep brain to sachet.

how very dare you

The jelly is obviously the best. But you can’t survive on just jelly. It’s one of those lessons we teach children. You can’t just eat the nice bits and leave the peas. Cats are harder to teach. If Smokey the Cat teaches me any lessons about following Jesus, she reminds me that we all like to pick and choose the parts of our faith we like, the chunks of the Bible we like, the churches we like,  and ignore the rest. I like the part of our faith that bangs on and on about grace and hope and transformation and heaven coming to earth and all that exciting and dynamic stuff; I am less inclined to feast on passages that talk more about judgements and laws and things all a little more Pharisaical. But those things are there. I prefer to preach about Jesus than Samson. But Samson is there. 

We all have our jelly. The things we lap up. But a mature faith is able to take the whole plate, and somehow hold it together; or, to hold parts of it, at least recognising there are other parts but that I cannot hold them. I can see where high-church Anglo-Catholics are coming from, I can see where low-church free-church evangelicals are coming from; I can see the grace, I can see the judgement, I can see the social action, I can see the personal commitment to faith that is needed. I can see the importance of string-free relationships in the community, and the importance of evangelism and challenging people to faith.

I can see that actually the world is more nuanced than polarised opposites, however easy it might be to assume otherwise.

moth balled

It’s the same in politics. We have our mantras, our favourite narratives, our ideologies, but if we take only the good bits from our politics and leave aside the flipsides we are kidding ourselves. 

I wish everyone’s jelly was the same as mine. My jelly is to preach hope, to lead towards Jesus, and to hope for the best that God will understand if I have got it wrong.  The rest of the food is there, and I promise I will get to it.

Unless I find a moth to eat instead.

 

stuff and nonsense

stuff and nonsense

Taxidermy is the act of mounting a dead animal for display. Hunt it, kill it, stuff it, display it. Trophies of success. Look at what was alive and is now dead. Look at the power I have. No longer will the animal roam freely, because its freedom is not convenient for me.

The drastic cuts the Conservative Coalition government is bringing in reminded me of this. The poor are a nuisance, an inconvenience. So stuff ‘em. Them with their dirty scrounging fingers, a bunch of frauds and benefit cheats. Like foxes who steal our eggs. The welfare burden is so great that we must reduce it; we will change the rules about what constitutes illness, striking fear into the disabled community; we will punish childbirth by not increasing benefits according to the size of the family, striking fear into large families. We will caricature poor communities as lazy and we will say that we support ‘hard working families’ (code: middle class, who prove their worth by their income), no matter that people on (less than) the minimum wage often work the hardest for the least reward.

Hunt it, kill it, stuff it, display it. Stuff the poor, so those in wealth and power can stay comfortable. Christian activist and anarchist Philip Berrigan once said this:

The poor tells us who we are, the prophets tell us who we could be. So we hide the poor, and kill the prophets.

For our current situation I suggest this:

The poor make us feel bad, the profits make us feel better. So we blame the poor, and we keep the profits.

If we are passionate about justice – if we really believe that Jesus meant what he said about speaking good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind and liberation for the oppressed – then we must be concerned and in more than a ‘hmph’ kind of way. Passion comes from the Latin ‘pasi’, which means ‘to suffer’. Passion involves suffering. If we are not poor, and passionately believe God’s heart is for the poor, then we must be prepared to suffer for them.

So if we are ok for money, instead of protecting our assets and income how about shouting “tax me!” If it is a choice between reducing welfare payments to dangerously low levels, or me paying a few hundred a year more in tax, tax me! And if that doesn’t work for you, then be generous in your charitable gifts, in your  actions, in your opinions. Not some “Big Society” nonsense, but Kingdom of God sense.

The poor must not be stuffed. They are not a plaything, a trophy, something we use to display our power. They are our sisters and brothers, our people. Anything else is stuff and nonsense.

in different ideology

I was lucky. I first voted in 1997. I was part of the revolution that finally demolished the 18 years (almost my entire lifetime) of Tory rule. I even went to a Blair rally! I didn’t sing along to Things Can Only Get Better but I held the coats of those who did. And I have a signed copy. Democracy felt good, felt real, felt necessary. There was fear in the Tory eyes, mine was the only Labour poster in a uni hall of residence full of Tory public school boys… And we won! My poster stayed up for ages. And will we ever forget the face of Portillo?

style or substance?

It’s never been quite the same since. Tony Blair stole the Tory policies and New Labour never looked back. Without a real difference in ethos or ideology between the parties, it was all on the charisma of the leaders and the art of communication. For all his faults, Blair won that battle hands down. He still would. And now…?

Finally it seems there is a difference. First Labour launched their manifesto. I think it was about economics and deficits but I was bored. Brown does not have charisma. Then the Tories launched theirs, and something happened. I heard something different. It’s not about charisma, Cameron is about as vacuous as the power station he launched the manifesto at. It is about ideology.

a little presumptuous?

They want to ‘empower communities’, they want us ‘the people’ to be more responsible for our own government. It’s the classic party division. It’s an ideological difference, an ethos. Remember those? Blair sacrificed ideology to gain power, and Labour have managed to hold on since, claiming to be for the ‘working people’ but really hoovering up the all-important middle-class votes. Now, in the absence of policies that are much different, the Tories have rediscovered ideology.

Ideology is what makes politics interesting. Ideology is what should drive policies, not the other way around. At least with an ideology you and I can argue until the cows come home about how things should or shouldn’t be done in general, because we can do that. What most of us can’t do is argue about whether Capital Gains Tax should go up or down. Because most of us don’t know what it is.

I think the Lib Dems have an ideology too...

So, finally, we can talk about the election. Winston Churchill said that democracy is a terrible system of governance, but the best one there is. So, do you think local people should have more say in local policies? That means you, by the way – do you actually want more say, will you actually volunteer to help run things or get involved, or is it a good thing for ‘other’ people? I certainly know there aren’t people queuing up to be school governors, Scout leaders, local councillors… Call me cynical, but just as an aside, isn’t this ‘community’ that Cameron trusts to be empowered the same ‘broken Britain’ full of scroungers, illegal immigrants and yoofs on ASBO’s that he always goes on about?

I think the 6 weeks of election indifference just got a little more interesting. We should not be indifferent to ideologies. We should have different ideologies. We should believe in different ideologies. We should believe in ideologies that benefit the poorest people in society, which may not be us. Societies should be judged on how they treat their poorest members. So, which ideology is it?

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Postscript: see St Aiden to Abbey Manor blog for what the three main leaders have to say to Christian voters…

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i am the vicar, i am

I am the vicar, I am.
I am the pastor, the carer, the listener
the one with the time to drop everything and
I also understand global politics and immigration and
I am the one who knows about Afghanistan
and cares about ‘our boys’
and I care about speed-humps
graffiti
litter
and the positioning of zebra crossings near schools.

I am passionate about school assemblies
council meetings
mums and toddlers and also
I am good at one-to-one and small groups and
I listen and empathise and at the same time
I am the one who plans and strategizes and
I am the one who understands budgets and decides if we can buy any staples
or replace the heating system.
I am the vicar, I am.

I am the quiet reflective prayer and
I am the speaker, the enthuser, the motivator, the learned teacher and
I can engage a room of 10, 50, 300 people with no problem because
I am the one who relates particularly well to children
older people
the middle-aged
the jobless
the employed
the doctors
teenagers and
I am the one who is always one step ahead and
I am the one who is endearingly disorganised.
I am the vicar, I am.

I care passionately about church politics
I care passionately about domestic abuse
I care passionately about the plight of Anglo Catholics
women priests
gay clergy
evangelicals and
I listen to the pope
the archbishop and
Rob Bell.

I am up-to-date with theological developments.
I understand the history of the reformation
the armed forces
the war
the government
the deanery
the Jewish background of Jesus and
I care about the excluded and
I manage my admin and
I know how to access children’s services.
I am the vicar, I am.

I am the one in whom trust is placed
I am the one in whom grumbles are placed
I am the one who is always talking to everyone else
I am the one who models worship
marriage
family
gardening
conversation
baking
prayer
listening
talking
planning.

I often get it wrong.
I am the one who has to keep my doubts under wraps and
I am also the one who is vulnerable and
dependable
stable
trustworthy.

I am the one who chairs meetings
I am the one who manages group discussions
I am the manager of an organisation that employs only me
I am the volunteer co-ordinator
the opinion co-ordinator
the trespasser on the territory of people who have been around a lot longer than me
and will be there after me.
I understand the heating system
the financial system
the rota system.

I love committees.

I drink tea with older people
And coffee with younger people
I listen to stories of bus routes and hospital visits and
I believe in transforming our community through the power of Jesus.

I am the one who is very tired.
I am the one who hates wearing dresses but still smiles
and would love to be muddy all the time.

I am the one who only works one day a week.

I am the one who loves this job.
I am the one who is making it up as I go along.
I am the one who would not swap this for anything.
I am the vicar, I am.

I am muddy. I am prayerful. I am.