Sabbatical Soundings part 4 - All at sea

Random things I learned at sea (in no particular order)

• It is utterly mesmerising. It is in constant movement and never looks the same two seconds in a row. It is always interacting - with the wind, the light, the clouds, the sun. When the sunlight broke through the clouds and tickled the surface, it was a beautiful party that I felt like I wanted to dive into. I can see why people fall in love with ocean travel.
  
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  It is really boring (yes, I know, but I'm asking readers to do the grown up thing and hold two contradictory facts in our heads at the same time) It is endlessly dull and grey. When we were miles, hundreds of miles, from land, and all around was grey, I craved some other life. For days there were no birds, no life visible above the waves. For days there were no other vessels on the horizon. I can see why people go mad at sea for weeks on end. 
• There is a scale for sea swell. If you're interested, it's here  It goes from 1 to 9. On day three when it got to 7 (high seas, 6-9m swell) little packets of sick bags appeared on each landing of the stairs. There were certainly times when walking was harder than you might imagine, we were woken up in the night from the rocking and rolling, and when nausea kicked in. The highest we got was a Force 9 wind and a sea swell of 8 - very high. I was very thankful to be on a modern large ship with stabilisers and ginger ale. And in awe of those who choose to travel the same ocean on something much smaller
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  It's very deep - at times there were thousands of metres of water below us. But the ship can also sail perfectly happily in quite shallow water as it approaches ports. On those days when I saw no other life, there was, of course plenty of it.  It was simply below the surface. When else might I miss the life that is abundant, but below a surface?

Sabbatical Soundings part 3 - Ocean perspectives.

It was something of a surprise to both my husband and I when I decided a Transatlantic crossing on a cruise ship would be something I'd like to do. Famously, I previously felt seasick on a canal barge.

But for me there was something about the length of the journey (11 nights on board with no stops) that appealed. It felt like we were placing the emphasis on the travelling itself -  and the time and effort involved in just travelling. Travelling 5000 miles at around 20mph was something I had never experienced. It was a significant investment of time compared with our 8 hour flight home. 

Of course, it was also a luxury! we were on board a large modern cruise ship - I really would not like to cross the ocean in something smaller! Our cabin was comfortable and the food was good (and plentiful) There was entertainment on board that we dipped in and out of (mostly out) but it was an opportunity to be off-grid and to read - both of which I took full advantage of. 

One of the aspects of the journey I knew I'd enjoy was the big skies. I love living where I live, but its abundance of trees means that my horizon is at least 50 feet above my head, and only a patch of sky is visible from any window. I wanted to put myself somewhere that the horizon would make me feel small and to experience something of the size of our planet in a way that modern air travel tends to deprive us of.

On the Atlantic ocean the sky was utterly enormous. Sometimes the horizon was close to the ship - we had some days of poor visibility with the result that the ship frequently deployed its fog horn. But on other days it stretched into the distance as if the ship and the sea were the only things to exist. So, although the ship itself was huge, it was more than possible to feel small. 

All too often I find there are things in life or in ministry which completely fill my horizon in an unhealthy way. What I need in those moments is a proper perspective. During our days at sea, as I sat and thought and read and prayed, I was able to find different perspectives on some things that I had been finding difficult. While there was learning and some healing in that itself, it turned out to be only the first of several shifts of perspective that the trip would bring about.

The gift and privilege of this sense of size, so hard to describe, has also brought a fresh meaning to some familiar hymns and songs.

Sabbatical Soundings - Part 2 Ash Wednesday - dust or water?

I had an odd Ash Wednesday this year. Not only because my Extended Study Leave (Sabbatical) has taken me away from parish ministry altogether for the whole of Lent, Holy Week and Easter, but because it was the second day of our Transatlantic crossing from Southampton to Miami. 

I saw a meme about Ash Wednesday coinciding with Valentine's Day this year, which it does, every so often. It went something like this:

Q:(addressed to a priest) "What are your plans for Valentine's Day?"

A: "I'm rubbing dirt on people's faces and telling them they're going to die."

It is my privilege every year to do just that. Or at least to say to people who come forward to have an ash cross marked on their forehead, that they should:

"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ."

It's a profoundly moving moment for me, not least as I look back on seven years in this parish and remember those people whom I've ashed and whose funerals I have subsequently conducted. 

Ash Wednesday, like the whole of Lent invites us to consider our mortality. Not in a morbid way, but because through Lent we move inexorably towards the death of Christ on Good Friday. But it's also because we're invited to consider how we will spend the days of the life that we have. Lent is an invitation into the fullest possible life - life with God - and that's why we examine our disciplines of prayer, worship, reading, fasting, generosity, and through these practices (as the Common Worship Eucharistic Preface has it) "learn to be your people once again".

Making ash from
the previous year's Palm Crosses

One of the reasons for using ash on Ash Wednesday is because the Biblical tradition tells us that humans were made from the dust of the earth, and we return there after death when we're buried. The first human, named Adam, deriving from the Hebrew word for soil or earth was so named because God created humans from the dust of the earth. (You can read all about that in Genesis Chapter 2.)

Anyway, this year as we headed out into the Atlantic ocean, I discovered that dust and ash are quite hard to come by on a cruise ship. I should perhaps have thought of that before I left but I had other packing issues. There is no soil on the ship (not even any artificial plants as it turns out) and very little dust because they keep the place scrupulously clean in the aftermath of Covid. No dust to use to mark the start of Lent and to remember our mortality. 

However, we were completely surrounded by water.

The finished ash!

That got me thinking. Israel was a people more accustomed to the desert than the sea (think Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah) so their understanding of where humans began will have been influenced by this. But water is essential for life  - and desert people certainly knew that. While the desert is an important part of the story  of God's people, Israel, water is significant too. They were saved from their life of slavery in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters at the time of creation. They passed through the Jordan river to enter into the Promised Land. Some of this is echoed in the Christian Baptismal rite where the prayers say: 

"Over water the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through water you led the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land." 

(Common Worship Baptism, prayer over the water)

We have a different understanding of where life began from those who wrote down the stories of Genesis. We know now that all life on earth began in water, and that humans are made of about 60% water. 

In the Christian tradition, water is most often associated with new life through Baptism rather than mortality and death, although there are some interesting connections. Some people still request that their coffins are sprinkled with water at their funerals to signify and recall their Baptism. But the words I couldn't quite remember on the ship (no internet to look them up!) were these ones:

"We thank you, Father, for the water of baptism.

In it we are buried with Christ in his death."

(Common Worship Baptism, prayer over the water)

Easter is the traditional time for Baptism in the church and Lent was the traditional time for preparation for Baptism when candidates for Baptism would learn about the spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith in preparation to "die with Christ and be raised to new life in Baptism" on the feast of the Resurrection. For us, Lent usually begins with dust and ends with water.

However, this Ash Wednesday, I found a way to reflect on the meaning of the beginning of Lent, my own death and Christian life with an entirely different set of imagery and metaphors, something that I'm still pondering. 

It was no less meaningful for being different. And there was a lot of water!

Sabbatical Soundings

 

2024 sees a period of Sabbatical for me. This amounts to three months of Extended Study leave during which time we are encouraged to pray, rest, read, travel and taking time away from the demands of our ministry to be refreshed and resourced. For me, the timing is perfect. My current role has changed considerably over the time that I have been in post (7 years) and has expanded to proportions that were not envisaged when I took on the role.

I'm tired and need a break. I also need time to envisage a different way of working - I can't continue with 60+ hour weeks that leave little time or energy for anything else. So that's what I'm hoping for.

But I'm hugely grateful to the very talented team in the parish of churchwardens, PCC members, and ministry team who will be holding the fort and also to the lovely friends and colleagues who are covering Sunday worship. It was no small undertaking to find cover for three churches for three months, and I'm enormously grateful to everyone who is helping out. I have no doubt that the parish will enjoy hearing them preach and receiving their ministry.

So there may be a few posts to help me reflect on what's been going on, and to share some of my musings. Some of them will be after the event since I have periods of time when I am without internet access (imagine!!!)

Let's see what happens....

Ash Wednesday

 How can it be Lent again? Sometimes it feels as if we never left last Lent. I will never forget the scramble to do an online service from the church building on Lent 4 last year. It was not much of a  Laetare refreshment Sunday. But we managed something and then came the rapid digita upskilling for us - among many churches. Within a few weeks, the choir in one of my churches was producing music from home - a discpline they have faithfully mantained for many months - interrupted sometimes with brief periods of singing together in the church building. Which is something that I hope none of us ever take for granted again.

But the calendar does not lie, and today is, in spite of my scepticism,  Ash Wednesday. The day on which we ponder our mortality - and  (re?) commit ourselves to spiritual disciplines that will help us to deal with it better - by reminding us that Christian faith and hope maintain that this life is not all there is. God transcends this life and draws us into eternity. So we will die - but it is then that we will see fully....

As a priest on this day I usually get to look healthy people in the eye, make a cross-shaped ash smudge on their forehead and remind them that they are going to die. It's impossibly meaningful and yet utterly mundane.

This year, we're doing it slightly differently. Congregation members have been able to collect a stone with an ash-and-varnish cross on it which we will use in our online service tonight (for which our choir have recorded a hymn, and anthem and a rather lovely plainchant version of Psalm 51  - all of which will be available on our You Tube Channel later)

But the reminder is there. As if we need it. For haven't we done more pondering of our mortality in the past 12 months than at any other time in many of our lives? Every decision at every level (Can I break the rules and walk with two friends? Should I visit my sick parent? Shoud I re-open schools? Restaurants? Who gets a vaccination today?) is governed by considerations of human mortality. Every single decision for the past year has been about saving people from premature death - or saving the ability of the Health Service to cope with patient numbers - which actually amount to the same thing.

I think that, like it or not there has been a collective contemplation of the fragility of life, and the certainty of death. Whether that will bring about lasting change in culture and lifestyle is another (much harder) question. So if, like me, you feel tht your have contemplated mortality enough, i'd like to offer another way of thinking about today. I was really struck by Jan Richardson's Blessing of Dust and the insistent question, "Do you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?" 

Into the dust of human life, God came, lived and died. And transformed that dust into something of eternal worth. So let us be marked, Jan says:

           for claiming

what God can do

within the dust,

within the dirt,

within the stuff

of which the world

is made

and the stars that blaze

in our bones

and the galaxies that spiral

inside the smudge

we bear.

© Jan Richardson  The Painted Prayer Book

What can God do with the dust of which we are made this Lent?

Wilderness

The Judean wilderness January 2019 - a traditional idea of wilderness?

Wilderness

Wilderness is wide.

Bare rocks are there –

No place to hide,

Exposed to all the elements

From every side.

Wilderness holds fear

Of dangers seen, unseen,

From far and near,

Threatening sounds and shadows

Are everywhere.

Wilderness can bloom,

Creative power is there.

Trees and plants find room,

Signs that life will flourish,

Death be overcome.

Wendy Ross-Barker

It seems like forever ago now but on Monday evenings we hold (held) something called Evening Stillness. A short introduction, then a reflection to help us frame our thoughts, and then around 20 minutes of silence. I love it. Thinking along a Lenten theme, I chose this poem for the 9th March. It has been sitting on my desk ever since and I keep returning to it.

It seems to be such a metaphor for where we are now.

We find ourselves in a strange new world where we are all staying at home. It might feel barren, wide with nowhere to hide. We feel exposed and vulnerable - like being in a desert.
It's a threatening place. One of the things I love to do is Godly Play and there are a number of the stories of God's people that take place in the desert. One of the lines in the stories about the desert is that you don't go there unless you have to. Like self-isolation and social distancing perhaps...

But God sometimes spoke very clearly to God's people when they were in thh desert. Think of Abraham entertaining the strangers in the desert, or the wilderness wanderings of Moses and his gang. So it can also be a place of creativity, and there are many signs that death will be overcome.

 I don't know about you but I have been enormously cheered by some of the silly videos and photos that people have been posting of their antics in isolation or quarantine.

There's this song by Sam Chaplin (apologies for the resulting earmworm)

Or this video of an amazing machine at home.

And then there's the beautiful stuff like this video of a Guildford choir singing wonderful harmonies whilst apart.

My current wilderness

 My wilderness looks a little like this photo at the moment - it's beautiful Spring, with lots of signs of new life in nature. Separated perhaps. But there is creativity and new life around. I hope you can share in some of that, and find peace and joy too.

The self-isolated woman at the well - John 4 A homily for 15th March 2020

I love the English language. It is ever-changing and evolving. Every year, the dictionary compilers add new words to the dictionary – and choose a word of the year. A few years ago, who knew what a selfie was? And why it may or may not need a stick?

I can’t help wondering if the word of 2020 will be a compound one, self-isolate. It’s a word I think we would never have used a few months ago. We would have known what it meant, but it would have seemed an odd choice of phrase  - how things change.

But I don’t think that self-isolate is a new concept. In fact I think it’s something that appears in our Gospel readings today. The woman at the well. In Samaria. It was perhaps not the most obvious choice of route from Galilee to Jerusalem for an observant Jew like Jesus. Many would have made the detour to avoid the territory. The Jews and the Samaritans had a history of mutual hatred and  distrust. The dispute was almost a thousand years old by the time that Jesus met this woman. A theological and political dispute dating from the splitting of the northern and southern kingdoms. When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, he was telling a radical story of boundary-crossing that has been somewhat diluted over the years. When we hear Samaritan, we think “good.” When his disciples heard “Samaritan”, they thought untouchable. Beyond the pale.

Living water? The River Jordan at Caeserea Philippi

And the Samaritan woman that Jesus meets at the well might have been regarded as the lowest of even these Samaritans. She was, perhaps self-isolating. We don’t know, but we might speculate that her relationship history had made her shunned by the rest of the women in the village. She was there alone in the heat of the day. Or perhaps she was self-isolating. Having had enough of the gossip, the taunts, the sly looks, she takes herself away from where she can be infected, polluted, by the hatred and suspicion of others.

And perhaps today when we think of it like that, the gospel reading takes on a new light. In the state of self-isolation, Jesus speaks to the woman. He does not shun her. He gives the means to quench her thirst for the true God for good. Jesus comes to those who are isolated or who isolate themselves. He comes to the shunned and those who shun others. That is his mission. He does not come for those who are well, but those who are sick. 

His disciples can scarcely believe it. Why does he pay attention to this woman? For what reason are so many of their taboos being ignored? Just how unclean is Jesus prepared to make himself in order to have his message heard by others?

We have no idea what lies ahead of us over the next few weeks. But it is likely that many of us may need to take some time to be away from others. This may or may not be welcome to us! But there is a need to address and acknowledge the fear that is widespread.

Isolation is not a good thing, all in all.

Jesus created a community of believers, in his lifetime and after his resurrection, the Holy Spirit continued that work at Pentecost. The church is a gathering, an ekklesia. It is all about being together with other believers. But there might be a time ahead of us when it is difficult to gather. There might come a time ahead of us when we choose to remove ourselves from  other people. But Jesus is still with us. Jesus still brings living water. Jesus will meet us when we are on our own, away from others. Jesus will be there always, ready to enter into conversation with us. ready to reveal himself as Saviour. So don’t be afraid. We are His and he is with us.

And the woman – even from her isolated position was able to share her faith in Jesus. She was able to bring others to him so that he could share that living water with more people. Perhaps there’s our challenge – even if we become physically estranged from others, we might still be able to point them to Jesus.