Forms

I feel purged.
I have been to see the accountant and he will fill out my tax forms.
The filling out of forms is a scary business. I am pretty sure that many great ideas fail in our communities when they open the brown envelope and out falls a very thick application booklet.
Usually once you start it's not so scary.
The forms are there for a reason I suspect,
they are a test,
they ask the question:
"are you serious about this?"
Problem is once professional form fillers are available, which they are, then unfortunately, they can be a test of your ability to afford a form filler.
Which reminds me, I wonder what my accountant will charge me for filling in my tax form?

Taxing Taxes

Why is tax so taxing? I have just spent the day struggling to fill in tax forms. I don't know why I get so het up about it, I guess I am a little wobbly at finances.
The eighteenth century reformers who brought about the demise of the slave trade were dead against taxes. They thought it better that the rich give spontaneously rather than have it reluctantly taken off them. They had this idea that there was a kind of grace involved in giving spontaneously which we deprived people of if we taxed their income. I will be interested in seeing if this is what's behind the American's relatively low tax and relatively high charitable giving.
Anyhow, forms finished I have tried to see myself as some sort of heroic figure who has just contributed to society in a direct and spontaneous way by filling in his tax form.
So three cheers for me and everyoen else who is paying their way, even if it's not spontaneous!

Is there an adult in the house?

Today there is much talk about being a grown up at Brew our Coffee and Caffeine free tea gathering in the bar at St Michaels. This is prompted by one of our number potty training her little boy. Needless to say we all have our advice to give her, mine boiling down to a laissez faire leaving it till he's ready, others with advice that includes bribery or down right sneakiness. (Buying smaller nappies and claiming the child has grown out of nappies does count as being a bit sneaky in my book!)
Someone suggests that they are fed up of being a grown up and wonder if it were possible to hire a grown up to come into your hosue when you need one to come and do the job for you. We agree this may be the attraction of nannies and the like.
I am currently trying to fill in my tax form so I would like an adult to come and do that for me.
We are now in the serious business of negotiations in the regenration building projects I am involved in so I would like an adult to come and take that on as well.
Who is the adult in our community?
People often want me to be the token adult in some circumatances even calling me father. I guess I should be flattered except of course this is only a prelude to what all chidlren do when they become tenagers, ignore their parents or tell you to leave them alone!
So watch this space I think my friend may be on to something...

Rent an Adult is coming to a town near you soon.

One word mission statements

Home again but not before taking another session this time on who God says we are. We ended by looking for a one word mission statement.
Funny thing mission statements... Lots of people and organizations have one but no one can ever remember what they are. They need to be portable to have any value at all.
When I came to Mytholmroyd and Cragg Vale ten years ago I brought the word "Open". It affected all that we subsequently did and moreover still affects all we do.
It is why we are open to regeneration and open to partners and open to change.
Today they picked "Together" and "outward" amongst others, I wonder how these mini Mission statements will affect their development? I can't wait to see!

You say building and I say people

Today I asked the church I'm working with a simple question... "what does church look like?" It's not as simple as it sounds because I had already primed them to think about the church as its people.
So answers came back about worship, welcome laughter etc. My wife asked innocentally why none of those picture were of things outside the church.
There was an awkward silence. Then some defensive replies. After a bit of a kaffufel, it turned out there was loads of stuff they were doing outside the confines of the church wall they had just forgotten to mention them.
It was as though church inside the building and church outside the building were different things to church.
I suspect if God were to talk about church he wouldn't mention buildings at all. Perhaps we need a different word the people and their building.
Or are we called homosapiens because we live in a home?

Love it how it is before you canchange anything

To Wydale a retreat house near Scarborough to take a weekend on regeneration for a church from Wakefield. We began tonight with the question who are we. Fundamental to any change is to understand what we are working with. Call it a base assessment. Knowing who we are helps us to work out what we might become. As a christian part of that identity is our infinite worth as children of God.
Tomorrow we will look at our communities. Also of infinite worth.
Any desire to change somewhere, any desire to regenerate needs us to know the place, love it and because of that want the best for it.

Enterprise

These are the voyages of the starship enterprise...
It's ten year mission to boldly go where no vicar has gone before.


If only the reality was like the programme.
I have spent the day thinking about enterprise. This morning at the ERDF funding panel to which I am now elevated, so another opportunity for me to sit in my wooley pulley with a bunch of suits looking baffled! It was interesting though that the besuited ones all seemd to think that enterprise and encouraging entrepeneurs involved big buildings and learning. Given that most entrepeneurs are by definition at least in the early days on their own, they needed a friendly should to lean on and a small space to work in. In adition they need the encouragement of those who have succeeded to sieze the day and continue.
Spent the afternoon looking at plans for the square outside the church hall. Of many exciting moments was the one when we wanted to put something in the middle fo our New Market Square scheme and realised that we should have a new modern market cross.
We also realised that we could do something amazing to our large urban village, create a new market town...
As we did this we could also incubate (old word new context for me) new businesses in our area.
Now that really is boldly going where no man has gone before.

Awards

To town council tonight where we had an interesting discussion about who we were going to give the community service awards to this year.
We have two of them:
The first is a straight forward award for a lifetime of achievement.
The second one is an award to a young person who shows promise.
Somewhat surprisingly the second is quite controversial and I have been wondering why.
I think the problem is that we are uncomfortable with measuring potential, reward is easy, and encouragement is much, much harder. How do we know that this young person’s potential will be realised? If we don’t give the award then they might not go on to fulfil their potential at all.
When it comes to regeneration there is a temptation to give funding to those who have a proven track record, who can prove they are capable. There needs to be space to give money to those who show potential, it is more risky but the rewards could be a lifetime of regeneration and some really interesting schemes.

Why don’t people just help each other?

I went to DEF committee today, a fine body of people and all what you might call… positive, DEF standing for Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship. The point is that each of the four of us who gathered are busy making a difference. One is working in the poorest bit of Halifax transforming through collaborative work into a place where things really happen. One is, after teens of years of work, finding himself to be at the heart of a vibrant busy faith community, a real mixture from the local estates of all ages. One is a Canon of a Kenyan Cathedral working in Britain to bring the insights they have learnt to us and expertise they have to them. One is a rural vicar trying to write a blog about regeneration!
The great insight these wise sages came up with today?
Why don’t we just help each other?

So many professions are in the same boat:
We are like the preverbial swan, graceful on the surface, paddling like hell underneath.
So why don’t we just help each other?

Professional pride?
Fear?
No time?

One of my favourite sayings applies here...
Why don't we...?

Get over it.

Get on with it.

Beware Greeks bearing gifts

Another day another AGM, this time at Cragg, a small community of 700 with a school, a pub and a church. Not doing too badly really but a bit battered after a year trying to get its plans for regeneration sorted out. As a church we have too buildings one which is great for disabled access but it's a church, the other is aweful for disabled access but its a much loved old community centre. The answer became obvious to us, sell the community centre and use the money to create a modern multipurpose centre in the church.
The problem is trying to persuade people that sacred and secular can exist in the same space.
We have been trained from Greek times to separate things: spiritual and material, church and state, male and female, adults and children, science and religion. Our instincts in the west are all about maintaining these divisions... unfortunately in the world of regeneration it is all about partnership we have to find a new way of working. In doing this we should not be surprised at resistance, after all we have three thousand years of separation to undo.

Three babies

Three babies baptised this morning and three families with that wonderful look of excitement and awe, maybe even a bit of fear. There is something eminently fragile about these bundles we baptise. It's a wonder any of us make it to adulthood but most of us do.
What I like most about baptisms and babies is the potential, it almost feels like energy in the new born. This child I hold could be anything, a scientific genius, a really good neighbour, a vicar, the best butcher in the Calder Valley!
Regeneration is all about harnessing that potential energy, creating the conditions for the child to grow, for the community to thrive.
I always tell people that one of our main jobs with children is to get out of their way or rather to remove the obstacles that get in the way even that means getting ourselves out of the way.

Pressing on

I have spent a couple of days trying to write my AGM report for my two churches. I always try to look forward as well as back. This year I have focused on regenration so I thought you might like to read what I am submitting tomorrow.

I am in two minds to whether to sing "Pressing on" at the end... perhaps not!


Erringden Benefice AGM 2008:
Pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us Philip. 3:12b (NIV)

Introduction
It was nearly ten years ago when the churches of this Diocese were asked to lay out their aims for the new millennium. I had a look recently at what we wrote and our aims for the two churches were:

St John’s
To have a growing youth group
To develop links with local schools
To have a confirmation service in the benefice every year
To have more of our congregation involved in the work of the church
To have more clergy involved in the benefice
To seek to help our congregation reflect better the profile of the parish
To increase giving of all kinds in our church
To make our church more visible in the community
To increase the sense of security that our church will continue to witness to our community

St Michael’s
To have a growing youth group with good links with other youth groups in the village
To continue developing links with the local schools
To have a confirmation service every year as new Christians come to join our church
To have more of the congregation involved in the work of the church
To have more clergy in the benefice
To grow our congregation by at least 10% per year and to seek to help it reflect better the profile of our parish
To increase giving of all kinds in the church
To make our church visible in our community
To have a well established Sunday School with teaching appropriate for all ages

Many of these of course are still priorities for us, but many of them have become the reality we now walk in. We don’t aim to do these things, we are doing these things. In many ways, we are, to coin a phrase “Living the dream” we had nearly ten years ago. So is now the time to rest, relax and consolidate? You may not be surprised to know that isn’t! What we should do but rather, as our motto for this year suggests, is to press on. Part of the way I believe we will be able to press on is to learn form others who are involved in long term projects and in particular form those involved in regeneration.

Lessons from regeneration
I suspect by now that some of you might be wishing you had a vicar whose obsession is playing with his train set and not regeneration! There are so many lessons I am learning from the places God is taking me in regeneration that I thought it would be good to share some vital lessons that we need to learn as a church this year. Before you get worried be assured that many of these things that others have to learn from regeneration God, has already taught us.
1 Partnership
The first lesson of regeneration is the need to make partnerships. “Who are you with?” is a key question in today’s world and if we are to develop and grow partnerships will be at the heart of what we do. St Michaels is already beginning to experience the fruit of partnerships. At a basic level we benefit through our work with Yorkshire Forward through the training they have provided for me and others in our church that are in the regeneration business. They are funding my sabbatical and this has already had an impact through the learning mentor they have attached to me. The future holds out many more fruits as we seek to walk alongside those who share our common aim to build community and to make our neighbourhoods a better place. St John’s is beginning to make links with the Cragg Vale Community Association which can only in time enable us to do more together than we can do apart. It’s difficult because partnerships are always complicated, ask anyone who is married! However if we are to reach out to our community, partnerships are clearly the way to go. Not so much “Come and join us!” but also “can we walk with you as we seem to be going down the same road?”

2 Outcomes and Outputs
The second lesson of regeneration is more difficult. One of the more unpleasant aspects of working with people in regeneration is that they are always asking about Outcomes and Outputs. It has taken me a long time to get a handle on this but, I think, an outcome is what you intend to achieve and an output is something measurable that you intend to achieve. These are a real challenge to those like me who like things to be open and ill-defined. However they are a great tool for us as churches because they force us to ask the question of anything we are trying to do: “why are we doing this?”

3 Engagement
The third lesson of regeneration is one that we have the learnt the lesson of over the years, it is the need for engagement. Our basic calling as Christians is to be “in the world but not of the world.” We have to engage with the communities to which God has called us to deal with the place he has sent us in such a way that we maintain our distinctiveness but don’t make that a reason to turn our back on our communities’ needs.

4 Sustainability
The final challenge of regeneration is sustainability. To create structures in such a way that they continue we have made great strides forwards in this but we are still not there. Finances are still not secure in either of our churches, many of us are working a bit too hard and need space to reflect and renew our weariness. This question is one which our diocese is facing and we need to ask hard questions about.

Four areas for us to bear in mind this year then: Partnership, Outcomes and outputs, engagement and Sustainability, but how do they impact on our two churches?
St Johns
Last year we felt as though we had been waiting and waiting and nothing much was happening as far as the hall and church development were concerned. This year with acquisition of planning permission finally we are beginning to move again. However the wait has caused damage to us, there are areas that need a bit of repair and healing. I am conscious of the toll the ups and downs of the planning process and record here my grateful thanks to Church Wardens, Treasurer, Gordon Nelson and all other members of the PCC who have so valiantly and unitedly fought this particular fight. Grateful too to my fellow clergy who this year more than any other have become a tight knit team who together can do far more than we could do apart.
We need to re-engage with our community, we need to look at our giving, we need to forgive one another, we need press on. We need to get the building done as quickly as possible so that we can get on with God’s other building project that of building the kingdom. We need to look locally and further a field for the partnerships that are so essential as we seek to regenerate our community. These partnerships must involve the community association, they must include the school and they must include our sister church in Mytholmroyd.

St Michaels
It’s been a roller coaster of a year with the ups and downs of being a vibrant Christian Community. Lows have included the loss of good friends, but also the many struggles to raise the money we need to keep this church running. Highs have to be topped by the completion of our wonderful hall extension. Highs have also included the growth of the choir, the arrival of Nancy and the continued success of our midweek congregation Angels and the introduction of ecumenical service MIX. All of these activities have been supported by the many prayers, doers and organisers in all areas of our church to whom I say a huge thank you from the bottom of my heart. What comes next is potentially even more exciting…
Firstly it is becoming increasingly likely that we are going to be able to get funding towards the later phases of the hall project. This is great news but means that we might have a disruptive year as the works progress.
Secondly with a growing choir it is becoming more important that we buy a new hymn book, to increase our repertoire and to enhance our worship. This is going to need a substantial fund raising effort.
Thirdly, when we have finished on the hall we need to start thinking about the church building itself. Especially we need to think about our entrance ways.
Fourthly, I am about to spend three month sabbatical studying how faith communities can more effectively become involved in regeneration and so I hope I will come back with new ideas and renewed energy. I think it will also help our other clergy to develop in their ministry as they are able to get on with things without me getting in the way!

Conclusion
Our two churches are about to have some of the biggest changes of the life, we need to be ready for it, not to be scared for it but open to all that God can do, with us, through us, and despite us!
God has had his hand on these churches, he has taken hold of us and our dreams and has helped us to walk in those dreams. His message for us this year is that we need to press on to take hold of that for which he took hold of us.

Life soundtracks

It's been a difficult day. Definitely cloudy with sunny spells.
I don't know why but its set me off thinking about soundtrack songs, you know the kind of thing you find yourself singing at low moments. For me these are a very small collection of music that at one time or other have lifted me, or protected me. they are a very bizarre bunch.
Michael Jackson (sorry!) - Keep the Faith helped me thorugh a very difficult patch when I was a university chaplain.
Keith Green - make my life a prayer for you, inspired me to give up two years of my life to work in the inner city.
Martyn Joseph: whoever it was that brought me here will have to take me home
Samuel Barbers: Adagio
Free: All Right Now
One which keeps following me around is by Bob Dylan when he was being untrendingly Christian, it's called Pressing on and its on Saved.
It isn't about denying the real problems it is just a recognition that in the middle of day to day struggles we have a higher calling... for me as a Christian that is the calling of God to be a priest
For me as a Regenrationalist(!) its that I want to make my part of the world a better place.
Keeping an eye on your "Higher Calling" whatever that is helps you on days like today when you bury a good friend... and comfort 360+ of your mourning community.
If you get chance to listen to pressing on, tell me what you think, it could be the Renaissance movements anthem!
It can't be any worse than: "Things can only get better!"
There is a really good version by the chicago masssed choir.

Well I'm pressing on
Yes, I'm pressing on
Well I'm pressing on
To the higher calling of my lord.

Many try to stop me,
shake me up in my mind
Say, "Prove to me that He is Lord,
show me a sign
"What kind of sign they need when it all come from within
When what's lost has been found,
what's to come has already been ?

Well I'm pressing on
Yes, I'm pressing on
Well I'm pressing on
To the higher calling of my lord.

Shake the dust off of your feet, don't look back
Nothing can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation's not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned I got no choice, it run in my vein.

Well I'm pressing on
Yes, I'm pressing on
Well I'm pressing on
To the higher calling of my lord.

Born to Park

We have are just about to enter a new level of unpopularity as a church. People used to be burnt at the stake for heresy, banished for not towing the line, but I have now discovered something in most Royder's minds which is far more heanous...
the eighth deadly sin...
reducing carparking spaces.
You wouldn't believe the amount of fuss that is being made because we may reduce the number of parking spaces available outside our church hall.
We haven't started public discussions but people aren't happy.
It's difficult isn't it and I appreciate as a regular car driver peoples' anxieties but when did we get to this point where we all have a right to parking, and parking in abundance? There must be some other way but as yet we haven't found out what it can be.

Oooh Bettys

Oooh... I have just finished eating a Yorkshire Curd Tart liberated from my favourite cafe Bettys, this time in its Ilkley incarnation. Any visit to Bettys is an event, it begins with the queue. Every time you visit any Bettys you always have to wait, it adds to that sense of anticipation and makes you value when you finally get to sit at your beautifully laid out table. While you wait the very attentive staff bring you a chair, a paper or menu to peruse to further build up the anticipation. On guiding you to the table which they make you feel was especially chosen for you they give you a menu and tell you of specials of the day. Service is polite, friendly, attentive without being pushy and after magnificent food and drink you don't mind paying twice the normal amount although not much more than Starbucks. I have often suggested that Heaven will be like Bettys but someone else will pick up the tab!
My wife who is a bit of an expert on Bettys remembers Bettys in the past, when it was full of 1970's formica and a bit naff. The service was always good and the food and drink always brilliant but I was interested to hear how Bettys developed by becoming more traditional.
Its always tempting to see regeneration as a process of becoming modern and trendy but just as with Bettys it can involve returning to older principals, bringing back to life, rediscovering that which was lost.
Bettys now own Taylors which produces Yorkshire Tea a nationally renowned local celebrity which allows many to praise this modern company that progressed by regressing as they drink their cuppa and say "Ooooh Bettys."

A "Royal Visit"

Today we were visited by the Queen's representative in Yorkshire The Lord Lieutenant. She was lovely and brilliant at being interested in what we were doing. The great and the good of Mytholmroyd were there including those who were actively doing stuff.
It was I guess an old fashioned kind of an experience and some might say a lot of fuss about nothing in particular. The point of it all is elusive but at the heart of the visit was a kind of market where people talked about what they do. We talked to The Lord Lieutenant but also we talked to each other and I was able to talk to at least three people who I wouldn’t have otherwise met.
Talking to others helps to clarify in your own mind what you are doing and talking to others, well all sorts of stuff can happen when people talk to each other.

When is a square not a square? When it's a car park.

I know it's not a very good joke but today has been one of those days when what seemed like a good idea to me appears to be a bad idea to others. It's difficult really because it is now probably five years since John Thompson and his team suggested that the only natural centre for Mytholmroyd was the church and so the village square ought to be where the hall currently is. Then we said we liked our hall and given that the meeting this was suggested we were in that hall perhaps we ought to try and keep it. The idea to turn the car park into a village square kept on floating. Today it seems it might be possible but... it is likely that we will lose some car parking spaces.

Multipurpose spaces are hard to plan but they are everywhere and in the end is it possible to have it all, can we have carparking spaces and a square? If so which should we choose? Answers in an e-mail to erringden@aol.com!

So what's the difference between a carpark and a village square?

One has tarmac and one has cobbles!

Running

Howard my neighbouring vicar will, hopefully have run the London marathon today. this is, apparently the largest charity event in the world. As a none sports person I have to say charity running is a bit baffling, why would anyone want to run 26 miles? Still more baffling is why we give money to them, but we do and tlrey do.
Perhaps we think good things need effort to be really valuable.

SALTAIRE

Today a trip to Saltaire where, I met my wife when we were at school, where my dad was a head designer, where Sir Titus Salt built a model town for his workers.
Now regenerated Through the vision of another man: Jonathan silver and his Friend David Hockney. It's already looking like this, unlike Sir Titus vision is going to achieve something he never did: ssustainability.
The story that is rarely told of Saltaire is that within 50 years of being built it was in Financial trouble.
Regeneration is great but sustainability who knows how to pull that one off... clearly Jonathan Silver, but unfortunately he died a few years ago leaving us to wonder and learn from what he left.

A day of travelling without going anywhere

So there I am sat in the church cafe trying to cancel the smoke alarm which is causing small people to look worried and adults somewhat bizarrely to laugh. It was fairly obvious that the smoke filling the cafe and triggering the smoke alarm was caused by the teenagers in the kitchen setting fire to toast: the youth of today etc etc.
Anyhow there I am sat in the church cafe with an old friend Tony talking about his thirty years of another life really, helping the communities of Yemen to regenerate. It feels really strange, I knew of this other existance but never knew what a double life he had. So we are talking and planning because this summer he is going to take me to his other world. This is exciting, what an adventure to travel to this very different culture. It is also a bit worrying, apparently the Arab word for guest is the same as their word for kidnap!
Came home to find three lovely Muslim ladies visiting my wife from her school. We laughed alot at our different cultures but found more often than not we found how similar we were. One talked about how difficult is was in some areas for the Muslims to get involved in regeneration because some of their leaders didn't want to get involved or who only wanted to help their community (muslims) and not their community (everybody else.) Yet again I thought this is so like my own faith.
Happily the three Muslim ladies were demonstrating there take on community by treating my wife and me as people they cared about.
Maybe this will be so in all parts of the world, I look forward to finding out.

A Recipe for Regeneration

This morning spent in meeting people from market towns all over Yorkshire, whilst they looked round Hebden Bridge and we tried to explain the inexplicable, how Hebden Bridge was regenerated. It is a difficult question… Not something you can give a simple answer or even a single answer.
Part of the answer lies with individuals, notably David Fletcher who in the sixties and seventies with just a few others began to buy up property and campaign to save others.
Part of the answer lies in the people who lived there and those who came to live there. If that is the case then we have to give some credit to the presence of magic mushrooms, which attracted so the legend goes Hippies to the area. Today we enjoy the presence of the IT active grandchildren.
Part of the answer could be strategy and documents: plenty were produced including the latest 25 year plan.
Part of the answer could be partners: Calderdale Council and Yorkshire Forward to name two of the biggest activists. Of note as well is the role of the Parish Councils preserved in the 1970’s when many others fell. Today they are great bastions against broader forces which could dramatically change or dramatically fossilize the town.
How was Hebden Bridge regenerated?
Probably the boring answer is that all of these factors brought regeneration.
It's complex, boring sometimes even but this recipe is a complex one.

Tales from the crypt

Began the morning with yet another blind date this time with the vicar of Halifax. We had kind of bumped into each other at a funeral and then he had posted a priliminary invite to a conferenc on... Faith and Regeneration which got me sufficiently interested to suggest we meet for a coffee.
Entering the Gothic doorway of the praish church I enter the cold dark church to the sound of creaking hinges, horses neighed and lightening flashed as he moved toward me with his cloak and fangs. He beckoned me slowy towards the crypt and into a small room at the heart of his evil empire...


Actually the door to the church opened semi automatically, the church was light and warm, the vicar was nice and enthusiastic and the coffeee was offered before I had chance to take my coat off. Turns out the new vicar has been involved in regeneration in Manchester and has hit the ground running in Halifax. Between us we should be able to do more than we can do seperately. I look forward to working with him.
It does sound like there is more involvement by faith communities in towns and cities in the strategic bit of regeneration, than in rural areas which is strange given the dominance of the rural landscape of church buildings.
We got on so well we are having a second date,
this time he is going all the way...


to Mytholmroyd!

Tables

What is it about tables? They are such an integral part of our culture. Today we sat together at a table, three partnerships with different needs and different things to bring to the table but one desire to firm up a deal. We put our cards on the table, literally and the deal came a little closer.
Perhaps it goes back to the round table, we are united in a cause, or like the last supper united in resolve or perhaps at a table we become a more basic thing; family.
More the pity then that the modern family, so I read, is getting rid of it's tables.

Stress

Today I am stressed and wake up tired which is a bad sign. Drag myself to meet with some of the young women from church, to talk about life the universe and everything. We talk, we laugh and again we walk to some old tennis courts that the church own to let three very small boys play football. Instant stress relief.
Was it the natural environment, was it the company, was it the place? All of these elements bringing a personal regeneration.
Stress is common in all communities, maybe we need to find ways to bring natural environment, community and place to have their rule in our schemes.

Let's begin at the end

Today has been a day of beginnings and endings. It began with an ending with an early phone call to announce the death of a dear friend and member of my church. She had been ill for a long time and as part of faith community we had travelled some of the distnace she had through the thick and thin of her illness. I was talking to one of our younger members who said that it was the first death she had been close to and that one of the consequences of being part of a faith community is that you do get to experience things like death more frequently. It reminded me of the great John Donne piece that begins "No man is an island..." and ends "...do not ask for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee." It eloquently makes the point that as people of a connected community every death diminishes us. The problem is in our disconnected, anticommunity culture we are all islands or rather that is what we aspire to. That makes for less sadnesses, less funerals to go to but something else "less" as well.
Today ended with a beginning, a group of young people who wanted to gather to talk about their new faith. It was great fun and quite exciting to watch these new beginnings. One said that she used to be very anti everything, especially church but that she had changed when she had worked with people of faith.
"You can't argue with the things they do," she said.
Despite what others do then, and despite the shared pain, I'm sticking firmly to the mainland, it may be more painful but it is also more fun.

Writer's Block

Today I have been suffering from the sermon equivalent of writer's block. Sometimes sermons appear as fully fledged and beautiful birds, at other times they are square eggs and I am the unfortunate bird trying to lay it. Today has been a square egg day, all my usual writing tricks haven't worked... then all of a sudden whoosh and the thing that got me out of bed at seven o'clock this morning is written. Of course its not finished, they never are until after they have been delivered and even then they tend to take a life of their own.
meeting with my mentor the other day has sent me on a few days of troubled reflection about this whole business of writing. I am quite a reluctant writer, especially with meetings. I have watched others turn up with a side of A4 and wondered at the impact those can have on a meeting. What I am wondering is why I don't do that. It's a kind of a writers block, I just avoid writing if I can, I wonder how many others are like that. Some of it is of course that I am a binge reader and with that probably a bit of a binge writer. I read in blocks, plunging into another writers world for a few days and then not reading for months.
Writing scares me a bit I think. Somewhere inside I see it as a way of closing an argument rather than opening a discussion, of shutting a door rather than opening one.
It's rubbish of course, if things are to be done, ideas to made solid, regeneration to be more than just talking, writing must be done. Perhaps that is something I am learning through this keeping of a blog, to have a conversation by writing.
Martin Luther King was commemorated yesterday, I watched pictures of him speaking, not a note in his hand, but with a sense of poetry and inspiration, it was almost as though he was reading someone else's script, written in his heart.

Zimbabwe and Mytholmroyd

The newspapers today are full of talk about Zimbabwe, a news story which I haven't given my undivided attention to. This is a pity because this evening I had the smallness of our world brought home to me once again.

I have been asked to do the funeral of a Mytholmroyd lady, a sculptor who moved into one of the tops houses in the 1970's. I drove up a very steep and windy lane to visit her husband an daughter listening to my radio which is permanently tuned to Radio 4 and hearing yet more news about Zimbabwe. The house was an amazing 17th century farm house filled with art work she spent so long creating. There were lots of beautiful creations in bronze and resin which impressed me greatly. Her story greatly impressed me too and I have no idea how I am going to do her justice. It turns out she was born in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia then) and had come to Mytholmroyd via St Ives to work and produce her art. As I left the radio was still talking about Zimbabwe and I listened a bit more closely now the connection had been made.

Incidentally whilst I was out the house I was shown one of 18 different stone masons marks on the stones of the house. Apparently in medieval times when a stone mason hewed a stone he marked it with his own individual mark so that he would get paid. You felt very connected with these rough craftsmen who four hundred years ago marked a stone to show they had made it. wouldn't it be great if the building blocks of our communities and towns were individually marked by those who built them.

It made me think about the things I do, will I put my sign on it?
Who knows but I hope they are still here in 400 years.

Someone set me a conundrum today: "why don't churches have postboxes?" Answers in an e-mail to...

Finding another Way

Sometimes on a journey you begin to suspect that you’re not meant to get there… better to turn round and go back to your duvet. I began to wonder today.
I had to visit London , long story for another time, but every step of the way there was trouble. It began weeks ago when I found it virtually impossible to virtually get my tickets on line.
I ended up booking tickets from Manchester: 11.15.
I duly turned up in Mytholmroyd for the 9.25 a.m. to Manchester.
It was delayed but not so bad, then at 9.45 it was cancelled not to worry the 9:56 would do.
Then I rang at 10: am to find that there were no trains to Manchester. So I set off to Leeds and caught at great expense the train to London.
Then there was a kafuffle in the coach and the train was brought to a halt in Doncaster. A man in my carriage had been apprehended for stealing some money.
In the end I got there but it was hardly letting the train take the strain. Finding another way to do things was the key to getting there.
Today Catherine had to go into hospital for a minor operation. She was taken into the local private hospital, a new scheme for cutting the queues. I wasn’t sure what to make of this “creeping privatisation,” but I suppose it’s finding another way to get there.

Facilitating and the Wizard of Oz

I’m off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of oz. Except that I don’t know how wonderful it will be as it’s an amateur production in Halifax. We’ve seen some good and bad productions in the past including one where a flying Scrooge kept colliding with the scenery until he grabbed hold of the curtains.
I don’t know what tonight will bring but it will top off another great day with Tom Herbert who as usual has been training me in facilitation. There are elements of the two experiences that link together. The story of the Wizard of Oz is of four people seeking something from the Wizard of Oz and discovering that the journey itself gives them the answer to their quest. The lion seeks courage but finds it though being courageous, the tin man seeks a heart but discovers it through caring for Dorothy, the scarecrow seeks a brain but discovers it by thinking things through. Only Dorothy has to find her own way, by discovering that she has the means to go home, the desire to return.
So much of facilitation and regeneration seems to be about helping people to discover that they have the means to do what they want to do right at hand.
Still if anyone knows where the yellow brick road is I would be grateful if you tell me… or the wizard of oz for that matter.

Short Term Hits and Long Term Struggles

The Diocese of Wakefield is having a crisis, this is not newworthy as whilst not in a perpetual state of crisis, it is hardly ever out of one. Our costs are up and our giving isn't so today I met with half the Rural Deans of the Diocese and an archdeacon.Talked alot about renewing our vision andn short term reponses. Lots of the usual stuff but an interesting discussion followed about our image as a Diocese and how we might rebrand. We came up with "Wakefield Diocese: The Heart of Yorkshire." We also talked about devolving money and resources locally.
It is of course rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, we are not likely to take the difficult decisions until we have to and at the moment we can see the iceberg but haven't hit it yet.
Still when we do we will have very well arranged deckchairs.