Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish educator and philosopher (1864-1936):

It is apparent to me that many people who regard themselves as Christian, and many of whom attend churches, believe that Christianity = niceness, and that being nice is more important than being truthful. Similarly, that one's faith should be steady, inoffensive and always and only a comfort. These are odd readings of the Gospel, and  to varying degrees, a betrayal of it.

I always regarded Victoria Wood's work as brilliantly funny, but I now see that its primary function (in my eyes) is to spread joy. She was a northerner, born in Lancashire. There is something about 'northern' humour - more widely northern personalities and perceptions - that speaks my language. I suppose the technical name for her approach is 'observational humour'.  Her's was always kind, perceptive and affirming of our (often quirky and conflicted) human nature. Here is a compilation of her series Dinnerladies. Such marvellous dialogue, timing and portraits of the kind of people I grew up with.

Victoria Wood: comedian, actress, lyricist, singer-songwriter, composer, pianist, screenwriter, presenter, producer, director, impressionist and entertainer. More importantly, she was a good human being.

Maggie Ross from an interview in the Church Times: "Contemporary theological education prepares people either for the petty battlegrounds of academia or for the spiritual suicide of ordination. Evagrius's notion of the absolute relationship of theology and praxis has been lost. There are a few good people who are exceptional in this regard, but they wisely camouflage themselves. There is an absolute abyss between the clericus and ordinary people, who are implicitly denigrated by them, and most theological education just widens this abyss. Also, so-called spiritual direction as it is practised today is destructive. It is both para-clerical and counter-productive, because it makes people more self-conscious instead of more self-forgetful, which is an important sign of spiritual maturity. Helping another is a charism of the moment, usually inadvertent, and can't be taught."

Maggie Ross is the pen name of a vowed Anglican solitary under episcopal guardianship. I have enjoyed reading her various works, not least because in part they confirm some of my own conclusions, and because they can be a heck of a provocation. Not for her the equation between the Church of England and niceness.

If you find this quotation interesting, here are links to more about her:

• Silent Ways of Knowing
• Interview - Silent Witness
• Freefalling in the love of God

Recently discovered, this poem by Robert Hayden.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

It speaks of the sacrifices many parents make, showing children love in ways they cannot at that stage appreciate, but may come to later. This poem sketches the father's (then unappreciated) work: many mothers do the same, maybe more so. Robert Hayden was American (1913-1980). This poem is dated 1962. "The poem is about the father/son relationship – recalling the poet's memories of his father, realizing that despite the distance between them there was a kind of love, real and intangible, shown by the father's efforts to improve his son's life, rather than by gifts or demonstrative affection. The author's words suggest that the son feels remorse that he failed to recognise this in his father's lifetime." (Wiki). The 'father' here was in fact Hayden's foster father.

I like the use of 'offices' ("What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?"). Clergy are canonically required to 'say the Offices' of Morning and Evening Prayer. Many don't. In the Olden Days you'd need to have the Office book, a bible and other material to see what 'extras' were needed on that particular day. Now, it is all there on your tablet or phone. Convenient Offices, you might say. But there's nothing convenient about sacrificial love. That's its point and its value.

Graham Greene's book is the last of his religious novels. It concerns the priest of the the village El Toboso who claims to be a descendant of Don Quixote. An encounter with a mysterious bishop leads to Father Quixote being honoured by the rank of Monsignor - to the annoyance of his own bishop. This 1987 film stars Alec Guiness as Father Quixote and Leo McKern as village communist mayor Sancho Zancas. It presents various themes, but the key theme to my mind is that of friendship: Quixote's friendship with the (ex) Mayor, and his friendship with God. The character is gloriously imperfect yet embodies such a wonderful approach to the Christian adventure.

2 FEBRUARY 2025  At home, alone, on a frosty and vibrantly sunny morning, I celebrate Candlemas, aka The Presentation (of Christ in the Temple). See Luke, 2:22-40. A ‘principal feast’ in the Church of England.

Mary and Joseph present Jesus at the Temple, as required in the Torah. On arrival they encounter the aged Simeon. According to the gospel, he had been promised that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ" (Luke 2:26). Simeon then uttered the prayer that would become known as the Nunc Dimittis, or Canticle of Simeon, which prophesied the redemption of the world by Jesus:

"Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel". (Luke 2:29–32).
 
Bach wrote his Cantata “Ich habe genug” (BWV 82) to celebrate the feast in February 1727. I first encountered it 30+ years ago, as part of my unfocussed grazing of the Bach Cantatas. It is written for bass, is (IMO) hauntingly beautiful and with just a hint of the melancholy I regard as evidence (in any art form or person) of having understood something important about life’s adventure.
 
Simeon has seen the promised child and has held in his arms this infant who is the incarnation of all hope. It has given him all he needs or wants. The encounter leaves the old man perfectly ready to die. “It is enough” (“Ich habe genug”).
 
You could say that the work is about making a proper accomodation with the prospect of one's death. The encounter fills Simeon with such gratitude, hope, and joy that he is ready for this, when it comes. What a marvellous disposition just prior to The Great Liberation.
 
Below, German baritone Christian Gerhaher with members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

I am poor company in art galleries. I much prefer powering through alone and stopping only when a canvas arrests me. I have previously written about the effect encountering The Subway (1950) by George Tooker had on me in New York. I had a similar experience  on seeing this painting of The Last Supper in Bruges.

The artist is Gustave Van de Woestijne (1881–1947), a Belgian expressionist painter. He entered the Benedictine order in Leuven in 1905, but quickly sensed that monastic life was not for him and left after four weeks. Maybe their pre-admission preparation was not up to the mark.

He remained a Christian. An expression of this is seen in this monumental portrayal of the Last Supper. And through it he expresses a criticism of convential artistic piety: "Away with this saccharine, stultifying, strait-laced religious art! We’ve had enough of it, and our Catholic Church is already crammed full of all kinds of such bland stuff. […] I am neither edified nor affected when I enter our churches and look at the modern ornaments, statues or paintings, on the contrary, I have the urge to curse".

His style was considered blasphemous by some. An encouraging sign. Fortunately, he found support from the van Buurens, Brussels art collectors who bought many of his works and, in 1927, sponsored a trip to Florence that allowed him to study fresco art. This canvas reflects his interest in fresco painting and his quest for modern religious art.

Why does it strike me so?

For a start, it is not mannered or pretty. No halos or pious expressions. No looking up, heavenwards. The proportions of the canvas (taller than it is wide) requires that the disciples huddle close. Something important is happening - draw near.

There is no iconography, just the essentials: wine and a loaf of bread. And the bread is an ordinary loaf, no delicate host. It belongs in the ordinary transaction of heavenly realities. The apostles depicted here  could be miners or labourers or fishermen. Hairstyles are those of the 1920s, pitch black, neatly combed. There is a sad solemnity in their grave faces. Jesus’ passion happens every day again.

Jesus’ hair and beard are red, along with the wine and along with the hair of the figure on the lower left. Judas, maybe? Jesus looks towards him. 

Van De Woestijne's picture has no extras, only the essentials - table, people, bread, wine - needed to depict the Last Supper.  These betoken solidarity (God with us), tragedy, longing, love. The building bricks of our human adventure.

The practice of gratitude may be one of the best ‘enhancers’ we can find.  I know it runs two risks in the way such a claim is perceived: one is that it is ‘religious’; the other that it belongs to a middle-aged or elderly view of things.  It may well be that the best insights of our various religions have come to see its value as an orientation and attitude; and ditto with the wise-older amongst us. So what?

If I want everything then what I do possess will always show a deficit against that target; if I see all as gift (life, senses, other people, what possessions I have, and the fact of the universe, this planet, its without-which-we-would-not-be here Sun) then the formula behind the equation becomes a positive, a credit.

When all things are viewed from this perspective, gratitude seems to spring up and change how we experience things.  Certain ‘I wants’ transform into ‘I haves’, though the condition this brings about (it seems to me) is better described as ‘we haves’, since the all-dominant I appears, too, to undergo some welcome change in this marvellous alchemy.

Have you noticed how, in recent years, an obsession with 'leadership' and 'leaders' has crept into much discourse (and fantasy) about business, the third sector, the public sector and even the churches? It's a great bore. Organisations need competent managers at every level, and those in such roles will, inevitably and necessarily, influence, shape and 'lead' developments in those organisations. But what seems to have happened is that this essential function and aspect has now become personalised into 'a leader'.  This is ego-talk. Many find it irresistible.

In the church (I am mostly familiar with the Church of England) the 'leadership' fetish has grown apace. A small example is the growing number of church websites that now list the clergy as 'the leadership team' - and I have seen some that locate them in 'the senior leadership team'. Frankly, it's all so desperate. What should be fellowship often seems now to be follower-ship.

To have leaders, you need the led. There is a place for this where it is operationally and functionally necessary for tightly defined outcomes (think uniformed services and organisations with precise functions and outcomes). But in Christian communities it can only produce drone-disciples who surrender responsibility for their own Christian life to the 'experts', the leaders. And don't think that the ghastly cliché about 'servant-leader' avoids the pitfalls and dangers.

I recently attended a mandatory safeguarding course, attended mostly by clergy and with some churchwardens. The (very competent) facilitator had, as part of her input, referred to the role that power and power-imbalances play in church abuse, and had illustrated this by some high-profile cases. As the event progressed, I was struck by how often 'leader' and 'leadership' were used by participants - in a sometimes slightly self-aggrandising way ("As the leader of my parish..."). I pointed this out, this link with what we had been told and how the conversation was going. There was some agreement, but others thought the two things were quite separate.

Mainline church denominations 'embody' power relations and differentials in various ways, some subtle. Priests and bishops over laity, for example. Church architecture is another (the sacred sanctuary and altar, with the laity in their theatre-like pews). And another is found in who may speak and who is required to 'reply' following a set script. These are aspects of liturgical exchanges and liturgical life.

I set these matters out bluntly to illustrate dimensions we often don't see clearly. There are many clergy who operate within these structures with attentiveness, humanity and sensitivity, and who mitigate the more dangerous aspects of the leadership fetish. They focus, first, on being disciples. But there are some clergy who don't. And there are laity who like to be 'led'. That does not make for mature Christian explorers.

I had been summoned by algorithm to a screening in older men for abdominal aortic aneurysm. It meant a trip to the Old Kent Road Surgery, a dreary place with a crowded, pinched waiting room and mirrored wall plates – why I wonder: the sick generally don’t wish to see themselves. The nurse doing the screening was cheerful and human. She announced, after applying gel and the ultrasound scanner to my abdomen, that ‘it looks perfect…. and you are not pregnant’. Such encounters make the day.

Seen in the West End yesterday: a stylish man sporting a sharp haircut and expensive-looking clothes. A tattoo on the rear of his left upper arm, so not visible to him (as an aide-memoire, say) but to those following. In a rather well-chosen typeface too. 

It read: "Attached to Nothing, Connected to Everything".

I didn't dare interupt him to ask about this. I imagine he is announcing his commitment to non-attachment and interconnectedness. I can only respect all that. But his collection of designer-labelled shopping bags seemed to confuse the message.

Visitors to these pages (that may only be me) will have spotted various posts that excoriate sentimentality. It is a fake and devaluing response to the challenges of life. It is rife.  And so I was glad to come across this in Roger Scruton's 'Confessions of a Heretic':

Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (1894–1986) British statesman and Conservative politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. He was nicknamed "Supermac" and was known for his pragmatism, wit, and unflappability. Here is his motto when at Number 10.

Motto for Private Office and Cabinet Room: "Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot - HM"

I wonder very often at the pervasive presence of violence and violent impulses in our species. Think here less of outward and physical violence but of harmful intentions and responses and the myriad ways in which these permeate so much of human encounter: suspicion, gossip, denigration, undermining, sarcasm, blaming, cold-shouldering, false witness.  What is the root of all this? 

I have long suspected that our species transmits violence, from generation to generation.  If so, this explains its endurance and persistence. Perhaps it is a delusion, this idea many of us hold, that we are reasonable, rational and well-adjusted. What if we begin with another premise - that virtually all humans sustain harming traumas and experiences during our formative years, and that these remain at work in us, largely unconsciously, throughout our lives?  In the more extreme cases, we see these - they are made manifest. But what if the situation I have described is endemic, and in most of us largely 'contained' (or so we might think) and so disguised? And what if we never find ourselves able to join up the dots - the 'standard' reactions we observe within us, the ways we conduct ourselves at work, in groups, how we handle intimacy, how we react to adversity and (often imagined) threat - and so remain unaware of enduring wounds which clamour for healing?

For the record, this has no connection, in my thinking, to so-called 'original sin' - a doctrine I cannot take seriously.  But what if very many people suffer some kind of 'original harm' in their developmentally vital years, say from birth to early adulthood? Such events are virtually unavoidable, however loving our care givers: experiences of separation, of various forms of abandonment, of 'friendly' teasing or sarcasm, of rejection by other children in the way typical of other children.  What if all these and more - things virtually inescapable in this world - leave negative imprints, things that shape us and remain alive as we move into adult life, even as (perhaps especially as) 'well adjusted', 'responsible', socially adept and outwardly 'successful' humans?  Just a thought.

I have been thinking about my maternal grandfather John William Burke. He was a pit worker in Yorkshire, a ‘deputy’, a kind of foreman. He worked at Maltby Main Colliery, one of the UK’s deep mines, noted for a major disaster on 28 July 1923 which killed 27 men and injured many more, my grandfather among them. I am told it affected his lungs. Eventually the condition shortened his life. Maltby Main closed for good in 2013. My grandfather is listed as one of the witnesses at the investigation by Sir Thomas Mottram (H M Chief Inspector of Mines) which resulted in the report “On the Causes of and Circumstances attending the Explosion which occurred at the Maltby Main Colliery, Yorkshire, On The 28th July, 1923”.

I never knew him, and wish I had. John William Burke 1 March 1890 (born Shirebrook, Derbyshire) and died 24 June 1954 at Harworth (then Yorkshire, later Nottinghamshire). In my early life (I was born two years after his death) I was surrounded by miners and by the North Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire collieries. My recent research has reminded me of the terrible working lives miners endured, and the high risks to which they were routinely exposed. As a boy I was unaware of the demanding nature of their work. All I recall is that the miners living near us appeared to enjoy a good standard of living. This (I now see) reflected both the risks of the job and the power of their union - the NUM. Now, their existence and power are things of the past. In late 2012 the 540 employees at Maltby Main were given redundancy notices and its above-ground structures demolished in 2014. In our more aware age coal is a dirty fuel. Yet it made very many things possible. And those who worked down the mines deserve to be remembered.

Woodbrooke closed at the end of October 2023. All down to cost, apparently. This residential Quaker centre was established by - and in the former home of - George Cadbury, in 1903.  I see that an invitation had been made for those who knew the place to send in memories, though I saw this only after the closing date.

In 1979 I spent almost one term at Woodbrooke. I was a member of Sheffield (Hartshead) Meeting and 23 years old. I'd had a miserable (and unsuccessful) time at Worksop's Valley Comprehensive School, followed by six years writing benefit Giro cheques (anyone remember those?) in the DHSS. Then an unexpected possibility opened up, to read for a social science degree and a social work qualification at university. Sheffield Friends (in particular Irene Gay and Maud Bruce) realised that I could do with some help in making the transition: they asked the meeting to fund me to spend time at Woodbrooke. I can never thank them enough.

Woodbrooke then operated a term-time community. I attended lectures and tutorials, and met people like tutors John Punshon and Parker Palmer (the latter a visiting tutor from the USA). The Priestman's were the wardens. All told, it was a wonderful place and atmosphere, and without the heavier self-consciousness of being Quaker that seems to have overtaken British Quakers in the decades since.

Alcohol was banned: a requirement imposed by George Cadbury. But that did not stop students slinking off in groups to bedrooms after supper to open a few bottles. And it was at Woodbrooke that I was introduced by a member of The Wee Frees - a distinct Presbyterian denomination in Scotland - to a Rusty Nail. It comprises equal measures of Scotch and Drambuie. I have occasionally drunk it ever since.

At that time, Woodbrooke (and the wider Society of Friends) would reference some of the then recent shapers of Quaker thought, including Maurice Creasey and Hugh Doncaster, names now largely forgotten.

In that glorious short but rich time for me, the days were full of thinking, discussion and conversation; trips out with other students, the odd crush, consumption of Quaker and Christian history and a profound sense of having been given a second chance.

Keynes’s in his 1930 essay ‘The Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’: “The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”
 
“… a somewhat disgusting morbidity…”. Brilliant phrase in that context.

Not long after I began social work it was common to hold generic caseloads comprising children and family cases, older persons, mental health clients and various supervision order cases.  I liked the variety, though it was soon to be replaced by specialism as part of the response to greater concern about child protection.

Older persons' cases were often for assessment, followed by various services such as Home Help, Day Care or respite or residential care. An assessment would cover a range of psycho-medico-social aspects. One aspect to address was continence, or rather incontinence, and whether it was single or double. I know, exciting stuff.

Many years later, after I had opted for specialist children and families work and had no continuing professional cause to consider incontinence of any kind, the term suddenly found a new use in my thinking.  I have often reflected on the endless volume of words some people spout, and in a flash I saw this as a new and pernicious form of incontinence. 'Incontinent of speech' became an apt (but private) description for various people I encountered. They seemed unable to shut up, dribbled uncontrollably, and mostly inept in the ability to listen. I later came across the wonderful term, to 'overtalk' and posted about that here.

Some people link the overtalkers - those who are 'incontinent of speech' - with the arrival of social media platforms. For sure these provide additional avenues for endless gas-bagging, but the condition was already at epidemic levels. What is it that makes a substantial proportion of the human race gas on so much and listen so little? They have as little control over what constantly spouts from their vocal chords as the traditionally incontinent do over their sphincters.

New pages here about the Church in the East End.

I was ordained 34 years ago today. A clichéd observation, I know, but it seems like only yesterday. It also seems a very long time ago. The newly ordained tend to be overwhelmed by the experience; indeed, it is a wildly significant moment and transition, usually the fulfilment of several years hard work and preparation, spiritual and intellectual. For all but the die-hard evangelical ‘minister’ type, it marks a transition of an ontological kind: something that fundamentally alters one. It is not a job taken on; it is a new life embarked upon.
 
I am very far from being a die-hard evangelical. Nor am I a high Anglo-Catholic.  I did reckon the moment of ordination to be of significance, and to represent a radical (i.e. far-reaching and irrevocable) handing-over of who and what I was – and who I might become - in the service of the Nazarene and His church. That has not changed, though time, observation and experience have changed my view of the church and its professional class. Interestingly, it has deepened and simplified my following of the Nazarene.
 
Inevitably, the years have shown me the unattractive (but not surprising) aspects of the church-as-institution: egoism, careerism, corruption, mediocrity. They have also acquainted me with the contrary: humility and loving kindness, modesty, faithfulness and superiority of character and conduct. I am grateful I actively served the institution for more than three decades whilst concurrently working in so-called secular jobs. Hugely grateful. This ‘dual’ aspect rooted me.

After a monumental struggle, I finally got a face-to-face appointment with a GP. But it turned out that Dr XXXX did not go in for much face-to-face contact except with her computer screen. I wondered if she might in fact be an automaton or an AI bot for the amount of personal interaction she engaged in with me. I didn’t think to check her for a pulse, and anyway, I was the patient. I asked if we might also do the ‘repeat prescription review’ which was booked for the following week – for a medication that was not unrelated to my presenting symptom. I was promptly, and I thought rather harshly, told that an appointment can last only ten minutes, and which did I want her to deal with, the symptom or the repeat prescription review? I opted for the former, but felt slapped down. Indeed, the whole experience left me feeling rather atomised, an easily separated collection of bits rather than a single human being. Is this what General Practice has been reduced to?

I got what I had hoped for: a referral to an ENT specialist. And since we had two minutes left, I asked if she might do the repeat prescription review. By her own time-and-motion logic, there was no obvious escape route for her, and she said she would mark the request for release.

Altogether an unhappy experience of being treated as an object to be processed. She did not examine me at all. But I examined her, with all the close attention of a patient treated as an inconvenience.

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY - John Betjeman
This is, of course, a satirical composition in which John Betjeman imagines an upper class woman attending Evening Prayer in Westminster Abbey during WWII. It is clever, and uncomfortably true. True not only of the class and disposition represented, but of the distorting mess so many of us make not only of our prayers but also our ideologies and professed attitudes. It is a lifelong process of interrogating ourselves before we begin to see, then transform, our often self-centred positions. Surely one of the purposes of prayer. Click Read More

"Get over yourself", when said to us by another, is often (usually) said as a rebuke, in anger, and is hurtful to hear. But the useful thrust of that perspective, when we can say it to ourselves, lovingly, is about the need to transcend our ego (something we all have). I found this helpful approach from Bertrand Russell:

I admire William Stringfellow and have written about him before (links below). Here is what he says about the corrupt use we too often make of language - what he calls Babel which he says "means the inversion of language, verbal inflation, libel, rumour, euphemism and coded phrases, rhetorical wantonness, redundancy, hyperbole, such profusion in speech and sound that comprehension is impaired, nonsense, sophistry, jargon, noise, incoherence, a chaos of voices and tongues, falsehood, blasphemy. And, in all of this, babel means violence…" In short, this is how we use language - personally, corporately, institutionally. 

Who amongst us is guilt-free in this corruption of communication?

Also in William Stringfellow's words, hints of the antidote: “Listening is a rare happening amongst human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word.” from his Count it All Joy.

• William Stringfellow: no distant prophet
• William Stringfellow again
• Detaching from the church the better to grasp the Gospel
• William Stringfellow on career vs vocation
• Vagabonds and Stringfellow
• Reciting words is not prayer
• I know Christian people who do not attend church because their experience has been that it is predisposed to a model they find infantilising