Dining at the Heart

I recently went to visit Tatton Park for the first time. I've been reluctant to visit because you have to pay for the car park (if you trace my ancestry back I come from both Yorkshire AND Scotland), but it was worth it - a beautiful place to visit. 

What made it even more worth it was an exhibition called 'Guardian Angels' by the artist Cristina Rodrigues. Rodrigues is a Portugese born, Manchester based artist and a lecturer in Architecture. Her art installations use objects that were simply functional and sometimes obsolete and she gives them an artistic identity. Her art tells the story of and celebrates the role of women as keepers of cultural traditions. The art tells the story of those women, interwoven with her own stories. 

The art installation at Tatton Mansion was inspired by the room in which each piece stood - where the stories of the people who lived in the mansion were in conversation with the modern day stories that had inspired the artist. 

One piece that fascinated me was called 'Dining at the Heart'. The table was donated by an Iranian family who had replaced it with a table from Ikea. The description of the piece explains how it is reflecting on the fact that we now spend less time gathered round the table which once stood in the heart of our homes. The red ribbons are like blood - energy lines that bring life and tell a story. The ceramic hearts connected by the ribbons show how we connect to one another. The piece was in the kitchen of the mansion - the kitchen as the heart of the house making the house a home.

I'm currently thinking about what to do for my MA dissertation, and whenever somebody asks me I often reply 'something to do with food'. It's not because I love food and cooking (which I do, clearly) but because I believe that gathering around the table with food is vitally important to the building of Christ-centred community and is a practice that began with the early Christian communities we read about in the New Testament as they gathered, broke bread and shared lives together. 

I've seen how food draws people together. I've seen how food inspires us to talk. I've seen how eating together before our church meeting enhances the conversation. I've seen that gathering intentionally together with a brew (how Lancashire am I now!?) and the offer of cake to explore life and faith can bring deep conversation and open up channels of faith exploration that have been avoided for fear of saying the wrong thing. 

I've been looking back and going through my post it notes I'd left in 'Slow Church'* and I found again a whole chapter on 'Dinner Table conversation'. Smith and Pattison write that "eating together and conversing together are both vital practices of slow church community...." because we learn the language of the family at the dinner table. To build community we should make it a priority to eat and relax with our neighbours - yet so often we eat fast and we move on. 

I've made it a rule before our Sunday church meetings that we can't have soup until 12pm, when everyone is able to gather, so we are not rushing from service to meeting without pausing to be family together. It felt forced at first, and I think people thought I was just being stubborn, but now it's becoming habit, and it makes a difference to what we say and do in our meetings - and we leave later - not because the meeting goes on forever, but because the meeting begins around the table, with food, where we gather and we learn what it means to be the family of God. Encouraging slowness in community sometimes needs to be intentional and often counter-cultural, but in that intentionality,  slowly, slowly the community begins to become more beautiful as it takes time to realign and centres itself on Christ. 



*Slow Church by Christopher Smith & John Pattison. I blogged about it here

A man doesn't sing.....

A man doesn't sing and the media cries out and shames him because he is not honouring those who have fought for the country. 

Meanwhile, a vote is passed that takes away tax credits from those who most desperately need them and the media is virtually silent.

Meanwhile, Trade Unions are challenged on their role in holding up workers rights and the media is virtually silent. 

Meanwhile, my local tory councillors refuse to debate a move to accept more refugees in the town as my local MP campaigns for better Wifi to make our lives more comfortable.

Meanwhile Hungary builds higher and higher fences as thousands of people are left out in the cold and the BBC changes its language back from refugees to migrants.

God save the Queen, yes, we all need salvation. Yes, honour those who have fought for our country and for freedom, but pray not for more victories, but for peace...... And as we celebrate our freedom, let's give our leaders the freedom to be who they are, not to play some media game. 

God save the poor

God save the oppressed

God save the homeless

God save the refugee

God save the politicians

God save the media

God bring the peace of your salvation, turn weapons into gardens of peace. 

Lord have mercy. 

What Lies Beneath

A paper clip floats... sometimes. If you lay a paper clip gently on top of the water and get it just right it will float. That's because of surface tension. If you look closely you can see the surface of the water embrace the paper clip and hold it in place. If you get it wrong or upset the tension then the paper clip sinks to the bottom. 

That's one thing I was reminded of this summer. I went with my Godsons to do some science and we did all sorts of things I've done before but had forgotten that feeling of ooooo when something you are not expecting happens. 

I've been on pause. I've been in between. In that time I've lost the words 'In training' from the end of 'Minister'. I'm not a different person, I don't even really have a different job (although I'm hoping it feels a little bit different), but I've transitioned, from one to another. I'm at a different place on the journey. 

Over the summer I've been trying to understand myself a bit better and how I relate to the world around me. The last four years has been chaotic as I've been thrown deep into a new life as minister of a church, occupying a different place in society, with totally unexpected challenges to who I am and where I am. As I have been exploring who I am and reflecting on life, I've been looking to see what lies beneath. What makes me think this way? Where is God in what I do and where I go? 

I finished my holiday by going to Barcelona and went to visit the Sagrada Familia. An amazing building, still under construction - the dream of Gaudi who died before it was even started and an iconic landmark on the Barcelona skyline. I went on Sunday morning to see this beautiful building with all the different coloured light streaming through the nature inspired, mathematically constructed nave of the building. 

Round the back of the altar are smaller chapels which are set aside for quiet prayer and contemplation (it being a church and all), despite the very loud video of the history of the building going on in one of the chapels, it was a bit less busy and perhaps a little bit quieter. The apostles creed was hung up in different languages, marking what unites Christians across the world. 

In the middle of the chapels, below what must have been the altar area of the main sanctuary, were some windows that looked down to the crypt. When you looked down you saw a worship area (which is, I found out afterwards, the local parish church). Down beneath the beauty created by Gaudi  being photographed by many tourists was the beauty of a congregation worshipping God. I watched as they shared the peace and I wanted to be with them, not with the tourists who were jostling for the best position to take a photo. 

At the core of the building was faith. The crypt was there before the rest of what is described as a 'temple' was built. In that crypt a faithful group of followers resisted the urge to look up at the tourists as they worshipped God. Although the beautiful temple spoke very deeply of the glory of God, and it, I'm sure, is an amazing place to worship, it was in that crypt that the true beauty of God was displayed; where gathering together to worship was a regular routine of faithfulness, and where the peace of God was shared in a community centred on Christ.

It's too easy sometimes to focus on the surface - on looks, on what's happening now, what's making me happy right now, but what I've been challenged on over the summer, a reminder and a nudge, is that what lies beneath that is most important - what creates the cushion that holds the paper clip up, what sustains faith community in the middle of a commercial tourist venture, what holds me...... it's the deep deep love of our creator God, demonstrated so starkly on the cross through Jesus who died for me, and the assurance I have that there is always hope in him. Buildings crumble, life changes, paper clips sink, but God's love is eternal.  







  

Lady Vicars and Sarcastic Rage

I got a bit wound up in a lecture this morning when someone referred to 'Lady Vicars'. It's a phrase I loathe. Someone once said to me 'Ooooo......... you're the new lady minister' and the sarcasm bubbled up. What am I? A minister of ladies (evidence suggests otherwise)? A lady who happens to be a minister (I'm not really sure about that word lady)? A minister who happens to be a lady (really, I'm not sure I am a lady....)?


Someone said to me, 'What's wrong with being a lady, surely it's a compliment?'


Well.......


I'm currently absorbed in the world of Post Modernity, both in real life and in my lectures (but often living in a world that still thinks of itself as un-post, just modern which is why we are in a strange place in church (but that's another story)). Being absorbed in this world means that I've come to grasp the idea that meaning is actually, often, all relative.


So I have a few problems with the phrase 'lady minister' (don't get me started on the vicar bit).....


Firstly, by calling me a lady minister, you're implying that this is unusual. Where we have two categories that overlap so completely (one bigger than the other) of ministers and lady ministers, you put me in a sub-category that implies I do a different, more defined job to those we just call ministers. So please stop calling me lady. I'm just a minister. Although I have some peerage ancestry in the far distant past, that's been and gone, so there are no reasons to define me as different or to give me the title 'Lady'.


Secondly, there are meanings attached to the world 'lady' that I am uncomfortable with (why are female ministers 'lady ministers' and male nurses 'male nurses' - why not 'gentleman nurses' (why not just nurses)?). Meaning is all very relative. When I was doing some research with my ace sister for her dissertation on the League of Nations and trafficking and slavery, we looked at some original meeting minutes where they were looking for someone who was female to work with them. One of the women was ideal for the job but they found her too strong and opinionated. They wanted someone who was gentle and compassionate - softly spoken. The problem with the word 'lady' is that I associate it with the second kind - the kind who is there because it is nice to have a female there but has a particular role and status within an organisation that is non-offensive.


And that leads me to my third problem. To identify 'lady ministers' in a separate category implies that ministers who are female are to be treated differently and are to act differently. The baggage attached to the word 'feminist' expresses some of that. Feminists are militant and outspoken, oppressive of men and always shouting up at the wrong moment (when Feminism is about lifting the status of women to equal, not higher, than men). Unfortunately people can attach that same baggage to ministers who are female. To attach the word 'lady' to minister perhaps makes us a little less offensive and easier to control than a female minister who has the same status and role as a male minister. A lady minister can be put in her place (and believe me, that happens) in a way a male minister isn't. Until we take away the baggage implied by attaching 'lady' to the front of my job title, that assumption and behaviour is not going to go away.


So please, don't define my role by my gender, instead, define my role by my calling. I've been called by a church to minister to that church, so my role is the role of minister. Not 'lady minister', 'lady vicar', 'woman of the cloth' or anything else (lady? I don't see no lady - nah that's something else...!). I'm Claire the minister, and that's me; God's called me, chosen me, and sent me, just as I am.


This recently came up in my facebook newsfeed, it's worth a watch..... A bit about not being 'that' kind of lady.....


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02q6768

Cake and Slow Church. Slow Cake. Cake Church.

I've just got back from the North West Baptist Association ministers conference and during it we had something called '7 on 7' - 7 people speaking about something they are passionate about for 7 minutes. It was good..... and I was one of the seven people and I said I would put up my talk on my blog - so here goes - with a few changes so it makes sense! 

If you spend any time with me you might be able to guess what I am passionate about. It appears that people on facebook with their random sharing of anything to do with shoes and anything to do with maths think they know what I am passionate about. I do like shoes and I do like maths. I even got asymptotes in my sermon on Sunday on Ephesians 6……

However, it’s not until you spend time with me you realise that it’s not all about those shoes or all about that maths…..

If you have spent any time with me in the last year or so there are two things I have probably done….

First, is offer you cake. I have a thing about cake. Not because I like eating it (although, I admit, there are times I do) but because it's an experience. I am not a massive fan of shop bought cakes and when someone brings shop bought cake when they have offered to make cake I have a secret intense disappointment. I am passionate about the homemade variety. This is the variety that has had time to be created. This is the variety that speaks of love and of care. This is the variety that makes me stop and savour.

The thing about cake for me is not in the eating, but it’s in the making. And making is not just about reading and looking. If you just read and follow a recipe without playing with any other senses the cake may be nice, but it’s not the same. I’m sorry.

The first thing I do when creating cake is to wander around and dream. Even if I am going back to a tried and tested recipe that dreaming and imagining is still there. I might have googled or searched books, but the dreaming (often in the car on the way home from college) is always there. This cake I am making – I need to really believe in.

The second thing I do is make the cake. With scales. I measure….. then I taste, then I feel, then I smell….. then I add…. (milk often actually is the magic ingredient). Then I put it in the oven and let it be. Let it rest as it grows, moves, breathes…..

The final thing I do is I listen. The cakes talk.

So.... now you think I am nuts. But, when you listen to sponge cakes baking they speak, and when they stop speaking they’re ready. It’s not about the time stated in the recipe book, it’s about when the cakes tell you they’re ready. You can hear it. You can feel it. Taste and see. And……

The second thing I may have mentioned if you have spent time with me,  is how you need to investigate Slow Church. Slow Church is church like cake baking and eating. Slow Church is a movement about cultivating community in the patient way of Christ. Slow church is inspired by the International slow food movement.

The slow food movement is a movement that goes against the grain of fast food…. Of buy and eat fast. Of lunch hours and business meetings. Of hour long lunchtime ministers meetings (let’s kill two birds with one stone ministers meetings). Of the rush from one meeting to the next. Of turning the occasional times we have traditionally just hung out with others from church to week by week, slow, slow, patient, focussed community building. The slow food movement is dedicated to the enjoyment and production of local food and wine, the preservation of food traditions, and  the promoting of pleasures of conviviality – from the Latin word for feast, which literally means ‘to live with’. The slow food movement challenges us as churches to ask questions about the ground our faith communities have given over to the cult of speed and challenges us to rethink the ways in which we share life together in our church communities. It challenges our ‘one size fits all’ church and discipleship models and calls for quality, local centred journeys forward, breathing and walking together in Christ’s way.

Slow Church is the challenge to be, faithfully and well, the embodiment of Christ in a particular place over time. Slow church speaks of the type of community where people are invited to hang out for a while and taste and see that the Lord is good.

Cake and Slow Church. Slow Cake. Cake Church. That’s what I am passionate about.

That lone voice......

And the lone voice of a man cries out 'but it's not in the Bible'. His views are heard. They're challenged. The service goes on. 

But that man's voice is still there. He's heard spell out his views on women leaders (women are made to be gorgeous not leaders, women can have babies, men can be bishops, we have different roles) on national news. He's challenged by an abundance of tweets and comments. 

But that man's voice is still there. His views are heard. His views represent a voice that rises up at moments like these, but is there, all the time, views that are the norm in some places. His voice is still there. 

His voice is still there in the concern over my role as minister of a church as a stumbling block for someone joining the church. His voice is still there when I'm told there are things I should not be doing because I am a woman and 'I should have learnt by now', his voice is still there when I'm told that women are not made to be leaders, his voice is still there when the conversation is about what makes a good preacher and that good preacher is most definitely male. 

His voice is still there when it's suggested that the move to female bishops is a step towards restoration of fallen creation and that suggestion is accompanied by a vehement shaking of head. His voice is still there. 

I'm struggling right now with the number of challenges to my ministry being thrown at me; not because I am no good at it; not because I'm getting it wrong all the time; not because I am not called; not because my ministry has not been affirmed most clearly by the church I am serving, my college and my association (I am called, I am affirmed, I am, I hear, doing a good job and getting it right a lot of the time); but because of my gender. 

This morning we were talking in our Bible Study about the anointing of King David in 1 Samuel 16. He was not who was expected. He was the youngest of a number of brothers. He wasn't even there when Samuel came to the temple because the expectations of him were definitely not King. Yet there he was. God knew him. God called him. 

We came to the conclusion that to God it didn't matter that David was the youngest, that to anoint him would be totally against society conventions, yet God still chose him. What mattered was God's call. 

What matters to me is God's call, as affirmed by those who know me well, my church and beyond... and that is what excites me and keeps me going. 

I love the fact that we're all different - we have different views and ideas. I love the fact that we can read the Bible and discover so much more about God. I love the fact that the journey is still ongoing. I love it when I see that something happens that is a sign that God's Kingdom is near, is here, is coming. 

But I'd love it if it wasn't so hard sometimes! That lone voice, I'm so pleased you have a say, because I believe in freedom of speech, but it doesn't mean that when it's there every day and not always such a lone voice it doesn't hurt and question the person who God has called me to be. It doesn't mean that you do not undermine the clear call my church has given me. We need to remember that many of our views are not just theoretical theological ideas, but about people, made in the image of God, and often, I've found, the people who are standing right there in front of you. 

And by the way, it is in the Bible - read about it here

The Parable of the Polygons (and let's add some shapes with curved edges because they're important too)

I often talk about what normal is with one particular mathematician friend. Whenever anyone talks about what normal is then there needs to be a central defining point. For us, (jokingly of course) it's people like us. We're two different people with a different set of beliefs but with a number of things that unite us, so if we are both normal the concept of what is normal (if it is to be us) must be quite diverse. What I value in our normalness together is the fact that we can engage on a level that has more depth than engaging with people who are just like us. 

I've been doing a lot of thinking about community building and hospitality in a church context. When we look to belong we often look to people who are like us. Same social standing, same economic background, same interests, same...... those social groupings are based on our own concept of normalness. To begin to let the group grow beyond that normality is seen as taking risks or messy or rocking the status quo. 

Or is it?

I recently came across the 'Parable of the Polygons' which was shared on facebook. This attracted me because of the word Polygon and probably put a lot of people off because it sounds a bit mathematical. Anyway, have a read and a go, it is really interesting - like a game you could play for ages..... and there are graphs. 

The general gist of the Parable of the Polygons is that the choices we make in the way we relate to different social groupings and the way we invite people to be part of our own social groupings can cause harm if we don't make those choices carefully. We can say we are seeking equality, we are seeking to embrace all, but in making bad choices as to who we spend time with we could be creating a community made up of unhappy triangles....it'll all make sense if you have a play... go on, I dare you. 

The writer wraps up with three points, the last one of which tells us to 'demand diversity near you'. They say that we need to look around us and that if we are all triangles we're going to be 'missing out on some amazing squares in your life - that's unfair to everyone'. 

The results of this parable are interesting - that where we demand a bit of diversity in our groupings, this makes a huge positive difference overall. 

So, why is this important in the context of a church community? 

Well, words are batted around about being welcoming, inclusive, seeking diversity; we say that God's love is for everyone, not just people like us, that Jesus died on the cross for everyone, not just those we like, they just need to respond to him. But then we mourn (or some of us secretly love I reckon) the fact that churches are monochrome, made of one generation, too family orientated, too feminine, too masculine, just too..... 

What the Parable of the Polygons shows us is that where a small minority are committed to challenging the biases that naturally exist in our communities, that can make a difference, but that it takes work. It doesn't take giving up and hoping it happens. It doesn't take giving in and saying 'well this inevitable'. It takes 2,3, 4..... people who are committed to being anti-biased to change a community, and as more people see the change, feel the change, recognise it as beneficial to the wider community they will join too. 

In recognising the diversity that should naturally exist in the people we group with as a local church, we recognise how society has changed. We'd like to hold on to a time when society was not as it is today, but then we miss the beauty of what we can learn from the God places - the thin places where heaven and earth meet that exist in the communities around us. 

So perhaps we need to change where the boundaries are, and that's what those triangles and squares seeking diversity are doing. Where the status quo changes to something more reflective of where people actually are, where the diversity of culture is expressed, then the community we are part of becomes better, more beautiful, more reflective of the Image of God in which we were created. In the end perhaps we'll be happier together....?

I've been reading 'Tracks and Traces' by Paul Fiddes. I love this book... he says on p133....

".... If we are to minister to society as a whole, and to its various social groupings that can no longer be confined to a nuclear family, then we must learn to 'open up space' within the boundaries of the gathered church. We must learn hospitality which is not patronizing and which values people for whom they are. We must let our living space overlap with others". 

A type of hospitality that is unbiased? Welcoming the squares and the triangles and the shapes with curved edges? Is that more normal than gathering with people who are like me? Is that what a church with Christ at the head should look like?