Learning to ride again

This morning I read one of those articles that someone regularly puts up in ministers groups that speculates on what life will look like once what the new normal is is revealed. 

I realised after I read it that I don't want to read articles like this anymore. I don't want to read your musings which are influenced by your own dreams of church about what church will look like post lockdown. I can't do it any more. 

If there is anything this time is teaching us is that we need to wait and see. I remember just before we had to close our buildings and the feeling in those groups was that we had to make contingency plans and I did that but then two days later I ripped it all up and started again because all the social distancing ideas we put in place were not possible anymore. 

If this time teaches us anything it teaches us that we can't be in control of this. We can't predict how things are going to go. We can have ideas, we can have dreams, we can imagine that church will become everything we want it to be, but that doesn't mean that will happen. 

Our future practise will arise from our experience. I believe our call right now is to be reflective practitioners, to listen and to learn from what is happening and adjust our direction to the hand that is tugging us down the path we might not have quite noticed before. 

I was sat in a webinar (hate that word) on listening to God in lockdown on Thursday night after the end of a long day when the things that needed to be sorted in the long day had not been sorted and I was feeling a bit disheartened. One of the contributors (forgive me for forgetting who) used the image of learning to ride a bike. At the moment it's like our stabilisers have been taken off and we are very much trying to find them again to find balance.... but actually maybe our call is not to find the stabilisers, maybe actually what is happening right now is that God is helping us to learn to ride in the way he is calling us without them. 

Those stabilisers (the weekly gathering that grounds us, the routine that keeps us in rhythm) have been taken off completely, not just lost, and God has let go of the saddle as we learn to peddle in the way he has taught us to on a journey that has an unknown destination as yet. Perhaps right now, we just need to learn to ride. When you first learn to ride a bike, it's not to go anywhere, it's to learn to adjust your balance as necessary, peddle at the right pace without getting dizzy, to turn the handle bars when the signs tell you to, to press the brakes at the right pressure and to put your feet down to stop when that's what you need to do and not just fall off because the stablisers aren't there to prevent that falling anymore. 

We learn to ride by getting on that bike, reflecting on our experience when we end up with a grazed knee, and doing it a bit differently next time so it doesn't hurt in the same way anymore. 

Our destination is not in our hands right now, and while we can dream and hope, we can't fix our eyes on anything but the direction that will be revealed over time. Our future holds many possibilities, but now is not time to predict the one route that future will take us down. Now is the time to let that route arise from the steps to which we are called. Now is the time to let that route arise from within the community we serve. Now is the time for that route to be revealed by the one who knows when we will be ready to see the destination.

One of the meditations of the day in the Northumbria Community Daily Prayer talks about how "if you must lead, let it be like the wind and all its unshackled direction". That strikes me every time I read it, and is particularly appropriate right now. 

Now is the time to listen to the wind, because the wind, it blows wherever it wishes. 


Photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/danbax/8568310235/

Loving the old and embracing the new

Living in a small town can sometimes be great, but can sometimes be really frustrating. I like the history, the tourist stuff, the chocolate. The quirkiness of small town living makes me happy. I have got used to having the name of the place I live laughed at (although it gets irritating at times - but I can't talk - I used to laugh). I like the fact that about five minutes walk away I can climb a hill and at the top I can see into the centre of Manchester.

My problem is that I have been a city (or very large town!) girl all of my life. I am used to having every large supermarket possible within about ten minutes drive. I am used to being able to walk to the train station (I can walk to the train station here, but I can only get a steam train). I love the variety in the industrial landscape - new and old mixed together. My favourite city is Birmingham. You drive in and you see old Birmingham mixed with new. A combination of history and forward thinking. The Selfridges building rises up in its blue and silver curvy space age style amongst crossing railway lines and arches that have been there for years and years. 

Love it!

 

Yet I bet that whenever anything new was built - the town hall, the bull ring tower, the Selfridges building, the railways, people complained about the monstrosity that was to be built. 

I love history, yet I love new innovation, and history would not be so interesting if innovation hadn't happened in the past. There are people who have stood up and looked forward and things have changed. They didn't necessarily reject the past, and probably celebrated it, but were also inspired and more often or not walked against the flow, gathering people with like minds on the journey. 

Birmingham reminds me that life is constantly changing, that diversity is exciting and that innovation can run alongside long established ideas. A living and active church is just like that. The community sees the need to celebrate the past and appreciate its foundations, but also recognises the need for vision and diversity in its outlook. Community living is changeable, sometimes volatile, but so often brilliantly beautiful. 

When the community becomes insular and resistant to difference, then the community becomes more like a stately home, which is interesting for historical purposes but will continue to stay the same - stuck in an era that is separate from where people really are. It becomes a place to dream about what has gone rather than what might be coming. 

I was watching Four Weddings* and one of the brides said about another's church venue that it was like two different places - old and beautiful on the outside and like a community centre on the inside. She was very disappointed. She wanted the tradition without the church community. If we really believe that church is community and live that out, then perhaps that juxtaposition of old and new should become the norm, not the surprise. 

*Programme where four brides rate one another's weddings and somebody wins a dream honeymoon. Mind numbing entertainment!