38 years a priest

38 years ago today, I was ordained as Priest in the Church of England. In my morning prayers today, I looked up the Ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer to read the exhortation in The Ordering of Priests. These are not quite the words we heard in that service, which I suspect had been brought in line with Series 3 or some other revised form of service. But these words express the same sentiment. And they are scary…

YOU have heard, brethren, as well in your private examination, as in the exhortation which was now made to you, and in the holy Lessons taken out of the Gospel and the writings of the Apostles, of what dignity and of how great importance this office is, whereunto ye are called. And now again we exhort you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you have in remembrance, into how high a dignity, and to how weighty an office and charge ye are called: that is to say, to be messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord; to teach and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.

Have always therefore printed in your remembrance, how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he his blood. The Church and Congregation whom you must serve, is his spouse and his body. And if it shall happen the same Church, or any member thereof, to take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue. Wherefore consider with yourselves the end of your ministry towards the children of God, towards the spouse and body of Christ; and see that you never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until you have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life.

Forasmuch then as your office is both of so great excellency and of so great difficulty, ye see with how great care and study ye ought to apply yourselves, as well that ye may shew yourselves dutiful and thankful unto that Lord, who hath placed you in so high a dignity; as also to beware that neither you yourselves offend, nor be occasion that others offend. Howbeit, ye cannot have a mind and will thereto of yourselves; for that will and ability is given of God alone. Therefore ye ought, and have need, to pray earnestly for his Holy Spirit. And seeing that you cannot by any other means compass the doing of so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of man, but with doctrine and exhortation taken out of the holy Scriptures, and with a life agreeable to the same; consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures, and in framing the manners both of yourselves, and of them that specially pertain unto you, according to the rule of the same Scriptures: and for this self-same cause, how ye ought to forsake and set aside (as much as you may) all worldly cares and studies.

We have good hope that you have well weighed and pondered these things with yourselves long before this time; and that you have clearly determined, by God’s grace, to give yourselves wholly to this office, whereunto it hath pleased God to call you: so that, as much as lieth in you, you will apply yourselves wholly to this one thing, and draw all your cares and studies this way; and that you will continually pray to God the Father, by the mediation of our only Saviour Jesus Christ, for the heavenly assistance of the Holy Ghost; that, by daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures, ye may wax riper and stronger in your ministry; and that ye may so endeavour yourselves from time to time to sanctify the lives of you and yours, and to fashion them after the rule and doctrine of Christ, that ye may be wholesome and godly examples and patterns for the people to follow.

Clearly no one is worthy, or can fully live up to that high calling. (God knows how any priest could physically or spiritually abuse any person, if they at all remembered those words about causing any hurt or hindrance to any member of the body of Christ, by their negligence…) The ordinary harm we cause by the ordinary negligence of ordinary sinners is a hard enough burden to bear, with words like ‘horrible punishment’ hanging over our heads. The only comfort is that Jesus called some pretty unworthy people to be his disciples and apostles (see the Gospels, passim); and that the Everlasting Mercy is always greater.

How did I dare to do it for all those years? And how do I still dare, when I’m asked to? Because somewhere, and sometimes it seems against all experience and evidence, I do believe that Mercy always triumphs over Judgement.

Why, why, why, Samson?

Photo credit: Walker Art Gallery

Then [Samson’s] brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. He had judged Israel twenty years. (Judges 16.31)

So ends the story of Samson, according to the Book of Judges. Clearly the word ‘judged’ means something different here, from what we take it to mean. For us, a judge is expected to be a person of wisdom, experience, and knowledge of the law. Samson, a testosterone-charged strong man, bully, boor, terrorist (according to the Philistines) or freedom fighter (according to the Israelites), womaniser and idiot, is of all the characters in the Bible pretty much the most lacking in all these qualities.

In fact, the word translated ‘judge’ does include other significances in the Bible. The entry in Strong’s Concordance for H8199 reads:

שָׁפַט  shâphaṭ, shaw-fat’; a primitive root; to judge, i.e. pronounce sentence (for or against); by implication, to vindicate or punish; by extension, to govern; passively, to litigate (literally or figuratively):— avenge, that condemn, contend, defend, execute (judgment), (be a) judge(-ment), needs, plead, reason, rule.

Well, there may be a lot of avenging and punishing going on in the story of Samson. But very little vindicating, pronouncing sentence in any legal sense, and still less governing. This is a man who can’t even govern himself; it would be remarkable if he could govern anything or anyone else.

When I was a child the biblical story of Samson used to be considered suitable reading for children, in Children’s Bibles and the like. Please don’t tell me it still is. We had to read the story of Samson and Delilah in this morning’s lections for Morning Prayer, and frankly we didn’t know what to make of it. (See Judges 16.4-31) It’s certainly a well-constructed story, as stories go: you have the rule of three, three questions and false answers before Samson finally betrays the secret of his strength (because of his mistress’s nagging and pestering, the narrator tells us); the inevitable violent consequence in his capture and the gouging out of his eyes (suitable for children?!); his final repentance and restoration, so that his enemies get their justifiable comeuppance… But really: what else is going on here? Is this a subversive tale, subverting patriarchy, marriage, male machismo in general? Is it a cautionary tale about ‘marrying out’? (Samson should have fallen in love with and married nice Jewish girls, instead of these sexy Philistine women…) or just against extra-marital sex in general? Is it a feminist tract urging women to get their own back? Is it a dire warning for parents not to indulge their children? Because we blamed the parents: Manoah and his (of course, unnamed) wife are visited by the angel of the LORD and promised a miraculous son who is to be consecrated to God for the whole of his life. But instead of bringing him up to have any kind of respect for that consecration, or any understanding of the Law or what it means to be holy and godly, they pander to his every whim, chasing round the country to negotiate for him to marry some young woman who has taken his fancy, whom their son then deserts on his wedding night, with the consequence that she and her father get burned to death by their neighbours. Nice story.

So, what is this Samson? A thoroughly nasty piece of work? Or a hero and a role model for Israel? I was going to say, Surely not! But maybe that is exactly what he has become: a model for still smiting and killing Palestinians?

A useless feature? Or just useless documentation?

So what I’m doing right now, is exploring Windows 10 again, after mostly using Linux, Chromebook and iPad for the last many months. This means dusting off my Asus ZenBook, which is a nice machine, though I don’t like the keyboard as much as the really chunky one of my ThinkPad Linux box.

And here’s a thing. Yesterday evening the touchpad suddenly wasn’t responding. Aargh! Naturally the first things I do are check the settings, and then google the problem. Whereupon I find this entry from Microsoft support. I am a trusting soul, so I followed the directions about trying to update the driver, and if that doesn’t work, uninstalling it, reinstalling it, restarting the computer. All the usual steps. Nothing worked.

Eventually, somewhere in the wildlands of the WWW – and I can’t even find the place again – I found someone who said, effectively: If you have accidentally disabled the touchpad…

It turns out there is a keypress to disable the touchpad. Why? Why would anyone want to do that? Even if they were using a mouse? Apparently some people do. I have never seen any documentation about this (because of course you don’t get computer manuals nowadays); there’s nothing in the Settings; there’s not even any consistency between manufacturers about which key(s) do it; the little icons on the function keys are gnomic to say the least. I had to try most of the ones whose operations I wasn’t familiar with, before I found f9. Which does indeed toggle the touchpad off or on. This whole ‘adventure’ wasted the best part of 45 minutes, I should think. I don’t believe I am the only computer user who sometimes presses keys that inadvertently. What’s hard to believe is the difficulty of finding a solution, with so many of the responders on various internet forums wanting to promote the sledgehammer options.

New Zealand: 17. Mount Cook and Christchurch

“Will we see Mount Cook?” lots of the travellers were asking. “When will we see Mount Cook?”

“There’s a good chance,” Denis replied. “We could get lucky.”

Apparently, this isn’t the case with every tourist group. It’s all too easy for low cloud or any poor visibility to hide the highest peak in New Zealand so completely that it’s invisible even (especially?) from just a few miles away.

We did get lucky. As we drove along the shore of Lake Pukaki, we had splendid views of Mount Cook which grew bigger and bigger as we got nearer. We stopped at the Hermitage Hotel for a morning break, with excellent views from the cafe terrace. Then back to the coach, past Lake Pukaki and on to Lake Tekapo for what is apparently an obligatory stop at the Church of the Good Shepherd. It’s a picturesque little stone building in a beautiful location: the east window of clear glass looks out over the lake to the mountains beyond. It’s supposed to be a place of prayer and worship, reminding people of the original settlers of this land, but also of the glory of God. Somehow I couldn’t get beyond the tourist rip-off factor. An attendant abruptly reminds you that no photography is allowed – unless you’re a professional photographer, when you will be allowed a 30-minute shoot for a mere $100. Hmm. Crowds of camera-wielding visitors can indeed detract from the holy feeling of a place. But not as much as what feels like an exaggerated commercialism.

The road then took us through the Mackenzie Country, then over Burke’s Pass, stopping at Geraldine for lunch, where we found the congregation of St Mary’s church sharing a church lunch, and happy to greet us. Then on, on, on over the Canterbury Plains, and so at last to Christchurch again.

Here we at last managed to make a short visit to the Transitional (AKA ‘Cardboard’) Cathedral

They were getting ready for a service to mark the beginning of a new school year, for which children and parents were gathering, so we had only a few minutes to look around and take a couple of photographs.

Behind the Cathedral is the memorial to the 185 victims of the 2011 earthquake, a moving sight which includes baby seats and wheelchairs representing the children and disabled who lost their lives.

Other notable views of Christchurch included the ruined original Cathedral. There’s been a lot of debate about whether to build a completely new, 21st century cathedral, or to rebuild the much-loved Victorian building. It seems the conservationists have won out over those (including the Bishop) who wanted something more appropriate for contemporary worship and witness.

And the Container Mall, where colourful shipping containers were brought in as soon as possible after the earthquake, to get the city’s commercial and business life up and running again. It’s such a feature, that as some of the shops return to rebuilt premises, other businesses are starting up in the vacated containers. I wouldn’t however recommend the container public toilets… in temperatures that were still in the upper 30s Celsius, these were not a comfortable experience.

Even though we spent so few hours there, we loved Christchurch, reputedly the most English of New Zealand cities. And so the last day of our New Zealand holiday drew to an end.

 

We Demand — Pippa Rathborne’s SCRATCH POST

THE PEOPLE’S VOTE TOO BIG TO IGNORE THE DEMOCRATIC RIGHT TO CHANGE OUR MINDS Over 100,000 people marched on Saturday, over 100,000 people have signed already. PLEASE MAKE IT EVEN BIGGER Whether you are a Leaver or a Remainer, if you are resident in Britain, if you are a British National or an EU National, […]

via We Demand — Pippa Rathborne’s SCRATCH POST

Blog posts in Word

I remember it must be possible to write some text for a blog post in Word, and then publish it from Word. (For the reader who hasn’t been keeping up, it’s been a long time since I used Word very much – I’ve been using LibreOffice and Google Docs for some time, or StackEdit in a browser.) So here we go. The task is, to set this up as a post, publish it as a draft to my WordPress blog, and see what happens.

Here goes…

At the first attempt, nothing happened, I was getting unhelpful error messages. It then transpired that some time in the past I did set up Word to publish to my older blog, and had forgotten all about it, and of course those settings are no longer valid, because the blog has been removed. The Microsoft interface to set up new details looks a bit old and clunky, sort of Windows 3 style? But I got it registered after a couple of tries. And yes, it’s working: this post is hereby Published.

Stoner, by John Williams

I suspect this is an old man’s book. I don’t know that I would have known what to do with it 40 or 20 or even 10 years ago. One reader proposed as an alternative title: Life Sucks And Then You Die. But no. It’s the story of a life shot through with bitter sadness, disappointment, seeming failure, yes. But it’s also the story of a life heroically lived, and lived, as Stoner himself comes to understand, with moment by moment passion, and love. It’s not a sad or depressing book, but one that breathes quiet, considered, hope. And it has one of the best and most moving descriptions of dying (and who can do anything other than imagine what that is like?) that I have ever read.

I especially loved this paragraph:

He had no wish to die; but there were moments, after Grace left, when he looked forward impatiently, as one might look to the moment of a journey that one does not particularly wish to take. And like any traveller, he felt that there were many things he had to do before he left; yet he could not think what they were.

And this, which I guess could be the most important question one could ask oneself about one’s life:

What did you expect? he asked himself.