A subject I thought I'd not mention!

Last week was busy, but got increasingly pleasurable. You can perhaps deduce the tipping point.
Monday - car had its MOT. Needs new tyre.
Wednesday - visit to doctor. Blood pressure needs "keeping an eye on". Kwikfit came and fitted two new tyres. Dog goes to vet with back/neck trouble.
Thursday - blood test, followed by dentist. Tooth refilled. Need to watch plaque upper left. My teeth are a catalogue of decay!
Friday - wheelchair serviced first thing. Afternoon visited my best man in Oxford, a brave man. Evening had three friends round for meal and to pray.
Saturday - Jane out morning, brother and wife call in for coffee. Out for meal in evening with two of the BEST friends.
And I forgot to mention three other visits from friends interspersed through the week.
Life's not dull.

Meanwhile the news broke on Wednesday, or was it Thursday, that William Windsor had proposed some time ago to Catherine Middleton. At last, you might think, after nine years of friendship and four years of 'living together'. The arcane reason given for its being announced now was, I heard, that otherwise she couldn't have spent Christmas at Sandringham with the royal family. The protocol that approves of cohabitation before marriage but not of entertaining your girl-friend at your parents' home seems to me a trifle bizarre, if not topsy-turvy.

However I must beware of sounding like the Bishop of Willesden, who's incurred the establishment's wrath with his republican remarks expressed in lively Facebook language. Pete Broadbent obviously wasn't brought up with the principle my mother taught us about making remarks. "Before you speak, ask: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? If it doesn't pass all three tests, don't say it." I guess the bishop's remarks fail on 2 out of 3 counts. That is a huge temptation with blogging and social networking - to be funny and trenchant without asking those questions or exercising personal imagination. That leads to vitriolic extremes, which are downright ugly.

Personally, I wish them a long and happy marriage. I don't envy royalty in any way. Their lot is not an easy one, mainly because of the obsessional interest which we appear to have in them and which the media profitably feeds. There's an excellent marriage preparation course which I hope the celebrant of their wedding will insist William and Kate do together.

 http://relationshipcentral.org/marriage-preparation-course. We used to use it with prospective couples in our church. Very good it was too. Hopefully the bishop's ill-judged remarks won't have put them off.

In retrospect

We’ve had a glorious week in South Devon, up a muddy bendy lane, in a warm converted cowshed overlooking beech trees and a trout-stream valley. What a full few days! I'm getting used to the idea that even in retirement holidays are worth having.

The view from the cottage was great, with the autumn leaves just clinging on for us despite the westerly winds. I didn't notice the pylons; the nearby wildlife was a lot more interesting. I reckon there were blue, great, coal and marsh tits, as well as greater spotted woodpeckers and nuthatches on the bird feeders, green woodpeckers, pheasants and squirrels in the garden - and Jane counted 14 herons in the field across the valley. Then at night the trains down in the dip would pass back and forth with the lights of their carriages on. 

On the Sunday we made for Exmouth to seek out Christ Church - the home church of some New Winers we met this year. Though the people we'd got to know best weren't there, we received a great welcome. The worship and whole service was led by young people. Excellent. I can even remember the 'talk's' three points still: we need consistency, cooperation and confidence in following Christ.

 After that we drove down to the estuary where Jane walked Jess to the river, while I discovered the car of the third in line to the throne, as I deduced from its registration K1NGH. In fact, when it passed us later, it contained an elderly couple (even older than us). We moved on to the promenade which was remarkably busy for a cool autumnal day. Dog-walkers, kite-fliers, promenaders, and even kayakers. It was of course sunny, and actually we joined the procession on the prom. Lovely.

I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the week: Seaton - overrated but nice clifftop garden; Jane's parents - impossible to overrate; Axmouth - brilliant picnic by another estuary and lots of waders and seabirds (curlew, little egret, redshank, sandpiper et al); plus a visit from my favourite journalist, walks for Jane in the area with the dog, the autumn colours, blue skies, and evenings watching 'Poldark'...! I came home reflecting how fortunate I was still to be mobile enough and able to enjoy such a beautiful place and how blessed we'd been with bright November weather.

In my inbox, among the emails, was on from my co-author, Jozanne. I don't think she'll mind my quoting from it:

"Since my last mail, I have regressed considerably. I am no longer able to use my computer and spend most of my days in bed. My body is weak and my breathing is very shallow. I have lost most of my muscle mass and probably weigh between 35 & 40 kg's. I am on a 4 hourly dosage of morphine which brings me great relief from the pain I have been experiencing in my neck and shoulders. I am not able to eat anymore due to the weakened muscles in my mouth and swallowing process. I take all my feeds through a tube in my stomach. I am completely paralysed and I am grateful for the two full-time caregivers that assist me during the day and for Dave who helps me at night.                                                                                                                                         

"My greatest challenge now is speech and communication. This is very frustrating for me because I can no longer verbalise any words. It is difficult for me to express how I feel or what I need and also for those around me to understand what I am trying to say. We do seem to find ways around this but with much difficulty and effort.

"Despite all these challenges God has been so faithful to us. He daily gives me the strength to carry on, but not just that, He fills my life with joy as He reveals Himself to me more and more everyday...." 

That's the reality of MND for all but a few.

David & Grace (Liverpool Echo)

And then there were two about my cousin, Grace Sheppard. She has been having treatment for widespread cancer. Last month, six years after her husband David had done the same, she preached at Liverpool Cathedral's Pause for Hope service. It's for cancer sufferers, families, carers and medics. One email told us she was in the hospice; the second that she had died, five years after David. Only a few months ago she'd stayed with us. She was, and is, a lovely person. I shall treasure her book, Living with Dying, which she inscribed for us when she was here.  http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2010/11/12/bishop-s-wife-grace-sheppard-dies-after-cancer-battle-100252-27646634/

Finally there was the news of a new Wenham born into the world, daughter to my nephew and his wife - with the nice name of Marianne. And I also saw, with delight, an entry on Jill McCloghry's blog that after 35 weeks she's still carrying her baby girl. You may remember the extract I included in I Choose Everything from her blog of her months of agonised grieving after the loss of her first baby, Max. She's another remarkable woman of faith.

"Your carriage awaits"

Here I am sitting in Whitequays Seat garage in Newbury. We’ve brought in our car for its first and final MOT. As ever, proceedings are taking longer than predicted, but the coffee’s nice and the disabled toilet well appointed.

Our next car - res ipsa

In ten days or so, we’ll take delivery of its replacement I’m hoping we’ll be able to have a sneak preview as, when we got home from Devon, we had a message that it had arrived. We can’t take delivery until the previous Motability contract expires. As I’ve commented before, this is a real boon of the Disability Allowance. I trust it survives the cuts. In the big scheme of things it is quite small, but having a reliable car which is comparatively easy for access and egress and which fits in the clobber of disability, such as wheelchairs, is not to be undervalued. My son who knows about such things is a bit disappointed we didn't go for the trendy Qashqai, but I'm afraid it failed on a number of convenience grounds. 

Beauty - or a beast?

And so it's this rather sleek Altea XL instead. I can't quite decide whether or not it looks a trifle sleazy! Whatever - I'm looking forward to being chauffeured in it!

Thinking of cars - so we've reached the end of the F1 season, and sadly Williams (our local team) haven't broken back into the big time, as I'd hoped. They've not done badly: 6th in the constructors' championship, and Rubens Barrichello 10th in the drivers'. Their young driver, Hulkenberg, is moving on (I wonder if they'd like Jane instead... She's quite nippy!), and I gather they might have a new engine next season. We wait in hope!

Please don't hijack care

First, an apology: I fell into the oldest trick in the politician's PR book, viz "When you've got some unpopular policy to announce, leak a worse version first and then when you make the real announcement people will think, 'Well, that's not so bad, is it?'" The cap on student loans is going to be "only" £9,000 per annum, but, unlike now, there will be an additional 3% p a over inflation to repay. It's still quite a hike from the present and still, of course, means students ending up in debt. Graduates on the national average wage of £31,000+ would pay 19.3% more tax than their non-graduate contemporaries, while paying off their loan. One mysterious (to me anyway) rule is that graduates will be penalised if they pay the loan off early.... (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ministers-set-to-unveil-tuition-fee-plans-2123847.html)

This week car manufacturer, Toyota, are having yet another recall, this time of 12,000 of their iQ models in this country (bringing the grand worldwide total over the past months to 10 million of various models). It's extraordinary how successful they still are. First it was a braking problem ("Keep your distance; the car in front is a Toyota"); this time it's a fault with the steering. I know they're not the only car maker to recall cars, but they seem to have more than their fair share.

It's ironic then that Care Services minister, Paul Burstow, should be so keen on another Japanese invention, Hureai Kippu. I don't know how likely it is to crash, but it's a very bad idea. In case you don't know, it means "Caring Relationship Tickets", and it's a way of rewarding voluntary carers with credits they could later redeem to fund their own care when they need it. So, for example, if someone were to shop for me or wash me or help me on the toilet - out of mere concern or love - they could log it and put it in a "bank" of credits for when they needed care. Good idea, you might think on a superficial level. However, there are two things fundamentally and profoundly wrong with this. 

One is that everyone, whether or not they've been nice or nasty, whether they've clocked up Hureai Kippu points or not, ought to be cared for when they're in need. Compassion should be free at the point of need. 

The other is that care, voluntarily and freely given, is just that. To link it to self-serving reward is to pollute its very nature. Certainly caring for someone else brings incredible personal reward, but as a by-product, not as its purpose. The caring professions, of course, are incomparable and I rely on them, but the care of those who stand to earn nothing from it is of a different order. To incentivise it would be to compromise it tragically.

I'm reminded of the prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola - which I think I learned in my brief career as a Cub Scout -. It would be an immense loss to abandon the profound principle of disinterested service which remains a beautiful part of our country's Christian heritage, even if so clearly enunciated by a Spaniard!

Teach us, good Lord,

to serve Thee as Thou deservest;

to give and not to count the cost;

to fight and not to heed the wounds;

to labour and not to ask for any reward,

save that of knowing that we do Thy will.

through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Thinking of volunteering, the episode of The Secret Millionaire on 17th October contained a good example. "Travel website entrepreneur and self-confessed geek Chris Brown confronts painful memories and undergoes a life-changing experience as he looks for people to help in north Manchester." Among the charities he visited was The Mustard Tree where Paul works. What Chris Brown found hard to get his mind round was when he offered £15,000 to Oscar, who works in the refuse centre and does up thrown out bikes and gives them to families who couldn't afford one. Oscar turned the money down, because he simply loves doing it. He does it out of love. That is worth the world. To give Chris Brown his due, he respected Oscar's decision. Let's hope the government gets the point too. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/4od#3129925

 

I think my life's not bad!

There are certainly frustrations in my life - such as the failure of the repairers to return my injured laptop for some days - but heigh! I could borrow Jane's, couldn't I? Lesley, my physio sans pareil, came for my four-monthly check-up on Monday. She's fabulous. She gave a very positive verdict on the state of my MND - which is basically really stable. Most MND patients have an M25 (or do I mean Porlock Hill?) experience, with on average 17 months between diagnosis and dying. I seem to have been sent on the scenic route. I'd be churlish not to appreciate it. 
It does make me think that in fact everyone should live in an "attitude of gratitude", as someone once said. A friend of mine, Claire, recently put on her Facebook status: "Loves the beautiful autumnal colours :-D  My Dad made each of those beautiful views you see around you right now." (NB Dad has a capital D.) I hope to be out at the weekend to admire those views. Even the last two leaves hanging on our cherry tree have their defiant frail beauty.


Meanwhile my second cousin sent me two attachments of which I already have one but the other is a fascinating one of when Kilbowie, Alfred Ebenezer's final pile, went on the market. It's the cover of the estate agent's blurb. Without all the modern excrescences, it is really impressive, it seems to me - but I wouldn't have wanted to live there. Give me my urban mod cons any time!
"Ours is a nice house ours is;
It has no rats nor no mouses." - as my dad used to quote!

 

So you think your life is hard...

Soon after I'd finished preaching on Sunday, in a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad, a congregation were being held hostage by six al-Qaeda gunmen. They'd seen their priest shot before them. The church was surrounded by Iraqi security forces, and they must have known that the outcome would only have been bloody. In the event the troops stormed the building, the terrorists exploded their bomb-vests and grenades and presumably opened fire - with the result that something like 50 worshippers were killed and more injured. Canon Andrew White reports one little girl running out crying, "They've killed my Daddy, they've killed my Daddy!" The avowed aim of this al-Qaeda group is kill all Christians or drive them out of Iraq.

On Monday evening Andrew White was interviewed on Radio 4's World Tonight programme. You can hear it at 30.53 minutes into http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vkwlz/The_World_Tonight_01_11_2010/ . 

Andrew White (FRRME website)

He said, "There's literally not one Christian in Baghdad that's not been affected." He says to his church, the largest in Iraq, "I'm not going. Don't you go... But despite all these things this is the happiest church I've had."

You can see him talking about it on Monday on the FRRME website; it's worth spending a minute and a half watching it. http://www.frrme.org/latest-news

On Facebook today Andrew reported:

"It has been another awful day in Baghdad with over 20 serious bombings, more of our people killed. Then one of our young people said to me, 'It may all be awful but Jesus is walking with me all the time.' For us it is not theory Jesus is indeed walking with us all the time."

'Extreme love'

On Sunday, as I mentioned, I preached on my first away fixture at Hampstead Norreys Village Hall. When I reported on Facebook that I'd preached longer than ten minutes, cried once, and no one had heckled, the response was immense - more even than for my birthday!

I thought you might like to read the historic talk, not that I stuck to it! Tony is the Rev Tony Lynn who took the risk of inviting me. People were very tolerant of my voice and my lability ('emotional incontinence'), and so after initial nerves I actually enjoyed the experience. Being treated to a rather good roast followed by a dripping chocolate dessert (Yum...) in The White Hart afterwards helped!

EXTREME LOVE

I asked Tony how long he'd like me to preach this morning, and he said, "I usually preach about ten minutes - but people would like it to be shorter."…

So I'm just going to try and tell you a couple of the discoveries I've made since being diagnosed with the dreaded MND and then just invite you to ask any questions - no holds barred.  

As you can imagine as a human being told I had an incurable condition was chilling and perplexing.  I wasn't particularly worried for myself.  I'd seen death and I believe in the resurrection and life to come.  But I feared and hated what it would mean for Jane and my children. 

My form of MND is slow, and so I've had more time than many to reflect on it as a Christian.  There have been all sorts of blessings on the way, such as being enabled to identify more with the many who have their own dark valley to go through and being less judgemental…  Dark valleys are, I suspect, a thousand times more common than we think: childlessness, rejection, joblessness, bereavement, failure, disappointment, illness, exhaustion, abuse, conflict, desertion.  I'm not saying life is all depressing.  That is quite simply untrue.  But for many, if not most, of us there is a dark underground stream where it hurts.  

Strangely, I've never really doubted that God loves me.  I've had enough evidence that I've not fallen off His radar - and there are what were once called the means of grace.  (I love that phrase, "the means of grace and the hope of glory".)

However I have had to reassess what this love can be.  What sort of love is it that allows torturing diseases and natural disasters?  And that doesn't stop humans torturing others and digging unsafe mines?  If God does let me have MND and yet loves me, what is this love?  

My conclusion has been that it is vastly vaster than my previous ideas.  This severe, mysterious and magnificent love which encompasses light and darkness, pain and joy, sickness and health, death and life.  It's rather like trying to picture the whole expanding universe as we explore it to ever greater depths.  As Isaiah put it: 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55.8 & 9).

And to be honest, I'm glad I don't understand.  I don't want a God who fits into my brain, or even the most brilliant human mind.  He wouldn't be worth worshipping.  My reference points have to be the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus in history.  This is God.  He's mystery, but this is love. 

I wanted to tell you about the means of grace which I've discovered, but I've not time.  I've listed most of them in I Choose Everything.  One of them is this service, the Eucharist, in which we come, just as we are, with empty hands, and Jesus comes and says, "This is my body, given for you.  This is my blood, shed for you.  I love you that much."  

The second means of grace and my last point today is faithful friends.  These are the people, family and friends, who I am persuaded will stick with me and walk alongside until the end of the road.  The Chilean miners' families.  You see, they are the embodiment of Christ.  I love our Gospel reading.  That verse must be one of my favourites in the Bible, 

  "Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to 

the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he 

loved them to the end" (John 13.1).

One version says, "He loved them to the uttermost" - to the very end.  

And I love the fact that the way Jesus, Son of God, expressed His love was in the most menial act of service - as well as in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.  Universally and unconditionally given: that's the mystery of love.  That is love.  I'm blessed to be on the receiving end of such love.

As followers of Christ we are all called to embody that love, unconditional, menial, self-sacrificing - to the utmost.  It's severe, a testing calling.  May the Holy Spirit enable us, to the glory of the Father.