A Dusty Old Book
The oldest book in our house is a copy of the poems of George Herbert, printed in 1656. It was the present given to me by one of my Newmarket parishes and it now occupies a treasured place in my study. There are lots of wonderful things about the book: its beautifully marbled leather cover, stained by three and a half centuries of handling; the inscriptions and comments written by attentive readers at various stages in its life; the little holes burrowed by two long-dead bookworms, one of whom made it all the way through the book, the other of whom gave up the ghost at page 176!
But the most wonderful thing about the book is, as it should be, its contents. George Herbert's poems were first published after his death. He left strict instructions that his executor should preserve only those that he judged worth keeping - fortunately he kept the lot! The collection's title is The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. Nowadays that last word sounds rather unsavoury, but in the Seventeenth Century an 'ejaculation' was what we might now call an 'arrow prayer' - a prayer offered up in a moment of doubt or trial, seeking God's guidance, blessing and strength.
Not all Herbert's poems and prayers have lasted, but some still speak with unparalleled power. One famous poem contains the beautiful description of prayer as 'God's breath in man returning to his birth': prayer, for Herbert, is not something that we offer to God, but something that God does in us. As God breathed into Adam 'the breath of life and he became a living being' (Genesis 2: 7), so now God breathes into his children the breath of prayer that lead us back to our heavenly home.
And at Eastertide there is no better hymn for Christians to have on their hearts than George Herbert's 'Easter'. He takes Saint Paul's great proclamation of the Resurrection faith, 'Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have died' (I Corinthians 15:20) and applies it to each and every one of us. Christ is risen! We who believe in him must rise with him too! Alleluia!
Rise, heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.
['calcined' = burned to ashes]
Fr. Edmund
The Back Steps
In preparation for this month's conference of Birmingham clergy, I was asked to reflect on the signs of God's kingdom in my daily ministry. Here are some thoughts on the back steps to church.
When people arrive at St Andrew's to say morning prayer, to arrange flowers or attend choir practice, we go into church not by the front door, but by the tradesman's entrance up the back steps. Very often there's something to greet us there. Well concealed, out of the glare of streetlights and CCTV, the steps are a popular resort for people on the margins of local life.
Yesterday morning there was a large pool of saliva on the steps, probably left by Martin (not his real name), a bronchitic substance-abuser. I like to think of him as part of our church community at St Andrew's, even though he's never been inside the building. Of course saliva is not the only bodily fluid we find on the steps. There have been vomit and excrement too; and sometimes it is left neatly encased in latex tubes - the rainbow coalition of Handsworth leaves its mark on our church!
When I first came to St Andrew's my immediate reaction was to want to protect the church from all of this - to put up cameras and railings. After a few weeks I changed my mind. The church steps may be a place of addiction and self-harm, but they are also a place of refuge and blessing and grace. I have rejoiced here with Matt, reunited with his girlfriend on his release from Winson Green. I have sat with Martin, trying and failing to get through the layers of drink and drugs to form some sort of meaningful contact. I have offered prayers and blessings; marriage guidance and first aid. Once we even had a thank-offering: a DVD left on the steps as a thank-you from Nick when a blessing I'd offered a few weeks previously had done the trick.
The back steps at St Andrew's are what theologians would call a liminal place, a place on the border where sacred and secular intertwine. And it's not always easy to tell where the holiness starts from: inside the church or outside it? In the Ordinal priests are asked to follow the Lord's teaching, so that 'God may sanctify the lives of all with whom [we] have to do'. The back steps are one of the prime places where I know that I am fulfilling that mission - and it is my life as much as those of my backstairs friends that is sanctified.
Fr. Edmund
Rev
Have you been watching Rev? Rev is a new BBC comedy-drama (Tuesday 10pm, BBC2), featuring the life and times of the Reverend Adam Smallbone, the hard-pressed Vicar of a majestic but dilapidated church in inner-city London.
Clergy in screen comedies tend to fall into one of three categories: shallow (The Vicar of Dibley), slimy (Four Weddings and a Funeral) or slapstick (Father Ted). Adam is none of those. He certainly isn't a model Vicar: there are times when he makes us laugh and blush and cringe. But in between the jokes, Rev has moments of great tenderness, where some of the joys and trials of parish life are laid bare. Fortunately for most of us things aren't so extreme as for Adam, but it's no coincidence that Rev has quite a following among the clergy of Birmingham: it's often pretty near the mark!
I especially appreciate the way in which the series gives us a glimpse of Adam's prayer life. Several times in each episode we see Adam at prayer: not just in church, but when he's doing the washing up or has been humiliatingly chucked out of the local Rastafarian house. Adam's prayers aren't perfect (whose are?), but we see his honest conversations with God, asking for guidance when perplexed, patience when angry, courage when afraid. As one priest has put it, we are given a real insight into the day-to-day life of a man who is 'trying to live by high principles in an increasingly unprincipled world'.
One recent episode featured Adam's college friend, the Reverend Roland Wise, a gilded sophisticate of a priest, admired by everyone from the Bishop down. Roland is sent to instruct Adam about the finer points of dealing with the media, after he has made a disastrous appearance on prime-time television. But it soon emerges that Roland's success has been all on the surface: deep down he has lost his sense of vocation and abandoned his life of prayer. In a touching scene, Adam falteringly helps his old friend to rediscover his calling. Kneeling on the dusty floor of the church, with discarded beer cans in the porch and a boarded-up stained glass window behind them, they are both touched by God's grace.
In this moment of stillness amidst 'the city's crowded clangour', they are able to tune their ears to the birdsong outside. And in a sublime scene, unheard of on a TV comedy show, Adam quotes a poem of Louis MacNiece. The birds singing in the trees are to him:
A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,
Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.
There in the midst of our daily lives, pointers to God are never far away: signs of God's glory and grace, ever-present, but so easily ignored.
Fr. Edmund