AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR DIOCESAN BISHOP 21 November 2012 - In response to General Synod

AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR DIOCESAN BISHOP 21 November 2012 - In response to General Synod Dear Bishop Peter A deep sadness… but also a very thin wearing of patience is where I stand at present following yesterday's vote. The over riding will of the Church has been frustrated by the unrepresentative House of Laity. There will be women whose full gifts are not able to be delighted in by the church in a way they might have done - just when in South Africa a Woman Bishop is consecrated. But above all I do feel the need to share the feeling that in the long long process of dialogue my patience and that of many others is wearing thin. We have walked a journey of goodwill and compromise with resolutions A, B and C available - we have attempted to compromise over Women Bishops. But still the minority stick out for an uncertain more. Meanwhile small parishes with resolutions force benefices that would rejoice in a female incumbent not to have one - and I know that the patience of the real 'laos' (as distinct from the House of Laity) is very tried by that limitation. In terms of the Mennonite ways of approaching conflict of which we spoke the other week it is as if we have been walking the route of taking the issue and the relationship seriously - working the time consuming route of seeking the win-win solution only to find that for a significant enough few the path that they have been walking is all about the issue and they do not value the relationship as much. Today it is not only women with gifts for ministry and leadership in the church who feel hurt but also all those of us who have tried to walk the extra mile with those with whom we disagree. We who now find that their actions and voting imply that they do not respect or value those with whom they disagree as much as we have valued and will continue to try to value them. Our missional credibility, many of our ministers and our unity all suffer as a result of yesterday. In this context the role of any Bishop is unenviable. Be assured of our prayers

Creation

Today I attended an 'Early good Friday' at Wells led by Melvyn Matthews. During this he said that "The cross essentially focuses in one event what has been going on all of the time in Jesus life and, I would add, in the life of God. God pours himself out in sacrificial love from the beginning."
The image picks up on this and the hymn verse:
"Come, see His hands and His feet, The scars that speak of sacrifice;
Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered."

Advent poem - written Nov 2009

Sentinel stands …

Expectant father ...
Hospice nurse …

Awaiting … Awaiting …
Life or death bearing moment
That is yet to come

Watching … Watching …
Over family, ward or city

Scanning farther horizons

Seeing … Seeing …
Beyond the parapets
That limit others' vision

Discerning … Discerning …
The signs of hope or fear

Untroubled, unshaken
By familiar sounds and sights

Guarding … Guarding …
The Peace …
Awaiting Shalom

Poem - The Clown

The Clown…

Furtive in the escape I make from all that has to be

Wanting to reassure, and seem at set at peace

I trust and share in the honesty of mirrored laughter

But the clown, the fool has in time to come off-stage

And as the weariness of life's journey is felt in one's feet

So their embrace in warming water softens the heart

And the clownish smile, the makeup and pretence

Are washed away, soothed and disturbed into tears

Then the gentle touch in drying affirms and values

Meets the tension and ticklishness of fears and doubts

And patiently brings them from death to life

So now the clown's tears are real and free

The act, the script, the audience, the stage

All are vanished away

And there is no more script to play the fool

Vulnerable, himself, the clown does not know who he is,

And all the cheers, the smiles, seem far away

Silent, restless, I feel the pain of compromise,

The death-dealing self-annihilation of performance

The anger of walking paths that others choose

The frustration in wanting freedom to improvise,

The hypocrisy of living ill at ease with gut-feeling,

And knowing that death seems easier than change.

And in the pain, the anguish that churns the soul

Death to one's self, life to the script, seems the answer

Till gentle, caring lips that have met with feeling

Speak in tender poetic words and touch deep

Deeper than the most passionate embrace

Until the clown knows that he must be himself

Lay aside the make-up, costume and ruddy nose

And cry no more painted tears, but only my own.

Poem - You are the prisoner of yourself

You are the prisoner of yourself,

You hold the key

and you want to throw it away

To remain secure in your hell

Tried, convicted and sentenced

By yourself as prosecution,

Judge and jury

But because you hold the key

We on the other side

Of your prison walls

Who forgive and love you

Feel prisoners too

We long to see you free

Not of memory by denial

But free to be wise

As only we who have failed can be

Free to risk the tears

Of pain and grief and anger

At all that has been

Could have been

And was not

Free to risk the joy

Of all that can be

Free to laugh with your eyes

To show the raw emotion that tells

of how you have faced the edge of life

- hopelessness, fear, rage and death -

and to show that love which rages still

that won't give up

Dare then to lay hold of the key

dare to open wide the prison door

Dare to accept yourself

As we accept you.

Poem - Winter

Winter

Like a garden

Cleared of a seasons glory of growth now past

Dug over deep and opened to the harshness

Of penetrating frost and icy cold

Bearing no fruit and dying in the hope of spring

Winters waiting and wounding time is now

Rudolf - Latin lyrics

Rudolf

Rubriconasus reno
Nasum habuit rubrum,
Siquandoque videres
Diceres et igneum.

Et ceteri renones
Hilares irridebant;
Rubriconasum ludos
Ludere suos vetant.
(Sed) Christi nataliciis
Santa “Nebulis”
Inquit “naso ludico,
Duc mi traham, obsecro”.

Tum ceteri renones
Cacchinnant hilariter
“Rubriconase Reno,
Celebraberis semper”.

Lyrics sourced by a student teacher at my secondary school ca 1970