Ministry in the Incomplete

If it happens to be that you score highly against the Belbin model of the 'Completer-Finisher', and you are considering parochial preisthood as a life-choice, I would urge you to ponder long and hard about it. It might just be that your head will explode and that you will leave a vile gooey mess all over your shoes.

I have been feeling an increasing frustration with my role - one that I am in raptures about in every other way - because it is one where everything that I draw near to has be left incomplete.

I was sat around a table today discussing the possibilities for a very worthy project in Aylesbury for the homeless community. I was attracted by the significant possibilities that this project could offer, and felt that there was a considerable amount I could do to help. It will not come to pass. I help to oversee another project that provides Christmas Dinner for a hundred people on Christmas Day, without charge. Partly for the homeless community, partly for the people living around the church who might otherwise spend the day alone, or just those who want to join us - the possibilities for this project are considerable and far exceed Christmas Day. I was attracted and am still and feel that that there is much that I can offer over and above what I do. It will not come to pass. I have helped steer the parish community away from some very difficult financial times, helped form a fundraising group and been attracted by the possibilities that those enterprises offer. I feel that there is far more that I can do to help in those things. It will not come to pass. The list is significant, not because I am endlessly blessed with skills and 'solutions' (I am not), but because I am endlessly blessed with a heart to do the best that I can for all of those endeavours.

My ministry seems to be about 'touches'. Like a stone skipped across the surface of a still lake, I bounce along making little splashes. Each are touches on the surface of the life that those around me are caused to lead full-time. I want to do so much for all of them, but I increasingly sense that I will have to be satisfied for doing just a little. This doesn't suit me, I have to be honest - but I am trying to adapt. It probably means that I say 'no' too infrequently! People often joke that priests only work on Sundays, and who can blame those jokers?! It is often only on Sundays when we get to complete something that we start, but the rest of it feels like a working-embodiment of a contents page to the book of many lives we can only point towards. This week, I only 'touched' the life of a teacher/preacher, only 'touched' the life of a school governor, only 'touched' the life of a theologian and writer, only 'touched' the life of a homeless-action worker. All started, all unfinished - all incomplete in my hands.

The Curate's Egg IV

Egg of the Day: Fayre to Middling

Unaccustomed as I am to raising my meagre head above the parapet and bleating about those things which annoy me en peut, I thought that I would venture forth. One's spleen needs venting ....

Stephen Griffiths: Most of you will be quite unaware to whom I refer. This isn't some bruv of mine but a man almost certainly going to be convicted of some vile murders. However, this fruit-loop is messing with our minds at the same time. When asked his name in court, he declared himself to be the 'Crossbow Cannibal'. Now, we can take several possibilities before us here: either he himself is a naturalised ex-pat crossbow who likes the flavour of his compatriot crossbows. Alternatively, he is a bow canibal who hasn't yet decided how best to dress for a party. Further still, he could be a bow eating bow who is a tad miffed at something. Either way, he seeks notoriety - he wants some attention (as if mutilating and disembowling the daughters of other humans isn't enough). 'Stephen' isn't enough - the boy wants us all to call him the 'Crossbow Cannibal', for he is a pretender to the Crown of none less that The Yorkshire Ripper. So, world - defeat his attempt at fame and never again refer to him as ........ . Let us simly pray that right justice will be done and that in the end, he repents and rehabilitates (somehow).

Politics: The slurry is flying already, and we are only days in. Good grief. 

Family Life: This week is, I believe, the Week of the Family, or something akin to that. 'I ain't getting marrid cos marridge dunt work' - no, the relationships that form the marriages in question have failed - so don't be dissing marriage. Is it me, or is Sunday Trading the key to the demise of the Family? Once upon a time, a Sunday was a time when the shops were shut (exc. B&Q) and families gathered, eat together, perhaps yelled and screamed, but had nowhere else to go at 1.30 on a Sunday, so worked through it. Some of us learned to ride our bikes on the empty supermarket car-parks in the afternoons, with our siblings. As a former Sunday worker (I can hear the cacophany of comments even now) - as a retailer, I wondered if the folks in my shop on that Sunday would permanently overlook the purchase of their 80/20 10 Gauge if I wasn't there, or simply come back when I was open for business next. I can buy milk on a Saturday, so Morrisons can close on a Sunday, thank you. Family life is killed by lack of quality time, and a once good 'family day' was suffocated by the money lust of the corporations. Retailers don't get Bank Holidays off either, so if you have kids and work in a shop, you is knackered mate. Heck, let's all boycott shops on Sundays and do something radical and risky - let's spend some time at home (and maybe even sit in the same room for a bit of that time).

Kids on Reality TV shows - I watched a young teenager being crushed by the weight of defeat in front of millions tonight. She was an ok singer, but in truth, her God given gifts may well lie elsewhere for her. 'Boo Simon Cowell' they all went - no, mate: stop exposing kids to that expectation and pressure. Lord Cowell of the High Belt was right, and is only doing what he is paid to do. She needn' have been there. Remember that sprog last year? You know the one, the kids who forgot her lines and sobbed, and then got another crack at it - she was bloody 8! Her mother should have been read the riot act for exposing the wee scrap to that. The singing was horrid, and she shouldn't have been there in the first place. Leave kids to be kids, you horrid pushy parents - stop using your progeny as your pension. Bah.....

Well, that is another Bank Holiday done for us Brits. I had a good say at a Spring Fayre, and now I slink off to seek rest. I will be awakened in less than six hours, and any sane cleric would have have been asleep hours ago. 

I know what you are thinking, so stoppit .....

Do you do, or do you don't do .... real life?

And so a little more thought after the events of the weekend; this time, on a broader issue that now presses upon me somewhat!

No, I am not referring to my flagrant mockery of my Rector's now extreme old age during the Eucharist, rather -

- the Church and, well, erm - real life. The stuff that happens outside the doors of the building.

Saturday taught me so much about the rightful place of a Christian in the context of the kind of melee that we were gifted so kindly by the Welsh-flag waving English Defence League. Should we, as Christian God-botherers have been up to our knees in it, or should we have stayed well clear? Then take the answer, multiply it by all the numbers of days, and apply it to each of them. 

To many, and indeed the vast majority of people, the Christian faith says little of interest or relevance. That is sad, and quite mistaken. People of faith have the answers - oh yes we do. We have a duty to declare what we have to say, to stand up and be counted, and sometimes, take daft risks doing it. It is our 'job' to convince the rest of you that you must attend the The Other in your lives - that niggling sense that this all has a greater meaning than sperm-egg-promotion-incontinence-death. People of faith have something to say on the subject - step into my office, I have something that you might need...

Now, we could do that in many ways (and do do it in many ways), but one such way is to be in the thick of it when it's all going a bit Pete Tong. Dishing out the low-down on The Other (who for sake of ease I will refer to as God) on a Sunday only, or on a sunny bank holiday in a park with other like-mindeds - it's all good, but just a fraction of the work that needs to be done. The other six days of the week have their needs and those outside of church-life live them too. In the church as a whole we talk very little about how people make their livings, how they spend their times, personal hopes or fears (aside from their outwatd 'results'). I believe that we-the-Church are missing a trick here. Then we get some unpleasantness. So what do we do? We put ourselves in the middle of where it is kicking-off (figuratively if not physically), that's what. Police, residents, bystanders, displaced traders, and maybe even the protesters who were there because their mates made them and weren't sure about it all - they all need support. Christians offer support and hope, it is what we do, it's our flag - 

... so we get in there and support and we offer our hope using every trick and tool to our grasp. No 'ifs' no 'buts'.