Rediscovering Facebook

The one thing that is hard about public ministry as a stipendary priest is that, by definition, we work away from where we grew up and away from circles of friends that we have built over time. It is easier for me in some ways because Mrs Acular and I have been relatively nomadic for over the last decade or so, so friends tend always to be at a distance, geographically speaking. 

This is another way of saying that in the wake of priest's lives is a litany of names of friends long neglected and rarely seen. 

Today I sat for half an hour waiting for the fruits of my loins to learn not to drown.They are achieving this well and so I can withdraw from the Pool of Drowning safe in the knowledge that they will once again prevail. However, half an hour is insufficient time for anything other than idle daydreaming over a caffeine infusion of one sort or another.

Today I sat with my Gadget of Choice and pawed over the Facebook thing, and did something that I have never done before. I opened up my 'Friends' page and scanned down the list. On iPad, the pictures are big (rather that diddly little thumbnail shots) so I was able to see faces as opposed to blurry figures of people that looked vaguely familiar. It was a wonderful thing to have done.

The Facebook detractors would say that we gather 'Friends' from among those who we really have no connection, have never met and would never want to. I am one such detractor. I have claimed, on this blog, that we only really know a fraction of the plethora of folk we claim as Friends on Facebook - that the rest are a kind of statistical stocking filler. I think I was wrong in that assertion.

As I looked down the long list, I saw many faces. They are the faces of people I have either grown up with, people I have worked with, people I have sat behind a pint with, people who I love, people who I respect, people who knew me when I was a boy, as a man, as a retailer, as a theological student, as a worshipping Christian, as a blogger, people I have known all of my life and people who (although I may not have met them at all in person) are those with whom I have connected and remain so. In short, everyone on my Friends list is someone significant to me, someone who has a meaning in the context of my unworthy existence.

As I fast approach my 40th birthday (noting the many of my school friends who have already passed that great and momentous occasion), I often wonder 'where it all went'. I have a wonderful family, beautiful wife and kids, the work I was born to do, a wonderful context in which to do that work - and a Facebook Friends list. If I wondered 'where it all went', I needn't have worried. It isn't about the moments always, but about those faces and the encounters we have shared. 

Disposable Laity

Someone very close to me wrote a blog post recently about the fact that she is, after six years, laying down her role as Churchwarden. If you want an interesting perspective on life in church, please read Doorkeeper's post here. It is a simple post, expressed well and offers a side to parish life that many experience. 

The nice thing about being "the Vicar" is that (Common Tenure allowing) we can hover around in a parish like a bad smell for decades. Because we feel called to? No; because we enjoy it and it works for us or our families to stay. Let there be no illusion there. We stay for us most of the time.

In a well run parish, this is broadly where it ends, unless the small matter of a wage or salary is brought to bear - but again, very often those people stay not because of calling, but because of economic reasons. It is our wonderful laity who step forward to do jobs around church who are called to it. They are there through that calling, with any luck take some pleasure from it, but in all cases do it in the context of their freely given spare time. This is the case for the lovely person who might polish a brass every month, who serves at the Altar on a rota-approved basis, or the kindly person who simply prays for the parish and her life. It is the same for Churchwardens too. 

Churchwardens, in most parishes I think, have a tenure. That is to say that they can hold office for a given period of time, having then to relinquish it and give to the next person. This is a good thing on many levels as we all know of Wardens who were in post six or seven years after they were clinically dead. Accounts of Warden who gripped steadfast to their staffs for decades are not uncommon, and rarely accounts filled with glee and happiness. 

So, dear reader, we have members of our wonderful laity who give their time freely, as a result of their sense of God's calling who - in the end - have to stop that work and give it away. Many have no choice at all in that, including Wardens. 

Reading Doorkeeper's account is helpful because it reminds people like me that such transitions are not painless. When you give your all to something, it is difficult to stop if those years have been good (as they were in Doorkeeper's case). What do they do afterwards? How do they re-integrate back into parish life in a revised way after a period of holding much authority? How do they fill the many hours that they previously gave, not to the parish in question, but to God? Vicar's (myself included) preside over these moments, and I will do so this session with a Warden of my own who ran her own Interregnum. Doorkeeper's post is a timely reminder that it isn't just puffed-up priests who hurt when the job stops or has to change. We forget that to our peril and to the pain and cost to our vital lay volunteers. 

Well, That Was Jolly!

Part of my ministry is teaching. Today I taught Christians how to express themselves creatively. It didn't involve liturgy (hard to comprehend, I know), and it didn't involve prayer as we know it. This act of blessed creativity brought with it a panoply, nay a plethora of Epiphany moments  in the context of the our discussion about the relative merits of arachnids. 

It is fair to say that there was outer and inner cursing. There was modesty and self-reproach. There was some appetite to mechanise. There was considerable example setting, and yes - even the questions about the merit of the creativity in focus were heard.

But we made 200 Palm Crosses and God will see that they are good. 

I was taught how to make a Palm Cross when I was a sprog and I have even had the opportunity to teach the kids to do it (which they managed, remarkably quickly I might add). But a dozen Christians sat together in the beautiful spring sunlight that floods through our Victorian stained-glass, chatted and fashioned these little worship-devices. 

Yes, you can pay through the nose and buy them in pre-made. They look the business, all uniform, all neat and tidy. Ours have character and ours now have a far greater meaning to us. They are the work of our hands, some not as nimble as others. 

To me, moments like these are a precious gift. They are an opportunity to put aside a couple of hours with a purpose and with others (so as not to feel guilty for stopping). They are moments when people who might otherwise have sat alone at home have now sat with friends in their church when only a year ago it was firmly bolted shut. They all learned something new, and the glee that they expressed when they 'got it' was a joy to behold. I now have a dozen flock-members who can (and should) teach others this noble art next year. Saturday is posy-making for Mothering Sunday (you will notice that I got it right that time). Coming together to be and do - perfect. 

Pre-made palm crosses? Why would you!

And the pictures are amusing too, but that is a matter for us - not you!

Humuhumunukunukuapua'a

You are now going to be wondering what the devil the mad curate is going to say that is remotely pertinent to the Trigger Reef-fish, or by its proper name, the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. 

Keep wondering, friends. 

I spent five or six whole minutes trying to master the pronunciation of this word this morning, after it appeared in an episode of Octonauts (that the kiddies watch). For your edification, you say it like this:

humu-humu-nuka-nuka-apua-a

Five or six minutes.

I was going to write on a topic today, which is now placed into perfect relief by this remarkable name, and more especially the time that I took to learn its pronunciation. I had been thinking about the way that a lot of us sustain our lives technologically. For me, as stated previously in other posts, I am a gadget freak. The world of David Cloake is largely worked out by the workings of an Apple device. Wanna read da Bible? Got an App for that. Wanna read da newspaper? Got an App for that. Wanna confess my sins to the Lord? Gotnapfudat. Want to squander imaginary millions? Gotnapfudat. Wanna listen to heavy metal or polyphonic choral splendour? Gonafudat. 

Some of us will remember the noble Commodore 64, or the Vic 20, the ZX Spectrum, or even the little PacMan hand-held games of the Eighties. With those PCs, it would take five or six minutes to load up a game while watching dancing horizontal ribbons of colour on our portable TV set up in the dining room. Then we would spend the entire afternoon mastering Level 6 of Nonterraqueous. This tendency to persist with things for a long time was normal in all other spheres of life. If something was worth doing, it was worth devoting time to. 

These days, we can load applications in a split second. We can converse with people the other side of the planet in real-time, from our hand-held devices. We can get much of what we want, when we want it. But then we spend hardly anytime doing it. If I play a game on a computer now, it is opened started attempted and closed in less time than it took to master 'Humuhumunukunukuapua'a'. I also think that this is a characteristic of so much more of our lives than perhaps we might be happy to admit. We eat faster, drive faster, wait less, patience mostly eroded. Applied to our spiritual life, we all know well that this is the case. Priests will all tell you (in their more candid moments) how rare prayer time or even silence truly is. We live in an on-tap on-demand 'Got An App For That' world, where we save all this time just to have less than we ever had before. 

What I need is an hour a day more. Got an App for That?

Leading By Example

Over the course of this weekend, I have trodden a transgression triply. That is to say - I have patronised a retail establishment not twice but thrice over Sunday and today.

Shame, shame and double shame.

As a former retailer (yes, reader, I know I have said it before, just leave it - ok!) and now as a 'professional' Christian (...zippit) I have soiled the kitty-litter of Sabbath, the Seventh Day that the Adventists love so much. 

On Sunday I went to the shop. And I made a purchase. Of something. Did I need to? No, of course I didn't. I had white but fancied red and was 'out'. Did my very life depend on that purchase? No, of course it didn't. Could I have waited until the start of Tuesday to make my needful purchase? Of course I could've, (though not had I intended to consume said Rioja - makes a mockery of the staff meeting if I turn up kale-eyed). The thing is this - I went to a shop on a Sunday and bought something unimportant that could have waited and upon which the very fabric of my being did not depend. 

It's all well and good when twonks like me roll up at shops to buy things. Great for us. The Covention for Human Rights rejoices for me - but what about the people who are called to man their emporia on the off-chance that I might feel called to make a non-essential purchase? They have to abandon family, weekend, Bank Holiday, maybe even a little dignity - to open up the stall for my non-essential purchase of the non-essential. 

Seriously, as a retailer (and a member of Da Management very often during that time) I was placed under no illusion that my 'right' to opt out of Sundays was not compatible with my status as manager (sod going to church, Cloakey). Contracts are written in retail these days in such a way as speaks of a 'sixth day worked', and not a Sunday, a sabbath day, not a family day. Employees, especially in retail, don't really have a choice all the while pratts like me feels inclined to visit the shop on a day when I too should be enjoying life in the bosom of my family. Me wanting to shop means that ten others are required to work for businesses that regard Sunday as the 'new Saturday' and are too fearful to close.

I am going to try, and I mean this, to stop visiting shops on a Sunday. Sunday working is a curse to family life, to church life, to quality of life. B&Q shareholders love it, but the thousands of people who (wo)man our stores on days when they should be with their families, but are too salary-dependent to stand up and say 'no'; many of them, even after so many years of Sunday Opening, loathe working when the rest of their family get on without them.

If you have read this post and give a toss for family life and those who are denied it by Sunday working - do something about it and don't follow my poor example.

No Time for God

Yesterday morning, yes Sunday - at around 9am, I had managed to fight my way into the bathroom for a little ablution. My filthy form required some keen cleansing, during which I heard a noise. A wasp? No. A space craft? No. It was person drilling. At 9am on a Sunday!

Then something occurred to me in clearest terms - something that might explain why churches are semi-empty in perpetuity.I am not sure that it has anything to do with the secularisation of society - it is far more simple than that - and it is the same reason why Mr. Man or Mrs woman was drilling at daft o'clock on a Sunday morning ...

We have run out of time! No, our end is not nigh (I don't think) - we have become so busy, so pressed, that we have no time for nuffin anymore. I can't think that anyone in a right mind would choose to enter into hole-making pursuits on a Sunday morning early, but rather prefer to do it at other times and on other days of the week. 

In our convenience I-choose world, we have the remote control that saves me nearly a minute every day. The modest microwave saves me three hours a week. The iTouch and Internet save me many hours of research time a week, and the computer itself save me copious 'handwriting hours'. So what do I do with all that gained time? Fill it up again. The world is in a mad hurry. People rush the traffic lights to gain a moment of time ... on their way to work?! People interrupt face-to-face conversations with mobile phone calls because the content of those calls is sooo urgent.The world is a-blur with speed.

So, we have the odd little things that accumulate throughout the week. We can only get them done in the time which is least committed - and that time is often Sunday. Gardens need primping and preening, holes need drilling, paperwork needs doing, cars polishing. After that list is exhausted, and after coffee is consumed by the gallon, then people might have the thought about church. The though might find time to turn into action a decade later.

...which is why I our churches seem to be full of 'older' people and not people my age! Them being there is wonderful news, but illustrates my point well. I have seen that as people approach retirement they acquire time for 'stuff'. Older people have the ability (and courage) to make time for themselves and what they consider important, including the nourishment of their spiritual life. Career and family years are now saturated, and I speak as one who wholly sympathises with people who have no time for God. I was one such person for a number of years. If they are even fractionally like me, then they labour under some guilt about not attending to their own needs - and that makes me sad. Time for praying? Time for reflection? Time to sit in silence and in awe at the wonder of the  world around us? Lovely, mate, but I have the nursery run to do before dinner needs cooking, the babies bathing, the ironing pressed and the dishwasher (a time saving device) needs unloading and reloading. And I'm paid to be religious ....

Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, I will (in the deliberate corporate places that allow for such activities) pray for those who have no time for God - I am not sure there is a clear solution to their exile.

It may be that ten gazillion people have written about this already, which is lovely, but I haven't read their work and this was fresh to my own head .... ok!