Transplant technology

I’ve hooked up my laptop to my desktop PC’s screen, printer and external hard drive. Here it is at the heart of the system like a temporary transplant whilst my desktop PC’s tower unit is away being repaired.

Sweet chestnuts

Sweet chestnuts, originally uploaded by areadeandavid.

Suddenly it feels like Autumn today after a final flourish of summer with strong sunshine yesterday afternoon. Today we went for a walk in a local woods and collected sweet chestnuts.

Beans

Just picked beans for today’s dinner from here.

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Crocosmia

Crocosmia

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New style TV vicar

Refreshingly different portrayal of a vicar on BBC TV in the episode of New Tricks last night. This is the series about a team of semi-retired detectives who investigate cold cases when new evidence comes to light. Last night’s story involved the vicar of an urban parish who, with his wife and own daughter, had taken in the stroppy teenage girl whose mother, an illegal immigrant slated for removal to her country of origin, had unaccountably disappeared. The plot’s more complicated than that and definitely worth a watch!

The Vicar was played by comedian-actor Hugh Dennis. (His father was a bishop and ordained me deacon in 1983!). But this was not the usual stereotypical TV vicar. There was no “dog collar” in sight. He wore jeans and a red top; spoke like other people, had a wife and daughter, was a gentle person trying to put his faith into practice; gave a good party, could relate to people of different origins and backgrounds, and was not goody-goody or “holier than thou”. When the team first met him he was on his knees in front of the altar – praying? – no, trying to get candle-wax off the carpet!

Hopefully here’s a sign there are at least some of those writing and producing for the BBC who see the Church of England with open eyes.

Sunlight on bean tree

Sunlight on bean tree

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New experiences in ministry

Even though I’ve been in ordained ministry for 25 years there are still new experiences – and for some reason this weekend has seen four days of them in a row! On Friday I visited the town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire for the first time in my life – a really pretty place it is too – and the new experience there was to meet a designer to commission new vestments – the special items worn by priests when presiding at the Eucharist.

On Saturday, the church marriage preparation team I’m part of led a one-day marriage preparation course for 5 couples having church weddings in Wokingham later this year. Although we’ve been doing marriage preparation courses for 10 years we’ve always done them in three parts of about 90 minutes each on weekday evenings – this was the first time we did the course within a single day on a Saturday. The event seemed to go very well and evaluation sheets completed by the couples were all positive and helpful.

On Sunday I led the invocation prayer at a graduation ceremony – or commencement I think the Americans call it – at Newbold College in Binfield, Bracknell. Although I’ve been to a number of graduation ceremonies, apart from my own, at English universities, such as when I was a university chaplain, I’d never before been to a graduation ceremony at a Seventh Day Adventist College, let alone been asked to offer the opening prayer. The ceremony shared many of the style characteristics of American college events so I intuited what would be needed from my knowledge of stuff I’d seen in American movies and transcripts on the internet; and it seemed to go well. Nonetheless I brought a distinctively Anglican style to the prayer – I was invited to be there because I represented a different Christian tradition.
And today – for the first time – I assist children of our local church school as they lead a memorial service for a much-loved learning support assistant, Wendy Flint, who died suddenly over a weekend earlier this term. For me and many of the staff of the school it is the first experience of the sudden death of a member of staff who was in the classroom on a Friday and gone by Monday;and it is my first experience of a memorial service for a staff member in a primary school with the children.

Even after twenty-five years as a priest there are still new experiences in ministry – though four such events in four days has to be rather unusual!

Madoff: a convenient scapegoat

Richard Adams writing in The Guardian makes the point well. Bernie Madoff certainly wasn’t the only crook on Wall Street and not the biggest either. He got 150 years in gaol for his undoubtedly fraudulent Ponzi scheme. But plenty of other financiers got bail-outs (and now we learn bonuses are back) for destroying people’s wealth on a massive scale and plunging our economy into deep recession. These events did not just happen with the inevitability of the arrival of next winter. They were created by the greed and irresponsibility of reckless bankers on the one hand, and the stupidity of the politicians who deregulated on the other.
Where exactly is the line of difference between Madoff, on the one hand now a convicted criminal, and other bankers who, in the name of high rates of profit sold sub-prime mortgages to people who didn’t understand them and in most cases didn’t need them; and then repackaged them to be sold as investments on behalf of ordinary workers and pensioners who knew nothing about their inherent instability?
Madoff deserves gaol to be sure; but it seems mighty convenient for the rest of Wall Street and the City that the high profile and severity of his sentence gives the handy impression that he must be a world apart from the rest of the industry – a convenient scapegoat.

Went to children’s prayer & story labyrinth on ‘All God’s Children’ at Gorse Ride Sch and here is what we came away with.

Went to children’s prayer & story labyrinth on ‘All God’s Children’ at Gorse Ride Sch and here is what we came away with.

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Why I’m not mourning Michael Jackson that much

We live in a culture which on one hand venerates, and hugely rewards, talented entertainers whatever their personal characters, and on the other hand offers no better than humiliating punishment to “ordinary” people who display similar failings for all the same reasons (bullied by father, loveless childhood). Isn’t this a sickness in our culture? And isn’t paying high tribute to Jackson on his death spreading that disease?