Five random happenings

1. Kenny Ball died today. We got our first stereo before I was a teenager. One of the first records we got was a Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen album. I was just starting to play the trumpet and the two I tried to imitate (I failed) were Louis Armstrong and Kenny Ball. His jazz was fun and the you could never get bored with the songs. I eventually played in a couple of jazz groups as a teenager – I was rubbish, but I never lost the love of trad jazz.

2. Hugo Chavez is to be embalmed and put on display. I just think there is something weird about this. Is it a corporate inability to comprehend the finality of death? Or something more ghoulish? One of my great regrets is that I never got the chance (I wasn't allowed) to visit the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square – I worked professionally as a Russian linguist and was intrigued by Soviet history. But, it was to glimpse mortality and to note how fragile even the most powerful human beings are: Lenin stuffed. Chavez deserves better.

3. The programme for the 19th Bradford International Film Festival has been published. It looks brilliant. Running from 11-21 April, it makes Cannes look lightweight. Bradford is a very surprising place. Not all about curry and the relics of a textile industry, but inspiring people with cultural vision.

4. The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church have arrived in Rome for the conclave that will conclude with the presentation of the new pope. Not a role many people would covet, surely? The rumours around and charges levelled at the church in the wake of Cardinal O'Brien's resignation and the unending abuse scandals must make being the top man something you would only wish on someone you didn't like. It will take remarkable courage, intellect and integrity to argue confidently for the credibility of both church and faith – but it might also commend a refreshed humility, rooted in a theology that speaks less of authority and more of mutuality.

5. The Psalmists of the Old Testament constantly bemoan the fact that the wicked always seem to prosper while the just simply suffer. Then the prophets decry a society in which justice can be bought and the poor be trampled in the dirt – and all this be seen as 'normal' or 'acceptable'. And then comes Silvio Berlusconi.

Good grief…

 

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This week…

Aong other things (like 'work'), this last week…

I read Francis Spufford's wonderful, funny, totally engaging and sweary Unapologetic – the best book on Christian faith I have read for ages.

I read Joachim Gauck's little book on Freiheit: Ein Plädoyer (Freedom: A Plea). The recently-appointed President of Germany was a Lutheran pastor in East Germany (Angela Merkel was the daughter of another). I heard him speak a couple of years ago in Hannover and he was brilliant. Intelligent, reflective and passionate, I can't think of a UK equivalent.

I listened (in the car) to Johann Sebastian Bach's gorgeous Weihnachtsoratorium – a 2-CD recording by the Thomanerchor from Leipzig which I bought at inflated price while visiting the Bachhaus in Eisenach a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful, inspiring and intricate, it takes you out of the present and into the eternal – Christmas being the irruption into history of the God who pours himself out for a world he loves infinitely.

I listened (in the car) to Mumford & Sons' new album Babel – great contemporary folk music, but very similar to their excellent debut album Sigh No More. Whack up the volume when alone and stuck on the motorway.

I listened (not in the car) to Bob Dylan's superb Tempest – as great as Modern Times and needing many re-listens. Let's hope it isn't – as rumoured – his last one.

I wondered about the sheer moralistic envy of us Brits who insist that anyone in a position of responsibility be cut down to size. I have no time for Chancellor George Osborne or his 'something for nothing' millionaire Cabinet colleagues, but it is quite absurd to prevent MPs and ministers from travelling first class on the trains. I travel on trains a lot – always cattle class… apart from getting on the wrong part of a German train from Eisenach to Frankfurt and being told to enjoy first class by the conductor – and use the time to read papers, catch up on briefings, draft writings, etc.. I also know how hard it can be to concentrate and get stuff done if penned in. If I want ministers and MPs to do the best for their constituents, why would I not want them to travel well and perform well when doing what they were travelling to or for? I suspect the sneering is simply envy or our obsession with pulling people down.

Liverpool won. At home. At last. Nuff said.

I preached (this morning at a service of baptism and confirmation in a parish church) on James, John and Bartimaeus from Mark 10: the 'seeing' are blind (obsession with power, status and personal kudos) while the blind sees. And those wonderful words spoken by the friends of Jesus (who clearly saw their job as to keep people like Bartimaeus away from Jesus): “Take heart. Get up. He is calling you.” Or: “Receive grace. Take responsibility. Don't duck the implications.”

I drove up to Ingleton to preach at an ecumenical service. Ingleton. Up in the Yorkshire Dales between the southern part of the Lake District to the north and the complex urban areas of Bradford and Keighley to the south. The sun shone, the sky was blue, the leaves gorgeously yellow-green-red-brown, the rivers sparklingly beautiful, the hills a reminder that they remain as we come and go.

Bring on this week…

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Pussy Riot: unfortunate connections

When commenting recently on what I might have blogged about had I bothered to write anything at all, I mentioned a few issues, but avoided the Pussy Riot trial in Moscow. The reason I avoided it has nothing to do with the issues raised by the case itself. I'll come back to it later – after a couple of bland observations that I hesitate to make without developing them (for which there isn't time).

First, Pussy Riot would still be anonymous around the world if Putin's boys and girls hadn't lost perspective. Putin will do the opposite of anything the 'old enemy' wants him to do – it's almost a matter of principle. So, the riot of disgust and anger around the world at the eventual sentences handed down to the three women won't cause Putin to lose sleep.

Second, the Moscow Patriarchate shows signs of being a little too close to Putin and his regime. This has clearly also led to a loss of theological perspective on its part. The ensuing global publicity about the Pussy Riot demo has simply drawn attention to questions the Church finds uncomfortable (or, at least, should do) and focused critical attention on its political allegiances and privileges.

Whichever way you look at it, Pussy Riot has managed to attract more attention to their cause than they could ever have dreamed of. And both the Putin regime and the Church look ridiculously self-regarding and over-sensitive. I wonder whose tables Jesus would have overturned…

Anyway, I am on an island holiday with almost no mobile signal and few places where I can get a wi-fi connection. I am also trying to avoid 'work'. So maybe this is the time to explain an unusual phenomenon that still surprises and amuses me.

Way back in 2009 I posted something entitled 'The rules of pizza'. It followed a bizarre experience in an Italian restaurant in London when the waiter, rather than asking me if everything was OK with the meal, instead observed that I “eat pizza funny”. The women on the next table were laughing. I said I wasn't aware there were any rules for how one should at pizza. So, I posted the piece and posed the question.

However, the odd thing is that I still get daily views of this particular post. Dozens every day – sometimes hundreds. I was amused early on after I had originally posted it that I was getting hundreds of referrals from a lesbian bondage website. This seems to be happening still. And I have no idea why or how.

So, you can understand why I hesitated before posting anything about Pussy Riot. Most referred viewers must have been really disappointed to find they got to a bishop discussing pizza. I dread to think what will happen to future referrals from exotic websites caught by the title of this post.

Or maybe they will all come from cat protection organisations…

 

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Bottling it

A couple of days ago I visited a microbrewery in Keighley. The Old Bear Brewery produces a variety of beers and the one I have tasted was very good.

However, I didn't go there to sample the goods. I went to see the Bottle Rescue scheme run by the brewery and employing a number of people with learning disabilities. It seems that this might be the only environmental charity project of its kind in the country – rescuing bottles from landfill or glass-recycling, with all the CO2 implications of such processes. This is a private company doing excellent work – at its own expense – for the good of wider society.

What is surprising about the project is that there isn't more support from a government that wants to reduce the welfare bill, but doesn't allow the sort of model that helps businesses like the Old Bear Brewery to make money from the project, pay the 'workers' a wage and make it work for everyone on a sustainable basis. But, that isn't the point of this post.

Bottle Rescue involves between 20-30 people who use Bradford and District NHS Care Trust services. Around 1.25 tonnes of glass is collected every week from across West Yorkshire. A quarter of the bottles are suitable for washing and processing for re-use by breweries, shops and drink manufacturers around the country. The national learning disability charity HFT runs the project with the brewery.

The reason I went there – and spent an enjoyable and informative hour and a half – was a bit odd. Ian Cowling, who runs the brewery, heard a Lent Lecture I did last March on BBC Radio 4, picked up on something I was saying about community projects. He emailed me to tell me about Bottle Rescue and I emailed back to ask if I could visit. It took a while to get it in the diary, but it was worth the wait (from my perspective, at least).

The story was written up in the Bradford Telegraph & Argus, but I can't find a link!

 

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World of wonders…

… is not only the title of a great Bruce Cockburn song (look it up on youtube…). It also describes this video which I picked up from Jeremy Vine on Twitter:

 

Circles

1. Having led a company that assumed for itself the authority to hound other people and call for heads to roll, Rebekah Brooks now expresses indignation that lawyers dare to question her integrity. I felt a bit sorry for her when she was charged and appeared to say how angry she was – she clearly doesn’t do irony. But, in the spirit of her former newspapers, let power be held to account and let justice be seen to be done. If she is innocent, the legal process will vindicate her. If not,…

2. In the same vein Rupert Murdoch complained about being harassed by paparazzi when in London for the Leveson Inquiry. Er…

3. Kenny Dalglish‘s second coming has come to an end. I’d make a terrible prophet: I thought he’d stay on until the first couple of months of next season and see if there was an improvement on this season’s inconsistencies… and then get pushed out if he didn’t deliver. I was wrong. A sad day for the legend and the club, but the owners don’t do ‘sentimental’. That’s leadership.

4. General Ratko Mladic is on trial for genocide in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Just goes to show what history always tells us: the truth will out – even if it takes twenty years. Things go around and come around.

5. The Greek tragedy continues to unfold in boggling fashion. But, when David Cameron suggested the Euro-branch might break he was accused of actually contributing to it happening. You just can’t win. If you don’t state the obvious, you must be either lying or stupid. If you state the obvious, you are stupid because you are influencing the market. I realise this is a bit of a silly circle (with not so silly consequences, of course), but I guess it proves that what public figures do or do not say does shape the public agenda one way or another. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

And, just to indulge in a little selfish trivia: this blog has now surpassed the million views mark (just now it is 1,001,457 for 737 posts in three years). Boggling, really. Thank you.

 

 

Three cheers

Too much going on and not much time for posting here. Even though by the middle of this month my blog will have had one million hits in two and a half years – how weird is that? Anyway, here are three things to cheer from the last week:

Zoe Williams saying that Emperor Gove is naked. People who have argued about money as the prime incentive for motivating people have often found themselves ridiculed for their naïveté. The mantra of successive governments since Thatcher’s in 1979 seem to have assumed that if you pay people more they will perform better. Or, at least, if you link money/pay to targets, performance will improve.

This might be true in some circumstances, but it takes absolutely no account of altruism, public service or a desire to improve the common good as prime motivators. Apart from the dehumanising triteness of these assumptions, they seem to be based on philosophical anthropologies that are not subject to wide scrutiny.

Zoe Williams nails the blind stupidity of drawing a straight line between financially incentivising teachers to treat their students like tabula rasa commodities. Apparently, some important social policy shapers think that if we link the pay of teachers to the ‘results’ they achieve from their students, standards will improve and young people will be better educated. Let’s just take a minute’s silence to sit, mouths open with incredulity, and reflect on this bit of epic nonsense.

Does anyone know any teacher who goes into a classroom thinking they must squeeze their kids through the exam machine in order to improve the end-of-month salary packet?The really misguided assumption behind all this stuff is the assumption (for that is all it is) that children are commodities who can be squeezed through ‘learning’ regimes, achieve five A-Cs at GCSE, and leave school content that at the very least they helped their teacher earn a higher wage.

Of course, this regime also thinks that every kid starts from the same place. No more room for ‘value added’ in any measurement of school effectiveness. But, then, those who do this live (and were themselves educated) on a different planet. The fact is that an excellent teacher in an excellent educational establishment (a school) who makes massive progress with a child who starts with every conceivable disadvantage in life is still deemed a failure if that child doesn’t tick the five A-C box at the end of the process.

The real mystery is not whether the teacher is good or bad, but why that teacher keeps teaching in a system run by ideologues who have little or no idea of life’s realities for too many of our children. This isn’t bleeding-heart liberalism; it is a question that arises every time I visit a school… which is almost every week. And it isn’t to decry the wonderful facilities and regimes in some of our ‘best’ schools; but it is to ask why all our schools can’t be like them. Read Zoe Williams and weep.

Life carries on. I spent Monday and Tuesday at a retreat house in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales: Parcevall Hall. It is a place of quietness (no mobile signal and almost no wifi) which takes all-comers and creates a space in which we can reconnect with reality, away from the frantic busyness of usual life. Take a step back and the value systems underlying the ‘people are only incentivised or motivated by money’ culture become seen for what they are.

Generosity and forgiveness. What a magnificent last thirty minutes of today’s FA Cup Final! Liverpool really must get out of their captivation to the theologically happy expression of grace. Letting the other clubs have 25 years of glory while Liverpool take a breather is OK to a point, but there must be limits. Not theologically, of course – just in football. With Liverpool. That’s all.

I could add extra cheers for a round table meeting I chaired at Lambeth Palace this week with Muslim leaders, looking at the future of Christian minorities in the post Arab Spring Middle East – honest, frank, realistic, if not entirely hopeful. And I could add a final cheer for the nearly 400 people who came to Skipton to assume responsibility as churchwardens in parishes across the diocese, plugging away in every local community out of love of God and the world he has put us in. (We do another such gig in Bradford on Tuesday.)

 

 

5 questions

I remember the days when I could write blog posts almost every day. But there seems to be a limit to how much writing I can do in the time available. This weeks has seen me writing radio scripts, a lecture four sermons and more besides. So, with another week looming and a full day out tomorrow, I simply ask five questions provoked by the last week:

 

1. Does James Murdoch have a future? His dad did a messianic drop-in to News International this week without the boss-boy and with boss-boy’s previously disconnected brother. Is James leaving the building?

2. Is Rupert serious about the Sun on Sunday? Probably. It all makes sense and was predicted when the News of the World shut down. But, the loin-girding bravado of Rupert’s presence and journalist-endorsing email might sound tough and supportive while being drowned in the swamp of arrests, suspicion and public outrage. Will the Sun survive?

3. Does anyone have any idea what is likely to happen with Iran as they send military ships through the Suez canal into the Mediterranean Sea for the first time since the revolution in 1979? Western policy in relation to Iran has not been… er… exactly inspiring during the Ahmadinejad years. In fact, Iran has been handled weirdly (in my humble opinion) ever since the revolution – especially when we backed Saddam Hussein’s ethical fight against Iran and in favour of democracy and human rights during the 1980s. What next for Iran – especially with Syria and the Falklands kicking off (in different ways, obviously)?

4. I am writing this while half-watching Keanu Reeves being persuaded to save the world in The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008). But, my real question is whether Arsenal can be saved – along with the career of Arsene Wenger. I find this hard to say (as a Scouser), but I like Arsenal and admire Wenger. They were hopeless against Martin O’Neill’s resurgent and exciting Sunderland in the FA Cup today. But, Wenger hasn’t suddenly turned into a bad manager. I hope, for football’s sake, that he survives. Am I a romantic optimist?

5. Will I make any sense at all of the need for religious institutions to be open to change and challenge when I do my ‘Faith and the City‘ lecture at the University of Bradford on Monday? Entitled Questioning Faith: Religion, change and challenge, I manage to get Rowan Williams, Dostoyevsky, Critical Muslim and the Church of England into a questioning of ends and means, language and fearlessness. I’ll let you know after Monday.

The Keanu Reeves film has just finished. It was rubbish.

 

Catch up

Yesterday was a bit worrying. During my sermon at a Confirmation service in Ilkley an elderly woman began to look unwell. As I came in to land she lost consciousness and, assisted by medics in the congregation, slid to the floor. She came round and was eventually taken off to hospital for a check up. When I got home I picked up my eighteen month old grandson, Ben, and he promptly vomited all over me and the kitchen floor. I began to think that if the service at the cathedral later went wrong, I’d begin to take it personally.

Anyway, last week saw some interesting stuff flying around the e-sphere:

1. A new magazine for Muslims has been produced, called Critical Muslim. I haven’t seen a copy and am not sure how its appearance on the scene has been received within the Muslim community, but it is an interesting development. Dr Philip Lewis’s appraisal is worth a look.

2. Nick Spencer did a great parody of the nonsense trotted out by some of the uncritical New Atheists – that religion is dangerous and divisive and should be confined to the dark corners of private entertainment. He starts from the idea that people claim that sport is a religion. It only gets funnier from there.

3. Giles Fraser hits the nail further on the head with an account of how Nietzsche contributed to his conversion to Christianity.

4. Will Hutton bangs the drum for language learning to be taken more seriously in the UK. I bang on about it often enough, but Hutton is better at pointing out that the philistines in government are unlikely to advocate a culture they themselves don’t ‘get’.

5. Leonard Cohen’s new album has been acquired and is being listened to to death. That voice has been lived in. We used to say that Cohen did ‘music to slit your wrists to’, but this caricature has always only exposed ignorance or illiteracy. He is funny, astute, ironic and wonderfully honest about being a complicated human being. My favourite lines from Old Ideas: 

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the Word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began

This week?

I have just arrived in London ahead of the General Synod which meets here until Thursday. The key item on the agenda is the matter of how we move ahead with bishops who might turn out to be women. It’s no secret that the debate is somewhat fraught – after all, this is one of only two issues that the media have any concern for (the other one being sexuality). Lots of other good stuff that drives and characterises the Church of England’s work in parishes and dioceses won’t get a mention, but the ‘loud stuff’ must not be allowed to distract us from what we should be about on the ground.

The torment about female bishops looks something like this. The Church has agreed that there should be no bar to women being bishops. The debate is about what provision should be made for those who cannot accept this. Huge financial provision was made back in 1992 when the Synod agreed to ordain women as priests. Twenty years on there are those who think enough time and provision has been made already. Then, the question is if the Church should create a ‘safe place’ for those who cannot accept ministry from women or men who have ordained women (like me).

There are many who wish to hold the Church together and make space in the Big Tent for the range of voices and commitments, but don’t want to set up first and second-class bishops. The pastoral urge to hold everyone in is tempered by the pastoral wisdom that advocates (a) making a decision, (b) ending the uncertainty and muddle, and (c) allowing everyone concerned to move on. Clarity has to be better than eternal muddle.

But, it is the understanding of what counts as ‘pastoral’ and to whom ‘pastoral provision’ is made that lies at the heart of the heart-searching going on in the Synod this week. And that is why debate is impassioned: we take stuff seriously and are not indifferent either to the theological/ecclesiological issues or the pastoral/people implications and consequences of the decisions we make. However, if it wasn’t clear before, it should be obvious now that some circles simply cannot be squared. I am not aware of anyone – of any persuasion – who is looking forward with unalloyed joy to this week’s debates.

Liverpool beating Tottenham Hotspur this evening might come as a welcome distraction…

 

 

Boris and the airport

I was driving over to a primary school in Ilkley this morning (dribbly rain and mist over the wild moors) and listening to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was being interviewed about the British Government’s apparent approval of the idea of a new London airport (after Heathrow, Gatwick and City – Luton and Stansted don’t count as they are nowhere near London). The wisdom and feasibility of such a new venture will continue to be debated, but that isn’t what grabbed my attention.

Boris responded to an insinuation that it would take decades to build the thing and would, therefore, not be worth starting. He said that just because it might take a long time didn’t mean it shouldn’t be started. And this reminded me of something else: cathedrals.

When the architects and builders of our great cathedrals began their work – driven by imagination and a vision for a future – they knew they probably would never see the finished article. They would be dead – the building would take generations. Liverpool Cathedral (Anglican) was started in 1904 and almost everybody involved in imagining, designing and building it was dead by the time it was finally completed at the back end of the twentieth century.

Or think of gardens. Capability Brown designed some of Britain’s most glorious gardens, but knew he would never see what he had designed because by the time the trees and plants had grown, he would be long gone. This didn’t stop him doing it.

I took a couple of academic friends to the pub this evening to talk about a range of matters. At one point the conversation ran onto the shortsighted utilitarianism of current university funding methods in England. It seems as if the ‘now’ is all that matters and the Market will control all our destinies. Any idea of vision (what should a university actually be – and for whom and for what end?) or long-term constructiveness gets lost under the pressing immediacy of instant financial viability. Yet, I guess this is just one more example of a pragmatic culture which has lost track of its guiding narrative, its traditions and memory – living in and for the ‘now’ and hesitant about building for someone else’s future that can’t be guaranteed anyway.

Pessimistic? Maybe. But, any culture needs people who imagine a future, invest in it, know why they are doing it and who it is for. They must be driven by a vision for a society that doesn’t confuse ends (people/society) with means (the Market).

I don’t know if Boris is right about the airport. But, he has the right perspective on time and investment.