Watchnight awaits

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Breakfast Show with Gary Davies.

I always get nervous as the end of the year approaches. I’m sure you know why. It’s people asking what resolutions I’m going to make when I know that I am not going to make any at all. Like every year.

I guess I never quite got over the story of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia who wrote in his diary on New Year’s Day 1917: “The year 1916 was cursed; 1917 will surely be better!” It wasn’t! Google it.

So, no resolutions I am bound to get wrong or fail to fulfil.

But, that isn’t the end of the matter. On New Year’s Eve I will join hundreds of other people in Ripon Cathedral for a short Watchnight Service before we process up to the city’s square and see in 2023 with the bishop’s blessing, lots of fun in the rain, and fireworks. It’s wonderful, and, apart from getting soaked, it’s a great start to the new year with all that it might hold for us.

The best bit for me is in the cathedral when we all stop, and reflect on what happened since we last did this. None of us knew what 2022 would hold when we began it. All of us will have had great celebrations and, almost certainly – in one way or another – suffered losses. The realities of life and death will have piled in on us as time went by, and we now start again, not knowing what lies ahead.

So, it seems to me that what matters more than me dreaming up unachievable resolutions – join a gym, win the Mercury Prize, etc. – is to address a more basic question: who will I trust? I need to keep it simple: I resolve to trust the God who has made us all in his image and who loves us to death and beyond. I will follow the way of Jesus, whatever life throws at us, messing it up along the way. And we’ll see what happens.

So, along with hundreds of others, I will stop, watch, wait … and hope.

 

Messiah

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2 with Zoe Ball.

In the last week I had one big miss and one big hit.

Jools Holland was in Leeds and I couldn’t go because we were hosting a Christmas party. That was the miss. The hit was attending the absolutely brilliant Huddersfield Choral Society’s performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’. They have done this every year without fail since 1864. That’s a lot of singing.

What the hit and the miss have in common is that they involve people bringing their talents together to make wonderful music that moves the heart as well as shakes the feet. I want to dance to boogie woogie, but I want to weep at the beauty of Handel’s oratorio. In both cases the audience is an essential part of the event – not just listening or being entertained, but responding in body, mind and spirit to what is being performed.

This might sound odd, but I think every person in the country should experience Handel’s ‘Messiah’ at least once in their life. It’s really hard to explain, but the intricacy of the orchestra and voices combining creates a sound that is greater than the bits that make it up. And key to this is that playing in a band or an orchestra, and singing in a choir, offers a unique experience of listening to others around you, moderating your own voice or instrument in order to fit in to the whole, creating together something that transcends any individual contribution.

I take two things from this. First, that every child should have an opportunity to sing or play in a band or choir. Nothing compares to it. But, secondly, the content of what is sung or played matters.

There’s a lot of darkness and understandable anxiety around at the moment: strikes, energy and food costs, inflation, war in Europe, and so on. Handel looks the darkness in the eye and, quoting the prophets of 3000 years ago, boldly affirms: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light…”

Christmas calls us to come together, to face the challenges, but to light a defiant candle as we hear: “the light has come, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” 

 

The Getaway Girls

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2 (live from Leeds).

Well, this has been a weird couple of days. Yesterday I was at a house in Leeds that has been there for over 500 years – Temple Newsam where we should have been ‘live’ with Radio 2 a couple of weeks ago – and today in Seacroft at a building that is brand new. Two stories in one city.

It’s astonishing what Nick and his team of experts and volunteers have done here. Building a place from scratch for The Getaway Girls is significant for many reasons. The need is urgent – and we can’t take 500 years to develop the idea. The new space will provide refuge, encouragement, education, entertainment and much more for girls in Leeds and beyond who need to know that they matter, that their lives are as important as anyone else’s, that their vulnerability is noticed and attended to.

The trouble with buildings, though, is that of themselves they achieve nothing. Shelter from the elements might be useful sometimes, but it is the people who use the space who fill it with life. As Luther Vandross famously sang, A House is not a Home; only people can turn bricks and mortar and plaster and wood into somewhere people can belong.

That’s why this matters. Every person – every girl – is unique. As a Christian, I start from the premise that every person is made in the image of God and is, therefore, infinitely valuable. Even when things go wrong. Even when people are abused or taken for granted or exploited or told they are useless. Even when they make bad decisions or dangerous choices.

We live in the real world where things are messy, people are messy, and the rest of us get invited to care for and support those who get stuck.

I’ve got to get away to London this morning, and there’s a cab waiting to get me to the station. But, now there is a new place here in Leeds where girls can getaway and find security, support – even love. Because, at the end of the day, it’s love we all need – a home, not just a house.

 

Warm Welcome

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show with Zoe Ball.

I don’t know about you, but the summer gives me a bit of space to get off the treadmill and reflect on questions like: why do I do what I do … and in the way that I do it? I think back to what has gone well and what has been disastrous or, at least, could have been better. And I see this as positive stuff, not miserable self-absorption.

But, this summer – I have just got back from a couple of weeks in Germany by a lake – all reflection has been overshadowed by the threatening stuff around us over which ordinary people have little or no control: energy prices, conflict on the continent, and so on. The next few months and years suddenly look more worrying and less certain.

It seems to me that there are two responses to this. One is to worry and get fed up with it all; the other is to join with others in doing something about it. Both responses are understandable, but the latter offers hope.

For example, a group of Christian organisations (along with other faith and civil society groups) have just launched a new initiative aimed at offering a warm welcome in local communities. This recognises that in the next few months and, possibly, years many people will face huge problems keeping their heating on and feeding their families. Already we are hearing stories of fear about what is happening. But, rather than simply assess the size of the problem, this initiative encourages organisations with building resources to provide places of welcome – warm, welcoming, safe and free of charge – for anyone who needs it.

So, many community groups are coming together to encourage this generous opening of resources in order to give people refuge. For Christians it is a response to the stark call by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel to care for those in need – whoever they are: those who are sick, unclothed, hungry, thirsty, trapped. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

At a conference this summer I misheard someone quoting Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’. I heard ‘Strangers in the Light’. ‘Warm Welcome’ chooses not just to curse the darkness, but to light a candle by which strangers can see each other and become friends.

 

Exile (on Main Street)

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Show.

Saturday was a bit of a nerve stretch, wasn’t it? Well, it was for me! Liverpool eventually winning the FA Cup Final after penalties and then Eurovision – which, whatever you think of the songs – is strangely compulsive viewing! I was a bit shredded by bedtime. Congratulations to Sam Ryder.

But, I must confess: I’m more of a blues man, myself – the sort of stuff that’s fifty years old this week: The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. It’s the sort of album that grows on you.

But, the blues are wonderful because they take us beneath the veneer of happy superficiality and open up the depths of our experience. Not just the words, but the tunes slow us down and expose the pain of life, the torments that can’t be tidied up or easily resolved. The blues recognise, as one track on the album puts it, that we are Torn and Frayed.

This is why so many blues songs took their lead from the haunting poetry of the Hebrew Psalms – unafraid to ask hard questions, to complain about stuff that happens, to stop pretending. Never without hope, but always with great, yearning emotion, unafraid of emptiness and silence.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the idea of exile finds its way into the album title. Because what the blues give voice to is the sense we all get at some point that we are not at home, that we are in exile – speaking the language of a different country, longing for the home where we feel we belong. OK, this can be merely romantic – a sort of nostalgia for when the world seemed simpler or kinder or less complicated.

But, I think it’s what an old saint – Augustine – meant when he said of God: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Not a rest that exempts us from reality, but one that takes it seriously – that even in exile we can sing the songs of home and know that we belong. That circumstances might change, but we are never abandoned by the God whose love cannot be extinguished.

Or, to twist another lyric by the Stones on their Sticky Fingers album: “Wild horses couldn’t drag [him] away”.

 

The Leeds Loop

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2 on the day they announced that September will see Radio 2 Live in Leeds.

Did you know that today is National Read a Roadmap Day? No? Nor did I. Who dreams up these things?

I use satnav all the time, but I do recognise that technology changes the way you see the world. If you look at a map – on paper – you know which way you’re facing and where you are in relation to other places; with satnav you just follow a line ‘forwards’.

When we had just moved to Leeds eight years ago I really struggled with the road system. The city centre loop means that you sometimes find you’re driving in the opposite direction to the one you think you should be on. So, you have to trust your screen or map and suspend your instincts. It’s not comfortable, but it works.

And, given one or two disorientating driving experiences here, I always hear the echo of some lines by Bruce Cockburn in a beautiful song called ‘Pacing the Cage’. He says: “Sometimes the best map will not guide you; you can’t see what’s round the bend. Sometimes the road leads through dark places; sometimes the darkness is your friend.” Does that sound odd?

Well, none of us needs any lessons today about uncertainty or dark places, do we? Nearly five million people are on the move from just Ukraine. They have no idea what lies around the next corner, but are all too familiar with dark places … as they long for light and the warmth of love.

This is why refugees from war will arrive traumatised by experiences most of us can barely imagine. Yet, the darkness of loss can be illuminated by the light of love and mercy and friendship and hospitality. The Psalms of the Old Testament give frequent voice to the reality of terror and hope. As he approaches his probable execution in Jerusalem, Jesus knows that violence will not have the last word.

And just as many people here in Leeds are reaching out in compassion and mercy to individuals and families for whom the darkness is fearful, they shine a light that cannot be extinguished. Like the loop system, you get there in the end.

 

I may be some time

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Breakfast Show.

The house I live in in Leeds is a couple of hundred years old. It once belonged to a family – the Oates family – whose son became very famous for all the right reasons. I’ll tell you the story briefly.

A hundred and ten years ago tomorrow a Norwegian explorer called Roald Amundsen won the race to be the first person to stand at the South Pole. He got there a month or so ahead of his British rival, Captain Robert Scott. Not only was Scott’s party disappointed, but they also all died on the way back to civilisation. One of his men, Captain Titus Oates, was suffering from frostbite and gangrene and decided he was compromising the chances of the others moving more quickly and surviving. One day he left the tent in a blizzard, his last words being: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” It was his 32nd birthday.

If you really want to annoy me, when you’re leaving our house, just pause at the door, look solemn, and say: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” It was funny the first time …

Captain Oates was brave, but also realistic. He knew how his behaviour and his decisions would impact on the wellbeing and survival chances of his friends. He laid down his life in the interests of others.

Now, I think that Captain Oates has something to say in a week when, away from blizzards and frostbite, we face challenges to our own lifestyle and decision-making. The Omicron virus is … er … virulent, and there are renewed fears about public health. So, the public is being asked to look not only to their own interests, but to those of others to whom we might transmit an infection. My own rights or freedoms might thus be limited or restricted. But, it is not all about ‘me’ – rather, it’s about us.

Jeremy Thorpe once said of Harold MacMillan: “Greater love has no man than this, that he laid down his friends for his life.” Titus Oates thought differently, taking Jesus seriously and laying down his life for his friends. When it comes to loving your neighbour as yourself, I’m with Titus.

 

St Nicholas

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2.

I have always felt a bit deprived. I don’t have a middle name. Apparently, I was called Guy for the first few weeks of my life; but my parents then decided that I was born too close to Guy Fawkes Night, so changed it to Nicholas … and didn’t give me a middle name. That means I had no options when I got fed up with Nicholas.

Unlike my youngest son’s Nigerian mate at school who had fifteen names and, technically, could have used any of them.

But, I was stuck with Nicholas. Over the years I got called Nick, but that was the only option for change. About forty years ago my in-laws gave me a glass paperweight on which was written something like: “Nicholas – winner of great victories; strong leader”. I thought they were having a laugh … or, at least, trying to make a point.

But, today my name comes into its own. 6 December is St Nicholas’ Day and is celebrated around the Christian world. Nicholas was Bishop of Myra and died in the year 343. And his story is where we get Father Christmas from.

If you’re looking for a powerful, triumphant leader in St Nicholas, you’ll have to change the way you think about strength, power and leadership. Nicholas turned it all upside down.

He was born into a wealthy family of Greek Christians in Turkey. Orphaned when very young, he used his inherited wealth to support sick and poor people. The Father Christmas bit comes from his dropping bags of gold coins down the chimney of three sisters whose father couldn’t pay their dowry, so risked them having to go on the streets. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, if that’s how power, strength and leadership are to be understood, then I am proud to be a Nicholas. The old saint was a follower of Jesus who, rather than marauding around the planet with a sword, was born as a vulnerable baby in a cowshed … and opened his arms on a cross, welcoming all that the world could throw at him, but not throwing it back.

St Nicholas got it. And I got the name. Now, I have to live up to it.

 

Learning to Wait

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Breakfast Show (with Gary Davies in the chair).

So, we start this week with new Covid restrictions – just at the point when we were hoping to emerge into a brighter world. And, yet again, we have to learn to wait for the day when the misery will – somehow – pass. In the meantime, the uncertainty drags on – perhaps inviting us to learn that this is normal for most people on this small blue planet.

It’s perhaps fitting, then, that today marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of George Harrison and this month the anniversary of his great post-Beatles album All Things Must Pass. He got it, didn’t he? Everything is transient, everything changes, seasons come and go. You can’t come to terms with living and losing, longing and … er … laughing without accepting first that all things must indeed pass.

For me this is built in to the rhythm and seasons of the year. Yesterday marked the start of Advent in the Christian calendar. What now follows is a rather weird exercise in learning to wait (as if we don’t know what’s coming) whilst actually knowing how the story goes. That the people have been waiting for centuries for God to come among them again: praying, longing, looking for signs. They try to make sense of their story in the light of what is happening now, but it doesn’t seem to compute. Then a baby is born in Bethlehem and the world is taken by surprise.

But, and this is the point, we don’t know that yet – not in Advent. So, we Christians try to re-live that waiting experience, trying to be open to being surprised when Christmas eventually comes – that God’s coming could have been a bit more impressive … than a mere baby born in an obscure village in a corner of the Middle East.

And that’s the point. As the Welsh poet RS Thomas put it: “The meaning is in the waiting.” In other words – and for a generation that wants everything now: Advent slows us down, makes waiting active and not empty, and leaves us open to surprise.

All things must indeed pass, George, but the story ends with a comma and not a full stop.

 

A Touching Place

This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that if you make a film about a place, loads of people then want to go there to see with their own eyes. ‘The Dig’ is a case in point. I watched the film the day it came out and was captivated. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in 1939, and the movie – with Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes – explores how it nearly didn’t happen at all.

Visitor numbers have shot up since the film was launched – so, I do understand the draw to see the place. When I was a vicar in Leicestershire we had the shaft of a Saxon cross in the churchyard, dating back to the mid-800s. I baptised in a Norman font that had been there for a thousand years (Norman was the period, not its name). We drank wine out of an Elizabethan chalice. People through the ages in that village had seen and touched these objects as the world changed around them.

I guess there is something powerful about a physical connection with people in the past that makes us realise that Now is transient, and one day we will all be someone else’s past.

Next Saturday I’ll be ordaining 23 new clergy at Ripon Cathedral. I have encouraged them all to go down into the Saxon crypt, reputed to be the oldest stone-built place of Christian worship in England. The people who brought Christianity to these islands were brave and radical, giving up their lives for the sake of love and rejecting the brutal plays for power through violence that characterised much of life then. And they were here.

The past might be a foreign country in many ways, but we need physical things that connect us, that remind us of where we have come from, of who we are and what has shaped us. This should not come as a surprise to me: Christian faith is rooted in the conviction that God once took flesh, opting into the material world of stuff.

So, what is spiritual always needs a touching place.