Surprised by Devon

I'm sorry to sound so metropolitan, but I really didn't expect what I heard a week ago on Sunday - in mid-Devon. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as St Andrew's church in Cullompton has been consistent in giving memorable worship. The previous time, when the bluebells, stitchwort and campion were scattered in the hedgerows, three of the ten people who had been baptised the day before gave their testimonies - evidence that meeting the risen Christ does radically change lives.

However this most recent occasion was something else. The sermon was to be given by a Simon Friend. I knew he wasn't one of the clergy there. When he stood up at the front, I recognised him from our previous visits. "Just another member of the church," I thought. "Nice chap. Probably we're in for a few pious thoughts for the day." It's not what we got. You really need to listen to this: Simon Friend "How sins are forgiven".

I think it's one of the most thoughtful and challenging talks I've ever heard delivered in a church - and I've heard a few fair in my time! Don't be deceived by the very measured manner in which it's given. I could pile on the superlatives, but I really hope you will take the time to hear him out as he contrasts our "redemptive violence" with God's "redemptive grace". He challenges cultural, political and religious powers in a quietly prophetic way. He is utterly relevant and up-to-date, but in my view utterly faithful to Jesus as we see him in the gospels. And like the best preachers he applies it personally.

I hope when you've listened you'll agree that here is an amateur whom the professionals (like me) would do well to listen to and emulate. I suspect, however, that Simon would want to give the credit not to him but to the Holy Spirit, who was in my view speaking loud and clear that Sunday.

(PS When he refers to the Cully Gazette, I imagine he's talking about a mythical local journal.)

My wife and the Holy Spirit

Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Walsingham, Norfolk

I hardly know where to start! Most churches have celebrated Pentecost and Trinity Sundays in the past few weeks. But it strikes me that the Holy Spirit nevertheless receives something of a raw deal, even though Pentecost is "His" festival, and since the 70s He has appeared much more in Christians' vocabulary.

There was once a widely used and mildly derogatory expression, "nominal Christians", meaning people who called themselves Christians but gave very little evidence of committed faith in practice. (The oft-reported decline in church attendance seems to me to be more a symptom of the increasing demands of real faith on nominal allegiance in a society drifting towards secularism.) I wonder whether today we are witnessing a new phenomenon of "nominal charismatics", ie Christians who talk about the Holy Spirit but who deny His reality and power.

In simple terms nominal charismatics refer to the Spirit as an inanimate "it", or "spirit" with a lower case s, implying something like "influence" or "character". The legacy that Jesus left behind was... his spirit, his influence, his example. The truth, as Jesus makes clear repeatedly, is much more than this, just as a person is much more that a shadow. The Holy Spirit is dynamic, active and above all personal. He is no less personal than God the Father and God the Son. (By the way, I use the masculine pronoun "He" as that's the habit of our Bible translations; but I'm equally at ease with the feminine "She", being equally personal - but never "it". God must be at least and more than personal, but never less.) His coming to the disciples at Pentecost demonstrated His power and interaction with people.

As this beautiful hymn by Irish musicians, Keith and Kristyn Getty, makes clear, the Holy Spirit is part of the mystery who is God: "Holy Spirit, Breath of God" with Kristyn & Keith Getty. Whatever else He is an active agent, not a passive possession. And so Jesus describes Him as a helper, a witness, a counsellor, a strengthener, a guide. I could go on, looking at what is sometimes known as The Acts of the Holy Spirit (Acts) and what Paul says about Him. I could relate how He impacted, unlooked for, my life. But I want to finish with what I recently found a helpful picture.

It starts, inappropriately, with my regular expeditions to the toilet. I am very unsteady on my feet and use a rollator (a wheeled zimmer). Getting into our toilet is a tricky operation, leaving my rollator outside and transferring precariously to grab-rails and trying awkwardly to turn round. Often I find hands steadying my waist at the point of greatest danger. Jane has glided up silently and unasked, and saves me from disaster. Occasionally in dire straits I shout out and there she is - panic over! Then I reflect how many details she has already thought of - everything is prepared, in position as I need it.

And wider than that, actually I depend on her for my survival from waking to going to sleep. She's there with me through my tough times - helping and encouraging. She enables the highlights of my life! She's my constant companion - and she does not seem to mind. In fact she likes to do it. Which is why I'm confident that she will, as she said well nigh 40 years ago, have and hold me until death parts us.

Of course I can be bolshy. I can refuse her help. I sometimes won't ask for her help; and in that case she doesn't force herself on me. I can and have been ungrateful and ungracious. I sometimes grimace when she stretches my muscles to keep me as mobile as possible, even though I know it's for my good. In a literal way through her I'm still alive and move and have my being. Mostly I am quite aware of how much I owe her and am full of gratitude.

It strikes me that there are a lot of parallels between the way Jane relates to me and the Holy Spirit's relationship with the believer. It is a personal relationship. There is a dynamic about it. I frequently grieve Him. He often surprises and delights me. One difference is that He proposed to me! Another is on His part, although He relates to me personally, it's not exclusive. The Holy Spirit - much as I love my wife - is infinitely greater in his scope. His activity is not restricted to caring for one person, or even one group of people.

As the great Jesuit poet Hopkins put it:
"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

He has an infinite individual love, because He is God. And I'm grateful.

Long reigning Queen

Today saw the service in Westminster Abbey celebrating the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's reign. I've been struck by the times I have heard her accession to the throne described as a "vocation". I believe that is a good description of how she regards it, not a very popular concept these days.

In my 3 Minute Retreat reading today, based on Isaiah 49.6 ("I will make you a light to the nations...") I read this comment: "Each of is called to be a light to the nations. The light is generated when we are true to our vocations in life. And when each of us acknowledges and develops the talents that are part and parcel of our vocation, the light we bear brings salvation (restoration) to the world. We become co-creators with God in the work of salvation. How do we do this? Through the action of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God's life at work in and through us. The more we open ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit, the brighter God's light of salvation shines."

"Spirit of God, move through me.
Help me to use my gifts in cooperation with God's plan of salvation."

I like the idea that when St Paul said, "Christ in you, the hope of glory", he was meaning the hope of glory for others. May we be faithful in whatever place and state God has called us.

Pentecost at Maldon

Someone asked me if I could put up all of my friend, Rob Wiggs' sermon from last Sunday. He's kindly allowed me to do so. So here is what in the trade, I believe, is called a guest post.

Pentecost at Maldon 19^th May 2013

As you probably know, I am really interested in envy and rivalry, in inferiority and superiority, and in how we can get these monkeys off our backs and live in freedom and joy. When you are young and worldly you worry about people being more beautiful than you, more popular, more clever and better at sport.  And to get free of these things is really important. They stop us being happy. Ok, but what are the religious forms of inferiority that persist among Christians into later life? People who are bothered by God, and I am deeply in favour of being bothered by God, worry that they haven’t really experienced God, and they look at other people and say, what is it that they have that I haven’t got? Wouldn’t you agree that you only have to look at Father xxx and John xxx and it is just obvious that they are oozing with a knowledge of God that the rest of us don’t understand?

But, of course, this is all rubbish. Let me tell you something that a famous Indian priest, Anthony de Mello, taught. All you have to do to experience God’s Holy Spirit is simply to breathe in. Anthony de Mello spent a huge amount of his life teaching people to breathe in, and hence to receive God’s Holy Spirit. When you have learned how to breathe in you will stop worrying about other people and whether you are beautiful because you will have received God’s Holy Spirit, and nothing else will matter again in the same way. There is nothing living that is not enlivened by God’s Spirit. What must we do to be saved? Breathe.

When I was young in the late 1960s people and early 1970s people used to come up to you and ask you if you were saved. I don’t think they do that now. But it used to worry me. I was never quite sure if I was saved. And then in the late 1970s the question changed. People used to ask you if you had received the Holy Spirit. And I really didn’t think I had received the Holy Spirit. And even after I was ordained I used to worry sometimes that one day people would find out that I wasn’t saved and that I hadn’t received the Holy Spirit. And I used to feel deeply inferior around evangelical and charismatic people. Really religious people scared me, to be quite frank, even after I was a priest. And it was something to do with being made uncomfortable and the fear that they might find out that I am a fraud.

But then I made the most wonderful discovery. I started to breathe. And as I breathed I came to recognise that I am indeed a fraud and a phoney, but I can no more stop God loving me than I can stop breathing. And that made all the difference. In the languages of the Bible, both in Hebrew and Greek, breath, wind and spirit, are all the same word. When Jesus rose from the dead, he breathed on his disciples, who were, like me, frauds and phonies, and he said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’. And he thus filled them with his spirit, authority. And it was the same at Pentecost. A sound like a violent wind is heard, and the disciples receive the Holy Spirit’ and they became authoritative, free, not inferior to anyone.

I want to spin a fantasy. And the fantasy is that the parish project for 2014 is that as many of us as possible learn to breathe. Let me explain how it would work. You would sign up at the end of December to the following commitment. Simply this. You would promise that for 10 minutes at the beginning and the end of every day you would sit still and pay attention to your breathing. Let me tell you what I think would happen.

First we would discover that it is immensely difficult and  many, perhaps most,  would give up. Then we would discover that many of us would need friends, some kind of community to keep us to it. So we would start to have to do it together sometimes. But let us also suppose that many of us did stick to it. What would happen to us ? Over time there would rise up little sanctuaries of freedom. Think of all the nonsense that swirls around in your brain – all the rubbish that is there simply because you are a member of a noisy non-stop society that is terrified of silence. Think of the accusing voices that you are forced to be in dialogue with. My son, whom I love dearly, and who I believe, loves me, nevertheless admits to me that I exist in his brain as a kind of accusing and disapproving voice whom he can’t appease. Do you have angry conversations in your head with your enemies and your accusers ? Or with the things and people who make you afraid ? Do you lie awake in the night in some unwelcome conversation with the spirit of the future, the spirit of how things might turn out, but which is nevertheless a false and lying voice that is never quite so real during waking hours ?

What I am trying to draw attention to is the fact that our brains are never empty, that they are occupied by some kind of spirit, to use biblical language, and frequently by spirits that are not for our flourishing. So what would happen if we committed ourselves to this silent breathing. Not, absolutely not, instant transformation. But what would be beginning would be some kind of spiritual warfare. The dominance of the spirit of the age would be beginning to be broken by the Holy Spirit.

As I have told you before, the Biblical word Satan literally means ‘the accuser’. And the Biblical word the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, means the Counsel for the Defence.

It is as if both our brains and the whole world we live in is a kind of court, and there is an accusing voice abroad in the world that is against our flourishing, that we might call Satan. But there really is also the Paraclete, the counsel for the defence, the Holy Spirit, who speaks up on our behalf, who battles with and silences the accusing voice and pours into our hearts and pours into our lives his gifts, love, joy peace, gentleness, self control and the rest. These things are free, gifts of grace, but they can only be received by those who would give their lives for them. And sitting quietly paying attention to your breathing is a wonderful place to start.

What I am describing is easy, but it will also cost you everything. That is the extraordinary knife edge which is the missionary frontier.

Just breathe

Last week we had a delicious lunch with our friends Rob and Lib in Essex. Rob and I have known each other since university days, and known each other well enough to interfere significantly in each other's lives in the sort of way that only good friends can.... He sent me the text of his sermon on Pentecost sermon which addressed what I reckon is a common Christian experience, the feeling of insecurity and inferiority - in other words, not being sure about whether we are "saved" or destined for heaven and suspecting we're not good enough and others are all better than us. I'd say this is because we haven't grasped the hugeness of God's grace, or as Frederick Faber put it "the wideness of God's mercy". Like baptism, it's not what we do that counts; it's what He does and has done eternally. We really need to get rid of our own sense of self-importance. Anyway here's a short extract from Rob's sermon:

"Let me tell you something that a famous Indian priest, Anthony de Mello, taught. All you have to do to experience God’s Holy Spirit is simply to breathe in. Anthony de Mello spent a huge amount of his life teaching people to breathe in, and hence to receive God’s Holy Spirit. When you have learned how to breathe in you will stop worrying about other people and whether you are beautiful because you will have received God’s Holy Spirit, and nothing else will matter again in the same way. There is nothing living that is not enlivened by God’s Spirit. What must we do to be saved? Breathe."

A good Sunday

Maybe someone's been praying especially hard for me. Maybe I'm on a post-holiday high. But yesterday was a particularly good day. As I wrote yesterday, I appreciated the service from Greenbelt on the radio. Then it was good meeting friends again at the real church service here. There was a large baptism party there; I always enjoy it when people, by hook or by crook, are welcomed into the church. Jane was on crèche duty, looking after the youngest children. One dad came in who'd lived his whole life in Grove and had never entered the church before. I hope he was pleasantly surprised by how friendly and normal Christians can be - like Jane!

It was a pleasant sunny day, which always helps, and as Jane hadn't had a service in the morning we took ourselves off to St Aldate's church in Oxford, after I'd set the record button on Songs of Praise and Countryfile on TV. We'd hoped for some up-lifting worship, but when we got there and had a chair removed for my wheelchair, the church seemed a quarter full (it did get fuller!), there was no sign of the band, and eventually the curate stood up and told us to be ready for anything. We looked at each other, thinking, "Bank Holiday weekend - maybe everyone, including the musicians, is having a night off - leaving one chap to wing it!" So it was a great relief when he invited the band up, and the worship songs started. It was a good relaxed service. Best, for me, was the sermon given by Laura Gallacher, the young student pastor, on "The Spirit who satisfies". The Bible passage was John 7.37-39, where Jesus stands up in the Temple at the climax of the Festival of Tabernacles and cries out, "If anyone thirsts, let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of their heart will flow rivers of living water.'" St John comments that Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit who had not yet been poured out. (Listen to "The Spirit who satisfies" here.)

Because of the way the sermon was structured I can still recall its main points. The message was that thirst is a universal human condition, spiritually as well as physically, and that Jesus satisfies the thirst of all: the parched (who've never tasted His Spirit's refreshing), the quenched (who have tasted it in the past, but have run dry), the waiting (those who feel He won't return), and the wanting (those who have taken to substitutes to satisfy their thirst). There was more of course to the sermon than that. Two more points come back to me. The Bible's story of God's dealing with humanity begins and finishes with flowing water, with the rivers in Eden and the river flowing from the throne for the healing of the nations in Revelation. But there's also meant to be this river in the middle of the story, flowing from those who believe in Jesus - which is why it's so vital that we take up Jesus' loud invitation, "Let them come to me," because that's the source of spiritual refreshing for a parched society. The other point was that the opening of the floodgates for the Spirit began when Jesus shared the universal human condition on the cross, "I thirst," as St John also records. (I remember the great Bible teacher, John McKay, commenting that the sour wine He then drank inaugurated the Kingdom.) It was a challenging but realistic sermon. We were glad we'd driven in. On the way home there was a spectacular sunset to our right.

Then, before going to bed, I thought I'd see what Songs of Praise had been like. It was advertised as "The Great Outdoors" with Eamonn Holmes - not very promising, I thought; probably one of these cobbled-together holiday-type programmes frequent in the summer. I had to eat my thoughts! The hymns were mainly traditional, but they tied in with the interviews. A bit slow, but interesting light accompaniments. However, the three interviews were cracking, especially the first with a champion surfer, called Andy Hill. "A former atheist, Andy says a period of illness 11 years ago put big life questions back on the table. He researched a lot of religions looking for answers and Christianity was the only one that made sense. Now, his faith is everything and he’s an enthusiastic member of his local church. While he still loves surfing – and still competes – he’s just as passionate about sharing his faith with others." He was an example, it seemed to me, of someone who'd found his thirst satisfied by Jesus and who was a conduit to others. The same was true of the other two interviewees: with a couple of Ulster's rugby team and with a hard-core mountain-biker. As a bonus, there was an item from the excellent band, Rend Collective Experiment, "Build Your Kingdom here", and the different but equally good, Keith and Kristyn Getty. Altogether a rich programme, to end a refreshing day.

No hands but ours?

"Transformation is nearer than temptation."

This was again a watchword of Alan Scott's. I took it as a reminder that God is constantly proactive and creative, whereas the devil is just opportunistic. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by a sense of failure or of facing overwhelming odds. However, it's not true.

Healing of lame man (St Peter's, Rome)

The truth is that "God is for us", i.e. on our side, or as Jesus put it, "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." And the point is this: that we are the means through which God wants to transform the world. It's not just about our transformation. God wants to transform the world He made and we keep spoiling. He wants to restore it to His original intention, through us, His Church - which means we can't retreat behind closed doors. Like the Pentecost Church we have to spill out on to the streets. However, doing so under our own steam, because we've "got the idea", isn't transformative. The apostles are told to "wait... until you are clothed with power from on high", i.e. until they receive God's Spirit.

God's life-giving touch (Sistine Chapel)

Ironically, it is our emptiness, our feeling of failure and inadequacy, which best forms a channel for God's love to flow to others. That is utterly counter-intuitive and incredible. But it's true because He is even keener and more able to transform His creation than evil is to thwart Him. He wants to fill us to bring His glory to the world. I have a feeling that this is what St Paul meant by "Christ in you, the hope of glory". I always thought it meant the hope of our glory; now I think it means "Jesus in us is the hope of the creation's restored glory". The reassuring truth remains that it's not through our best laid plans and efforts but through our being who we are in Christ and letting His Spirit have a say that God's transformation happens.  

Come, Holy Spirit!

Beauty for ashes

You might like to read my Diary of a Dancing Donkey blog, where I described what Julian of Norwich  called a "revelation of divine love". We spent last week at the New Wine Festival, a big gathering of Christians in Somerset, which led to my starting this blog a year ago.

Gorgeous Grace - Click for link

In the end it was an encouraging time for me. On the way I noted things which people said. Unfortunately I was just using my iPod on which I'm very slow, and so they may be approximate quotes. Anyway here's the first of them, from Karen Jones - who's recently published her first novel with the unlikely title of The Babe's Bible - Gorgeous Grace, which I am reliably informed is gripping. As I was saying, here's the quote:

"Our sufferings cost us too much to waste them."

It's true, isn't it? We can either nurse our pains and almost cherish them, clinging to them rather like Gollum and his "my precious" ring. Or we can release them and use them more like St Paul who used his afflictions "to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." 

I think Karen was thinking not only of that, but also of our suffering being a seedbed for the growth of our own maturity and our relationship with God. We can regard suffering as entirely negative and destructive, or we can allow it to be turned to good. I say "allow" as I don't think it's merely a matter of the will. Paul talks about "the God of all comfort" who enables us to pass on the comfort we've received. That has to be the work of the Holy Spirit. And equally it's Him who turns our ashes into a crown of beauty and gives us a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61). It's certainly true that when we're going through suffering like depression or bereavement it doesn't lie in our power to drag ourselves into the light, not really. We may put on a brave face, but it always conceals a weeping heart. But God... "is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine". YIPPEE! 

"Weeping may last through the night,    
but joy comes with the morning."   
So I wait for you....

Is he really with me?

Last Thursday was Ascension Day, the day when Christians recall the end of "all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day that he was taken up", as St Luke says in Acts. On Thought for the Day the speaker told us, as far as I understood her, that the message of the day is that Jesus left his disciples, and us, on our own to get on with it. She finished with the gnomic statement: "It is possible to make our peace with God when we live with the reality that we live together, alone."

I was sorry Lucy Winkett ended there, because, of course, the story doesn't end there. It was just the end of what "Jesus began to do and teach". St Luke proceeds to tell us what Jesus went on to do in The Acts of the Apostles, and he certainly doesn't mean that the apostles did his work for him together, "alone", i.e. without him. Arguably they are "on their own together" for ten days. But on Pentecost they receive "the promise of the Father". On the night of  his arrest, Jesus had told them: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." Putting it a different way, he'd said,  ^"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." And, pow! on Pentecost, don't they know it! I have a feeling that that's the significance of the physical signs they experience - they're to be in no doubt that Jesus has kept his promise: "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."


It remains true. The Holy Spirit of Jesus dwells in those who follow him. On 24th May 1738 (anniversary - Thursday), the Rev John Wesley wrote in his journal, "In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans.  About a quarter before nine, while the leader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." He was never the same man again. It was the same transforming experience which radicalised the first disciples at Pentecost. He had no doubt that Jesus had answered his longing and kept his promise.


On 30th September 1994 another Anglican cleric wrote, "God answered immediately and dramatically, as it seemed to me. The conversation between my spirit and the Holy Spirit was humbling, yet full of his fiery love. I knew and physically felt that, in spite of everything, God loved me. It was the most liberating and wonderful experience.... It was not surprising that next morning I was different." He would tell you that, although his life has not been easy, he still has no doubt of the presence of Jesus.


Last Friday we read the story of Jesus asleep in the storm. "On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.' And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, andthere was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?'" The accompanying note suggested we imagine the Father's arms around us. I have to admit that didn't really help me. I actually found the picture of Jesus there sleeping in the storm-threatened boat more like my experience. It's clear that he's there, and therefore it's ok, but nevertheless it can be pretty scary - but it's all right. You can't sink Jesus, and he's not suddenly about to take to the lifeboat. This is the lifeboat!

Collar doves and the cross

I hope you had a good Easter. I must say that I have. It was lovely having all but one of our family with us (though we did miss him). Our grandchildren had great fun hunting for Easter eggs in the garden on Sunday morning. In Stanford we used to have them hidden round the graveyard and the children would hunt for them while the adults had a reading and sermon. It used to remind me of the angels on the first Easter morning, saying, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen."

Today we had Café Church, which is another family-sort of occasion. We'd moved on from the Easter theme. But not entirely. When we came out, we were met with a striking symbol. Sadly we didn't have a camera or iPhone to capture it, and when Jane cycled back with the camera they were gone. So I'll have to try and describe it.

On Good Friday in Grove we have an open-air service with all the churches together, at which there's a tall, rather flimsy cross. It's just a reminder of the cruel Roman means of execution to which Jesus was subjected. Afterwards it's put up in front of the parish church, by the roadside. It's still there - an empty cross. Today as we walked out of church (or at least Jane did and I chugged in my wheelchair), we noticed two dusky collar doves settled right down on the arms of the cross, one on each side, in the sun. It reminded me that the Easter story, and its meaning, doesn't end with the empty cross and the empty tomb. It doesn't even end with the risen Jesus appearing to the first disciples. It goes on to his ascension to be with God the Father - and to Pentecost, or Whitsun, when the Holy Spirit, the "promise of the Father", was given to the Church in order to enable it to live as the Kingdom of God and to share the good news of Jesus' love for everyone of all colours, languages, orientations and social status. One symbol of the Holy Spirit, of course, a dove. And so, there together were the signs of Jesus' sacrificial love for the world and his gift of his presence, strengthening, guiding and encouraging. The whole story of Easter.


I've learned that the Spirit likes to be welcomed in us, - he doesn't force himself on us -, and that it's possible to "grieve" him. I once read that a difference between pigeons and doves was that doves alight but are easily scared into flight, whereas pigeons are more phlegmatic. So it's not surprising the collar-doves had flown when Jane returned to photograph them. The writer noted that when Jesus was baptised the Spirit like a dove came and "settled" on him; in other words the Spirit was at home with him. You'll gather that I love George Herbert's poems, one of which is Whitsunday, which is a great prayer, starting:

"Listen sweet Dove unto my song 

And spread thy golden wings in me; 

Hatching my tender heart so long, 

Till it get wing, and flie away with thee."  We need to invite him to come and then continually cherish his presence in us.

Perspective

One of the temptations when you're in pain is to focus on it. Well, to be honest, it's a natural reaction. Our dog Jess, when she gets a stone or a thorn lodged in her foot, lies there licking it like mad. What's interesting about humans is that not only do we do that, but when things are all roses in the garden we're also tempted to become self-absorbed.

A good feature of New Wine this year were the opportunities to change our perspectives. Bishop Zac was particularly effective in achieving this. He identified four idols in 1st World faith: religion, security, sacralization (making sacred) of youth, and "me". He wasn't censorious about it; he was just describing ourselves from a 3rd World perspective. It certainly made me sit up! Then there was Baroness Cox talking about places like Burma and North Korea, Major General Porter talking about faith in the armed forces, Vincent Munyosi on church-planting in Uganda. One began to see the church in a world-wide perspective.

I love George Herbert's poetry. "The Elixir" from which there are quotations at the top of this blog is perhaps his best-known poem as it is often sung as a hymn (worship song). It is about practising the presence of God, seeing God in all things, even the most menial tasks and, I'd add, the most painful and restricted situations. The person who looks at a window ("looks on glass", which wasn't as clear as today), he says, has a choice, either to look at its surface ("on it may stay his eye") or to look through it and see the sky, or heaven ("the heaven espy"). We can choose to lick our wounds in our own confined safe world or to take the risk of looking up and seeing God's beauty. It's not that God isn't with us. He is. It's more an invitation to raise our eyes and recognise him there - and that means looking through the material to the real. Easier said than done, I know, and I guess Herbert did too as he prayed for a fresh pouring out of the Spirit in "Whitsunday":
Lord, though we change, thou art the same;
The same sweet God of love and light:
Restore this day, for thy great name,
Unto his ancient and miraculous right. 
Good call!