SOUL SURMISE

RUSHING OUT OF LOCKDOWN - NOT COOL... NOT BIG... NOT CLEVER!

When my children were small I remember watching a TV documentary. A teacher gave a child five sweets and told them that they were now leaving the room for fifteen minutes. If the sweets were still there when the teacher returned the children were promised more sweets.

Then, most entertainingly, we were treated to watching the decisions and actions of the children when they were alone in the room. Of course most took the sweets in front of them. 

It was a version of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and the research showed that those who waited ended up with better health, higher exam results and more positive in various other outcomes.

I have thought a lot about that wee experiment as the weeks of lockdown have lengthened. 

I have heard so many suggest that they cannot wait any longer to get out from under these draconian laws. It’s a free country and we shouldn’t be asked to live like this. Sadly, some were politicians!

We need shops and we need them now. We need to get to a beach and we need to go now. We need Liverpool to get the trophy and we need them to get it now. They remind me of those who children who were not clever enough to wait.

Now I am not suggesting the stupidity of Liverpool fans even though I support Manchester City and am happy that the Premiership stays where it is! 

No… this is much more serious than sweets. As a society we have gone through the challenge of a generation but can I suggest that the next few months might be an even bigger challenge. If we can hold back our temptation to have a little now, we can have more people alive and a more healthy environment to come back out into later down the line. Eating my sweets NOW would be murderously stupid!

Stay Home might not have been easy for many but at least we knew what was what. The shops were closed. The parks too. The police were stopping you driving too far. 

It was hard but it was easy. It is not going to be so easy when we start opening up. Then we will not be living by law but by mature decision making.

Stay Alert is a trickier deal. It needs the maturity and intelligence of a child who can refrain from a few sweets to get a load more. Staying alert means that even when things open up we need to be about the longer game. What we do in these months coming out of lockdown will effect the results in the future, maybe even if we… or our neighbours… live or die.

Why am I concerned as my life and my loved ones lives might well come down to the intelligence, maturity and selfless discipline of our nation! A shiver runs through me just typing that! Can you see what Stay At Home, plain and simple, still seems a good idea to me!!

The spiritual life is in play here too. The apostle Paul spoke about how the law was a pedagogue (teacher) saving us from our immature selves until Christ came to redeem us and then by the indwelling Holy Spirit brought about our maturity. “Strict laws are for children and freedom is only a good thing in the hands of the mature,” is a very loose paraphrase of Paul in Galatians 3;23-25.

Now don’t get me wrong. There are those who claim to be followers of Jesus and immaturely stlll worship at its altar and try to burden us all with their childishness. There are those with no interest in Jesus who act more maturely. That is how the world is.

However, what I am taking 600 words in this blog to say is that we need a maturity that perhaps we have never been tested for before. We need a social intelligence that is always looking AHEAD rather than at the NOW. We need a discipline that will re-programme every social interaction. We need a Love Your Neighbour that sacrifices every impatience to get what we want in order to stay alive and keep others alive too. 

Rushing out of lock down is not COOL… it’s not BIG… and it’s not CLEVER!

WHY JANICE AND I FEAR COMING OUT OF LOCK DOWN

the photo is the two of us modelling Norn Iron Tees and Tote Bags... put a laugh on your shirt here https://nornirontees.com

 

I was on the phone with a friend recently who said that he and his wife were feeling guilty for actually enjoying lock down. I understood the sentiment. 

Janice and I are both only children and so are very used to our own company. We have our daughters locked down with us. This is almost perfect for us.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. A friend lost a friend to Covid 19 this past week. We are aware of the grief. We have members of Fitzroy on the NHS front line. We are anxious. My father has dementia and is in a Residential Home. We are frightened. 

Yet, in the every day lock down we are more than surviving. We are thriving. Fitzroy’s nerve centre has moved to our kitchen table. Janice is phoning around the congregation, doing Rhyme Time with the toddlers on Zoom as well as the Woman’s Group. I conjure Sunday morning’s service, lead the Zoom Prayer meeting and keep a handle on pastoral care, neighbourhood outreach and other projects.

Life is full if not as mad crazy busy as the “normal” life we used to live. It has been time consuming learning all kinds of new technical operations but for us there have been lots of advantages.  

I have been on a journey, understanding something about myself, for a couple of years. Writer Donald Miller put out a piece on the hard work that the introvert has to do in company. It struck a chord. It was like he was describing me.

Yet, me an introvert? Who would think? My office is a lecturn in front of a full Church. I have led communion to 20,000 people. I have made crowded rooms across the world laugh out loud as well as hopefully communicate something of God’s grace and imagination.  

This is true. Give me a crowd, the bigger the better. Push me out before it and something deep within me decides to go for broke. If they are going to laugh at me, I might as well ham it up. Maybe I can grab their attention. I believe that without doubt that it is what I was born for.

However, send me into a room with no introduction or reason to be there and I am the last person who will walk across and introduce myself. I am, below the hoopla, very shy. I become that only child who didn’t learn interaction with brothers and sister. I sat in my music room and played The Beatles. On my own.

So reading Donald Miller was a relief. He explained my struggle. He understood. The extrovert refreshes in socialising. The extrovert refuels in crowds. The introvert is working his or her socks off in any group dynamic. Even though I am looking confident and extrovert on the surface, my inner core is running like a marathon runner to keep up. It is exhausting.

So, during this lock down, Janice and I have rested from that hard work that we believed we are called to. We really have had sabbatical. We understand the struggles our friends are having being cut off from social groups. We understand but we are not struggling. 

In fact we are beginning to struggle as we start to imagine the coming out of lock down. We are aware that this idyllic cocoon we are in is soon to be over. We are bracing ourselves. We know that it will mean party time, a celebratory overload of the social gatherings that tire us out. We will want to be there but we are readying ourselves for the hard work.

I suppose that I am writing this to say that for the vast majority this lock down has been a mental stretching. Mental health has been rightfully high on the agenda of those of us who pastor and care. As lock down lifts us introverts are simply asking that our mental struggles would be equally considered. 

Indeed this respite has been unprecedented (how many times have I heard that word!) for us shy folk. The norm stretches our mental resources all of the time. As introverts have been gentle with extroverts during lock down, please be sympathetic to us as it lifts! 

 

THE PNEUMATOLOGY BENEDICTION

 

My benediction in yesterday's Fitzroy On-Line Sunday Service (17.5.2020) after a sermon on the workings of the Holy Spirit during and after lock down...

 

Janice and I send it out as a blessing for the week ahead...

 

 

May God the Father bless us and keep us

 

May Jesus words be a lamp for our feet

 

May the Holy Spirit accompany us, abide in us, comfort us and guide us as individuals and a community of faith.

 

AMEN

HOPE

I discovered this poem as I was looking through old blogs and I thought it seemed a perfect contribution to these strange lock down times...

 

Hope is a known starling falling

Hope is the shade of an apricot tree

Hope is a dove with a leaf in its mouth

Hope is a star in the sky named for me

 

Hope is a greeting in the silence

Hope is a hand held tight in grief

Hope is a song sung in darkness

Hope is a fragile and robust belief

 

Hope is the promise you remember

Hope is the substance of a mystery

Hope is a veil that’s torn asunder

Hope is a stone that’s rolled away.

 

Hope is a decision for love and joy

And that we're going to get out of this minute

Hope is belief in tomorrow ahead

And that today we’re going to live in it.

HOW HAYDON SPENCELEY IS GETTING THROUGH CORONAVIRUS TIMES?

 

Rev Haydon Spenceley is a vicar and serves as Team Rector at The Emmanuel Group of Churches in Northampton, England. Haydon was formerly a recording artist and still does record reviews for The Clash magazine. Haydon lives with Cerebral Palsy and ministers from a wheelchair. Don't call him disabled though because this guy is way more than able!  

I was keen to interview Haydon because I was fascinated by how ministering in a wheelchair might be in these Coronavirus Times and also what insight Haydon would have spiritually on these days. I was also keen to get a few musical recommendations and boy does he deliver... 

 

When did you realise that Coronavirus would impinge on your life and ministry? 

I can remember in the week leading up to March 15th I did all the things I usually do - school visits, visiting our Church Cafe, the Foodbank we run, going in to Northampton Town where I’m Club Chaplain, swimming and so on. There’d been a home game for Northampton the Saturday before as well, before all games got cancelled on March 14th. 

It was obvious that things were going to change, but looking back on it now I don’t think we’d really understood exactly how much change there was going to be until only a few days before it happened. 

 

How has it effected what you do on a daily basis?

I last left my property on March 22nd. As I write this it’s May 12th. I’ve been outside (I’m lucky to have a garden) but I’ve not been to shops or anything else since Mothering Sunday, and even going to see my Mum that day was ‘frowned upon’. 

I’m not in the shielding group - I have Cerebral Palsy which was named as a ‘social distancing’ condition, but I took the view that caution was a decent plan early on. 

Now I’ve known a few people who have had the virus and survived it I know that, whatever the consequences might be for me if I did catch it, or for others if I inadvertently passed it on, anything I can do to avoid either happening is more than worth it. 

Whatever those who think it is being over-egged or isn’t more serious than ‘normal’ flu or whatever, it isn’t being over-egged and it is very different to ‘normal’ flu. We need to think of others and not even just our own household or family, but the whole of humanity when we make our choices about whether we follow the stipulations we’ve been given. 

I was really struck by something you said in one of your posts actually Steve about how loving your neighbour in the context of this time means doing all we can to avoid infecting anyone else and that this might come to be a re-placing of the idea of loving others. Are we all about ourselves or do we actually care what happens to other people? In these days where illnesses and deaths are measured in numbers which are rising in the thousands perhaps we need to remember that each person is a person with a story, a person with potential for a better story, a person who has immeasurable value to God. 

If we start thinking of this as a war, where there is collateral and it’s ok as long as it doesn’t come in our direction then I don’t think we can really be loving our neighbour, in which case we can’t really claiming to follow God according to Jesus’s most straightforward and foundational statement of how to do that - love God with everything we have, love self, love neighbour.

I’ve been weighing up how I feel about the idea that Churches might be able to meet together in some form in a relatively short time. I understand how important it is for many people to be able to gather in a building. I miss my own Church building, as well as the schools, cafe’s, community spaces, football club and other places I spend my time, along with gig venues and so on, but I hope we don’t get back to having public gatherings too fast. 

Ultimately, this period of waiting - let’s not call it an exile - might just teach all of us a thing or two about not being able to do what we want when we want, have what we want when we want it and so on. And I’m fortunate that the community I lead seems to be finding its feet and a home in an online gathering space too. I know that hasn’t worked for everyone. I consider myself fortunate.

 

You are in a wheelchair? That must bring its own hurdles in ministry in general. How has ministry become even more difficult in Coronavirus Times?

Yes, I am in a wheelchair even at this very moment. Sometimes I sit on a sofa or an armchair to mix it up, but the wheels on those don’t go round quickly enough to get me to where I want to go. 

Thankfully there are a growing number of people who use wheelchairs or have other impairing and disabling conditions ministering in Churches. That said there’s still a yawning gap between what is at the moment and what ought to happen if Church communities and by extension their ministry teams (of whatever sort) did what they could and featured a representative sample of the people who lived in their communities. 

Every community has impaired and disabled people in it, but by no means does every Church, and ministers or leaders, even less. 

When I was growing up I never saw someone ‘like me’ ministering and so for a long time I didn’t think it was something I would be able to do. So the first and primary obstacle was actually realising that the fact I’d never seen it wasn’t in itself a reason why I couldn’t, if I was being invited to do it by God then I should go for it. 

Of course, that took a long time, a lot of talking, thinking and reflecting and then I’ve been very fortunate to have my first couple of posts in Churches and communities where I’m able to be me and bring what I bring and learn a whole heap and make some good quality mistakes too all with support and encouragement. 

I’ve been fortunate. Not everyone is, and it saddens me beyond belief that a lot of people might be put off putting themselves forward to play their part because they think the Church has no room or no place for them. If that’s the case, it’s often the Church that needs to change. 

God calls people. It’s for us as the Church family to work out how to be able to hear God’s call and work out how to make it a reality. Disabled people are something of a prophetic instrument to the Church I think. No one with Cerebral Palsy has ever been healed of it, so probably it was deemed by God to be the best way I could live my life and be the kind of person that I’m supposed to be. 

I’ve met some ‘healing’ ministers (inverted commas deliberate - I could have said charlatans) who have begged to differ, sometimes quite forcefully. It’s funny how when the physical healing hasn’t come somehow that’s been to do with me. Especially as over the years a lot of other healing has taken place in my life which was arguably a lot more important and yet often what people most want to change about me is making sure I end up being able to walk. Or do star jumps, oddly. Whether I can walk in this life, in heaven, or if a heavenly wheelchair is one that never gets a puncture, I don’t honestly care. Others care a lot more about it, it seems to me.

That’s all an aside I suppose. Ministry in these times has actually been ok. I’ve got into a pattern. Early on, my job coach asked me what I thought the five most important things in my work were. 

I said,  “Prayer. Prep for sermons, worship and offering material to folks in my Church and community. Communicating and Leading on Pastoral Care with a Team. Keeping in touch with staff and key volunteers. Thinking about what might be new or different and what we might be invited to do after this period of time.

As I’ve been working from home all the time now I’ve been able to prioritise those things a bit more easily and still have some time for the necessarily responsive and reactive part of all this. I’m a million miles from perfect but I do feel like I’ve done this first couple of months pretty well.

Our Church is serving an area which includes 14 housing estates, has 14 schools in it, has lots of beauty and possibility and potential but also has a lot of the tough stuff to it too, with poverty, problems with gangs and serious youth violence and a lot else besides.

Our Church is not too big but we work hard to serve the people around us and we try to show the love of God to people and provide a home for the community. We want to be a family of faith where there’s always room for one more. We’ve been slow on the online ministry side of things, but this pandemic has pushed us into doing new things. I’m glad it has.

I’ve learnt a lot from people who were doing it a long time ago, people like Cole Moreton and the folks at Disability & Jesus who have been at it for years and are justifiably frustrated that everyone is excited to have found this ‘new’ thing that they’ve known about all along. I’ve met some new people through online stuff and have found that some of the people on the fringes of our community feel more comfortable and have more of a voice in this forum. Fortunately we are not a church where the minister does everything, but the online thing has brought that out all the more. It’s great to involve more and more people with each passing week. 

Also I think the fact that I visibly can’t do everything (I’m isolated at home now, but even at the best of times I have obvious limitations) is a good thing for a minister and a good thing for a Church and community to see. Everyone has limitations but a lot of people pretend they don’t or think that if they show ‘weakness’, which isn’t really weakness at all but honest humanity, they’ll be frowned on or deemed a failure. We all need to get over being people-pleasers or institution-pleasers and all that those things bring. God is pleased with our being at least as much if not more so than our doing.

 

Do you think that the government or even society in general has given enough consideration for those with physical or indeed mental disabilities during these days?

No. If I say much more than that I’ll get in more trouble than I may have already caused myself.

 

Are there any ways that we can help?

Pray. I am being quite serious. That seems to me to be the thing that we need to be doing. It almost doesn’t matter what you pray, besides praying for the governments of our countries to make wise decisions that serve the needs of all. But for me the biggest thing in prayer is that when we spend time doing it we are drawing close to God who is the source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist. 

He wants to hear from us and speak to us, yes, but I think actually what is best about prayer is when neither party involved in the prayer is saying anything at all, but actually just having the courage to stop and to just ‘be’. 

Sometimes things change when we pray, but it is also about acknowledging that I can’t do life on my own, I wasn’t ever meant to and I don’t want to. I want to acknowledge God and not try and figure it all out myself. So I’d say pray and wait, pray and breathe, pray and be still a while and then if something tells you that God wants you to go, to move, to speak, to act, go for it, but don’t rush. 

One of the beauties of this moment in all of our lives is that if we’re really honest, however busy we are and however much work we have on, we do actually have more time than most of us are used to having. Use it well. Pray before you do whatever you think of doing next. When you do something, do it for the benefit of someone else, or another group of people.

 

As well as a vicar you are a musician. Has that creativity been a help in days when creativity has been needed to share pastorally and missionally?

Yes. I have albums and used to tour and had a lot of fun for a season learning how to be a Failed Christian Pop Star. That’d make a good book title actually. Don’t nick it anyone. I’ve been writing in this season actually, but in more normal times I find it most useful in schools, where the children particularly in Primary-level education aren’t used to people talking to them one minute and then popping behind a piano the next with a song which illustrates the point I’ve been making. 

Sadly I was once called the most depressing musician in Christian music so a lot of my tunes are not exactly happy-clappy. I’ve been meaning to write some happier ones but it never seems to happen. 

 

Does your own music help you deal with the strangeness?

That’s a cracking question I could take in all sorts of directions. The strangeness of….life?…..the Church of England?…the way my beard is growing?…I suppose it does yes, I have been reminiscing a little recently and remembering how much I love writing. I’m a pretty crap pianist and an average singer at best but I worked hard at writing songs and I think I’m ok at that. 

I spent yesterday making a demo of a new song just because I wanted to and I owe myself about 4 months of TOIL by now and I got so immersed in it. It came out ok. I would never let others hear it, but the act of writing and creating used a different part of my brain and I loved being in that zone for a while. It was tiring but a good kind of tiring, a different kind. I hope one day to make another album. We’ll see.

 

Are there are any songs or albums by others that you have used as prayers of companions on the road?

I like Martyn Joseph’s new song. He has such a way of getting to the heart of things.

I’ve been using the music of Hammock to help me focus and concentrate at times recently, it’s instrumental but you can feel the heart to it. Instrumental prayers are a bit like the silence and the waiting I was talking about earlier. 

An act like Portico Quartet or Gogo Penguin can really be an aid to prayer for me, even though they have no intention of being so at all. 

There are times when a great lyric or a crashing riff can help, for instance I’ve liked Verra Cruz’s new single Like a Lion .

Recently, I’ve just discovered Pugwash (for shame, 23 years late or something like that) and so on. 

But right now I’m listening to some gorgeous piano from a French guy called Maxence Cyrin which is helping me ease into the evening. 

I review records for Under the Radar, an indie magazine in America and Clash Magazine over here, so I get to hear all sorts of new stuff. Too much really. Most recently, I wrote about this guy Alex Henry Foster who made an amazing album of really deep rock music which I only found out afterwards came from a faith-based place. That was an album about grief and loss. 

Another great recent discovery was the new Denison Witmer album on Asthmatic Kitty. Really great folk stuff.

 

Are there any lessons that you have learned during the lock down that you would like to carry on into the post lock down days?

Slow down. Most things can wait longer than you think, so then you’re around for the things that really can’t. Which includes prayerfully taking risks at the right moments. It doesn’t all depend on me, or you. It’ll only work if we really are all in it together. Whatever politics we have or slogans we get excited or annoyed by, the only peace we need is the peace the world can’t give. There’s only one place to go for that. Keep going there.

 

STOCKI SURMISES BORIS'S SPEECH

The name of this blog is Soul Surmise. It was for me to do some public surmising. So, here I go…

Boris’s speech on Sunday night.

On Sunday evening, Boris played out one of my greatest fears. For many years I have known that God gifted me with oratory. I learned in my late teens that I could hold a crowd. None of my parents ever could. The best thing about me wasn’t hereditary! It was indeed a gift. I have no grounds for boasting!

In my early 20s, when that oratory was gaining me the respect that football and golf had failed to give me, I suddenly became aware of its responsibility. The greatest danger was that I might share confused ambiguity with real conviction. That’s what I heard in Boris’s speech on Sunday night, though to be fair I have always told a good joke in my most vacuous sermons!

I facetiously paraphrase… “We are setting a clear road forward but clearly it might not happen if the science clearly tells us that we should clearly keep things the way they are. Clearly we cannot tell you anything but clearly you need to hear something.” Boris shared with such conviction that you might have been fooled into thinking that it was clear!

Now, let me say that Boris does not have an easy job. He is trying to pastor a nation and I would suggest without some of the skills necessary to do that well. Again though, most modern Prime Ministers have not seemed to need classes in how to be pastoral, though it would have done them no harm.

Coronavirus changes the skills required. This pandemic came much too fast for Britain, and indeed America, to change the quality of their leaders or the discernment of their electorate to have the right leader for the right time!

Boris is not to blame for this oratory gaff! It seems to be that he was pressurised into it. It is this that I have been surmising. What is it in the core of the modern Brit that cannot deal with the courageous behaviour needed to beat a killer virus? 

It was not lost on me that Boris’s speech was made on the very same weekend that Britain celebrated VE Day - 75 years since the nation partied at a victory over Germany in World War 2. We spent Friday remembering heroes who fought and lived through 6 years of war. We should also remember that rationing continued pretty much into the 50s.

So accidentally, or by an embarrassing serendipity, we were contrasting a nation that had the fortitude to sacrifice its way of life for over a decade and a nation that is so soft and fragile that they were selfishly pressurising the Prime Minister, desperately needing a road out of lock down after just two months! 

Now I find that I need time to surmise that. I do not want to minimise some of the difficulties that some of the population have during lock down. Food poverty is soaring, unemployment is rising and some are in difficult places of isolation. The top floor of a London tower block with 5 children under 10 will be much more challenging than where I am pontificating from.

Yet, for very many of us, lock down hasn’t changed much in our lives. We still have TV, Social media, Skype, Zoom, well stocked shops. Where is that World War 2 fortitude? A few generations later and we are so soft and mentally fragile that we need a Prime Minister to almost change “We will fight them on the beaches’’ to “we are doing all we can so that you can sunbathe on the beaches.”

My final concern with Boris’s speech was not so ambiguous. I believe that he fully believes that the next most important thing to the nation’s health is the economy. Where I might agree the importance of the economy I am suspicious of the motives and implementation of big business. I have often felt that the god of our age, the altar that we worship at and live our lives for is profit. 

I think Jesus had misgivings too. The accumulation of wealth at the cost of others seemed to have been a bug bear.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for business and a thriving economy that gives us a good health system, a good education system, good infrastructure, a place to fulfil our vocations in employment and the capacity to look after the poor and marginalised. I just don’t often see those things being as important to the business world as the stocks and share prices of the most wealthy. I have never really felt that most big businesses sit in their offices all day working out how to best serve their customers. Unaccountable capitalism needs a robust critique from the justice laid out in the Bible!

When Boris equated our mental health with a maintenance of wealth I was far from convinced. Is it possible that mental illness has increased as our society has become financially more wealthy? Could it be that the reason for such fortitude in World War 2 was because there was not as much wealth to liberally go around? That needs a PhD surmise! 

As I said at the outset, these are but surmises but they are seriously challenging thoughts. This lock down “sabbatical” is a time to winnow our society’s priorities and values. Everything seems up in the air. May God bless us by blowing away our selfish and spoiled chaff to leave us with the wheat of a more resilient and caring character than the one that doesn’t seem to have the patience to sit out this virus and to sacrifice our decadence in order to save our neighbours’… or indeed our own lives! 

As for the shift from STAY AT HOME to BE ALERT... surmising fails me! Well done, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland!

JANICE AND MY WEEKLY BLESSING - CORONAVIRUS BENEDICTION #5

(my weekly benediction from our Fitzroy service on May 10.2020. It is created from the key words of the sermon but you don't need to have heard it to understand it. Janice and I send it out as a prayer for another Coronavirus week of lockdown)

 

May God the Father be our refuge and strength,

May Jesus be our way, truth and life,

May the Holy Spirit lead us out of a refuge on a curve to change the world.

 

THE TENDER COMPASSION, TENACIOUS COURAGE AND TIRELESS CREATIVITY OF GOD

(this was my Coronavirus Column in the Belfast Telegraph on May 9th 2020...)

 

It has been said that you can take the Sun/Mon/Tues etc off your calendar because every day is just the same old same old. As a family we have been watching a film together every night we have been locked down. Groundhog Day was one of the first. We are glad. It would be too close to the bone eight to watch it now!

Many of us were aware that this would be a marathon not a sprint and in marathons you often hit the wall. I have been doing the Everest In A Month Challenge. 1000 step ups a day and if your step is high enough you could have done the equivalent of climbing Everest during the month April. My step is not big enough and a dodgy knee slowed me down. We are a week into May and I am still on the mountain. 

The first 350 steps, every day, are easy. The next 400 are tough and the last 250 you could nearly sprint! So we might be in the tough time of this Coronavirus. It is exhausting learning new practices, being confined to our homes, crossing the street to avoid neighbours, fearing loved ones going to work on the front line and grieving family members who have died. No wonder we are weary.

As a pastor I have been encouraging my congregation to find comfort in God. I believe that God is tenderly compassionate. I believe he is not a God out in space but a God who lived among us and understands. 

Jesus hit the wall. The night before the cross Jesus prayed that God would take his suffering away. In the prayer he found a second wind and got off his knees to get through the cross and the ticker tape finish of resurrection. 

God therefore empathises. Jesus is able to sympathise with our current inner turmoil. You can seek him in the heat of the monotony of just another day and the anxiety that brings.

Yet there is more. Jesus shows tender compassion but he also gives an example of tenacious courage. We need courage right now. Courage to battle through the monotony as we wait for lock down to be lifted. It will save lives if we can dig in and see this marathon through.

Jesus example is an inspirational one, whether you believe him to be God or not. Here was a man who showed fortitude and inner strength to make his way through an unjust suffering. His claim was that he did it for others. He asked us that we would follow him. We need to follow with his tenacious courage in this marathon.

Maybe we should see another day not as another tedious day but as another day of opportunity. There are many ways that we can actually ease the struggle of others. A phone call or a text, a letter sent (remember those) or a social media message might make all the difference for someone who feels alone or under pressure. 

Let us not underestimate the power of knowing that someone is thinking of you. To be remembered. To be known. There is a very simple yet profoundly powerful opportunity for every single one of us to love our neighbour. 

As well as the tender compassion of God and the tenacious courage of Jesus there is a tireless creativity of the Holy Spirit. We are all invited to involve ourselves in such a creativity. Imagining what is achievable from our kitchen and front room. That might in itself ease our tedium as we reach out to help others through the marathon of these Coronavirus Times. 

HOW IS JUBILEE FARM COPING THROUGH CORONAVIRUS TIMES - INTERVIEW WITH JONNY HANSON

Jubilee Farm, in Glynn near Larne, County Antrim is a radical venture of Christian praxis. It is a new community-led, Christian-based agricultural and environmental co-operative, well on the way to establishing the first community-owned farm in Northern Ireland.

I caught up with Farm Manager Jonny Hanson to ask him how a community farm works when community has been closed down due to Coronavirus. As ever Jonny is practical and insightful in his responses.

 

What was happening on the farm before you were locked down?

After a challenging first year of operations, we were just hitting our stride at the start of our second: seedlings were being planted for a doubling of our vegbox production; there were pigs of all shapes, sizes and stages - everywhere; our wheelchair-accessible greenhouse was being built; refugees and asylum seekers, referred to us one day per week from the International Meeting Point, and adults with learning difficulties, referred to us two days per week from the NHSCT, were participating in our care farming programmes; we'd signed up our first two partner churches to our church partnership programme, with a third in the pipeline (no Presbyterian ones yet though 😉); we'd recently taken part in a series of high profile events, including the 4 Corners Festival and headlining the NI Science Festival Sustainability Fair; and to top it all, on the 18th March - the day we had to close the farm to all non-essential visits - we were profiled in the Belfast Telegraph.

 

At what stage did you are start thinking that you might have to close?

Because we were having twice-weekly visits from NHS service users and staff we were aware by early March that our care farming visits from the NHSCT were likely to be put on hold. By St Patrick's Day we realised that all non-essential visits would also have to be cancelled for the foreseeable future.

 

What way does the lock down impinge on the farm?

The greatest strength of a community farm is that in does what it says on the tin: it involves the community in the farm, and all the varied activities and processes that take place on and off it. But at the moment, that strength is also our greatest weakness because the majority of the community aspects - care farming, educational and church visits, community volunteer days, internships -  are on hold. 

That has created two interrelated problems for us: 1) Our income from services, which are a key part of our social enterprise business model, has disappeared; 2) Our access to labour, whether staff, volunteer or intern, has reduced significantly, causing particular problems in the market garden, which is the most labour intensive part of our operation. 

 

Are there ways that you can use the downtime?

Our 3 children have been drafted in to help with particular tasks, such as packing the biweekly vegboxes, which are still going out. It's also given us space as an organisation to think about our operations over the last year: what worked well, what didn't, what we need more of, and what we need less of. We're also keeping up our communications, providing stories and images of life on the farm, in that sense bringing the farm to the community.

 

Are there are any ways that the public can help you?

You can buy our pork - either quarter pigs or sausages and burgers - or make a donation. You can pray for us. If you're free on Tuesdays, you could also come and volunteer in the market garden, which is consistent with official guidelines, subject to social distancing and other safeguards being in place. You can also sign up to our monthly email newsletter via our website and follow us on social media.

 

What are you planning for what this is all over?

Getting all our community services - care farming, church partnerships, school visits, community volunteer days - up and running again. We're currently researching and scoping out an extended care farming project with refugees and asylum seekers, which would extend our provision to 3 days per week, but also work with a partner organisation to train and resource a network of social farms across Northern Ireland to do the same (our community consultation questionnaire on the proposed project is here - please fill it in). 

We're also about to submit a planning application for our multi-purpose barn, which is another exciting project that will greatly expand our facilities at Jubilee Farm, for people and other animals.

 

Any books on the Environment that we can be reading in this downtime?

In general, I'm wary of seeing 'the environment' as a separate topic that we need separate books on, that we can then choose to read or ignore, depending on our interests and preferences. Rather, integrating and noticing environmental issues in every aspect of society, culture and the economy, including fiction and non-fiction books, is a key thing. 

For instance, I've just finished reading George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and was struck by the fact that, even in the grimdark fantasy world of Westeros, environmental issues such as land - conflict over it - and weather - winter is coming - dictate life. Therefore for Westeros as for planet earth: there is no history without geography. 

Similarly, I've also recently read No Short Cuts to the Top by Ed Viesturs, the first American to climb all of the 14 peak over 8,000m. It's an extraordinary tale of his adventures but it reminded me of an extraordinary fact: be it viruses, climate chaos or indomitable mountains, humanity, and its house of cards, is very fragile, especially when compared to the awesome power of the natural world, on which it is utterly dependent. A good dose of humility is therefore prescribed for the human race, along with a Covid-19 vaccine.

 

more info and how to donate and buy - https://www.jubilee.coop/jubileefarm/

HOW I DO SUNDAY SERVICES AND SERMONS - CORONAVIRUS PERSONAL REFLECTIONS #7

My friend David Dark brought the phrase to my attention. He said it was from Marshall McLuhan - “Anyone who thinks that there is a difference between education and entertainment does not know the first thing about either.”

If ever those words were true then they are true in these Coronavirus Times of Sunday Church Services online.

It makes sense. Much of what we have learned in a formal setting in our lives was through people, books, films or songs that grabbed us creatively and imaginatively. That is the entertaining end of education. 

More worrying (and for another blog) are those who think that entertainment doesn’t educate. If you walk into a cinema with such a misunderstanding then you are opening your mind and your heart and your soul to be sold some lies and sold them with dangerous consequences.

Boring Church services are a disservice to God and the Scriptures in a plethora of ways but you do not get off with such boredom when your services are on-line. The entertainment level needs more consideration, never at the cost of education but actually for the sake of education.

For me, the entertainment consideration of services going out on on Fitzroy TV means that we need to be more focused, more intentional, more weighty.

The length needs to be shorter. The sermon time too. A congregation’s attention span is different if they are watching on their TV, even less on a lap top, smart phone or tablet. I am attempting to be as succinct as possible. In some places the entertaining throw away in the live setting is jettisoned for brevity.

There is also more weightiness to choice of hymns or songs or readings or other little additions. 

One week, we threw in a video from the slums of Kampala. I felt it would be a creative (entertaining) way into my prayers for the how other parts of the world were dealing with the virus. It ended up a crucial part of that Sunday’s ministry, giving perspective and inspiration. I have been more intentional ever since.

A song helps. As well as the worship songs, we have being including a performance pieces, a bit like Presbyterian anthem (but nothing like!). Jonny Fitch’s cover of Martyn Joseph’s Sunday’s Coming was hope-filled. Martyn himself allowing us to use When We Get Through this a fortitude strengthener. Talitha Bowman’s vulnerable rendition of Laura Daigle’s Rescue had a similar prayerful quality.

Then there are the video lifters. An amazing presentation of our Sounds Good Family Orchestra on Resurrection Sunday was a seriously joyous celebration. Over 20 players in their own homes coming together alone. It brought a smile to the face as well as the soul. Vital in these times.

So to the sermon. Again, a new focus to regular rhythms.

I quickly realised the importance of eye balling the camera. People are in lock down. They are not seeing people. That someone looked them in the eye made a difference.

That is not new for me. I was terrified to look down in the few years that I spoke in Coffee Bars across Ireland in the 80s. It meant I memorised my talks so that I could eye ball the tough guys in the room. It worked.

That skill is vital now, yet it has also meant a new way to prepare. In Coronavirus Times I am preparing visually, with diagrams as much as words. It is vital when we press record that I see the sermon laid out in my mind and can therefore speak directly into people’s lives.

The content too. Again, I have the same aims but there has been an intensity of application. When I read the pericope for Sunday’s sermon it sends me off in my imagination. 

I am scanning Scripture for similar themes BUT just as important I am scanning the pews of Fitzroy, seeking God’s imagination as to how this ancient text will come alive in the lives of Fitzroy members, as individuals and as a congregation.

Last week’s listening was done by Janice who sensed Fitzroy, and the wider world, hitting a 40 day wall. With a text in John 10, on Good Shepherd Sunday, it didn’t take long for the Spirit to bring those things together. When one member said that my sermons are “fulfilling the exact needs we have” I thank God for preparing me over 40 years for a time such as this and the privilege of being part of his hovering over our Coronavirus dark void, creating.

My perpetual prayer request, just now, is that God will continue to inspire me to apply the Word to these particular times. My thankfulness to God is how he has been preparing for 40 years, for this exact moment. I can work out how to re-adjust when life gets back to “normal”!