Our Big Day Out.

Between showers from the cable-car.

Today I could dress-down for school. Today was the day when everyone went out on the end of year trip. My Year Group were going to Flamingo Land: eight coachloads of over-excited fourteen year olds and their teachers and support staff off to a theme park in North Yorkshire. In the rain.

I am not really a Form Tutor. My role is as acting tutor and cover long-term absence: Mrs Kazmi left at Christmas and I have had her form for the rest of the year. "They're not my form. They're Mrs. Kazmi's. I am just looking after them until they get a replacement tutor." became my mantra, particularly in the presence of senior management just in case they got any silly ideas. I still had them for longer than Mrs. Kazmi ever did. I have grown to quite like them - well most of them anyway. Not so much that I was cut up when in some administrative error I was put on a different coach to them, however. They got the Headteacher.

I was on the same coach as Shakir which was a good omen for the day. For him too. When I am with him people are less likely to think he is a suicide bomber. Its the beard. And the brown skin, obviously. He is leaving at the end of the week and is going to teach at an international school in Saudi Arabia.

"Is it true you're going to re-hab, Sir?"

"What?"

"I heard you were leaving to go to re-hab."

"No. I'm going to Riyadh."

Thanks for your unstinting service. Have a day out with your form at Flamingo Land.

"Sir, did you know that Susan Boyle has been recruited to the war against terror? Once the terrorists realise she's a virgin they'll be less likely to be suicide bombers."

"Thank you Alex. Put your seat belt on."

As we left the car park we passed by the room where those who were not to be trusted on a rewards trip were under house arrest. Shakir and I just managed to conceal our glee as we espied all the usual suspects pretending that they didn't care about not going out for the day. Some of the kids in front of us on the coach were less inhibited, making "Knob-head" signs. We felt they had a point so we decided not to remonstrate with them.

"Has Mr. Brocklesby been naughty then? Only he's got to stay with them."

"It's O.K. He has a set of science weights."

Aren't teenagers a joy to travel with?

"Are we here?"

"Yes, we're definately here."

"Is it going to rain all day?"

"I don't know."

"You're a teacher. You're supposed to know. Look it up on your laptop."

"Oh silly me. I forgot to pack it with my cagool and sandwiches."

"I can look it up on my mobile phone Sir. What's the web address?"

"www.BBC.co.UK/weather."

"I can't find it."

"Read it back to me."

"www.BBC.co.UK/whether."

There is a lull. Someone decides to play music on their phone.

"Do you have anything with a tune?"

"Is that it?"

"No. That's an electricity pylon."

"I feel sick."

"Don't give her a bin bag. Put her in it and tie it up."

"Are we there yet?"

"Yes."

"No we aren't."

"Then why ask?"

"Is this it?"

"No. These are roadworks. We've driven for an hour to drive over bumpy ground to give you the impression of a white-knuckle ride. We're going home now."

"Is that it?"

"No. That's a grain silo."

"There aren't any buildings."

"This is called the countryside. You see those things over there?"

"Yes."

"They're called trees. And those black and white things standing in that field: they're beefburgers at an earlier stage."

We overtake a coachload of pensioners.

"Are they going to Flamingo Land Sir?"

"Yes. There's a new white-knuckle ride. It's called the Mobility Scooter drop."

"Is there?"

I doze for a while.

"Is this it?"

"Yes."

"No. stop messing about."

"No. Actually it is. The clues are the big sign that says Welcome to Flamingo Land and the car park with forty coaches in it."

Mr Delaney starts to count the pupils.

"Shouldn't you have done that before we sat out?"

"It's for the tickets numb-nut."

We stood in line as he dished out the tickets.

"Hang on. I've got one left over."

"How many did you get?"

"Thirty two."

"There are thirty one on the coach. Numb nut yourself."

"What do I do with this then?"

"See you."

We filed out and into the theme park and Shakir and I headed to the far end of the park and a nice cafe for the biggest chocolate muffin ever and a coffee, served with little enthusiasm by a young lady from Slovakia.

"Can we sit outside?"

"Eet rain."

"Not at the moment."

"I haf to whip taybel." Only she didn't so we sat inside and watched the world go by. This involved a ringside seat at the newest ride (no, not the mobility scooter drop) but the Mumbo Jumbo. (Big Fanfare.) This has "the most extreme drop in roller coaster history, followed by a host of twists, spins and turns."



Personally, I'd rather lick my own armpits but our lot seemed happy to queue for three weeks for a two minute ride.

I suppose once you've done one theme park you've done them all.

It's not exactly Disneyland.

Still we wandered around the zoo area and had a good laugh at the Meercats, found the two semi-submerged blobs that are rumoured to be Hippos deeply disappointing, were turned off by that red arse-thing that Baboons have going on, fell in love with the Giraffes, failed to see any Lions, watched the Emus steaming after the rain and had a very close encounter with a Tiger.



One wonders whether they should be quite so free-range.

Satisfied by this we decided to risk the little train thing that skirts the park. White-knuckle it was not but it got us from a-b and then we came back again on the monorail and once more on the cable car. This, we felt, would enable us to answer in the affirmative when our kids asked us if we'd been on anything.

And then one of those showers we'd been warned of hit. Actually it was the monsoon.




"I think this is now officially a disaster." Shakir said as we sheltered under an awning and I ate a portion of chips and he ate a Philadelphia cream-cheese sandwich. ("We've not been to Tescos yet") I wouldn't say it was a long shower but we both felt able to sing the irritating tune that was piped out into the Muddy Duck Farm area for the rest of the day. Indeed, I am humming it it as I type.

We took shelter in the reptile house. This was surprisingly interesting and we came across snakes, frogs, gekkos, skinks and lizards in all shapes and sizes. I was particularly impressed by the snake that some people in some foreign place keep as house pets to keep the rodent population down. The information point helpfully told us they were docile. It didn't, however, say whether or not they were poisonous. I didn't feel one could take it for granted.

It isn't a huge theme park and we soon got the measure of it bumping into groups of kids (high on adrenalin and e-numbers) and pairs of staff as we went.

All too soon the unalloyed joy came to an end and we were back on the coaches. There was much comparing of notes. "Did you go on.....?"

"Did you see that girl being sick. It was awewsome!"

"Let's play a game to pass the time."

"No, please, let's not."

"I spy with my little eye something beginning with A. D'ya give in? D'ya? D'ya? Air. Hahahaha. I win. My turn again."

"How about a game of "My shopping basket?"

"If I must."

"In my shopping basket I've got..." And in turn each participant adds something to the list while remembering and reciting all the items which preceded it in order.

"In my shopping basket I have got a pair of flip flops, hair extensions, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, a takeaway curry, a car, a private jet...."

"You missed out the lemur, the lion, the mars bar and the hamburger."

"Look. The lion ate the lemur and I ate the mars bar and the hamburger. I win. Right?"

"Mr. Laher said you were on songs of Praise." Shakir seems suddenly absorbed by something out of the window."

I smile at him. "You're going to die."

And we never saw a flamingo all day.

The Curious Incident of the Teacher and the Charge of Attempted Murder.

British newspapers (and the Daily Mail) have been full of this incident over the last few days. It seems that on Wednesday of last week Peter Harvey, a 49 year old science teacher recently back at work after recovering from a stroke or stress, depending on which account you read, assaulted a fourteen year old boy called Jack Waterhouse at All Saints' Roman Catholic School in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. The assault, which involved two other children, left the pupil unconscious in a pool of blood and with a fractured skull as the result of being hit with science weights.

On the radio one broadcaster concluded the news item with the comment "We send our children to school with the expectation that they will be safe."

Now, call me a cynical old teacher (27 years service) but I also think we send our children to school with the expectation that they will behave themselves appropriately.

What has been interesting about this case is that since Peter Harvey has been in custody the pupils of his school have been out in force SUPPORTING him, even taking cards to the police station where he has been held. I doubt this is the outcome that the media, who are very good at bashing teachers, expected.

My colleagues and I were discussing this on Friday and the general consensus - all speculation I may add - is that the poor man lost it and lost it big time. This led on to a conversation about why a much respected teacher would do that in a moment of madness he will surely regret for the rest of his life. We could all (a totally unscientific survey) to a man and woman recount situations when we have come close to losing it big time: the boy who squares up to a teacher, the girl who screams "Fucking Cunt" repeatedly when her make-up is confiscated, the herd mentality which causes kids to stand passively by while a fight takes place, or, worse, to egg the participants on while chanting "Fight, Fight", the parent who threatens to call the police because you have used your poiny finger on their child, the boy who screams into the face of a teacher who had remonstrated about his behaviour. All these, by the way, are examples from my own school in the last term and the school photos of each child suggest a little angel in whose mouth butter would not melt.

Now I would not wish to suggest that physical assault is in any way acceptable but I do wonder what planet some of our political leaders inhabit if they are not aware of the huge underlying problem of pupil behaviour in schools. Respect is increasingly a thing of the past; low level disruption, chellenging behaviour, the barrack-room lawyer mentality and levels of disaffection are all on the increase. In addition, it is virtually impossible to permenantly suspend a pupil: schools incur a three figure financial penalty for every child they manage to get through the levels of red-tape and remedial support schemes to exclusion. That child has then by law to be picked up by another school. We have one such recent admission and he is a nightmare. The problem is not solved, merely moved, the original school is financially worse off into the bargain and the new school will in all likelihood go through the same process. Perhaps the case of poor Mr. Harvey might just cause our leaders to pause and ask some searching questions about what is happening in schools.

Please pray for Jack Waterhouse and his family.

I shall be praying for Peter Harvey and his. There but for the grace of God.....

The vexed question of music in church.

Pastor Mark and I did our famous double act on Sunday morning. We arrived to find the Polish congegation still entrenched in church and running over time as usual. They are naughty: they worship in Polish once a month but even though most of them have been here since 1939 and could, therefore be assumed to have a reasonable grasp of English, they won't come to the English language service for the other three weeks of the month. Neither will their children or grandchildren.

Is there something about the Polish psyche or does Bishop Walter just choose the worst possible dirges for hymns and then insist that they be played really, really slowly? Still it made our lot sound wonderful by comparison. (There is a belief in the congregation, which included his wife, that Bishop Walter only chooses hymns known to him and the rest of us just have to struggle.) When Mark or I are in charge we go for the well known - often (and I blush to confess) - selecting hymns on the basis of their tunes rather than their theological content. I have refined this. We now only sing four verses regardless unless it is the last hymn and more only if it is a particularly popular and rousing number. As one who thinks there should be a bylaw against ANY singing before mid-day, and as I always make people stand up to sing (so unlutheran) in order to reaquaint themselves with their diaphragms, I won't have a hymn that goes higher than D natural on the stave: some of these composers were clearly masochists. Fortunately we are blessed to have Nev, who is not easy to phase, at the organ. However, choosing the hymn by tune does have a serious disadvantage if you don't actually check the words too: there was the famous occasion when I felt I had to stop a hymn because it was becoming clear that it was a wedding hymn. The congregation said they didn't care because they liked the tune and so we carried on.

We are also experimenting with music generally. I say we: I mean me. When Bishop Walter is in charge we MUST sing. (There must be a little known edict in the Book of Concord somewhere.) It doesn't matter what particular combination of the congregation is there, or even whether or not Nev is there. I am sure everyone is familiar with the sort of forced, unenthusiastic community singing that goes on in old people's homes. Well it's often like that with us. With the addition of Bishop Walter singing loudly and with great enthusiasm, and half a tone flat, dragging the rest of us somewhat reluctantly, and often mortified, in his wake.

Mark has no pretentions to musicality and I suspect that he might rather die than be heard singing in public.

I, on the other hand, sing in a prestigious choir, which makes me, as Rachel regularly points out, something of a musical snob. If Nev isn't with us I would rather we didn't sing at all and I sense that the congregation feels the same. Instead, when I'm in charge, I like to bring CDs of reflective religious music from a variety of genre to play at various points during the service. Mark likes this too.

I sense I might also be dangerously radical - in Leeds Lutheran terms. One Sunday recently neither Mark nor Walter were at church and so I suggested to Nev that we might try a little Taize chant during the intercessions. Nev thought this was a good idea and we decided to use the chant "O Lord hear my prayer": while I led the prayers Nev simply played the tune quietly and then the congregation sang the chant as an intercessory response to each prayer. I introduced the idea to what must have been a record small congregation and explained the deal: as neither of my supervisors were in church, if this experiment didn't work we would never speak of it again. If it did work then we would introduce it more often. I thought it was a disaster but they absolutely loved it and were very keen to use Taize again.

I have to say this probably goes to the heart of the whole debate about change or die. I know all the arguments about chucking out the baby with the bath water but really we can't carry on with the same tired patterns and expect to be a congregation people want to join.

Thought for the Day: G8, Christianity and Climate Change.

BBC Radio 4, 8th July 2009

In the place where the earth quaked to devastating effect the leaders of the world's richest nations will meet today for the G8 Summit in L'Aquila. Global recession and climate change will be on the agenda. And tonight here in London the Prince of Wales will give the Dimbleby Lecture. He too will be addressing global problems.

Over in Italy at the G8 Summit President Obama will be leading the session on Copenhagen. Unless America comes to the table with serious proposals the deal will not be worth the laptop it's printed from.

But it's what's happening in the Republican party in America that's so vital. The President's People know that whatever deal they strike in Copenhagen has got to get through the Senate - and it's there they need Republican votes to get a majority.

So cut to Washington, a week ago today and more specifically to the Washington Post and an article about the President's Climate Bill.It was a story about how 8 Republicans in the House of Representatives had voted for the President's proposals on climate change.

But that's not why the story's so big. The author of the article which ends by commending their action as "admirable" was none other than Mike Gerson, once President Bush's Chief Speech Writer.

His conversion to the realities of climate change and the need to save the rainforests show a major shift and rift in the Republican Party. Crucial, if President Obama is to get Copenhagen through Congress.

Mike Gerson is known not just as one of the conservative intellectuals but as a person of deep religious conviction.

For him as for all Christians the earth is sacred, for according to the New Testament, it has come into being 'through and for Christ'.

To see the planet desecrated is to behold the undoing of God's creation, which is why it's not just a political but a moral and theological issue.

There's a famous Liverpool poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. In a poem called "Binsey Poplars" he laments the wanton felling of trees. It's almost an ode to the destruction of our forests and our changing climate.

"O if we but knew what we do when we delve or hew - Hack and rack the growing green!"

Well, over a hundered years later we do now know! And it would be good for the earth if the G8 leaders in L'Aquila knew it too!


The Rt Rev. James Jones

Thought for the Day: St. Paul's Cathedral, Artwork and contemplation

BBC Radio 4: July 9th

The contemporary artist Bill Viola was on this programme yesterday, speaking about his latest project that involves installing several large plasma video screens at St Paul's Cathedral. Down one side of Wren's great masterpiece, these screens will play images of the Virgin Mary, and down the other, images of martyrdom.

In his interview with Bill Viola, John Humphreys seemed a little sniffy about the whole idea - and I suspect he won't be alone. I imagine quite a few people will think it inappropriate to have all this technological wizardry in such a beautiful house of prayer.

Perhaps this lack of ease originates in the association that screens have with noisy video games or fast moving action movies. But the thing is, Bill Viola's work could hardly be more different. For in Viola's fantastically moody videos, things often happen very very slowly indeed. Sometimes the image looks motionless - or just makes the slightest of movements, giving the impression of an even greater stillness than a fixed image ever could. In his work Reflecting Pool Viola invites us to sit for several minutes and watch the ripples and reflections in a pond.

In other words, Bill Viola demands that we give him our time. Which means that impatient people like me - who have the ability to skip through a traditional art gallery in ten minutes, often looking out for little more the next picture I recognise - are forced to stop and wait and watch and take their time. And that is exactly what a place like St Paul's Cathedral has been trying to get people to do for centuries.

Outside the cathedral, the city of London races on at a thousand miles an hour, with banks making millions of trades a minute. Inside the cathedral, people are led along by the completely different rhythms of matins and choral evensong. Here is time to think and be still.

This is why, in my view, Bill Viola's artworks are entirely appropriate for the cathedral. For Viola does not feed the impatient ego, forever greedy for the next new experience or the next glittering distraction. Rather, his work takes its lead from the wisdom of contemplative prayer where many have discovered in the discipline of silence profound sources of human nourishment that can shape our lives. We are often only aware of these when we remove ourselves from the maelstrom of perpetual forward motion where the big questions of life are easily and conveniently dodged. And I wonder if - amidst all this current talk of regulating banks and financial controls - the very simple proposition that we ought to slow things down a bit might actually have a far greater impact on our destructive boom and bust philosophy than any government legislation could ever hope to have.

Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser

Thought For The Day: The Human Face of "The Axis of Evil"

From BBC Radio 4, 2nd July:

The columnist Jonathan Freedland, writing about the recent riots and upheavals in Iran, made a very interesting observation in yesterday's Guardian. "Seven years ago" he wrote "Bush cast Iran as the axis of evil, a faraway, abstract place clothed in black and bent on destruction. Now the world's people have seen that Iranians have a human face." Freedland goes on to argue that, having seen the human face of the Iranian people, the old style belligerence of the United States has become all but impossible.

This connection between moral obligation and the human face is one that was extensively explored by that great twentieth century philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas. Famously, Levinas argued that: "To see a face is already to hear: 'Thou shalt not kill." For Levinas, the concrete human encounter with the face of the other is the basis for all moral obligation. Simply put, in its nakedness and vulnerability, the human face cries out not be be harmed.

It might be assumed that behind Levinas's moral philosophy is that thought that the face of the other introduces moral responsibility because it reveals that the other is, at base, just like us. That, in terms of Freedland's article, a war between Iran and the US is less likely because the US people now recognize how much they have in common with the people of Iran. This may be Freedland's point, but it's not what Levinas is saying.

On the contrary, Levinas argues that the face of the other is indeed other, that it has an irreducible mystery, a certain something that cannot be collapsed back to me or stuff about me. Too much of the time, Levinas argues, we try to reduce uncomfortable difference back into things that we understand and feel comfortable with, forever translating difference into familiar sameness. In the Bible our moral obligations are supremely to the stranger, to the person who is different to me. What is so challenging about Levinas is that he demands we take seriously the sheer otherness of the other.

And indeed, for Levinas, this is just as important when thinking about God. For with God we are constantly seeking to retranslate God's otherness back into comfortable immanence, making God all about me and my life. But the inscrutible God who appears in the burning bush or the cloudy mountain top ought not to be so easily requisitioned by my own needs. Against the tide of popular assumptions for which everything is returned to the familiar, always defined in terms that centre my culture and my understanding, Levinas posits the enigmatic and the mysterious, the genuinely different and supremely other. This is the face of the stranger. And this is the face that cries out and pleads: 'do not harm me'.

Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser

Ordination

Today is the day when the Church of England ordains its Deacons. Please pray for those who are to be ordained today, especially the other leavers from the Yorkshire Ministry Course.

Rachel and I will be in Sheffield Cathedral this evening to celebrate with my dear friends Hilda and Dr. Bob (real name Richard).

As the ordinations are on the same day, sadly I can't get to Bradford Wakefield and York to celebrate with my other friends.

One day this may be me.

Internal Dialogue

I was looking back in my writings and found some notes I had made when I was getting to grips with the idea of vocation. This seems to be a good time to dust it off.

God wants me to be a priest. (Well I’m pretty sure he does anyway.) I know! Me! Of all people!

Right. Two things on that. Firstly you may want to consider how you express that to other people if you want to avoid the men in white coats being sent for and secondly, we’ve been here before haven’t we?

Yes we have, at various stages throughout my adult life. But that’s the point. It won’t go away.

So … what… you’ve heard voices? What did I say about men in white coats?

Don’t start.

So how have you heard this call if not through voices?

Well not voices in my head certainly: it’s been a long standing feeling that asserts itself now and then and demands that I pay attention to it. Sometimes it comes through the things that others say in conversation or through hearing a sermon – very much so this time, through my own private devotional time and ... erm … oh dear … erm … through dreams.

Dreams!

Look, I’d really rather not overstate this one, O.K. They were just part of a whole wider thing.

So let’s just consider what happened last time you felt this call.

I know. It came to nothing. Perhaps the timing wasn’t God’s timing: but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a call. Maybe that’s why it seems so insistent now.

And the times before that?

I think those times were preparatory nudges. It was first mentioned when I was twenty for goodness sake: no-one becomes a priest in their twenties. Well hardly anyone. And the other times … well, I don’t think I was in the right place, spiritually, emotionally, geographically … I’m not even in the same denomination as I was then.

So you rationalised those nudges away?

Yes.

But you’re taking this one seriously?

I think I may have run out of excuses.

And you think you have what it takes?

I don’t know. What does it take? I’ve been a committed Christian for thirty five years or so. I’ve been around more clergy in one guise or another than I care to remember all my adult life and I’ve discerned no particular model. Do I have what it takes? Other people have seemed to think so and in the end it’s not down to me is it?

So what do you think you have to offer?

Well, I’m a Theology graduate, a qualified teacher and a qualified counsellor. I’ve had up-front leadership roles in the church for years and I am a licensed Lay Minister: you’d think that was a good starting point wouldn’t you? But it’s not like I can pop down the careers office is it? It’s not a job like other jobs. “Good morning. Got any leaflets on vicaring?” You don’t choose it. It chooses you. Who in their right mind would choose it anyway – other than masochists obviously? It’s not exactly a career choice. It doesn’t offer great pay and prospects with high status and lots of fringe benefits. If anything it’s really counter-cultural in that respect. Long hours, low status and low pay. You may even not get paid at all with the way church finances are these days and have to carry in your other job to pay your way. Yippee. Bring it on.

You’re not exactly selling it.

Sorry. You see I’m trying to use unchurchy language here which isn’t easy. My clergy friends talk about mission and ministry and service and despite what I just said there is the privilege of working with God. It has to be awesome in every sense surely? I see priesthood as being with people; being an advocate for them and seeing God in them while desperately hoping that they see God in me. I just have a problem with unpacking mission and ministry and service and really hope they don’t encompass the sugary and lobotomised “Just come to Jesus” approach, the aggressive evangelism which says “Well I’ve done my bit. I’ve told you about Jesus. You’re going to die in your sins so don’t blame me.” or the “It’s in the Bible so you’d better believe it.” style because I think they are all basically signs of inauthentic religion and I’d rather lick my own armpits than buy into any of that.

That’s not very pious.

I don’t do pious. It’s not in my repertoire – not unless I’m messing about anyway. I’m too pragmatic for that. My feet are firmly on the ground and my head is nowhere near the clouds. For goodness sake I’m an Enneagram profile four which if you apply it to Biblical characters puts me fairly and squarely (and unsurprisingly) in Thomas’s camp.

Anyway, you don’t like Christians. You’re always telling people that.

That’s not strictly true. I have a love-hate relationship with the church but that’s true of most people I know. As for Christians they are a hard group not to make generalisations about or stereotype. I do have a thing about “Not in my name” when I rant about the nutters on the fringes who do mad things. You know: Dickheads for Jesus, that sort of thing. In the end I don’t think people take enough notice of personality types and churchmanship. I was never destined to be a Pentecostalist or a Creationist because my brain just doesn’t work that way. Anyway, I have to say I sometimes wonder what “Christian” means when I see so many poor role models and interdenominational bad-tempered exchanges. Take the Phelps clan in Topeka. Am I supposed to call them Christian and if I do am I not tarred with the same brush for calling myself a Christian too?

So what will you do about this calling?

I have no choice. I have to follow it up or I’ll never have peace.

Are you sure you’re up for this? For the emotional turmoil; the possibility of rejection; the disruption to your family, professional and social lives; the additional study; people perceiving you differently ….?

Am I sure? No, given a free choice I wouldn’t want any of those things but I don’t feel I have a free choice. I have to follow it up. It isn’t going away. Things will never be the same again.

Prayer Request

The Examinations Committee of the LCiGB meets tomorrow. One of the things it will discuss is my progression to the next stage. It will look at references and reports and at the essay task it gave me.

Your prayers would be appreciated.

Dr. Bob and I in 20 yrs time.

Uncanny, isn't it?

(The Vicar and Mr Yeatman from Dad's Army: a much loved comedy classic series)



Sorry: I can't find part 1