With a mind made up

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.

(for non latin speakers (!) a translation is here.)

You know, my paternal Grandfather was born a Roman Catholic. He died aboard HMS Martin in 1942, so I never got to ask him why he converted to Anglicanism. I'd often wondered whether it was in order to get married, but my dad thinks it was because in the Navy in World War 1 they had church parade on board ship - it was just for Church of England. If you were from any other church you had to scrub the anchor chain instead. Easy decision I guess, but in a strange way I resent that it was pretty much forced upon him by institutional religion (in this case the C of E).
 
And that is perhaps part of why I have such an ambivalent attitude to the Pope,which I have all the time and am only talking about now obviously because of the visit and the beatification of Cardinal Newman. On the one hand I respect the man as an elder, as a man who (let's face it)  has a very difficult job, and actually as a man who talks about Jesus a lot. I feel sorry for him becaus he is constantly in the media glare and everywhere he goes we will be reminded by tabloid and broadsheet alike that he was in the Hitler Youth etc. I also feel sorry for the guy because his is not  a job you can retire from. On top of that when he was criticised last week it was usually by people who are critical of Christianity per se so by implication I stood with him on some of those issues.

Roman Catholicism is the religion of my Father's family (though  they were originally Irish Quakers who were disowned for "marrying out") and if Grandpa had been a bit more devout I might have been in the crowd yesterday as His Holiness beatified John Henry Newman. I'm certainly with Macca when it comes to the Irish question.
 
On the other hand I frequently find it hard to respect him, or more spcifically the church he speaks for and leads. It is hard to avoid the terrorism of the IRA. It is hard to avoid (especially in my role as Child Protection Officer for the benefice) the complete mess that has been caused by the Catholic church's attitude to paedophile priests in the past. It is hard to avoid the hideous behaviour of the conquistadores' priests in Latin and South America. It is hard to avoid the current disater area that is Catholic Africa facing up to HIV and AIDS without the aid of condoms. In a nutshell it is hard to avoid the fact that the Roman Catholic church has had too much power and has let it go to their heads, doctrinally (Papal infallibility,  ) socially (the Christian Brothers, especially in Ireland and Australia) and morally (AIDS in Africa again). There are so many reasons to agree with people like Stephen Fry or Peter Tatchell.

But I just can't do that and its more than just a family thing. I suspect that my mechanism for coping with this love/hate relationship with the Holy See is to make a disctinction between religion and faith. It is religious ethinicity, not faith and spirituality that caused the Troubles. It was misguided imperialism disguised as mission, not genuine evangelisation (even in the Catholic sense) that decimated the aboriginal population of South America. Roman Catholic faith and devotion can be seen as admirable (though wasn't it ironic to have an epistle re-iterating the uniqueness of Christ as mediator yesterday!), even if the institution itself is hard to stomach.

So for every Cortez there is a Boff and a St Francis Xavier
for every Walter Kaspar there is a Mother Teresa of Calcutta and a Vincent Donovan

And let's not forget the rapprochement that the Charismatic movement has brought about. In many ways it is my charismatic spirituality that helps me find connections with Catholic devotion and spirituality. Franciscan and Ignatian approaches to spirituality, the Lectio Divina Bible reading approach, and the good side of hagiography have all enhanced my personal prayer life and faith over the years.

In a sense the Roman Catholic Church is like my dog; most of the time (to me anyway) docile and harmless, but occasionally prone to getting out of control with disastrous consequences for itself and others at a great emotional (and even financial) cost to me. I keep wondering whether to kick it out but can't bring myself to be parted from a faithful companion.

I laugh at jokes about the Pope but I secretly think I ought not to. Am I the only one in this place?

P.S if you can get the source of that lyric in the title without using an internet search then you probably ought to get out more

I'll never be the same [again]

So, got back from New Wine North and East late last night. Still got lots to process (which I will eventually get around to blogging about) but we had a great week, so here are my top  (mostly humorous) reasons why Newark is better than Shepton Mallett (and maybe a couple why it isn't)

1: Its SO much easier to get to from virtually anywhere east of Reading. 1 hour 50 mins beats the 9 hours it took one of my friends to get to Shepton Mallett from Essex a few years back. No more M25 or A303 for me on the last day in July ...

2: The campsite is flat with short grass; no more marital disharmony levelling the van or putting up the awning!

3: It is smaller, only 6 and a half thousand people, so more personal and a lot less queueing.

4: Let's face it, there was less Boden and Joules and more scousers and tattoos and therefore it was more like real life (sorry LSE folk).

5: [Getting theological now, steady on] There was  more overt affirmation of women in ordained ministry from the stage. This week for me there was another watershed moment when the evening introductions in the Meeting Place (that's venue 1 in old money)were done by a clergy spouse, who was a man!!

6: There was a concerted effort to explain what was going on for the uninitiated; lots of "you may not have done this before..." This is in the spirit of 1Corinthians 14 for me.

7: AWACS and Red Arrows flypasts!

and 2 why not ...
1: It's just one week, so no cashpoint, no recycling, and a minimal shop. Takeaway food quite limited too. If we had another week, or a Soul Survivor, I appreciate these things would be easier to arrange.

2: Currys .... [you had to be there]

Derivatar

So, my wife is now the only person in Britain over the age of 12 and under the age of 50 who hasn't seen Avatar because I watched it last night. We got it off Love Film and I did love it.

I enjoyed it so much that I didn't even notice it was midnight when the credits rolled. Let me say that again, I really enjoyed the film, and as I said then, "I believe the hype".

That said, I did spend quite a lot of the time saying "that's like in so and so". Thankfully there was only one " 'ere, wasn't she in Lost?" However I have concluded that this was possibly the most derivative film I've ever seen, in terms of plot, characterisation and indeed props and scenery. So here's my Avatar hall of fame (or should that be shame?)

PLOT
Well, obviously it owes a lot to the Matrix, in terms of the "special one", in terms of going in and and coming out of another world, and so on. When Grace and Jake were awoken and their avatars collapsed I couldn't help thinking of that scene I usually fast forward in the Matrix when Cypher pulls the plug ... The ending (btw as you gather from my opening statement, I'm assuming you've all seen it and won't mind that this is littered with spoilers) was also very similar to the end of the Matrix with the awakening in the other world.

The way Jake changed sides by association with the Na'vi (btw = Hebrew for  prophet) was to me lifted straight from Dances with Wolves (Costner's finest moment anyone?) even down to the journal style monologue voiceover.

The basic resistance movement plotline appeared to be derivative of the Magnificent 7/7 Samurai/Bug's Life storyline, or many other little vs big movies I'm sure you can identify. More from Bugs Life in a minute. One might even derive elements of the "fetch the clans" bit from the Lord of the Rings final battle scene.

Naturally the evil general was the usual stereotype, and of course I did enjoy that nerdy guy from Friends/Saving Private Ryan as the sort of evil middle management. Otherwise it was great that most of the characters were smurfs ... sorry Na'vi so you couldn't get distracted by trying to remember what else they'd been in.

PROPS & SCENERY
To me Home Tree did in fact look exactly like Ant Island from Bugs life, but in HD. And while we're with Pixar do you really expect me to take seriously a giant blue character called Sully after I've seen Monsters Inc (a little research never does any harm!)

The armoured suits (like the one the general wore in the final showdown) were clearly actually borrowed from the Matrix props cupboard and just jazzed up a bit for low oxygen use.

The twin prop helicopters reminded me of the twin prop helicopters on Syndrome's island in the Incredibles, and the big gunship reminded me of the Millennium Falcon, except if it had been eating doughnuts since filming stopped on Star Wars.

And the whole Pandora background was like watching a Roger Dean poster come to life (and I know I'm not the only person to have noticed this).

So why did this happen? We're told James Cameron had the idea for this film ages ago when the technology to create it didn't exist. In many senses it was like watching (yet) another animated film like the ones my kids are just growing out of.

My take on it is this; Cameron had the idea for the movie and then he had a dream in which a mash-up of all the films I've mentioned came to him, and then he knew he was ready... He's obviously been watching a lot of Disney films and cartoons on TV (if there was any justice in the movie world, "The Last Airbender" would be called "Avatar") and I like to think he fell asleep looking at the cover from "Tales from Topographic oceans" or some such thing.

I think it was George Harrison who said that eventually all the songs possible would be written because of a finite number of combinations of notes. It seems to me with Avatar we have reached the point where art isn't imitating life, just other art.
But I still thought it was great and will watch it again tomorrow with my "looking out for spiritual reference points" hat on.

Learning to Fly

Actually that's one thing Jody Stowell won't be doing while she's with us in these parishes. Even though she could ...

But my title is intended to paint a picture of ministers taking flight, both in terms of the ordinations that have just happened (I'm feeling surprisingly emotional looking at the from page of the Church Times with its pic of David Stancliffe taking part in his last ordianations before retirement) and more relevantly here, the arrival of Jody on placement from Ridley Hall in Cambridge to spend 4 weeks here observing what Anglican vicars do.

Although it was a long time ago I have to admit that my behaviour as a placement supervisor is entirely lifted from the bloke who supervised me all those years back. That is to say, carry on pretty much as normal except precede each encounter with "This is Jody, she's training to be a vicar", or "This is my colleague Jody" for short.

Of course you probably realise that when I'm talking about "what Anglican vicars do" I am referring to the business of grassroots parish ministry. Anglican vicars do other things, like battering each other in General Synod over the issue of Women Bishops (on which I have already written ages ago), but parish placements I feel should be about the coal face of gospel ministry, "being with God with the people", or to use our current jargon, making connections.

The best thing about having someone visit like this is it gives me the opportunity to look in the mirror a bit, and reflect on my own ministry. It is also goood to get an objective viewpoint of  situations we have observed together. I'm looking forward to the next time this happens, in the autumn.

sermons online

Just to remind local readers (and those further afield if they so wish) that the sermons from St Mary the Virgin Stebbing are available in audio format here

This is the most recent one available by me.