Biblical Miracles in the Twenty-First Century

Just over seven years ago, the Lord blessed me and the fragrant Mrs Acular with the calling of parenthood and the blessing of not just one tiny life, but two. Two bundles of curly red-headed joy, a journey as yet unfolded, the future resting prone before us. Yes, they were a challenge of some intensity in the beginning - sleepless nights and fraught uncertain days. The handbook of parenting is yet to be written, (if we disregard Gina Ford, which is a good start) yet its blueprint is embedded within each and every new parent. We have the instinct hitherto unseen to know how to fix the problems that presented themselves. It was a small seam of knowing that accompanied the life-stage of the girls, only to vanish from our grasp once we had passed its needs by. 

You know what I think of my little girls if you read this blog, so I won't burden you with a plethora of superlatives. However, I wish to share with you, dear reader, the very real evidence brought into my life of a biblical miracle as granted us by our young ladies. 

Last weekend, it happened very simply - within the context of the celebrations that marked their shared birthday. Amid the balloons, the party food, the gleeful faces of the guests as they watched the magician work his magic before them. Their eyes were wide, rictus grins painted across their innocent faces. Life for them was bounded up the very moment that they existed in - a sufficiency and satisfaction so easily and readily lost in the wilderness years of adulthood. But happen it did and like this.

You will be familiar with the account of the feeding of the five thousand onlookers, the provision from what appeared be a lack to what proved to be a plenty - a ministry of hospitality and refreshment, food for the journey of faith. You know that story, and I can tell you here and now that by the gracious gift of my perfect little girls, I saw a latter-day equivalent of this miracle, and it unfolded before my eyes and in the power of God's Holy Spirit.

The thing is this, you invite 32 ankle-biters to your daughters' birthday party, you will be blessed by an outpouring of generosity in the form of gift-giving to mark the joyous occasion. In this case, that outpouring filled a table top that is 5' long by 3' wide. A neat pile. An exciting and promising pile of gifts wrapped largely in bright papers of pink and fuchsia. When the party drew to its climax and its inevitable end, we carried that little pile of gifts back to the house, during which time something miraculous happened, almost at a cellular level. 

But the gifts from the party, all 5' x 3' of them, all wrapped beautifully, became the manna from heaven that we read about in the scriptures, and it happened when those gifts were opened. 

Blow me if that little pile of gifts didn't expand at an exponential rate. What sat neatly on a table top soon became sufficient in volume to eclipse even the sun and moon - paper everywhere. Boxes hither and plastic yon. Indeed, the wife and I could hardly see the kids for detritus, and it spread from room to room, basket full by alarming basketful, up the stairs, along that landing, into at least four of the bedrooms, all overt the lounge floor, the Hallway, the kitchen table, the garden, on top of the dog and under the cat. Stuff everywhere I tell you. All that was visible of yours truly was the spiky tips of his grey hair emerging from a self propelled shifting mountain of wrapping paper. To the left, one kid's gifts, and to the right the other's. Never in my whole life have I seen physical matter expand in volume at the rate that this modest gift pile did. Like the magic porridge pot, the immanence of our certain drowning fast approached as we lamented our early departure and sought the comfort of Last Rites. Batteries were needed, and that right quick. So, therefore, did we need the little screwdriver - and that even quicker. Bawling and screaming accompanied the determined affront to our physical well-being by this every expanding Leviathan of gift stuff. 

The moral of the story is this. If you are ever wandering through the Gallilean countryside, all bucolic and that, and you bump into five-thousand groupies looking for a free feed, this is what to do. Put on a birthday party for two seven year old girls and ask that their only gifts we in food and fluid. Mark my words - once you start faffing with them, they will feed a small continent of free-food foraging groupies. 

Old and Knackered?

Picture courtesy of Dan Cloake, an Officer of the Law

And so it was that the fourth decade ended and the fifth began!

Yesterday was my birthday. It wasn't just any old birthday - oh no. It was my fortieth birthday. Some say that life begins. Others would say that it is all downhill (if the cards are anything to go by). 

These 'big birthdays' are a timely moment for pause and reflection. I stopped to think what I was doing as I lurched into my thirties - a day that felt like it was a week ago. Then I was peddling my wares in a West London carpet shop and doing alright with that. I was already married (and had been for five years by then) to the Fragrant Yet Rarely Smelly Mrs Acular (whom I saw a day a fortnight due to working arrangements). We were living as a couple in Sussex and I trudged to work daily through a ninety-minute-plus commute. All my hair was brown, I was in debt up to my nostrils, drove a fast car that I didn't own, in a house I borrowed and with as much sleep as I needed on my days off. Priestly ministry was a pipe-dream-calling that seemed an unlikely matter never destined to be fulfilled. I had stopped going to church because of the work I did and the hours it demanded of me. 

This time around, I am forty and the browns are giving way to the whites and the silver. I am the good side of the lengthy process that means I am undertaking the ministry I was created and born to do. I am a priest in God's Church. I am working in such a good parish setting that I truly wouldn't wish to be anywhere else right now (sincerely). I am blessed with two perfect and wonderful children who do more to make me happy than any humans could ever hope to do - and they don't even try. My amazing soul-mate and wife is still by my side and we now even manage to get a day together in the week. I have gathered more wonderful and generous friends. I feel like I have settled in to my own life for the first time and can, for the first time since I started working, not worry about the next house move, job move, or role-shift. I can finally dedicate myself to what I am and to what I do, and do justice to the short moments that I call my life. 

So, I am forty. I am a decade light of life compared to that moment what I flicked thirty. However, I busked my way through that decade hoping for something more at every stage. I was on my way to a place I didn't know and couldn't see and I spent more of that decade wishing myself away from where I was than to remain where I found myself. Now, I have it all. I lack for nothing. I can truly and honestly say, without pathos or drama, that if it came to an end for me tomorrow I could not ache for the things I didn't have or do. The only ache would be for not having more of the same. 

Happy birthday to me. 

Hap Happity Birthday, to Me - Pure Blogging Gold

The use of Our Lord in this compilation is purely illustrative and not a statement by this Blogger that he is fact Jesus.

The Birth Pangs of A Baby Church

With thanks to garretthoffman of You Tube

Happy Birthday Church. Many Happy Returns

HapHappity Birthday: Honk Honk Beep Beep*

Beat upon the timbrels, toot your kazoos, for today is a significant day for The Vernacular Curate. Let joy be unconfined, bring forth your effervescent gaity, for today is the Birthday of This Blog. Yes, my dear wearied Reader, you have tolerated this gubbins for a whole year.

This is where it all began, without imagery, and frankly - with a really dreary title. Still, it is best to set the standard high for such odd ventures as this.

I am not going to launch forth with reader numbers - I did that a while ago, and also because the support I have recieved for this little expression of my inner mentalist has far exceeded anything that I dared hope or pray for. This pile of slugpellets has been read in over 600 cities around the world and I have begun to discover that some of my own thoughts have been quoted elsewhere. I am bowled away by that, more especially because I have tried to be myself and with that be fairly raw.

I have learned a considerable amount about a lot of things while doing this. I know I look at the world differently - not in the sense that I seek material, but more that I reflect about the world around me more. I question things to a greater level, and I question myself in a similar way. The questions still exist about this being a meaningful medium for a priest (or anyone else for that matter) to communicate - but until they are clarified, I will persist (or until I get a 'nil' day of readers). I still don't really know if this is helpful of grossly narcissistic, and I still write this as a man who really rather dislikes talking about himself. Perhaps the humour is the disguise. This thing has bought me into contact with some stunning people whose presence is a great joy to me.

Anyway, the bottom line is that this is still enjoyable. Were it not, I'd be long gone because life is too short and I am no Prophet whose message must be heard. A lot of you read this, not sporadically, but very regularly and again, I thank you for walking this little journey with me. What you have learned about me I have learned about myself at the same pace. I find your support incredibly humbling - something that I think priests need at times (even to the extent of knowing that our spelling is apalling).

So, the next year: I will carry this on, and all the while thinking about the transition from curacy to (I hope, at the moment) an incumbency. My children will start school, we may move house, town and maybe even end of the country. So many changes ahead - and then this thing. Will I blog after curacy? That question remains unanswered, partly because I recognise the secure womb of protection that being a curate enjoys. Would I be able to blog this way as an incumbent? I am not sure. I hope so, but the jury will remain out for some months yet. So many questions, so few answers - so much to hope for. 

Thank you, all of you. May God (or whatever Guiding Light calls you on) bless you and those you love.

*title courtesy of Ren & Stimpy - my ffffffffffffffffavourite

Guilty as Charged

It went and happened - I got 'Curatitis', a condition identified by ++Michael Ramsey in the Sixties where a Curate becomes a little jealous of another. It only went and happened to me; and 'where?' you might ask ...

...here!

I was reading Lesley's blog post today in an increasing grump about the exposure her efforts recieve compared to mine (like it matters!?). Her latest post surrounded the event of her birthday, and in that post, she offers a number of lists (read her here). I will be the first to confess that I am deeply envious of her blog successes, and indeed of her intellectual and spiritual depths, and recognise that I have become a little competitive about it (after all, what she stands a chance of achieving in the latter list on her post would look preposterous on any that I could write). Anyway, with all this said, I felt it important to place that confession here for safe keeping and take some counsel! 

Blogging is an odd thing and it often creates apparitions and spectres. What I am guilty of is counting what I do not have and overlooking the riches that I do have. That is now to be corrected.

Entirely by chance, my birthday follows Lesley's by a day - for it is my 'turn' tomorrow (I shall be 38). I have no lists for you, I am afraid, save for wanting to be the best person I can be and for my family to be happy and healthy, and for my flock to draw closer to God (a handsome list nonetheless) - and I have a past that shall remain a matter of privacy not because it is alarming, but because it is quite the opposite! What I think is important for me to place here is a simple 'thank you'.

There are a number of you who read this drivel, reliably and regularly, and I thank you all for spending a moment with me in my thoughts. The presence of each of you is noted, recognised and appreciated. Without readers, this and every blog would be utterly pointless and probably grotesquely self-serving. I consider it an honour and a privilege to have an opportunity to express myself in a form hitherto unknown to me; one where I can work it out as I go along. This blog and those of you who read it are a gift to me that I do not take for granted - and be sure, I write nothing purely to entertain. What you see is what you get is what and who I am in that moment. So thank you ... 

...and for the record, Lesley is a close personal and ministerial friend, and I am in awe of what she writes. I don't always agree with what she writes (it would be dull if I did), but I am delighted to share space with her to the modest extent that I do.

Trust a Man to Get it Wrong

Today is a day of mixed emotion for me. On one hand, me ma is enjoying a 'Birthday of Note' (I can't tell you which one, of course, but it starts with a '6' and ends in a '0'). On the other hand, it is the anniversary of the old man's untimely demise. So it is a funny day ... funny peculiar, not funny 'ha ha'.

The thing about having a Blogette such as this, is that in the Early Days (sounding like a pension plan all of a sudden - 'pension', get it?) I am coming up against hitherto untapped events - family stuff, good or ill, things that I have not reflected on in this way - beware dear Reader, I am about to set off on another.

I wrote a little something about the Old Gal a while ago on Mother's Day and declared my admiration for Mrs Brady Old Lady. Well, today is her birthday, and she too of course, has to ally the pleasure of that with the pain of the fact that Dad cocked up big time, and fell off his twig on that day of all days. 'Silly old sod' I said then, and 'Silly old sod' I say now. Only a bloke could could die on his wife's birthday ... silly old sod.

The thing about my old man is that he was a most excellent fella. Built in the image of none less that Humpty Dumpty, he did the rather brave thing and married my freshly be-widowed mother when she had three ankle-biters and he was fast approached his retirement. Yes, that's right - there was a spectacular age gap between mum and dad, thirty-one whole British years. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from his own family (dad was freshly be-widowed at the same time as mum - it gets complicated, but his daughter was of a similar age to mum, and her son was my age - keep up). Still, despite all, they remained married for well over 25 years, mostly happily - and dad helped raise a young family when he should have been having late-life crises and fits of the dribbles. He was a grumpy bastard, a red socialist who made Scargill look like a LibDem. He was a Colour Sargeant formerly of the Royal Engineers, so had a very very very loud shouting voice (which, from one who looked like a wheeble, was at times amusing).

But he was kind, insightful, funny, wise and in his own way, beautiful. He was conspicuously proud of us even when we made a mess of things. But he had a wonderful sense of how to be silly - an art lost to so many people. There is nothing better at times than just to be silly. Even into my late twenties and until he died, I could walk up to him, given him a big kiss and hug, and reverse his hair on his head so the ones that covered his baldy-slap fell forward - then I would walk away laughing. He didn't mind. We would then argue simply for the pleasure of arguing. 

I didn't see him for a whole fortnight before he died so suddenly that night. I was still a retailer and was based in Swindon at that time, so visits were less frequent. That hurts, that still winds me, and that still makes me feel ashamed. I could not have asked for a better Dad, and I can't believe my luck that I had the dad I had. The old bastard has, however, let me down. He promised that when I got nice furniture of my own that he would come to my house and jump on it like I did to his. Well, mate, it's here and ready. If you came back just one more time, I'd let you smash it to firewood. Then I'd mess your hair up again, just because I could.

May you rest in the peace that you so richly deserve and with the God that you kept so close to you. If you had met my girls they would have loved you too, and had you lived long enough to see me ordained, you'd have known that so much of my joy was down to you and your prayers for me. Take care, mate, God Bless.

But dying on mum's birthday ....... silly old sod.