Time

Despite my tender years (did I mention that I am almost still quite young?), I can remember coming home from school on foot. I would return home and, if allowed, to watch a little television whose channels were changed by the pressing of an actual button (implying the physical removal off my dainty butt from the draylon sofa). As this happened, my dinner was likely being cooked on a hob or in an oven in a pan or similar. Afterwards, my siblings and I would war over the task of washing up the detritus of said meal in a bowl of sudsy water, tepid, full of food waste and other muck. If we were still alive, we may have been allowed to put the computer on - an activity that required the portable telly to be brought in, the keyboard plugged into cassette player, then to wait five full minutes while Jet Set Willy loaded. Those of my generation will remember how many hours of life were devoted to watching the flicking horizontal coloured lines on the telly as the game loaded. 

Life was good then, back in the late 80s! Then progress went and happened. To make life easier and altogether more convenient, several things happened. After school (well, college by then) I could flick through the four channels with a plastic Mars Bar and not leave the comfort of the fitted covers. As I pondered the adventures of the TV heroes of the day, dinner would warm up in a split second in the microwave. After I bolted it down my gullet, I would sling the pots in the dishwasher and get on with my evening. That transaction might take as little as ten minutes before I was back before the Goggle Box. So much time saved! 

And so it continued. Now, as a man in my very early forties, I can arrive home, sit down in my comfy chair, and with my gadget of choice order my dinner with a credit card, eat it from paper boxes which I can dump in another box. I can watch anything I like whenever I want, because I can capture and hoard television and instead of losing time writing to friends, can snatch moments of meaning from the telephone that is also my camera. Indeed, a character from a recent Bond film commented that he could do more damage to the world from his bed with a laptop in his pyjamas than ever before - and he is right. So many ways to save time, corners cuts, shortcuts taken. Instant, on-demand, in control, now, not later, buy-now-pay-before-you-die, 24/7! Frankly, if I extrapolate the time-saving attained simply delivered by a dishwasher in the 80s to the modern world, I must have another three or four hours a day to do what I want. 

But I don't. And neither do you. Indeed, we are so pressed for time, we need even more time-saving inventions to allow us to cope. We can carve out 8 minutes by not boiling our rice in a pan of water but in a blister pack in the microwave. We don't even have to go out to socialize - you can find a spouse on line if you know where to look. We don't even need to go to the next room to speak to our nearest and dearest - we can text them! This hard-won innovative freedom never arrived. In fact, we have so little time that we cannot cope. It has meant that we are so on-demand that we demand everything on our terms - now. Love is on demand, and pizza too. 

Little wonder faith is seemingly dying in our age. When my own punters get twitchy when they are forced to give God a minute over an hour, because of the myriad things that demand their sparse time, then I wonder if the world is melting in a mess of busy-ness whose end I cannot predict. I wonder too if this isn't a silent war that Christians should be fighting - to save people from task and duty! Indeed, it seems that so many of us in our religious ivory towers gnash our teeth wondering where everyone gets to half the time and why people don't or can't do more. Maybe faith is found in less. Maybe God is to be found in the gaps that we can create for people, not in the religious task that we seem content to impose at the expense of all else. 

As Jesus passed along the South Embankment, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew emailing a programme patch to a client (from their iPads)—for they were IT consultants. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you Facetime for Disciples.’But they never left their tablets or followed him - they were busy and the client was waiting. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were on their Boris Bikes. Immediately he called them, but they were plugged into their iPhones having a chat with one another so didn't hear; and they left their saviour Jesus by the boats with the homeless men, and went about their business oblivious.

Struggling for Stability

Sometimes you get weeks when things are busy and then there are weeks like the one I am having at present. It would be fair to say that I am working to absolute capacity this week, simply due to an un-plannable convergence of several factors - largely to do with the Occasional Offices and the needs of Lent and the imminent Passion.

As I sat in London traffic, a few days ago, bang below the landing flight-path to Heathrow, I watched a vast Boeing 747. It was a windy day - the sort you get when weather is fast approaching. It was blustery, so the pedestrians walking up and down West Hounslow's shopping streets were being buffeted all over the place.

And so was the plane. The first thing I noticed as the 600,000lb lump of aluminium descended was that despite appearing to be progressing gracefully in a very straight line (as they all seem to do when they descend), it was in fact flying at a rather odd angle into the wind. It was, to a lesser extent, flying sideways. The next thing I noticed is that as the people on the High Street were being jostled, so was this jet. As it approached my position, the effects of the wind upon it became more noticeable. It was being knocked all over the place. The wing on one side suddenly lifted and the plane made a perceptible slide to the other side. It corrected and the next salvo of invisible air came upon it. In every way, the plane was struggling just to maintain that air of graceful line-drawing to the ground.

As I sat in the car my first reaction was "I know how you feel, plane". The job of ministry is characterised by being very unpredictable. One week has the sense of being "quiet", with time to read and ponder. An hour later and the customary scan of the answer-machine, and a week of abject chaos ensues. In many ways, I have to be seen to be dignified and maintaining course. I don't think that the people of the parish need to be troubled with my wrestling with time and duty - that is not the relationship we have. When the fingertips have the feeling of losing grip in the crumbling edges, I have to look for all the world like I am stood on granite. 

To be sure I am not complaining - simply observing.  There are weeks like this, and all matters squeezed into each one is a privilege. It is just nice to know that at times I am not the only one ... as if I ever was!




As an aside, I have been amused to note that my ditty last week about One Direction has now been viewed in excess of 70,000 times. Such is the unpredictable Interweb!

Busy Church

I don't normally speak of the specifics of the parish church and her life, because I don't have the right to talk about others without their say so, especially as I am one of their priests. I just don' think it is right to use the parish as my blog fodder.

But today I am going to break my own rule. I have just returned to my modest abode after a morning at St. Mary's. Look at the picture - a magnificent little edifice! Costly, though ...

But don't let me keep you in suspenders - there is a reason why I am smashing up my ailing keyboard for your entertainment.

I have left a church with a toddler group in full-swing, comprising at least thirty kids and their chauffeurs - all singing Tommy Thumb and chasing bubbles. I left a group of twenty older kids, with their teachers, enjoying cups of squash after I toured them around the church, the bell tower, and after messing around with incense and the sanctus-bell.  They drew their pictures and asked some very good questions, while I tried to fill in the blanks. In the office, the administrator was dancing the dance of insanely stressed while her accumulated technologies conspired against her. In there too was an engineer trying to sort the issues, the 'folding-ladies' folding the pew sheets, and the faithful admin volunteer working with the one functioning photocopier. In the other corner of the church a gathering of adults who attend a support group were sipping the tea and chatting, and in the other corner of the church the Refectory was trading nicely. The sun cast into the building through our stunning windows, and the church was buzzing. One of the teachers had told me how she had warned the kids on pain of death to respect the silence of the church - and how good it was that it was so busy and active (and friendly), and how much the kids felt at home and relaxed. 

Like so many churches, we have our little problems. We try to get along as well as we can, and so often it comes down to money. Our church is expensive because we insist on keeping it open for everyone to visit, all week. Heating and lighting are not cheap, but we must provide this place. Now this is not an initiative that we can label and put into a self-starter book. I can't market this across the world with subsidies from the pasta industry and by which I can achieve international celebrity. I doubt I could even talk about it very much save for on my own blog. Simply, we opened the church and people came in. They saw and they liked. On this bright Friday morning in March, a church was full of people, all busy, all there by choice, and all happy to be there. 

It's not rocket science, it only costs more.