Looking Up The Noses of the Dead and Dying

Once upon a time, newsreaders sat at desks and, decked in the nattiest tweeds and with the crispest hairdos, would tell the story of the world's ills. Their deportment was often graver than the news reported, but that was to be expected. 

But not no more. 

It seems to be that since television channels have proliferated (and with little effort I have 80 or 90 channels that I never watch instead of just two or three) that the programmes that they broadcast have had to try very hard to stand out from the pack. New programmes are no different. 

No more Angela Ripon. No more Alistair Burnett. No more that bloke who went on to present Treasure Hunt with Anneka Rice's bum. Even the lovely Moira Stewart is relegated to early-time radio (though seems to have far more fun with Mr Evans et al than ever she did before a camera). Things changed and Terry Lloyd became the first symptom of this new style or reporting the news. 

Now me, I am happy to take the word of the Orla Guerins and Fergal Keanes of this world when they say that terrible things happened in the far flung places of the world. I am happy at that. They tell me a tale, I will take it as reported (foolishly perhaps, you may say), but that is no longer sufficient for the world's audience. 

A little while ago, some vile people blew up some innocent people in their cars. There was all the carnage that you might expect, with some hapless TV news reporter reporting it to the world, flak-jacket adorned, mid-carnage, stepping over smouldering bits of metal and rubber and dead people. I have seen enough mid-cremated human bodies to know what they look like, and at 6pm (or a similarly early hour in the evening) I beheld the smouldering and hard-to-identify remain of three separate people. The reporter stated the obvious - that people died - and did so treading on and pushing past their remains. 

Then you get the other phenomenon - the reporter dodging actual 'murder-death-kill' bullets so that the news is coming from the armpit of the local militia. Not satisfied with being close enough to the action to hear it, they become part of the problem and a person needful of bodily protection, so that they can assume the physical space of the purported victims. "Look at me, I am going to be shot at now...". Why? Why? Why?

Is it me? Is it my fault (as a member of the news consuming public) that apparently sensible people have to actually risk actual life to tell me a story. Only recently a eye-patched reporter was atomised out of existence to the consternation of many praying Christians who seemed to want to hold vigils and the like for her. Why was she in harm's way? She was a reporter, not a peace-keeper. Are reporters required to be action heroes?

Terry Lloyd's daughter (whom I have met, and she is very pleasant) lost a father because of what? The news headlines that I have long forgotten! Is it me? Watch this space as we prepare to have Coffin-Cam and the dishevelled figure of a journo descending into the ground as s/he sits atop the descending casket of a famous dead person. Mark my words, it'll happen.

Careless Whisper

There is a theory expressed in some places that claims that the beat of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world can create a hurricane in another. I am no physicist or chaos-theorist, so I opt to acquiesce on this idea, all the while being quite sure in my unqualified heart that it is bunkum!

As I spend more time in this ministry of mine, I encounter more and more people. Every single human creature has a story, and I am willing to bet that they have one thing in common (or else know personally of such a thing close at hand).

I believe that, in the main, the fractures and disputes, wars and conflicts, turmoil and suffering, needless slaughter, lifelong antipathies, deeply set quarrels, career ending, family smashing, sibling dividing, friend destroying phenomena are not the products of great single events. It would be easy to say that all marriages end because of an affair, because of violence, or because of someone else - but I am not sure that is the case. It would be easy to say that siblings fall out for decades because of a Last Will and Testament, of greed or jealousy - but I am not sure that is the case. It would be easy to blame all wars on Archduke Ferdinand-type events, the lit touchpaper, the invasion - but I am not sure that is the case.

I think the cause is altogether more mundane. I think the cause is banal in and of itself. 

Every conflict (with the very rare exception) I have heard about in all the ways I sit and listen to people talk have started not in the seat of a significant event, but in the wake of what can only be termed a 'careless whisper', an ill-thought phrase uttered thoughtlessly, a rebuke that was a fraction too heavy. Equally, I have heard of conflicts that are seated in the glint on an eye, a passing expression, the interpreted inference that wasn't intended. That beat of a butterfly wing, in the moment, seems to cause little damage - but the fracture starts and simply widens with time until a hair-line crack becomes a gap becomes a fissure becomes an aching chasm. 

This is both an alarming conclusion and a reassuring one. Everyone of us has the wings of a butterfly and the power to cause a hurricane. Mostly we would never intend to, but the road to Hell and all that ... Equally, we have the power to prevent wars and disputes that destroy lives, simply by taking a moment more care in an argument, with throwaway comments. We can ignite a smoldering fire in someone with consequences that can never be predicted, or we can quell one (or indeed avoid one). 

As I sit and write this, it occurs to me with some measure of concern the increasing power to build or destroy in the context of social-media. If only people read our words as we intended them to be read!

What To Do?

I am a mild-tempered man. Yes, I may rant and rave on this thing, but in the end, better that I tap keys than deliver a dry-slap to a passing pensioner, no? Apart from in front of Saturday night reality TV when I am rage-incarnate, I am just a ball of fluffy loveliness. 

Until just now ....

My little girl, my darling daughter, all three-years-old of her returned home from church in a ponderous mood. She is only like this if she is once again contemplating issues of mortality and the theology of death (I often wonder if Paul Sheppy isn't her real dad, at times), or if someone has been mean to her. Without exception, such a person is another child, one of her peers, and we attend to matters accordingly.

Until just now ...

She is fairly shy or perhaps measured. She is well-socialised as any clergy kids are, but she is cautious about who she speaks to - no bad thing in the large public gatherings that my work and life expose her and her sister to. It is a frequent thing that complete (or relative) strangers speak to them like old friends, or (as happened this very week) grab and squeeze their cheeks. For them to have a healthy reticence in the face of all this attention (wonderful and kind as it is) is a useful skill.

Well, this very day, within the context of the Eucharist at which we had all gathered to celebrate, someone accused my perfect little angel of being rude, because she didn't speak to that person (someone she hadn't seen in nearly a year). Were it another child, Rebekah would have stood her ground, but when it is another adult, all she could do was package it up, internalise it, believe what was said and take it home quietly. 

I have discovered a new emotion. Fortunately, I only learned about this after collar-off time, so was safely locked into the house. Why? Because this emotion is a dark one, one that propelled me towards a fury the like of which I have not felt for some time. I wanted to fight for my little girl. I wanted to do the index-finger-jabbing-chest thing, ask what the devil they thought they were doing. It is in the heart of most parents to protect their youngsters, or to seek retribution when they seem to have been wronged. I now know this first hand, and was, I confess, alarmed by my own fury. They are my kids and I am their dad, but here we have the old balancing act thing again, because I am clergy, and clergy do not habitually throttle people. I am now at a loss to know what to do in this thorny world that my children will have to journey through. I know that my collar will hold me back, and whether that is right or not I don't know. I jealously protect my own, but for the first time, I feel that there is a barrier to that in some small part. 

I don't know how to end this post. At the moment I want to take my little girl's pain away and do death in equal measure. I am a nice man, and also a priest, and at the moment, I am not sure how this stuff works. 

Clearing Air

A difficult experience yesterday has given me cause to think about an issue that I had never really identified before. Now that I have, it is a consistent factor in the life of all churches with which I am familiar (no small number, at that).

There seems to be a behaviour in church community life which can occur unchecked very often. The concerns, agendas, hobbyhorses, hot-potatoes, bees-in-bonnets of individual parishioners, when expressed in the warm-love-petri-dish environment of a church can grow like so many cultivated bacteria. They may be issues that are important and pressing, or else they may just be the personal crusades that Christians, like all human beings, instigate from time to time.

In the petri-dish, the environment for the growth of conflict is perfect. It is a place full of people who are called to love, often ill-equipped to challenge the more extrovert members or those with their own time-developed audiences. They are places that hold love as the greatest of virtues, so when an issue rises to the surface, it rises fast and spreads rapidly like a fire in dry hay. 

In my own experience, it seems that there is no firefighting mechanism. Church communities are often gathered for a single occasion during the week. They gather to undertake an activity that demands (rightly or wrongly) that they are less interactive one with the other. They gather often as strangers in a room, strangers who for years will never ever know the names of other strangers in the same room. They come; they worship; they go home. Over coffee, the petri-dish environment does its work and agendas gain their momentum while the rest of the gathered assembly agonise about the conflicts - in private. 

Church life very often lacks that thing that families have, gathering of friends have, businesses have, working teams have - a way of clearing the air, of addressing a conflict issue to resolve or debate the issues. We come together once a week to worship, then mutual-friend networks meet in the intervening periods and rally round the crusader of the day. How do church communities get together, as they do on a Sunday, to sit down not to worship, but to argue healthily? 

My church, like all churches (even those who believe that this does not apply to them) has a couple of hot-potato issues on the coal burner. They are expressed between individuals behind pillars or in a corner. I think the traditional view is that the benevolent Vicar waves a Jedi-Knight hand and all issues vanish or minds changed, but that is clearly not the case. Yesterday, I felt I had no choice to stand at the front and address one issue head on - an issue that is misinformed and has the potential to do much harm. Is that all we have to clear our air? 

The resultant beheviour is familiar to many long-term Christian churchy types: the 'twenty-year blow out'. Because churches have no way of clearing the air or arguing healthily, the pressure builds and after about twenty years, an atypical response is normally seen. The agitators of old (themselves good and loving people) become bricked up behind the walls of their former skirmishes and the need arises to pull those walls down. People get hurt, people leave, damage is done and rubble is left. Good people get hurt. Why? Because there is no way (that I have identified) for a healthy church to have an healthy argument and to clear the air. 

Answers on a post-card, please.