The Death of Hope

In Britain at least, the news stories have been made even darker by the unfolding story of the death of little Daniel Pelka, a boy of a mere four years who was tortured and murdered by his mother and her partner. Like all of these sorts of stories, this one finds its way under the toughest of skin as we try hard not to imagine how a little boy felt as he subjected to terminal harm at the hands of the people who should have protected him. They starved him, imprisoned him and brought such harm to him that all he knew was suffering and eventually death - the only freedom left for him.

As a father to young daughters, it is in imagining Daniel's pain that I find myself on the edge of tears, left wondering how such a catalogue of tragedies might unfold for one so vulnerable and small. It is a pain that many now feel as a nation grieves for a little boy whom it never know except my virtue of the nature of his death.

What is also noticeable is the near-inevitable unfolding of the blame game. How did this agency miss it, or that? How did the injuries go un-noticed or the behaviour that might have betrayed an abused child? Whose fault was it? The teachers? The police? Social Services? The local authorities? Each blames the other and each dances away from blame, and all fingers are pointing. Despite their life sentence, it seems to remain unspoken that the blame for the death of little lad lays in the hands of his mother and her choice of partner. It was her fault. 

This is where a new problem arises. It is now precipitating calls for an assumed state of suspicion - that all authorities should start to assume the worst instead of the best in the cases of children. At the face it, it seems fair enough, too. Yes, it grievous when children die in their own homes, and more so by the hand of a parent (and, I venture to say, when that parent is a mother for whom I would have imagined such a crime to be even less likely). What this revised state of perspective does is accepts that harm comes to children and effectively turns parents into latent suspects. If my daughter falls awkwardly on the trampoline whilst playing with her sister and sustains a bruise, should I expect social services at my door? And what if I can't prove that I didn't batter my baby? Am I, by default, a child abuser? 

The statutory authorities were guilty of something else entirely. They were guilty of not believing that a mother could kill her own child. Yes, cases exist and children have been killed by parents, even mothers. However, it is also the case that more children by a long way have been killed by cars on roads or even by bugs in hospitals. On the whole, in the main, in the great majority of cases, children are safe with their parents. I worry that in seeking to protect children, the authorities might start to undermine the very protective agency that most children depend upon for safety, their family. Families may well cease to be perceived as havens of hope and safety, becoming the new arena for harm and death. Are we throwing out the baby with the bath water here? 

I sense, and I fear, that in the wake of the human tragedy that is personified in the little blond Daniel Pelka, we will start to see draconian over-reactions emerge because people who work to protect children will see ghosts behind every door, and with a healthy sense of self-preservation, may well kill hope. 

For now, I pray for the little life so cruelly extinguished by people who I cannot claim to understand. He was their precious gift and they squandered him like a disposable pleasure. I am glad that he is free of the terror found at home, and I glad that he is in a place of such beauty and peace where his value is recognised. 

House, Home & Office

May I introduce our lovely new home. Featured on the front page of the parish website for some time, I thought I would expand its cyber-fame.

House meet Readers

Readers meet House

That's that sorted then.

And what a lovely house it is. It has all we need plus thirty rooms that we can count as surplus (or where I can count my surplices, who knows), a wonderful mature garden with large trees and concomitant squirrels. We have presocratic Rhododendrons, a superfluity of lavender and much Christmas fodder in the form of re-planted trees and a significant sting of emergent holly. We have two foxes (those with fluffy tails, boys) and a significant flutter of wood pigeons. The two wild green parakeets are a mystery to us and out-yell Boeing 747s, but they add to the ambiance.

But this pile isn't simply home. To Mrs Acular and the Twins Aculae, it is - but to me it is the office, as it is to the parish administrator. In the last house, it was more home than office, as I didn't 'have people round', and we were miles from the church (all by plan - I am a welcoming host). This house will be where I receive guests, entertain visitors, hold meetings - and the usual scripting of sermons and all that. There has to be a boundary set, for the preservation and protection of all concerned, and then there is the invisible boundary that I have to set that means that I am not always at work (or never at work if I am a lazy sod). In this, I journey along a new road.

Yes, having tied accommodation is a joy, honour and privilege. We are incredibly fortunate and considerably blessed by it. At Theological College the tell us to 'work' a number of sessions a day, but not all. Some clergy abide by this fastidiously, others (read 'me') do not. The failing is on my part, as I am a self-confessed workaholic; though it is easy with work such as mine as it is so darned good.

Clocking off, for want of a better term, is hard. I can retire from the study and pad across the newly carpeted hallway to fashion a meal for la Famille d'Aculaire, but then I am only ten feet away from The Harridan Emailer and the Siren Telephone. They carry on unremittingly, and we clerics are endlessly lured to their bidding. Days off to date have been grand as the kids have been home, but from now on, they will be at school. Wife might even find herself a job, so my day off may mean me sitting at home with nothing but Harridan and Siren - to wit, no day off (much). It can be a problem.

Advice for clergy is to bugger awf on days and weeks off. To undertake a Staycation is to maintain a de facto Stayatworkation. So, we have to escape home which feels odd at times. This boundary setting permeates much of what we do. We want to be gracious and willing hosts all the while preserving safe space. We want and need to relax but our diligence means that very often the danger is we carry on until the job is done (which it never is). Danger!

For now, before 'work' starts, I will enjoy the new Cloake Castle. God Bless this house and all who dwell in and visit it. 

An Altogether New View

Well, the eagle has landed - figuratively speaking. 

This is my first post from a new desk in a new house in a new town in a new part of the world. From my new desk in a new house in a new town in a new part of the world I also have a new view of a new street - a view that is absolutely nothing like the view represented in the image supplied. 

The boxes are nearly all emptied and flattened. The twins are safely installed in new bedrooms. The gerbils still gnaw loo-roll cores. The cats are back to soiling cat-litter. All in the world is good. We are blessed with a lovely house which much more space even than the house we have just vacated, though even now we feel like we have run out of space to empty the remaining boxes. 

Stress levels have been high. The first few days have been characterised by skin-stripping arguments, invective, bile and a sense that we may have lost a sense of 'normal' forever. Gladly, that sense is fast abating as routines re-build, old habits of play resume and the kids remove their self-applied red horns. If us adults have found it all a bit much, we must remember that the Twins Aculae must have had it all the worse. Peace begins to reign over the (now) sunny idyll that is Whitton.

I have placed my new desk in such a way as means I can look out of the window of my study. In the last house, this was of little advantage as the window looked out over a fence and a marauding Russian Vine. From my desk I can see who is at the front door, who is driving or walking along the road, which planes are landing at Heathrow; if I turn and look out of the window behind my chair (this is a 'two-windows-one-patio-door' study) I can see the garden (and the twins playing) and the church in-between the large trees that grace my glebe. The profound differences that mark curacy from incumbency are made manifest to me in the change of view I now have.

Curacy, for me, was a blend of working hard and then retreating the anonymous house to be 'normal', to spend time with the family and to shut out the world of the ministry to a certain extent. Getting that blend right was important, but the closed view from the old study window now reminds me of the express limits that existed in that form of ministry. Incumbency will, by definition, be different. I will be more visible to the world and the world more visible to me. I have to have an eye on family life while having a different kind of eye on parish life. Somewhere in there needs to be some 'me' time (and I opt to do that in the garden or kitchen these days). From my vantage point I see the world (and can close it out if I choose), am surrounded by Scriptures and gadgets, can see the kids and the church in the same glance. I feel like I am at home now. 

So far, we have been blessed by the card-sending of the card senders, thew wine-leaving of the wine-leavers, and have received a very wise document from a very wise man that describes and annotates the local facilities (read 'pubs'). A very wise man indeed (not least because he reads this drivel)! In short, we are in, and are settling. Some rooms will get curtains sometime, and others might be painted away from their current pink-all-over state. All in good time.