Children and Theological Whittling

The difficult events of the last twenty-four hours (and no, I am not referring to last night's PCC meeting, which was good) have left a pall of awkwardness over la Famille d'Aculaire. Me and the missus are feeling sad, and the very visible grief response from the girls is now turning into something altogether more tricky. 

As a priest, some would call me a theologian. Certainly, it was the excuse I used for being rubbish at practical things like decorating, but as for the truth of the matter, the jury is still out. 

Then the loss of the Blessed Stimpy (the Vatican beatified her this morning) precipitated the questions that children ask. They are the questions are that, without any doubt, are deeper than any I have seen or read or have been asked by any adult. They are the questions that expose me not as a theologian, but as something of a fraudulent, clumsy heretic. 

Daddy, how did Stimpy go to Heaven? Did she have to go in a plane?

No love, God took that special part of her that made her Stimpy and took it and is looking after it 

What does it look like?

You can't see it, but you know it is there. It's a bit like the wind, sweetheart. You can't see it but you know it there because the leaves move about. 

Will Stimpy see Dante (our old bunny) in Heaven?

I am not sure. What do you think? I think that they will be playing together with Charlie (Mavis's dog who died a year ago). I hope so too. 

But who will feed Stimpy in Heaven?

Stimpy won't need food like we need food, because she won't be hungry - just really happy all of the time. 

Why did Stimpy have to die?

We all have to die, baby. It is part of being alive, and in the end we go to Heaven.  

Will I see Stimpy when I go to Heaven?

Of course. I think she might be waiting for you like she does when you come home from school. 

...and so it goes. This happens in schools too (the 'what you mean that God calls you to be a Vicar?' type of questions). They are deep and insightful questions, whose answers are important and will be meaningful to those who ask them. It also tells me more about the quality of spirituality that children have - and to be honest, it is breathtakingly deep. It also presses in me the niggling suspicion that we as adults do not receive the spirituality and implicit theology of children half as much as we should. I would go so far as to say that in an ideal world, it should not be the priest or minister who preaches, but a young child who is given the chance to say what they think. How much more would we learn as disciples. 

It is not that adults are incapable of asking those sort of questions - more that they have lost the ability to express themselves so purely and wonderfully (and fearfully at times).

Public Theology 2 - Blogging

Today has been an edifying one on here because I went out on a limb and did not find the place lonely. That is the thing about writing on weblogs, we go out on a limb quite often.

I have written for over year on an array of topics that I would never have predicted. When I used to read Bp Alan's Blog (long before I thought of doing it myself), I marvelled at how he found the variety of things to write about. People now say the same of me. To them I say that it is not a skill, but I think that blogging requires a certain courage to test an un-prepared idea of thought. There are times when those thoughts chime, and times when they don't - and that is to be expected. 

I believe that the corpus of work that is represented in blog is a purely personal theology. Yes, it has considerable overlap with the theologies of most Christians, but each blog has a distinctiveness. That is perhaps the reason why for the moment, blogs are popular reads for many, and I modestly add my own to that number in its own small way. In short, you get my theology. What is also true, is that it outstrips sermonising in terms of volume, variety and maybe raw honesty (though I hope not too far in the case of the latter). In short, I have said more here about Christ, directly or indirectly, than I have in all my sermons over all the years I have been delivering them. Each of these posts is read by more people than hear my sermons on a given Sunday - and I can no more stop this now than discontinue sermons. 

I have noticed something about blogging as public theology - a thing I believe wholly that it is. Pawing through the statistics that this site delivers, I have learned the following:

 - Bloggers write in a linear fashion, one post after another one day to the next. That is not often how they are read. In a given day on this site, ten or more separate posts are read, and given that I typically write no more than two posts a day, suggests that people come here looking rather than just finding.

 - I wrote a silly post about a BBC TV programme. Many many hundreds of people have read it because it was added to the BBC's own website. Each of those readers had never seen this blog, and have now visited - some even looking further than the post that they were seeking in the first place. They didn't run a mile when they saw that it was a link to a God-botherer! If I were to receive that many unsolicited new visitors to my church in the same period of time, I would feel very pleased - and that is even before I spoke a word to them about God. We don't need to be exclusively obsessed about speaking of God to speak about God!

 - The posts that people seem to want to read the most here are not all the ultra-pious ones (not that you would find any). Actually, the perennial appetite for a human story, good or painful - the accounts of faith as struggle, of theology bound up in the normal disappointments and joys of life - they are what people read. It is the joy of having a fairly wide 'back catalogue' of some fairly whacky stuff that I am able to make this observation. 

 - A phenomenon that I note but do not attempt to interpret: posts with the word 'Women/Woman' in the title is a 'fast sell', and not for the reasons you might imagine with a filthy mind (which you are invited to rinse out over there)! This at least tells me that a public theology is one that is still struggling for an equal voice for all. 

In line with my previous posting, public theology is lived out in the considered and conspicuous lives of Christian people. Priests have an advantage if only they recognised it and wore it, and so do bloggers. The danger for bloggers is that they may be so wrapped up in writing theology that they in fact stop being theology, just as priests who over-theologise the choices that they have miss a trick for those who never knew or cared for those choices in the first place. 

Public Theology

I wandered down my Blogs of Choice this morning and discovered a post that just 'clicked' for me. I pondered a long rambling comment, but thought it better to unpack the thoughts here on my own space. 

I thank Maggi Dawn for her post, which I invite and encourage you to read

Her topic is 'doing theology in public', and in line with the best of Laurie Green, implies throughout her article that theology is not just a bookshelf topic but a way of life. My take on this is that we don't just read theology, but we do theology and are theology. For a Christian, theology is implicit in every action of our lives, intentionally or otherwise. 

Then I arrived at the killer sentence in Maggi's post:

Theology is much more interesting done in a broad context; it saves it from the angels-on-a-pinhead  stuff, and from disappearing down rabbit holes that are really not that important.  But what I fear to some extent is that Christian theology is becoming more and more privatised, and the gap between those who are totally inside it and totally alienated from it is widening. And we really shouldn't let that happen.

I couldn't agree more, but I have a very clear view about a contributory factor in this apparent departure. I have posted on this before, and have used an image on this post to highlight my view. In the picture that you can see at the top, it is clear who the priest is. Why? The clothes he wears tells us so. 

Priests in many circles don't like to call themselves priests - ministers, if you please. Priests in many circles have also decided that the uniform of ministry, the Number Ones (to coin a military term) are 'unhelpful' and 'barriers' - so stop wearing them. Dog-collars are pulled out for meetings with bishops, synod meetings and maybe even funerals. The rest of the time they are regarded as the dirty secret of ordination - the 'thing we don't like to do'. 

I meet many people from a diverse population in my work. I meet young and old, Christian and non (including those of other faiths), men and women. I wear a uniform, and my uniform is my theology. The life I lead is therefore projected through the lens of this little piece of white plastic. There are probably 500 kids in this town who can greet me as 'Father David' without flinch or awkwardness, and with all warmth and openness. They know who I am and what I do; I get the 'high-fives' and from the tinies a group hug. I can talk about God, but also I don't need to. With adults my collar doesn't eclipse the fact that I like a beer, am a normal bloke, like fast cars, swear a bit, laugh with the lads, be an idiot at times - they happen and I am still a priest. The implicit theology about priesthood that I believe very firmly that I bring is valuable. If I was the same person out of uniform, much of it would be lost. Not least of all, I'd have to waste half the time in every encounter explaining my Christianity, then my job - before I got around to asking them about them! 

Multiply my experience across a whole country, and we have a problem. If people in paid or public ministry seem to be ashamed (and that is how it is at time perceived by others beyond me) of the signs of their office, then the rest of world will make assumptions about the stuff that they believe too - that it too is worthy of concealment. Being a shining-example Christian inside the doors of a church is easy. What is harder is to be a Christian without saying a word as we walk past. We need not just preach our theologies to the converted, we need to walk them down the street around our necks too! 

What Can I Say II?

Parenthood brings many joys and many challenges. The former outweighs the latter in such measure that the challenges themselves become a privilege. 

One such challenge is questioning - the persistent type you would expect from a reasonably bright 3-yr old. I am not referring to the litany of 'whys' that pour down like so many raindrops during the course of day - no, this is serious stuff, life changing stuff - and I am not referring only to them and their lives!

Some time ago, in a period that now numbers in months, a much loved parishioner lost her much adored dog. The kids were scared of the dog, as seems to be their wont. It was a big labrador, old and doddery - though nonetheless a wonderful hound to have around. Sadly, the dog died but at the end of a long and apparently happy life. 

Without prompt some weeks after that event, one of my daughters asked me if Charlie was 'coming back alive'. I wasn't even aware that she knew that Charlie had died. I told her no, that when we die, we go somewhere else very special. 'Where has Charlie gone, daddy?'; 'doggy heaven darling'. Then the 'why' and the 'how'. Then the matter went quiet.

A month later, completely out of the blue: 'Is Charlie in heaven daddy?' 'Yes, baby, why?', I replied? 'Will he be on his own?' 'No, love, his friends will be there and he will probably be playing there now'. I explained that old and poorly dogs are more like young bouncy puppies when they go to heaven. 'Why did Charlie die?', she asked as she coloured in a penguin on her book. 'Charlie died because he was old and very tired, and so he needed to have a long rest'. 

The subject dropped again, as quickly as it arose - until this weekend. The same questions, without any sense of upset, though large measures of genuine concern, poured forth as I drove us around Yorkshire. 'Is Charlie sad, daddy?' she asked completely out of the blue. 'Why do ask that, love?' I followed. 'He will miss Mavis, won't he?' 'Yes, I think so, but he was very tired and old and his legs were poorly and he needed his rest, so he is feeling much better now'. 

This round ended simply: 'Charlie has a big juicy bone in heaven doesn't he?' 'The biggest bone he has ever seen', I replied.

Once again, a three-year-old hit my theology 'reset button'.