Insurance

Back in the day, the day being 1973-1981, I worked in the insurance industry. Part of the training, you may be relieved to hear, was a course on Elements of Insurance. It was part one of a nine-part course to become an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (ACII).

One of the first things we were required to learn was this. The basic principle of insurance is that the premiums of the many compensated the misfortunes of the the few. Fair enough. Nobody gets stung by a big loss because everyone agrees to a small loss calculated on the basis of experience.

I had worries about this when various groups began to be set aside, told they represented a low risk and offered cheap premiums. Think SAGA, women drivers, post-codes for house insurance and many other examples.

Today we hear often that young people, once they have passed their tests, cannot afford insurance for their cars.

This week I read that life insurance may, in the future, use genetic readers to anticipate a person's chance of an early passing and thus raising the premium for the life-limited. I hope that various ethical committees will say that this is a bridge too far, But I wonder if we have established  a dangerous precedent.

What would it be like if all insurance premiums were better rounded? Then the fortunes of the few would still contribute to compensation.

Not having a claim is not a matter, as one customer once told me, of not getting your money's worth. It is a cause for rejoicing about the absence of misfortune.

Spirituality

I was at clergy meeting the other day at which a guest speaker talked about spirituality. I think, and I lost concentration at about sentence two so I may be wrong, that we were being encouraged to make time for our own spirituality in order to sustain ourselves in our demanding roles.

I used to do a job training youth leaders. From time to time this involved talking to clergy about youth-work. I discovered, quite early on, that if I talked specifics I often got the reply 'That won't work here mate and I'll tell you why.' Not always so politely. So I spoke in general terms and principles and allowed others to do the application to their local situation. This had some success.

I think this is what our guest speaker was doing the other day although her precise generalisations (can't believe I wrote that, sorry) were hard to pin down. Elusive wisps of thoughts and ideas came and went, every one of them, sending my mind off on a journey to a better place. Maybe this is what a spirituality adviser should do. But the result was that when we were asked to respond to what she had said I had no idea what the question was. It seemed that most others in the room, with the exception of some of the more recently ordained clergy, knew what to talk about at this point.

The more they spoke the more I thought I wouldn't because I would seem weird. I get this a lot. So I wrote a bit. This usually helps. Just now I found my notes. It occurs to me that discovering others who saw the world my way might be an encouragement. So here, with a bit of tidying, is what I wrote:

What sort of spirituality do you identify with?
Which do you prefer? I do not engage with life as a series of preferences. My life is not especially binary, digital. If given a series of choices I will often make one, but not out of long-term established principle; merely then and there. Tea or coffee? Chips or mash?  Bath or shower? Silence or company? Read or write? Mercedes or VW? (That one's real, current and hard.)

If given a choice of yellow and any other colour, yellow will usually lose. But asked to choose between any other two colours I will probably not have a favourite.

Our speaker just said, 'If I am not astonished (by the world) I am not paying attention.' What has astonished me this week? Nothing. Some people find this question easy. I am not often shocked (although I don't like horror movies so tend to avoid trying to be shocked) and the opposite is also true. I am rarely astonished. Being astonished has just been equated with paying attention. I think I am permanently curious but rarely astonished. The world has a consistency about it such that only the miraculous and street magic (trickery) astonishes me. Since 'astonished' is such a wrong word for me I find the question hard.

So I won't usually hate a week but neither will I instantly and clearly be able to tell you what was the best bit. I wonder if seeing the world in terms of being rather than doing (which I be) makes it peculiarly difficult to identify the best doings of the week. What was the best bit of last week? Being me. It was great. I have eyes and opposable thumbs. Ain't that the dogs?

So what is my response to questions such as, 'What sort of spirituality do you identify with?' It's difficult. All of them. None of them.

If there are any people out there who understand this and would like to talk about it please get in touch. Use the comments box, tweet @s1eve or pick any other way you know.

And nobody mentioned Jesus, once.

Important information from Royal Mail

Along with many people in 'my area' I am going to have changes to my Royal Mail service. A letter, from Plymouth so I don't know quite how big 'my area' is, explains why these changes are necessary.

These changes are necessary to give best value, invest in modern equipment and stop Royal Mail personnel getting a hernia from their heavy bags. Apparently it has not occurred to Glynn Lane, Delivery Sector Manager for the Nailsea area, that I might expect these things to happen as a matter of course.

Still, we get to heading three, 'What this means for you.' I quote in full:

• We will continue to deliver in the morning and for a longer period during the day. Many customers will continue to get their mail by lunchtime.
• The time you receive your mail will depend on where you are on the new delivery route. This may be later or possibly earlier than you are used to.
• As I am sure you understand, when mail volumes vary, I may need to adjust delivery arrangements and time.

He finishes:

'These changes may mean a different postman or woman ... will deliver to you...'

May I summarise Glynn's letter for the hard-of-understanding:

As a result of us doing what you would expect us to do we may deliver your post earlier, at the same time or later in future. In busy times your post may be late. This delivery may be carried out by the same, or different, personnel to those you are used to.

Gee thanks. Load off my mind Glynn.

Garden Bird Sightings

Here are the results of a year's staring out of the window. I have listed the species (21 different ones) seen in, or immediately over, my garden in the last year. The number following is the most of that species seen at any one time, followed in brackets by the date on which that occurred. The final number is the figure for 2010:

Blackbird 5 (14/1/11) 5

Blackcap 2 (several) 2

Blue Tit 5 (6/1/11) 3

Chaffinch 3 (20/2/11) 2

Coal Tit 1 (10/5/11) 2

Collared Dove 5 (6/3/11) 7

Dunnock 2 (several) 4

Goldfinch 6 (8/2/11) (20/2/11) 4

Great Tit 2 (several) 3

House Martin 16 (31/8/11) 17

House Sparrow 16 (18/11/11) 14

Jackdaw 2 (28/3/11) 2

Jay 1 (1/1/11) 2

Long-tailed Tit 2 (31/1/11) 5

Magpie 3 (5/1/11) (27/2/11) 2

Robin 2 (several) 2

Sparrowhawk 1 (22/2/11) 0

Starling 20 (25/3/11) 36

Swift 5 (26/6/11) 3

Wood Pigeon 3 (several) 3

Wren 1 (several) 1

Observed 2010 but not 2011:

Black-headed Gulls

Common Gull

Crow

Fieldfare

Green Finch

Herring Gull

Heron

Pied Wagtail

Redwing

Song Thrush

Swallow

The eagle, parakeet and giraffe observations noted in the book all seem to have taken place on Tuesdays which, coincidentally, is when I host the Holy Trinity leadership team meeting.

Shipwrecks

In Rhossili Bay on the end of the Gower Peninsula is a beautiful beach. Two thirds of the way along you can make out, from the cliffs above, some weird shapes in the sand. They look as if they could have been old groynes or a small boat that has long since died.

Approaching it you discover the alignment of the wood doesn't quite work as sea defence or small boat. In fact you can see the prow of an enormous boat. There is a mixture of wood and metal work that suggests it may be old but not that old.

In fact this is the Helvetia, which sank in 1887 without loss of life although the story is that the cargo of wood now makes up the floor of many local houses. Sadly there was a tragedy when six men were killed in the operation to recover the valuable anchor.

I pondered our island existence this week. It has been a week when a British submarine lost in 1942 off Malta was found and declared a war grave for the 90 hands who perished and also when a huge passenger boat capsized, also in the Med, currently with a loss of life of only three. I fear this will rise.

We live on a planet made up largely of water. Those early explorers who went to sea not knowing where they would end up sure were brave, or at minimum had more curiosity than fear. But shipwrecks tend to stay where they happen.

The wreck of the Helvetia is strangely beautiful at low-tide in the January light. It breaks up the monotony of the miles of sand but like flowers attached to a lamp-post. How fragile we are.

January 4th Faith

So, as some of you know, I got dressed yesterday and did some work. It helped. What helped particularly was meeting with a very ordinary bunch of, yeah let's say it, not that young, members of a local church who wanted help with learning to lead worship, pray in church, read the Bible and preach. Doing this sort of thing is an absolute priority for me. Partly because it clears my diary of having to plan services because others can do it and partly because delegation is the business I am in.

This morning I said Morning Prayer with two other guys in a cold church. They have faithfully done this every Wednesday throughout a vacancy that is nearly two years old now. Only recently have I begun to join them. I don't think there was any clear articulation of why it should be done. It just seemed right to them to carry on and so they did, come rain or shine.

Routine is a good way to keep faithful. You follow the patterns laid down in the past because then the journey is familiar. Footpaths tend to lead to the same place every time, unless you are at Hogwarts or something.

Every time I have posted, over the last eight years, in a manner such as I did yesterday, or indeed ventured that sort of information in a conversation, I have found it tremendously rewarding. Not rewarding in the sense that everyone says 'there, there, buck up' even though they do and it's OK, but rewarding in the sense that it seems to be a helpful thing to say. Judging by the feedback on Facebook and in the comments box I suspect that I am being more helpful to people when I say how I really feel. Obviously not the sort of thing to blurt out on a bereavement visit but you know what I mean.

I used to enjoy a quote that said something like;

Tell them about your certainties - they'll have enough doubts of their own.

I think it was the late David Watson who said it, or at least popularised it. Thing is, that leaves the impression that the clergy are the only ones with 100% clarity of faith all the time. Clergy can come across as just a bit over-sincere - you know that thing we do with slightly more eye contact than everyone is comfortable with.

After prayers I went shopping for a bit - a wander ponder if you like and anyway I had to buy some birthday presents. Another reason January sucks is that half the family have birthdays in it and that is joined by the car insurance renewal and my balancing tax payment for the year.

So the current state of me is that I am bright and breezy and not particularly stressed that the world is currently a place of godless truth and beauty. I will attend tonight's prayer time with a clear conscience and maybe even say a few myself.

In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.

It's from the beginning of Samuel. We don't quote it often enough.

January 3rd Faith

I have to ease myself into it. Like getting into a too-hot bath it has to be done gingerly. Subtle difference is that, once entered, a bath is by-and-large pleasant.

It's not the work I worry about. I can do tasks after Christmas. I can get stuff done.

It's the faith. Where did it go?

There are several mornings a year when I wake up not believing in God and have to do that Descartian locking myself in a metaphorical cupboard thing until I can face the possibility of spiritual questions. Not quite cogito yet. You?

Let me show my working. It may bother you but it gets me going.

Suppose there is no God. It's easy if you try. Then put on a dog-collar. Ha. Weird isn't it? Why are you wearing a symbol of spiritual support to others if you don't think there is a God? Take it off for a bit.

Now look around you. You have a job with very few responsibilities and a nice house and a salary that works as long as you are sensible or have a partner who works. All you have to do to keep those things is to make a few glib and platitudinous statements once a week and pitch up when expected at various occasions. Far more than you could possibly imagine can be delegated. Could you manage that? You may be a con-artist but you are quite a good one.

OK. So that's a starting point. You can come out of the cupboard now. You are a hypocrite but aren't we all? You know you have felt like this before and getting on with things will move you on, or at least has in the past.

Your next step is to decide if any of the things you are going to be talking about can be said to be true in any sense. The world kinda needs a meta-narrative and the Christian one is a good one. Triumph of good over evil; live pessimistically but hold on to a grand hope etc. If there is a God he would be like a good father; if he cared for us he would enter our world, his glory veiled possibly. So that was Christmas.

Just a few days ago I was singing that we might let:

Our happy voices rend the jocund air asunder

Tried it at Trendlewood Church New Year's morning. Never seen a bunch of people less likely to rend the air, jocund or otherwise.

Maybe others feel like me too. Or just went to better parties where they weren't the driver.

But that is where I have reached currently. There may be no God but I will carry on acting as if there is for a bit until he catches up with me again, or I with him. If he is there he won't be hiding.

I'll add some new bricks to this wall over the next few days. I thought it might encourage you to know that you are not the only one who feels, from time to time, that everything has been in vain, but your pension is probably not tied to it quite so tightly.

Happy new year.

The Animals' Tales

As used at Holy Trinity, Nailsea Crib Service yesterday.

The Story of the Journey - The Donkey's Tale
I am a donkey. To tell the truth I don't have a name. Everyone calls me little. I suppose I am small for my age. But small creatures can do important tasks.

Caesar Augustus wanted to know how many people were in the Roman Empire. So he made everyone go home.

When a census was taken in the Roman Empire everyone had to get back to their birthplace and sign in. All the important people got the best rides. Those with no money either walked or got a donkey.

I got to carry this woman who was pregnant. Very pregnant. I put my hooves down really carefully in case a loud noise started her off.

And her bloke, Joseph, came from David's family. The great King David of Israel. And everyone knows that he came from - yeah that's right - Bethlehem, In Judea. But they lived in Nazareth in Galilee. That's eighty miles away and further if you don't want to go through Samaria. Which we didn't. Scum.

It took us a week. Amazing she didn't have the baby on the way.

And when we got to Bethlehem it was ramming. I wondered if some people wanted to show off that they came from the same town as David.

And all the rooms were taken. Everyone must have got there early to get a bed. So Mary and Joseph had to kip at my place. With the other animals.

I'll let Daisy the cow take the story on.



Inside the Stable - The Cow's Tale
Moo. Moo.

Hi I'm Daisy. High quality, organic milk supply to the hospitality industry.

This bit of the story gets exaggerated. Everyone reckons they know what happened and adds a bit of detail. To be honest it all took place quite quickly. Mary and Joseph crashed in the barn and that was where she had the baby. When Luke wrote it down all he said was:

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her first-born, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger...

As I remember it we all tried to move to the side to give them a bit of room. Everyone respects a birth round here.

But it all went well. Lots of happy voices and then Mary and the baby went to sleep and Joseph went to the pub.

We had a bet on what they would call the kid. My money was on David - it seemed to fit - but everyone lost. They called him Joshua; that's Jesus in Greek. It means 'The Lord saves.' Hmm. I wonder.

How do I know all this? Remember, not all cows are as silly as they look.


Out in the Fields - The Sheep's Tale
It was night. We were all asleep. It was a bit of a boring night.

Sorry. I'm forgetting myself. Name's Harry. Harry the lamb. I told my Mum it would have been easier to remember if it had been Larry but what can you do?

I'll never forget what happened next. It became day. Not slowly as usual. At once. In an instant. Kaflash!

And a thing appeared. I didn't know what it was. The shepherds, who had been doing OK up to then, went crazy. They are supposed to protect us but they hid behind us while we tried to hide behind each other. It was chaos.

And a voice said:

Do not be afraid.

Didn't really work. We carried on being more afraid. Because the kaflash talked.

Then it spoke some more and said a baby had been born, was dressed in cloths, was lying in a manger and was really quite important.

The kaflash got brighter and started singing:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.

Rubbish song. Great video.

So the shepherds left us and went to visit Bethlehem. Left us. Alone in the dark again. In the fields, by ourselves. That was frightening.

When they came back they seemed very excited. They kept talking about what had happened and told everyone who passed by the next day.

Amazing.


Another Journey - the Camel's Tale
If you want to go somewhere in style you don't walk. You don't go on a little donkey. You hire a camel.

That's me that is. Tall. Distinguished. Very capable. Someone once called us the ships of the desert.

They must have meant my sister. She looks like the back end of a liner. I, on the other hand...

Anyway, my story.

One day some wise men who studied the stars hired me and my mates for a few weeks to travel to the east, to Jerusalem. They wanted to see a new king. They had seen it in the stars.

In Jerusalem we stopped and asked where the king was, thinking everyone would send us to the Palace. Nobody knew anything.

Eventually some priests and teachers did a bit of checking. They told King Herod, the current king, what they had found out. He sent us on our way to Bethlehem. We looked up and a star seemed to be moving there too. Cool.

When we got to Bethlehem we found a house where the baby they were all talking about lived. The wise guys went in and said hello and left presents.

Herod had told us to report back to him but the wise guys decided not to. There was something of the night about him.

Rich Gospel Investigates the Light

To use this in a service dress as a private eye (dark glasses, hat, raincoat with collar pulled up)

On the word intriguing – stroke your chin before speaking it

On the word suspicious - look round from side to side before speaking it

On the word mysterious - scratch your head as if puzzled

It was Christmas Eve and Rich Gospel was about to go home for Christmas.

It was a busy time of year. At the offices of Glad, Tidings, Comfort and Joy – the theological detective agency – the phone was ringing incessantly. Sadly, incessantly wasn't picking up.

'Paranormal, supernatural and doctrinal investigations,' they'd put on the business cards.

Very popular this time of year. It had been the busiest Christmas season ever and Rich had taken all the countings. Oops. Of course he meant counted all the takings. Obviously.

Suddenly a letter came through the window and landed on his desk. The window had been closed but luckily the letter was tied to a brick.

Very (look round from side to side) suspicious.

He raced outside but there was no-one in sight. Very (scratch your head) mysterious.

Picking bits of broken glass out of his hair, Rich opened the letter.

'Dear Mr Gospel', it said, 'My daughter has asked for a very specific sort of torch for Christmas. She wants a light that shines in the darkness that the darkness doesn't understand.'

Rich had a ponder. He toasted it and spread it with jam. Best ponder he'd had for ages. Then he went back to his train of thought. Sadly the station was closed so he had to return to work.

He knew about light. It wasn't as clever as it was made out to be. Think about it. Every time you put a light on it is because the room is dark. The dark must have got there first. If scientists listened to him (which they didn't because they tried to avoid being in the same room as an eccentric crank) they would be investigating not the speed of light but the speed of dark.

He had a little wonder, a 1987 one, a good year for wonder. It went very well with the ponder he had just finished.

So if all the girl wanted was a light that shines in the darkness he could give her a torch, a lamp, a candle, a bulb, a match, a fire, a tinderstick, a taper, a laser beam, a thunderflash... easy. But she wanted a light that the darkness didn't understand. Weird. In fact very (stroke your chin) intriguing.

Only recently he had whispered into his computer keyboard that he hadn't washed his hands today. This had turned it off.

He picked it up and kicked it across the room. This booted it up. He waited for it to be ready for use again.

He decided to search for lights that shine in the darkness but this simply took him to the web-sites of lighting companies. Very (stroke your chin) intriguing.

So he changed his search string for a piece of rope and tried the words 'understanding the darkness'. This took him to some very disappointing web-sites all about goths. Very (scratch your head) mysterious.

He was about to remove the piece of wood from the top of the computer to log off when he noticed, far down the search list, a quote from a book by a man called John. Men called John were, in his experience, deeply in touch with the innermost secrets of the theological universe. Something to do with the meaning of their name. Jonathan means God has given us a gift.

He read the quote. It was from a very old book but he thought he had one which he had used last Christmas when investigating angels.

He got the book down from his shelf. He read the beginning of John:

...and the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendesd it not.

It was very old language in his Bible; he must get a new one. Then he had a thought. After his ponder and wonder he was pretty full but eating always helped. Comprehending. That means understanding, doesn't it?

Very (stroke your chin) intriguing.

He read on. On wasn't as interesting as the Bible so he went back to it. What was this light?

As he read he found out more and more. The light wasn't a torch or a candle. It was illuminating in a different way. It was a person. A person who throws light on things. A person who - very (scratch your head) mysterious - was said to come from God.

Still he had his answer and that was what he got paid for. He was about to send the reply when he realised he had no address to write back to. Just a brick and a broken window. He'd forgotten that this was very (look round from side to side) suspicious.

He went back into his office where a surfer was just leaving. He was from an emergency boarding company and had tidied up the window.

Give me the answer he said, and the brick. If you let me take it to the client she'll pay for the window to be fixed. She just wanted to get your attention.

Very (scratch your head) mysterious. But he had one thing in common with the window. He was also shattered. He headed for home before anyone else needed investigating, a copy of John's clever book tucked under his arm, to read over Christmas.

This is what he started to read...

(Reading John 1:1-14)

See Through?

A quote from the Church Times drops into the in-tray of WWA's 'truth is stranger than fiction' department:

The likes and dislikes of the PCC and the reordering committee may come into play if your DAC is equally happy for a modern, glass-walled lavatory area, or for a panelled, more traditional-looking one.

If a Parochial Church Council (PCC) and its Diocesan Advisory Committee (for the care of churches) (DAC) cannot issue, today, a joint statement that glass-walled lavatory areas are inadvisable in churches I think we all out to go home.

Year in Status

First one Twitter; second one Facebook

What if?

OK this is a 'What if ?' post. If you don't know what one of those is then go away until you do.

See, the thing is, every Christmas someone goes to a lot of trouble to debunk a bit of Christmas. This year an excellent, and scholarly work by Anthony Billington points out that the word we translate as 'inn' in Luke 2 is probably wrong. It is more likely to mean no guest room. Read it here.

Most exaggerations and additons to the Christmas story (number and arrival time of wise men, presence of animals, requests to Christian children to behave nicely) have been dealt with at some point over the years. They are largely the fault of Victorian carol-writers.

My 'What if' is this. What if it's all bunk? No, not rubbish, but simply not history. John and Mark wrote perfectly acceptable gospels without birth narratives. Paul never refers to it and manages possibly the high point of early church Christology in Philippians 2 without talking about it, or apparently needing to. Jesus himself never refers to it; only to his human family. Joseph disappears from view before Jesus is an adult.

What if, aware of the nature of Jesus the healer/teacher and his ability, it was felt appropriate to give him the sort of exceptional birth or call that heroes of the faith traditionally had? Think Isaac's miraculous arrival, Moses escape, Samuel's childhood temple ministry and you'll get the idea. What if tales grew up as a mark of respect? Needing to treat him as divine someone invented his beginning. Luke adds shepherds (Jesus for the poor and stoopid); Matthew wise men (Jesus for the rich and educated).

Given the unique nature of his birth it is amazing that only one story from age 2-30 survives, Jesus at 12 in the temple. Didn't anyone think to chronicle the life of this amazing and special child? Why on earth not? What if that was because at that time he was not yet special, hadn't yet heard God's call and was busy learning not to cut the ends of his fingers off with carpentry tools?

Does that make his eventual sacrifice any less? Here, finally is a son of God (as we are all called) whose obedience is exemplary. 'This is my son', says a voice from the heavens. What if that is what we all could be, if we just went the way he pointed rather than wondering where he came from.

What if?

Christmas Letter

Christmas letter 2011 now published here. Don't all rush at once but it does contain between none and four good jokes.

A right and wrong speech

I commend you all to read the Prime Minister's speech to theologians and church leaders on the occasion of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the King James' Bible.

Read the text here.

It contains many fine words and quotes but I can't help leaving with the feeling that I have read a speech that was both completely right and completely wrong at the same time. Fully God and fully man?

I think it was this quote, nailing his colours firmly to the fence, that set the tone:

I am a committed – but I have to say vaguely practising – Church of England Christian, who will stand up for the values and principles of my faith…

Maybe he has simply picked up the vibe of the average Englander today - committed but vague. In what other walk of life could you claim a firm commitment allied with vague practice?

He goes on to praise, rightly, the exquisite language of the King James Bible yet finds within it an authority for everything including a constitutional monarchy, something which, on my reading of the Bible, earned God's disapproval and strong discouragement.

There are pot shots at modern translations, failing to understand that these are to help people access God's word as living and active rather than literature and archive.

He insists that the Bible sets our moral framework but wrestles with his own theological issues. There is an inherent danger in seeing the Bible as a finishing point rather than an agreed starting point. It doesn't give us the last word on divorce, sex, abortion or warfare. Indeed the Bible's own theology of these things develops through its pages.

There is a certain amount of cherry-picking:

Indeed, as Margaret Thatcher once said, 'We are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible.'
 
Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love…

…pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities…

These are all good but why no mention of prayer, receiving the Holy Spirit, putting Jesus first, witnessing - these are every bit as much the Bible's values yet I suspect slightly less popular.

I rejoice that we have a Prime Minister who will, unlike Tony Blair 'do God'. I hope he understands that there will be some who feel it is rude not to do God properly.

A Bit of Dissonance

My head has been in a bit of a spin today. It started with a vague feeling of I don't-know-whatness at Morning Prayer and it hasn't gone away. I'm not ill or stressed; it's just that there's a thought trying to fly.

It may come from having had my notions of order challenged and being invited to embrace the conflict (see Monday's post and comments) but I seem to be more than usually aware of the bigness of God and the smallness of humanity.

It is also a time where many are discussing the future of the church, especially the Church of England, in the light of the TV programme Rev (tonight 9.00 p.m) and also a few articles being Facebooked and Twittered (some quite old) about the decline in the church. Others are renewing their spleen-venting over disestablishment and literal understandings of the Bible. I'm with them on both counts so they may as well save their spleens when in my company.

In Psalm 76 this morning we were invited to ponder a view of God that was enormous:

You are resplendent with light,
more majestic than mountains rich with game.
Valiant men lie plundered,
they sleep their last sleep;
not one of the warriors
can lift his hands.
At your rebuke, O God of Jacob,
both horse and chariot lie still.

This human view of God's majesty was that creatures were attractive because they were food and defeat in battle was all part of God's mighty, all-encompassing command and control. When he says die, you die.

Some say that they dislike the bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament. In fact it is the people who were bloodthirsty. The psalmist suggests that God is bigger than all this.

The Old Testament contains a lot of history and, as we all know, history is often written by the winners.

Then we started the Book of Zephaniah. He prophesied during the reign of Josiah. Josiah is always lauded as a good king who preserved Israel's sacred religious traditions and instituted reforms on that basis. He listened to the prophets and obeyed them. But the words of Zephaniah fly in the face of that. Here's a guy who proclaims death and judgement while things are improving and being renewed. It looks as if Josiah and he may have shared a great-grandfather (King Hezekiah) so that may be how Zephaniah managed to avoid becoming lion food. He is not mentioned in the parallel accounts in the historical books of 2 Kings or 2 Chronicles.

Then we had that little passage in Matthew where Jesus gets his and Peter's temple tax paid by doing a magic trick with a fish. It smacks of folk-tale to me, an invention of Matthew to keep Jews paying their taxes after the fall of Jerusalem.

We (there were four of us at Morning Prayer) often have a short discussion about the readings but today we sat in silence and I enjoyed my own discussion.

During a pastoral prayer meeting a little later I pondered on the simple faith of some of those prayers. At one point I jotted this down, addressed to those who rubbish the church:

The God you mock, the one who intervenes from time to time, occasionally doing our will, is too small. The God  I think I recognise, and know, always intervenes and my prayers are a way of seeing my unique issues in an eternal context.

This thought, not quite fully-formed enough to write down but what-the-hell, wants to suggest that in getting to grasp the fullness of the wonder of God, literalism can be a real hindrance. Sometimes it doesn't mean quite what it appears to says. That doesn't mean it ain't truth. We may need to search harder to find what is. None of these passages, experiences or events will reveal its meaning alone.

Weather

Why do you talk about the weather so much in England? I've been asked this a few times, mainly by continental friends or west-coast Yanks.

If it was 20c every day with rain falling in April only we'd probably not discuss it. But this morning we had overnight heavy wind followed by torrential rain, hail, lightning and thunder. Now it is looking slightly sunny.

We are blessed with not living in a part of the world where the weather makes a serious annual attempt to take your life, but also where it is not so predictable as to be dull.

I think it is part of what makes us adaptable and creative as a people. And on that note I'm going to get some writing and cooking done.

Pepper Pots and OCD

As you know the world divides into two types of people - those who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't . That's not original but originality is forgetting where you found something (Jonny Baker) and I've forgotten.

So you will either love and understand what I am about to tell you or wonder what all the fuss is about.

First, by way of background, you need to know that I suffer from a bit of OCD. Not seriously. I can cope with an odd number of cans in the fridge and visit untidy houses. I walk on the cracks. But I close doors and switch off lights (not a bad habit so far) and (extreme coming up) can't sleep with a dressing table drawer or wardrobe door slightly open.

Today I was meeting with some other ministers from around the Diocese (Hi David, Kate, Tina, Diana and Roger). We are the ones who have specific job descriptions including missional stuff - fresh expressions, pioneering etc.

Over coffee after our lunch together Tina rolled up a piece of paper that had previously contained chocolate and placed it under the pepper pot so said pot now leaned at an alarming angle. And left it there. She continued to talk as if nothing important had happened and when I suggested that I wondered why she had done this she said 'Because I am a pioneer.' When I further indicated that I found this made me uneasy she did nothing.

Now. Who else is bothered by the idea of sitting at a table looking at a deliberately destabilised pepper pot? Only me? OK. I'll shut up now.

Dr Theo

This morning we welcome Dr Theo Claptrap to the site to answer your questions on matters liturgical, biblical and ecclesiastical. Welcome Dr Theo and let's take a question:

Dr Theo, big fan, love your work, been following you for years...

Yes, yes get on with it.

Well I can't help noticing that today is the Festival of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Indeed it is. Your question?

Well what is that for?

Ah well, glad you asked me that. The idea is that for the Son of God to be completely pure and free from the stain of human sinfulness his human mother must also have been and so on. It used to be called the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It is celebrated on the 8th December, nine months before the Nativity of Mary which is celebrated on the 8th September. I guess they assumed a full-term pregnancy. Started about the fifth century CE.

Used to?

I think someone realised we'd have to be celebrating her grandparents, great-grandparents and so on. We'd disappear, immaculately up our own genealogy. Anyway if Christ is fully human as well as fully divine it is important that there was nothing special about his mother.

Nothing special?

Exactly. Ordinary, obedient human lass, probably a teenager.

Ordinary lass?

Exactly. The last thing she'd have wanted was a feast. Let alone one to celebrate her parents getting it on. Have you read the Magnificat?

Blimey won't that upset a few of our catholic friends?

Might do. Accuracy more important than friendship I reckon. You don't help your friends by agreeing with them when they're talking boll... Anyway, must dash, those Orange Lodge doors won't open themselves. Cheerio.

Dr Claptrap will be back to answer more of your questions after his meeting. Acknowledgement to the late Miles Kington who did this sort of thing from time to time.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

This is the title of a short book by Leszek Kolakowski which I have been reading very slowly over the last year or two. It is published, in translation, by Penguin.

In it he concentrates on 30 great philosophers and one idea they introduced or discussed which is, in some respects, still current and still being talked about. It is not (as he categorically says in the introduction) a history of philosophy and he warns any student attempting to treat it as such that they will fail their exams.

It is, especially for those of us who enjoy the exercise of thinking for its own sake, a great challenge. Fantastic to strip down life's great questions to such as:

Can we know anything?
How can we achieve certainty?
Do we need the church?
What is human existence?

It is equally interesting to read a summary of what the world's great thinkers (the list is the author's choice) have made of these questions. At the end of each chapter Kolakowski lists further questions and issues that are raised by the particular philosopher's views.

I loved it. And in passing I note how many of the world's great thinkers have given no answers whatsoever but merely raised questions that others have then gone on to think about in detail. Friends and colleagues will be aware of my dislike of answers and love of questions. Shoulders of giants and all that.

Cost me £8.99 through the Guardian book club.

Signs 2

Observing the strap-lines on large lorries has become a bit of a hobby of late (see previous post). What would once have been a Fowler chilled van is now:

temperature controlled distribution

I felt confident that Eddie Stobart's fleet, kings of truckers with girl names on the front of their rigs, would claim no such nonsense but was devastatingly disappointed to pass one of their vehicles on Saturday. It proudly proclaimed:

trans store logistics

No-one is a delivery driver any more.

Soon window cleaners vans will be offering:

on-site transparent wall cleansing solutions

And the Fire Brigade:

domestic and industrial combustion calming

I used to be a vicar. Now I wonder if people would rather have:

eternity logistics and solutions

Well it's a thought.

Signs

If you were to put three words on the side of your van what would they be? I know you haven't got a van, stupid. Take an imaginary trip.

Thing is, I bet that after a bit of work you'd have only those words remaining that were really worth keeping. They'd say a lot about you. Even the words you jettisoned to get, say, six down to four, would be interesting.

I passed a van on the M4 today. In fact I passed three vans from the same company, Downton. Of the three words on the side of their van, a strap line which you will find on their web site, I contend that two are unnecessary:

Real Distribution Solutions

One way to test a slogan is to see if the opposite is clearly stupid. If it is you don't need to say it. So:

Fake Distribution Solutions
Surreal Distribution Solutions
No Distribution Solutions

And as for 'solutions':

Downton - Really Solving Nothing
Downton - Not a Real Clue
Downton - No Real Answers for 55 Years

I rest my case.

I bet some creative types were involved in finalising the slogan. I used to do this for a living. I wish I was back in that line of work sometimes. People will pay good money for that level of stupidity.

May I suggest:

Downton Distribution

Alliterative, simple and memorable.

There will be no charge.

Unless, of course, it was only one van and it kept jumping beyond me at light speed. Now that would be a solution.

Don't Start Anything

I work best in the worlds of vision and delivery. I am not so hot at strategy. If vision is about destination - where are we going? - then strategy is about the steps to take to get there.

It follows that vision is more about leadership than management and vice-versa for strategy.

After two and a half days of retreat, and now a free day before returning to Advent earth, I have a single thought pinned down. I am fed up of starting things. I've spent all my ministry starting things. I've set things up. I've seen things that were not being done and I've made them happen. I have begun.

But I have lost the knack of being able to infect people with the passion for whatever it is I start and thus hand on the started thing to someone who will run with it, polish it and make it great, perhaps using me as occasional consultant if things get stuck.

I am currently doing too many things I started. And this makes me spend too much time keeping those things going when I really want/ought to be starting something else. I hear a Michael Jackson song on constant repetition. And yes I do '...wanna be starting something.'

The danger, with people such as me, is that we walk away from the things we have started because of the call of things as yet unbegun. I am determined not to succumb to this but it helps me understand the niggly level of frustration I currently experience all the time. Keep too many live things in a bag and one day the fight will break out.

It is good for me to take on one or two jobs in any post which require discipline and stickability. I do this in a couple of ways. It reminds me that everyone has to do a certain amount of the less pleasant jobs.

I've started two new things this term but I didn't stop anything in order to do them. I merely postponed. Both have gone well first time and are heading towards that difficult second album in a term when all the other things I've started here, bar two (which stopped because they didn't work), need to carry on.

If you hear me talk about pioneering anything for the next few months tell me to stop starting. At the moment, like a dodgy set of jump leads, I'm not starting anything.

On Criticism

I found myself, though no fault of my own, watching Strictly and Xfactor last night. It was horrid.

One observation. The panels of judges in both programmes know something about the subject they are critiquing. Why, in both cases, are they so hated if they offer suggestions for improvement? Most of the acts nod in acknowledgement. Why do the audience boo?

When Craig Revel Horwood enjoys a routine but suggests some correction of posture or hand positioning he is booed. When Gary Barlow applauds a singer but points out pitching issues in verse 1 (I like 'pitching issues' for what we would call 'out of tune') the audience goes mad at him.

We seem to want our developing stars to be fully formed and unmentored. Even the babies. How do you learn without comments?

I suppose the good cop bad cop routine and falling-out-judges makes for good tele but I can't help feeling that giving the impression that every piece of advice that is not encouraging is somehow wrong is, well, wrong.

We used to run a summer camp and each day would review the performance of everyone at everything the day before. One sign of growth as a Christian leader was the ability to sit in the meeting and hear feedback on your talk/music/game-leading/cooking. Those who listened and learned were the best; those who got all defensive were in for a life of under-development. It was also good to learn to give feedback, positive and negative.

Criticism is good. Anyway the TV was all too loud for me. Went to bed with quiet music. Getting old.

Change

Three weeks ago, in a large meeting, I made the assertion that all change arises from dissatisfaction of some sort. I gave some examples. In the specific context of wondering if we might change the way we do our small group work at church, my colleagues and I shared that we were dissatisfied with our church's outreach. We wanted to have a conversation (and we have a had a really good one with about 120 people involved) about whether or not our home groups might be the solution to this problem.

In the midst of this I wondered if anyone could think of any examples of change that did not arise from dissatisfaction and I tried to prove them wrong. This too was a fascinating discussion. Most of the examples suggested were too easy to knock down and after a while I stopped bothering, but I did feel the original assertion wasn't tight enough. Some extracts:

Maybe better to say all growth begins with change.

Of course all change begins with dissatisfaction. If we were satisfied why would we change? Why make a mountain out of a truism?

So I posed another question. I said, 'No-one has yet given me an example of change that does not arise out of dissatisfaction - but the dissatisfaction may be about the future.'

I received a number of replies concerning things such as adolescence or plants changing with the seasons. In terms of philosophical posturing they are correct. My axiom is not a catch all for the non-human world. Adolescence is, of course, not a change but a development, a distinction list on many of my contributors. To some extent this is true of the plant world too but I was not happy yet.

Some more comments:

I fear that you're using 'dissatisfaction' in a catch-all way...my hope that 'maybe if I change this/that I'll see an improvement' might indicate dissatisfaction or it might illustrate anticipation or hope.

Lost you on this Steve, your definition of dissatisfaction and change needed.

Sales Training 101: You cannot sell to anyone who is in a satisfied state. They have no needs and so you cannot supply anything to meet them. The only people to whom you can sell are those who have a problem they need solving (70%) and those who see an opportunity they wish to grasp (30%.) I would argue that both those states show a dissatisfaction with the status quo. What's true for selling and buying is true for the rest of life.

I've never been convinced by the 'needs' based humanistic approach to human activity. I know it's popular in some areas of management/marketing, but my own research suggests that people's activity is generally far to complex to fit with one decision making mode.  ...you've created dissatisfaction as an umbrella term and can now quite satisfactorily fit any eventuality under it.

Can I ask if using your dissatisfaction motif helps you to act in ways that brings about the change you aspire to? If it does, don't worry about being wrong, instigating and supporting healthy change is surely the goal?

So let's say a few things in response to this. Firstly a big yah boo sucks to anyone who says social networking lacks depth. Over 40 contributions to this discussion and many of a very high quality. Secondly, can we recall for a moment that I only posed a couple of questions. I haven't arrived anywhere yet (I'm about to though).

Thirdly, and finally, I think I would now want to say that no-one will invest time and energy in making a change to their pattern of behaviour unless there is some element of dissatisfaction with the current pattern. This way we exclude those who have unwanted change forced upon them - it was their bosses/leaders who were dissatisfied and made them change. If we want to change together we need to agree on the dissatisfaction we are moving away from. Thus meetings and conversations.

I think this can be summarised as 'All human planned change arises out of dissatisfaction.'

OMG It's Happened

Today is Friday and my regular day free from clerical duties. I finished work last night at 7.30 p.m. for an evening out with Mrs WWA so this morning feels relaxed. I started, as I often do, by knocking off a short piece of writing. Earning £50 extra before breakfast is good (but I breakfast late these days).

Anyway, and this is the point, as I was finishing my article my mind wandered to breakfast and of what it might consist. This is why I am not a good proof reader and why I put written pieces down for a few hours before submitting them.

I recalled that there were left over rolls and tomatoes from a lunch yesterday and that I owned some bacon.

As I walked into the kitchen my inner dialogue went, 'And lo, it came to pass that he discovered bacon in the fridge and...' Stop.

Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Stop.

Nativity speak has begun. I never asked for that to happen. Why? It is November. I am not putting a tea towel on my head for at least a fortnight.

Haiku

Apologies but, inspired by Harry Baker, I have had an outbreak of appalling haiku puns. Here they are so far:

The mountain ruler
Removed by people power
It was a high coup

Remember Miss Stark?
Prince Andrew entered the room
And he said 'Hi Koo.'

Many people wait
I arrive to join them all
And so I queue

Noise like a pigeon
I can do that sound quite well
It is when I coo

I wanted a walk

She suggested a long one

But I said 'Hike, oo.'

 

Latter day prophet

I think you are quite bonkers

You David Icke you

 

Geordie snooker star

Gives reasons for his talent

That is why aye cue

Show em yer warts

Lovely time round the lunch table yesterday with some nice people:

My Curate colleague, her husband and little boy
A couple from Trendlewood church we have got to know
A couple we met at the pub (he) and then when I married them
A couple we met through Alpha then a baptism contact and their little girl

But I think this may be odd behaviour for round here, with some notable exceptions.

A few year's ago a Christian course was published called 'Friendship Evangelism.' I recall remarking at the time that if the only bunch of people who had a specific brief to build relationships with outsiders had to have a course on how to make friends wasn't that a bit of an indictment about how well we were doing after 2,000 years? Maybe it was because I had lived in the Midlands or the north all my life, a dining room table constantly surrounded by people and a kitchen permanently inhabited by someone who had dropped by for tea and a chat.

A fellow church employee, who I supervised, asked me a few years ago, 'Steve, are we friends?' I found it a difficult question. Firstly, if he had to ask, clearly there was some doubt in his mind. Secondly because I operate without a category 'friend' in my head most of the time. I meet people, I behave in a friendly way towards them, I build a relationship. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but until they screw me over I continue to trust them and want to get the relationship better.

I have three or four really close friends and a nice family. Thereafter I don't use the friend word very much.

Regardless of what you mean by 'friend' it has been much harder than I ever thought here in the south-west to gently encourage this attitude of building relationships with outsiders. It simply doesn't come naturally to most people. No-one is unfriendly, but few are lowering the drawbridge.

Is it fear? A couple once told me they would invite me round for a meal when the ensuite bathroom was finished. What a terrible, all-consuming fear it is that people might see us in a state of less than perfection, even in a room there was no chance of my ever going in.

If you want to make friends you have to show everyone your blemishes, make your mistakes in public. When people come round for a meal here sometimes they get asked to peel stuff, stir pans or serve the drinks. They certainly see the last minute cooking panic since the kitchen and dining room are open plan. Clearing up is often a communal event. No-one minds.

I have heard someone describe having guests for a meal as 'outside my comfort zone.' I have been in lounges I think no one else has ever been in. It doesn't even have to be a meal you cooked. 'Let's share a take-away.'

People of Nailsea. Next time you meet the neighbour in the drive why not say 'Would you and Mr(s) neighbour like to come round for a drink and a chat next (name)day?'

For goodness sake, what's the worst that could happen? And I have seen those Dr Pepper ads.

Dream dream dream

I may have shared my recurring dream before. The backdrop varies but the situation is always that I need to be somewhere or do something and things are conspiring to distract me, block my way, or hinder progress.

I have almost reached the point where I can break into my own dream, without waking up, and announce to myself that I am dreaming.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this tells me I am frustrated by the slow progress of my work.

Parish life isn't hard like log-chopping is, or tedious like a table-top manufacturing job might be, but it is all about the technique of lining things up in the same direction so the whole thing will move. It can be incredibly slow.

Today I am frustrated that something has gone wrong only I can fix and it is taking my mind off important things.

We all want the gospel to be effective but we stay where we are because we can't agree precisely how. Clinging mud; can't walk forwards.

Thank you I feel a bit better now.

Trapped between two silences

If it came to it, and you knew you were going to be remembered in public, would you want a minute's silence or a minute's applause?

Our culture is changing.

I did a quick Bible study on silence this week, in preparation for a thought for the day at a men's breakfast this morning.

Obviously there is no noise in a vacuum, so when the earth was without form and void it would have been quiet. Genesis 1 tells us God spoke into this silence. There then follows a hubbub, a cacophony as the created order finds its place and seemingly, in the process, loses its God.

Only with the onset of the ministry of prophets do we have the poignant thought that God is not in the earthquake, wind or fire (where his people might have expected him after a few skirmishes on mountains) but a still small voice. When the earth was formless he could speak quietly. Why raise his volume now?

In the wisdom tradition Job's best comfort comes from friends sitting in silence; when they speak they screw up. Proverbs tell us that a fool seems wise when he remains silent. Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to be silent and a time to speak.

Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would be silent like a sheep before its shearers. Six centuries later, before the High Priest, Mark tells us the Messiah stood and said nothing.

After the resurrection the noise is of proclamation with accompanying special effect tongues of fire and wind. Now there can be shouting. The rest of the New Testament is all talk.

At the end of all things Revelation tells us only of silence in heaven for half an hour.

On Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday we fall silent for two minutes in memory of those who fell silent for ever. We are currently the people in between, a poppy for comfort.

You may applaud me when I'm gone if you wish. But silence reminds the senders of the sent. It takes one to make a noise; it takes everyone to make a silence.

A Questioning Post

A colleague of mine used to say that discussion groups after a talk were a good opportunity for people to 'burp'. He drew the analogy of a baby being fed - after a while the infant needs to be winded and then some more food can be inserted into the gap. Without being winded a small child will feel full before it is.

It said a lot about that teaching style. The speaker has the food and people need feeding; almost force-feeding.

I have always been a great enthusiast for teaching in a dialogue.  I am not anti-input. I do have some resources, training and skills which equip me with stuff to pass on. But the assumption about dialogue (Greek: dia logos = through word(s)) is that I will be as helped by the listener as the listener by me.

In passing let us note that the wonderful thing about a Twitter #hashtag at the beginning of a broadcast is that it then becomes a dialogue rather than a monologue.

For me a crucial skill in promoting dialogue is to allow others to speak once a question has been asked. I heard the brilliant John Sergeant at a literary festival a few years back. When he took questions he took all the questions then spoke a bit more on the most common themes raised.

So if a speaker says 'Any questions' I think they should resist at all costs the desire to answer the first one. Doing that suggests that the first questioner has captured the mood of the meeting. Often the answer to the first question is so long it precludes further questions being asked. Major fail. Answering questions is over-rated anyway. Telling people their question is helpful and allowing it to inform the rest of the gathering is better, much better, than feeling it is just a need to burp which can be dealt with and more input inserted.

Last night Declan, the RC Bishop of Clifton told a group of us that the ecumenical community has today begun to use the expression 'receptive ecumenism'; we approach other Christian communities as gifted people who might inform us. It is a dreadful expression - one of my major problems with the ecumenical community is that its language, in striving for common ground, becomes more and more uncommon - but a good point is hiding in it.

Let us live with each other's questions, appreciate each other's giftedness and accept that every time we answer a question too quickly we betray our agenda that these are no more than burps.

Mick's Metaphor of the Week

BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning at about 8.50 a.m.

Greece has already gone down the plughole and Italy is on its way down and somehow the countries on the rim are being prised away by the gravitational pull.

That's a hell of a plughole. Some sort of white hole perhaps, although who is doing the prising in such a difficult environment?

Push push shove shove

When people start a blog post 'This is not a complaint about anyone' they are rarely believed. But this is not a complaint about anyone. It's a conversation starter.

There was a joke told to me about thirty years ago, and I guess it had been around for a while before that. It concerned a vicar.

Every morning he was seen walking out of the house and along to the railway line. He stood on the bridge looking along the track. As the first train of the day passed beneath the bridge he did a little leap of joy and danced his way back to his house.

More on that later.

In one of the parishes in which I work there is a usual Sunday attendance of over 300 in four congregations across two worship centres. The electoral role is about 320 or so and those we might call our members (over 16 years of age) number about 340 or 350.

For some months now we have been talking about, and planning, how to improve outreach. The parish might be blessed with large numbers but this is more through residence than successful evangelism. Massive growth in numbers in the 1980s and 1990s corresponded with people moving into the area as it was allowed to grow under the North Somerset Development Plan.

As part of this we have suspended our small groups this month. We are holding a series of congregational meetings to discuss whether those small groups might be the key place to get this improvement to happen. We have invited all church members to these meetings, not just those currently in small groups (you might call them home groups but ours don't all meet in homes).

The first two meetings (one daytime, one evening) have been good. I am sure I should be grateful that a total of 110 people have wrestled with our opening session and asked great questions. There is clearly an underlying nervousness about change, something my personality type finds it very hard to understand but I try and listen. The opening few comments suggest that it is the support and care people value about their small groups and this has corresponded to a reluctance, over the years, to grow and multiply.

The end point of the conversation, for our small groups, has not been identified. You can't have a conversation if the end point is fixed. The end point of the conversation for the church has to be fixed. If we don't get real about outreach then we will do what a near neighbour church has done - grow old and be in danger of death.

Here's the conversation I want to start. If 110 out of 340 people came that is about a third. However radical the decision making of this holy bunch of the committed and concerned how should we communicate it to the two thirds who couldn't make it, didn't see the point or weren't bothered?

Those of us who try to lead the church are not trying to force anything through, despite the feelings of some more outspoken members. We are genuinely trying to have a conversation about improving evangelism and see our small groups as being at the heart of this.

But I fear that we will have a hard job on our hands convincing the two-thirds that any decision or policy change was genuinely arrived at through prayer and dialogue. As the 'nam vet says, 'You wouldn't know man; you weren't there.' Maybe that is simply what I should expect life to be like.

Asked why he got so excited about the train  the vicar in the joke (remember the joke) said, 'I get excited because it is fantastic to see something in this town that moves without being pushed.'

If I ever show signs of becoming a train-spotter please take me out the back and have a harsh word with blunt sticks. But I understand that vicar.

Good morning.

The Greatest Gift?

Those of us unfortunate enough to recall Ken Dodd's pop career will be able to humm a little ditty called Happiness. 'The greatest gift that I possess...' went the chorus which, annoyingly, I can still sing in full.

I've been pondering happiness recently. A survey, picked up by the Daily Mail but which started its life as the research from a drinks company, listed the top thirty things people said made them happy. These included eating cake, finding £10 in an old pair of jeans and having a quiet moment to yourself.

Since it is fairly clear that two cakes are better than one, £20 is preferable to £10 and two quiet moments are better than a singleton it is apparent that these results are to do with the transitory hit of well-being one can get from a specific event.

In other words, happiness is temporary and short-lived..

Last week Jeanette Winterson read from her biography Why be happy when you could be normal. The comedian Jon Richardson called his recent tour Don't happy be worry.

I was preaching yesterday on the passage in 2 Kings 4 where Elisha revives the dead son of a well-to-do Shunammite woman. In this passage the Hebrew word shalom appears a lot.

It is a fascinating passage, linguistically. Asked if there is anything that can be done to repay her hospitality the woman responds 'I have a home amongst my people.'

It seems to me that she is asked how she can be made happier and she responds that she is content. A home amongst her people is all she needs.

Probing further it turns out she is childless. Elisha prophesies that she will have a son within a year. She accuses him of being mean, 'Don't mislead your servant...'

But she does have a son, who dies after a few years. She heads off to the mountain where Elisha hangs out. Asked if everything is OK (shalom) she replies 'Everything is shalom.' Elisha sees through this and she gives him a right telling-off for taking her contentedness and making her happy only to make her unhappy again.

There is a happy ending. Great prophets don't become so by accident and Elisha does the resurrection thing on the lad.

But you see in a Hebrew sense everything was shalom even before that. The woman was back in exactly the same state she had been in when asked if she needed anything.

You wouldn't be able to imagine chocolate making you happy if you had never tasted chocolate. Once you have had some you need more.

Childlessness is hard to bear but having that ended and then returned to you so dramatically is appalling.

To finish where I began there was a ghastly song we used to sing on houseparties in the 1970s:

If you want joy, real joy, wonderful joy
Let Jesus come into your heart

He won't make you happy but he may make you content. I still hate the song but I do understand it. Do not seek happiness; seek joy and contentedness. If you have a home amongst your people that is enough.

WWJD

Back in the 1980s David Jenkins, as Bishop of Durham, managed to become the story. It always dismays Christians when they want to point people to Jesus and find the press pointing at them.  The problem was that the press got wind of the idea that his views on the main features of Christianity were not conventional (they were, but they were academically nuanced). Eventually something he said 'the resurrection is not just a conjuring trick with bones - it's far more than that' began to circulate as the exact opposite 'Bishop says resurrection a conjuring trick with bones.'

I heard the original interview on the radio and know what he said.

But for a few months, in the pubs, clubs, homes and workplaces where I wandered it was easy to talk about Jesus. You started with 'What do you think about the Bishop of Durham' and then moved on to 'So what do you think happened at the resurrection?' Easy. Good chats ensued.

As a naive ordinand/student in 1982 or so I suggested to a group in the Common Room that 'What Would Jesus Do' was a good way to approach an ethical issue. A lecturer, who spent a lot of time in the Junior Common Room because we had a snooker table and the SCR didn't, overheard and said, 'I don't think it's a valid question.'

Since one of the reasons we spent time in the JCR was to get away from theological discussions with lecturers for a while, and given that he had placed his view diametrically opposite to mine rather than letting me tease out dissatisfaction with my own position (a much better way to argue), I didn't rise to the bait.

He was right though.

Five years ago, when being interviewed for the post I currently hold, my final question was, 'What one word would five people who know you well use to describe you?' I answered that the thing I appreciated about most of my friends was that their response in such circumstances would be unexpected. I then listed the sort of words I hoped my friends would use if I bought them enough beer and promised them more.

What Would Jesus Do was being debated on the radio yesterday. I heard nobody say that having read the gospels they would not like to hazard a guess at how this most unpredictable of holy men might respond. For every 'Let the one without sin cast the first stone' there is a 'Let's go somewhere else.' For each compassionate gut reaction, 'They were like sheep without a shepherd' there is a 'Wipe the dust from your feet if you are not welcomed.'

So outside St Paul's Cathedral my Jesus, my saviour, the one like whom there is no-one (English O level, grade 3, thanks Mr Parry) would just as likely tear down the tents, ask how many people there had any credit cards, admonish the cathedral staff for not welcoming the poor or ignore the crowds and go down the pub and speak to some others because that was why he came.

So WWJD? What Would Jesus Drink?

Obviously WWJD. White Wine or Jack Daniel's.

Good morning.