Happy Halloween

Just a quick reminder today, Christian chums, to avoid saying that the commercialisation of Halloween will draw people a little closer to the dark side if we will be moaning, in a month or so's time, that the commercialisation of Christmas will lure people away from its true spiritual meaning. Joined up protest please.

Brummie Alphabet

Language warning. The easily offended will be. Stop reading now.

Correspondence in the Guardian this week has spoken of the non-phonetic alphabet. It begins with:

A for horses
B for lamb

I recall my Dad telling me the RAF used this during the war years but could never remember much of it. So a few years after I started going to pubs I sat down with some drinking friends and we devised the Brummie alphabet. It's not that clean. Went a bit like this:

A for 'orses
B for lamb
C for miles
D for kate
E for brick
F for vescent
G force
H for train
I for tower
L for leather
M for cream sherry
N for the moor
O for a thousand tongues
P for ages
Q for tickets
R for Askey
S for Rantzen
T for dentures
U for cough
V for Las Vegas
W for quits
X for breakfast
Y for biscuits
Z for bollocks

All of them work (say them quickly) except for the last one which had that wonderful Brummie resignation about it that said that things don't work out, shouldn't work out and sometimes you just have to say bollocks.

Sod's Law

My gym holdall hangs lifelessly, inside-out from the rotary washing line in the garden. My wash-bag is dripping over a towel in the spare bedroom. The unwashable cardboard inners to both these things have been wiped down and sit in various basins. My plastic over-trousers are hanging in the shower, dripping dry. Suds come up from the plug-hole whenever I use a basin. The clean duvet cover, bed-linen changed not half an hour before, has a couple of large orange stains on it.

Sod's law says that if something can go wrong it will.

The second inversion says that this will happen at the worst possible time.

The third inversion adds that this will take place so as to cause maximum inconvenience and expense.

So, which of the three bottles of shower-product in my gym bag spent three days upside-down with the top slightly open? Was it the £1 bottle of quarter full tea tree and mint shampoo from Tesco? Was it the £7 bottle of half full American Crew conditioner? Or was it the new, full £16 bottle of Molten Brown shower gel?

And did I discover it as I took my stuff out of the wardrobe? Or did I only notice once my bag had sat on the newly changed bed for a few minutes while I tracked down clean gym kit?

And was this at a quiet moment in the day or just before I was heading out for an appointment?

Do you have to ask?

By the way the plastic over-trousers were sitting at the bottom of the wardrobe under the gym bag and caught the leakage in there, preventing damage to the wardrobe floor. So there is some good news. Also, the whole house smells lovely.

Thank you. Good morning.

Visiting

People like to see Bobbies on the beat but Bobbies reckon to solve more crime by being pro-active not reactive these days. Fewer than 10% are on the beat at any one time, so I gather.

I'm going to write a few pastoral thoughts on visiting. Usually, on feeling like writing pastoral stuff, I go and have a beer until the feeling wears off. But I have a cold Becks and am back at my desk. Gonna nail this.

This visiting thing. I was talking to a few fellow clerges the other day and was amazed at how many of them, as a matter of course, still do a pretty full, weekly case-load of visiting. Train their curates to do it too. And the thing is that it seemed to make not the slightest difference to the numbers of people who came to church.

Over the years I have encountered one or two outstanding visitors, especially in rural situations. At a pub meeting in one country village I heard about, a community leader said, 'Well the parson has visited all of us, let's visit him.' They all went to church at Christmas.

I don't especially enjoy the cake and old dears school of ministry so try to make sure it gets done by those who have a gift for it. By and large few people seem enthusiastic about having a coffee in Costa with teenagers or feeding young adults but I like doing that. So I meet with a pastoral group who help me pray for the sick, keep me in touch with other pastoral matters and tell me when a clergy visit is essential.

If people feel that a visit from a lay person is second class I have to say I give them a thorough lecture on every member ministry.

I have a second point. The guy who trained me in ministry felt that the daily round of parish visiting was essential and gave me a list. I felt a bit worried about daytime visits, always catching the women in and never the men. But I was told that I could learn so much more about people from seeing their homes.

As time has gone by I discover that a conversation is not badly lacking if it takes place at a neutral venue. I discover that many people make appointments to go and see professionals. Doctors don't stall on a diagnosis until they've seen the patient's lounge. So folk coming to me is a good use of my time. I can also demonstrate hospitality and let them see my home (people are generally nosey about clergy homes - mine has an open door).

I still do visit, but not just for the sake of a visit. I will visit those who I need to talk to about something specific. I will visit those who specifically invite me for a reason. I will visit, whenever possible, when the man of the house is in.

That country parson had a great Christmas congregation but they weren't back the following week. It made no difference in the long run.

Visiting. Not a great use of time. Better to be working to a purpose than merely 'on the beat' eh? Tell me I'm wrong if you like, but beware. I might have to come round for a chat.

Influences

David Keen has tagged me. I don't normally respond to tags or tag others but he did it so nicely and described me as an influence on his blog. Brilliant that you influence someone to start a blog and then they go off and do it so much better than you. It helps me to get in touch with my inner trainer.

So he has posted here about blogs who have influenced him and invites us to go and do likewise.

So my thanks go to Seb, who put me on to blogging in the first place but who has long since disappeared from my circle. One of the first blogs I found was Jonny Baker's. It's a hub of links to emerging church, events, photography (top class) and music with regular ideas for worship events and activities called worship tricks. I still call in a lot. Thanks.

Bishop Alan posts regularly from the higher echelons of Anglicanism. He makes good use of photographs and images to add to his well-written text. Expect comments on the church and the general news with Christian insights. Updated very regularly.

Simon, at Life, the Universe and Everything doesn't like religious faith (not sure I like the adjective 'religious' either) and says so. I visit his blog to find out what the opposition are saying and we've commented on each other's posts over the years. Possibly a sense of grudging respect might describe our relationship. I've enjoyed the battle of wits.

So, if any of you three read this then feel free to pay it forward.

Jesus on Wheels

Jesus makes it to the Victoria Falls. How impressive is that?

Repetition

One of the skills of writing is to avoid repetition. Most competent scribes prefer to find another word rather than using a previous one again. See what I did there?

There are some interesting exceptions. There are times in life when you need to say the same again. When asked what you're drinking, of course, to make the obvious gag, but also safety instructions. Nobody tells a three year old, who has just been burned on the cooker, that the instructions were clearly stated a year ago and listening should have been done. 'Don't go near the fire' needs to be a mantra for small children.

On the radio the other day Mark Lawson explained that writing about the internet was complex because there weren't yet enough words to allow for synonyms. 'Then don't write about the internet' was the advice of one of his fellow panelists.

When doing a piece of writing which will be read aloud I find it is good to have repetition to draw attention to a continuing theme or pattern. The end of my sermon on Sunday night was:

Is this a holy place?
Is this a holy time?
Are we a holy people?
Are you a holy person?

I think this was more powerful because of the pattern and the repetition. It summarised three points from earlier each of which began with:

The Bible says there are...

Holy places
Holy times
Holy people

By repeating the three, then adding a fourth to catch the listener out and personalise it, you pick people back up who may think they have been paying attention but had wandered.

As I have been reading though MSS and adding labels I have noticed that there are repeated stories. The same illustration, joke or expression has occasionally been used more than once. Great writers keep in mind everything that has gone before. I need to work harder at that.

Avoiding the repetition of common words is easy enough with find and replace facilities as long as you know what your problem words are. Avoiding whole stories in a piece of work with nearly 1,800 small chapters? Not so easy.

As I plough on deep into year seven of this project I suspect there may be more and more repeats. I will have genuinely forgotten that I said something about this (whatever 'this' is) before.

Dear Mr Griffin

I live in Somerset but I don't come from there. I come from the place of the Mercia tribe, Brum, although I am not descended from Mercians as they were defeated by one or more invading armies (Romans, Vikings, Mid-Europeans) and legged it to the hills of Wales and Scotland. So I am descended from those cowardly Mercians who remained to inter-breed with the invading armies as life settled down.

'Cept I'm not. Because my surname, so the records show, was changed from Tillé to Tilley because the Cornish couldn't cope with writing the name of the French labourers who had pitched up looking for work in the seventeenth/eighteenth century.

Now I would be guessing at this point, but population movement probably didn't make those immigrating-folk pure Breton. Frankly their record-keeping was a sack of pants (dirty) so I can't say with certainty. Italy? Spain? North Africa? Anyway they were all joined up once (a bit before people came along, I accept) and international boundaries still cause the odd dispute, you may have noticed.

Please help me. To where would you like me to return?

Doves

On the red button now and for a few days longer only - Doves live at the Roundhouse with the London Bulgarian choir. Not to be missed. Part of the BBC Electric proms series.

Labels

I have almost finished the epic task of labelling nearly 2,000 posts. If you are a new blogger please learn from this and do it from the beginning. On September 10th I said the task would take me three weeks and it turns out to have been double that.

I think I have become clearer in my use of labels as I have worked through the task so some of my early efforts might have had too specific a label, later ones I may have ignored some more appropriate possibilities. I'll tweak the system as I go but it gives a general idea of what sort of things I write about.

Click on a label and all the posts under that heading will be appear in chronological order.

Interesting that my key labels have been, in current order:

Church (which is, after all, my work)
Biography (by which I mean posts that tell you more about me than any other subject)
Life Skills (things worth learning or mistakes best not making - call it 'wisdom')
Music
Theology
Language
Bible
Politics
Book review
Football
Food
Family

I think this list does express my interests in about the right order. My family will all understand that coming 12th says nothing about what they mean to me.

Through on Goal

Having a pleasant pub meal with friends last night I carefully positioned myself with my back to a screen showing football. They'd not have had my full company otherwise. An atmosphere change, and the person sitting opposite me who could see it, told me something had happened.

It was the Fulham Roma game, 76th minute, and there was a crowd of people around the ref disputing a red card.

The replay showed a Fulham defender, the last man, tangling with an opponent who was through on goal and both falling to the floor. Penalty, eventually well saved by Mark however-you-spell-his-second-name let's try Schwauzer, given.

Thing is this. When I was a defender (stop laughing at the back) I often found myself in this position, mainly due to the incompetence of the other three, of course. It was in the days when a foul outside the box would only get you a booking. But I never fouled. All I did was run as close behind the attacker as possible. Usually they would clip your leg as they ran and would then lose balance and fall a couple of paces later. It always looked as if they had fallen without a touch from me and often I would get away with it.

It looks as if even this has been outlawed. So a forward, through on goal, now merely has to zig zag slightly to prevent a defender catching and coming past. Any clip, however minor, by a defender who is only trying to catch up, not tackle, is a red card.

So these days, if a forward is through on goal, it would be sensible to let them go and hope for the best. Most of them are rubbish anyway.

Peace Piece

You can get lost in jazz. Some, not all. Some jazz can simply get lost, unless you persevere. But the basic format of the jazz trio - bass, drums and piano - seems to me to provide the perfect place to get lost.

At the end of a day when I've tried to wind down and slow from frantic to doing nothing I discover an old track by the Bill Evans trio. Just a simple riff to bounce off, sometimes almost discordantly but always pulling it back.

Five minutes of giftedness. Watch and listen to someone else playing a short and simplified solo version of it here.

Bolt Bowling

You thought Usain Bolt was only a runner? Watch this slightly grainy footage of a charity cricket match. Bolt bowling, creamed for six by Chris Gayle and then bowls him next ball. Bolt then requires Gayle to acknowledge his genius as he chases him off the pitch. Brilliant.

Soft or Stern

We weigh up how we are doing in life by feedback. Only way to weigh (hey, hey), unless we just don't care what people think. And one of the interesting times is when there is no feedback at all. Am I doing OK? Or am I being dull? If nothing has gone wrong have I taken insufficient risks?

So someone takes me on one side and says how much softer I have been recently. That she used to think I was a bit unapproachable but I have changed. I point out, in my own subtle way, that I am an acquired taste and she has probably changed, leaving her to ponder if she was right the first time. Meanwhile an email arrives from someone telling me I have been a bit stern recently.

When they are shooting at you from both sides you are probably standing accurately enough in the middle. Not a good place to observe the battle.

Metaphor Watch

Giles Fraser on Radio 4 just now:

'It's come like a bolt from the blue and we're all trying to digest it ... it's not pie in the sky.'

So, the news is that the Roman Catholic church is going to be accommodating to those who will leave the Church of England over women bishops. The news has come like a tasty, food-like lightning strike which we have swallowed. We have discovered one thing it isn't. So what does it taste like? And does this bring to mind inter-church relations as a giant food fight?

Wordle

I redid the Wordle on the side bar and although the new one has come out more blurred than previous efforts I love the fish shape.

Celery, Apple and Stilton Soup

This will take two hours to cook. You need:

Two complete heads of celery
Two large onions
Two eating apples
A handful of crumbly stilton
100 mls of dry sherry
Butter
A spoonful of mascarpone per bowl
Old vegetables for stock
A garlic clove
A bay leaf
Salt and pepper (use celery salt if you have it)

The beauty of this is to make your own vegetable stock so nothing is wasted.

Put two litres of salted water on to boil with the garlic clove (whole) and bay leaf. Add the complete base of both celery heads, the onion skins, one of the apple skins and cores and any other vegetables that are decaying on you a bit, such as bendy carrots, outer cabbage leaves etc. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to a gentle simmer, check taste and season, then cover. Leave on for at least 90 minutes (the longer the better).

In the second pan place a generous lump of butter and melt gently. Add the chopped onions and let them sweat slowly for about 10 minutes. Chop all the remaining celery. Set aside a few leaves and one stick. Put the rest of the celery and the peeled/cored apple into the onion pan, add the sherry and bring to a boil for a minute or two to boil off the alcohol. Check taste and season. Turn heat right down, cover and put a double layer of damp grease-proof paper between the pan and the lid. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Remove celery pan from heat and set aside.

When ready to serve, sieve the stock and add the clear liquid to the soup mixture. Whisk or blend this as fine as you can get it. Check seasoning but remember that a slightly salty cheese will be going in at the end. Pass resulting mixture through a sieve into a clean pan.

Reheat and at the last minute crumble in a generous handful of stilton. Stir until melted in and check seasoning again.

For garnish, core the remaining apple and slice thinly. Quick fry the slices until golden. Add to soup with chopped celery leaves, quick-fried celery slices, a tea-spoon of mascarpone and fresh black pepper.

Serve with good bread and garnish. 'Tis an autumn treat.

Thoughts and Feelings

One of the contributors to a debate last night said that he'd been challenged recently that he was only making the decision with half his brain. Don't worry. It wasn't as scathing as that. It was simply a note that some people's decisions are emotionally led and others intellectually. It is good if we can register both sides. This person, responding to the question, said:

'I think it's right.
I feel it's right.'

Bang on. But not so easy for all of us.

How do you feel? The microphone is thrust under the nose of the sweating, victorious team captain who is asked to put feelings into words. Is it any wonder that 'over the moon' is the best that can be done with the English language in all its breadth and glory, at that stage?

I have a friend who, almost literally, seizes up when asked about his feelings. He doesn't engage with the world on a feelings level. At all.

I'm not so far behind. I don't find feelings particularly useful and rarely begin a sentence with 'I feel' unless I am deliberately choosing that language to engage with someone else. So how do I feel 'right now?' When I began drafting this I was sitting in a church meeting, awaiting the end of some discussions about details so we could get on to a vote about a big decision. I felt a little bored but by and large content. Perhaps weary.

Bored. Content. Weary. I don't find these words help me very much. None of them made the slightest difference to what I chose to do. However bad I might have felt, short of terribly ill, I wasn't leaving my seat. And having had the first word on this particular debate some nineteen months ago I was determined not to have any of the last ones but to let others report on their thoughts and feelings. I do find that a failure to get over-excited at small wins, or over-depressed at minor losses, stands me in good stead. 'Letting myself go' for goals, gigs and girl stops this being too pent-up.

I also get a little frustrated (there's a good 'feelings' word) at the repetition of feelings language. I don't find it hard to say 'I love you' but as a writer prefer to find new ways of saying things. There are more interesting traits than feelings. Or so I feel.

So there was this vision, 19 months ago, that needed chaperoning. I wouldn't swear to it but I think the first expression of it may have come from my lips. A vision to spend a huge amount of money buying a building the purpose of which God had not fully revealed. Still hasn't. I thought it was a good idea then. I still do. But now a Council of the Church has voted in favour of it with no-one against.

It will cost the equivalent of each member of our church finding £4,000 over the next couple of years which means a few sacrificial decisions. Something from our savings pot for a retirement property? Cancel a couple of holidays? Abandon the car? Donate all my writing royalties? Waive my expenses. That is the sort of order we are talking about.

I'm glad it wasn't simply led by feelings but, if I'm honest, it was even less than that. It was a hunch. Which became a vision. Which became a reality. Now I feel we must go to work. Think so too.

The Old Rectory Project is go.

Massive Attack - Swindon Oasis - 3/10/09

Since buying the vinyl seven-inch of Safe from Harm in 1991 Massive Attack have been a part of my personal soundtrack. Hugely influential yet somehow indefinable. Even the trip-hop label, invented to find a box into which to place them, failed to do them justice and they regularly rejected it. The early 1990s signalled that the creative heart of developing pop had driven down the M5/M6 from Manchester to Bristol.

But in all that time I have never seen them live.

A support set from long-time collaborator Martina Topley-Bird was wondrously creative. From the understated early-set tunes over subtle click-track and live drums alone, to the astounding virtuosity of a female beat-boxing double-bass player (honest) I was truly entertained. What a voice she has.

Massive Attack displayed their many vocalists, including the gorgeous tones of Horace Andy, some new material and a raid on the back catalogue including several from Blue Lines and Mezzanine. Most of the old tunes were remixed and reunderstood for 2009 which, for me, made it a show and not the equivalent of a band on stage pressing play on their own MP3s. You could sing along but there was so much more to enjoy too. Two hours of fine music which showed many sides to them and to some extent split the constituency. Some talked in the quieter moments of the beautiful Teardrop; others left for the bar during the more industrial heavy sections. For me, that they do both so competently is part of the attraction.

This band has brought the 50 something late 1980s audience along but welcomed the young too. Possibly Blue Lines has been the soundtrack to many bedroom fumblings. One couple near us certainly needed to get a room, lay-by or cleaning cupboard.

The other side of a Massive Attack gig is the politics. A back projector reminds us of the wealth of bankers, the carbon-footprint of aeroplanes and the cost of basic drugs. You aren't allowed merely to love the band; you have to listen to the cause.

A joy.

Great Questions 5

What's the point of remembering it if you've written it down?
(Alastair King - CPAS 1998 or so)

Great Questions 4

How would you explain this problem to a six year old?
(101 Ways to Generate Great Ideas - Timothy Foster)

Great Questions 3

Why has there never been a famine in a country that is a democracy with a relatively free press?
(P.J. O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World)

Great Questions 2

'If you think your God's so wonderful, why do you sing such bloody horrible songs?'
(Bishop James Jones' Postman)

Great Questions

Over the years I have always been interested in people who ask the right questions. I have tried to ask the right questions myself at every opportunity. Here's a great question:

'Will I discover why I was born, before I die?'
(Bernard Levin, 60th birthday article, The Times, January 1991)

Kiva

Don't know how I've missed this brilliant twist on the world of micro-finance (small loans for poor people) before. Kiva connects individuals with small amounts of money to lend to entrepreneurs around the world who need small start-up loans in peer-to-peer online lending.

It's a fantastic way to give because once the money has helped you get it back to give to someone else. If you want to give regularly you can help more and more people each month. Pay back rate is around 98%. Investigate. It was the vision of a young, passionate American woman called Jessica Jackley who was interviewed at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.

October 1st

Twenty five years ago it was a Monday. I sat in a study and wondered what a minister did all day? I pretty soon found out and did quite a lot of it. It was weird that first job. A curacy. A title. A training parish. I had some responsibilities but also the freedom to work out what I wanted to develop over my four years.

I note that I did 16 weddings, 50 funerals and spoke/talked/preached on 281 other occasions. That was where I learned the dark arts of public manipulation oops I mean preaching. I accepted every invitation even if I had no time to prepare. Deliberately.

I was involved in three services plus the youth group every Sunday unless on holiday, sometimes with a parish lunch or afternoon baptism too.

I led a house group, started a youth group, set up a youth club night, entertained regularly, had two small kids and remember with wonder the mini-break every Friday of 45 minutes between finishing the shopping and doing the playgroup run. I would listen to one album and drink a coffee with a Twix. Magic.

We did a youth weekend away every year and two eight day summer CYFA Houseparties consecutively.

If you are recently ordained and your diary isn't quite full yet, don't worry. It will be. And since it will be impossible to learn everything, pick something you are going to become really good at by the end of your four years. And nail it.