Jack of all trades

Being a man who tries to keep his word… let me return to the subject of the Land Rover. (I did say I would about two months ago).

I know that my views are not universally accepted, but I do think Landrovers are fantastic cars. Mine has transported me to the Alps and back and spent the last few weeks lugging wood for the Poustinia around the country. This morning I arrived with a large trailer stuffed full of wood and roofing felt and other bits having cruised, albeit slightly noisily, back from collecting it all. It seems that whatever task I throw at it, it copes.

Yes, a Lexus would be quieter, a 2CV less bumpy, a Yaris more economical, a 1200GS quicker, and so on, but it gets there with all the things I ask it to lug around. Furthermore, get it in the mud and it is virtually unbeatable. It is a jack of all automotive trades and the master of off-road.

Omnicompetence is great in cars. I wonder, though, if it was the way that humans were designed to be?

Everything or nothing...

I am slightly concerned that this doesn’t just become a series of pictures of a shed going up but, apart from writing, that is what I am mostly doing at the moment.

The shed, soon-to-be-poustinia, is now up and largely weather-tight. You can possibly make out the plastic sheeting on the roof held on picturesquely by some large stones. It’s not pretty, but that’s not what I want to discuss; I plan to tell you about my temptations.

You see, there is still a decking bit with a roof to go in front of the shed. I can’t do that until I pick up the wood, DV on Wednesday. However my s-t-b-p is getting wet and that doesn’t seem right…

So, on the one hand I am tempted to stick the felt on the roof now to make it weather tight. That would appeal to my neater sense and would preserve the shed. However I would then have to bodge the new bit of roof on to make it waterproof.

On the other hand part of me says I should just leave it. It is only a couple of days and, even in Cumbria it can only rain so much… probably.

Neither would be quite right, so I scrabbled around for sheeting, but it did make me think that this was a microcosm of life. Too often I want to either do everything now (even though it will prevent me doing a proper job later) or not bother starting until I have a hope of finishing. Often neither will do. Life is dynamic. We have to do things for now and work towards a bigger picture. That’s the way that s-t-b-p’s turn into p’s.

Forget faith...

Well, the foundations are down for the poustinia. As you can see from the photo they are not a thing of great beauty, but they are level and resting on stone. They will support the beams on which the poustinia will stand, and they will be invisible and unnoticed until either the shed is taken down or the floor starts to wobble.

As I have been putting them in I have been musing on the whole topic of foundations. 

Whoa! Hang on. Although it would be true to say that following the commands of Jesus lays solid foundations for our lives and we should make sure that we do it carefully, actually that’s not where I am going with this.

The question I have been mulling is rather the anonymity and forgotten-ness of foundations. When was the last time you looked at the ones in your house for example? How does this aspect of foundation enlarge our understanding of enacted faith in Christ as the foundation of life? At first glance it seems rather to undermine rather than boulster discipleship.

However there are three rather important areas for contemplation, I think.

The first is that we do need to grow as disciples. In 1 Corinthians 3 (where Paul talks about building on the foundations of Christ), we see those who are not moving on from milk to solid food. They are not building up, they are messing around in the mud. Foundations are there to be built on.

The second is that we do not need to question the foundation. Now of course we gain from studying it, or Him, and questions are good if we are learning through them. But we can rely on what God has done. 

In Ripon there is a problem with Gypsum under the ground. Houses can suddenly drop into holes that weren’t there the night before. People check, particularly when buying houses that the foundations are solid. However, we don’t need constantly to dig down and check that Jesus is secure or that His death and resurrection is still holding us before the throne of grace.

Thirdly, though, we do need to be careful about the things that we build on the foundations. We are right to take certain things for granted in our own faith; to rely on them as foundational in the way we work out our salvation. However, we should always be aware that they are things that we have come to rely on, other wise we can become very judgemental very quickly.

Let me give you an example. My wife and I choose not to shop on Sundays. We find it a helpful way to mirror the work of God in creation, to invest in family and worship for ourselves and others, and to bring rhythm and order to the week. This matters to us, so, for example, as we have been looking for houses recently we chose not to look at them on Sunday afternoons despite it being the easiest time for us as it would make the estate agent have to work and thus disrupt their family Sundays.

Do we, though, or even should we condemn those who do work on Sundays? Certainly not. I have worked 90% of the Sundays of my adult life. There are questions that we would want to pose, but you can still get to heaven if you are spotted in Morrisons on a Sunday afternoon. This is a foundational thing for our family which helps in our faith, but it is not actually part of the foundation.

I don’t know if that ramble makes any sense, but it was what I was pondering as I wielded a pickaxe.

To thank or not to thank?

I found myself 'on the horns of a dilemma' yesterday as I was praying.

Like many of you I have been remembering the people of Japan in my prayers. How can we not be moved by the tragedy that is unfolding in front of our eyes? The world is a broken place with terrible ferocity lurking in its ravaged depths and I am convinced that, as people of faith, we need to learn more about responding with prayer not just with questions when things like this happen.


The questions are, of course, vitally important, it's just that the prayer is at least as important... possibly more so.


What flummoxed me, theologically speaking, was that later in the day I spent some time 'creosoting' the panels of the poustinia. As you can see from the photo I took with a different blog post in mind it was a beautifully sunny day. I painted and prayed ponderingly. I found myself thanking God for the wonderful sun which was drying my paint so well... but then found myself wondering if it was right to thank Him at the same times as I wept over the earthquake and tsunami o the other side of the world.


Questions are important. But so is prayer. 


I guess that's the dilemma which we need to inhabit. Both matter. Both matter to God, and both matter to us.

There's a time for everything

OK, here’s another confession of my own stupidity.

I picked up the shed on Saturday and loaded it onto a borrowed trailer and left it on a friends driveway ready to drag off to the poustinia-site when I returned having been in the Vicarage over the weekend to enable a boy-scout-adventure-thingamajig (I don’t resent it, I am just jealous. Do you know what scouts get to do these days? Apart from some guages taken out of fingers, they seemed to have a great time. Anyway I am digressing.)

I have to leave poustinia-central again tomorrow afternoon so I was quite keen to get a whole day in today, but after watching the Scots get thrashed at Rugby (sorry, who were they playing again?) and then waiting til my wife got home (not only so I could gloat, I hasten to add) it was almost dark and as the trailer is now over eight foot wide I thought I would prefer to tow it in the daylight.

I reminded myself that the poustinia is one of the aims of the sabbatical so it is allowed to take time. So instead of shooting off in the darkness and arriving tired and stressed I worshipped with the methodists, had a lovely evening with the family, and drove across in gorgeous sunshine. Furthermore the hardware shop was open on a Monday morning, so I have saved myself an hour’s driving later in the week to get the other bits I need.

Why is it that, even when we don’t need to we still rush? I have reflected on this before but we become so accustomed to stress that we seem to become addicted and create it around ourselves for fun. Have you ever heard anything so silly?

Today has already been a gift of grace but I bet there is more to be found. Anyone fancy a treasure hunt?

Where were they?

I noticed this years ago when I embarrassed myself in a car full of colleagues, but it is still true today. “What do you mean?” I hear you cry, and would like to believe that you want to know what is still true today. However, although you might be interested in that I bet that you are far more interested in how I embarrassed myself in a car full of colleagues.

Go on! Be honest! You are! Aren't you?

We were driving to a meeting. I can’t remember what it was, but I had offered to drive and I had four other far older, wiser, and more important clergy than me in the car. The conversation was pleasant and we were all relaxed… and then it happened.

A fire engine drove towards us. It was a big red shiny one that my eighteen month old (at the time) son would have loved. I had no control over my body. Before I could do anything my hand had shot up raising a gesturing digit in the general direction of the anti-inflammatory appliance and out of my words had sprung, with vastly over-egged enthusiasm, the words “Look! It’s a nee-nah.”

I recalled this the other day as I drove along the A66 and saw this pony in a field beside the traffic jam I had been snarled up in. My daughter would have loved to see it and there would have been another half hour discussion about why she can’t have a horse.

She wasn’t there in body, but I still took a photo. For, though it sounds cheesy, she was there, just as my son had been among the startled and slightly mocking clergy in my car all those years ago.

Love is like that.

What do you suppose that says about prayer? For if God loves us half as much as we love our kids I suspect it says an awful lot.

And so it begins...

You may or may not know but one of the key plans for my sabbatical has been to build a poustinia, which is a sort of prayer shed. I guess you might be reading more about it in the posts that are to come, but I guess it really got started today.

My original plan had been to build one from scratch, but I have had to scale back a bit because of shortening my sabbatical… so I went looking on ebay and found this shack for sale. Today I went and picked it up on a borrowed trailer.

In many ways it is perfect for my needs. It needs some planks replacing and general tidying up, but I think that I can make it into something new. What had ceased to be any use to the guy selling it will now become a place of prayer, reflection, listening and growth.

Although in some ways I would have preferred to create a purpose-built poustinia from first principles there is something wonderful about making something which is broken and unwanted into a place of reconciliation and hope. It means that, at the heart of the poustinia, is a reflection of the characteristic action of God.

For I am convinced that we give up on others, and even on ourselves, far quicker than God does.

All they had to do...

OK, so this is not going to be the most eloquent, informed, erudite or riveting blog you have ever read, but (if you are still reading), I am in a state of chuffed-ness.

Why? You ask. Well because my new wellies work.

There is little as disappointing in life as when a trusted old pair of wellies leak. Mine started to let water in months ago, but I always thought I must have splashed water over the top or been walking too close to the children. However the time came to face facts. All wellies really need to do is vaguely fit and be waterproof… so in the bin they went.

Yesterday I searched everywhere for wellies and could only find blue ones in my size. They look silly, if I am honest, but it doesn’t matter. They do the only things wellies need to do. They vaguely fit and my feet are dry having been stamping around in mud and streams earlier when I was beginning work on the poustinia site. Now these are my new old friends.

It makes me wonder though… if God were to write a blog about us how would he end the sentence “All they need to do is vaguely… and be…”. How long does He put up with us not being and doing?

Forgive the line (I can’t resist), but I think He is very patient with wet soles.

... and smells

As you probably know, yesterday was Ash Wednesday and I wanted to go to a service somewhere or other. As I was near the Cathedral I thought I would drop in there for the evening service. I hadn't quite expected that it would be a service with all the bells and whistles, but the Dean preached in His normal thought-provoking and soul-feeding way and the worship was rich.

I looked up half way through, though, at the faces of the congregation seated opposite me. I couldn't decide if they were miserable or bored from the expression on their faces. However it then occurred to me that maybe they were neither... maybe the solemn look on the face was sobriety and reflection.

And so the incense rose in billows, the service progressed and then the fire alarm went off... repeatedly. Bells and smells or what? And in the midst of sobriety came humour. Somehow it rounded the circle and I realised that not only do I need both dynamics but I also ought ought not to run away from either.

Cracking up

Phase two of the sabbatical started today as I settled into a new weekly rhythm of reading, praying, writing and building a poustinia (more of which anon, mesuspects).

Anyway, this meant that I shot off to the wilds of Cumbria to chateau poustinik and have enjoyed a combination of practical tasks and reviewing the material that I have been scribbling. The biggest shock, though, was the state of my chimney. I don’t know how well you can make it out in the photograph but it has shattered. Either the RAF have been flying even lower than normal or the ceramic has simply exploded in the extreme cold we have had and I have not noticed ’til now. The chimney looks like it has a geriatric tooth in an advanced state of decay sticking out the top of it.

Apart from the fact that I am glad that nobody was standing underneath it when it plummeted earth-wards it has made me think about fragility and sturdiness. I have never heard of a chimney pot exploding. It has never crossed my mind that it might. There are other things I worry about on the house, but not the chimney. It is the same with people, I realise. Those places where people appear weak are often the places where there is an extraordinary reserve of strength. The times when people crumble normally come as a shock.

I guess I have to be honest and say that the same dynamic is at work in me. In God’s grace there is great strength where I feel weakest but, perhaps because I don’t feel the need of support, where I am strong I often stumble.

So the challenge… well apart from having to clamber on the roof AGAIN, I guess it is to reflect more on where strength and weakness really lie. They are odd things those two.

The wisdom of St Arsène

This morning we had the rare joy of going to church together as a family and none of doing anything except participating. The discipline, of course, for people who are often ‘up front’, is listening as hard when you are not on show as you do when you have to prepare something for others. Actually, now I come to think of it, that’s a challenge for all of us; who knows how diligently we are actually engaging with God when we are engaging in worship. I guess that all of us find it alarmingly easy to fake attention.

Anyway, the thing that really caught my imagination this morning was something that the preacher ascribed to Arsène Wenger. Apparently M. Wenger says something along the lines that if you hold one hand in front of you and imagine that to be your priorities in life and then the other just behind it, between you and the first, that ought to be the attitude you bring to life. The problem is that your attitude is so often swung by prevailing situations or emotions such that it veers right, up, and down with mesmerising unpredictability.

In other words the attitude that you nurture within yourself ought to be directly in line with your priorities in life. If love is a priority then we cultivate patience, diligence, respect, loyalty and so on…

What a helpful image. I’ve got no idea how effective it is for footballers, but it bears reflection for those of us who are serious about growing and developing as Christians.

Rhythm and context

OK, we’re back. Apologies for the break, if you have missed your daily dose. However the week’s holiday was great and then I have been back in the UK for a few days.

What is fascinating to me is that the rhythm which was so easy in a variety of contexts while I was away is much harder here at home. Away I would decide on the structure of a day and then stick to the plan with minor variations; at home there are a thousand things which impinge on time. Most of  them are important things, but the interesting thing is that they erode central tasks for this time.

So, for example, while I was abroad I was writing four to five thousand words a day, here I have written about that in a week.  This is fine because there is an inevitability about tasks stacking up while I am away and then needing attention when I return. Moreover there was a week’s grace built into the plan for this return.

However, what it makes me realise is the importance of rhythm that is refreshed regularly to fit the current context. In fact that’s what I am going to do now: it is time to sit down and map out how the week will look for the remaining time on sabbatical. Being away is fruitful, the gift is bringing that ongoing fruitfulness into the everyday of life.