Signing off

Posted on by
55

Well I have blogged for just over two years and I can honestly say it has been one of the richest experiences of my life. However, since getting married I have struggled to find time to blog. I used to blog after the kids were in bed, but now I spend the time with the new hubby. I’m hopelessly in love and really, there is no contest between pretty much anything else and quality time with the new man!

Furthermore, with a new relationship comes so much more… more children, more friends, more elderly parents, more relatives…. and it is a lovely experience… but something needs to give.

Then with my mum’s death, my dad seems to be descending into a slump of despair. I have promised I will visit him in the nursing home frequently. This promise is one I am determined to honour but it is not without cost as dad lives some distance away.

And then there is the new ministry, new parish, new challenges, new people, new friends, new schools, a renewed joy and passion for my work…… And a strong sense of God’s call that takes me way back to those giddy days when I thought God was calling me to be a priest and I tried to run like the wind to escape it!

Except now the sense of call thrills me and draws me. I love ministry, love it, love it, love it. :)

I would say that you are best measuring a blog not by the number of hits that were made on the site but by the number of friends that were made along the way. In this sense my blog has been a wonderful journey and I treasure the friendships I have made here. I sincerely hope that they will continue to flourish without the mechanism of the blog.

Thank-you for reading my blog and especially to those who have commented. I can’t find the right words to express what an immense difference you have made to me and how grateful I have been for your thoughts, your honesty, your compassion and your love.

I hope you have a very joyful Christmas and a very peaceful and successful New Year.

Pressure grows for a Turing pardon

Posted on by
1
alan-turing

Image by Revolweb via Flickr

One has to be a resident of UK to sign the petition. If you are, please do by clicking HERE:

Pressure grows for a Turing pardon:

Supporters are clicking on a new e-petition for the man whose brilliance underlies the laptops, mobiles and computer world which we often take for granted

 

Alan Turing; his 100th birthday celebrations would be topped off by a full pardon.

An e-petition to the Government to end the long if now somewhat theoretical disgrace of Alan Turingis rapidly gathering signatures after only a few days.

More than 3000 people have signed the appeal for an official pardon for the brilliant scientist whose work in Manchester was instrumental in the creation of today’s computer world but ended in tragedy after his conviction for gross indecency because he was actively gay.

Turing has been rehabilitated in almost every other sense, in a society very different from that of 1952, but that makes letting his conviction stand seems all the more perverse. Campaigners hope that success with the e-petition, which will trigger a debate in Parliament if it collects 100,000 signatories, will act as symbolic contrition to other men treated in the same way.

Turing’s academic career was the stuff which normally earns knighthoods and honorary degrees, from decoding work at Bletchley Park during the Second World War to his celebrated period in the computing laboratory at Manchester University from 1948, leading a team which set the pace for computer development for the next three decades.

Although his genius was recognised in his lifetime, with fellowship of the Royal Society and an OBE, his conviction lost him his security clearance and ruined his career. Always something of an outsider, he had been given a report as a teenager at Sherborne school which warned that his public school education would be wasted if he insisted on being purely a ‘scientific specialist.’

Next year sees the centenary of his birth and has been designated Alan Turing Year, with an international programmeorganised by a committee of scientists and others chaired by Prof Barry Cooper of the School of Mathematics at the Leeds University. He says:

A pardon from the Government in the centenary year of Turing’s birth would be warmly welcomed by his family, friends, colleagues and those in the scientific community who have benefitted from the foundations he laid.

His work in computer science and mathematical logic remains relatively unknown to the wider public, despite the prevalence of everyday devices based on it. We hope that this petition and the year-long celebrations planned in 2012 will raise awareness and cement his place as one of the great scientists.

Turing was found dead from cyanide poisoning at his home in 1954, two years after his conviction and a sentence which obliged him to undergo hormonal treatment intended to reduce libido. An inquest concluded that he had committed suicide.

Many years later, honours have been piled on him, including statues, the annual Turing Award which is computing equivalent of a Nobel, and the widely-used title of the Father of Computing. A previous e-petition prompted an official apology from the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown in September 2009. He said:

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

But the conviction still stands. The link to the e-petition is above, or you can sign it here.

 

I’m missing my mum

Posted on by
12

I’m missing my mum. I keep wanting to pick up the phone to tell my mum that I’m missing my mum. Some insane childish part of me keeps forgetting that I can’t ring her and then she gets all stroppy that she is being denied and then she starts crying all over again.

Yesterday, I cleared out almost all my mum’s possessions. Every time I picked up almost anything this child inside me cried out “Mum, mum – where are you? Mum, I want you”.

Of course mums are permanently at the beck and call of their children. From birth it is what we demand with our first cry. Some part of me seems to be still crying out… it was all I could do yesterday to stop myself verbally crying out to her.

But my mantra was “just keep going”, and that is what I did. My mum was not one for accruing possessions. She loved a “bargain” and would regularly give me wonderful little gifts, like a frying pan from the pound shop…. to add to my collection. Hence, she used to buy these amazingly thin, almost transparent bin bags that were fiendishly inexpensive, and these were the beasts I was dealing with yesterday. They are interesting animals that split at the very thought of you putting a piece of rubbish in them, and as my mum lived through the war and taught me to never waste anything, I was obliged to do battle with them. I think I won… in the end.

I also did battle with the hail, which was quite spectacularly persistent, I thought, yesterday.

I was frozen – loading and unloading the car. Trips to the charity shop and the dump and home….

Plus I saw my dad.

And he wouldn’t stop crying.

Like the weather really.

You see if mum was here she would listen to my story – I could phone her up, and she would be delighted to hear my voice.

But I can’t.

Related articles

Sermon for John 1:6-8, 19-28

Posted on by
5

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

   He said, “I am not.”

   “Are you the Prophet?”

   He answered, “No.”

22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The Jews are looking for a Messiah – they ask John if he is the Messiah… “No”. Then some Jews thought that Elijah would precede the Messiah because of a prophecy in Malachi (4:5) – is John Elijah? “No”. Then there is also a “prophet” mentioned in Deuteronomy (18:15-18) promised by Moses who would precede the Messiah. Is John “the prophet”? “No!”.

It has got to be said that John the Baptist is not being dreadfully forthcoming to put it mildly.

“Well who the “$*&!” are you then? John quotes from Isaiah:

“I’m the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord”.

It is interesting that John doesn’t really tell us who he is, he tells us what he is doing – he says he is the one whose job it is to call us to repentance.

This caused me to think about identity and calling, and I’d like to explore those themes this morning. So first of all identity…. If I were to ask you who you are, I wonder what you would say? What would I say? I guess I’d say I’m a wife, a mother, a priest, I used to be a university lecturer…

For those of us who are really pious, they would perhaps come up with the ‘right’ answer “I am a child of God”. Mmmm. I used to go to a church where they made a point of saying regularly that our identity should be in Christ, not in what we do, or our social status, or how much money we have, or in being a spouse or a parent or anything else. We took this to heart and when we met someone new we would avoid all these sorts of questions, which made it rather difficult to say anything at all. In addition, or course, the leaders still had status in their identity, because they were the err…. leaders. But I think it is true that finding our identity in God, in being Children of the Heavenly Father, leads us to a greater stability and sanity than finding our identity in what we do….

So what about John? Is he not finding his identity in what he does? What about Jesus, for that matter? It occurs to me that when asked who he is, Jesus seems more interested in saying what he does… “I have come to set the captives free” or when John the Baptist sends someone to ask whether Jesus is the Messiah he tells them to look around – “the blind see, the lame walk, whaddya think?” I tell this joke on Trinity Sunday that rather emphasises this:

Jesus said, Whom do men say that I am?

And his disciples answered and said, Some say you are John the Baptist returned from the dead; others say Elias, or other of the old prophets.

And Jesus answered and said, But whom do you say that I am?

Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Logos, existing in the Father as His rationality and then, by an act of His will, being generated, in consideration of the various functions by which God is related to his creation, but only on the fact that Scripture speaks of a Father, and a Son, and a Holy Spirit, each member of the Trinity being coequal with every other member, and each acting inseparably with and interpenetrating every other member, with only an economic subordination within God, but causing no division which would make the substance no longer simple.”

And Jesus answering, said,


“You What!!!!!!!!!???????”

That joke is actually probably only funny for those who have suffered a theology course explaining the Trinity…. or Early Church Heresies. You see, the early church got its knickers in a twist about who Jesus was – with people excommunicated for overemphasising one aspect of Jesus over another, and the church split over the tiniest differences in the Creeds… I was truly amazed. Especially as the doctrine of the Trinity is pieced together by half a sentence of scripture over here and a raised eyebrow in the scriptures over there. You would think that if it was so important Jesus would have spelt it out for us…..

But where does that leave us – are we really to find our identity in what we do? My belief is that identity and calling are closely entwined – if we find our calling then we find our identity… if we find our identity then we find our calling… I think that as we find ourselves in Christ we also find what we are designed for.

I also believe that all callings bring more goodness and light and love into the world. John the Baptist is called to bear witness to the Light. In one way or another, for all of us, we too are to bear witness to the Light, to fulfil that wonderful quote by Desmund Tutu:

Love is stronger than hate.

Light is stronger than darkness.

Life is stronger than death.

Victory is ours through Him who loved us.”

Of course, the ways in which we testify to that light differ… I wonder whether you have heard the story of the little girl who was busy drawing a picture and her mum asked her what she was drawing:

“God” she said.

“Oh goodness”, her mum said, “no one knows what God looks like”.

“They will now!” came the reply.

Often, our callings change as we go through the stages of our lives, I was speaking to someone recently who had felt called into priestly ministry earlier in life and then felt called out of it to do something else. I asked him if he missed Celebrating the Eucharist or preaching and was amazed that he said “No”… for me it is unthinkable to not do these things… for him he was now called to something new.

Also, I think our callings are probably easier to discern as we get older, hopefully we start to know ourselves better as time goes on, we recognise what gives us energy and what drains us, although sometimes younger people know what they are called to.

I believe that callings are often scary, and they stretch us. I am not remotely surprised that characters in the Bible tried to run from their calling:

Moses said he couldn’t do it because he had a speech impediment, Jeremiah said he couldn’t because he was too young, Jonah took a boat and fled in the opposite direction to where God had asked him to go, Gideon thought that he was going mad so looked for a sign… he put a fleece of wool out and asked that if he was called to fight the Midianites then God was to make only the fleece wet with dew in the morning, not the ground…. And it came to pass, so then he thought perhaps he had got that wrong, perhaps this was some natural occurrence and so he put another fleece out the following night, this time asking that the fleece should be dry and the ground should be wet. I wonder how he felt when he got there on the third morning, tromping through wet grass and found the fleece bone dry!

I can’t really mock Gideon. When I felt called to be a priest I ran away for a good year, then when the sense of call became unbearable I did a similar thing to Gideon and put out a metaphorical fleece. I was shocked when my fleece was answered… note: I do note recommend testing God :) I went to see the person in the Diocese who tests vocations and she laughed at my story – she described it as divine toothache – the sense of call comes and then it goes away and you feel relieved, then it comes back again, and again, until there is nothing for it – you have to visit the dentist.

Alan was the same. He went on a Vocations Day in the Diocese to prove to himself and others, once and for all, that he was not called to be a priest. Then the Bishop stood up and said that he was looking for people who can think outside the box and manage change. And the crushing realisation hit Alan that his job and expertise for the last 20 years was….. thinking outside the box and managing change.

Top tip: if you are trying to avoid a Vocation to the priesthood – do NOT go on a Diocesan Vocations Day!

We all have a calling, every one of us has a role to fulfil in the Body of Christ – as Teresa of Avila said:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

If you have found your calling then I hope that you will find yourself drawn ever deeper into it. If you are running from your calling then my experience is that God will catch up with you. If you are seeking your calling then I believe that the answer is actually within you – it is your identity and as you find yourself you will find your call.

Our callings are precious. Our hopes and dreams are precious. Let us follow the example of John and live out our callings, both individually and together, to the Glory of God and the service of others in this place.

Eeek, you read my blog?

Posted on by
6

I’ve had occasion to say these words about 10 times in the last month… mostly I manage to stifle them, after all – why blog if you don’t want anyone to read it!

I was amazed to find that a reasonable percentage of mum’s friends and relatives already knew she had died before I rang them because they had read it here…. Plus at the Inclusive Church conference I was asked several times “Are you Lesley of “Lesley’s Blog?” ” … at which point I sort of hummed and harred a bit. Plus parishioners say “oh yeah – I read about that on the blog”.

On reflection, I guess people Google those who they know and find blogs that way, plus I blog on Inclusive issues, so the people I mention above are more likely to read the blog than your average Jo. It isn’t as if I can go into the local pub and people will say “Oh I read your blog”… well except I think Alan mentioned it in the parish magazine which has a good readership…. Mmmm.

But this leads me to the obvious point that I blog to be read and so why am I surprised when I happen upon readers?

I don’t know.

I have wondered for the past two years why I blog, and come up with various answers – I think all of them are true – it helps me understand and communicate things that I am passionate about – it is cheaper and better than therapy – it gets a more liberal Christian voice out in the blogosphere – it creates community – it causes me to make friends – I like sharing ideas and thoughts.

It seems to me that I can no more answer why I blog than I can answer why I am married to Alan… there is a relationship there that is complex, it has highs and lows and in-betweens, it gives me a great deal and costs me a great deal…. it exposes me, makes me vulnerable, but it is because of this, not in spite it, that I grow.

But I still don’t really understand it.