SPRING IS SPRUNG

In the Springtime

It is genuinely warm. Hooray! I was able to cycle in a normal jersey and shorts on Saturday. The urchins (sorry, dear little children) have started their summer game of ringing my doorbell and running away. The overwhelming sickly scent of the laurel blossoms keeps me out of the garden, and, if I open the back windows, invades the house. There was a dapper gent walking along the Harrow Road the other day in a smart pearl-grey suit and a yellow fedora (matching his yellow tie).  Cricket books are being published: I see there’s one about E.W.Swanton and John Arlott (sort of “compare and contrast”) which I’d quite like to read. I wonder whether the author has picked up the fact that both were active Christians. Jim Swanton was an Anglo-Catholic, and lodged at Pusey House when he was an Oxford undergraduate. John Arlott wrote hymns (one quite often sung at harvest, which is pleasing to imagine in his Hampshire burr).

The weather has been pleasant enough for someone to be willing to clear the garden at St Peter’s (for payment, of course). He worked very diligently on Monday, but did not finish. I didn’t really register the fact that he left bags and piles of dead leaves on the ramp down to the church door, or rather, I dismissed this as a potential problem, because I didn’t think it would inconvenience anyone. That was because I didn’t know that the Brownies have a member with cerebral palsy. To be fair, I’d forgotten the Brownies would be there at all: it’s hard to hold all the bookings in one’s mind, and ones that aren’t there every week I find especially hard to remember. So, when on Monday evening I took a young woman down to see the church, who had just filled in a banns certificate for us (she’s not getting married here, but at the Grosvenor Chapel, so I expect she wanted to be reassured that she had made the right choice) I was seriously told off by the Brownie leaders. I wasn’t sufficiently apologetic, but I was a bit confused.

A Surprise

One of London’s surprises to me is the way that contractors can just close roads without warning. So, on Monday I cycled out onto the Harrow Road perplexed by a queue of stationary traffic, only to find that it was caused by the fact that Sutherland Avenue was closed, entirely, at the Harrow Road end, so lots of vehicles were approaching, expecting to turn in, and then going on with great uncertainty. The next option for them is Marylands Road, and that is being dug up outside the undercover Greek restaurant, so I imagined we would have total chaos, but in fact very few have been trying to go that way (which is just as well, as it would only get you to Elgin Avenue).

A Conundrum

I spent some time the other day listening to a parishioner’s story. It’s complicated, so please bear with me. They are a member of one of my congregations, with a spouse (who doesn’t come) and children (who do). Now, my parishioner was brought up as a Christian (of another denomination) but has another religious heritage, which they regard as important to them. Their spouse was brought up in a third faith (and observes it to an extent). They don’t feel able to go to worship in their “heritage” religion, because of all the questions that they would be asked, and because their spouse would be very uncomfortable about that, but this makes them feel sad, as they have found that very culturally affirming in the past. Now, though, they listen to spokespeople of the “heritage” religion on satellite TV, who say that people like them are traitors to the faith. They are happy coming to church, but don’t feel the same depth of mutual feeling as in the “heritage” faith, which now seems to be rejecting them. I am disappointed that they don’t feel we are more supportive, but I am more exercised by the exclusivist religious attitudes that give them such pain. We live in a world where religious groups, feeling threatened (by secularism and by each other), draw ever more rigorous boundaries; it doesn’t have to be like that.

Historically, in many societies, people of different faiths have coexisted without demonizing each other but have lived with mutual respect and harmony. However, most of us come from societies which have historically been more or less monocultural, and broadly uniform in faith, and that makes us ill-equipped to deal with other faiths. Western Christians mostly met other faiths in a colonial context, and so our understandable reaction was to try to convert them; we’ve mostly moved beyond that, but other faiths have had very different experiences. If, historically, you’ve always been a minority (periodically oppressed) then that breeds a particular mindset. Equally, if your history has been of always living in societies ruled by your co-religionists, then it’s hard to find resources in the tradition to equip you for living as a minority (beyond an imperative to convert the majority or rule them). Our conversation reminded me of how very Christian the idea of choosing your religion for yourself is; most faith traditions assume something quite different, that one way or another, your birth gives you a religious identity.

Up the Scaffold

A day of leading tours yesterday, taking some of our local supporters up the scaffold to see the saints in the roof at close quarters (among other things). It was notable how warm it was in the top of the roof, which can’t be very comfortable for the conservators (who have worked for the past few months in barely tolerable cold). Everybody is thrilled to see the conservators at work with their cotton buds, and it was particularly good to be able to show people the change in appearance of the saints happening before your very eyes. The scaffolders were just bringing down a floor in the chancel, so now conservation is moving lower there, which at least means that you can visit the vault while remaining upright, which is a pleasant change (the conservators had brought a couple of Sunday school chairs up there, which at least enabled you to sit for a while). Without the conservators’ lights the chancel vault still looks muddy, so how we light it is going to be crucial. Anyway, we had lots of enthusiastic reactions; it's going very well.