JACOB AND SONS

A Biblical Understanding of Marriage

On Monday evening the Old Testament lesson at evening prayer was from Genesis, chapters 29 and 30, giving the story of Jacob and his children. Now we all know that Jacob has twelve sons, the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel (“Jacob, Jacob and sons” as Tim Rice had it), but the details just made me sit there open-mouthed as I read them. To remind you, this is how it was. Jacob’s first four sons are with Leah, the unattractive wife, whom he doesn’t love, but was forced to marry by his father-in-law. Then Rachel, the pretty wife, whom he does love, but who is apparently infertile, gets jealous and encourages Jacob to sleep with her maid Bilhah, who has the next two sons. At that, Leah gets in on the act and gives Jacob her maid Zilpah as well, with whom he has the next two sons. After that comes the strangest incident, when Reuben (the oldest son) picks some mandrake plants and brings them home to his mother, Leah, but Rachel wants some of them, and sells Leah a night with Jacob for some mandrakes, at which Leah conceives again, and again. After her sixth son, Leah also has a daughter, Dinah (who I’d forgotten completely). Then, finally, Rachel has her own son, which is Joseph. That was the end of Monday’s reading. Benjamin, who is Rachel’s second son, is eventually born five chapters later.

This is the story of one of the greatest of the patriarchs, one of the foundation myths of the people of Israel, and there is not the slightest suggestion that there is anything unethical or even problematic about what Jacob does. That, of course, is because polygamy is actually normative in the Old Testament, and concubinage is perfectly acceptable. This is a biblical understanding of marriage; fair enough, the eighth century prophets develop a high doctrine of marriage which emphasizes fidelity rather than fertility, but polygamy remains the norm, a fact that the rabbis recognized by giving a dispensation for monogamy in Judaism.  This makes me smile when other Christians announce to the world that they hold a biblical view of marriage, which turns out to be a conventional western view.

The fact of the matter is that marriage is a civil affair; that’s how scripture treats it, and how the Church treated it for the first thousand years. Christians routinely wanted their marriages to be blessed, and so that’s what happened, but the liturgical evidence is clear that other forms of partnership were blessed as well. The notion of marriage as a sacrament is, of course, very late to develop, and in the high middle ages the consecration of virgins was much more likely to be numbered as a sacrament; it is only with Thomas Aquinas that the classic list of seven sacraments is achieved, with marriage as one of them.

The Book of Common Prayer described marriage as “instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency”, but that is not what the Church of England teaches nowadays. The Common Worship marriage service (like its ASB predecessor) pointedly does not describe marriage as instituted by God; instead, it is described as “a gift of God in creation” (which means what, exactly?). This is important to see: the Church of England does not teach that God instituted marriage. Yes, we must recognise that the Prayer Book still has some standing, but the Prayer Book cannot be construed as meaning that literally or historically, because we have no belief in a literal or historical “time of man’s innocency”, rather the Prayer Book expresses a myth.  The seventeenth century view, in the Book of Common Prayer, is all of a piece with the reasoning of Sir Robert Filmer in his “Patriarcha” that since God had given men dominion over women, and fathers dominion over their families, then kings had the divine right to rule their people. Having said that, though, I am not entirely sure how literally all seventeenth century people took this. I am quite sure that Filmer and the Prayer Book’s authors are speaking mythologically, but they perhaps mean it literally as well. Filmer was an exact contemporary of Archbishop James Ussher, who famously used the Bible to work out the date of creation, which is today taken as the literal truth by Christian fundamentalists who disparage science, but Filmer and Ussher were trying to be scientific by their own lights; they were trying to bring a “modern” scientific approach to the best evidence that they had. Filmer was trying to give an anthropological basis for his political theory, and the authors of the Prayer Book likewise for their doctrine of marriage, while Ussher sought a rational universal history. That the Old Testament accounts were mythological, that is symbolic stories embodying important moral truths, would surely have been obvious to the seventeenth century authors, but I suspect they would have thought them true in a merely literal sense as well, and most likely would not have been clear about the distinction. Many of our problems today come from people who refuse to see a mythological dimension and read sacred texts only in a reductively literal way.

I don’t mean to expose to ridicule my fellow-Christians who regard their faith as “biblical”, but I would hope that they might read the Bible a little more intelligently, and perhaps not use it as a weapon to close down debate, particularly on a subject, like marriage, which is fundamentally societal rather than theological.

RIP Steve Hewlett

I was not surprised to hear on Monday’s PM programme that Steve Hewlett had died that morning, but it still made me cry. As I said last time, do listen to the interviews, and pray for him and his family.

DIGNITY AND POLITENESS (OR THE LACK OF IT)

Steve Hewlett

I said long ago that this wasn't going to be a cancer blog, but I have to draw your attention to Steve Hewlett, the BBC's chief media correspondent, who was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus a few months ago. Steve has been continuing to present The Media Show on Radio 4 as though nothing was happening, but has also been doing regular slots on the PM programme on Monday evenings (at about a quarter to six) talking to Eddie Mair about his cancer and its treatment. This Monday he explained that he had been told that his cancer was now untreatable. When I first heard one of these slots I didn't want to listen, but did, because I realised at once that he was approaching the experience much as Helen did, which was about living with cancer, not "fighting" it, or "battling" it and letting the struggle define you, but going on with life and trying to retain as much agency as you can. That doesn't mean giving in, but it is about trying to be realistic and practical, but not defined by an illness. Steve has informed himself, and, like Helen, got on a trial for some quite special new drug, but, like Helen, he has now had the message that there is no more that  can be done to defeat the cancer, and he has had to adapt to that. His response has been to marry his long-term partner, but also to keep broadcasting. Do go to the Radio 4 website and listen to his conversation with Eddie Mair (and any of the previous ones that are still available). They are a testament of dignity and good sense. Do pray for Steve and his family (if you pray).

I confess I have also kept the copy of the Sunday Times Magazine with A.A.Gill's last article, published the day after the cancer got him. Again, a refusal to be defined by this odious disease, and bursting with the zest for life which characterised his writing. I think people saw a similar zest for life in Helen, and it was still there in her eyes as her body failed; the trouble was that she was so full of life that people didn't see how ill she was, and I suspect it was the same with A.A.Gill. Do pray for him and his family too.


The Bishop's Farewell

Bishop Richard is retiring after 33 years of ministry in London, and his last major public function was to preside at Candlemass in the Cathedral last week. It was a vast affair, with aspects characteristic of Bishop Richard: the Mass setting was Merbecke (the sixteenth-century music for the Book of Common Prayer, which I am old enough to have grown up with) showing his love for the Prayer Book; the Nunc Dimittis was by Rachmaninov, and the Creed by Gretchaninov, and an anthem by John Tavener, all showing his love of the Orthodox tradition. He wore a chasuble of his own, behind which there is no doubt a touching story, but which was quite unsuitable, which is again entirely characteristic. Various exotic Eastern clerics were prominent, and the diversity of Anglicanism in London was demonstrated; all very much part of the story. It was all very well organised, and very well done. I might say in parenthesis that Helen and I attended a beatification Mass at the Duomo in Florence a few years ago and were left thinking how much better it would have been done at St.Paul's. So, a very splendid evening.

Not so splendid, though, for Pauline, who went along to represent St.Peter's. She's of Jamaican heritage, and was flabbergasted when the city gent who came and sat next to her used the "N" word. From her account, it's clear that he was meaning to be supportive ("But I'm on your side!" he protested) but he was also quite drunk, after apparently a livery company lunch. Poor Pauline was just too dumbfounded to make a fuss, but it utterly spoiled the occasion for her, and spectacularly undermined our rather self-congratulatory vision of what contemporary London (and especially the Church in London) is like. This was clearly someone well-educated, and well-brought-up, who firstly thought it was appropriate to go to church when visibly drunk, but also seemed not to have learnt that it is simply not acceptable to use the "N" word in conversation. Certainly not in public. Least of all to a black person. And actually, when was it ever polite to use that word to a black person? That was part of the shock, that Pauline naturally expected this person (well-dressed, well-spoken, in church) to have good manners. Not necessarily good sense, but at least good manners, but apparently he had neither. Most of the drunks we get in church round here tend to be the scruffy sort, but they are mostly polite and behave when told. I don't mean to be pious about this, but it is a  reminder that you can't take anything for granted. Politeness is a much underestimated virtue!     

ON THE ROAD

On The Road

Waiting on my bike to come out onto the Harrow Road one day last week I was horrified to see a black-headed gull being hit by a car. It happened this way: foolish cafe owners deposit unwanted food on the grass near the canal, which usually includes lots of stale bread, and on this occasion a flock of gulls had been helping themselves. By the time I came along they were squabbling in mid-air, and the brawl spilled out into the air above the road, which, since this is exactly where the road crosses the canal on a humpbacked bridge, meant that they were not very high in relation to the traffic. They wheeled and skirmished, and one of them dropped a sizeable chunk of baguette onto the road, whereupon a succession of gulls tried to pick it up without being run over. Finally this black-headed gull swooped down and managed to lift the chunk of bread, and tried to fly up and away, but didn't have enough time; he was right in front of a car coming over the bridge. I was transfixed as the car's numberplate smacked into the gull and he cartwheeled under the chassis. I was expecting to see a bloody mess on the road. Instead, when the car passed out of my line of sight, there was the gull, still holding the bread, taking off perfectly successfully, and wheeling away out of danger.

I should add that many years ago I hit a buzzard when driving in Cornwall (it was standing in the middle of a lane). I was only going at 20mph but hit it firmly as I came round a corner. I didn't stop, reasoning that there was nothing I could do for an angry, injured buzzard and not wanting to make his acquaintance in those circumstances, but when I reached my destination I examined the front of the car and found a new crack in my numberplate. I returned the same way an hour later after doing a baptism interview and did stop. There was no sign of the buzzard at all. I always believed he had just brushed himself down and gone his way, and now I am quite sure.   


The Lonely Londoners

For our book group we are reading a novel called "The Lonely Londoners", by a man called Sam Selvon. He was a Tamil/Scottish Trinidadian, and the book is about the experiences of West Indian men living in London in the 1950s, in the era just before the notorious Notting Hill riots. Published in 1956, it is written entirely in Patois, and I found myself saying sentences out loud to see what they sounded like, and recognizing their authenticity. It is a remarkable piece of work and you instinctively accept the truthfulness of the picture it paints. This is not an angry, bitter, or campaigning novel, but is matter-of-fact about the atmosphere of the times.  Of course it's particularly interesting for us as it is set almost entirely within a radius of a mile from my house; they go and hang out in the Park, or saunter along Bayswater Road, but most of them actually live in Harrow Road, "what the English call a working-class area".  It feels like really authentic local social history, but then you ponder that this is actually self-consciously a "Beat Generation" novel, in the Kerouac mould; does its consciously literary identity compromise its truthfulness? I'd say not, and contend for the importance of the novel in giving us a picture of the past. Of course a novel doesn't tell us everything; you learn nothing of the Napoleonic Wars from reading Jane Austen, but actually Pride and Prejudice does tell you something about the experience of having troops billeted in the neighbourhood in wartime, and tells you a very great deal about the society those troops were meant to defend.  After all, no accounts, however objective or drily factual they seem, are actually unmediated; there is always a writer, who has chosen to record one thing rather than another, and has drawn his own conclusions from the events he chooses. So take that as a health warning!  

BRICKS AND ICE

Confirm, O Lord

This morning I went to school. All sorts of unpleasant ghosts came back to me, and it evoked all sorts of uncomfortable memories as I waited for an early bus and then joined a throng of children heading for school. In this case St Marylebone School, the local Church of England girls' secondary, once a grammar school, now an academy growing its own subsidiaries. I was going to the school confirmation service. Now generally I don't really approve of school confirmations, because I think confirmation is about mature membership of a particular Christian community, and that should be the parish church where you worship on a Sunday, but I will put my hand up and say this was an exception which demonstrates the value of doing it this way. Because I had been alerted to this service by the school chaplain, who contacted me to check the baptism details of one of the candidates; it turned out that this was a girl who had been at St Mary Magdalene's School, and who we had baptized, at her request, when she was ten. I was highly delighted that she was now getting confirmed, because she is someone whose home circumstances never made it possible for her to come to church on Sunday when she was younger, but now that the opportunities of faith have been put in front of her at St Marylebone she has made it her own. By all accounts she is an enthusiastic worshipper and her charm has made an impression on the clergy there (who have every reason to be cynical). I hope that  we can continue to support her.

The confirmation was taken by Bishop Robert Ladds, who is a retired Bishop of Whitby, but who is also Provost of St Marylebone School. Those familiar with Anglican education might be aware that the Woodard Corporation  has a Provost; I can only suppose that St Marylebone has adopted the same title in emulation. The Woodard Schools are a group of Anglican public schools, originally founded by a cleric called the Revd Nathaniel Woodard, which remain much more self-consciously ecclesiastical than most Anglican schools, and include places from Lancing to Ellesmere. Being involved with the Woodard Corporation is the sort of thing that the more establishment high-church clerics have on their cv. I imagine that Bishop Robert has done his time there as well, but now he's St Marylebone's tame bishop, and so laid hands on a dozen girls this morning. He preached an entertaining sermon, involving an impressive chemical reaction, which is fair enough since he's a scientist by training, but I'm not sure how many of the girls were actually well-enough up on Star Wars to follow some of his references. Still, it all went very well, despite chaos being unleashed at the Peace. The Chaplain was flapping ineffectually, so the Rector bellowed the announcement of the next hymn, which put a stop to all the fraternization. It was a pleasure to be involved.


Ice Bound

London has been freezing for the past few days, and the Canal was frozen over yesterday and today. Yesterday I watched two Canada geese come into land and be surprised by finding themselves landing on ice rather than water. It wasn't so thick, though, as one of them managed to break the ice by merely sitting down rather forcibly and kicking a bit. Today I was told that the pond in Regent's Park was frozen, which is unusual.  It was a beautiful day for cycling on Saturday, but I had a heavy cold and so couldn't go riding, so I drove out into Oxfordshire and was impressed by places where the frost had clearly been lying for days, and was as white as snow on some roofs. Gloria was wearing her tee shirt for the Women's March which she couldn't go on.


Another Brick in the Wall

Last night we had the local service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, at Emmanuel Church in Harrow Road (by the bus stop, opposite Iceland). It was commemorating both the five hundredth anniversary of the start of the Reformation, and the end of the Berlin Wall, and we used the symbolism of a wall as part of the liturgy, which would have been easier with almost anything other than the water-smoothed stones we had for the purpose. Still,  it was a strong idea, a wall built of prejudice, isolation, hatred and so on, being broken down and put into the form of a cross.  We sang Luther's "Ein Feste Burg", which was very appropriate, as well as something of Timothy Dudley-Smith's to "Danny Boy", which I enjoyed but found defeated the range of my cold-addled voice. The good people of Emmanuel even provided rice and peas. A genuinely diverse occasion, with a real variety of voices expressing something of the variety of Christian experience round here.                     

BUSES AND TRAINS

Vegan Buses

As the buses stand waiting for the traffic lights to change outside the Parish Office I often read the adverts on their sides; "La La Land" is being well-promoted. In the last few days adverts have appeared from a vegan organisation, GoVeganWorld.com, which have come as quite a surprise. There is one with a cute calf being nuzzled by its cuddly mother and the message "Dairy takes babies from their mothers". Now this irritates me on several levels. First, there's the sentimental anthropomorphizing; "babies". No. Baby as a noun refers to human infants; we might indeed talk about baby calves, but that's using baby as an adjective, because what you are talking about is a calf. The cute picture is part of the sentimentalizing as well, the attempt to provoke an emotional rather than a rational response. Then there's the assumed high moral tone, the implication that  vegans are more moral than the rest of us. Most of all, though, I object to the idea that this is about animal welfare, when it manifestly isn't: if the dairy industry is abolished the result will not be lots of happy cows, but lots of dead cows, and then no cows at all, because why would there be any cows if we weren't milking them? If existence is better than non-existence (which seems to me to be a fairly uncontroversial point of view) then veganism, which implies the extermination of all farm animal species, can hardly claim moral superiority. Of course humans have obligations to treat other sentient beings responsibly and kindly but it's perfectly possible to have a dairy industry and an egg industry that aren't cruel; cruelty and abuse are not inherent in consuming milk or eggs. The extermination of whole species really would be implied if the world did truly go vegan!


Thanks To Keble

Last week I had a couple of very pleasant days at Keble College, Oxford. Keble are the patrons of the living of St Mary Mags, which in the past meant that they appointed the vicar; nowadays it's all more consultative, but they still have a role. Like good patrons they want to support their incumbents, and so put on a biennial conference for us, and that was what I went to last week. We heard from two CSMV sisters about prayer, which was helpful, and it was a good opportunity for me to re-establish links with them, as CSMV sisters worked in the parish for many decades, up to the 1950s, and it would be very good to get them involved in the heritage project. It was great to meet other Keble incumbents, and encouraging to see priests with a very wide range of experience, and lots of learning. It was also good to meet a couple of ordinands who are at Keble, and the Chaplain, also Fr Everett (though he rejoices in the Christian name Nevsky).


New Lines

Going to Oxford I tried for myself the new route from Marylebone, and can thoroughly recommend it. There is a half-hourly service, which is as quick as the First Great Western trains from Paddington, and they are pleasantly uncrowded. The grotesque overcrowding on the Paddington-Oxford trains has been a feature of the line for years, so this great boost in capacity is very welcome. The stop on the new curve at Bicester is for Bicester Village, the vastly popular retail outlet centre, and you can tell where its popularity comes from by the fact that the on-train announcements when you get there are in Arabic and Chinese as well as English!  Sensible enterprise from Chiltern Rail. 

SIMPLY HAVING...

Your Busy Time...

"It's coming up to your busy time, isn't it?" people say, cheerily. Every priest gets this, all through their ministry, every Christmas. There's no point in saying that actually there are more services at Easter, because people are trying to be friendly. It's an indication that they sort of understand Christmas; it's a frenetic time, and they recognize that we have some sort of proprietorial relationship with it. And to be fair, Christmas is more stressful than Easter because the extra services are things that you are not in control of. In Holy Week you have a very demanding round of worship, but you set the pace, and the liturgy is all given, so you know what's coming next, whereas at Christmas, there is an expectation that you will put in an appearance, give a welcome, say a prayer or a blessing and generally be Christmassy at events that you haven't planned, and where you don't know how long they will last. If they are using your building then you probably have to open and close for them and generally do what a verger does in places that have vergers (though the excellent Lesley does some of that for me here). When you go to someone else's premises to do the Christmas thing you often fail to factor in the possibility of being offered mince pies by nice hospitable people, which again adds to uncertainty over timing. I should say that I'm in no position to complain, as we have hardly any outside requests for use of our buildings as Christmas venues, unlike some of my brethren, in more "civic" churches, where there is a constant procession of carol services for one organisation or institution or another from late November onwards. It's also not just worship, because there are Christmas events of other sorts that require a clerical presence as well.

The reason clergy tend not to welcome the "busy time" comment, though, is that underlying it is the assumption that we're not busy the rest of the time. There is a very persistent presumption in England (which goes back centuries) that the clergy are idle and ineffectual, and in a society that doesn't much want to engage with things of the spirit, or matters of life and death, it's not surprising that many people simply can't envisage what we do all day. We are economically unproductive, and so don't fit easily into a business model, which is how most people seem to be encouraged to view the world just now. To be fair, lots of churchgoers seem to imagine that their parish priest does nothing very much for most of the time, which is a bit frustrating. All the clergy I know work very hard, all year round, and don't actually take anything like the amount of time off that they are supposed to. Finding the time for one's personal relationships, not to mention prayer, study and reading, all of which are supposed to be priorities for us, is always a challenge.     


Are You Going Away?

The other question that grates for us just now (this is really Scrooge-like!) is when people ask, "Are you going away for Christmas?" which someone does almost every day. Some then think about it and add, "Oh, but I suppose you have to be here," but it's amazing how many that never occurs to. Yes, actually, I shall be here, because I have to celebrate the Holy Mysteries at Midnight, and on Christmas morning; and please don't think I'm complaining about that. Far from it; that is a great privilege for a parish priest. And it's entirely appropriate that we should be at home at Christmas, because you're supposed to be in the bosom of your family, and actually, for the priest, your congregation and the people of the neighbourhood are your extended family. It would feel very strange to be worshipping with a different bunch of people at Christmas from those you minister to for the rest of the year. But the question just forgets that whereas Christmas means holiday for most people, we are the one profession who are absolutely guaranteed to be working, at least up until lunchtime on Christmas Day. It doesn't necessarily stop then, either, because I remember years ago having someone turn up on my doorstep after dark on Christmas Day who needed to make a confession, which demanded quite a change of gear.


Deck The Halls

The events, however, have been joyful. Our Christmas fair raised over a thousand pounds (which should please the treasurer, who was crewing a yacht sailing across the Atlantic) and passed off happily. The Lunch Club Christmas Party fed about sixty people (variously elderly, vulnerable or needy) with, frankly, a feast, cooked almost single-handed by the indefatigable Jacqui, and ended with an extraordinarily diverse group sitting around playing dominoes. I went along to the Paddington Festival Gala Awards last week, to support one of the volunteers who works incredibly hard to support the Lunch Club, and who we'd put up for an award, which he duly received, but then I found myself being given an award for "encouraging community spirit", which was a total surprise. It was good to see ordinary people being saluted for making an effort in their community, and moving to see how loyal to the area many people who have grown up in Paddington are. Probably our most important events, though, were carols in St Mary Magdalene's Church for Edward Wilson School, the other school on the Estate, the secular, "community" school, whose student body is at least 90% Muslim. The current Head decided a year ago that it was not sustainable for the school to ignore Christmas, as it had done, and so last year was the first time they used our building, while I stayed away, at his request, so as not to appear to be proselytising. This year I was asked to be present and welcome people, which I was delighted to do, and it was really encouraging to see lots of parents there. A new group of people found that they were welcome in a beautiful and inspiring space, which is what it's all about. Happy Christmas!    

THREE CHURCHES

 

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

I went back to my old parish in Reading the other day, for the induction of the new Vicar; now you never attend the induction of your immediate successor, for obvious reasons, but after that there’s no particular prohibition. It is quite unusual, though.  All Saints, Downshire Square, Reading, is a Victorian daughter-church of Reading Minster, which sits on the crest of the chalk ridge along which the Bath Road runs. It is a handsome, well-kept church, much beautified by my predecessor. I suppose I have kept in touch with All Saints better than is normal, mostly because Helen’s best friend is still there, and of course here in Paddington we are quite conveniently situated for popping over to Reading (fast trains from Paddington, as they say). I carefully tried not to undermine my successor, and I have no intention of criticizing the new Vicar, but when I heard about the Induction I thought it would be good to go along. The new Vicar is a woman, you see. 

When I moved to All Saints, in 1996, it was in the wake of great controversy, and deep hurt, over the ordination of women. My predecessor, Fr Jones, had been a doughty opponent of women’s ordination, and when it came to pass spent a good deal of energy in trying to persuade his people. In the end he resigned in 1995 and became a Roman Catholic (though he subsequently came back to the Church of England). There were bitter arguments in the parish, and one family moved to another church amid much unhappiness. When I was appointed the bishop’s clear desire was that I should keep the parish in the Church of England and try to heal the divisions. I stayed eleven years in Reading, and hope that was what was achieved. We managed to steer a course where I hope everyone felt they were part of the family. I believe my successor carried on much the same. Now, though, a woman has been appointed, and I felt it was important to be seen to offer support, so along I went. It was interesting to see a number of those who had been unconvinced by the wisdom of the ordination of women were there to welcome their new parish priest. Nobody was tactless enough to ask me, “Did you ever think you’d see this?” but I don’t suppose I did. Things have changed. Not impressed by the poor turnout of clergy from Reading Deanery, though; in my day we tried hard to attend these things, for the sake of solidarity.

OPEN OR CLOSED

I had a Sunday off to go down to Exeter, to the parish I served my first curacy in. There they were closing a church, St Andrew’s, on Alphington Road. St Andrew’s is a modern building, which replaced a “tin church” that had been destroyed in the war, and has a very high, steeply-pitched roof. Its fittings are a bit 1960s. Now I had no particular connection with St Andrew’s when I was there, I was mostly at the parish church, St Thomas, but St Andrew’s was Helen’s church. She was the head server there when I arrived, and her father was churchwarden, and her mother became sacristan. Ian, her brother, was in Cambridge then, but when he returned to Exeter when the Met Office moved down there a few years ago he slotted back into St Andrew’s. So the life of St Andrew’s has been part of my family for thirty years. I didn’t particularly want to go, but the idea gradually crept up on me that I should, and I asked a colleague whether he could do the service for me at St Peter’s, having worked out that it was just possible to get down leaving after Mass at St Mary Mags; he sensibly said he could do Mary Mags as well and urged me to have a Sunday off. So I did. I realised that I owed it to Helen. She would have gone, and while she would have told me I shouldn’t leave my responsibilities here, if I’d had any sense I would have insisted on going with her. So I had to go.

It was fantastically difficult. I couldn’t look at the servers (dressed exactly as they used to be) because I just saw Helen. Serious catch in the throat when singing. So many memories from so long. I renewed acquaintance with someone I was very close to before Helen and I got together, and hadn’t spoken to in twenty-eight years. Many people there who remembered me, and who I remembered, even if not their names. I was thinking that one really does feel old in that situation, having started work in a church now closed, but then I thought of my boss there, Fr Alan, who, when he was a student, had been present at the consecration of St Andrew’s back in the early 60s, and was now there with us at its closing. It was very brave of the present congregation to decide to close, and to throw in their lot with St Thomas, especially those who, like Ian, have a lifetime’s memories there. Of course we can worship anywhere, and it is the quality of the human fellowship that is the most important feature, but we do all invest memories in buildings, even modern ones like St Andrew’s.

A FAMOUS SHRINE

I had the honour to be asked to preach at St Mary’s, Bourne Street, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, last week. St Mary’s was built as a servants’ church, a little brick, gothic place behind Sloane Square tube station, but it was transformed by Fr Humphrey Whitby in the early twentieth century, who installed lots of baroque furnishings, many by Martin Travers, and attracted a smart congregation. The congregation remain smart in many ways. There was a surprisingly good turnout for a midweek evening, and it was all very well done. The choir sang a Mozart setting and a Bruckner motet, though there wasn’t enough congregational singing for my taste, just two hymns (one unknown) and the Creed to the Missa de Angelis. The ceremonial is what is described as traditional, and all justified by the most impeccable authorities, but of course as it was a modern service (albeit old language) which inevitably affects the ceremonial, you can’t really claim that this is the traditional rite. Fortunately, as a visiting preacher one has few opportunities to mess up the ceremonial. It all went on very smoothly around me. Everybody was very kind and welcoming, and we chatted merrily over a glass of wine afterwards. It was here that Helen and I came on the Sunday after she had received her diagnosis last May, when we wanted to be somewhere we weren’t known, but no-one remembered me from then. Why would they, since I wasn’t dressed as a priest on that occasion?  The people were very positive about the sermon when we had a glass of wine in the Presbytery afterwards, though I came away starving, as there were only tiny snacks, and it was too late to eat a proper meal.