Month: March 2021

British Gas are really struggling in this pandemic. It’s going to take 8 weeks before they can fix our boiler, which loses pressure rapidly and whose pressure fluctuates a lot during the on/off cycle.

Not wishing to spend money and carbon using an electric heater, we are modifying our behaviour. It’s likely the fluctuations are caused by a lack of air in a container somewhere in the boiler that would normally be air-filled to damp out pressure fluctuations. And as far as we can see the loss of water is not a leak somewhere else in the system. So we only have the heating on when I’m around to check the pressure every hour or so, and I’ve reduced the water temperature (we don’t need it high) to decrease the fluctuations. (Downwards when the burner comes on and there’s cold water in a hot casing, then back upwards and beyond when the hot water spreads to the cold radiators… I guess).

Sometimes God, the world seems too much,
the powerful too powerful,
poor people and those ill and war-torn too deep in despair,
my own understanding and will too weak
for anything to ever be better.
But this I will pray;
“Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.”

Diverted a little way from my morning walk to pick up a boring parcel; inkjet ink – not even coloured inkjet ink, but black. This will be used to print out things we’ve written and things other people have written to us. I hope it will be used sparingly, so as not to overuse earth’s resources (or our money).

God bless this ink.
We thank you because we’re free to communicate.
We thank you because there is technology
that helps us communicate
when we can’t meet face to face.
We ask you to help us to be mindful of the planet
when we decide whether to print something out.
God bless our friends and colleagues;
bless all the people whose concerns
are reflected in the words and pictures
that this ink will make.
God we thank you for ideas,
and for your big idea, the Word,
that we see spoken in the life of Jesus.

More freedom guff in the media yesterday. I don’t think we understand what a troubling idea freedom is: for we also need to be constrained by care for our fellow human beings. Absolute freedom has contradictions. We can’t be free to enslave people. If people in the name of freedom cut down forests, then re-employ the displaced people on tiny wages, where is the freedom? Freedom depends on choice – but how many choices are actually free? – there are pressures. We can’t always expect people to decide freely whether to end their own lives – because there are bound to be pressures on them. How many times do women appear to consent to sexual acts without really being free to do so? Are you free to consent when you’re young? You can’t legally consent to sex when you are 15, but can apparently be held responsible for being lied to and pressured into going to join a band of terrorists at the same age. Freedom as understood in present-day capitalism depends on ownership and money, but these are constraints on freedom. Free choices depend on good information, but we are also free to lie on social media, in mass media, to our friends and to our colleagues. Free societies (and we can’t do any better) are also potentially unstable – because people are free to express opinions which would lead us down the path to authoritarianism and enslavement.

As ever, the rich are more free than those who are in poverty. I don’t need to repeat the old music-hall song to that effect.

Morning prayers by the lake by Janet and a zoom congregation. Then a walk in the misty and gentle weather.

Sunday’s Lectionary contains a reading from John’s Gospel where Jesus talks about his forthcoming death. It’s not just random – it’s where everything was leading. ‘Passion’ can also be about being done to, being powerless as in ‘passive’ – ‘suffer’ can also be about allowing something to happen. Jesus is walking towards his own powerlessness. But ‘passion’ is also (in current usage anyway) about intense feeling. And there’s that in Jesus too. For all that love is an act of the will, it also, sooner or later, comes with feeling. “Now my soul is troubled.” says Jesus in verse 12:27.

Some holes in the mist early on – now it seems to have lifted into a fairly constant cloud layer.

Just in case you thought it wasn’t spring…

To my ears, for half a second the fridge sounded like a distant train. I think this must be the longest I’ve been without going on a train for my whole life. As a small child I was taken on a 223 bus or the Metropolitan Line to see my grandfather (and grandmother before she died when I was very tiny). Trains are freedom, excitement, adventure, walks, holidays: even the promise of doing business in a different place was somehow enticing. I don’t think I’ve even seen many trains except our local sad little 323s. I think the loss may be inducing auditory hallucinations (or wishful thinking maybe). Not relevant here, but I note that the first thing to go when I’ve lost a lot of sleep is my ability to interpret what I hear, for instance I was once walking along the seafront at Worthing after an all-night walk, thinking I could hear voices in the waves crashing on the shore.

Small note on the Lectionary for Sunday... Jesus is talking to the crowd. ‘”And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.’ The cross was very public. Jesus could not suffer in secret, but suffered in public, where the people pointed and laughed. If the English press had been there, they would have had a good laugh and a hate-filled rant too. Perhaps we should remember the terrible, public, messy suffering endured by Jesus when we see all those neat crosses in our churches and public spaces.

Strange that some (at least two) of the English language’s best-loved phrases are the wrong way round. Wouldn’t “eat your cake and have it” be better, and “swim or sink”? My heartiest contrafibularities to anyone who knows why it’s the way it is.

From next Sunday’s Lectionary… “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34) – and yet here we are in 2021 still dependent on a separate group of people for learning about faith, and even to intercede for us. But how can I moan about this, because it’s been my bread and butter.

It is still exciting to think that access to God doesn’t have to be in the hands of a priestly caste.

Living God we thank you,
for the people who have made us what we are,
who have cared for us, cleaned up after us,
fed us, had conversations with us.
We thank you for our mothers,
and what they are to us,
for fathers,
for grandmothers and grandfathers,
step-parents, aunts, uncles, all our family members
who cared about us.
We thank you for teachers,
for people in church,
who have helped us to grow
in body and in mind.
We thank you for Jesus Christ,
and what he is to us.
Lord, in your mercy…
…hear our prayer. Amen.

Confession
Merciful God, we confess
that sometimes parenting goes wrong;
that we have made the world such a place
that sometimes parents and other family members,
and those who should be trustworthy
have been cruel, neglectful, or exploitative.
God forgive us.

Intercession
God of love, we pray for all carers,
especially those at their wits’ end.
May they find encouragement,
and support that goes beyond mere applause
for all that they do.

We pray for those with no children,
whether that is what they wanted,
or whether it goes against a deeply-held
desire to be a parent.
Walk with them too, we pray,
in love and strength.

The Trail this morning was very quiet for a Saturday. The rain seems to have kept a lot of people away. Nice to spend some time thinking. There’s a handy fold-up rucksack in our household, which I used today, coming back via the baker’s. But it turns out the bag isn’t very waterproof. You live and learn.

We are entitled to live. Violence against women has been in the news this week. Hats off to Jess Phillips for making the consequences clear. I may not have been personally involved in violence against women, but I still feel ashamed of my Y chromosome. And I am responsible for this in some ways. Have I not sat around in pubs and portakabins and canteens and been part of the reinforcing of a toxic culture?

God forgive us.

After a reasonable start to this morning’s walk, the rain started to come down heavily, and after a while there were some pulses of wet, flollopy sleetiness (neither of these completely unexpected). It had improved a lot by the time I got home and there were only the slightest traces of white remaining on the hills around. By the time I got to the shops, my fingers had become rather too numb for easy handling of the complexities of grocery shopping and zip, bag and mask management. So some delays there. Now the sun shines from time to time.

God of sun and rain,
God of joy,
God who suffers and loves and gives us hope,
give us grace to know you in all things.