not so silent

Are you ever lost for words? Some things are hard to describe. People ask, how was it? The same way I ask others, how was it? Often what we or I would like as an answer is something short, do not ramble I think internally, not too much fine detail please just enough to keep my eyes interested but not too much creating me a problem with my next meeting, conversation, appointment, TV programme.  I remember being in Mozambique with Paul and he said when you get home people will ask “how was your holiday”? and you will struggle to put it into words, he was right. At our Christmas fair on Saturday I had an enriching conversation with my local funeral director. She “you’ve been on that thingy, begins with an S”, me sabbatical, she “yes or as I call it a jolly”! it is hard to put into words some things you go through,  perhaps there are no words maybe  words just get in the way of the experience, words might just clutter and misrepresent the experience

Church with the missionaries made very welcome then lunch out after church, recommended. Delivered our thoughts on the Prodigal Son at Mercy Air. Still doing day to day vicar things like talking God and pastoral care. Also talking to God. Learning that  short service in Africa means you do not leave your old skills behind you. So I have been servicing a tractor and ride on lawn mower, vital for a grass air strip. Erin has also been making things, more of that later. I had coffee with the local Pastor very interesting it was to get another view of God and church. Invited to a brai on the rooftop with another Mercy Air family, a bit different watching the monkeys  bedding down in the trees above you. It's also been a privilege to say Morning Prayer, Erin and I together. Once again meeting so many good people doing great things.  A privilege. 

30 years ago today Erin and meself made our way across the city in our Austin Maxi to the hospital, the maternity unit. We had gone to all the 'how to have a baby' night school lessons, (different to how to make a a baby night school lessons). We had with much commitment put together our baby birth plan. Cassette player in hand with tapes for music to soothe mother to be as she pops baby out. On reflection I remember the room being like the space you love to have as a garage, polished floors, tiled white walls, storage for tools, spanners. We entered that room with a sense of naivety, hope and Unknowingly not a bloody clue what would be required of us over the next 30 years, let alone the next few hours. I say a few more like 24hours.  There was no popping,  after a long struggle Daniel came into the very centre of our lives. Life was changed but we did not know it. Naivety still hung around us like a medal?  The celebration was was for a moment, mother and bed transporte...

I don't have much to say about this. But being up so high opens up my vulnerability, lost in a landscape of rock. Being up here I am insignificant, not in a I don't matter way. But I take up less space I am small, open to fall, reliant upon others. I am reminded of Richard Rohr words I am not the most important thing in life. Not insignificant to my God. 

I have purposely kept from going to museums and galleries this week as I did not want too much on my mind, (small mind) to many images to blur the story and experience I have had.  But here below is the most striking painting I have seen his week because it ties in with a sermon I preached on The Merchant and Pearl. Part of what struck me about the Merchant and the kingdom was that he must have been well worked out, organised, had a plan, made a sacrifice. This was not the kingdom of hap hazard and maybe. This is the kingdom of let's make a plan (Paul Middelton). So this is how I see this painting.  We have people working together possibly Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Mary a servant?  They have planed for this, talked to each other committed to something in the Kingdom. They are organised, rope, clothes a bowl perhaps to wipe the face of Christ and maybe for the wounds, there is compassion in this plan.  There is sacrifice in this painting, time given to the dead ...

In looking out of my window this w eek I have wondered, how much room do I take up?

  This week I've been living in a palace yes most of you who know me well presumed I had in my normal dyslexic manner written palace but meant place. NO. I was invited to leave my palace rooms ( I will explain when i see you) to be guided to 500  feet below my bedroom. The entrance to this house visit is not unlike the entrance to our church cellar.  Unmarked, dark, uninviting, this house gets worse as I make my way through it. Dark, dirty, ill kept. Unfinished and confusing. That is until David begins to tell its story and it's unfolding possibilities into context. I will not go into the fine detail I could not do it justice. Many scholars believe this dirty complex under my bedroom could be the house St Paul was keep under house arrest (Acts 28:30-30) and where he was taken from to be executed by the Roman authorities.    The photo you see is they believe to be a blocked up window that looked over the via del Corso (Broadway) he could have watched returning Ro...

There is general belief that the kind of people you hang around with you eventually become like them, and I suppose the opposite is true. I remember in the 70s after a night out I would have to hang my clothes in the garden because if the smell of cigarette smoke. I did not smoke but it seemed many others did. For years I was a diesel mechanic and for years I came home smelling like a diesel mechanic, we all did.   So the bridge.  The picture you have is of two buildings linked by a bridge. The building on the right is a ancient university the building on the left is a church equally ancient. Both built by St ignatius and his people. Ignatius after his conversion to Christ started a Christian social project with 6 people which grew into the order of the Jesuits. Committed to the poor, education and telling others of Jesus. So the bridge.  Ignatius said you could not join his people unless you crossed the bridge. You could not serve the poor from an educational ivory tower...

This evening I went to take a picture of a bridge but that's for tomorrow now. For on the way I meet a young couple walking from the shop. Smiles and broken English break out (I need to improve my English) they were the couple I meet in church Sunday morning and night. (3 times I went) anyway the couple. They asked what I was doing? in my broken English I told them about the bridge (more tomorrow ) we live above the bridge in he church! would you like to come and look? Now you can hear my wife saying Nigel will excuse himself and go home to his cell. BUT i said yes I would love too. (nigel sticking toungeout in a childish manner) up the winding church tower stairs to thier home. A small flat for their new life in Italy. They make me lovely coffee and they place fresh fruit cut into juicy pieces on the table around where we share our stories for a while. I tell them (because they ask) about England and Scotland they think it might be warm in Edinburgh. I quickly smash the idea of a ...

Today I was imersed into the history and modern context of St ignatius  Archbishop David as my guide and fellow pilgrim took me to a number of places where the life of Ignatius is recorded. Back home months ago when I suggested to Mark my Sabbatical guide I might continue to explore what Ignatious spiritual practice may offer me post my Spiriual Directors Course, I never dreamt I would be so close to the home of this spiritual giant.  So what am and have I been learning over the past year? God sends people.  God has sent many people to me I call them God bumpers or brief encounters, God sends them to bump into me and in that bumping for me there is a great possibility for change and enrichment.  When I told a dear friend I was going to be flat sharing with someone I had never meet, to a place I had never been, exploring a spectrum of faith I had no understanding of he said "your mad". Well he is right but in that bumping together I have been part of through this past...

On what is supposed to be a quiet night in reading Archbishop David announces we have an invitation be in the reception for 5 to journey together to The Church of San Gregorio Magno al Celio, Pope Gregory. We arrived and was meet by Fr. Robet McMCullock Procrator General of the Missioanry Society of St Columban. A lovely warm hospitable and entertaining man. So here's the rub. It is the feast of St Augustian today and the Archbishop has been invited to say prayers and liturgy with Father Robert in an ecumenical action of a shared understanding of our past. There are 5 of us 3 from New Zealand an Australian and 1 Englishman. The rub continues, this is the site from which Pope Gregory sent St Augustine to the pagans in England. So here I discover some wonderful things. 1. Augustine gets halfway to my land and the pagans he gets frightened and goes back to the Pope. Like me St Augustine was frightened of the Unknown. The Pope having non of this makes him a Bishop and sends him back on...

After walking and praying and pizza I am reminded some people and sometimes mystery is an invitation BUT other times and other people mystery is thrust upon mystery us   unwanted. 

There have been many times in my life when I have wanted to run. I presume we all have experiences from our childhood where we wanted to run back to a parent for protection and the Safty of the overly well known. If I were a psychologist returning to the womb (sorry dad). First days in a new institution can be fearful why did I move? new job, new relationship, new school, new church. My first day at junior school shit scared of loosing all the comfort, the protection the routine for what? I had no idea just fear.  When I gave up my job at 30 ish I took a gap year, well three weeks to be precise and went to visit a friend in India. I remember traveling at two in the morning from the airport with Chris in a richashw, I felt like I was in a scean from Appocolips Now. I had never observed anyone have a shit in the street and then sleep under a cart. We were to spend a week on Mumbi and two weeks traveling to Rajasthan very cheaply, very. For a week all I could think of was that prayer ...

I am now part way through my 17 th  year in my parish and with that have just begun my second sabbatical, a privilege I know. I occasionally wonder what my garage Forman would have responded with if I asked for a sabbatical to gather my thoughts and feeling and beliefs? Well yes I probably do know the response. But I am grateful to all who will have made this possible a time of privileged reflection and exploration.  To draw my last sabbatical to a close I went to Skye where I spent a week on my own no  tv and  no radio as far as i  can remember and there I cooked my first Sunday lunch. During this next period  of time I wonder what I will learn and  experience?

If you watch old black and white TV programs it is possible to see usually a man wearing a sandwich board stating  ‘The end is nigh’ . We look back and perhaps see how misguided they were, wrong time? Wrong place?  They were people who were passionate and prepared to stand out of the crowd for their cause. Those people who tried to guide us in a different direction are now images of ridicule and sly or open laughter. So where are they today? My feeling is these sandwich board bearers of the past are now the politicians of our government yes the once ridiculed people of the 50s have become politicians of today. Don’t be daft I hear you say they are not as ill thought out as those narrow minded misguided people of the past. Well I believe so and I see them imbedded in the in out EU argument. I feel I am being guided by the conversation of fear.  Woe to us if we stay in woe woe to us if we leave. This form of argument is straight out of the 1950s our politicians today are bl...

I have just spent the morning preparing for Good Friday and Easter Sunday. My home made cross and prayers are in place (see other blog). I have set the large cross in the Lady Chapel and decorated it. During this time I was playing The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir  ‘I’ll  say Yes ’ . In 2009 I went to  New  York for a week with my daughter and under direction from my PA Franci we went to The Brooklyn Tabernacle ,  it was a taste of heaven not a foretaste but a taste now. It was there I  first heard this song  and on engaging with it I knew I would go back to Pype Hayes and my parish.  I know it is emotionally charged and not of my culture or background, but there you go he is a strange God.  As I have put up the cross and hung the prayers and listened to the music on my own I found myself on my knees in front of the cross in tears. It is a good day to say yes to his will, for the prospects are bleak.  If  you do not know the ending of ...

In my 16th year of being Team Vicar of my parish Pype Hayes. I have reflecting a lot of what that means. A few years ago a coworker asked me if I was still in this parish I said yep. His reply was "the diocese will have on your file no vision and no imagination"! My response if I remember correctly was something like "I prefer to call it commitment".  I have just read 'Trees which are repeatedly transplanted do not grow roots', St Gregory of Sinai. I wonder what my roots look like? Perhaps the reason to be in a parish or community is to grow roots, spiritual roots. And that others may watch and be part of that process of growth. 

Our Father   This year during lent we are looking at The Lords Prayer. Beginning with Our Father. I was reminded he is Our Father not mine or even my own congregations Father but Our. The picture of Earth from the Hubble Telescope challenged my very personal or local view of Our Father. It seems for to long I have claimed him for myself and my congregation. The picture of earth reminded me well crashed in on my very narrow view of my father. The picture and the opening words Our Father forced me to contemplate the reality that people from all continents across all languages will today cry out Our Father and with that my family and Our Father seems much larger and more encompassing.