It was a very full-on weekend. On Saturday, we went to a Ruby Wedding celebration in Lancaster. This was a very special time of reunion, but I was embarrassed when a picture of me came up on the screen, from 1971, complete with full evening dress and in the company of a young female student who did not become my wife. I hadn't told Les about that one! The event also gave us some ideas for our own 'Ruby' next year - if we're still together!!
Yesterday was basically non-stop, comprising a big baptism service, a lunchtime meeting, BCP Evensong and finally Communion. Oh and a bit of domestic cleaning on the way!
I was told a few days ago that Mossley Hill/Allerton (where I live) is in the Sunday Times Top Ten for places to bring up a family. Get that - Liverpool, a good place for families! I was naturally gladdened, and can understand why this should be: good schools and local amenities, relatively low crime rate, good transport links etc.
As it happens, I was in a different conversation with a neighbour concerning the issues of our area. I asked him what he thought the main issues were. There aren't really any big ones, he said; people round here are 'small-c' conservative. They live here because they want to conserve what they have. My friend would be the first to admit that there are 'issues' here: lonely elderly folks living by themselves in large houses, the family having moved away; I suspect that levels of debt and alcoholism are rather higher than most of us realise; and there is undoubtedly mental ill health, often stress-related, for professional people in many walks of life. But, all things considered, this is a good place to live.
How does it affect church life, when it is all too easy to be complacent, self-satisfied, yet we constantly pray 'your kingdom come'? What would that look like? I and others talk often these days about the need for culture-change within the church, infected as we are with that 'nothing changes here' mentality. Here's a quote from a book I've mentioned before, Unapologetic by Francis Spufford. He is describing particular areas where the Church (of England) is open to criticism. One of these, he believes
...(is) our recurring tendency to give religious sanction to whatever is 'small-c' conservative in a society, at the expense of everybody who falls outside the conservative definition of what's good and natural ...It is possible to see the church...as virtue's tribe, as a new version of the self-satisfied Us...Then whatever is inside the tribal boundary begins to seem good because it is inside, and whatever is outside begins to seem wicked because it is outside.
Today the Church remembers Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus cast seven demons and who was quite possibly a prostitute before becoming a disciple. She followed Jesus to the Cross and beyond to the tomb, becoming the first to see him following his resurrection and bearing the news to the other disciples. Would she have found a place within our church, I wonder?
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