Love God = hate your family?!

A couple of weeks ago a small group of friends, all dads with young-ish (and rapidly growing) children, met together to chat. Nothing unusual in that, especially with curry involved! But what was more unusual was that we had come together to talk about being a dad - to share, with as much honesty as we could manage, the joys and the struggles of parenting, how we've been shaped in it by experiences long past and more recent, and how we might try to do it as well as we can. It was a fascinating conversation, and hopefully the first of many. Perhaps most interesting was that it brought to the surface tensions that we wrestled with, not just between our best ideals and the imperfections of reality, between the various senses of vocation in our lives.

Love God = hate your family?!

We recalled Jesus' harsh words in Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple." The 'cost of discipleship' might sometimes be great - but hate your family?! Jesus is speaking in hyperbolic language, of course, and we had a sense that this is, first and foremost, a call to resist idolising. Following Jesus, loving God, seeking the kingdom, must come first - and nothing else must fill that place. We can (and culturally, often do) place 'family' in the place of God - as the ultimate source of our security, as our ultimate goal in life, as the locus of our meaningful relationships, and so on - and such idolatry can destroy us all. Jesus' words must shock us out of such idolising. But...

Love your neighbour = love your family?

I resist the expression 'charity begins at home' like the plague. It's normally said to argue that generosity shouldn't be extended anywhere else but the home, or 'our community', or 'our country'. 'Look after our own first' usually means not looking after 'others' at all. It's an expression that comes out of a worldview of scarcity and competition, rather than abundance and sharing. But if what if we took 'charity begins at home' more at its word? What if home and family, in whatever form we our lucky enough to have them, offer us a 'school' for love - a place to learn it, practise it, get it wrong and learn from our mistakes - a training ground for loving in the wider world? The particular gift of family (however difficult that gift is, often, to receive) is that we're stuck with them for life - whether through the commitment of marriage, or the 'givens' of parents, siblings and children. And if we have a lifetime with these people, then we have a lifetime to be able to learn the art of loving them.

Vocations in harmony - or tension?

I floated a suggestion, offered to me by a wise friend, that if our various vocations are given to us by God, then they shouldn't conflict. I'm afraid to say that none of us, in our little group of dads, was terribly convinced. Managing tensions between our different vocations seemed to be an inextricable part of our lives - in particular the tension between loving our family and loving our other neighbours (both locally and wider): both loves are 'good', both we acknowledged as callings from God, but they often seemed to pull in different directions on our time, energy and attention.

I've been thinking about our conversation a lot in the days since that evening. I don't feel like I have many gems of wisdom yet, but it feels important to try and get dads (and perhaps men more generally) together more often for these kind of conversations, as I have a feeling we men tend to be rather less well-equipped for them (or more resistant to them, perhaps) than women.

For the moment, I have some emerging questions that might just help me navigate some of those tensions between the different calls on our time, energy and attention. They probably need refining, and adding to, but they feel like a place to start...

• Vocation - am I called to this? with all that I am?
• Responsibility - how much of the responsibility for this rests with me? who else is it (or could it be) shared with?
• Strain - is something (or someone) under strain here? is there a 'clear and present danger' of something (or someone) breaking?
• Possibility - can I contribute meaningfully here and now?

I wonder what wisdom you can bring to this - as male or female, whatever the makeup of your particular 'household' might be? I feel like I'm just a beginner, with much to learn!

'Ethical Leadership and the CofE'

On Tuesday, I went up to Leeds for a day 'workshop' on 'Ethical Leadership and the CofE'. When I first saw it advertised, I was instantly intrigued, closely followed by the instinctive response of 'that's surely not for people like me'. As someone who has, at times, been rather scathing of the apparent lack of theological reflection preceding major reforms in the Church of England (the Green Report being the most notorious example), however, I realised that this might be a great opportunity to dip a toe into exactly those waters. So I booked, I travelled, and I wasn't (on the whole) disappointed...

It wasn't exactly a 'workshop', more a series of intensely nutritious reflections, philosophical, theological and biblical, on the question of leadership. But with some immensely fine minds, and experienced practitioners, both behind the lectern and in the audience, the conversations that began yesterday (and beginnings, rather than endings, they surely were) were rich with insight.

Leadership as skillful, non-manipulative persuasion

Jamie Dow, a philosopher in Leeds, mined Aristotle's understanding of rhetoric to make suggestions as what 'leadership as persuasive influence' might look like if it was thoroughly ethical, which is to say both skillful and non-manipulative. If a key aspect of leadership is, as he framed it, 'seeking to have a persuasive influence on the beliefs and actions of others in order to achieve a common goal', then there are ethical questions to be asked about:

1. the 'common goal' itself
2. the identity of the leader(s)
3. the character of the leader(s)
4. the behaviour of the 'followers'
5. the character and culture of the 'followers'
6. the process or methods of leadership

Via Aristotle, Jamie argued that the last of these can be considered ethical if it 'gives people proper grounds for conviction' - and, in the process, helps create the conditions, among the 'followers', for appropriate weighing, thinking, deliberating and responding. It is not enough to have a 'trustworthy' leader who presents 'pre-cooked' decisions - such leaders should be skilled at enabling genuine deliberation. In the questions that followed Jamie's presentation, we noted that leaders should be just as skilled at 'holding spaces open', understanding the particularity of context (with its vested interests, power imbalances, pressures and the like), making themselves accountable to the judgment of others, listening well, and reflecting on what they hear (perhaps balancing an emphasis on 'rhetoric' with an attention to both 'dialectic' and 'praxis'). One big danger of overly 'task-focused' leadership, it was suggested (with the story of Socrates' wife in mind), is that there might well be people and considerations apparently marginal to 'the task in hand' whose exclusion could result in the wider fabric of life being damaged.

The practice of leadership in the Pauline epistles

Loveday Alexander, a biblical scholar (and member of the Faith & Order Commission which has reflected on senior leadership in the CofE), offered us a rich picture of leadership emerging not so much from the teachings of Paul but from Paul's practice as a leader through his letter-writing, itself creating the 'social glue' between Christians (himself included), and the 'theological glue' between Christians and their God. Loveday pointed to much evidence in the Pauline epistles of an 'equilateral triangle' of relationship between local church leaders ('B'), the trans-local apostle ('C'), and the God who calls and empowers both ('A'). Each divine-human relation (A-B, A-C) was a two-way relationship of call and response, and the human-human relation (B-C) was also one of mutual support. The important thing for Paul, said Loveday, was 'keeping the triangle equilateral' and not 'collapsing it into (top-down) line-management', whether of a 'congregationalist' ('A-B-C') or 'Catholic' ('A-C-B') shape. Paul is interested, she suggested, in redistributing hierarchical power into something shared and accountable, so that the one who is 'obeyed' is not the apostle, or the local leaders, but only Godself.

The Pauline ethos of apostolic leadership, then, understood leadership as discipleship or calling; as charisma or gift; as diakonia or service (of God, and of others); as koinonia, synergy or partnership (all working within the same divine energy); as episkope or oversight (of a consensual, enabling kind - 'power to' not 'power over'); and as apostolicity, ultimately cross-shaped. Philippians 2:5 was a hermeneutical key for a Pauline understanding of leadership relations: 'let your bearing towards one another arise out of your life in Christ' (NEB). Or, in Rowan Williams' words:

"How can anyone carry God, bring God to birth in the world? How can you carry the cup without spilling it? But what if the cup is no fragile container but a deep well that can never run dry? Then you know it isn't just your resource, but God's insistent generosity, carrying you as you carry God." (from 'Waiting on God: a sermon for Lady Day 1992', in A Ray of Darkness, p.13)

The ethics of leadership in a diverse church

Sam Wells, theologian and vicar of London's St Martin's-in-the-Fields, began his reflection with the reality of diversity, difference and disagreement in the CofE, and suggested (in the title of his lecture) that "There's Two Ways We Can Do This". One way is to ignore the diversity and make assertions of 'truth' and 'integrity'; the other way is to embrace diversity in the cause of 'unity' and 'grace'. In fact, for Sam, there were perhaps three ways we could 'do this' - think about the ethics of church leadership, that is - corresponding to his three-fold typology of 'ethics for anyone' ('universal ethics'), 'ethics for the oppressed' ('subversive ethics') and 'ethics for the church' ('ecclesial ethics').

The first ('universal ethics') understands Christian faith as content rather than process, and Christian practices as a 'delivery mechanism' for that content. The 'ethics of leadership' can be considered independent of its specifically Christian context - as a question of universal 'norms' to be negotiated through an ongoing series of dilemmas, rather as President Bartlett in The West Wing or Jim Hacker in Yes, Minister repeatedly had to confront. The underpinning assumption that the 'goals' of leadership are clear, unambiguous and widely shared - such as for Churchill against Hitler - falls down, of course, in the case of the CofE - where most 'goals' are themselves are disputed and fundamental interpretations diverge. The recent Reform and Renewal process emerges as a victim of just such false assumptions of clarity and consensus - which is why it was so widely received as an 'arbitrary exercise of power', Sam suggested.

The second approach ('subversive ethics') finds its expression (in this particular context) in 'lament, criticism, antagonism and even fury' at the exclusion of people on grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality or disability; in 'concern, attention, penitence and even despair' at the misuse of power, abuse and negligence often witnessed in the leadership of the church; in 'a longing for and concerted commitment to leadership models of care nurture, compassion and kindness (in contrast to models which emphasise winning and losing, dominating and submitting, and an infantilising avoidance of responsibility); and, most clearly, in an exasperation at 'business as usual' - the 'narrow habits and exclusive assumptions' - of the church's 'civil service'.

A third approach ('ecclesial ethics') might be seen as seeking, in Sam's words, to "put the church in order before trying to put the world to rights", but most crucially understands the church more as the 'how' than the 'what' - the importance of the process or the journey as much as (if not more than) the destination. Questions of leadership in this approach begin not with supposed 'universals', or with lament from the margins, but with the Christian-specific question of 'what might Christ-like leadership look like?' With echoes of Loveday  Alexander's reading of Paul, Sam observed that the biblical witness often highlights the ways in which human leaders all too often obscure God's authority, and questions and deconstructs the legitimacy of any kind of leadership (e.g. 'the greatest among you shall be your servant', Mk 10:42). Embracing the diversity of the church rather than seeking to pass over it, an 'ecclesial' approach seeks to 'disagree with dignity, muddle through with hope' and, at best, understands that as a much-needed gift to the wider world.

There is, however, Sam suggested, a sense of urgency - anxiety even - in the current CofE, that fears that the church is 'slipping into social oblivion' and that 'something must be done'. The danger is that this anxious urgency works precisely against the good news of the gospel, that proclaims and practises grace, mercy, compassion and forgiveness for what has been; that is confident, in the present, that 'God has given the church everything it needs to follow'; and that is able to be a non-anxious presence, trusting that 'in God, the future is bigger than the past'.

Sam's final point, in conclusion, was to suggest that church leaders must develop the ability to speak two languages (and be able to make the distinctions between them): the language of 'contract' (a 'minimal expectation', perhaps, but one which expresses love through keeping promises, safeguarding the vulnerable, undertaking due process, etc.); and the language of 'covenant' (a 'maximal aspiration', which relies on God, dwells in forgiveness, trusts in time-honoured practices, and overflows with grace and patience). Both 'contract' and 'covenant' are needed, he argued, and in both love is expressed as 'attention to particulars'.

In a rich Q&A session, the language of 'covenant' was questioned - 'co-opted' as it has been by the 'Anglican Covenant' - something which, it was generally felt, started with covenant and ended in contract, an illegitimate switch that people rightly 'felt done' by. The instrumentalising of the CofE as 'the best boat to fish from' was critiqued - 'it's all about being a good boat', Sam said. How might 'contract' and 'covenant' function together to build up the body again from its current catatonic state, someone asked. 'There are things worse than numerical decline,' Sam replied, 'such as losing your soul'. As a church we should embrace opportunities to be more like David and less like Goliath. 'It's not about size - it's about being transfigured.' And returning to the importance of 'subversive' ethics alongside an 'ecclesial' focus, the CofE would do well to 'become more aware of the stones it has rejected over the years' that might just, with the grace of God, 'become the cornerstones'.

Leadership as collective practice, enabling collective practice

In the final presentation of the day, Mike Higton asked (and suggested an answer to) the question "Whose leadership is it anyway?". Starting from a 'low-key' definition of leadership as "assisting others in the performance of a collective practice", and drawing out the distinction between 'assisting' and 'imposing' or 'coercing', he carefully unfolded an argument that if we can 'get non-coercion clear', then we will in fact clarify what we mean by 'leadership' itself in all its most important dimensions.

First, then, 'non-coercion' means working with the 'free agency' of others. 'Freedom' doesn't mean somehow escaping relationships of receptivity and dependence in which we are all enmeshed, but rather not being absorbed into, or co-opted by, other people's narratives - freedom is dependence, but dependence on an attentive love that is not oriented towards meeting another's needs and/or fantasies.

Secondly, God loves us in precisely this attentive, unselfish way: God doesn't have an agency or project defined over against the agency and projects of others in the world - rather, God's unselfish love is precisely the condition of the possibility of our free agency.

Thirdly, for this to become real for us, God's unselfish love needs to be mediated to us - through words and actions ('sacraments'), and through the love of others. We need practices, embodied ways in which we celebrate, learn to inhabit, communicate and pass on the unselfish love of God. Such mediations are, because we're human, imperfect, however - and so we need also to regularly acknowledge our failures in mediation, through seeking forgiveness, healing wounds, etc. These practices of word and sacrament, care and penitence are themselves, then, the necessary conditions for enabling the growth of free agency - a certain kind of communal life which is the 'collective practice' of the church.

So, what kind of leadership is necessary to 'assist others in the performance of [the church's] collective practice'? A kind of leadership which is, in fact, the collective practices of the church themselves. 'Being the church' is what enables us to 'be the church'. Leadership is distributed and shared before it is held by particular individuals - which itself is but one specific way of inhabiting the communal practice of the church. 'Agency is something you receive at the hands of love,' said Mike. A leader is only someone who is 'enabled by all this', to then be able to assist the enabling of all of this. 'The freer I am, the more I am receiving well from others, the more I'm sharing in God's agency'. The argument is beautifully circular.

'But what about the world?' we asked. Mediations of the love of God happen in multiple contexts, Mike replied, but with one telos: for the whole world to be radiant with it. 'What about our needs?' we asked. As finite beings, our needs are inherent to our loving (unlike God's unselfish love), and not just a limitation on it. It's vital, in our church and in our leaders, to acknowledge honestly our needs, insufficiencies and vulnerabilities - as part of enabling us to love honestly, love fully, and enable others to do likewise.

Where does all this get us?

So, much to chew on, for a long time to come. What did I take away - or at least, what is forefront in my mind in these early reflections? The importance, in a diverse church, of creating spaces for conversation - not assuming we have a 'common goal', but discovering one another as we engage each other's different interpretations of what the 'goals' of church, of Christian faith, might be. The importance of enabling others to reflect theologically, to articulate the 'whys' for their beliefs and their actions, as a precondition for any kind of genuine deliberation together. The importance of 'encouraging one another in our relationships to God', as vital to avoiding collapsing 'leadership' into 'line management', in Loveday's resonant phrase. The importance of attending to voices (perhaps barely spoken) and considerations 'on the edges', seen as 'marginal' to the task in hand - the importance, that is, of tending the fabric of life, a telos, perhaps, more important than any more 'focused' goal. The possibility, and the dangers, in holding the language of 'contract' and 'covenant' together - embodying love in our careful 'attention to the particulars'. The importance of a non-anxious ecclesial presence, grounded in a receptivity to the abundant love and patience of God that operates more in an economy of transfiguration than a neo-capitalist economy of endless growth. The importance of our communal life as the most important kind of 'leadership' of which any of us are a part - a life in which we learn to mediate the love of God through our finite, vulnerable, needy-and-gifted human lives.

Things are growing in Hodge Hill!

I need to be honest with you from the outset. Not everything in Hodge Hill is beautiful. My neighbourhood, Firs & Bromford, is a 1950s/60s council estate, still dominated by huge, claustrophobia-inducing, high-rise tower blocks (even though they are slowly being taken down, opening up surprising new 'breathing spaces'). And although there are pockets of beautiful community hidden inside these looming (and slowly crumbling) towers, if you talk to those of my friends and neighbours who still live in these flats, the vast majority will tell you they'd give almost anything to get out of them. There are days, not helped by the less-than-perfect British weather, when the estate just looks and feels grey, a greyness that can sink into your soul. There are times, particularly if you don't have the luxury of a car, when what the estate-born Brummie author Lynsey Hanley calls 'the wall in the head' can feel almost-impossible to break out from, when things beyond the local (library, swimming pool, coffee shop, supermarket even) feel a million miles away (all are within 2-3 miles, but often that's at least 2 buses away).

All of that is true. Some of it accounts for why some people who've come to visit us, to explore the possibility of being part of our 'Common Ground' missional community, have gone away again, unable to get their heads around moving here. The cost, the sacrifices - especially for those used to the luxuries of the middle-class consumer, the bustling 'vibrancy' of an inner-city high street, or even just some of the basic necessities to meet particular physical and social needs - have seemed to be too much to swallow. And each time we've got our hopes up that we might be about to welcome new and gifted and imaginative travelling-companions and co-conspirators to our community-growing adventure here, our hearts have sank as we've watched them go again.

But...


Things are growing here. I've been here six years now, and in that time I've had the great privilege of witnessing so much growth in so many ways. Local people, my neighbours, growing in confidence, discovering their passions and gifts and opportunities to share them with those around them (take the 3-year-old Bromford Theatre Group for example, and the genius of Phil Howkins who started it, and who has the vision, passion and ability to charm almost anyone to do almost anything, beyond what they ever imagined possible). Friendships growing and flourishing, between people from vastly different backgrounds, from different parts of the world (Nigeria, Somalia, Romania, Ireland, Bromford, Berkshire and more...), learning each other's languages, sharing each other's favourite recipes, looking after each other's kids and dreaming each other's dreams. And at the risk of using an overly-technical word for something much more human and messy, local 'infrastructure' has grown, with institutions like schools (and Hodge Hill Church, of which I'm a part) increasingly looking outwards rather than inwards, strong and creative partnerships developing between organisations, and new places and spaces popping up for encounter, friendship, support and creativity, from Worth Unlimited's shopfront youth & community space, 'The Hub', to Open Door's drop-ins, school gate 'cuppas' and multicultural women's group, and now, most recently, our brand new Community Forest Space (at the local primary school), an Urban Allotment (around some of the sheltered housing), and a labyrinth and open-access raised beds outside the two Community Houses of our Common Ground Community.

Yes, things are growing here. People, friendships, organisations, partnerships, places and spaces are growing here. And while much of that growth feels often like 'one step forward, two steps back', while much of it is very small, very fragile, messy and chaotic - well, isn't growth in the natural world a bit like that, and yet, precisely in and through this, utterly beautiful?

So here's the invitation, and the challenge: why not come and join us?! Come and discover the beauty, the glory, even amidst the grey (as the poet Kathy Galloway puts it so well). Come and be part of growing things, growing people, growing friendships, growing community here. Our Common Ground Community is made up of people, households, families who live in and around the area and commit to sharing together - sharing time, sharing food, sharing work and projects and the ongoing journey of community-building, sharing prayer and struggles and joys together - and it includes those who have chosen to share their lives together in our two Community Houses, The Old Rectory and The Croft, places of welcome and hospitality and sharing, places of prayer and learning and exploring.

None of this is without its cost, its sacrifices. Sometimes it can be bloody hard living here, working here. It can be overwhelming frustrating, when hard-won growth is senselessly destroyed, or overtaken by fragility and precariousness, or it just feels like it's taking forever to see anything change. It can be the hardest thing imaginable, sometimes, to put aside our own sense of 'what we have to offer', how we imagine we can 'solve' this particular 'problem', or the supposed 'rightness' of our own agenda, to make space for others to give their gifts, to find their solutions, to begin to articulate their words, their agendas, their stories. But it is the most rewarding thing in the world.

So how about it? Come and join us! Come and move here. Come and join one of our Community Houses (we're after both long-term 'anchor' people and those who want to come for shorter-term experience) [click this link for more information].

And if growing things is your particular passion, why not come and work with us... We'll even pay you! Check out the advert below for more info... (NB. deadline Monday 9th May!)

Learning to walk in the dark

I have just started reading, for Advent, Barbara Brown Taylor's book, the title of which I've stolen for this blog post. In her introduction, she describes her experience of "full solar spirituality", which 'focuses on staying in the light of God around the clock, both absorbing and reflecting the sunny side of faith.' 'You can usually recognize a full solar church,' she suggests, 'by its emphasis on the benefits of faith, which include a sure sense of God's presence, certainty of belief, divine guidance in all things, and reliable answers to prayer. Members strive to be positive in attitude, firm in conviction, helpful in relationship, and unwavering in faith.' (p.7)

Although for Taylor '[t]here are days when I would give anything to share their vision of the world and their ability to navigate it safely,' her spiritual gifts 'do not seem to include the gift of solar spirituality. Instead, I have been given the gift of lunar spirituality, in which the divine light available to me waxes and wanes with the season. When I go out on my porch at night, the moon never looks the same way twice. Some nights it is as round and bright as a headlight; other nights it is thinner than the sickle hanging in my garage. Some nights it is high in the sky, and other nights low over the mountains. Some nights it is altogether gone, leaving a vast web of stars that are brighter in its absence.' 'What would my life with God look like,' she wonders, 'if I trusted this rhythm instead of opposing it.' (pp.8-9)

I like the Taylor contrasts here, and I recognise it: not just as a contrast between 'others' and 'me', but as a contrast within others, and within myself too. I've been struck, over the last few days, by the uneasy way we seem often to have one foot in each of these worlds. For my own benefit as much as anyone else's I want to try and tease out just a few of those places where 'solar' and 'lunar' have been apparently entangled, and articulate some 'wonderings' from within those entanglements.

Two came close together, at Lambeth Palace, of all places. The home and 'office' of the Archbishop of Canterbury, where a group of vicars (including me) were gathered together on Thursday. We were meant to have been welcomed in the morning by Archbishop Justin himself, but he had been called away, to the Houses of Parliament just the other side of the Thames, to listen to David Cameron's statement on potential military action in Syria. Archbishop Justin joined us briefly after lunch, and offered us a few first reflections, building on what he had just said in the House of Lords. It wasn't the moment to engage him in debate - he would be leaving our gathering to meet with advisors, to draft an official response. As an insightful friend observed, he looked 'a mixture of resolute and exhausted'. And this in itself is immensely significant, I think. I'm not going to focus here on his analysis of whether or not this constitutes a 'just war'. I'm just observing that here was someone 'on the way' to having to articulate a response, with a heavy heart, with no 'solar' confidence in the goodness and rightness of any of it, no clear vision 'bright' before him. He was 'learning to walk in the dark', on this issue, as on many others.

He was followed, in that great hall in Lambeth Palace, by Lord Peter Hennessy, hugely-respected constitutional historian, whose task it was to reflect on the state of British politics. He certainly knows his history - much of the last few decades, from an intimate involvement with many of the most senior figures in the British political establishment. He cracked some witty jokes. But what impressed me most about his presentation was his honesty, about his utter cluelessness about where British politics is going. He had some hunches, of course, as any good pundit would. On the probability of an EU-exit vote, and the knock-on inevitability of Scottish independence. He had some opinions about Jeremy Corbyn, and George Osborne (among others), which he wasn't reticent in sharing. But when it came to predicting the future, even over the next two or three years, he admitted with endearing frankness that he was a bit stumped. You got a sense of a man who was just beginning to realise he was going to have to 'learn to walk in the dark' - perhaps for the first time in many years.

The last example is much smaller and closer to home. Our local church is at a point where there are some big issues to be wrestled with: we have an increasing financial deficit, and depleting reserves; at least one of the denominations which make up our partnership is looking very small, aged and fragile (and overall we can't exactly report dramatic growth in Sunday attendance, the most prominent statistic by which the CofE judges local congregations); we have begun new ventures over the last few years which some see as quite 'radical', but they are mostly very small, fragile, and developing often with a snail-paced slowness. The chances are, over the next few years, that the costs of having paid clergy in Hodge Hill will continue to rise, the congregation will slowly - or quicker than that - begin to shrink, the deficit in the budget will continue increasing, and our impact within our wider neighbourhoods will remain small, fragile, and often painfully slow. If you add into the picture the prospect of ongoing, and deepening 'austerity' (in the rapidly-dissolving welfare 'safety net', and the cuts to public services and amenities locally and across our city), and a level of indifference - if not tension or hostility - between different communities who inhabit the same neighbourhoods here, not helped in any constructive way by the pronouncements of politicians or the mass media... well, there's a risk, at least, of a bit of 'descending gloom', on the one hand, and increasingly-frantic quests to "do something, anything" on the other. It is at once comforting, and doubly disconcerting, that most of these challenges are being wrestled with by the Church of England as a whole, at a national level, with a similar mix of responses.

And, like any good leader should, I find myself returning to our vision statement: "growing loving community - in the love of God, with all our neighbours, across Hodge Hill". It's a statement I treasure, and am deeply proud of: not just because it sounds good, but because it emerged out of good, attentive, shared conversations as a church - and because we're doing our very best, I think, to try and put it into practice. When things are feeling gloomy, when we're tempted into the reactive "do something" responses, the vision is what we should keep in our sights, hold it before us as our direction, and the light to our path. And if we have a vision, then we can work on a strategy to help us achieve it more fully, 'step-by-step' processes that will take us in the right direction, and ways of discerning what not to do, or what to stop doing, that isn't in line with the guiding vision.

And yet... I sense shades of Barbara Brown Taylor's 'solar spirituality' about the return to 'the vision'. There are costs to such a clarity too - not least the temptation to believe that it is possible to 'get it right', and that if we could only get it right, then everything will be OK. On the brink of Advent, I find myself needing to relearn the art of 'walking in the dark': keeping my eyes wide open, of course, but coming to terms with not being able to see clearly, even to be aware with clarity what is immediately around me, where the next step will take me, let alone to comprehend the terrain beyond the next tree. On the brink of Advent, I find myself remembering to distrust 'bright visions' for their seeming ease of achievement, for the clarity of what they purport to include and exclude, not least the questions and doubts which arise both when we are on the move and when we are standing still. I find myself remembering that walking slowly - with painful, snail-like slowness - is often the thing we are called to most urgently. That experimenting, without any guarantee of success, without even being able to predict many of the consequences, is sometimes all we have, and that bearing the risks and the unexpected costs is an unavoidable part of the journey. And that, in the tentativeness and loss of confidence, there is, of necessity, a gently-growing sense of trust: in one another, in strangers we encounter along the way, and just as crucially, in God. And that, surely, is what faith is about.

Come and join Hodge Hill’s Common Ground Community: sharing life, learning together, seeking shalom

Who we’re looking for

• an ‘anchor’ person (or couple, or family) – prepared to consider a long-term commitment to the community here, able to give at least 20 hours a week of their time to ‘making connections’ with neighbours, and helping to shape new and developing local community activities, in and around our 2 Community Houses;
•  shorter-term community members (minimum 1 year) – wanting to explore  the fun, challenges and possibilities of sharing a common life together (perhaps alongside studies or paid work), getting involved in local community activities, and drawing learning from shared reflection on a (possibly) once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Who we are

The Common Ground Community is an intentional, missional community, part of the ‘extended family’ of the local church (an Anglican-URC ecumenical partnership), with ‘resident members’ living in our 2 Community Houses and ‘local members’ dispersed across the wider neighbourhood.

Together we are seeking to learn and live out rhythms of life shaped by ‘shalom’ (peace, justice, wholeness), and expressed in hospitality and friendship with neighbours, activity and prayer. We’re involved in women’s groups, stay-and-plays and forest spaces; we’re learning to garden and we love cooking and eating together; we offer spaces for retreat and reflection, and hospitality for refugees and asylum-seekers. We learn from each other (e.g. ‘Doubting Aloud’), from our neighbours, and from a network of reflective-practitioner friends across the UK and beyond!

Where we are

We’re in the diverse, multi-cultural and rapidly-changing area of Hodge Hill, in East Birmingham, near M6 Junction 5. ‘The Croft’ is right in the middle of the Firs & Bromford estate (B36 8SN), ‘The Old Rectory’ is in a quiet spot on the edge of Hodge Hill Common (B36 8AG).

Practicalities

We currently have 4 vacant bedrooms (2 in each house, some big enough for couples and/or children). Residents make a financial contribution, according to their means, to the running costs of the Community Houses (covers rent and bills, but not food; guideline £200 per person, per month).

If you’d like to find out more, then come and visit us!

To start the conversation, contact Al Barrett: hodgehillvicar@hotmail.co.uk / 07738119210
See our website, hodgehillchurch.wordpress.com for more details
Join our Facebook group ‘Common Ground Community in Hodge Hill’

NB. DEADLINE FOR THIS ROUND OF APPLICATIONS: Monday 9th May

When worlds collide

Two stories, remarkably and poignantly, came together last Sunday morning (6^th Sept).

One was the story of little Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was found, washed up on a Turkish beach, his family having tried to make the perilous journey from Turkey to Greece, fleeing the violence, oppression and destruction within Syria, seeking some kind of greater safety and security in Europe. The image, published by most national newspapers, seems to have been something of a ‘turning point’ in British responses to the refugee crisis. Responding at least in part to the wave of shock felt by ordinary people across the UK, our Prime Minister seems to have changed his mind and heart, at least in part, about the number of Syrian refugees the UK is willing to take. Aylan’s story, then, has become one not just about Syrian people desperate for help, but about people with power whose instinctive ‘No’ (accompanied by dehumanising words about refugees – calling them, among other things, a ‘swarm’, suggesting they are of no more value than insects) is slowly turning into a ‘Yes’, however limited and cautious and qualified that ‘Yes’ might at present be.

The other story came in last Sunday’s gospel reading, set for the day in the Revised Common Lectionary, which would have been read that day in churches across the world, across denominations. It’s a story found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, verses 24-30: the story of an encounter in the land of Tyre (that is, Syria), between Jesus and a Syrophoenician (Syrian) woman, desperate for help for her daughter who is dying. And Jesus responds with a ‘No’, insisting that ‘the children’ (his own people, the Israelites) should be looked after first, calling the woman and her daughter (and other Syrians, by implication) ‘dogs’ – less than human. But the woman persists, insists, that ‘even the dogs under the table’ eat the crumbs that fall from it. And Jesus changes his mind, and heart, and tells her that, because of what she has said, her daughter has been healed. This is a real ‘turn-around’ for Jesus, and in case we don’t get that, he literally turns around, changes direction, heads back to Galilee, and seems to have had his horizons broadened, bringing healing and food to Gentiles (non-Jews) that before he has not paid attention to.

I think there is something amazing about this gospel story, just in and of itself. The Son of God, challenged and changed, taught even, by a Gentile woman?! But alongside Aylan’s story, it seems to speak directly to our situation here and now.

David Cameron’s first response to the shock-waves following the publication of Aylan’s picture was to tell us that he too ‘was deeply moved’. But he seemed to realise quite quickly that that in itself was far from an adequate response. People didn’t want to see emotion, they wanted to see action. And perhaps as significant in the UK government reaching a ‘tipping point’ was the response of ordinary people, which seemed to spread like wildfire, offering practical help in all kinds of ways.

This ‘refugee crisis’ is one of those huge, overwhelming situations that we have prayed about in church for weeks, if not months, having little sense of what we, here, could do. Some things do depend on governments. Much more simply needs governments to remove the obstacles in the way. And even more we can simply get on and do. So here is what we are able to do, right here in Hodge Hill:

1)      Urgently – send supplies to the refugee camps in Calais. The camps are already holding thousands of people, in desperate circumstances and without even basic supplies. On 18^th September, the Amirah Foundation in Aston is taking several lorry-loads of supplies, and stuff from Hodge Hill will be on those lorries. (A full list can be found in this magazine.) I’m sure there will be more trips after the 18^th.

2)      Longer-term – last year Hodge Hill Church established a link with BIRCH (Birmingham Community Hosting), who connect up local households with individual asylum-seekers and families seeking asylum. You can choose to host a young asylum-seeker for Sunday lunch every month, offering ongoing friendship and support. Or, if you have a spare bedroom, you can provide accommodation for someone, over a timescale that you feel comfortable with. BIRCH do very careful match-making, and ongoing support for hosts, and are also able to offer a financial contribution to cover food costs and the like. Our Old Rectory Community House has already started the process towards offering accommodation for at least one person, and I hope more of us will be able to follow, in one form or another.

3)      Longer-term, starting now – we already have two established ‘Places of Welcome’, at the Old Rectory on a Monday afternoon, and at Open Door (at The Hub) on Tuesday and Saturday mornings. We also have the monthly Coffee Mornings at church, which already pretty much operate on ‘Place of Welcome’ principles. It will only take us small adjustments to make sure those ‘Places of Welcome’ are genuinely welcoming to refugees and asylum-seekers – places where those in such circumstances know they will get a warm welcome, a cuppa and a bite to eat, the beginning of friendships which will grow and develop, and opportunities to make their own contribution, with their gifts and skills, to the life of our community here in Hodge Hill.

So what can we do? Quite a lot, actually. And things that can make a real difference to people affected by this desperate crisis in our intimately-interconnected world. And when we are able to show governments what we can do, what we’re prepared to do, what comes naturally to us because of our faith and our faith-stories, then the world begins to change...

What do we do NOW? (Part 3 - If this is class war, how do we love our enemies?)

In my previous post (Part 2), I described the possibilities that began to emerge for me in the experience of running a local hustings event. The possibilities of honest, critical conversation at local level that begins to take back politics as the domain of us ordinary people at the grassroots, and puts the politicians in their place. But there was more to be said...
When we looked at the geography of the 2015 General Election result, we saw the stark reality of a divided country. In England at least, the urban areas were red, and the rest was blue. Parliamentary constituencies are such that, even though there are substantial 'pockets' of poverty and deprivation spread across the country, 'pockets' where large numbers might well be at the sharp end of this government's policies, the majority of people in those blue constituencies were people for whom the Tories seemed the best, or at least the least worst, option. And what we have seen, time and time again (and most recently in today's budget), is a government which invests in Tory-voting areas and disinvests from non-Tory-voting areas. Just look at the recent decisions around rail investment (northern routes postponed, Great Western main line goes ahead), or funding to local authorities (the 'spending power' of Labour-controlled urban authorities with the highest levels of poverty and deprivation are now dramatically less than those Tory-controlled authorities in more affluent areas).
So if a change of government isn't the answer (and as Labour tear themselves to pieces yet again, in a fight over nothing more substantial than to be more electable, perhaps, than the Tories, the so-called 'opposition' isn't looking like a great alternative), then what can be done? Well, I'm not a political theorist, merely a grassroots community-builder with a bit of faith and a bit of theology, but here's an idea or two...
Firstly, let's acknowledge there's a class war going on here. But let's be clear about the sides. This isn't a 50-50 thing, blue against red, white-collar against blue-collar. No. The wealthy, powerful elite - among them, a whole load of politicians, 'business-leaders' and most of those pulling the strings of the media - don't give a monkeys about those at the other end of the wealth-and-power spectrum. In fact, they see them as a drain on the economy, 'defective consumers', at best people who can be put to work (for the lowest possible wage an employer can get away with), at worst an unwanted cost to the system. And so the cutting, and the scapegoating, and the sanctioning, and the incarcerating, and so on. Divide and rule, blame the poorest and most vulnerable, and get those higher up the income ladder to do likewise, and to live in fear - more than anything else - of sliding into a similar situation themselves.
And in that fear lies a glimmer of possibility. If the Occupy movement left any kind of lasting legacy, it must surely be in that slogan: "we are the 99%". As hard as it might be, those of us who are naturally left-leaning need to acknowledge that the 'we' we need to work on includes a whole bunch of people who voted Tory. Not simply out of selfishness or greed, but out of fear, insecurity, precarity. Many of those who voted Tory might have big incomes, big cars and big houses, but they also have big mortgages. They might not be living hand-to-mouth, not knowing where they'll find the money for the electric meter, like an increasing number of my near neighbours. But they are often in their own, substantial, kinds of debt, and if they lose that well-paid job, well, there might be a bit of a cushion, but the lurking fears are of losing it all. The middle-class might be more 'comfortable', but they're precarious in a way that those in the 1% will never be. They're precarious in a way that the 1% need them to be - to keep working, to keep spending, to keep borrowing, to keep voting. In the class war, the vast majority of Tory voters are helpless conscripts, who can see no alternative.
So secondly (and this is where I get Christian on you), if this is class war, how do we love our enemies? Because that's what my faith calls me to. What does reconciliation look like, in this context?
I have a hunch, and it's no more than that. The hunch is that it looks like an extension of those local conversations I talked about in Part 2. Extending them from the local to the trans-local. Finding ways to put in a room together both people on the sharp end of poverty, deprivation and the brutal austerity regime, and people in middle-class 'comfort', with all their anxious precarity. And getting them to listen to each other, really listen to each other, so that they can be honest enough to share their flawedness ("yes, some things are a result of my own choices, and I wish I'd chosen otherwise"), their privilege ("and if it wasn't for the rental income from our second house, we'd be drowning in debt right now"), their captivity to their desires ("I just can't give up smoking", "I just can't give up the 4-wheel drive"), and their fears (illness, isolation, disability, death - they come to us all, in different ways).
Russell Brand's suggestion (I didn't manage to finish his Revolution, but in what I read I found more grounded insight than hypocritical narcissism, even though there was a bit of both) that AA offer us a model for 'coming to our senses' as a society, as consumers as well as the more traditionally marginalised kinds of addicts - I reckon it's got something going for it. But we need to find ways of bridging the divides of our society in such 'political therapy' groups - or else the scapegoating will continue. We need to recognise our enemies, find them, sit down with them, and learn to love them. It will be immensely vulnerable and costly on all sides. But it is perhaps the only way that real change is going to happen.
There's even the beginnings of a model, in the amazing work of Poverty Truth Commissions in Scotland and in Leeds. Courageous people in these places have come together, from the sharp end of poverty and the sharp end of power, and the former have mentored the latter, and the two have become friends - or if not friends, they have at least grown to understand each other better, and all have changed in the process. And in little ways, slowly, the structures, the processes, the policies, the systems, have begun to change too.
It's not coincidental that in both Scotland and Leeds, the churches have been instrumental in making the PTCs happen. As institutions, or networks, the churches are perhaps better placed than almost anyone else to bring together two sets of people who spend much of their time at war. Because the churches include both in their own bodies, and engage both, externally, from day to day (even acknowledging the ways the churches have often failed and excluded the poorest).
But it remains to be seen if our churches can break out of their own addictions and insecurities, their own fetishism of 'growth' (read, 'institutional survival'), their own tendencies towards top-down, managerial modes of operation and organisational change - to discover their calling as genuinely, radically political bodies, catalysts of grass-roots politics, of trans-local conversation and reconciliation and transformation. I'm hopeful, but I'm under no illusions how much of a challenge it's going to be.
Also worth reading:

Joel Lazarus, 'Beyond Electoral Scapegoating'
The Spiritual Opposition to the Cuts
The Only Way is Down
Abandon Hope: Summer is Coming