Category Archives: autobiography

Why I am staying on Twitter

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There has been something of an exodus from Twitter recently, especially from church bodies. The justifications and rationales have been rather entertaining to read, and have made me think of nothing more than the story of the Good Samaritan, specifically the religious authorities who pass by on the other side for fear of becoming contaminated. Whereas those who follow Jesus know that the contamination flows in the other direction…

Which is why I’m staying; indeed, why I have now increased my subscription to the top level, so these articles will be on both the stack and Twitter (slightly tweaked for the latter so as not to fall foul of the algorithm). Let me unpack that a little.

Firstly, principally due to network effects and first-mover advantage, Twitter IS the village square for the world – at least the Western part of it. That’s the reality. All the purported rivals, like Threads, have fallen short because they cannot catch up. BlueSky will suffer the same fate (I’m on there but I hardly use it). Which means that if you need to find out what is happening, and most especially if you want to speak into that common conversation, this is the place to be.

Which leads to my second point, building on my introduction. Christians are not called to withdraw into holy huddles apart from the world – at least, not in general. There are some people who have that specific vocation, and they perform an absolutely essential role in the life of the church – we call them monastics – but for most people our duty is to to go out into the world bearing witness and sharing the good news about Jesus. So we need to do that on Twitter, indeed just as some have vocations away from the world, some might have vocations IN to the world. We need to embody the light, show different patterns of life, become the provocative people that make people ask ‘why do they do what they do?’ To withdraw from Twitter out of distaste for the owner is a bizarrely anti-Christian, anti-evangelistic mindset.

Thirdly, and the best thing about Twitter, it exposes you to disagreement – at least if you use it intelligently (and more on that below). The great blight of the last several decades, and of the last decade most of all, is the increasing polarisation of discourse and in particular the detachment of received opinion (consensus) from common sense. The starkest and most painful form of that resolved around questions of gender and transition, but the rot had spread so much wider. Scott Alexander has a very stimulating discussion of the underlying dynamics here. In his words, for there to be a productive conversation there has to be a Priesthood, there to guard good speech against bad speech. However, when a priesthood goes wrong – as in, when it ends up prohibiting the good speech – it can go very wrong indeed. We have been living through such a situation, and the only solution is to let light and air in on the conversation, in other words, to expose conversations and arguments to a much greater diversity of information and perspectives. It seems to me that most of the people withdrawing from Twitter are simply in shock that reasonable and moral people hold different views.

Which is why Elon Musk is a great man. I think he’s a great man for several reasons – I believe that he will succeed in colonising Mars – but his purchase of X is also of long-term significance (which is what I mean by a ‘great man’ – I don’t mean morally great, I mean someone whose choices have immense consequence for human life). The mainstream consensus, what I call the ‘bubble’, has gone very wrong – and, indeed, it continues to go very wrong. Here in the UK this can be seen with the appalling grooming gang scandal, not just the evils committed but in the (often unconscious, I hope) covering up that has followed. Musk turning a searchlight on to this situation is an immensely hopeful sign. The more people that are aware of what has happened, of just how bad it is – of how widespread, systematic and ongoing the religiously aggravated statutory rape of white working class girls is – the more likely it is that we will start to make the difficult decisions needed to ensure that it stops, and that the guilty are punished. Justice must be done, and justice must be seen to be done, and this cannot happen without a full and open conversation. I am now quite hopeful that, thanks to Musk, there will be a proper national inquiry.

So what is the best way to use Twitter? It is undoubtedly the case that Musk is using the platform as his own personal megaphone. Such has been the way of rich people through the ages – just think of Rupert Murdoch – but the great blessing of Twitter is that there is this remarkable option called ‘mute’. Unlike with, say, the Times (or Bezos’ Washington Post) the voice of the oligarch is not distributed and hidden between many different journalistic voices, giving the illusion of diverse opinion. No, here is the owner in all his idiosyncratic, chaotic, brilliant and contradictory glory. What you see is what you get. Alongside that there are also voices calling Musk a moron – and much worse. How often are there Times editorials saying that Murdoch is a plague and a pestilence?

Which points to the right way to use Twitter. Unlike a traditional newspaper, which can be a leisurely and sedate affair, using Twitter is much more like navigating the rapids in a canoe. So the first and most important thing you need is the canoe – which is the basic subscription (remember if you are not paying for a product then you are the product). To use Twitter without the ability to easily use lists (ie Tweetdeck) is to place oneself at the mercy of the algorithm, the swift flow of water over the rocks. It is still possible to use Twitter in this way, but it requires much more active suppression of content that you don’t want to see (ie blocking and muting). The algorithm, as a first approximation, is set up to maximise the time spent on the site, so if you have spent a few moments looking at a cute cat picture, you will then have many more cute cat pictures to look at. No doubt the AI will become more sophisticated over time, but you can bypass that delay by setting up lists, and lists are THE way to use Twitter intelligently (there may be even better ways that I’m unaware of).

The function of a list is to gather together the people that you wish to read under different headings. So I have a list composed of people that I know in real life; a list composed of the people that I most like reading, and which I read every day; I have a list for football writers, a list for Ukraine analysts, a list for my PhD research and so on. With a list, only the tweets from people that you have specifically placed on the list will appear. It is a completely ‘clean’ flow of information, there aren’t even any adverts if you pay at the appropriate rate.

Which means that when I read Twitter, which I do every day – and which has, to a very great extent, largely displaced my newspaper reading – I feel that I am in control of what I am reading, and I am left feeling both informed and challenged. Challenged? Yes, for one of my lists is of my fellow clergy, and it would be fair to say that I am out of step with the consensus political opinion on that list! It’s how I know that so many have left the site 🙂

Twitter is a tool, and it rewards the expertise with which it is used. It is an optional extra to life – as are newspapers generally – but if you want to be informed about the world and, even more, if you want to speak into the conversation that is shaping the world, Twitter is essential. It is not the only tool (I’m a great devotee of RSS feeds too), and there are some tasks it cannot do, but I really enjoy using it – so here I stay. It really suits me.

So that was 2024

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Cordoba steps

Much happened this year, lots of good things, mostly below the surface – and in contrast to some previous years (like last year!) I think it would make most sense to tell a single story which rather governed everything. For at the end of last year I got engaged…

Getting engaged means getting married, and that means finding somewhere suitable for living, and as my fiancée had deep roots in the Bristol area – and as I was happy to be close to Bristol for PhD purposes – at the beginning of 2024 I started to look at the job pages of the Church Times with a more specific interest. I have looked at a lot of parish profiles – most of which were, frankly, quite awful, because so much of the CofE doesn’t know what a priest is for (!) – but that was fine because we were not in a hurry, and I was quite happy in the Forest.

In the early part of the year – February I think – the parish of Backwell with Chelvey and Brockley advertised for a new Rector. This was certainly in the ideal location so we went to have a look. However, after a quick look at the Rectory we decided that it wouldn’t work for us (we have eight children between us, and a four bedroom house presented problems in that respect). So I didn’t apply. However, a few weeks later, Backwell came up in a conversation – ‘a pity that one didn’t work out’ – which lodged in my mind. So when it was re-advertised around May time, as no appointment was made, I thought I’d better take the possibility more seriously. So I studied the parish profile in more depth, and the more I looked at it the more I thought ‘I really like the look of this job’, and I got in touch with the Diocese to register interest. However, when push came to shove, I couldn’t see a way to make it work as a family home, and I again didn’t apply.

Enter God, stage right.

My eldest has been attending the Latin Mass in Bristol, with a view to being received in the Roman Catholic church, and shortly after deciding not to apply for the post I went with him to his Sunday worship, to get a sense of what he was getting involved with. The sermon made mention of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life, and the story is about giving up attachments in order to follow Jesus. I felt rather convicted after hearing this, and wondered if my attachment to a large house was getting in the way of hearing God’s call, so I said to God – as a bit of a ‘Gideon’s fleece’ – ‘if they don’t appoint, I’ll stick my head up above the parapet’.

They didn’t appoint.

So I sent a message to the Bishop, describing what had happened, and asking if he thought it would be worth my applying – I enclosed a truncated application. This was not replied to, which made me assume that I had breached ecclesiastical etiquette, and that the non-answer was the substantive answer. Come September and the post is advertised again, for the third time. After a few days of pondering I thought – let me just make sure that they got the email… It turns out that the Bishop had been away through much of the summer and I was encouraged to apply.

Which I did. As part of the interview process, candidates need to give a short homily on a bible passage, and you can guess which one was chosen as the text… I felt that God was giving me a big ‘cosmic wink’, which I found reassuring. So I told this story in the interviews, and I have been appointed to the post, which means that I am moving to Backwell in February to take up the post of Rector. It is reasonable to think that this will be my last job before retirement, and there is a freedom that comes from that – I shall write more on that freedom in due course.

I still don’t know how we are going to make the house work, but we – fiancée especially – are in a very strong ‘can-do’ frame of mind, and we are determined to make a success of it. It is, of course, a very nice house! It helps that timings can be flexible, and that soon the majority of children will be at university or completely independent. They are all also mostly reconciled to the prospect of sharing rooms when needed.

So that has really been the story of 2024 for me. There have been some particularly hard moments through the year, but a strong sense through all the testing times that God was leading me and that, despite regular ego-trips making me stumble, I have really learned to trust the Lord.

Alleluia. God is good. I am very much looking forward to 2025, which will end with a wedding 🙂

Previous years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.

How to resist: a decision made on holiday

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I have been in Cordoba, pondering the Reconquista. One interim conclusion of my reflections is that I’m going to drop the word ‘Islam’ from the title of this sequence, and I’m going to go back and edit it out of previous elements. This is for three reasons.

Firstly, I have no wish to be arrested for airing opinions that are ‘legal but harmful’. On the whole I find the present political situation in the UK unbearably toxic, and I have much that I would like to share – look out for something long called ‘After Southport’ which I’ll finish writing once I’m back from Greenbelt – but I’m not going to be reckless in what I write. I’d never support rioting or attacking mosques or refugee centres, but I don’t trust the bubble and the servants of the bubble to see that, so I’m going to try to be exquisitely precise and clear. In particular nothing that I shall be writing is ever to be taken as advocating a breach of the King’s Peace. The preservation of the King’s Peace, the maintenance of the rule of law applied to all without fear or favour, it is on this that our whole civilisation (British and Christian) is built.

However, if that was my only concern then I might not change things. So the second element in wanting to remove the word Islam from the title is that I don’t want to do anything which adds to the scapegoating process. As I have said repeatedly the logical endpoint of the path that we have embarked upon is inter-ethnic and inter-religious strife when it will be the task of the Christian to defend the ones that society will scapegoat. I’m expecting that to be the Islamic community. I thought the way that Bristol residents surrounded the Mercure hotel (to defend it) was a good demonstration of what we will need to do, when the crises come. And come they will, increasingly, and more violently, for so long as the tragedy of the modern left plays out. I remain convinced that as an ideology, Islam is pernicious – but in a situation of civil conflict those concerns (and I will still write about those concerns) are beside the point. We protect the vulnerable.

Which leads to the third thing, and what I was most conscious of whilst in Cordoba. Islam is expanding in Britain because it is expanding into a spiritual vacuum. What I most want is to renew the historic spiritual centre of this land. England has only ever been a Christian nation (that is, Christianity in England predates the establishment of England as a nation). If we were spiritually robust then we would have no need to fear Islam, our spiritual immune system would be able to cope. So I am more persuaded that the locus of ‘resistance’ needs to change. It is the Starmtroopers, both physical and spiritual, that we need to tackle as a higher priority.

Spelling out what that means remains the burden of this sequence.

~

I’ve been saying this for a very long time. In searching for something else I came upon this Remembrance Day sermon from 2010:

20101114 Remembrance Sunday

We have gathered together today to remember before God those who have gone before us, who gave their lives in war in order that those whom they loved would be saved.

In the news this morning the newly appointed Chief of the Defence Staff is alleged to have said that defeating Islamic militancy – the enemy against whom our armed forces are presently fighting – that defeating them was “unnecessary and could never be achieved”. Now I know that the Telegraph cannot always be trusted in its reporting, so I don’t want to focus my remarks upon General Richards himself. I would however like to say a few words about the attitude that those words express, because, even if they are not a faithful report of General Richards’ views, I’m sure they do reflect the views of other people in this country.

To begin with, it is, of course true, that an ideology cannot be defeated on the battlefield. Particular expressions of an ideology can be – as was the case in the Second World War – but an ideology itself cannot be defeated by physical force. So in that sense of ‘can never be achieved’ I understand the point that is being made. Yet what is missed, so it seems to me, is the truth that ideologies can be defeated in their own terms; that is, they can be shown to be false if they can be shown not to achieve what they claim to achieve – and it is that, so it seems to me, which is our task.

In the case of Islamic militancy, the central claim is that the Western world is in a state of barbaric ignorance, cut off from God, as a result of which people cannot flourish. In contrast to that, those who have embraced Islam, most especially through accepting Sharia law, are able to flourish in their lives. The armed struggle is undertaken as a struggle to advance human liberty and happiness – throwing off barbaric regimes that destroy people physically and spiritually, and exchanging that state for one in which true human freedom is established. The argument is not, therefore, between one side that seeks freedom and well-being, and another that resists those things, but rather a struggle between different visions of what human freedom and well-being actually are.

Islamic militancy is a view which has very deep roots, going back at least two hundred and fifty years to the Reform movement in Saudi Arabia known as Wahhabism, and taken forward by others. It long predates the establishment of Israel, or the Western invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, and we would be gravely mistaken if we ever thought that withdrawing from Afghanistan, or abandoning Israel, would solve our problems. Most importantly Islamic militancy is not a trivial ideology, and we must not dismiss it trivially, nor is it one which does not contain any truth. In criticising the West, they are right to point out the ways in which we fall short of God’s intentions for us – because we do – and there is in fact a very great deal of overlap between the critique of our society given by the Islamist militants, and that given by faithful Christians. There is also, of course, a very great deal of difference between what is seen as the solution.

For we do still live in a place where we are free to pursue a Christian faith, even if that freedom is starting to break down at the edges. Whatever our concerns about being allowed to wear a cross if you are working for British Airways, or whether you will lose your job as a nurse if you offer to pray with a patient, we are not like the church in Baghdad that was recently attacked by Islamic militants, with great loss of life. And we have that privilege for the simple reason that people have struggled for it – struggled with force of arms, and struggled spiritually. The greatest victories for Christian faith were won by the martyrs of the first centuries, who would rather have been fed to the lions than renounce their Saviour. They were the ones who demonstrated the true nature of freedom, who demonstrated what it meant to live an abundant life, and it is their spirit that we need to emulate.

The only lasting victory over Islamic militancy will come from demonstrating that we are not a Godless society, and that, in pursuing God to the best of our abilities, as we have known him revealed in Christ, we show in our lives what it means to live as free and flourishing human beings. And what does that mean in practice? What is it that I am actually saying we need to do? To answer that, I would like to share with you a passage from St Paul’s letter to the Romans. St Paul writes:

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is noble and right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

We will not overcome the ideology of Islamic militancy by simply fighting suicide vests with cluster bombs. We will overcome it by remembering what it is that those we remember today fought for, remembering it and renewing our commitment to it – that is, the values of a Christian civilisation – which is one that takes those words of St Paul seriously. Let us not be overcome with evil, but let us overcome evil with good. Those we remember today fought and died in order that we might enjoy the freedom to pursue a Christian life in peace – so let us honour their sacrifice by renewing our commitment to our Christian inheritance, trusting in the God who sent his Son, not to condemn the world, but that the whole world might be saved through Him. Amen.

Living with lacunae

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I’ve recently had cause to ponder situations where my need to understand something has been bouncing up against limits. Where it has become clear that there is no explanation to be had, that, instead, wisdom requires a living with the absence of an explanation – what philosophers call a lacuna, a gap in the understanding. I think this is healthy, but it has made me reflect on some areas in my life where I have come to what I now think of as premature certainty, a premature closing off of the gap, a refusal to live with the lacunae.

Two examples from the United States, as they are matters far from my daily life, and therefore quite clearly areas where there is no need for me to seek any certainty, where it is easiest.

The first is the collapse of WTC7. This does not make sense to me. The official explanation is that it was brought down by fire. The official explanation has been proven false. To an outside observer it looks very like a controlled demolition, but positing a controlled demolition requires a large amount of other hypotheses which very rapidly enter into the realms of madness. If I ponder this for too long then I end up in a place of extreme cognitive dissonance. So now I say: I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand what happened. It’s a gap.

The second is the 2020 election. I remember when it happened thinking that it was odd, and in particular I remember the fact that 18 of the 19 hitherto ‘bellwether’ counties had voted for Trump, so Biden winning in that context seemed very odd (the conventional explanation for that oddness is here). The ‘down the rabbit-hole’ explanation is here. Pondering the way in which US elections are carried out – and the role of the ‘voting machines’ – makes me think that, if there isn’t fraud, that is a result of divine grace rather than a robust system. I have no idea what the truth is. I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand what happened. It’s a gap.

I’m coming to see that desire for premature certainty as the high road to delusion (and also all sorts of conflicts), and I interpret it now in the light of lateral hemispheres. The desire for certainty is a sign of left-hemisphere capture, a hall of mirrors. Whereas sitting with paradox, with ignorance, with acknowledged lacunae – this is the way.

I am slowly becoming healthy again. Thanks be to God.

On needing to be opened by the wonderful

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Help comes
When you need it most
I’m cured by laughter
Mood swings – not sure I can cope
My life’s in plaster (In plaster)

May your mind set you free (Be opened by the wonderful)
May your heart lead you on
May your mind let you be through all disasters (Be opened by the wonderful)
May your heart lead you on

These wounds are all self-imposed
Life’s no disaster
All roads lead onto death row
Who knows what’s after

May your mind be wide open
May your heart beat strong
May your minds will be broken
By this heartfelt song

(and this is a very good description of the left-brain’s need for the right-brain…)

So that was 2023

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Well now. What a wonderful year. Can I have another one please?

A year of solid progression at work, and with the PhD.
A year in which I started writing properly again – outward facing stuff on the substack, personal musings here.
A year dominated by the sabbatical – and in which I listened to a lot of James!
A year in which I had some proper quality time with each of my children.
A year which finished with my getting engaged
God is good.
I am filled with optimism, excitement and determination for 2024. Avanti cosmos!

Previous years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.

Tearing down the hedges

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Recently at Morning Prayer I read Isaiah 5, which describes God’s judgement upon faithless Israel, and it gives this description of God’s wrath:

“Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.”

I keep musing on the link between boundaries and holiness. We see, daily, more and more evidence of the collapse of virtue in our society, the moral bankruptcy that causes chaos and disorder. So I think: is the lack of boundaries a result of this collapse, or does the collapse flow from the removal of the boundaries? The hedges around the West have been destroyed and now we are being trampled. We are in the place of After Virtue – and, as the man said, the barbarians have been governing us for quite some time.

How to rebuild the boundaries? How to reclaim virtue? This has been my avatar (or one of them) for a few years now:

Of low moments

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So, I have my low moments.

On Saturday night I came across this reel on Instagram which well articulated how I was feeling. I found it comforting, in the same way that I like Leonard Cohen’s songs which many people find miserable! It helps me to understand and gain distance.

That morning I had read my friend Jamie’s discussion of accidie (acedia), that rang many bells with me. It’s good to be reminded of the perennial struggle with our demons, and accidie is certainly one of mine. So perhaps the demon of despair had been roused to attack because Jamie’s post had let some light in past the accreted crust of accidie. There was certainly no reason in what had happened that day for me to feel low, quite the opposite in fact.

Anyhow, on Sunday morning, during the intercessions (read by a colleague) I was reflecting on the struggle, and just at the time when I was doing so the intercessor prayed for those ‘close to despair’, and I laughed (inwardly, of course, I am English). It was as if the Lord was channelling Delboy and saying ‘you plonker Rodney!‘

I don’t believe in coincidence. Either all is meaningful or nothing is. So the Lord gave me a poke, and blessed be the name of the Lord.

Something quoted in Jamie’s post: Finally, the essential remedy is perseverance, in Greek hypomonē, which is a very active thing. It is an appeal, an increase of fidelity. When you are in a tunnel and you see nothing at all, it is advisable to remain near the handrail; otherwise, without noticing it, you will wander off and get turned around. The handrail is fidelity to one’s rule of life. Perseverance sometimes consists of remaining without doing anything, or else, on the contrary, doing everything that one did not think one had come to do. But ultimately, little matters. What does matter is to endure. As another saying puts it: “If you are hungry, eat; if you want to sleep, sleep; but do not leave your cell!”

The handrail is fidelity to one’s rule of life. Once more unto the breach, dear friends! Once more!

On the need to understand the gospel

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Here is a confession. I struggle with some of the language used around the gospel.
(OK, not much of a confession)

So I came across the above image on Twitter, with the tag-line “Believe on the Son for everlasting life”.

Now before going further, I should clarify, I think this is true. I do think that if we believe in the Son then we have everlasting life (I’d rather say eternal life – everlasting is a bit too much of a Protestant emphasis for me).

What challenges me is that, whether it is simply a matter of temperament or philosophical training (I feel like an honourary Missourian) – I really need to know the answer to the question ‘why?’ In other words, why believe on the Son? How does it work? What am I being saved from? (As Florence sings: He died for what?)

The thing is, there is an answer to that question. Jesus died to save the world from the power of the evil one. Salvation is to be set free from the fear of death and those who resort to the fear of death to get their way, ie the prince of this world and all those who conform to the ways of the world. To believe in Christ is to know a peace that this world cannot give – and so on and so forth.

There IS an answer to my questions in other words. It’s just that I find those answers more compelling than ‘believe in Jesus!’ – however true I also think that to be.

Such are my musings this day.