Monthly Archives: April 2006

Mad vicar

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My friends see me as the mad vicar, with a tendency to chase up strange phantoms (like 9/11 conspiracy theories and Peak Oil…)

Have a read of this. I enjoy Giles Fraser, even when I sometimes disagree with him (absolutely not the case on this occasion). I particularly liked this: “In exchange for a walk-on part during major family occasions and the opportunity to be custodian of the country’s most impressive collection of buildings, the vicar promised discretion in all things pertaining to faith: he agreed to treat God as a private matter. In a country exhausted by wars about religion, the creation of the nonreligious priest was a masterstroke of English inventiveness. And once the priest had been cut off from the source of his fire and reassigned to judge marrows at the village fete, his transformation from figure of fear to figure of fun was complete.”

It was precisely because that was my image of the priest that I had a struggle accepting my vocation (I still struggle with it). I think I have too much passion to fit into the establishment box. What encourages me is that the passion is finding an outlet, and seems to be sparking a response. I’m being profiled in the Colchester local paper tomorrow, and Channel 4 want me to take part in a documentary in the autumn.

God is up to something – the Spirit is restless and uprooting the old certainties. I’m more and more convinced that a real capital-R Revival is around the corner.

A talented mother

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My mum has taken up stained glass as a hobby. This was her first major work, and I think it is rather wonderful – the entrance into our home. It is based on John 1 and John 6 (my two favourite texts). My friend Andy set it into a new door made of oak.

What a talented mum!

On top of the world

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Been thinking about my holiday last year – and the fact that I haven’t yet gotten round to writing it up (tho’ I still have my notes). The high point was (literally) standing on top of a mountain though – piccie above, courtesy of IL.

We’re all off to Germany in the summer…

Admission (What is my true purpose in life?)

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I think it was from Steve Pavlina that I got this little exercise.

What is your true purpose in life?

If you don’t know the answer, take a blank piece of paper. Write freely whatever comes to you as an answer. Give it time. When you write something that makes you cry, you’ve finished.

~~~

My answers were these:

(swift answers)
To preach the word
To be a priest
To love
To speak the word I have been given (something which my ordaining Bishop told me)

(pause for thought)

To heal people

(further pause for thought)

To teach
To sing

(much more pausing, then eventually)

To communicate by the beauty of my voice

Which got the eyes mildly moist, so I stopped there. There’s an ambiguity about ‘voice’ at the end of course – it’s not really a claim about the quality of my singing, although I’ve been given reason recently to think it’s not that bad. It’s the content of what is sung as much as how it is sung (it’s ‘the word I have been given to speak’). (Von Balthasar hovers in the background)

I was reminded of this because that MII test (see last post) gave me a higher score on music than I was expecting, and it brought to mind just how important I think it is to sing the liturgy (see this). One of the highest moments in my ministerial life so far was singing the Exsultet on Easter morning several years back. I am reinstituting it this year; I think it’s when one of those things most deeply embedded within myself is enabled to peep out and blink in the dawn. It is probably the moment when I am most profoundly in tune with my true purpose in life.

Multiple Intelligence Inventory

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Something to do when the mind is idling a little:

Linguistic 40
Mathematics 40
Visual/Spatial 36
Body/Kinesthetic 35
Naturalistic 32
Music 39
Interpersonal 37
Intrapersonal 47

(HT Bending the Rule and MREM).

I think the important thing is the distribution, not the absolute score (which may simply reflect how emphatic the person is in answering). It’s all self-description anyway – but top score on Intrapersonal seems about right.

Random stuff

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Got rid of the flu but now seem to have succumbed to a cold: I feel mentally shot to pieces at the moment – not the best place to be at the beginning of holy week 🙁

But I’m sure I’ll recover slowly. Monday’s are always the ‘down day’ after the weekend, and the most strenuous thing on my plate today is preparing some compline addresses – I’m going to expand on my Orthodoxy post over the next three evenings.

In the meantime, this made me smile (HT Chrisendom), as did this for very different reasons.

And Matt Kundert is sustaining a very hiqh Quality output of MoQ related thoughts on his blog, and this reading of Pirsig’s Lila is remarkably fruitful. You’ll hear more of that in due course.

Oh yes, and on the Peak Oil front, this is worth glancing at. Key quote: “The oil industry has for several years claimed that the production from existing fields is declining at around 5 % per year or a decrease in production of about 4 mbpd each year. Adding the increase in demand and the decline we get that an extra 27 mbpd is needed in new capacity in the next 5 years” – is that going to be found? No. Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye.