Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver

This is the first book in a series the “Chronicles of Ancient Darkness” which I got from the Library after seeing a review of a related school’s pack in British Archaeology.  The way in which we categorise fiction is often unhelpful – this book is to be found in the “11up” sections of Southampton’s Libraries – but like all the best “Children’s” books it is equally captivating and enjoyable for the adult reader. 

Set in the “Stone-Age” the fact that the resource pack and, in fact in an earlier edition Wolf Brother itself, was reviewed in British Archaeology is a nod to the strong attempt made by Paver for historical (or should I say prehistorical!) accuracy.  There is a lot of detail about the tools used, the hunting techniques, and so on, which have their basis in the archaeological record and/or anthropological studies.  This might sound a bit worrying, the risk that you would become bogged down in all this and lose sight of the story is real – however it is avoided.  These details serve to draw you deeper into the narrative and make it come alive. 

As well as the detail of tools etc there is a layer of myth and legend for which there can, of course, be no strict claim to historical accuracy.  There however a general plausibility to the belief system.  In creating a belief system there is, again, a danger of getting bogged which Paver avoids.  You have enough to engage you without Tolkienesque baggage of endless songs…

It has to be said that there is nothing particularly innovative in this story, if follows the well tried and tested quest format.  But it is, in my view, a particularly well written example. 

I found this a book I couldn’t put down and the first thing I did on finishing it was order up the next of the Chronicles from the Library, (frustrated that I will have to wait till after the New Year Bank Holiday for the Library to reopen!).

Day by Day: The Rhythm of the Bible in the Book of Common Prayer by Benjamin Sargent

I  read this booklet because I knew Ben back in student days at King’s College London, however its focus of the BCP was also of interest.

Much of what is written about the BCP these days is highly partisan, often written by zealous members of the Prayer Book Society.  For all the passion that such writings might contain, in general such is the blinkered view of reality that few actual have much capacity to persuade the reader of the Prayer Book’s merits. 

One of the great strengths therefore of this booklet is the way in which it does not deny the limitations of the Prayer Book in certain aspects – it is also not afraid to give Common Worship credit in those (very small) regards where it does provide a more pastorally flexible approach.  Within the context of this honesty and realism you are moved to take the arguments for the Prayer Book much more seriously. 

One of the buzz word phrases of the age is “Bible Believing Christian” (it crops up all over the place, including the occasionally advert in the Church Times, as a touch stone for Evangelical ministry).  Many of those who would assert to be “Bible Believing” would have little time for formal liturgy, preferring some form of spontaneous encounter with Scripture.  I think this group will be the primary audience for this booklet because its fundamental argument is; if you want your worship to be filled with, and shaped by, Scripture you really need look no further that the BCP.  Very few liturgical expressions, formal or “spontaneous”, can claim to provide a greater depth but also breadth of Scriptural material.

Back in 1984 by Richard Woolley

A warning that the following might contain spoilers…

This is a book of 2 parts; the first takes a standard format for a novel, with omnipotent narrator etc (although chapters jump around chronologically), the second the format of the journal of one of the characters.  This creates a transition between the openness of the first part and the more claustrophobic inner world of Joe in the second.

I found this a captivating read, in large part because there was a degree of personal familiarity with Joe’s neurotic character.  There was however still a sense of loss that some of the stories begun in the first part were left unfinished as those characters were not of particular interest to Joe and his journal. 

While I enjoyed the experience of reading it, there was a feeling of frustration with the narrative once I had finished it.  I feel that Woolley either needed to provide a fuller dramatic conclusion or have simply left us in full flow and not given us the final chapter, which I feel is rather weak. 

One of the things that I did like is the way that Woolley creates this sense that “life” is made up mainly of things which almost happen (for better or worse).  In a lot of fiction you get the feeling the writer has thrown the kitchen sink at their characters and everything that could happen does.  (This is especially true in many long running US TV dramas…).  I think you get to a certain age in life when your character is best defined by the way in which you handle the near misses!

Woolley’s handling of sex is another aspect of the book that I found successfully.  Between Joe and Mary the descriptions of sex are pretty graphic, but graphic in a matter of fact way, neither rose-tinted nor smutty.  Joe’s relationships with his male friends, and their potential as a context for sex, is also well informed.  In Joe’s mind at least they are a source of plenty of the “almosts”!  But that feels very authentic, once you are open to the idea the men do have sex with each other, male friendships and the intimacy they contain can become filled with complexity.

I am now looking forward to reading Woolley’s 2 other novels.

The Breathing by Mary-Ann Constantine

This is a powerful collection of short stories, tightly written, which leave you wondering about the past, the future, the wider story that has not been told.

In most of the stories there is some element of fantasy or surrealism which is handled well.  A hint perhaps of some untold mythology that is intriguing, but could so easily, in less skilful hands, have become laboured or over-bearing.

Within this context of myth and magic what is captured and brought out is a very strong sense of “ordinary” humanness, the characters within the stories are entirely believable – indeed you have the sense that these are not only people you could bump into in the street, but in fact people you already know.

To Bury the Dead by Ignacio Martínez De Pisón

The Spanish Civil War remains both a fascinating and deeply tragic moment in history.  It was a microcosm in which the true, and mostly unflattering, colours of the full range of society and politics were revealed.  This account is both a narrow slice of the story and yet also a retelling of the “big” story.

It is a book about José Robles’ death, a writer I have never read, who moved in literary circles, the output of which I have also never read, and so at one level the major result of reading this account was the sense of how poorly educated and ignorant I must be.

There were moments when I was gripped by the tale, and moments I felt lost.  It is a search for the truth of José Robles’ death, and yet it uncovers, as far as I could tell, not one ounce of new information about that event.  But that is the great truth of the Spanish Civil War, it is one never ending hall of mirrors – the more you reach for the “truth”, the reality of it, the further that sprite darts away from you. 

For me, having read a little about the Spanish Civil War there was no great revelation, (and for someone who has not at least a working knowledge of the conflict this is I think a book in which you would flounder).  The interest was rather a closer look at the patina of the essentially familiar.

One irritation is that this is a book in translation and they translated the titles of source material in the text with no indication of the original language (or availability of English versions).  Therefore, turning to the bibliography to find the details of the many interesting follow up reads what one finds is a wall of Spanish.  That most works about the Spanish Civil War referenced by a Spanish writer are written in Spanish is not my complaint, but it would have been a simple task for the translator to have some notation in the text that would have told the simpleton monoglot like me that a work was inaccessible.

The Phenomenon of Welshness by Siôn T. Jobbins

My first reaction to this collection of essays is that it is surprisingly angry. 

This will in part be due to there original composition as columns in the magazine Cambria – it is the columnist’s job to take a position and spark debate. 

But part of the surprise is also the exact root of Jobbins’ anger – “Welsh” political life is characterised, or at least caricatured, by mildness.  Those who champion a “Welsh” identity tend to be seen as cultured and reasonable not impassioned and argumentative.  Therefore I think Jobbins would welcome my surprise.

The other thing which was not entirely expected was the intensity of focus on the Welsh language – again the lack of such an expectation is at the heart of Jobbins’ argument.  The fact that the place of the Welsh language within the “Welsh” identity is contested is one of the key stumbling blocks to an effective nationalist movement within Wales.  There is a need to assert that, while as an individual you don’t have to speak Welsh to be Welsh, a Wales without a living Welsh language would be fundamentally diminished as a nation.  

The case which Jobbins puts, convincingly, is that the Welsh Government and Welsh political establishment, of all shades including Plaid, do not take the language seriously.  Devolution has if anything degraded the status of Welsh, it was part of the rhetoric of the fight to bring powers “home” to Wales – but with those powers won the language is treated as much as an inconvenience by decision makers in Cardiff as it was by decision makers in Whitehall.

Jobbins suggest that this lack of confidence and/or commitment in the language is a window deep into the soul of the nation – and what you see through that window is a black hole…

These punchy essays would be thought provoking reading even if you have no vested interest in the credibility of a Welsh identity.

The Cross and Creation in Christian Liturgy and Art

The Alcuin Club’s collections are normally rich and highly rewarding reading, but not on this occasion.

I am sorry to say that if I was allowed just one word for this book I would have to go for “rambling”.  It does includes an interesting miscellany of reflections on various artworks but I would have to agree with Nicholas Cranfield’s review in the Church Times and say that the application of a strong editorial hand would have been of great benefit to both Christopher Irvine and the reader.   

For example when he mentions Constantinople he feels the need to tell us this is now Istanbul and lies on the Bosphorus - one doubts that many readers who pick up this work would actually be ignorant of these facts, but even if they were, these facts appear to me to be entirely irrelevant to the substance of the point at hand. 

While I would agree with the broad assumptions of the book I do that despite it not because of it.  It does not, in itself, deliver a compelling argument.  It is only with concerted effort that one is able to keep track of it’s underlying arguments as you range far and wide over the details of particular artworks or background descriptions of Christian theology. 

What is also puzzling is who Irvine thinks the audience will be. He gives such lengthy summaries of basic aspects of Christian theology that you have to assume he is catering for the reader with no knowledge of the Christian faith other that which is imparted within the covers of this volume – there are many people in such a state of knowledge but whether they would ever be drawn to read this work is I think doubtful. 

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

I read Victoria Hislop’s The Island and now my mother has presented me with The Thread to read as well.  While I enjoyed The Island I completely failed to engage with The Thread, and it was in something of a state of irritation that I abandoned it mid way through.  

Perhaps I should warn you of spoilers ahead but then again one of my complaints with the book is that Hislop herself begins with a massive spoiler. The old and happily married Dimitri and Katerina meet their Grandson and this gives the “excuse” for their reflection on the events of their early life that is the rest of the book.  This device relieves you from the burden of worry at any point within the tale because you already know that D and K will live happily ever after.   

I also found this prologue pointless as the rest of the novel is written from the view point of the omnipotent anonymous narrator; it might make sense if the rest of the story had actually been narrated as one of other of D and K’s recollections - but it isn’t and therefore it doesn’t. 

My other major complaint is that this is the lightest of literary outputs and therefore it is, to me, distasteful that it uses ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust as its window dressing.  It is not that these events can not be the subject of fiction but that such events demand the highest of standards – it is not good enough to be mediocre when you speak of the greatest of human tragedies. To be saccharin sweet is a denial of the reality. 

Hislop over plays the idea that Thessaloniki was this completely happy and tolerant cosmopolitan city where all religions lived side by side, and overlays this with a simplistic dichotomy the happy poor and discontented rich.

I guess that in such a fanciful narrative to question plot inconsistencies is just foolish (like saying that plot twists in Dr Who don’t make sense – but fully accepting the credibility of his time machine) However I remain puzzled that after locating her mother Katerina does not suggest that rather than her going to live with her Mother, who had now married a brutal bully of a husband, her Mother comes to her -her Mother is supposed to be a talented seamstress – surely she would have found ready employ along with Katerina with the Jewish Tailors next door.  

While The Thread is actually comparable with The Island it is the subject matter which forces me to apply a different measure on it, and therefore find it so woeful.

On the side of the Crow by Christien Gholson

This collection of “prose poems” is unsettling. (Prose poem is a description that makes me cringe a bit – perhaps calling them single page short stories might be better). 

They are stand alone pieces and yet gradually you pick up on the same names being mentioned – there is a thread that runs between them, but what exactly that thread is never comes completely into focus.  They are both gritty and surreal, are they of the past or of the future? you can’t pin them down, but there is a deep sense of the “real” about them.  They force the reader’s own imagination into work as you try to make sense of the world that is being sketched before you – and that is the real strength of the collection, they demand your input and so you are drawn in.

Vision and Values in Primary Education Edited by Kathleen Taylor and Richard Woolley

It was an unusual experience reading this book, the collected word of a number of authors, because for once I knew most of them - from the time I spend in the midst of Bishop Grosseteste University (nee College).  Not all of them are still at BG, but that would have been the place where most of the paths crossed that led to the creation of this book. I could hear they individual voices speaking through the text.

While I knew them at BG, mostly what I shared with the authors was the usual grumbles over coffee that will be heard in any staffroom and so it was really good to encounter them here with their profession hats on.  But I think it was also good to have that other insight and as such to ground what is often an idealistic book - that these ideals are not the product of super-humans but ordinary mortals acts to empowered the writing rather than detracting from it (and I think that they would be please to have that insight shared – these are, if we believe what they have written, educators who would see no value in maintaining a mystique around their presence).  

Among the chapters some were more directly practical; and perhaps I personally took less from those, but I am not a Primary School Teacher and therefore not really the target audience and so that is no criticism of the book.  It was instead with the more “philosophical” chapters that I personally found the greatest connection.  In part this was me reading as a School Governor, for whom the key question is mostly “What?” rather than “How?” a school should deliver.  But I think I was equally making connections as a “general reader” – so much of where is at steak here is about the kind of society you wish to live in not just the running of a primary classroom, and as such you don’t have to be an educationalist in order to take an interest.

I was recently at Local Authority session for School Governors where an HMI was forcefully asserting that Ofsted has no agenda on the “How” of what you do in school, as long as it works.  The difficultly comes in the definition of “works” – which for Ofsted has to be framed in the measurable standards as captured in SATs and other formalized assessment measures. What the HMI was sort of saying was the best education will result in high standards in SATs etc as an incidental result rather than as its sole focus.  If you take him at his word (and I am not sure how much Ofsted’s working practices bear witness to this belief…) Ofsted is entirely in tune with the message of this book – an idea which might both horrify and delight (and perhaps also mystify) its authors!

There are some fundamental skills which Primary Education needs to impart, such as moving children from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”, but actually a greater part of the curriculum should be there to inspire the life long desire and the habit of learning, rather than thinking it has delivered a package of knowledge (armed with which the child can go away and get on with life).  

I accept that my own Primary Education is from an era when facts were out of fashion, the National Curriculum arrived in my final years at Whitings Hill, but as far as I can tell it was yet to have any real impact in our classrooms by the time we left – and Literacy Hours were not yet even a twinkle in a Secretary of State’s eye.  I encountered SATs only at the end of year 9, and, having opted out of school for most of the preceding term, I ended up doing an English SAT on Romeo and Juliet without actually having read any of the play (it was not a complete disaster and for better or worse I have gone on to often deploy similar tactics in the rest of my educational career…).  As such I am naturally drawn to the “softer” side of education and away from “hard” facts (I got through my History A-Level without learning a single date – but without “flying colours” either…).

As the report “Every Child Matters” has now been superseded we are once again freed to say that we believe that every child matters without it being part of an “Agenda” or a hallow cliques.  Running throughout the book it an approach in which the starting point should be a delight in every child, the belief that they not only matter but are amazing.  This in not to say that they always (or in some cases even often) make that an easy thing to remember, but it is true. 

I am not sure how much the coming together of the authors at BG as an institution with a Christian identity will have impacted their thought, or how many of them personally own a Christian identity, but the valuing of the potential and the inherent gifts of each individual is surely an expression Christianity at its best. There is much that the Church could learn, healthy Churches will be learning communities built on individuals exploring their potential, not on rout learnt catechisms or buzzing with this week’s proof text.  

The following quote really spoke to me “Education should seek to produce learners that are curious, creative, imaginative, motivated, enthusiastic, and prepared to take ricks. It should develop aspirational, self-assured, flexible, and resilient human beings who not only can answer questions independently, but seek to raise their own questions and hypotheses as well.  It should be liberating and empowering … [It] should allow children to not only produce products, but also to luxuriate in and dwell on the process of the learning journey.”  You only have to substitute a couple of words to shift it from the context of school to church.

A Commonplace Killing By Siân Busby

To approach a novel where the foreword is a eulogy to the author from her grieving husband sets a degree of tension, will she, Siân Busby, overshadow, overpower, the narrative.  There is a caution in reading this, the final act of a literary life. I was thankful that in actual fact there was very little sense that this was the work of someone who knew they were terminally ill, only by over stretching the analogies would you make any of the characters a proxy for Siân.  It was only at the penultimate page that I experienced a moment of transference – as she wrote “It would be hard to die like that, he thought; knowing the precise moment. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning. To have death steal up on you knowingly, expectantly.  He imagined that all you can do in such circumstance as that would be to deny that it is going to happen; believe that there will be a reprieve – even up to the last second…” you could not escape that fact that in writing it she was in her final days, ok Cancer does not give you quite the exact time and place in the way that the hangman did, but by that stage in the illness, for all intents and purposes, it as unavoidable a death sentence as in the novel.  There is a kind of arrogance almost to continue to write a novel, a long term project, against the backdrop of such a short term future – it is a declaration that you are in charge – that you can out run the hangman?.

Turning to the substance of the narrative; I found DDI Cooper a bit of a cliché, a mixture of Morse and Frost. There were a couple of moments when I could all too readily imagine the second rate TV adaptation, with Cooper and the plucky Policewomen Tring solving every murder under the sun despite the best, and well intentioned but Neanderthal, efforts of the rest of the Met.  But this is to Siân’s credit, it made me cringe exactly because her writing desires better. 

What was most interesting was the way in which Siân inverted the general narrative; this is of World War Two as a period of sacrifice and hardship followed by a great liberation with the coming of peace and the welfare state.  The common bond between the very different lives of Policewomen Tring and Lillian Frobisher was that the war years had been years of freedom and self-fulfillment which were not carried over into the peace.  The old rules were being reapplied but these women were not prepared to take the steps backwards which would have been needed to fit contentedly into old role models. Lillian is by far the strongest character in the novel – and her storyline is the captivating one, the parallel track of the police investigation, while not badly written, is definitely second fiddle, perhaps because it is centered on DDI Cooper rather than Tring.   

The Byzantine Patriarchate 451-1204 by George Every S.S.M.

When approaching a book like this which has been sat on your father’s study bookcase for some 45 years (and was published 20 years before that) a degree of caution does need to be exercised as there is the chance that scholarship might have moved on in the intervening decades.  In particular, I was a little wary of the account of the changing nature of the papacy during the period.  This seems to support a particular Anglican version of history in which the Church of England’s split from Rome was no revolution.  Rather it was a restoration of its proper status as a “National Church” that had pre-existed the Popes overstating of their authority from about the tenth century onwards.

The majority of the book is a narrative account of the Emperors, Patriarchs, and Popes and their relationships with one another. It is only really the last chapter, “The nature of the schism”, that is, as it were, operative.  Once we are looking at a great sweep of history and the division, and ultimately mutual-denial, of the Western and Eastern Churches you get the sense that the outcome was in fact determined by the personalities of individuals. 

There were theological differences between East and West, but these were for most of the period held in tension within the scope of a single Church, it was issues of power, status, and jurisdiction that ultimately resulted in separation.  I am not sure whether it is a comforting or a depressing thought that a millennia later you could apply the same sentence to the Anglican Communion.  As Anglicans we talk a lot about our theological differences, between “liberals” and “conservatives”, but what really drives those differences to become open conflict is issues of power, status, and jurisdiction.  

Maybe the message of this book is, really, that there is nothing new under the sun…

So many ways to begin by Jon Mcgregor

This was this year’s Greenbelt “Big Read” and despite hating last year’s Big Read book I still decided to give this one a go. This was most definitely a good move.

I will flag up that it will be fairly hard to talk much about the book without running the risk of spoilers – therefore if that is a problem for you perhaps you should stop now. The power of the book is rooted in the way the Mcgregor depicts the ordinariness of life with such clarity and pathos, the drama of the book is on a very domestic scale – but it is still the scene for gut wrenching tension.

There is a parallel with the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and the honest account of depression is central to the narrative. The success with which the reality of depression is shown in this book makes it a very powerful read, but also in some ways a test of the reader’s endurance. The persistence of love between David and Eleanor even when their daily life together has become devoid of any outward sign of tenderness is both beautiful and harrowing.

We are fed a diet of TV soaps where stories move quickly and even in the midst of tragedy there is a buzz from the pace of the time line. This is almost the exact opposite, after the long years of ordinary pain it appears that a resolution is going to come, only for hope to be dashed, and yet in that moment it is not a return to despair but contentment that emerges.

It felt like a privilege to see into the private, and often dark, spaces of David and Eleanor’s lives.

Thank you Greenbelt for choosing this book and thank you to all the others who came along to the Big Read session to share their own experience of it.

Transcendent Vocation by Sarah Maxwell

The sub-title of this book “Why gay clergy tolerate hypocrisy” certainly doesn’t pull any punches. 

I think the strength of that word “hypocrisy” was what drew me in, too often I think those advocating an “inclusive” agenda within the Church pussy-foot around the current situation.  Here it becomes a deeply personal as well as a complex and challenging subject.  I have spent many years in various ways exploring my “vocation” within the Church of England and recognise the corrosive self-censorship which Maxwell identifies among her gay clergy had at one time become a part of my life. 

It was a deeply troubling time in my life, I had an overwhelming sense of vocation to ordained ministry but I also found that in conscious and sub-conscious ways the only way to fulfil that vocation was to base it on a lie, a half-truth, a partial account of myself.  How could I serve a God from whom no secrets are hid when there were certain friends that I quietly lost touch with in case they prompted an awkward question?  And this was in a Diocese where the ordaining Bishop was well known as a strong support of gay inclusion in the Church.  However for all his “support” he was still signed up to all the official messages of the House of Bishops.   

Often the issues of gay ministry and women’s ministry are taken in the same breath and I would not for a moment want to diminish the pain and damage the Church has caused to women in the exercise of their vocations.  However I think hypocrisy is an issue that particularly effects gay clergy – the ordination of women is pretty black and white, but it is clear that it is not unusual for gay clergy to find their Bishop will warmly support them and their same-sex partner in private while publicly denying their existence.  I feel we need to get off the fence and call these Bishop’s out – at the moment I feel we are trying to make the omelette of gay emancipation without breaking any eggs.

But what is a Church that keeps such double standards worth? – it says one thing and then wilfully ignores that its ordained ministers don’t live by its teaching – why should any of the rest of us pay a blind bit of notice to anything it says while those who preach at us are happy to collude in lies?

I am honest about my cynicism – so reading about the experience of gay clergy in certain London deaneries (where they make up the majority of the staff because clergy with families simply don’t choose to live and work in those areas) makes me wonder.  The senior staff in those areas know they have a deanery full of gay clergy and understand the essential role those gay clergy play in delivering the ministry of the Church – yet they seem unwilling to normalise the position of their staff by seeking the emancipation of gay clergy.  Who does this serve? – are they perhaps fearful that once gay clergy find they have a secure standing in the Church the rule “beggars can’t be choosers” will no longer apply and gay clergy will become as reluctant as their straight colleagues to work in these “undesirable” neighbourhoods?

The account of the legal changes in the status of gay people in the UK over the last 40 years is amazing – given here in a clear and concise way.  Maxwell’s research finished just before the Government started the process of providing for Same-sex Marriage – the far end of a continuum from “de-criminalisation” through to societal affirmation. And it is interesting that the changes to the age of consent which were revolutionary for me as a teenager now don’t even warrant a mention.

I also wonder if the picture that Maxwell paints is a little bit bleak, I infer that most of her interviewees were older.  They were all to some extent “closeted” in a way that some of the clergy who appear on my facebook wall clearly aren’t.  As I finished the book one of them was posting pictures of his fancy dress for a pride march…

It has been adapted from a PhD thetis and this does show, the structure is at times a little clunky, however this does not detract from the power and the importance of the content – I really hope that one way or another it finds its way in to the hands of every member of the House of Bishops – because whatever their views about sexuality they all need an urgent wake up call that we simply can not go on like this.  The sad fact is that the vast majority of people who will read this will be those who are already frustrated by the Church’s status quo – and not nearly enough will be those who could stand up and contribute to a change of heart.

When a book deals with something so personal to oneself it becomes difficult to write about – there is a rawness and a nakedness in this which I am not altogether comfortable with – but given the subject of the book I feel compelled to live with a little nakedness rather than the comfort of concealment.

On the Suffering of the World by Arthur Schopenhauer

This is one of the Penguin “Great Ideas” series – but it is one of the few within that collection where I have found the writer’s thought completely without merit. 

OK he is anti God and religion and therefore there would be little common ground between us in terms of conclusions, however often reading the writings of those that have come to other conclusions from yourself sharpens your thought and is an intellectually stimulating counter-point.  I found done of this with Schopenhauer, his arguments seemed to fail even on their own terms. 

I would also add that his Essay “On Women” would suggest that he wasn’t a feminist to put it mildly…

Inscribing the Text by Walter Brueggemann

This collection of sermons and prayer/poems is of astounding quality.  This comes as no surprise given Brueggemann is one of the greatest living theologians.

But what is perhaps most powerful is that this is a pastoral collection, sermons given at particular moments in particular places, and yet informed by the full extent of Brueggemann’s scholarship. What a delight it must be to find yourself in the pews as Brueggemann rises to speak of God. 

How many Sundays have been defined by the crushing mediocrity of a sermon? And yet somewhere out there such pearls as these were being offered. 

Many of the prayers are response to Psalms, many are, to use a term of Jim Cotter’s, “unfoldings” of a Psalm – not translation or paraphrase but a reimagining in our contemporary setting of what prompted the first Psalmist to write or craft the words. 

Much of the collection was written shortly after “9/11” - in a moment when Americans of all perspectives were taken off guard. Brueggemann would fit within what is loosely called “Liberal” America and if is interesting to see him trying to process the events of 9/11.  At moments the shock and grief of the event are at the fore, but at others he is taking on a bold prophetic voice – as the American Establishment lurched toward reactive and ultra-conservative responses, often buttressed by “Christian” rhetoric – he is calling out to a different understanding of the message of Christ.

This collection is a joy to read, but that does not mean it is an entirely comfortable read.  The intensity of Brueggemann’s faith and thought is a challenge – even on the page he demands our attention, and then directs that attention away to Christ.  Anyone would is genuinely attentive to Christ can not stay long unchanged. 

Men and women in marriage by Church of England's Faith and Order Commission

Many have stated that this document should receive the fate common to the vast majority of General Synod Miscellaneous paper, to be ignored and to sink without trace impacting neither the life of the Church and much less the life of wider society. 

However such is my disgust with its content that I feel at least some comment must be offered.

We begin with paragraph 13 (I am highlighting only the most extreme of the documents errors, please do not interpret my silence on other paragraphs as assent to them!).  There is a wilful misinterpretation of the quotation “The first blessing God gave to man was society” – it seems to me that in the context of the quote “society” is being used as a pseudonym for companionship and not as society as in for example “Big Society”.  Neither does it seem clear from the fact that the first expression of that blessing was marriage between Adam and Eve (a union with only limited coexistence with our current legalistic expression of marriage) which of the characteristics of Adam and Eve are  about any resulting patterning of “society” – perhaps we should only be allowed to marry people who have been cloned from one of our ribs?

On to paragraph 21 – which tells in the context of marriage sex between those for whom there is “no prospect of actually having children” is still somehow open to procreation.  This is bizarre, it is characteristic of the deployment of arguments to justify a predetermined conclusion without any critical evaluation of them.

In paragraph 23 we come to one of, in my view, the most offensive and pastorally damaging statements in the document.  It is a direct attack on single parents, which even the patronising language about their “heroic struggles” can not hide.  For many being an adoptive or single parent is not ultimately characterised by “struggle”.

In paragraph 41 the document seems to shoot itself in the foot, by stating that neither state nor Church are the arbiters of marriage, it is a matter of God’s providence at work in the couples themselves.  It is therefore left to a question of whether you believe God’s providence to be constrained and limited or bountiful and boundless.  Then in 42 it seeks to pretend that civil marriage within the UK has been defined within the bounds of the Church’s understanding, completely ignoring that the state took an approach to divorce at variance to the Church and only latterly has the Church come to realign its understanding of divorce towards that of the state.

My final complaint is about paragraph 45 which talks of “giving pastoral help to those who seek to engage with the challenges of life responsibly.” It is clear that the vast majority of those who would wish to have a same-sex marriage are doing exactly that, it is an act of responsibility.  However setting that aside even the most ill-informed Gospel reader must see that Jesus was often far more interested in those who, for what ever reason, were engaging with life irresponsibly – are we not now to give pastoral help to the prodigal?

Into Suez by Stevie Davies

Having sat on my wish list, after a review in Planet, for some time I read this book on the plane out to Canada back in May.  Your encounter with a novel is always, I think, more intense when you get the opportunity to spend 9 straight hours reading it.

This is a bitter sweet story, based are a kind of “who do you think you are?” journey.  It is full of all the richness that was so sadly lacking in Barry Unsworth’s Lands of Marvels, while both centre on the lives of a group of “white” British within a hinterland of an indigenous population, that unease about the characterisation that plagued Land of Marvels is thankfully absence here.  Perhaps it is because the key dynamic of this story is the class tensions between the “white” characters, it is a tale of the birth pangs of the social and sexual revolution that would come in the following decade (the 1960s). 

It is also a tale, fundamentally, of lives lived in regret.  Freedom was momentarily grasped and then through tragedy (in the dramatic sense) revoked. The lead character Nia discovers that the small and sheltered life of her Mother was the consequence of that tragedy, and perhaps the only route to survival after it.

This is one of those tales that is haunting, and it lingers (in the best possible way), despite being a fiction the pain is so vivid that it demands your continuing attention.

The Drama of Scripture by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen

This is the latest book to be handed out by the Bishop of Winchester, and is the homework before a Diocesan conference in September. 

The premise of the book is simple – that there is a single over arching [meta] narrative to the Bible.  It is not enough to read parts of the Bible in isolation without at least a sense of the context of the whole “story”.  This is hardly a radical idea, although (as with last year’s book by Tom Wright) the authors seem convinced that this will rock our world…

Having set out this approach the bulk of the book is a retelling of the Bible with a focus on its unifying story.  There is nothing wrong with this – there are one or two points when there is a particular theological interpretation I might question – but in general it is a solid account.  I think that this would be of value to those considering confirmation (or equivalent step) – that is someone who is not completely fresh to Christianity, someone looking to deepen and consolidate their understanding. 

However call me an evangelical if you must, but I do always have a nagging feeling that in the vast majority of cases people would still be better off reading the Bible rather than reading a book about the Bible.

What is the purpose of this book in the context of our Diocesan Conference?  I think it is to encourage a different approach to outreach – for must of the 20^th Century mission has been about imparting the truth of the Christian faith (the search for the Historical Jesus and all that).  However the 21^st Century “post-moderns” have only limited interest in hearing the “facts” about Christianity and an accumulation of facts win never add up to a decisive argument – what matters to them is whether the “story” make sense, and make sense of the world.  The book does make that point – however personally I didn’t need to read this book to arrive at that conviction!

Alongside this we were also given “Hope – the heartbeat of mission” which is a source book of ideas for mission.  It labours its own “radical” notion, that social action and mission are a single activity rather than mutually exclusive.  It identifies three steps, One – connecting with your community, Two – sharing the Gospel in words, Three – giving opportunities to respond.  This is all well and good, and it has lots of great ideas for steps One and Two.  However all it offers under step Three is running an Alpha course (ok that is unfair – it does suggest as an alternative if you want to do something “different” running a Christianity Explored course!).  Really? Is Alpha the only format they could think of for response – and what does it say that Alpha is the third and seemingly final step?

Rites surrounding Death: The Palermo Statement of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation 2007 Edited by Trevor Lloyd

You might be able to guess from the title that this is a recent edition of  Joint Liturgical Studies! And as I have said before (and no doubt will say again) the value of these is that they place before you material that you would not otherwise encounter. 

The International Anglican Liturgical Consultation is one of a number of fora for the production of “normative statements”, either ecumenically or, as in this case, for a particular denomination.   Their relationship to the general thinking of the members of a denomination or the pronouncements of a denomination’s Synods (or equivalent bodies) is often loose or strained.  A clear example of this difficulty was the ARCIC report on the place of Virgin Mary which a large part of the Anglican Church denounced.

Here we have “The Palermo Statement; Rites surrounding Death” along side a commentary by Trevor Lloyd.  The commentary is mostly made up of examples from different Anglican Liturgies of the themes encountered in the Statement.

While of interest neither the Statement nor the commentary had anything particularly earth shattering to say. 

However as someone with no love for Common Worship I need raise an audible cheer when reading the Statement saying,

“We affirm that the liturgy is owned by the Christian community as well as by the minister or clergy leading the rites.  Where church members own a service book in their homes, and also a hymn book, they are more likely to feel they own the liturgy with the clergy.”

This is one of my key critiques of Common Worship – it has fundamentally removed the liturgy from the hands of the people.  The Prayer Book, and even the ASB, gave a sense of a liturgical whole while Common Worship allows only for the encounter of isolated liturgical events.  Also the people saw and knew the rubrics in both the Prayer Book and ASB - allowing at least some small insight into why things were happening – in Common Worship these are hidden from sight encouraging the people to be passive recipients of worship done by the clergy and other leaders.

On similar ground the Statement later says:

“No set of texts or rubrics, however comprehensive or permissive, can do all this without the mediation of pastorally sensitive, theologically astute and liturgically fluent clergy.”

From this I would read that the search for the perfect text (which the endless variation of Common Worship encourages) is flawed.  A decent text placed within an appropriate context of pastoral and liturgical action is powerful enough.  And the search for “pastorally sensitive, theologically astute and liturgically fluent clergy” is somewhat less fruitful than the search for hen’s teeth!

Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth

I read this on the plane home from Canada and maybe reading in the hours when by rights I should have been sleeping resulted in me missing some essential quality of the novel.

The cover proudly proclaims that Barry Unsworth is a Booker Prize winner and in is within the context of this claim that I found the novel lacking.  The story is fairly engaging and appealed to the bit of me that enjoys reading Agatha Christie but is that enough to place it in Booker Prize territory?

The cast of characters was made up of clichés, many of them paper thin clichés at that – there were few that were in anyway rounded and none that were insightful.  There was a worry that these stereotypes of the Western and the “Arab” were in fact supporting racist assumptions – you can give Agatha Christie some degree of flexibility as she was writing in different era, and so we can hold a critical distance to some of the less enlightened depictions of non-Western characters, but for Barry Unsworth, publishing in 2009, to be deploying the simpleton chai wallah as the basis of his non-Western characters is unsatisfactory.

 

If you have a few hours that need filling with light reading this book “would do” but to be honest my recommendation is to avoid it. 

Mimosa by Susan Wilkinson

The Mimosa was the ship which carried the first Welsh colonists to Patagonia.  Patagonia is the only significant Welsh-speaking community overseas and therefore there is a special affection for it, especially because the life of the early colony was far from easy and on more than one occasion it found itself at the point of collapse.

This book takes perhaps an eccentric approach of chronicling the “life and times” of the Mimosa, such that while the voyage to Patagonia does get special attention it does not dominate the book - and the life of the colony after Mimosa departed is only mentioned incidentally (there are of course plenty of other sources for the story of the colony).

The Mimosa was built in the middle of the 19^th Century in a period of unbelievable change, change which was in part driven by developments in shipping and in part driving the development of shipping.  Therefore the account of this ship’s working life is an excellent key to unlock the period. 

There were little facts that fascinated me as someone working with shipping – for example I knew that ships have to be registered in 64 equal shares, I knew this was an antiquated practice, but I didn’t know that it dates all the way back to the merchants of ancient Rhodes!

In giving the wider story of Mimosa you gain a greater context to the voyage to Patagonia for those first colonists.  We tend to focus our current attention on the negative aspects of British Imperialism (and there are undeniably many such negative aspects).  The “colonists” of Patagonia do not fit into that narrative – they left in order to save there language in the face of ever increasing Anglicisation – as the “Modern” world was born monoglot welsh-speaking life was under threat.  This small poor group of new “Patagonians” are perhaps the anthesis of the arrogantly striding Empire Builder in his pith helmet…

The Radical Disciple by John Stott

This is the final book of an undeniable giant within the English speaking Christian world but it was for me something of a disappointment. 

Having had it on my Amazon Wishlist since its publication (and so before John Stott’s death) I only recently ordered it and read it sat on the beach last weekend. 

I think the disappointment comes from your reference point with the word “Radical” in the title.  Stott divides the book into 8 themes within discipleship which he feels are often overlooked.  Shining a spotlight on them is the essence of his claim to radicalism but I struggle to recognise a Christianity that could continue while overlooking these issues.  Is it that within the depths “Orthodox” Evangelicalism, which is the mainstay of Stott’s audience, Biblical Legalism has allowed them to drift so far from the spirit of the Gospel?

For example one of the themes is “Simplicity” – I read it wondering to what extent it really needed pointing out that wealth is problematic to the Christian.  Perhaps this is written as a challenge to “Health and Wealth” ministries (indeed another of the themes is “Death”).

I don’t want to give this book too much of a hard time, I am not within its target audience.  It is not that I had a problem with what Stott is saying here, just that it left me muttering “No S**T Sherlock…”. If there are people claiming to be Christian for whom this book is “news” then it is a great thing that someone with the authority of John Stott has offered them a wake up call.  

Kicking the Black Mamba - Life, Alcohol & Death By Robert Anthony Welch

The Church Times review signalled the intense power of this book and it certainly lived up to this. 

It is the story of a father (Robert Anthony Welch) and his alcoholic son (Egan).  It is a tragedy, not in the glib way that the media apply the word to each and every death they report, but in the literary sense.

It was not an easy book to read, not easy for anyone, but more so as my own relationship with drink has at times been complex.  For example, I found myself trying to read it on a train journey, with a can of Stella on the go, and I just could not turn the pages, for there were tears in my eyes.

It feels as those Egan and his alcoholism had a symbiotic relationship, there is the refrain within the book – taken from a suicide note written by Egan – “it is not alcohol that killed me. It’s something else.” It is clear that it was not in a straightforward way simply that Egan was drunk that he came to the place where he died. And the wrestling of the book is Robert wrestling with the search for what that something else was.

I think the times when my parents (a Vicar and his wife) have been most truly Christ-like has been in there care of the various alcoholics that crossed their path.  The stash of tins under the stairs, to be dispensed two an evening, for the one who was told by their Doctor not to go cold turkey was one of the very few times I have seen the Church of England living out Biblical principles of manna from heaven…

There is the incredible honesty of Robert, he admits the deep annoyance that not only did he have to cope with Egan’s behaviour, but because they couldn’t have drink in the house so as to protect Egan, he couldn’t have his customary evening glass of wine to take the edge off life - at times when life was such that it really needed the edge taking off. 

We like to live in a tidy world, but drink is untidy, I sometimes call it “the chaos monster”.  There have been many times when I have had a few drinks, and a lovely evening, and I think “I’ll go to the bar, get a refreshing lemonade, perhaps a tea...” and then find myself returning from the bar with a massive glass of wine or a double vodka.  And the end of the evening was rarely as “lovely” as I would have hoped.

Or I call to mind the different reactions there can be to the ring of the last orders bell, I never got used to the fact the most of the students who went to the bar (and they themselves were a minority) at Bishop Grosseteste would on hearing the bell finish their drink and head to bed, while I, as was I’m sure the norm in Durham, heard the bell and got a couple of drinks from the bar to tide me over till chucking out time…

There is a lot in the book about the “Irish” identity and how that predisposes you if not to drink then at least to the “something else” Egan thought had killed him.  I am not sure how that sits with me.  There is a lot of poetry and folklore, which chimed in well – as Christians there is too much wisdom which we dismiss – we need a bigger understanding of what truth is.

It is a book that I really want people to read, but I am worried that people will read it and not get it.