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.

Christ in the Wilderness - Stephen Cottrell reflecting on the paintings by Stanley Spencer

You may have by now noticed that Stephen Cottrell is one of my favourite writers, and it should be no surprise that I am going to wax lyrical about this book…

I have a great fondness to Stations of the Cross, there seems to be an extra richness that comes from an artist responding across a set of works.  Stanley Spencer’s pictures, which form the basis of this book, might not be stations in a formal sense but they are of the same family.

The pictures have an innocence and yet also multiple layers of meaning - and I think I should take a moment to give due credit to them as the starting point of the book.  To encounter the pictures on your own would be a rich experience, but to have Stephen Cottrell alongside you gently offering some thoughts on, and around, the works takes the encounter to the next level.

I think one of the great things is the way that he mixes the theological and academic with incidents from family holidays or other everyday events.  This really embeds a truly incarnational understanding of life – “incarnational” is such an overused word in the church today that it is largely a worn out word and means nothing much at all.  But with Cottrell the essence is recaptured, holding the whole range of human experience in the presence of God.

Of the paintings I think the one I keep coming back to is “Consider the Lilies” in which a rather fat Christ is on his hands and knees looking down at simple daisies – this is the Genesis 1 moment, “God saw that it was good”, but captured in a way that brings it from the supernatural into the realm of our own experience.  And this is perhaps the overall achievement of the book.

Here I Am by Richard Giles

Having read and not really enjoyed The Art of Tent Making, I did however decide to get hold of this book which many of the contributors mentioned. 

There was a particular idea that Giles understands the “priesthood of all believers” as a collective identity not a stand alone quality of each individual that I really wanted to follow up.

This idea is mentioned in Here I Am, but if is not the dominant theme and at one level I was a little disappointed by that.  It is a personal and idiosyncratic account of priesthood and at that level it was really refreshing, having read a lot of the standard books on priesthood and vocation that a mostly bland, glib, soulless, monochrome…

The chapters are short and punchy and this is the ideal companion to the Christian Priest Today. A different but compatible vision.

What is clear is that Giles has a pretty robust understanding of the role of the priest (or presbyter as he demands they are called).  The guiding hand of the priest is, for him, a strong one and the metaphor of the tough love of parenthood seems to be the one that spring quickest to his mind. 

This is ok in the right hands, and I think it is clear that Giles balances this assertive nature with a servant heart – but in other hands it could well be disastrous.  This worry, I think unfortunately, comes from my increasingly low view of the clergy, en masse.  Before anyone gets the hump - I continue meet and know some exceptionally gifted clergy and I am privileged to count many of these as friends – however I sadly feel they are exactly that “exceptional”.  When I go to various levels of Synods the vast majority of clergy I encounter are anything but an inspiration – and one of the (many) reasons why I currently have no interest in following a path to ordination is because I have no desire to become one of “them”.

The Old Ways By Robert MacFarlane

Reading this book was a little triumph over the capitalist machine, Amazon sent me an email recommending it, and so I got it out of the local library…

Robert MacFarlane begins with some general reflections on walking, and cites numerous philosophers who have mused that “real” thinking can only be done while walking – “I can only meditate when I am walking” said Rousseau, while Nietzsche is quoted “Only those thoughts which come from walking have any value.”

This draws on a strong sense that the pace of walking is in tune with the natural rhythm of life and thought.  From my experience of walking Northern Leg (Student Cross) over the last few years I can certainly testify to the special relationship there is between some really deep thought and walking the road. 

He then goes on to recount for a number of walks which he has made.  The first is down the Icknield Way from Cambridge passing through my old home of Baldock, which gets a mention (just!). 

One of the most powerful walks is out on the mud flats off the edge of Essex, it seems to be a transgressive act to walk out where the sea should be and yet there is a draw towards this landscape [sic].  He quotes William Fox who found “cognitive dissonance in isotropic spaces” and once again I’m thinking of Northern Leg – those days we spend crossing the Fens are all important to the experience.  There is a blankness that allows the mind, away from the distractions of our hyperactive 21^st Century lifestyle, to settle on what is important. 

This year I missed the days on the Fens, and found that on those days while I was back at work there was a nagging sense of claustrophobia.  I hope that my colleagues didn’t notice the wild look in my eyes, wistful to be away and out there - even as the wind bit and the snow came down.  Having walked Northern without the Fens I now realise that is not the exquisite beauty of Castle Acre that is my favourite place, it is a mile out from the Daffodil Barn, when lunch is just around the next bend in the road (aka 3 miles away!).

There are other powerful chapters, for example when he walks in Palestine, when the land is contested and the “open road” has become an oxymoron, but towards the end of the book I got a bit lost in the chapters devoted to the poet Edward Thomas.

It is a rich book, and there was one of those blissful ironies that as I read it the radio was reporting a study that Brits walk for an average of only 9.5 minutes a day – no wonder we are so often an unthinking society…