Limestone Man by Robert Minhinnick

Buy it from Hive.co.uk and support local booksellers 

Minhinnick writes prose with a strong sense of poetry, powerful imagery, but also the layering on meaning, the hint, the metaphor, the illusion as much as the allusion. The counterpoints of south Wales and Australia are both given an air of simultaneous authenticity and unreality.

This is a book running across multiple chronologies and geographies, and even when you are in one chronology you are having a flash back to another. Therefore there is nothing recognisable as a narrative arch – but I don't think that is the point.

The heart of the novel seems to be the question “what happened to Lulu?” but it is a question that is never remotely answered. (One begins to wonder did Lulu ever exist? Did anyone exist for that matter?)

The central character Richard muses “ As ever, we wondered whether there was anyone left who wasn't phoney. Because we were the real thing. Weren't we? We were the last of the prue. The founders of a new age.”

And yet you have the sense that Richard is the biggest phoney of the lot – maybe that is the only way you can ever actually live by the saying “be the change you wish to see”, you have to pretend the world is a better place than it is, pretend that you are a better person than you really are, and hope somewhere along the line reality catches up?

The Greatest Need, Biography of Lily Tobias by Jasmine Donahaye

Buy it from Hive.co.uk and support local booksellers 

In exploring the life of writer and campaigner Lily Tobias, Donahaye also explores both Welsh and Israeli identities. To be engrossed in the biography of a writer whose work I have never read demonstrates the skill of Donahaye.

The very concept of being an “Israeli” is something that comes into being during Lily Tobias' life. When she first leaves Wales she moves to Palestine, she is a British (Welsh) Jew living in Palestine. When she returns from wartime exile in South Africa it is to Israel she “returns” to – although while she never lived permanently in Britain again she never gave up her British Citizenship, so perhaps at some levels never become an Israeli.

In her early live, Lily's experience of being a Welsh Jew Women is one of multi-layered “minorities” (Women have never been a numerical minority but the early 20^th Century was a society essentially structured as if they were...).

The violent death of her husband in Palestine very clearly shaped the whole of the rest of her life, a reminder of how long violence can have a hold over a person, and in a land of such violence, how very very long the process of healing will be even once peace is achieved.

The shift from her early pacifism to later belief in “just war” in defence of the Jewish homeland, a transition for which her husband's murder was the main catalysis if not necessary the only cause, is a sad one. How she would have responded to intensified conflict between Israeli and Palestinians in the decades since her death (in 1984) can only ever be speculation.

Donahaye gives a sympathetic but not an airbrushed account of Lily's life, and is willing to point out that not all her views sit that easily in contemporary contexts, but she was a women of her time, and her views are understandable if where we might now find them difficult to defend.

Celebrating Christian Initiation by Simon Jones

Buy it from Hive.co.uk and support local booksellers 

This is an example of the real strength of the Alcuin Club, it provides a truly comprehensive guide to the current liturgical provision for Baptism, and other rites of initiation, within the Church of England. It provides a mix of theological reflection and practical guidance.

There are a lot of “how to” guides written, but they generally look to innovate without providing the baseline practice. This guide helps us understand what the ordinary practice of Baptism should be like, what it should be like when it is at its best. In many cases I tend to feel that we feel the need to innovate more because we do the ordinary badly rather than because the ordinary can not provide for the community or people we wish to engage.

Also I would suggest that we mostly find things within the liturgy cold or clunky because we have failed to understand their purpose – and if we (those engaged in preparing and leading the liturgy) haven't understood why we are doing things, what chance do those coming to receive the liturgy have. I don't think that an encounter with the liturgy depends on any prior theological knowledge or understanding – if liturgy has integrity it should be self-explanatory (and by that I definitely do not mean that each liturgical action should be explained – meaning should be communicated through the action not separate from it – much like jokes, liturgy you “have” to explain has essentially failed).

Lovesongs & Reproaches By L. William Countryman

Buy it from Hive.co.uk and support local booksellers 

This collection is in the tradition of the Psalms, full of passion, rejoicing in the goodness of God and Creation, and yet also raging against the ills of Creation and the God that seems to stand by and let it happen. This is a really rich and powerful collection.

Of these latter day psalms I find that many of those I have tabbed for future reference reflect on the challenge of capturing ideas about God within our language, for example here is an extract of one;

... Your beauty is beyond our power

to express. It draws us; we respond.

We never grasp it, reduce it

successfully to words. And we never stop

trying...

There is a powerful connection between age old ideas and modern cadences, as an example;

… My gratitude mixes itself

with the guilt of a survivor. I wonder

if I am one of those rich that Amos

denounced for battening off the poor.

I suppose I am. How does anyone

live in the tangle of our times

without being a part of the web

of unequal exchange?

And from another one;

… Your Spirit is well-named, as busy

and untiring as the wind, as close to us

as our breath; and we never know

if the initiative is hers or ours.

Perhaps it is both. Even she

cannot play violin on a drum.

She plays the instrument she finds.

Under the Fig Tree By Roger Hutchison

Buy it from Hive.co.uk and support local booksellers 

To bring words and imagines together is to enrich both, both the prayers and the pictures had a simplicity about them which gives plenty of space for your our thoughts and reactions to take shape. I mostly took just one at a time to allow depth of encounter. Some were a figurative response to the ideas of the prayer, others more abstract. Some of the prayers had a liturgical feel, others were more loose, starting points for meditation.

Although this book is sub-titled “Visual prayers and poems for Lent” I am not sure I found anything especially Lenten about it. It arrived at the start of May, and I worked my way through in it over the next few weeks, and although this was Easter it didn't seem too out of season.

Lapsed Agnostic by John Waters

Buy it from Hive.co.uk and support local booksellers 

This is the second of John Waters books I have read, and once again I struggled as for the most part I find him long winded and self indulgent – bit in the midst of that there are moments of insight – pearls within the silt.

There were moments of interest, like when he talks about as an adult starting to pray, and how he knelt to pray – while recognising that there isn't any “need” to kneel to pray he found “It began to suggest itself as important for me to have this different posture, if only to distinguish the procedure and mark it as having at least as much significance as eating and sleeping.” (p99) In our current laissez-faire liturgical culture I think we miss out of sharing this reality with people. For me to kneel for the Confession, and then, after the Absolution, to stand for the Gloria is not empty ritual habit, it is a bodily enactment of a transition from being weighed down with the burden of sin to standing in a state of grace before the Lord. I would not insist that everyone need to adopt the posture, but I think we should share the ways in which deliberate posture can enrich the encounter, the liturgy is not just words you say, but can be expressed with your body, with the whole of your being. (perhaps the “hands in the air” brigade need to owe up to that fact that they equally subscribe to this...).

The other theme I found important was his reflection on the shift, within Irish society but applicable to most of the West, from a society shaped by Christian faith to one without a coherent common moral framework. He writes, “Nor can a society successfully remain agnostic in the way an individual may seem to. The unbelieving individual, in a broadly believing society, can function well by availing himself of the slipstream and buffering provided by the faith of others … [but] an overwhelmingly unbelieving society, once it exhausts the imaginative possibilities of money and other freedoms, is doomed to a form of collective depression.” (p171)

He talks about our reaction against the faith, and constraints, of our parents – but worries about what will become of the next generation – the children of the “faithless” will have no reference point to frame their morals or identity. This is based on the assumption that most of those brought up “within the Church” when they leave continue with a “Christianity-Lite” moral framework. We might recognise this from UK census data, where the percentage identifying as Christian far outweighs those who participate in “Church”. What is our common bond as a society? – in the shadow of the EU referendum you might have thought that this would be central to the public debate – but the question of what sort of country we want to be has barely been mentioned.

And then he particularly speaks to me when he speaks of alcohol...

“My problem derived from the fact that I needed alcohol in order to be even a shadow of a sociable human being. On the surface I was simply a young man who had perhaps become over-exuberant in his indulgence in the bottle... [but what I learnt] after I stopped drinking was the ubiquitousness of fear in my life. Without knowing it, I had been afraid of everything: meeting people, conversation, waking up in the morning … work, responsibilities, police officers... I was afraid of big things and small things.... Drink cured all that, or, to be absolutely precise, I was relieved from all this fear when I had taken drink.” (p75)

Sometimes it is hard to look in a mirror, but it is also hard to know how to respond. Self awareness doesn't actually take you that far. I know that there are lots of situations that make me anxious, and one of the reasons I tend to drink is to take that anxiety away – it is partly the chemical relief, but it is equally psychosomatic – just knowing I have had a drink I somehow go into the room more confident. It is not an issue one can “fix” but there are perhaps strategies to manage it more effectively. It is also an issue of habits, a drink goes along with an activity, and it is hard to break that link (eg drinking on the long train journey, drinking when you are cooking dinner, drinking when you get in from PCC, I probably shouldn't try to list all the activities which I accompany with a drink!) and the individual drinks are not the problem it is the cumulative effect...

Stilling the Strom Edited by John Vincent

This collection of reflections on Mark's telling of the Stilling of the Storm, when Jesus is woken from sleep by the disciples fearful that the Storm will sink their boat, is full of intriguing ideas. This is a slim volume, but packed with such a range to ideas it is hard to do justice to it. Instead I will just share a few of the ideas that particular caught my attention.

Ian Wallis paints a picture, that is perhaps a little too familiar “Every church community inherits Jesus sleeping in the stern. How he got there no-one quiet remembers. In fact, the existence of the boat is equally inexplicable. As is the crew among whom we find ourselves numbered and the voyage on which we're set. We trust all this once made sense and was persuasive. That, awake, Jesus demanded attention and attracted supporters willing to venture beyond familiar waters in pursuit of God's kingdom causes. But none of the original recruits survives, not even their successors. And the vessel has been en route for so many generations that the Galilean shoreline from which in embarked is barely visible, a distant speck on history's horizon. Speculation over where the boast is heading and the purpose of the journey fills the airwaves. And the only person able to supply an answer remains dead to the world.”

One of the features of Mark's telling is that the boat in which Jesus and the disciples are crossing the lake is not alone, there is mention of “other boats” also making the journey, and this allows a number of expansive readings of the story.

Christopher Burdon explores this, recalling working with a group who are asked to imagine their role in the story and there reactions. One reflected “I wasn't in that boat with Jesus and the disciples. I was one of the crowd who got into one of those other boats. I don't know what's happened to us.” Jesus stilled the storm and provided safety to those in his boat – but what of the others? Maybe they were left sinking? How often is our concern, when we are really honest about it, limited by the boundaries of our Church?

Meanwhile, Neil Richardson cautions to over playing the story, “It does not mean that God underwrites all our ways of being church. But the story does mean that a church, which even in its unbelief, cries out to God, will not be overcome.” Here, as so often, the disciples weren't “getting it right” but Jesus still responds to their need.

We can build on that when David Blather Wick notes that “Running through the conversation in 4.38-40 is the question “Who is in charge of the boat?” Clearly the disciples think Jesus is, just as we tend to think God is in our lives. Jesus says they are.” this is a profound reversal, we want someone else to sort our lives out for us, but Jesus reminds us that we have free will, accountability, therefore it is down to our initiative to make the difference.

Perhaps thinking about the story in another way, Louise J. Lawrence wrote that “Over the last couple of decades as a result of these social trends, there has been a marked interest in “places” which are defined as having a shared community story... [while there has been a rise in “non-places”] … People can operate within them alone and anonymously. Supermarkets, airport lounges, chain-dominated high streets... When communities don't communicate, not only is a rich vein of experience left un-mined (an old saying in Africa goes “when a person dies a library burns down”) they also literally forget who they collectively are. The world is increasingly suffering from this corporate amnesia and does so at its peril.”

Lawrence quotes Lane that Jesus knows “that places on the edge, those considered God-forsaken by many, are where his identity as Messiah has to be revealed … ever dragging his disciples away from the familiarity of home, he declares present the power of the kingdom in the alien landscapes of another land”

Lawrence goes on that “This was echoed in responses from a rural community in Dartmoor who, while bemoaning that fact that their rector was no longer resident in the village, nevertheless saw that this had led to the empowerment of others to take on ministry in all its forms within their context. Due to the changing nature of “place” the “crew” really does need to be envisaged in a much wider sense than just stipendiary priests. Lay led initiatives need to be encouraged and developed. Likewise any collective movements in the locality which support or regenerate community also need to be supported by the church.... If the “all hands on deck” ethos is not promoted, the church becomes less a missionary-led fishing trawler with a proactive crew and more a passenger ferry with passive travellers. Such ships are heavy and hard to handle, difficult to get on board, and ill equipped to reach those at sea-level within a storm.”