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rgy should be reigned in and more financially focussed minds be given a greater say when it comes to making the big decisions i don t have any argument with this development though i do find it hard to understand quite why it is that there is a connection between being ordained and being financially feckless perhaps its that the clergy are so poorly paid that no one who cared about money would ever allow themselves to be called to serve in ordained ministry or is it the absence of a financial management module on the curriculum of our theological colleges the question of how to manage money was certainly never raised in my three years at westcott house nor was it a big deal in my curacy it was when i became an incumbent that i had to start to think very hard about money not only so that we could see our way to paying the parish share but also because our large and beautiful grade 1 medieval parish church had huge problems with its fabric these became evident in the time between my appointment and my institution and at my first pcc i naively asked how much money is in the fabric fund to be honest i don t now who was more astonished the pcc that i asked the question or me at the answer there is no fabric fund the big question in cathedral leadership today is how you find a way to care for an institution where neglect of the financial practical and material side of life will undermine the spiritual mission but also where excessive attention to the financial and managerial will distort and undermine the very purpose of the institution it is clear to me that while we might say that you can meet god anywhere there is spiritual point and purpose in maintaining beautiful parish churches and similar point and purpose coupled with extra layers of cultural meaning in sustaining cathedrals i don t think it is a bad thing for instance to have scriptural phrases like this is none other than the house of god this is the gate of heaven come to mind when we walk into a place like this to think this is not to denigrate anything else but to remind us of the best purpose and the highest aspiration that any cathedral can have to locate earth and to encourage god consciousness every year back in cambridge i have a conversation with the boys who are about to admitted as full choristers to our choir these year six boys have had up to two years of probationary experience and will have sung in plenty of services and concerts so as well asking them what makes a good chorister i ask them what the differences are between services and concerts it s remarkable just how much wisdom and insight the ten year olds can come up with i in a concert you face the audience who have come along to be entertained and they clap at the end in a service its about the worship of god so there are readings and prayers as well as music and no one claps because its not a performance to palace or entertain people but its a kind of message and it s all for god so that even if no one turned up we would still do it in these days when we have learnt a certain amount about how to balance commercial activity with the spiritual mission of our cathedrals we would hope that should jesus turn up one day that he wouldn t take exception at the shop or the admission charge or suggested donations he might however take exception to the attitude and demeanour of those leading worship or those offering tours if what was missing from what they offered was a sense of the profound presence and yet complete transcendence of god god is not captured or constrained by anything that we do but god can be referenced and reverenced and acknowledged and called upon and trusted and loved in and through absolutely every human activity of all that happens in a cathedral what matters most are the thoughts words acts of nonverbal communications and deeds that reference and encourage not an exotic mysticism but an everyday down to earth god consciousness there is no recipe for god consciousness this but let me conclude with a very short list of proverbs that i hope might both reflect and encourage the sort of god consciousness that is the best foundation for the life of a cathedral welcome is an attitude it s a matter of the heart slow is better than fast because every moment matters to god silence is as important as music or speech it is space for the spirit humility is never out of season it always becomes the wise you might be able to add your own proverbs to my little list and i d encourage you to do so but the most fundamental point is this a cathedral needs to be founded on god consciousness to exhibit god consciousness and to encourage god consciousness read full post the politics of emotion posted in brexit cambridge sermons tagged brexit emotion god wisdom on july 3 2016 3 comments a sermon preached at king s college chapel cambridge on sunday 3 july 2016 the final sunday of the academic year prime minister harold wilson famously said that a week is a long time in politics one can only think that had he coined the phrase recently he would have said that a week is an extremely long time in politics a few days before the referendum someone remarked to me that there is a lot of emotion about at the moment i believe that person was right and further believe that there has been even more emotion in public life since then emotion often begins to flow when people are uncertain and when they sense that change is afoot that they either do not desire or do not understand we are also emotional though in a slightly different way when we look back and remember events in the past whether they are delightful or dreadful many people have found themselves moved as the battle of the somme has been commemorated and they have been drawn closer to the human side the human cost of history at their best emotions make us wiser drawing from us intuitions that are more profound than the workings of the rational mind the famously unemotional mr spock of star trek was excellent at some tasks but he was hopeless at others if we are to flourish then we need to learn how to feel understand and respond both to our own emotions and to the emotions of others empathy sympathy and compassion are integral and vital in all human relationships and all human communities i was speaking with some people about medical education recently and one of the points that came up was that while we might want to encourage doctors to have empathy and to train them to be sympathetic and compassionate there are limits to these as to all other virtues personally i want a doctor to be full of sympathy and empathy when he or she is talking with me about my problems but when it comes to the technical side of the work i don t want empathy i want precision efficiency and an excellent result in cases like surgery this should be quite simple as far as i am concerned the empathy can stop the moment the anesthetic kicks in but what about more complex areas like physiotherapy the subtleties of emotional life are indeed complex when children are very young it s no good if their parents try to organize things so that the child will never be upset on the contrary the parent must determine when the child is upset part of the role of the parent is to be in charge of the boundaries that make the child s life safe and manageable and healthy part of the role of the child is to test and to seek to transgress those boundaries fast forward seventy or eighty years and things may well be reversed power of attorney is arranged and the children might now have to upset their parents by making decisions about care and wellbeing and even such basic things as whether someone can live at home any longer these will be times of strong and difficult emotion and rightly so emotion is a proper and important part of life emotions rise when choices are faced and the starker the choice and the closer the deadline the greater the emotion a referendum is therefore bound to raise more emotions than a general election and the aftermath is bound to be more emotional just as a knockout competition is more exciting than a league and why penalty shoot outs are knife edge affairs especially when they get to the stage of sudden death if well attuned and proportional our emotions can make us wise but if they are excessive they can easily make us foolish very often when emotion pushes us to make a mistake we go on flooded with the further emotions of guilt or embarrassment to make more and more mistakes so that the whole thing spirals out of control until something or someone or maybe many things or many people get very badly hurt and we decide far too late to stop it and so it is that we look back at the wars of the twentieth century with a tear in our eye and look at the current state of our politics and feel at least a little bit anxious about where it is all heading for a long time the most motivating words in politics and economics have been growth or change looking at things today many of us might find words like stability and indeed sustainability more attractive however there are times in our lives when change is not an option change is the point at which we have arrived we have recently seen graduation ceremonies here and today we come to the end of the chapel s academic year and so we are saying goodbye to our year 8 choristers and our recently graduated choral scholars one of the nice things about institutions is that they generate and evolve traditional rites of passage these help us manage the inevitable emotions and make good transitions sometimes such traditions involve food a dinner perhaps with speeches the choral scholars have a dinner tonight and i gave the choristers a dinner a few weeks ago it is worth noticing in this context that the talking and eating the conviviality and shared emotion of such occasions mirror that of the eucharist with its focus on the meal of bread and wine and the sharing of the word of god through readings and sermon if we use these occasions to be emotionally generous and intellectually truthful then they can be more than good ways to manage the emotions of transition they can become gateways to the transcendent windows that open us up to the guiding supporting and sustaining love of god who is grace and truth and it is to that eternal love that i would want to commend our leavers and all those who are at this time experiencing complex and deep emotions all those who have been taken by forces both outside and inside themselves to a place of disequilibrium and stress and all those who have in recent days been on the receiving end of hurtful remarks or violent actions sparked by the unfortunate emotionality of our recent political process the love of god is more than a match for all this trouble and strife god s future is far more positive than the naive mix of anxiety and optimism that dominates our current politics and bangs on about change and growth as if they were ultimate values time and again jesus and his followers have said that it is the heart that matters most certainly it is our hearts that can become dangerous when inflamed with raw emotion but it is our hearts that are the seat of our deepest values and the place of our spiritual struggles the message of this final sermon of this year is simple put your heart into the hands of the god of love truth peace forgiveness hope and joy these are the things that matter most deeply for they are the qualities of both of god and of human beings at their best and it is when we pursue these that we find our selves our lives and our world transfigured and transformed and discover that we are easing our way towards a positive future in the sustaining company of the god of grace and truth read full post breathing space posted in poetry spirituality tagged god grace peace prayer religion and spirituality on january 13 2013 1 comment this is the name of a wonderful project at witton gilbert chruch just outside durham read more here http wittongilbert durhamnorthteam org breathingspace this poem of mine was read at a special serivce there this evening to commission the project officer mrs pamela barmey breath of god breath of god be my life this day be my compassion breath of god flow where you are not expected flow where there is hurt and hatred breath of god flow where life is coming to an end flow into the place of death breath of god flow into me through me from me breath of god be grace be spirit be life be love breath of god breath of god breath of god breathe on me breathe with me breathe me read full post 25 years a priest the lessons posted in christian ministry tagged church durham cathedral god ordination religion and spirituality on june 30 2012 5 comments twenty five years ago i was ordained a priest that means this is silver jubilee time and i even have a card to prove it i remember the ordination in manchester cathedral eight of us were ordained at the same time to my left a man who died about five years later in a fishing accident he took it up as a hobby but should first have learnt how to swim a terrible tragedy to my right an extremely large man who could only get to his feet from kneeling by putting his hand on my shoulder and pushing hard i recall that much more vividly than any bishop s hands on my head that man s ministerial career came to an untimely end too he was arrested and imprisoned for possessing a firearm and ammunition it was hot very hot my wife was eight months pregnant six weeks later i remember conducting a pre wedding interview with our new baby on the floor sleeping fitfully on a fleece a few hours later he was in hospital in the middle of the night we had to decide whether to summon the chaplain to baptise him i was caught between wanting to do it myself and toughing it out we toughed it out so did he but it was touch and go i baptised him three months later attending an ordination service earlier today i was trying to recall what i was thinking twenty five years ago apart from will i buckle under the strain of this giant heaving himself to his feet i was wondering how much of the reality of ministry i had been able to imagine at that stage very little i think certainly in terms of detail but also in terms of themes so what did i underestimate three things spring to mind buildings money and people i had expected terribly wrongly that ministry would be something that happened wherever and whenever the church building seemed to me to be a kind of convenience certainly not intrinsic or central i discovered that i was wrong in my curacy i wrote in article in theology that people connect their mental image of the church building with the person of the local priest since my curacy i have only had three jobs but in each one the building had a massive significance when i say that one was king s college chapel cambridge and another durham cathedral then it does make sense though i had never seen such splendid edifices in my crystal ball but the two churches of holy trinity ...