FROM THE BOUNDARY

Some while ago I said I would tell you something about my collection of poems ‘Love Songs in a Zipless World’. Well, that’s precisely what I’ve been doing over the past three Sundays. Another newspaper was kind enough to feature it. So far as I know, the subject matter – love in the ordinary, in the ‘zipless world’ – has not been explored before. So you see, I’m rather proud of the idea even if the poetry doesn’t amount to much. Now, in recent weeks I’ve been putting the finishing touches to a second volume of poetry which I’ve called ‘The Love Within’. It traces my spiritual life from student to priest and is in two parts which I’ve called ‘Advent One’ and ‘Advent Two’.

 

The background to ‘Advent One’ is the compulsion I had to write ‘religious’ poetry following a heart attack and by-pass surgery while I was a second, and final-year student at Codrington. I suppose they were hymns of thanks that I was still alive and then, a little later, hymns of frustration that I wasn’t being ordained. The ‘Advent Two’ poems were largely written over the past three years and are quite different. They’re different because they express not religion but ‘religiousness’ – ‘religiousness’ because I’d finally given up on my life as a serving priest in the Anglican Church in this Diocese. Well, in fact there’d been no life in any formal sense since 2005, and the entire passage had been stormy. It might just have caused me to become a Jacobin, but didn’t. What follows is some account of that.

 

One of the first poems I wrote in ‘Advent One’ is called ‘Election’ and it’s basically a hymn of praise for the decision of Synod, well, the Holy Spirit’s vote, to make Dr. John Holder a Bishop. It was published at the suggestion of Dr. Frank Hughes, then Lecturer in New Testament at Codrington. Frank had been very kind and had actually pushed me to write a paper on the claims to priority of Paul’s ‘Letters’ and ‘Acts’ as historical documents. The paper was read at a post-graduate seminar and was later published. Frank loaded my poem onto the Diocesan website – and then I saw, for what seemed the first time, that priests are no different from anyone else. One, from another Province, publicly described the poem as “utter rubbish”. Well, he may have been right but I thought that he’d been – well, a little hard. The irony is that a few years back the same priest published some of his poems in the ‘Anglican’ newspaper. He made the odd claim that they’d been inspired by the Holy Spirit – which was enough to corroborate my feeling over years that priests who described their efforts from the pulpit as inspired and spoken “in the name of” the deity were arguably delusional. I should say that I wrote to the priest and told him that I now realised, after reading his stuff, how my poor ‘Election’ had fallen short and how glad I was that he’d received the Imprimatur of the Big Boys. For some reason, he didn’t reply.

 

I entered Codrington in 1998. Bishop Brome had been very supportive, very gracious. Because of my background in academic life, a two-year course of study was worked out for me leading to a Diploma in Pastoral Studies. The idea was that I should join the supplementary ministry. That meant I would never have a parish of my own, and rightly so because of the day job at Cave Hill. I was then being both daddy and mummy to two of my kids so it wasn’t easy.

 

For some three years my home Church had been St. Michael’s Cathedral. I loved it there and felt grounded. I suppose in large measure it was the music and the aura of authority that Dean Harold invariably created. My two sons had been Cathedral Choristers at Lincoln Cathedral in the UK and so I guess you’ll understand the affinity I felt for St. Michael’s. Harold was one of my sponsors for ordination training, as also my dearest friend, Canon Lionel Burke. Harold made me cathedral reader which meant that I read the OT lessons at Matins and Evensong. Harold’s successor, Dean William, was also very kind and a ‘natural’ from whom to seek advice then and as I still do. 

 

When I left Codrington in 2000, I’d done, despite my illness, everything I’d been required to do. I’d very happily completed my ordination training at St. Barnabas. I saw the references which Fr Guy and Frank wrote for me with a view to my ordination. They were very supportive and I should say that the St. Barnabas people were lovely. It was all very encouraging – but then, nothing.

 

Though armed with my Diploma there were in fact 18 months of nothing. Normally, ordination would follow Codrington after no more than six months. Dean Harold and Dean William tried to intervene in my support but were told that the decision maker would not be rushed and that no one had a guarantee of ordination. To me, it seemed utterly disingenuous. A friend in a similar situation was fortunate to have had Bishop Sehon Goodridge as his benefactor and he was ordained in St. Vincent. He was also sympathetic to me, and when the friend was ordained Sehon invited me to stay with him. He told me he’d made inquiries of the Bench of Bishops why I hadn’t yet been ordained and had been told (a) that I was a divorced man (which everyone knew at my selection as an ordinand), and (b) that I hadn’t been properly trained (eh?). Meanwhile, another benefactor asked me to send him copies of my ex-Codrington references. Diocesan House had no record of them.

 

I was finally ordained deacon on the Feast of St. Thomas in December 2001 with three others who included the Bishop’s nephew, John Rogers. There followed rather more than three happy years at the Cathedral as my base. I made many friends and, of course, some had known me there since I first visited as a communicant in 1995. Dean William then retired and in January 2005 I went to attend a clergy meeting chaired by the new incumbent. As I entered the room, he pulled me to one side and told me the Bishop was going to move me. I wasn’t happy about it, but could do nothing. I supposed it was intended to enhance my experience. Despite having been associated with the Cathedral as communicant, cathedral reader, deacon and priest for nearly ten years the customary gift went AWOL. A week after my move to St. Patrick’s I received a call from a dear friend who asked me whether I’d seen the latest Cathedral Bulletin. I hadn’t, of course. She read it to me: “Mr. Hall has left the Cathedral at his own wish.” Eh? You what? Laughter.

 

Go safely – until the next time.

 

Poetic insight from the boundary: While God has been waiting for his temples to be built with love, men have just brought stones (Rabindranath Tagore).