From the Boundary: Towards religiousness – Part two

As we fumble our way through life’s passage, with all its hard knocks, we never quite know how or when we touch other people’s lives for good – or ill for that matter. Their lives’ stories we may never know. Their distant whisperings we may never hear though they serve to inform who we really are. Sometimes those we touch return to us, maybe in snatches, like my former pupils now young attorneys with their way to make. If we’ve managed to make other lives easier then we’ve succeeded in being fully human, authentic and rooted in love no matter the religion we have or don’t have. Religiousness, the fragrance of the heart, overrides religion as the spirit of things overrides the letter.

With this in mind, let me mention a young man who turned up at my door yesterday evening. He asked me if I recognised him. I didn’t. He said he was a dear one whom I’d known here in the village some 15 years ago. We used to go out together with his cousin and my daughter. He must have been eight then and we were good friends. At that time he’d left the village to live in the UK and I’d not seen him since. Well, he’s grown up tall and very handsome and he has a great talent for basketball.  Instinctively, I embraced him as if he was my own, and I have to say that tears came to my eyes.  Even whisperings, you see, materialise.

And then on Sunday another young man came to the house to tell me that his daughter was being baptised at St Catherine’s Church. I’d assisted Dean William there on and off for several years when he was priest-in-charge. It’s a lovely place, and its people are welcoming, kind and responsive. Some while ago, the baby’s mother had called me and told me she was pregnant. She reminded me that years ago I’d given her a rosary and she asked me whether I’d also give one to the baby. I wrote to a friend in Rome and she sent one for me – blessed by Pope Francis. In fact, the couple came by later with baby and, with great pride, showed her to me. She was lovely, with knowing eyes that somehow went far beyond the days of her little life. It’s moments like these which make life so rewarding. I count myself lucky that despite all the nonsenses there have been many similar moments – and, of course, you must have experienced them too in the context of your lives.

You see, despite all the difficulties my problems have never come from the pew. Every Church I’ve attended has been like St Catherine’s, from the first (St Mary’s as communicant with wonderful Canon Hennis in 1994-95) to the last (20 months ago at St Lawrence, taking the service courtesy of the Archdeacon because the incumbent was ill). Of course, not everyone will take to you, but that’s just part of life, isn’t it? For some maybe I’m not ‘laugh-it-off’ enough. For others, maybe I don’t issue sufficiently in comfortable words. Certainly many former parishioners stop me in the street or supermarket and say they miss me – and that ‘hospitality in action’ never fails to warm my heart. But our conversations  never seem to get beyond “Which Church are you at now?” When I tell them ‘none’, they visibly become embarrassed and move away. It’s either a case of ‘I don’t want to be involved’ or ‘What did you do wrong?’ Well the fact is I hold a Licence and am in good standing, so I find the question irritating. 

My irritation is not with them. How could it be? It’s with those who appear to have used their power to stifle my ministry without good cause. To me, it’s a form of defamation, but in their mean spiritedness I don’t expect them to understand that. I guess you’ll understand then my disenchantment and why it is that ’religion’, as it’s practised here in the Church I notionally serve, is simply not enough. As I’ve said before, it’s a disenchantment shared by many for a variety of reasons. Out in the world, many priests, far more able than me, have had to confront it. It’s nothing new. But how sad that ‘hospitality’, that core principle, seems to mean so little. The ‘bare foot preacher’, wherever he is, will know exactly what I mean. 

Last week, my Column ended with my departure from the Cathedral in 2005. I certainly didn’t want to go but it was published that I did. I’ve often wondered how that ‘inaccuracy’ could possibly square publicly with the story that the Bishop had determined to move me. There are various possibilities, but I’ll leave you to work those out if you’ve a mind. I should say that subsequent to receiving my information on that, I phoned the incumbent and suggested, not too politely, that he should get it right – which he subsequently did in a niggardly sort of way.

Thereafter, I spent a little over two years at St Patrick’s and St John the Baptist as an assistant priest. I had assumed that these were Diocesan appointments but I was wrong. They were ‘grace and favour’ positions, as I found out a few months back when I tried to discover from Diocesan House the date I’d left John the Baptist. There was no official record of my ever having been there. The record was, in fact, later found in my personal file in the ‘inner’ office. The two placements, therefore, seem to have been private arrangements between the Bishop and the incumbent; and in practice that meant that I really had no Diocesan protection by virtue of the formal status of Assistant Priest. The practical effect of that was that if the incumbent chose to make my life miserable, there was really nothing I could do. I really couldn’t appeal to the Bishop and ask him to sort it out because the incumbent inevitably had priority. Taking me on had been no more than a favour.

In fact, my relationship with the two incumbents was not good. My character simply didn’t mesh with the first and there was a heavy premium on listening. As for the second – well, it was made abundantly clear that my role was simply to take services. And then it happened – the white man’s nightmare – an anonymous letter accusing me of being a racist. Cheez on bread.

Well, I’ll say more of this next week. Suffice it to say now that the letter finished my time  at John the Baptist and my “friend and Bishop” in effect told me to get on my bike, go out into the wilderness, and find someone else to take me for, like Pilate, he washed his hands of me. Humming ‘A wandering minstrel I’, that’s exactly what I did.

Go safely, then – until the next time.

Comfort from the boundary: “If we wish to follow Christ closely, we cannot choose an easy, quiet life. It will be a demanding life, but full of joy” (Pope Francis).