Seasons of Durham Life: December

In every cathedral and parish church, the year ends on a high note. Or rather, begins - for Advent marks the start of another liturgical cycle. 

Advent and Christmas see more people flock to places of worship than any other time of year. From late November a busy procession of services and events prepares the way for Christmas itself. Local organisations such as schools, Durham colleges, the University Christian Union, MenCap, Women's Institutes, the Hospice and others hold annual services. The Durham Christmas Fair partly takes place in the cloister bringing thousands through the Cathedral where many linger to sing carols. There is the Lighting of the Christmas Tree and the Blessing of the Crib. The Cathedral Friends and Cathedral Choir have big concerts. And to bring the season to its climax, there are two sittings of the Nine Lessons and Carols, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and the major services on Christmas Day itself. 

We love seeing the Cathedral full of people day after day. It's what the place is for. I guess that for many of them, this is their only church service of the year, so we want to make it as beautiful and eloquent as we can. The good news about the coming of Light and Love into the world is too important not to make every effort to communicate it by all means possible. And if you are like me, you find that the magic of Christmas becomes more powerful and mysterious with each returning year. As I look back on 25 Christmases in three different cathedrals, where marvellous liturgy and music in magnificent surroundings have never failed to lift the heart and imagination in profoundly moving ways, I realise what a gift these wonderful places are. They are an inspiration not only to us who work and worship in them daily, but to our entire communities, our guests, public.

However, December does take its toll. The Cathedral staff, the volunteers, the building itself are on duty day after day. Services have to be prepared, printed, choreographed and rehearsed, largely back-room jobs unseen by most people but vital to every act of worship. Vergers have to move furniture around, put up staging, prepare robes, make sure that the ceremonial details are taken care of, solve problems on the day, generally see that everything passes off smoothly. Seating plans have to be devised and the volunteer duty stewards need to understand them before worshippers arrive. The church will be decorated near Christmas, and need daily cleaning and tidying. Organists and choir have music to practise, ministers have sermons and prayers to prepare. For large services there will be representatives of the media to brief, security operations to manage, first aiders to oversee, civic guests to receive. Even a simple service takes a lot of preparation; run several of them back-to-back on top of the daily services of matins, eucharist and evensong and you can see that it all takes a lot of careful planning. This is why we have each year's pattern of Advent and Christmas services carefully laid out a full 18 months in advance. We have learned the hard way that not to do this ends up by exhausting everyone. Not to mention the awful possibility that the wheels could come off....

'It's your busy time' people often say to us clergy at this time of year. I wish there were a better answer than feebly to agree that there is a lot to do. Advent ought to give us space to take the long view. This means reflecting on the ultimate things of human life itself, traditionally the season's themes of death, judgment, hell and heaven. And also on the meaning of the Incarnation itself: what Christmas is really for and why we make so much of it. There's a real tension between doing this through the Cathedral's solemn Advent worship while at the same time being ungrudgingly hospitable to everyone else's desire to anticipate Christmas early in the month. We can be singing 'O come O come Emmanuel' and 'Yea, Lord, we greet thee' on any day in December and feel thoroughly mixed up as we do. After all, we wouldn't sing 'Thine be the glory' during Passiontide. 

There isn't an easy way of resolving these tensions. But I try to suspend my own personal welcome to the Nativity until Christmas Eve itself, say to myself that until then, I'm singing carols 'proleptically', in the future tense so to speak, keeping the present until we finally arrive there. So when I get into the pulpit at the Nine Lessons and Carols on the afternoon of Christmas Eve and invite the huge crowd to 'go in heart and mind even unto Bethlehem to see this thing that has come to pass', it comes as a fresh revelation of a great and might wonder. I admit it - I am powerfully moved by the words of that bidding prayer. This 'surprise by joy' has never failed yet. 

And even after evensong on Christmas Day, when the choir has gone home and the Cathedral is quiet once more, the vaults and arcades still re-echo in mind and heart to the remembered tidings of comfort and joy we have celebrated in this past month, and to the glory that has come among us, never to depart. 

Heaven in a Shop Window: a meditation at Christmas

Here is a piece I wrote for Christmas, published today in the Durham Times and other local papers.
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For many North East people, a highlight of the Christmas season is going to Newcastle to admire the windows in Fenwick’s. They are always beautiful to look at, even if you have to queue in the bracing December air with scores of excited children to get anywhere near them.

This year’s theme is Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s Alice books were my favourite bedtime reading as a child. Maybe that tells you something…. But back to the windows. They are wonderfully dramatic and colourful. You can see the White Rabbit and his house, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mat Hatter’s tea party, Caterpillar on his mushroom, the Cheshire Cat, and a fearsome Queen of Hearts looking for all the world as if she were wearing a bishop’s mitre. It’s all beautifully done.

In the hard-nosed environment of Christmas shopping, it’s good to see one store at least enter into the spirit of the season without having to promote its wares. I’m not naïve about this: no doubt Fenwick’s have calculated the value their displays add to the bottom line, and have decided that it’s worth the investment. Despite that, I see these gorgeous windows as playfulness for its own sake, a feast for the eyes that celebrates the season by delighting passers-by like me.

  

What’s it got to do with Christmas?, you ask yourself. Well, the connection isn’t as direct as the Nativity windows Fenwick’s devised a few years ago. But Christmas can speak to us in many different ways. One of them can be by stretching our imagination, helping us think thoughts and dream dreams beyond the ordinary and every day.
 
Looking back to my childhood, I can see that this was what Alice did for me. I loved the thought of plunging down a rabbit hole and falling into a new world, or pushing through a mirror on the wall and stepping into topsy-turvy-dom. In those imaginary places, the laws of normal life didn’t apply any more. Nothing was what it seemed. And yet it didn’t feel any the less real. In some ways, these worlds of fiction seemed almost tangible, populated by characters you got to know. Yes, in the end Alice has to wake up from her dream. But her journey has changed her. And those of us who travel with her.

I don’t reckon it’s fanciful to think about Christmas in this kind of way. It’s a time of year when we not only dream about a kinder, fairer, better world, but even dare to try living it out. How? By thinking of other people through Christmas greetings, the presents we give as symbols of our love and care, noticing the needs of others far and near and responding with compassion. We long for a new start for our world, our society, ourselves and those we care for. And in small ways, we enter into the spirit of that new beginning.

These are the dreams, the hopes, the vision embodied in the Child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas. We ask so much of this Infant in the manger. And we are right to. When he becomes a man he starts to speak about the ‘kingdom of heaven’. It’s the language of the grand vision, the great hope, the wonderful dream: ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven’. In that kingdom, things are different. There is no more conflict or pain. People don’t hurt or damage one another. Everyone lives in peace and harmony. There is happiness instead of grief, laughter not tears. Who doesn’t long for such a world?

Alice ends on a charming note. She wakes up and runs home for tea, thinking ‘what a wonderful dream it had been’. Her sister lingers, thinking ‘how this same little sister would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and happy summer days’.

Christmas says: this tender vision of innocence, happiness and a ‘simple and loving heart’ is God’s gift to us and all humanity. In Wonderland, goodness wins out against all that is cruel or hostile. This is what the Infant Jesus promises us. It’s why we love him, why his birthday fills us with hope once more.

If you live in the North East, you've still got time to see the Alice windows. They paint a wonderful dream. And hint that the reality can be even better. Happy Christmas.

The Next Generation of Church Leaders: thoughts on the Green Report

I left theological college more than 40 years ago. In my leaving interview, my tutor said: ‘Michael, it’s possible that one day you might be invited to become a bishop or a dean – who knows what God might call you to? (Pause for wry smile.) But if you are approached, think carefully about which of those two paths would best fit your personality and gifts.’ When I was asked to become a cathedral dean I willingly said yes, first at Sheffield and then here at Durham. That makes me ‘duodeanal’ (cue groan). I have loved this role and would unhesitatingly say that being a dean is one of the best jobs in the Church of England.

Looking back on how I arrived here in the providence of God, I am amazed that nothing was ever done to help me think about taking on this role. Of course, my ministry before this taught me a huge amount about leadership in the church, especially being a parish priest. Then I joined the cathedral chapter at Coventry, observed my boss the provost (as he then was) at close quarters, tried to learn from his example. But most of what I now know about senior office I acquired ‘on the job’, often the hard way. I have made many mistakes, but I hope I have learned from some of them. That of course is how we tend to learn the important things of life. Experience is a great teacher.

But I can’t help feeling there was something haphazard about a system that did almost nothing to prepare my generation of church leaders. Two of my children have done the excellent ‘Future Leaders’ programme that trains teachers for senior roles in education. The selection and appointment process for deans was always thorough, but it didn't involve much 'discernment' as we now call it. There was no ‘accompaniment’, no testing of my motives, no exploration of my path in ministry. I said to bishops years ago that this should be taken with the kind of seriousness that is the norm for candidates who offer for ordination as deacons and priests. I think this is especially important for bishops because the episcopacy is the odd one out when it comes to preparing people for the three orders of ministry.

The Green Report Talent Management for Future leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans seeks to change this. At last, the Church will identify men and women from among whom the bishops and deans of the future will mostly be drawn. This ‘talent pool’ of up to 150 'high potential' candidates across the nation will be nurtured for a future leadership role in the church. There is to be a more rigorous approach to the professional development and in-service training of senior post holders. As somebody who has helped with the induction of new deans for the past few years, I welcome this thinking in principle, and have said so in broad discussions I have participated in. No-one will argue with the three components of church leadership that are identified in the report: reshaping ministry, leading the church into growth, and contributing to the common good. And no-one will argue with the importance attached to achieving excellence in both the leadership and management of the church.

My reservations are to do with what theological and spiritual wisdom underlies this thinking. Some of these are echoed in a perceptive critique from a fellow dean, Martyn Percy, in this week’s Church Times.

The tone of the report is heavily influenced by the language and assumptions of leadership and management theory. And this, precisely at a time when writers on systems and organisations are recognising that no one-size-fits-all model can be imposed on institutions that are as diverse as individuals, with their own histories, characteristics, eccentricities and if you like, ‘personality’ types.  So while there is a lot to learn from the public, private and voluntary sectors (and I am the first to admit my debt to secular leadership training), the experience of one organisation is never entirely transferable. When it comes to the church with its long and often quirky history it’s especially important to be wary of organisational ‘solutions’ that are imported from somewhere else. I doubt if an MBA can be a serious answer to the church’s search for the best possible leadership and management.

I am worried about the erosion of the traditional Christian way of speaking about vocation and the spiritual path. Words like formation, awareness, discernment and above all wisdom feature prominently in the classic writers on Christian ministry. These profound concepts, carrying as they do such deep spiritual and pastoral resonances cannot be collapsed into some generic textbook notion of ‘leadership’. I want to make it clear straight away that I don't regard any of these classical concepts as 'soft' or lacking in rigour. On the contrary: they are more exacting than any of the leadership or management criteria listed in organisational check-lists, because they go to the heart of how someone inhabits their role. I asked in a recent forum why this rich tradition was so little referenced in the report. Deans in cathedrals like mine are the direct successors of Benedictine priors, so how could the Rule of St Benedict, one of the best manuals on spiritual leadership ever written, be passed over without notice? Or Gregory the Great's  Pastoral Rule, for centuries presented to new bishops at their ordination?

I can’t speak about bishops. But I know a bit about deaning after 20 years in this role. As a dean I am many things. I preside over a part of the nation’s heritage, a medium-sized enterprise with a multi-million pound turnover, a retail outlet and catering facility, a leisure destination, a public park, a music-and-arts centre, a place of education and a sizeable piece of estate. I need, and the Chapter needs, to draw constantly on a huge amount of expertise and skill on the part of those whose day-job it is to lead and manage the various departments of the cathedral’s life. We couldn't do it without one hundred per cent collaboration and a great deal of trust in one another. I am proud of my staff who do what they do so professionally and so well.

But I need to be completely clear about what lies at the centre of my calling as a priest in this senior church role. It is to be the Head of a Religious Foundation, that is to say, a spiritual leader like the abbots and priors before me. The most important thing I do is to be in my stall twice each day to pray with this community of faith. This is where the distinctive vocational task of a dean has its source and end, and where leadership as configured in a Christian way is modelled. From there springs the dean's role as an interpreter: speaking for the cathedral in society, and for society in the cathedral. This mean helping the wider community understand what at its heart a cathedral is meant to be because of what its gospel means. And it entails helping the cathedral to grasp what it is to be a faith community in our contemporary, complex culture with its ever-loosening ties to organised religion. This is much more than being a good corporate CEO who runs a tight and efficient ship. It's a theological and vocational task, and it is at this fundamental level that nurture, accompaniment, formation and training must be focused. We could say that it is the human and spiritual ‘ecology’ within which the role of a dean and every senior church leader is lived out. 

Like the environment, we need to ‘green’ the spiritual ecology of the church if it is going to be sustainable and flourish, and not be eroded by an Athenian love-affair with whatever is the current organisational doctrine. The Green Report points in important directions and I have welcomed this new focus on leadership in the church. But it is work in progress, not the finished product. More debate is needed, particularly on how the Christian spiritual tradition can impart a deeper wisdom texture to the thinking of the working group. For example, good spiritual accompaniment will be as important as professional mentoring (which is also vital). Like some other matters in the report, it's not a case of either-or but both-and. This is something those who have been bishops and deans for a while could offer.

I'm suggesting that In the ecology of God's people, the Green report could benefit from becoming a bit more ‘green’. All of us who are currently bishops and deans will I'm sure want to contribute to that task for the good of the whole church.

Cathedrals: a success story?

What do we make of the latest statistics about cathedral attendances?

I've been a cathedral dean for half my ministry, and was a canon residentiary before that. So I once knew a fair amount about Coventry Cathedral and Sheffield Cathedral. 12 years at Durham completes a trio of three very different cathedrals (and if you count my years as an honorary vicar choral at Salisbury, that makes four).

In the last decade or so, the rhetoric has been that cathedrals are 'a success story of the Church of England'. (Some immodestly replace the indefinite article with the definite.) I've often wondered what this means, and whether success/failure language ought to belong to the way we perceive church life. In the heritage sector, there is now much more talk about the importance of 'intangible values', not just the things we can observe and measure. I'm not the only one to worry that church growth/fresh expressions language is seduced by the easy appeal of measurables ('bums on seats'). I doubt if these are what ultimately matter when it comes to understanding the dynamics of a faith community.

The metrics of weekday service attendance in cathedrals (which has doubled in 10 years) are telling, but it's not obvious what they mean. Here in Durham, the simple act of transferring the daily eucharist from the early morning to the middle of the day tripled or quadrupled attendances at a stroke. Some worshipper are regulars, but many (often the majority) are guests who are pleased to find that they have stumbled across a service during their visit. It helps to convey the message that cathedrals are active, working churches.

But pace some other deans, I doubt if many Durham Cathedral regulars are coming in preference to attending Sunday worship. I see a number of familiar Sunday faces at all our weekday services (that day's volunteers in the Cathedral, for example). I know plenty of others whom I've met at Sunday services in their parish churches. What weekday worship can offer is the chance of 'double belonging': parish on Sunday, cathedral during the week, especially on festivals and holy days. It's a mark of these people's discipleship that public worship isn't simply a Sunday only business.

The other key aspect of weekday worship is its evangelistic potential. John Wesley famously called the eucharist a 'converting ordinance'. The same is true of the daily office, especially choral evensong. It can come as a surprise to unchurched visitors that the Cathedral is not simply a grand heritage site, and that religion actually goes on inside it. ('So you still hold religious services in this place. How amazing!') I've known people in all the cathedrals I've worked in who came to faith through attending evensong. We have a steady stream of choir parents who are confirmed here as a result of coming to hear their children sing. St Paul says that worship 'shows forth the Lord's death until he comes' - a strongly missionary idea. So cathedrals work hard at making liturgy not only beautiful and transcendent, but also accessible, humane and warm.

Perhaps cathedrals are themselves a genuine 'fresh expression', not like a parish church, not better or worse, simply different. In Durham we rarely use the word 'congregation' because that doesn't really describe the communities that gather here for prayer and worship. They are more like the third order of a religious community, associating to and identifying with the 'foundation' in its discipline of daily and weekly common prayer. The extent of some of our worshippers' utter commitment to daily prayer both moves and shames me.

Cathedral life can mean loss as well as gain. You won't find in a cathedral the same quasi-family intimacy you get in a parish. You won't find the same sense of locality that parish boundaries create. On the other hand, a cathedral can affirm and help develop a person's rule of life by offering a range of services and opportunities for spiritual exploration that are beyond the scope of most parishes. And it's definitely not true to say that most worshippers drift in and out of cathedrals without properly 'belonging'. A recent study of cathedrals has found, perhaps surprisingly, that cathedral people feel a strong sense of loyalty and commitment to their place. In all the cathedrals I have worked in, their communities have been made up of loyally committed people. But they practise a different kind of 'belonging'.

I don't think this aspect of cathedral ecclesiology has been sufficiently studied. It would be good to set a theologian this task so that cathedrals can understand 'success' in more nuanced ways, and can shape their mission in the light of it.

Seasons of Durham Life 2: November

'Now is the time for the burning of the leaves' says Lawence Binyon of the late autumn. The trees are stripped bare. It can take you by surprise if there is an overnight storm or a sudden sharp frost. This year, November has brought calm, warm days as if to coax the golden leaves to stay a little longer. But they know it is time. And now the trees in the College and on the river banks are almost bare. The peninsula is bedding down for winter.

November is an up-and-down month in the Cathedral. It begins on an upbeat with All Saints' Day: all light and splendour and warmth. But next day it's All Souls when we remember our dead. So the liturgy takes us from alleluias to 'requiem aeternam' in the space of just a few hours. All Souls sets the tone for so much of the month: elegiac, reflective, sombre. By now it is entirely dark at evensong each day. The Cathedral vaults are lost in the gloom, though they still echo to the singing of choristers. Sometimes there are just a handful of worshippers strung out along the length of the quire, almost lost in the dark 17th century stalls. The nave may be quite empty. 

Regulars in cathedrals wouldn't wish it otherwise. When you have several hundred thousand visitors streaming through the Cathedral, you welcome these weeks marked by a quieter pace between October half term and Advent when it all starts up again. It can feel like a mini-Lent, a chance to breathe and take stock. The Cathedral has its own tranquil beauty in this quiet empty season. 'Ordinary time' is a precious gift in the liturgical calendar, just as it is in human life.

The 2nd or 3rd Sunday of November is Remembrance, with Armistice Day close by. The service that culminates in the two minute silence and act of remembrance echoes the reflective character of the month. In the 12 years I have been Dean, I have been intrigued by how big this service has become. It's interesting how many students and young people come nowadays. Undoubtedly, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq have a lot to do with it, along with a deeper awareness of what we owe to our armed services, and how fragile peace really is. And perhaps, too, a greater sense of citizenship and how ceremony in public life, whether it is celebration or lament, can bind a society together. 

But November is also marked by a number of celebrations that are special to Durham. There are red-letter days marked by joyful services and processions as we remember those who have played a part in the story of  North East England. St Margaret of Scotland, a great 11th century friend of the Cathedral, and St Hild, the foremost female leader of the Saxon church in the 7th century, are commemorated on successive days when we go in procession to their altars swinging the incense and singing hymns. Other Durham people remembered this month include the much-loved 20th century Archbishop Michael Ramsey in whose memory a new stained-glass window was installed a few years ago, and the 15th century Bishop Thomas Langley, Chancellor of England, whose tomb is in the Galilee Chapel and who founded the two schools associated with the Cathedral.

The litany of famous North East names are gathered up in another November occasion, the annual celebration of Founders and Benefactors (or 'Bounders and Malefactors' as it is affectionately known). This service on the last Sunday of the church year brings people together from across the North East to celebrate the generosity of past ages towards our great public institutions. Civic leaders come to give thanks for the life of Durham City, its University and the Cathedral without which neither would have existed. The service culminates in a procession to St Cuthbert's shrine where posies are laid on his tomb as our tribute to the humble man of Lindisfarne to whom the North of England looks as the fountainhead and inspiration of so much of our past and present. This year we celebrate the centenary of this service in its modern form, though its roots go back to the Middle Ages when a 'Liber Vitae' recording the names of the Priory's benefactors was laid on the altar in their memory each year. We now have a modern Liber Vitae which names all who have supported the Cathedral through generous giving and loyal voluntary service in recent times, and this too is laid on the high altar together with the facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

After this burst of colourful splendour, it is back to a few more days to reflect as the daylight continues to fade, and the year grows old and prepares to slip gently into its night. By then it will be Advent. 

Seasons of Durham Life 1: October

October feels like the start of the new year in the Cathedral. It’s true that the rhythm of Cathedral meetings is already a month old, the Chorister School term has begun, the choir is back from its summer break so that once more daily choral evensong is restored to us - how we have missed it!

But more than anything, October in Durham means the influx of thousands of students. No sooner have the summer tourists gone than it’s time for another invasion. The freshers make up the first wave – returners have a few days grace. You step out of the medieval gate of the precinct and find the Bailey festooned with welcome banners over the colleges, the narrow streets heaving with young people, bewildered parents with cars packed to the gunwales, baffled by Durham’s arcane traffic system while delivering their offspring for the first time. On Volvo Sunday as it’s called, residents don’t try to drive off the peninsula. It only takes one driver in a big 4x4 attempting a 9-point turn in a street no wider than a car’s length and you lose the will to live.

All new students are presented in the Cathedral to be matriculated by college. This is the formal ceremony of admission to the University. The name comes from the matricula or register that a representative student from each college signs during the occasion. There are so many students that it takes five ceremonies to get all of them through. For most, it will be their first time inside the Cathedral; for some, their first time inside any Christian church.

I scan their faces. Most are expectant, some look anxious or uncertain about what is about to happen, a few fold their arms as if defying the occasion to move them. How they dress tells you a lot. As Dean and ex officio member of the University Council, I sit on the platform with the Vice-Chancellor and senior staff and give a welcome. I tell the students that I hope that they will always feel at home in this great place, whatever their faith. I invite them to make the most of what it offers. I also say that students bring great liveliness to Durham, and that’s a gift to us, despite the grumbles of a few locals about how the University is ‘taking over’ our little city.

Going to services is part of life for surprising number of students. I say surprising because the environment of higher education in Britain is mostly resolutely secular. They head for their college chapels, or for churches in the city of all styles and denominations, or both; and some of them become regulars at the Cathedral. Some were brought up in faith and are committed worshippers. Some have recently found faith and are excited by its life-changing impact on their lives. Some are curious, some come because of the building, the liturgy and the music. October always sees a noticeable increase in congregations both on Sundays and weekdays. One or two even find their way to the daily service of morning prayer (which we say at 8.45am: later than most cathedrals, not because we are lazy but because it’s an hour when some students at least will be up and about and on their way to lectures or supervisions). Some start volunteering in the Cathedral as welcomers, servers or singers in one of the voluntary choirs.

You mustn’t think that the Cathedral’s life is dominated by the University. It isn’t.  But when you are working and praying (and in the case of the clergy living) cheek-by-jowl with it, indeed, when you are historically the institution that gave it birth, it’s understandable that it features prominently. This is especially true at the beginning and end of the academic year (when students flock into the Cathedral once more, this time for their graduation ceremonies).

What other cathedral has such opportunities for outreach to students at such a key time in their development? Hundreds walk past it, even through it, every day on their way to their studies, shopping or socialising. Some of these young men and women will be in positions of great power and influence in the future. We owe it to them to grasp this opportunity. And we try to be alive to how the gifts we inherit in Durham – our wonderful building, its community, its saints, its heritage, its music – are among the tools God has given us to use in this mission that is both his and ours.

Seasons of Durham Life: a monthly blog

The seasons of the year are like tides that ebb and flow. We experience them as peoples and societies, as churches, as local communities, and in our personal lives as men, women and children. To change the metaphor, each time of year has its own distinctive colour, its own native accent.

No two months are alike. The turning of the seasons with their solstices and equinoxes, the public calendar of holidays, celebrations and commemorations, the liturgical cycles of feasts and fasts of every faith, our own personal and family anniversaries: all these go into the rich and complex colouring that makes up the year.

I’ve been thinking about this during the autumn. Recovering from surgery in October, I have had time to take gentle walks around Durham’s river banks. To me they have never looked lovelier than this autumn. Perhaps that’s simply because in convalescence I have had to walk slowly, so I have noticed them, watched the leaves turn from green to gold to brown, then fall and return to the earth in coppery piles underneath the trees that gave them birth.

I thought I'd blog on this unending variety show of the changing seasons. To anchor it in a particular place and community, I’m going to try to reflect the distinctiveness of each month in Durham Cathedral starting with October. Maybe it will shed a little light on what goes on in cathedrals from one month to the next, indeed, something of what a jobbing dean gets up to. This isn’t stuff that tends to feature in my blog  - I almost said because of its sheer ordinariness. But that’s precisely the point: it’s in the ordinary as much as the unusual or spectacular that we see, and begin to understand.

So you may like to read on to the next post on this blog. This first instalment is a belated reflection on October. November will follow soon.