The Olympic Flame Arrives in Durham

In a dean’s life there are occasional diversions from the solemn business of looking after a Cathedral. 

This weekend the Olympic Torch was in Durham.  Early on Sunday morning, a lot of people gathered in front of the Cathedral to see Durham cricketer Paul Collingwood light the Torch before being taking it in procession down to the market place.  It was timed to depart at 0833 with the railway precision of a French TGV.  The Cathedral choir sang anthems (including, appropriately, Hail Gladdening Light despite the line ‘the lights of evening round us shine).  The Chorister School turned out in force, as did the civic dignitaries, the media and the public.  The rain had stopped.  It was all very merry. 

I did some interviews with press, radio and TV.  One of the media people asked a question I hadn’t expected.  Did I secretly hanker after holding the Olympic Torch for myself?  Not especially, I said, though I was pleased for the many ‘ordinary’ people who had been honoured by being asked to carry it.  Then it was time to light the flame at the Cathedral door.  I found myself standing next to Paul Collingwood so I asked him how heavy the Torch was.  ‘See for yourself’ he said and handed it to me.  I held it up in the approved way. At once a score of cameras started clicking. Apparently a cleric in a cassock holding the Torch had some novelty value, even if it wasn’t yet lit. 

I’d expected that it would all simply be a bit of fun, not much more.  But as it was happening, I realised that perhaps it carried a deeper symbolism.

First, lighting the Olympic flame outside a religious building reminded me of the origins of the Olympic Games in classical Greece. In ancient times the Games were deeply imbued with religious ceremonies and rites, indeed they were thought of as a religious event held in honour of the gods who lived on the sacred mountain of Olympus.  So what about today?  Some would throw their hands up in horror at the thought of linking the Games with God.  Yet the question is not whether God will be present in the London Olympics (we know he will be: as Carl Jung famously inscribed on the lintel of his front door, recognised or not, the Deity will always be present), but how we shall recognise and know his unseen presence there. 

Second, lighting the Torch at the door of the Cathedral recalled for me the lighting of the new fire early in the morning of Easter Day. The Easter liturgy is the greatest service of the year.  The new fire symbolises the light of the risen Christ whom we look forward to greeting in the eucharist. This unconscious resonance with Easter seemed especially apt on a Sunday morning when the early morning eucharist had just been celebrated inside the Cathedral. Light is a great symbol for all people of faith.  Perhaps the Olympic flame and the Games themselves can raise the sights of people going through dark times during this economic crisis.  Perhaps it can even bring hope.

Third, the ancient Olympics were a time of truce between peoples in conflict. Warfare was forbidden while the Games were taking place.  The Flame seems to have had a remarkable effect in bringing people together out on the streets as it passes through cities, towns and villages.  It helps to build community.  Perhaps we should cut through the dark side of sport with its obsession with power, image and big money and think of it instead as re-creation. When I was a youngster learning to play rugby, our instructor told us: ‘the object of a game is to enjoy yourself.  Never forget that’. Joy is always a clue that God is around.  So the Olympics could be a striking image of the kingdom of God.  When people of every race and background gather together for celebration and recreation, when the barriers of division are broken down, at least for a while, isn’t this a picture of the world as God would like it to be?

Finally (and perhaps I should have put this first), I thought about ancient Greece again, and how the Olympics are its gift to the world.  I recalled the agonies (a good Greek sporting word for the struggles an athlete would endure) modern Greece is going through right now.  On Sunday, while the Torch was passing through Durham, the Greek people were going to the polls in an election that the whole of Europe was watching anxiously.  Their crisis is our crisis.  As we celebrate the London Olympics 2012, it’s important that we don’t allow them to become a big distraction from the problems our world is facing. Rather, we should allow the Games to give us a new vision of God’s world as it might be shaped one day.  So this is not a time to forget the people of Greece but to hold them in our hearts and pray for a better future for them and for us all. 

It was a good start to the day for Durham.  It was fun.  And it was thought-provoking. 

Where are we now on Women as Bishops?

Where are we now on women as bishops?

We should this summer have been looking forward to the meeting of General Synod in July and a confident vote in favour.  We had years of study, consultation and debate.  The Synod had unambiguously stated its belief in the principle and how it wanted to see it implemented.  It provided for a statutory code of practice that would safeguard the consciences of those who for theological reasons could not go along with it.  I was a member of the Synod when these debates were taking place.  They were intelligent and fair.  In the past year, 42 out of the 44 dioceses in England have approved the draft legislation.  That feels like a fair following wind.  What could deflect the church now? 

The House of Bishops!

As we know, the bishops considered the draft legislation at a recent meeting and decided to amend it.  They reckoned that the two amendments were slight and would not make much difference to the proposed measure. One of them is indeed simply a matter of clarification.  But the other is significant.  It has the effect of permanently endorsing within the church the position of those who are opposed to the ordination of women.  It does this by guaranteeing to provide male bishops and priests whose theological convictions about women’s ministry are consistent with the beliefs held by parishes that seek ordained leadership from men only. For ever…. In those parishes, whether anglo-catholic or conservative evangelical, it would be a case of ‘only men allowed’.    

What’s the problem with that?  Shouldn’t the church be generous in providing an honoured place for people who don’t agree?  Of course it should.  It always has.  Ours is a broad church where we differ about many issues: how to read the Bible, what we believe about the sacraments, what we think about human sexuality and so on.  But we don’t legislate around those matters.  We live with difference on the basis of common faith, mutual trust and our sharing in the sacraments.  It’s called koinonia, ‘communion’. 

But the bishops’ amendment privileges the issue of women bishops and priests by saying: unlike any of the other things we don’t agree about, on this we intend to give legal protection to the minority who cannot come with us on this journey.  That would have the effect of disabling women bishops themselves by limiting their authority.  So inequality would be built into the college of bishops because its male and female members would not have the same powers or freedoms.  That would institutionalise discrimination at the very top.  And it would send out the message that the Church of England did not have complete conviction to say ‘yes’ to women bishops and take the consequences of that decision.  It would be a half-hearted compromise.

There’s something else.  How could the House of Bishops contemplate tampering with draft legislation that had so convincingly been approved by the Synod itself and by 42 of the 44 dioceses?  That is an overwhelming consensus.  We all thought it would be more than enough to take it back unchanged to the Synod in July for the final decision to be made.

I am sure that the bishops were acting with the best of intentions.  They wanted to sugar a pill that some would find very bitter to swallow. But good process is at stake here.  We often repeat the mantra that the Church of England is ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’.  The role of governance is to hold and shape the operation of power and authority in an organisation, to ensure that decisions are made properly and due processes are observed.  This is what the General Synod exists for.  It is there to make sure that church decisions are made in a way that is transparent, accountable and can be trusted.  It safeguards integrity.  The Bishops can’t act independently of the Synod’s wishes any more than I as a cathedral dean can act independently of the chapter I chair. Leadership in any organisation needs the checks and balances of good governance.

It feels as though the House of Bishops has exerted force majeure and imposed its will on the Synod.  As a rank and file cleric, I am dismayed that my elected representatives have not been consulted about it.  And because of the compromise now built into the draft measure, I am not sure I would want to vote for it.  I am not sure that Parliament with its care about equality would support it in this form. 

I posted a blog a few months ago with the title ‘Women Bishops – Let’s Do it!’ (You'll find it on this site.) It’s not too late for the Bishops to withdraw the amendment.  I hope they will.  If they do, then we can take this great step in the conviction that it is biblical, that it is catholic, and that it is just and right.  But let’s not do it at all unless we can embrace it with confidence and joy. 

For a careful statement on the Bishops’ amendment see the statement by WATCH at

www.womenandthechurch.org

In Weardale

After the excitements of the Jubilee in Durham, we have escaped for a couple of days to the North Pennines where we have a little house. Rookhope is a village in a remote side valley in Upper Weardale. Up here at about 1200 feet, the fells are wide, lonely and silent. It is the highest settlement in the valley: beyond, the land is bleak and treeless, broken only by abandoned farm buildings and homesteads and the sandstone walls that run up the fell sides. We look out over the village and up the valley; at the top 5 miles away a high ridge closes off the view. This is the watershed between tributaries of the Wear and the Tyne.  Beyond lies Northumberland.

You get a lot of 'weather' here. Clouds mass above the high fells to the west heralding the fierce rainstorms that power down the valley. The sky is often leaden and lowering for days on end. The snow can be relentless and lie in sheltered pockets until May: Upper Weardale is said to be the snowiest place in England. All roads descend into Rookhope and we have known times when it has been impossible to get in or out. Life has always been hard in the Pennine dales.

The valley sits in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  And there is great beauty in this environment, though you have to like your landscapes tough and gritty rather than intimate and charming.  Guests etherealise over the marvellous view from the living room.  'To look out on all this, just as nature intended!' they sometimes say. But this is not altogether how nature intended the dale.  The big industry in the North Pennines up to the early 20th century was lead mining. Its fossils are everywhere in our valley for Rookhope was once a thriving centre of mining. Our house is in a row of former miners' dwellings, true Victorian back-to-backs that were knocked through in the 1960s. The view up the valley takes in the arch that used to carry the flue bearing poisonous gases from the smelters to the fell-tops.  The unmistakable outlines of spoil-heaps, long grassed-over, are everywhere. Below the house is the trackbed of an inclined railway up which wagons were hauled by a fixed steam engine: the ruined engine house is still there on the flank of Bolt's Law. It was the highest standard-gauge railway in England.  You can walk the track-bed for miles across the fells. 

W.H. Auden loved this exposed, inhospitable lead-mining country. A midlander, he felt the pull of 'north' and as a young man loved nothing better than exploring the wreckage of this once flourishing industry. He found his poetic voice at Rookhope. He had a defining moment when he idly threw a pebble down a disused mineshaft and imagined it disappearing into the dark and distant void as its echoes died away into silence. In 1940 he wrote in 'New Year Letter':

                                                                                There
                                         In Rookhope I was first aware
                                         Of self and not-self, Death and Dread....
                                         There I dropped pebbles, listened, heard
                                         The reservoir of darkness stirred.

Today Rookhope is visited by walkers and cyclists doing the cross-country Coast to Coast route. The village pub is busy in summer: their b&b trade probably keeps it going. There is a school, a small shop and a church where Anglicans and Methodists worship together. The villagers are warm and friendly and are glad that off-comers like us enjoy being here. When it comes to practical jobs, you seem to be able to get anything done here or close by: building work, joinery, plumbing, electrics.... Help is always at hand: when we had to dig the car out of the snow, or get a table into the house round impossibly tight corners, folk were cheerfully willing. And although Durham Dales people don't wear their heart on their sleeve, Rookhopers (is that what they are called?) are kind, warm-hearted neighbours. We love coming here.

Yet life is hard for many in the upper Dale. The abandoned farms tell their own story of drift away from the countryside.  With local government reorganisation, people feel further away than ever from where decisions are made.  Public transport and local services are patchy.  The cement works, once a major employer in the Dale, has gone.  Tourism is important and growing, but it is not flourishing on the scale you find in Teesdale let alone the Yorkshire Dales. Yet there are many attractions here.  The Dale has some of the best walking country in England.  Killhope open air museum is a great evocation of lead-mining.  The Weardale steam railway (whose opening I blessed) has one of the longest heritage lines in the country and deserves to succeed. 

It will take time for this forgotten valley to be rediscovered.  But to all who love wide open spaces, Weardale, and our side-valley, are Pennine jewels.  In summer you can walk the fells all day with only the grouse and curlews for company. June days seem almost endless: it is late when the day's last embers flicker out behind the high ridge that marks the watershed. In winter after briefer forays against the cold or rain, you head homewards where smoke from a score of hearths hangs over the village's homes huddling together for shelter, and you look forward to an evening in front of the stove with books or music or conversation. There is no mobile phone signal in Rookhope, and in our house, no TV or Internet*. Life is simpler here. It seems to cleanse the mind.  Perhaps there is more room for God in these remote places.

*So I have travelled down to Stanhope, capital of Upper Weardale, to post this.

Why I love Romanesque

On Sunday we hosted a visit of a group of Cathedral Friends from Rochester. At lunch I welcomed them. In the way that you do when you get up to speak spontaneously, I heard myself saying: 'I'm very glad that you've come all this way from one Romanesque cathedral to visit another. We Romanesque cathedrals need to stick together in the face of Gothic supremacy'. This was well received. And Durham people liked it when one of our guests responded by saying that they were pleased to be visiting their 'big brother cathedral'.

After this good-humoured banter, I thought a bit more about what I'd meant. I've noticed that there is a kinship between lovers of Romanesque architecture: it's a shared passion that is more than simply admiration. We deans of Romanesque cathedrals feel that we are a privileged bunch. Why is this? Is it heritage, history and archtecture? Of course, these play a large part. Romanesque is older than Gothic, so that gives it antiquity value. The fact that it comes from a more remote past than Gothic adds to its fascination: it belongs to 'another country: they do things differently there'. But I think there's more to it than simply pastness....or even vastness (because Romanesque churches and cathedrals can be monumental: no-one in England had built like this since the Romans left).

Let's agree what we are talking about. 'Romanesque' means 'in the spirit of the Roman'. It was coined to describe architecture that harked back to the classical Roman style. But that style was only dimly remembered across the so-called 'dark ages', so 'Romanesque' also had the connotation of being pastiche, even debased imitation. In the UK we tend to call this style 'Norman', because of how it took hold of the nation after the Norman Conquest: the invaders were builders on a grand scale not least because this was one way of expressing their power. I prefer 'Romanesque' because it covers a style that flourished all over Europe in the 10th, 11th and early 12th centuries. The Saxons were adopting it in England before the Normans ever set foot here.

What are its features? If you walk round Durham Cathedral you can see them worked up in their fullest, finest expression: whoever its original architect was, he created one of Europe's masterpieces. The sense of mass is one mark of it: huge, elemental forms like the procession of alternating piers that define the nave and quire like an avenue of great trees; the thick walls pierced by modest round-headed windows that contain the space as if it were a cave in which to hide and be kept safe; and in Durham's case, the high vaults, Europe's first experiment in throwing a stone canopy across volumes so lofty and wide. In the vaults at Durham, as in many Romanesque churches in France, you can see the pointed arch being developed as a new construction technique to strengthen the building, a discovery that would prove vital to the evolution of Gothic. The Normans were engineering pioneers. They took risks in building on such a scale and it paid off. The Cathedral is still here to prove it.

But what about the deeper meaning of Romanesque? And why do its afficionados like me say we love it? Here it's less easy to be precise. But here are some tentative suggestions.

First, because it of its rich spirituality of space. Romanesque churches, even intimate ones, have a wonderful ability to suggest that space means something by pointing beyond itself to the ultimate Mystery of God. You walk up the nave at Durham and the alternating rhythms of decorated drum piers and compound pillars to right and left tell you that this is journey with a purpose, a pilgrimage if you like. Or you stand in the marvellous, too little known, crypt chapel of Durham Castle and are surrounded by a forest of columns as if that numinous underground place in the bowels of a fortress you are protected and don't need to be afraid. The subtle way light and dark play across Romanesque spaces - chiaroscuro - is to me one of its glories: richer and more complex than the brilliant light-filled spaces of high Gothic. Life is light-dark, joy and woe. I love buildings in which I can inhabit this world's complexity and my own, and begin to 'read' it as God does.

Secondly, because of its sense of proportion. In Durham, everything seems 'right': the vaults are not too high or heavy, the piers are not too thick, the nave is not too wide. It's a Goldilocks church. Perhaps this represents the Benedictine love of balance that marked the spiritual values of the community that built it: human life is at its most noble and beautiful when there is stability and proportion and everything has its proper priority and place. This is a church that seems to respect and ennoble your humanity. It neither gives you ideas above your station, nor does it crush it into nothingness. As a young boy said once after a visit, it seems to wrap itself round you. It's a beautiful way of putting it.

And thirdly, because of its fearless witness to the majesty of God. Romanesque churches were built big and strong. Their builders believed they were creating not just sacred spaces to worship in and process around. Their very existence said something about God's rule and power in an age that was hazardous and cruel, where life was short and often cheap. The church or cathedral was a sign of something that rose above (literally) the changes and chances of life, that pointed beyond our human mortality. Yes, these churches were also meant to be reminders of human rule and power, i.e. the Normans': Durham Cathedral and Castle on their acropolis are an undeniable sign of a regime that had come to England to stay. We mustn't forget the ambivalent histories all buildings have, even cathedrals. But this isn't what we remember about them. What moves us is the vision that created them and that still has the power to inspire and transform our perspective on life.

I've spoken about Durham because this is where I do most of my woolgathering. But I could have thought thoughts like these at Norwich, Peterborough or Gloucester; or at Compostela, Vézelay or Pisa or in hundreds of other places across Europe. We all have our favourites. You may like to share yours and tell us why.

Message to Followers

I have set up a new blog where I am posting my sermons and addresses.

You can find it at: http://deanstalks.blogspot.co.uk/

You'll note that it rhymes with beanstalks, so there may be no telling where Jack may be led. This site is now for wool gathering (i.e. proper blogging) only.

Thank you for following and for comments. I hope you enjoy reading.

Michael Sadgrove

Back in Coventry

Today I am in Coventry, with hundreds of others who have come to celebrate the Cathedral’s golden jubilee. It was consecrated on 25 May 1962. Like half the population of England, I came to see it that year as a boy of 12.  I have never forgotten that visit and the impact it had on me.  Years later I first heard Benjamin Britten's War Requiem performed there against the backdrop of the ruins destroyed in the air-raid of November 1940.  It was unutterably moving to think about 'war and the pity of the war' in that evocative setting.     

I used to work at the Cathedral as the canon in charge of its worship and music.  We arrived in the spring of 1987.  A few days later, the Sky Blues won the cup final and the whole city went mad for joy. Not long after that, we celebrated the Cathedral’s silver jubilee.  That was the first big service I had to organise.

Today it was good (very good) to be part of the service without any responsibility for it. Princess Anne was there and read a lesson.  A brass ensemble lent brilliance and colour. Children from a local school performed a beautiful dance to John Cosin (of Durham)’s hymn Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire.  The sun shone gloriously.  We met up with lots of good friends and colleagues.  It was a great occasion. 

Rowan Williams preached the sermon.  He began with Cosin’s lines enable with perpetual light the dullness of our blinded sight and suggested that reconciliation always involves seeing the other person or community in a new way.  The Cathedral could help us to do this. He walked us up the nave towards Graham Sutherland’s tapestry of Christ in Glory.  Then he turned us round to reveal the array of colour in the aisle windows hidden on the eastward journey; then drew the eye westwards towards the Hutton glass screen, and beyond that, to the ruins.  This, he said, is how Christ on the tapestry sees the world: not as lost in pain and conflict but transfigured by the reconciliation grace brings. He drew attention to the figure of the human being held between Christ’s feet.  That figure, he said, is also looking out to the world, and is seeing it as the risen Jesus sees it. This diminutive figure represents us. If we see the world in this new way, the task of reconciliation becomes possible.  And this has been demonstrated in the history of Coventry Cathedral.

During the service, I reflected on what Coventry taught me. I learned there that liturgy is a divine performance art, a kind of godly play that imagines the kingdom of God as being among us.  The cathedral is a magnificent theatre for worship, but you have to understand it, love it for what it is, work with its grain.  ‘The building always wins in the end’ we used to say when trying experiments that didn’t quite come off.  I also learned that however noble the setting and dignified the worship, it must always have a human face, for it is the offering of God’s people gathered in that place.  Liturgy needs to care for people, touch them, change their lives by helping them to meet God.  And I learned how important it is for a cathedral to connect with its environment, not sit in Olympian grandeur above the struggles and crises its local community may be going through. Coventry is a tough place with a lot of deprivation.  I’ve come to realise how important it is to get to know the social context in which we worship and ritualise our lives. 

After lunch I walked round the city centre in the fierce afternoon sun.  Much has been done to brighten it up since the 80s when it could feel pretty forlorn.  It is still bleak in places. When you compare how German cities were carefully rebuilt after the war to recreate their historic streets and buildings, you wonder how Coventry could have been reinvented quite so brutally. And it’s clear from the shops and offices that it goes on struggling economically just as it did in our day. That’s familiar from what I know all over north-east England with the decline of manufacturing industry. 

Yet at its heart, the cathedral quarter is a pool of greenness and contemplative calm. You go into this wonderful building, surely one of the great achievements of 20^th century architecture, and you are strangely stilled and excited at the same time.  The Cathedral puts you in your place, like the human figure between the feet of Christ, which is a safe, restful place to be.  And then it lifts your vision and stimulates you to reflect before God on who you are and who you might become. It is both moving and transformative. As the Archbishop said, it helps you see in new ways.  I felt proud to have been part of its life for 8 good years.  I am sure the city feels proud today. 

I shall try and preach about some of this on Whit Sunday.

Imitation is....

A few days ago, I was trying to find the exact quotation matching a half-remembered phrase from a poem.  So I googled it, too lazy to pull down the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or get up to fetch the book where I knew I would find it.  Among the top web-hits were two that I followed up. One was a sermon I'd preached some years ago where I'd quoted the poem.  It was about St Mark's resurrection story and was on the Cathedral website.  Text identified, quotation corrected, job done. 

But the other hit intrigued me.  It looked as though this same quotation was being used in an uncannily similar setting, a blog about how St Mark talks about the first Easter Day.  As I scrolled up and down, I thought first: this chap's 'take' on the story seems very like my own.  Then I thought: he even writes like me.  And finally - far too slowly - I cottoned on to the awful realisation.  This is me!  I was reading my own sermon on somebody else's blog. It was topped and tailed and there were a few small amendments, but apart from that it was word for word what I had written back in 2004. 

Now, I wouldn't have minded in the least if the blogger (a priest) had acknowledged his sources.  I'm not proprietorial about preaching: you fling your words from a pulpit (real or virtual) out into the world and if someone picks them up and runs with them, that is gratifying, and indeed, God-given. It's the idea that another writer could simply copy someone else's text and pass it off as his own. That feels like a kind of theft.  (Which under copyright law it is: intellectual property is precisely that - property.)  If a student is found doing it, he or she is awarded zero for that assignment and disciplined, sometimes severely.  Plagiarism is taken very seriously.

I have tried to reflect what I think and feel about this little episode. My first reaction was a kind of amused bafflement.  If this priest down under reckons my work is good enough to pass off as his own, I should take it as a compliment.  Imitation, famously, is the sincerest form of flattery.  But then I began to think about the consequences.  My reason for googling the poem in the first place was that I wanted to rewrite that part of the sermon with the poem in a chapter of my next book.  What if readers were to stumble across the blog and find all-too-similar material there? Wouldn't it be I who would then be suspected of plagiarism?     

I tweeted about this and got a unison response: I need to challenge the blogger.  So I did.  I left an anonymous comment on his blog saying he should acknowledge his sources and directing him to the Cathedral website.  The next day I went back and added a link to my sermon in case he hadn't found it.  One or two others did the same.  None of these comments were published, and 3 days later the blog still hadn't been taken down or amended to attribute the source.  So I tweeted links to both his site and mine and having 'outed' him, waited to see what would happen.  So far, nothing: this story (like Mark's resurrection narrative!) may not have an ending. 

There is moral hazard attached to the worldwide web. It is just too easy to lift other people's writing, photos, artwork or music and pass them off as your own.  When a priest does this, it raises rather sharper questions about Christian ethical behaviour.  OK, so in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was perfectly normal for Baroque composers to lift musical themes by others and incorporate them into their own works.  And in ancient times, pseudepigraphical texts carried the names of well-known writers to lend them authority.  There are examples in the Bible itself.  But that was then; this is now.  Our vastly increased access to information in the digital age needs to be matched by increased moral awareness about how we use these powerful tools. 

What does this leave me?  I don't want to make too much of this. There are plenty of bigger issues to keep us awake at night.  The worst thing would be to become self-important about it. That's the moral hazard the victim faces. Perhaps a Christian response is to register the point and then get over it.  If we follow Christ the Servant, we shouldn't be surprised that we are sometimes 'used' or stolen from or walked over. 

It reminded me of a very Anglican limeric about the famous Victorian Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon.

There once was a preacher called Spurgy
Who greatly disliked the liturgy.
His sermons are fine:
I use them as mine,
And so do the rest of the clergy.

Here's the calculus of my emotions so far.  Flattered?  Yes, quite a lot if I am honest.  Amused?  Yes, a little, at this bizarre discovery.  Irritated, angry even?  Yes, but less than before.  Writing a blog is cathartic.  I recommend it. 

My sermon at

http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/schedule/sermons/8 - St Mark

His blog at

http://revdedbakkeropr.blogspot.com/2012/04/saint-mark-apostle.html?spref=tw

Judge for yourself.