The Revd Writes…“Give me life, O Lord…” (Psalm 119 verse 107) sums up the dependency of the adult. The task of parenting focuses for much of time on encouraging the child to work through dependency towards a state of ever greater independence. When a child grasps the chance to properly take responsibility for themselves, riding a bicycle without stabilizers is a good metaphor, the parent smiles with pride. Cross riding a bike off your list. One more skill learned, one less thing to worry about. “One day you will be a woman, my daughter”, to misquote Kipling. The road to independence is, more often than not, paved with tears, frustration and much parental anguish as the hard fact dawns that there is no textbook answer for helping my child negotiate its way into maturity. Parenting, despite what DIY manuals proclaim, is less of a science and more of an art. What works for one child does not necessarily work for another. The rich tapestry of family life is made all the more colourful and interesting by young personalities emerging into ‘this is me!’ and there is no duplicate of ‘me’ to be found in the whole wide world. Good parenting acknowledges from the start that mature independence always includes a place for a certain ‘grown-up dependency’. It is natural for children to imagine that to be independent is to be no longer dependent but ‘big and strong’, believing that they can take on the world with a, sometimes, reckless youthfulness. Yet wise parents will be all too aware of the need for boundaries to keep their children safe, often from themselves. A newfound independence and blind confidence can very quickly collapse into uncertainty and vulnerability. As every parent of a swaggering teenager knows all too well.A consequence for parents who promote independence at all costs is that they sometimes find themselves with adult children who have become isolated individuals, intolerant, with little empathy for others who are different from themselves. Such children are less likely to be there for their parents in later years, who themselves may well have become increasingly dependent. “You taught me to be independent. What you forgot to teach me is that we need each other.” Perhaps one of the correctives that the coronavirus pandemic has brought home is not so much how independent and resourceful we can be as individuals but how much more dependent we really are. “Give me life, O Lord…” through my neighbours and friends… and through my children… God Bless Mark
The meaning of statuesSt Paul writes in his letter to the Romans (5:1-2), “…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through who we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand…” In other words, it is by the grace of God through the redeeming work of Christ that we are delivered from our failing selves and enabled to stand up straight and tall before God. To put that more succinctly, it is by God’s grace that we are made to feel okay. In doctrinal terms, we all fall short in various ways because we are only human – we are not perfect like God – and yet God still finds a way for us to become acceptable – this is the relationship between humanity and God. Humanity is dependent upon God to affirm anything that is good and redeemable.Our own experience of one another, however, is slightly different. Though we are able to affirm those character traits within each other that is positive, for example a good teacher will enable a student to become more confident at a particular skill or talent and give them the necessary boost to translate that skill into say, a future career, yet that same teacher might have to recognise that the student is never going to be good at foreign languages. This is negative and might be disappointing. And the teacher might have to accept this fact over time – that no matter how hard you try, no matter what resources are poured in, this particular student is never going to be able to learn to speak French or German to an acceptable standard. The student is always going to fall short. Or the example where a child comes from an emotionally starving childhood goes on to become a persistent shoplifter becoming a nuisance to the wider community to the extent that they end up in youth custody and no amount of support given replaces the neglect of earlier years, and results in later years turning to more serious crime, ends up in prison, banished from society for years. Whereas we believe that God transforms the disappointment and failure - wiping the slate clean - so that we become something good and acceptable, we human beings find ourselves often having to learn to live with the good and the bad that often live alongside each other in who we are. So, I might like the fact that you have a really good sense of humour but I don’t like the fact that you can be very controlling when it comes to what we watch on telly etc. Here on planet earth, we find we must live with these contradictions in each other, unlike the transformed state, instigated by God, in the heavenly place. By divine intervention, God transforms our failure and disappointed selves into that which is made good and acceptable in a way that we struggle to do with one another.The question of living with contradiction is an important part of the current debate, born out of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, and which asks us to consider which statues of famous people do we keep on public display as reference points for good role models in current society? Admittedly society today is not the same as it was one hundred or even fifty years ago. What might have been acceptable then in terms of how much good and bad was tolerated in someone whose life had been remarkable, and whose contribution to the common good pointed in the direction of them being publicly honoured by having a statue of them unveiled, might well not be the same today. So, it is right that we reflect on who is now, and who is not now, deemed to have manifested sufficient good over bad in their lives that they should be publicly honoured. Some statues may well need to be taken down and others brought into being. The question that we have yet to answer is, what criteria should we use in assessing the weight of good over bad – when we know that we are all good and bad – and fall short of the glory of God in our human existence? By faith, we know that we are all dependent upon the grace of God. But by what grace do we determine which statues of our historical forebears should stand… and which should fall? Revd Mark Bailey
The Revd Writes…“Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;Love lives again, that with the dead has been;Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.”At the time of writing the restrictions of Lockdown remain firmly in place but there is some hope that these will shortly be eased, and that life will slowly revert to a more normal pattern of living. The coronavirus pandemic has pushed into the spotlight the fragility and weaknesses of so much of our daily lives and systems that up until a few short months ago we believed to be strong and robust. Democracy, the market economy, national institutions from the NHS to local government administrations and charitable organisations have all been tested. Cracks papered over and fault lines ignored in the past have now all surfaced. Whilst we readjust to a new and more dangerous world somewhat hesitantly, somewhat unsure of where permanent security lies, the whole of humanity is forced to reflect on the consequences of this particular event in our history. There are some painful losses. Industries and employment that were dependent upon the short-term have struggled and some will never recover. Some areas of the market economy that in the past prided themselves on super efficiency have found themselves unable to bridge the gap between something and nothing. Popular past times such as sport and other entertainments have been pushed to the sidelines and have had to either quickly reinvent themselves in a virtual world or to cease trading altogether. And as if this were not enough, thousands of families, already left dependent upon the state, have lost loved ones to chronic disease - lives cut short before their time. The Dever Valley, like everywhere else, has had to shoulder its fair share of suffering.If this depressing picture feels too uncomfortable to bear and the urge is to move quickly on, then reflection on the priest poet JMC Crum’s words in his famous hymn above are worth pondering. ‘The dark earth…’ where ‘that with the dead has been…’ is crucial as a place for rethinking. From the experience of huge losses COVID-19 has also brought some positives to light. An under-resourced health service must now be more cherished than it was before. Some of the lowest paid workers, on whom all our common life depends, has been recognised of being of much greater value. The importance of neighbours and community has been reassessed. Living in a private, self-contained world is not good for any of us. Charity begins at home but must not stop at our front door. Love will come again, in the weeks and months before us, more valued, more treasured, more shared – ‘like wheat that springeth green.’God Bless Mark
The Revd Writes… 2020 sees the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower from Plymouth to America – an event which was to have a direct influence on the people of the Dever Valley. In the early C17th, people were at loggerheads with each other - and the fundamental issue that they were fighting over was religion. Under the reign of Elizabeth I it was the law that you had to attend Church on a Sunday – and the Church that you had to attend was the Church of England. The Church was the most important tool that the monarch had to reinforce national unity at the local level. The clergy were there not only to impart the Gospel, but they were also there too, to impart the message that everyone belonged to the Queen’s religion and the most important enforcers of that fact were the Bishops, who quite ruthlessly made sure that every parish priest toed the line. By 1603 with the advent of a new monarch, James I, quite a few clergy felt that they could now voice their anger, and protest. Unfortunately for them, they demanded, on reflection somewhat naively, that the Bishops should have their power curtailed. They wanted to see more power given to local leadership and for congregations themselves to have more say in how the local church should be run. King James decided to side with the Bishops and famously told those protesting – known as puritans – that they could ‘believe anything that they wanted to as long as it was what the King himself believed.’And so, the Dever Valley began to tear itself apart. Some felt that they could no longer live in a country where their religious practice and identity was determined by monarchy. They clung to a more protestant faith that longed for more freedom for the individual to practice their faith in whatever way they chose. Some longed to go to a place where Bishops had no authority whatsoever.In 1620 a group of puritan immigrants determined to flee religious persecution, set sail for a ‘New World’. Onboard that ship, the Mayflower, was one able seaman with the surname of Ely - a Plymouth sailor, probably connected to the Ely family of Wonston. If true, then the Dever Valley links with the founding of the first settlement at Plymouth in Massachusetts goes all the way back to the very beginning of the establishment of a ‘New England’. 10 Years later a small fleet of ships followed in the Mayflowers trail – on board were several Dever Valley people, including one Thomas Talmadge from Newton Stacey. Newton Stacey had become a bastion of Puritan sentiment under the leadership of the denounced Vicar of Wherwell, Stephen Bachiler. Bachiler went on to found the First Congregational Church in Hampton, in present-day Hampton, in New Hampshire. It is the oldest continuing congregation in North America.In these troubled times, as you celebrate Easter, you might like to remember those in the past who courageously journeyed by faith into new worlds and those who continue to do so today – they probably don’t live too far away from you.God Bless Mark
