Category: Thought for the Week

As a single person, I am used to silence; as an introvert, I positively relish it. Silence is however rarely total. As I write this, alone, I am aware of the wind blowing outside, the faint hum from the central heating in the house. One of the most magical silences I regularly experience is being alone in a church; to hear the birdsong, the bleating of sheep, perhaps less romantically, the sound of traffic or a plane in the sky. As a vicar, I wish I could tell you that this is when I hear God speaking to me. I don’t and the more I try to be holy, the worse it gets. The silence is broken in my head by a babble of voices as I relive past triumphs and disasters. Better just to enjoy the silence. But, as a vicar, I also believe that God is ever-present. God enjoys silence as much as I do; it is not necessary for him/her to be constantly chattering to me. Somehow through that very silence when I am simply enjoying it, God is transfusing into me and strengthening me. The language of God is indeed silence.

Rev David Poyner

Last month the news was announced of the death of the Rev. Don Cupitt. He came to fame in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then he was the BBC’s favourite theologian; the high-point was a TV series he presented called “The Sea of Faith” in 1984. This was the period I was a student at Cambridge University; Don Cupitt was a lecturer in theology at Cambridge, Dean of Emmanuel College there and as a friend of mine recently put it, he “was all the rage”. This was not just because he was a gifted speaker and presenter, but also because he was radical in his views. He was an ordained Christian priest, but who freely described himself as a “Christian atheist”, or similar. He had studied science as an undergraduate but was fundamentally a philosopher. He had come to reject any notion of the existence of God or the supernatural, but he also knew himself to be a deeply spiritual person. Towards the end of the life, he ceased to be a “communicating” member of the Church of England, but as far as I can tell, that made no difference to his spirituality. I think his work was really an attempt to make sense of these contradictions; his acceptance that we live in a physical world governed by laws of nature and yet also the reality of the spiritual. Some were outraged by him, some claimed he damaged their faith. Personally I was fascinated by his work. He lived in much the same space as I do as a scientist and a priest. I think he came to the wrong conclusions; I am a mainstream Christian who does believe in the reality of God. However, I am very grateful to him for asking hard questions that have allowed me to come to that position. May he rest in peace and, perhaps to his surprise, rise in glory.

Rev David Poyner

I have written several thoughts about St Valentine. This brings challenges, as next to nothing is known for certain about him. Somewhere behind all the stories there is probably a Christian priest, killed during one of the persecutions of the Roman Empire. Wikipedia tells me that he is also the patron saint of suffers from epilepsy and beekeepers, in addition to being the patron of lovers. All of these associations would have probably been news to the person who was actually behind the stories. No matter, the value of Valentine is what he reminds us of today.

Valentine stands as a symbol of mutual love, “romantic love” as it is sometimes called. Love takes many forms; when it degenerates to self-centred lust, there is nothing in it to be celebrated. But romantic love is about two people who prize their relationship above everything else, including material prosperity and status. They will pay any price to be together. Of course, some of these attachments are ill-thought out and do not last but many will endure a life-time.  Romantic love is worth celebrating and has been used as metaphor for the highest relationship between a believer and God.  So celebrate St Valentine’s Day!

Rev David Poyner

Another day, another story about the Church of England. This time the Bishop of Liverpool has retired, following allegations of sexual harassment of two women, one a bishop. The Bishop of Liverpool denies the allegations; they were apparently investigated by the police and no action was taken and there was no action taken following a Church of England Safeguarding investigation. However, the fact that there was no realistic prospect of a criminal conviction (the police) nor any issue with vulnerable people (safeguarding) does not address whether there were other issues of dubious conduct. This could have been investigated by a disciplinary enquiry following a complaint. It would have allowed all parties to put their cases, both the women and the bishop. One of the women did make such a complaint, but there is a time deadline for reporting such matters. My understanding is that the complaint was made outside of this; the matter seems to have gone to a judge to adjudicate and he ruled that the case could not proceed. In this he was following due legal process, which is necessary to ensure fairness to all parties. Thus we have ended up with the situation where nobody can get satisfaction because every option is flawed. 

It is easy when news stories break to just judge them by the headline and our natural urge is to seek heroes or victims and villains. Sometimes however the truth is more complex; we are faced with situations where whatever is done will be an uncomfortable compromise. In the Twitter/X culture in which we live there is no room for this. We are all the poorer.

Rev David Poyner

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a local resident. She had taken her son into one of our churches. Once there, he just sat, not moving. Eventually he spoke, of how beautiful the place was. He could never remember being in a church before, now he was overwhelmed. Apparently he had no wish to come to a service, but he did want to go into other churches, to sit and be still.

I do not know what words this person would use to describe what he discovered in the church; quite possibly “God” would not be one of them. But in that moment, God connected with him, whatever he thought it was. God does not need a preacher to reach out to his/her people.

Rev David Poyner

Sent to me this week by a colleague: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, which is pretty much everyone, since I’m clearly not you, God. At least not the last time I checked.

And while you’re at it, God, please give me the courage to change what I need to change about myself, which is frankly a lot, since, once again, I’m not you, which means I’m not perfect.

It’s better for me to focus on changing myself than to worry about changing other people, who, as you’ll no doubt remember me saying, I can’t change anyway.

Finally, give me the wisdom to just shut up whenever I think that I’m clearly smarter than everyone else in the room, that no one knows what they’re talking about except me, or that I alone have all the answers.

Basically God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I’m not you.

Amen.

R

“Truth” is much in the news at the moment, particularly as regards the big social media platforms; what is true and who decides that? Sometimes truth is simple to decide, where it hinges on a verifiable fact, but this is not always the case.  There are “moral truths” on which we base society; thus the famous opening lines of the US constitution; “We hold these truths to be self-evident”. This immediately raises questions as to why something is “self-evident”; who decides? Most, if not all, of our self-evident truths are derived from the major world religions. In the West, the concept of human rights ultimately can be traced back to the belief that all are made in the image of God and that give us intrinsic value. As religious beliefs retreat, some are starting to realise that the foundations of our society are being left exposed. This is not an argument for the existence of God, but perhaps it does show why we seem to have evolved to need faith and the problem we have to face if that is abandoned.

Rev David Poyner

It is traditional for any vicar to write something in January about New Year resolutions. Every year I have the same problem, because I have never made a resolution for the New Year; how can I improve on my current state of perfection?…. The truth is that I do not make resolutions because I know that I will never keep them; I have a (partial) grasp of my own limitations. 

One of the mantras in today’s world is about “being the best you can be”. On one level, it is hard to argue with this as an aspiration and it is a line I sometimes use when trying to encourage others. However, like empty New Year resolutions, it can be dangerous, when the person has an unrealistic vision of just what they are capable of being. It needs to be tempered with reality; that sometimes we will fail and we have to accept that some things are beyond us. Perhaps this is where one of the insights of Christianity can help. We believe that in some sense, we are all made in the image of God, God who is perfection. But for a whole range of reasons, that image is marred; as humans, after we are born things will very soon start to go wrong. But we are still loved and cherished by God despite all our failures and imperfections. We cannot always be the best we would like to be, our resolutions are often doomed to fail, but we are all still precious.

Rev David Poyner

How is the Christmas season going for you? In the Church, we talk a lot about hope in the run-up to Christmas and the birth of a saviour.  However, I often speak of hope as being something in the far distant future and welcoming a saviour implies we have things we need to be saved from. I don’t knock this, one of my Christmas sermons this year was about how we need to be saved from ourselves. However, many of the oldest Christmas carols focus much more on the business of making merry, of people experiencing joy and happiness at Christmas. In medieval times, Christmas was called a feast for a reason; it was an occasion to party in an age where there was not always much to be merry about. The serious-minded Puritans who tried to abolish this in the 16th and 17th centuries. They failed because they were too solemn for their own good. It is good to make merry when we can. Of course Christmas is very commercialised, of course it can be a very difficult time for some. However, after all the Christmas services I have done this year, there has been socialising, banter, good conversation, often with refreshments that always help. I have enjoyed this a lot. So I wish you all a merry Christmas season; the ancient feast has 12 days so plenty more to enjoy!

Rev David Poyner

It has been another bruising week for the Church of England, as more revelations have emerged of abusive behaviour from vicars and calls for resignations. For the victims of abuse, the news must have been particularly hard to bear. Over the next few days, I will be standing in pulpits talking about good tidings in my Christmas sermons; some will see that as a sanctimonious act of hypocrisy. All I can urge is that people do not focus on the institution of the Church, do not focus on the person in the dog collar. Look instead at the one in the manager; a baby, helpless and vulnerable and see in that how God really works in the world. God does not use earthly power, God does not use human authority. God works only through love but that love will triumph, with or without the Church of England.

Rev David Poyner