Beautiful Albert Bridge

At the left edge, the silver is an outdoor public art piece - I liked all the linear elements - with a tree and corner of glass building.




Two pretty cool snaps of the Albert Bridge from Chelsea to Battersey (I think) just near the Albion Gallery for ChanSchatz show. It was wicked cold but such great clouds, huH? Not every day in England is beautiful so you've got to really enjoy them - even with coat, hat, and gloves on!

Albion & surround

In front of the Albion looking RIGHT along the Thames ...

And looking LEFT ..


and beyond ...
What a beautiful day !! This is back across the Albert bridge - the Albion is on the ground floor of the building. Crisp and cool - perfect end of winter.

Joys of ministry

Here I am in Gorton with parishioners, L&H. We've just had a naming service for their one week old little girl "Grace" who's being held by a friend. CofE has a great service for just what they wanted and were used to back "home". We'll baptize her later when more family can attend.

I married L&H just one week before the birth so this continued our celebrations (actually during the Sunday morning Holy Communion because the parish has so welcomed them and they have little family here.

It's part of the amazing multi-cultural world of England and the Anglican Communion ... they're originally from Nigeria, but citizens of Austria. They found St James Church just a few months before - after moving very nearby. H's the one who always makes sure they go to church ... they speak to their families back "home" every day on the mobile. Not different from me and emails.
What a great new family!

SERMON: 3 February 2008

Here in England they have the show "Deal or No Deal" but it is VERY different from how it is played at home - read on to find out. In addition to enjoying the show myself, I've found that lots of people DO watch TV (or telly as they say) here and when I asked if they watched-most of them raised their hands. I like taking the common things like TV and making them theological, or at least finding the theological in them when it's not there explicitly.
Also - this is Part 1 of a 2 Part "series" I did because I knew I'd be back at this church in a fortnight (2 weeks time). It's rare that within this team I preach so close together - usually its about once a month at each church which has its challenges for preaching here.

Sunday, 3 February 2008
Last before Lent, Year A
St Philip’s Church (Gorton Abbey Hey Team)

2 Peter 16 – 21
Matthew 17 : 1-9

Do any of you watch the television program called “Deal or No Deal”?

The idea is deceptively simple, isn’t it? One player of the day has a box with an amount of money in it. The other players also each have a box – all ranging from 1 P to 250,000 pounds. The player then has to choose which of the others’ boxes will have the lower amounts and hope that hers has more. But, “the Banker” is making offers as the game goes on to “buy” the one box from her. So, the skill of the game is in the level of risk (or gambling), the based on confidence in the chance amount of cash in the box the player is willing to take.

I have to admit, since I’ve been here, this program has captured my attention. On many weekday afternoons (at 4 pm) you can find me watching it and I’ve tried to analyze why it’s got me hooked. Now we have a show by the same name in America, but they play it differently. The difference is in the other box holders – here they’re other players, real people who will eventually be in the hot seat; at home they’re a bunch of beautiful women models displaying the boxes. This is a huge difference because I’m told that all the people on the game here – all the box holders – actually live together during each week until they’re called into the hot seat themselves. They’re strangers who get to know one another and want each other to WIN!!

It’s NOT about competing against each other. They’re ALL supporting one another. They’re only against the banker. They want each person in the hot seat to win because they know that at some time THEY will have a chance there themselves.

I LOVE that.

It’s so different from all the other games where there are winners and losers because of judges like the dancing or singing shows. And it’s not about someone’s knowledge like a quiz game. These players always want the person who’s playing to make the most money in their box. They offer each other advice about taking the risks and say supportive things especially about making the deals. And that’s because they’ve come to know one another.

I think the people supporting each other – their generosity -- is why I watch : because it’s so different from most of real life.
How many people do you have in your average week telling you positive things, or supporting you for the things you do? Maybe your family and friends, but very rarely do strangers want you to win, do they?

All very good – but why am I talking about this game? Well, we’re approaching Ash Wednesday and it’s time to be thinking about Lent. During Lent, we have the opportunity to take a look at ourselves and our lives – we have the chance to make some changes.

You all know some people who give up things for Lent. The point of giving up is to live our lives in a different way for a short time.

AND, there’s another way to “do” Lent. It’s basically the opposite way. Instead of giving something up; you take something on. To my mind, this is just as difficult and can be just as good for us in terms of making changes. Adding to our lives can also be good for the people and the world around us.

I’m definitely not alone in this idea. This is the second year that the Church of England has taken to publishing a little booklet called “Love Life, Live Lent” which is full of things “to do” during Lent. The things are very simple and easy to do:

Ask someone about their day
Leave a thank you note for the postie
Give up your place to someone in the queue
Light a candle and pray for someone – well, we do that, don’t we?
Buy a low energy light bulb
Have a conversation with someone from another generation
Say hello to a police officer
Think about how you can take time for quiet and silence

You get it. The idea is that by making a variety of small actions, lots of little additions to our lives during Lent, we can make a huge difference to the places we live.

For me the theme of most of these is about generosity. Like in Deal or No Deal – now you don’t have to watch the show, just act generous way toward each other that they do.

For me, this year Lent will be about taking on things instead of giving them up. Being generous has become very important. I’m not sure exactly why, but there’s a way in which today’s gospel partly answers that.

In last week’s story of the miracle at the wedding at Cana, we heard about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. This story of Jesus changing into blazing white like the sun takes place in the middle of his time in Galilee meeting people, healing them, and preaching about the way life can be better in his everlasting kingdom where life is upside-down from the way it appears.

Remember, as Jesus is there on the mountain with both Moses and Elijah, a voice comes from the clouds saying, “this is my Beloved with whom I am well pleased” – It’s the voice of God - of course referring to Jesus. Well, it takes your imagination to take this in, and now I want you to use your imagination even more. What IF; what if we believed that voice of God was talking to each one of us?

Could you believe that God would say to you, “YOU are MY Beloved with YOU I am well pleased!”?? I have faith that we ARE to believe that! We are to know we are loved by God just as Jesus was loved, just as the people of God have been loved even since the time of Adam and Eve.

And IF we believe that – then one of the most important things that Jesus says makes sense. We know that Jesus said, FIRST love the Lord your God, and then love your neighbors as yourself. It seems that our lives as Christians is then about figuring how to do that. We are able to even make a start is because we know that we are loved by God first. When we can imagine that we are God’s beloved then we can begin to love our neighbors.

THEN the generosity starts to flow. WHEN we believe we are God’s beloved, then we can act like the folks on “Deal or No Deal”. Will you join me this Lent in being generous as well?

Can you take time each week to do a few things that might change the world? And maybe watching the telly is one way to get started! Amen.

the song!

Here's the song for which my blog is named!! 

Warning - these people appear to be having a really "good" time (ie maybe a few too many) but they're very  happy because I think it must be a wedding party, right?  

You get the idea of how the song goes despite the fact that it's a little irreverent, ok?  And most of you in the US will have never heard it anyway.  

SERMON: 14 October 2007

The Gorton Team ministry is located with the Ardwick Deanery of the Manchester Diocese. The clergy of the deanery meet together about once a month. They've been a real support to me since I've been here - I can turn to them with questions, and "cover" (a clergy substitute) for our churches when we need a priest. They've also accepted me quite well and have asked me to preach in their churches at various times. This is for the Dean's home parish. I felt a bit of pressure because it's a church that although they welcomed me to their pulpit, they have not "authorized" a woman to serve as their Rector. Since of 1992 when women were ordained as priests in CofE, there's a vote taken each time a search process is begun in a parish. Knowing how they felt about me not serving at the altar was odd - even more odd is that the Dean is married to a woman priest and SHE can't celebrate at the church of her husband ... FYI she works part time as a women's prison chaplain and is available on Sundays!!

SUNDAY 14 October 2007
St Cross Church, Clayton, Manchester
19 after Trinity Year C
TEC – Ruth 1:1-19A COE – Jeremiah 29: 1,4-7
Luke 17:11- 19 – Jesus heals ten lepers, one says thanks

I offer these words in the name of one Triune God. Amen.

I am very happy to be here and to have been invited by Matt my dean and colleague who has really helped both my partner JD and I. I have known some of you already as it was about one year ago, that I was a part of St George’s as it was closing. I will also say that Joe and I were here for a wonderful sermon by Jacob that stayed with us for weeks. I can tell you which it was later, but I feel it set a very high standard for me this morning.

In our gospel story we hear about ten people whom Jesus heals. We also are told that only ONE of them praises God and thanks Jesus for his healing. Jesus acknowledges this man. But to the other Nine Jesus seems to be a bit upset. Jesus appears to say that they were un-grateful; that they didn’t need to thank him but the least they could have done was to give praise to God.

We all know it doesn’t go down well when you don’t say thanks to someone who has helped you, does it? Since moving here to the North, I’ve learnt that getting off the bus should include: cheers, thank you, Ta, or some combination of the three. Growing up, my mum taught me the same thing back home. Whether we’re in England or America, we can hear a tone in Jesus’ voice that sounds a bit critical. Maybe you can see Jesus wagging his finger as well. With that in mind, it would be very easy for us to see this gospel as a lesson in being polite in either British or American society.

But it’s not quite that. We could see these words of Jesus as a reminder on how to act when someone give us something. But they’re not exactly that either. During the time Jesus lived there WERE ways that people were expected to act toward one another. But they were different from ours. One thing that they could exchange with one another wasn’t money – it was how they ACTED.
And if you were poor and couldn’t afford to repay you also gave praise and said thanks to the person who took care of you because you had nothing else to give. So who is this man who comes back to Jesus? We’re told he’s a Samaritan – a foreigner – someone from an area that good Jewish people avoided and someone who the non-Jewish people avoided as well. Basically, he is an outsider. He is just like the woman whom Jesus talked to at the well when no one else would. And he has nothing to give back to Jesus –– so all he can do is give praise to God and say thanks to Jesus. He has no other way to “repay” Jesus’ kindness.

I often try to put Jesus’ stories in our current world and think who around us today would play the different parts.
Who do YOU think could be the person feeling least able to give anything back?
Who is the person we might find just like this Samaritan man?

Now I might surprise you with my suggestions – because perhaps you, like me, often think of yourself as the One who gives thanks and praise – we’re here in church after all. But what IF the One -- Is a young “hoodie” lad – no longer a child not quite an adult? Or maybe a Polish immigrant, without economic well-being in his home and a stranger here?
Perhaps he would be a foreign refugee – definitely someone without a country?

Then what about the other 9? In Jesus’ day these folk must have felt able somehow to give back or repay Jesus because they didn’t give their thanks and praise. In some way, they felt themselves more on par with Jesus and less in his debt – even though being healed. Although you may disagree with me, I believe most of us in church today are a lot more like the Nine than we are the one. Not that we’re ungrateful or not-thankful but because we probably DO feel we have some way to give back to Jesus or repay God.

Understood this way, Jesus is not wagging his finger at the Nine or at us regular church-goers. We’re not meant to feel criticized or bad or guilty for not coming back to say thanks. However, I do believe Jesus IS asking WHERE are we?
Where are we??

We are here. We live in the city and the prophet Jeremiah is talking to us. He knows us because he lives in the city as well. About 2,000 600 years ago Jeremiah lived in Jerusalem and felt called by God to stay in his city at a time when the people around him needed hope. Jeremiah says to us: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” If we are like the Nine, then perhaps our way to give praise and thanks is to seek the welfare of the city and pray to God. Maybe this is how we can show our gratitude to God.

Where I lived in California was quite different from Manchester. I did not grow up in a proper city. Honestly, I have never lived with a bus stop outside my door nor bars on my windows. I had no experience with living in a district like Gorton. Obviously I’ve come to experience the deprivations of the inner city quickly. Most of you know better than I how challenging the city can be – the difficulties of daily life, the frustrations when people live close together, health and safety are always “issues” and the consequences of deprivation can even lead to depression. Sometimes even changes for the good can feel less than positive.

However, since moving here, I’ve clearly come to recognize the resources I have to give back to God.
My way to say thanks and give praise to Jesus is to join Jeremiah in giving hope and to follow Jeremiah in to seeking the welfare of the city and to pray on its behalf. To love and care for the city will take more than my prayers; it might take each one of the Nine of us – especially if we’re to reach out to that one who is outside – the refugee, the immigrant, the hoodie.

In this light, I don’t believe Jesus is criticizing us, not calling us ungrateful. We’re necessary.
AND we must go on to find our OWN way to show our thanks to Jesus and give praise to God.
The question is - Do you also see yourself as someone with enough gratitude to give back to God?
Can you show your appreciation by how you act? IF so! Because then that all of us like the Nine can not only pray but also work toward the welfare of our city.
Amen.

SERMON: Thursday 8 June 2007

An invitation from one of my deanery colleagues to preach mid-week at a "Festival" we don't celebrate in my Team. Corpus Christi would possibly be celebrated in TEC, but is more popular with the Anglo-Catholics. Here, the Anglo-Catholics are often the churches more open to women than the Evangelicals - so I have a natural affinity with them. This was an excellent chance to get to talk about a favorite saint of mine : Julian. It was also the chance to talk/write about an experience I've wanted to share since I've been ordained and sharing the bread - looking at people's hands. (the stories they could tell!) After the service, the rector told me he'd never seen the congregation be asked to move or "participate" during a sermon but you wouldn't have known it at the time - they all talked with the person sitting next to them. And because, as usual, there were so few people in these large church buildings ... they really HAD to move.

PS - you can see a truly wonderful parish website for this church St Agnes, Longsight . I think it's a gorgeous building, and the people are rector are absolutely lovely!


Corpus Christi aka “Thanksgiving for Holy Communion”
(Season of Pentecost - Thursday after Trinity Sunday) Year C
8 June 2007 – Festival, HC, Procession & Adoration
St Agnes Church, Longsight – Stephen Edwards, Rector

Genesis 14:18-20
Psalm 116:10-17
1 Cor 11:23-26
John 6: 51-58

I offer these words in the name of our one triune God – the supreme goodness of all manner of things and the endless fulfilling of all true desires. Amen.

It’s a real joy to be here this evening. Since the first day I met your rector Stephen he’s been telling me what fun you all have in church, especially when there’s a celebration. And together with my partner Joe, let me say we’re delighted to be part of yours tonight.

I did not grow up in the Anglican Church. I “found” it when I was in my mid-twenties and immediately fell in love with the consistent regularity of a community gathering together to share this very special meal of bread and wine made Holy. However, I admit that regularity can become a negative. Sometimes we can get quite routine in our tradition. It can become common and ordinary to walk forward week after week, put out our hands, and partake of Jesus. I know that on some Sundays, I completely take for granted the Mystery of it all.

So, this yearly celebration is wonderful because gives us a chance to look again at the Eucharist and to maybe encounter the Mystery again. Tonight, I hope that with what we hear and say; with our movement and in silence, and with what is prepared at the altar and what has been prepared in your kitchens we’ll each come to experience something – anything – about Holy Communion in a new way.

One of the things I’ve come to love about living in Manchester – which I’m sure you can relate to – is the many things on offer each evening. Manchester is full of events from sports to culture and leisure for everyone. This evening there is a concert at Bridgewater Hall featuring the music of the English Christian Mystic called Julian (1342-1417). You might know her as the saint who lived in the late 1300’s with her cat, anchored onto the cathedral in Norwich from which she gave spiritual direction to those who came to visit her. She also wrote of her vivid visions or dreams about God and realistic conversations with Jesus.
Mystics are those strange people among us who can feel and experience God most closely. And they often write to describe that to us. What I love about the mystics is that what they say can move us to a new insight, they might play with what we take for granted or challenge what we believe.

Julian is like that. Julian wrote – all those ages ago – in a very unusual way about Holy Communion. I said mystics challenged us, and Julian does. She writes about Jesus as our Mother. Although not disputing that Jesus is a male, Christ is our Mother because by taking our human nature, with Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection he sustains our growing into God. That’s certainly different. You need to know that to hear how beautifully she talks of Holy Communion …

“The mother can give her child from her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with Himself; and He does it most graciously and most tenderly with the Blessed Sacrament which is the Precious Food of true life … with which he supports us most mercifully and graciously.”

That may not make sense to your head, but what about touching your heart? I feel she expresses the sustenance I get from the Eucharist; she captures the wholesome sense of nurture and love that’s present.

There’s another mystic – this time from Germany – I like. His name is Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) – in the early 1300’s He writes …

“I could not bear to touch God with my own hand
when he came within my reach,
but He wanted me to hold Him.”

And we do hold God with our very hands when we take the host - the bread. There’s nothing between our skin and the touch of God at that point, is there?
We know that the priest’s hands are essential in the sacraments – baptizing, elevating gifts, anointing the sick, and blessing. This mystic Eckhart makes us think of it the other way when receiving communion. At that moment, WE hold God, we hold Jesus; not the priest.

But the priest does have the privilege to pass out this very special bread. As a new priest, one of the first things I noticed at the altar rail was people’s hands as they prepared to accept the wafer or bread.

Every pair of hands is different – some young and small, some wrinkled with the signs of age or cupped by the ravages of arthritis, sometimes only one hand;
hands thick and hairy, some with the well-earned dirt of hard work or beautifully manicured at the beauty salon; dry and cracked or smooth and soft;
the hands that have been opened to me come in a whole range of colors
and there might be a bandage, cut or bruise presented to me …

And there are stories behind each set of hands … some stories I would know about through my role as pastor and counselor, some stories I could only guess at, some stories that I might hear about later over tea or never ever learn.

These hands – presented to receive - have become a mystical experience for me – but it’s a Holy moment that only I get to have. Now -- if you’ll humor the American visitor amongst you – I’d like you to invite you to share in this with me. We’ll have a little bit of interaction; but don’t worry there’s nothing too touchy-feely.

First, I want you to put your hands together as YOU do to receive communion. Look at them – take a moment to Trust and Feel that God wants you to hold God there – you might want to imagine the wafer in your palms.
Now take your right hand and open it - present it to the person sitting on your right – but bring your gaze to the right hand of your neighbor that’s now in front of you … look at it: What do you see? you might know the story that goes with it, you might not; something might surprise you in what you see
Now, do the Reverse, Share your left hand to the left and focus on a different hand in front of you: Remember that this hand will reach out for and touch the presence of Jesus just as yours does in a few minutes.
!! Thanks everybody !!

My final thought is that our hands – mine, yours, the person next to you – our hands should be more than receiving. The simple act of opening our hands to receive the bread and wine should do more than just change OUR own lives.

From recent times, French mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) writes “in our hands, the hands of all of us, the world and life – our world, our life – are placed like a host, ready to be changed with divine influence.”

As Teilhard reminds us we’ve must never forget that the Precious Food of our Mother Jesus and the ability to hold God in our own hands are meant to be both receiving AND giving. Once consumed, the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood must then help to transform the world. A final mystic Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) says, “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.”

So when you come forward to receive bread and wine tonight, as we walk the procession, spend time in adoration as well as in fellowship
remember that only through the actions of our hands to forgive, nurture, sustain, to offer tenderness and work for justice can our regular practice of celebrating Eucharist together continue the healing, saving and blessing work of Christ all around us.

Amen.