IT'S 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED . . .

I have updated this post from 3 1/2 years ago, because I still like it.

St Mary's Church, Kersey, Suffolk

IT’s 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

Oh dear. Now what? I have an indeterminate term ahead of me, I am about to be appointed by the Sovereign, and I need to know what to do to, for, and with the 77 million Anglicans of whom I will soon be the titular spiritual head. Not in any authoritative sense, for, true to traditional Anglican muddle, Canterbury is in no way a Pope. He has no power; he has no authority other than moral and traditional; he cannot order much and can command less. And nowadays, most Anglicans will be sure to disagree with him vehemently on almost all issues they consider important. So?

This has its good points, too. Canterbury can, if he likes, be individual, eccentric, and stubborn; and if he is seen to have a touch of holiness, or even greatness, he may get away with it. Rowan Williams, on the other hand, showed us all exactly what to avoid when he said that any successor of his should proceed ‘with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other’. Under that reportedly saintly man, the Church let its agenda be set by the media, and was thus always seen to be behind. Michael Ramsey, who admittedly lived in the prehistoric age Before Twitter, is a better example. When asked by a bratty Oxford undergraduate ‘Your Grace, what’s wrong with the Church of England?’ he murmured not one word about sex, gender, or LGBT, but said crisply, ‘It doesn’t preach enough.’

So here I am, with two short months before my intronisation, and some serious praying to do. I’ll start with Don Camillo. That only slightly fictitious Italian parish priest talked frequently with the crucified Christ on the wall of his church, and dealt with local ex-virgins and would-be Communists on the strength of it. We may think him pawky, but those conversations will, I suspect, be a good way to start. Right, Lord?

What (few will ask because most think they know) is wrong with the Church of England? And those other churches in our Communion? I’d begin by showing people what’s right. It is a national Church, and one of the few; because it has the vocation to be a national Church, it cannot hide itself in a comfy closed doctrinal closet but must worry the issues until they succumb. It is on the whole a tolerant Church, a reasonably kindly Church, an unpretentious Church, a Church that functions best when assembling many people of different points if view for a liturgy of Matins or Communion followed by coffee or sherry, and cake.

It is not good at taking positions on knotty problems beloved by television talk-show hosts. It is not good at dealing with morals beyond the Great Commandments. It is not good at being Cool. It is not good at being political. It is not good at being Progressive, or Liberal, or Conservative. It is not good at being Ecological or Diverse.

So I think that I will not try to be any of those things. Journalists with microphones and enormous cameras will try to make me, and I will prepare a few good one-liners to send them home with. But I will not bite.

Instead, I will surprise them. I will give each of Britain’s parishes the choice of being, like the hexes in Jack Chalker’s Well World novels, Wild, Half-Wild, or Tame, the choice to be made by all members in a parish referendum. Wild parishes will permit everything, from gay marriage to djembe-rock services; Half-Wild will choose from a small list which changes they will adopt, but will then be stuck with those for twelve years before a review; Tame parishes will be traditional (and BCP) in every way, whether Low, High, or Broad. Once those choices are made, I will put a twelve-year moratorium on all discussions of ‘modernization’, whether of morality or of liturgy, in the Church.

The place of these will be taken by an enormous effort of spirituality, accompanied (but not replaced) by active charity. Discussion will be allowed of matters of theology, but not encouraged: I will try to steer my fractious Church in the direction of being a praying Church rather than a forum for disagreement. I will put huge effort into encouraging vocations, both priestly and religious, and maintain and encourage all Anglican religious orders. Since my appointment coincides with the 350^th anniversary of the Restoration (1668) Prayer Book, I will direct that for one year it be used in all prime-time parish services, with Common Worship relegated for that time to 8 a.m. I will institute part-time seminars on preaching for all Church of England rectors and curates, and encourage longer, text-based sermons in all Sunday services.

An easily-overlooked feature of these changes is that they are low-cost financially. On that front, I will encourage a new form of tithing compatible with high taxation, and I will appoint a committee to study the feasibility of part-time curates. I will encourage Government to increase its assistance in maintaining historic churches and their fabric, and encourage the creation of lay readers and Matins and Evensong services led by them.

Finally, I will initiate a large effort of promulgating the knowledge of Anglican spirituality and its history, including the lives of persons to be venerated; I will institute popular courses on the thought of Hooker and Burnet, on the sermons of Donne and Newman (even though he left for Rome), and on the poetry of Herbert and Watts.

Thinking about this has almost made me eager to begin. Thanks, Lord.    

Christmas Carol Service, Canterbury Cathedral

 

SO ANCIENT, SO NEW

Reading -- for the first time, to my shame -- through St Augustine's Confessions, I worked my way through his interminable inquiry concerning memory (fascinating, though), and suddenly came upon this, which of course I remembered as it is often quoted. But to find it embedded in its original context was an immediate and almost spine-chilling thrill: you can imagine Augustinus, having sweated away on his philosophical quest, suddenly breaking out in this immortal prose poem of pure devotion. How can you not love this man?

Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi ! 
Et ecce intus eras et ego foris
et ibi te quærebam et in ista formosa, quæ fecisti, deformis irruebam. 
Mecum eras, et tecum non eram.
Ea me tenebant longe a te, quæ si in te non essent, non essent. 
Vocasti et clamasti et rupisti surdidatem meam, 
coruscasti, splenduisti et fugasti cæcitatem meam;
fragrasti, et duxi spiritum et anhelo tibi, 
gustavi, et esurio et sitio, 
tetigisti me, et exarsi in pacem tuam. 


Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! 
And look, you were within me and I outside, 
and it was there that I searched for you, and into the lovely things you created all unlovely I plunged.
You were with me, and I was not with you. 
Those things kept me far from you which if they had not been in you would not have been at all. 
You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness, 
You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness; 
You breathed your fragrance on me, and I drew in breath and pant for you, 
I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst. 
You touched me, and at once I burned for your peace.

And such a pleasure to find the original Latin, the compactness of which only increases the emotion.

ELIOT ANYWAY

It is so great, and so moving, and so true, that one cannot NOT post it on this day.

Ash Wednesday

by T.S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again


Because I do not hope


Because I do not hope to turn


Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope


I no longer strive to strive towards such things


(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)


Why should I mourn


The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again


The infirm glory of the positive hour


Because I do not think


Because I know I shall not know


The one veritable transitory power


Because I cannot drink


There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time


And place is always and only place


And what is actual is actual only for one time


And only for one place


I rejoice that things are as they are and


I renounce the blessed face


And renounce the voice


Because I cannot hope to turn again


Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something


Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us


And pray that I may forget


These matters that with myself I too much discuss


Too much explain


Because I do not hope to turn again


Let these words answer


For what is done, not to be done again


May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly


But merely vans to beat the air


The air which is now thoroughly small and dry


Smaller and dryer than the will


Teach us to care and not to care


Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death


Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree


In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety


On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained


In the hollow round of my skull. And God said


Shall these bones live? shall these


Bones live? And that which had been contained


In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:


Because of the goodness of this Lady


And because of her loveliness, and because


She honours the Virgin in meditation,


We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love


To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.


It is this which recovers


My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions


Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn


In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.


Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.


There is no life in them. As I am forgotten


And would be forgotten, so I would forget


Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said


Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only


The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping


With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences


Calm and distressed


Torn and most whole


Rose of memory


Rose of forgetfulness


Exhausted and life-giving


Worried reposeful


The single Rose


Is now the Garden


Where all loves end


Terminate torment


Of love unsatisfied


The greater torment


Of love satisfied


End of the endless


Journey to no end


Conclusion of all that


Is inconclusible


Speech without word and


Word of no speech


Grace to the Mother


For the Garden


Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining


We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,


Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,


Forgetting themselves and each other, united


In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye


Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity


Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair


I turned and saw below


The same shape twisted on the banister


Under the vapour in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears


The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair


I left them twisting, turning below;


There were no more faces and the stair was dark,


Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,


Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair


Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit


And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene


The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green


Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.


Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,


Lilac and brown hair;


Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,


Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair


Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy


Lord, I am not worthy


                        but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet


Who walked between


The various ranks of varied green


Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,


Talking of trivial things


In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour


Who moved among the others as they walked,


Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand


In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,


Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing


Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring


One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.


The new years walk, restoring


Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring


With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem


The time. Redeem


The unread vision in the higher dream


While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue


Between the yews, behind the garden god,


Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down


Redeem the time, redeem the dream


The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent


If the unheard, unspoken


Word is unspoken, unheard;


Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,


The Word without a word, the Word within


The world and for the world;


And the light shone in darkness and


Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled


About the centre of the silent Word.

         O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word


Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence


Not on the sea or on the islands, not


On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,


For those who walk in darkness


Both in the day time and in the night time


The right time and the right place are not here


No place of grace for those who avoid the face


No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for


Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,


Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between


Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait


In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray


For children at the gate


Who will not go away and cannot pray:


Pray for those who chose and oppose

        O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender


Yew trees pray for those who offend her


And are terrified and cannot surrender


And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks


In the last desert before the last blue rocks


The desert in the garden the garden in the desert


Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

        O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again


Although I do not hope


Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss


In this brief transit where the dreams cross


The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying


(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things


From the wide window towards the granite shore


The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying


Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices


In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices


And the weak spirit quickens to rebel


For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell


Quickens to recover


The cry of quail and the whirling plover


And the blind eye creates


The empty forms between the ivory gates


And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth

The place of solitude where three dreams cross

Between blue rocks

But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away

Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,


Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood


Teach us to care and not to care


Teach us to sit still


Even among these rocks,


Our peace in His will


And even among these rocks


Sister, mother


And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,


Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.