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Blithe Spirit
ON PENTECOST Sunday I like to recall a story told to me by the late Bill Westwood, then Bishop of Edmonton. He was taking a confirmation service in a very respectable church in a very respectable part of north London. As he laid his hands on one woman and prayed that God would send his Holy Spirit upon her, she began to speak in tongues. “I was so surprised that I took my hands off her head,” he said. “We bishops go around praying that God will send his Holy Spirit on people, but when something actually happens, it comes as a bit of a shock.”
I met the woman in question a year or so later. She was in her forties, and had been brought up in a family of atheists. Her baptism and confirmation followed a sudden decision to attend church one Sunday morning, and she told me that until the moment that Bishop Bill described she could not remember ever having heard anything about “speaking in tongues”. It was certainly not a feature of the church she attended.
I shall think of her story as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Spirit on Sunday — the festival of the wonderful, exciting, and totally unpredictable Spirit of Life. God forgive us if we try to trap him in our systems.
Advanced attunement
I HAVE in front of me an invitation to a “CANA Reflection Day” in Abingdon, at which Diana Durham, an “advanced practitioner of attunement”, will explore the meaning of the Vesica Piscis.
In case you share my ignorance of this symbol, here is her explanation of it: “An ancient symbol with deep meaning, but in most traditions indicate the overlap inner and the outer, or the invisible and the manifest with the ‘fish’ shaper where they overlap being the field of conscious perception in the Now.” The grammar, punctuation, and syntax are entirely hers.
I am sure somebody, somewhere, can tell me what it means. I am left with the thought that St Paul at his most elusive (“some things hard to understand”) speaks with utter, crystal clarity in comparison.
Stroll in the Parkway
NETWORK RAIL directed me, the other day, to “change at Bristol Parkway”. I fell to musing on the name as I travelled. A parkway evokes a vista of green lawns, trees and bushes, with a gentle winding path making its way towards an ornamental pond. In fact, in Network Rail language it is a massive expanse of tarmac where people can park their cars at an exorbitant charge before paying an even more exorbitant charge to travel on a train that will probably arrive late.
I would still rather leave my car in a “parkway”, however, than in a multi-storey car park, for aesthetic and practical reasons.
The inventor of the name “Parkway” was in fact a former Archdeacon of Northolt, Eddie Gibbs, now house-for-duty parish priest of Marcham, in Oxfordshire. Many, many years ago, when British Rail were developing these new monster car-parks at strategic stations, they ran a competition to find a suitable name. Eddie, a bit of a rail buff, won the competition — the prize was a British Rail holiday, complete with a stay in a British Rail hotel. Luxury piled on luxury, as you might say.
Every time I use Didcot Parkway, a few miles from his current home, I think of Eddie and give thanks. After all, it could have been Didcot Park ’n’ Rail, or Didcot Motorpark, or Didcot Pay-as-you-Go. At least “Parkway”, as the hymn-writer might have said, is “melodious to the ear”.
Democracy overload
ON DUTY in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford last week, I got into conversation with a delightful couple from Sacramento, California. They had been Episcopalians, they told me, but were now Roman Catholics.
In answer to my question, they assured me that they had not left the Episcopal fold over gay bishops or anything like that; it was simply, as the man put it, that ECUSA suffered from “a surfeit of democracy”.
Edicts, advice, warnings, and rulings came down from diocesan power centres, duly authorised by votes of this or that committee, council, or advisory group, and were elevated (he said) to the level of Holy Writ. Seldom, he explained, were these to do with matters of faith or things of the Spirit, but were more often about politics, economics, or church discipline.
I did not have the heart to mention such things as Rome, frying pans, and fires.
The smart alec
ON THE same day, a group of girls from what one would guess was a very “good” school poured into Christ Church. Soon they had taken up residence in the Latin chapel, taking pictures of each other with their mobile phones, and — of course — giggling and generally kicking up quite a commotion.
Glenn, who looks after the cathedral’s general cleanliness and tidiness, suggested that they might moderate the noise. “After all,” she said, “this is a church.”
“No it’s not,” retorted one young lady. “It’s a cathedral.”
Canon Winter is a retired cleric in the diocese of Oxford, and a former head of religious broadcasting at the BBC.
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