CALLING IN THE CANONS

Following my last post a friend forwarded this to me from J. John - thanks Nick!

Valuing life’s veterans The elderly are often overlooked and pushed to the margins of society. Although many are physically active, psychologically alert and enjoy fulfilled, happy lives, many more struggle with loneliness, ill health and neglect. Not long ago they were honoured and respected. Why has this devaluation of the old happened and what should we do about it? • In the past, older men would have advised on farming and home maintenance and older women on child-rearing, cooking and managing families. Grandparents were a rich store of wisdom. Now, the hard-earned life skills of the elderly seem to have only curiosity value. • The elderly can be demanding. They expect a conversation to last longer than a few quick sentences and we have to slow down to their pace. • The elderly are an uncomfortable reminder of what we will become. Our culture is obsessed with youth, appearance and fitness and one day we will have lost these. The elderly remind us of our own mortality. How we treat the weak, sick and aged is a test of what we really are. The Bible talks about respecting family and looking after those at the margins of society. Life’s veterans are to be treated with dignity and respect for other reasons, too: • They are the people who built the world we live in. They may have taught or cared for us; many suffered in wartime to maintain the freedoms and prosperity of our society. To ignore them is to be guilty of ingratitude. • We should be kind to the old because they need our care. We should look after them and listen to them, not because we get anything out of it, but because those who have received grace should also display grace. • The elderly are often wiser concerning human relationships than the young. Their friendships were not in cyberspace, but in reality. The elderly deserve our: • Attention. We should find situations in which we can get involved with elderly people. • Honour. The elderly should be listened to. In a throwaway society, we need to reassure the elderly that they are not disposable. • Time. We should be ready to sit down with the elderly, listen to them and talk to them. • Consideration. The elderly are often baffled and frustrated about modern living. Although we must avoid being patronising, we need to ask how we can help. • Assistance. Some elderly people are fiercely independent but some need transport, most will welcome a visit and many will sleep easier knowing that a friend is just a phone call away. We can be advocates for them, accompanying them to the garage, standing behind them as they negotiate costs with the plumber or helping them phone the council. Working with the elderly can be challenging and may require patience, tact and persistence. Nevertheless, we need to care for them. Remember Jesus’ great command to ‘do to others what you would have them do to you ’. Agagé, J.John (Canon) www.philotrust.com

GRASPING THE LIVE RAIL

The BBC is leading its new coverage this morning with a report about the poor state of care of the elderly in British hospitals. Sadly, this is hardly news to many of us.

The state and future of the NHS is one of the hottest of hot political potatoes. It is the live rail of politics - try and grasp it and you are likely to go down in smoke, as David Cameron is beginning to discover with his proposed health reforms. This extreme politicization is, I think, unfortunate, as it makes it very difficult to have a rational debate. However, one thing that many of us will probably agree on is that this latest report highlights something that is of genuine concern.

Too often there are stories about patient neglect, especially of the elderly. Lack of attention to the basics - feeding, washing, turning to avoid bed sores - are all things that those of us who visit hospitals are likely to have witnessed. There are probably a host of reasons for this, but perhaps one - and here I risk grasping the live rail myself - is the transition to nursing becoming a graduate career. Perhaps, as nursing has become a 'profession', those with degrees in the subject don't feel the same kind of commitment to the basic (and lets face it, often unpleasant) aspects of patient care as did an earlier generation of nurses.

(And here I need to make all the normal caveats about the thousands of nurses who are passionate and committed and diligent in patient care - including several members of my congregation. So let's assume that as a given.)

There is a lot to be said for being non-professional. Not in the sense that the term tends to get used nowadays, but in the sense of doing something not because one has to, but because one wants to, or feels it is important that a thing just gets done. The thing gets done because one is passionately committed to it, not because one is paid for it. John Piper's masterful book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, makes the same appeal to those of us who are employed in Christian work. Piper begins this book with a quote from E.M. Bounds,

The preacher...is not a professional man; his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion.

Professional preachers are a disaster. Perhaps professional nurses are too. When it comes to the care of bodies and souls, sometimes a healthy dash of amateurism is what we all need.

BOOK REVIEW: HEDGEROW

Hedgerow, by John Wright

Last Friday it was Mrs Hosier’s birthday, so I took the day off work to be with her. This turned into a bit of a foody meander through Dorset – organic, stoneground flour from Cann, just outside Shaftesbury; the farmers market at Sherbourne supplying Blue Vinney and sheeps milk cheese, and fresh asparagus; local beers at the Brace of Pheasants pub in the village of Plush.

We like interesting food.

Our garden is starting to get interesting too – so far we’ve had salad (lots of salad), one artichoke, and the first couple of strawberries. Pesto made with our home-grown basil is a big hit. Tomatoes are forming on the vine, and the early potatoes are nearly ready. The weirdly warm spring we’ve had has really helped speed things along this year.

Daughter No. 3 is into this kind of thing as well, and bought her mother the River Cottage Handbook on Hedgerows as a birthday gift. We go in for a bit of foraging already, but John Wright operates at a higher dimension of free food gathering. For anyone interested in the culinary properties of what might more generally be disregarded as weeds, this is a great place to start.

As well as being informative, Wright has a nice turn of phrase. For example, in describing wood sorrel…

The trefoil nature of the leaves has made it one of the candidates for the shamrock, with which St Patrick demonstrated the nature of the Holy Trinity (in fact the Trinity is a mystery and resists metaphor). Another familiar religious association is due to its flowering at Easter time, giving it the occasional name of Alleluia.

The flowers are unusual in that while they are nearly always infertile, the plant always sets seed. In fact the seeds are produced by tiny, unopening and self-fertile flowers near the roots in a process called cleistogamy (‘closed marriage’ – ‘open marriage’, if you’re wondering, is called chasmogamy). The visible flowers are, it seems, just for show.

Or this, on that pernicious invader of gardens – ground elder…

I have made Ground Elder soup and Ground Elder quiche, all the tastier for being made from the bodies of an enemy. If you keep guinea pigs it is well worth feeding them with as much Ground Elder as you can – it gives a lovely fresh flavour to the meat.

Picking your way through hedgerows looking for something interesting to eat won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it has much to commend it – fresh air and the victorious feeling of a successful hunt if nothing else. Reading this little book might be just the spur you need to get out there and munching on your first piece of red goosefoot or hogweed.

BOOK REVIEW: MARRIED FOR GOD

Married for God, by Christopher Ash

This is the book I have been meaning to write, and now I don’t have to. It’s actually a few years old (2007), but I hadn’t come across it previously.

Whenever I teach on sex and marriage (which seems to be a lot) I always do so in terms of the biblical understanding of sex being intended for fruitfulness, faithfulness and sacrifice. Invariably, this understanding comes as something novel for many of my hearers, but Ash takes a very similar line – although he talks about marriage as an institution rather than an act of sacrificial love. (Personally, I prefer my choice of words – sacrifice is rather more inspiring than being part of an institution.)

Ash’s writing is biblically soaked, and this means his approach to sex and marriage expresses itself differently from most other discussions of the subject (including far too many “Christian” books). His perspective on marriage and sex begins with the recognition that God gave man and woman to one another for a purpose – that they are to exist in relationship in order to help one another. This is very different from our more normal cultural assumption that relationships are primarily about keeping us from being lonely, or meeting our sexual needs. No, Ash is clear, we are given to one another in order to work together, which is why the Bible says that Eve was given to Adam as a ‘helper’ rather than as a ‘companion’. “Marriage is not the remedy for loneliness. Not all human beings are able to marry, but all human beings are invited into fellowship with God and with one another in Jesus Christ…we should want marriages that serve God. If they are sexually and personally fulfilled, well and good. But if they do not serve God, no amount of personal fulfilment will make them right.” And as part of this approach, sex should become sex in the service of God.

Sex is sex in the service of God when it is fruitful. God’s plan for sex was for “pro-creating (creating on his behalf) potential gardeners to join his team.” While discussing this, Ash spends some time speaking to those who are unable to have children (as do I whenever I speak on this subject) as this is one of the most painful things anyone can experience. But this pastoral sensitivity does not prevent him from being clear about the fruitful intent of sex in the service of God.

Ash is also very clear about how marriage requires faithfulness, and how sacrificial love (or the marriage institution) is good gift of grace. “Sex within marriage is sex under grace, with nothing to prove. A married couple may ‘do well’ or ‘do badly’ at sex, and cheerfully laugh about it knowing that their relationship is not threatened when they do badly… On the other hand, sex outside marriage is always sex ‘under law’…always anxious lest at any time the other may decide there is not enough in it for them.”

As well as spending a lot of time teaching on sex and marriage, I also spend a lot of time counselling people on these subjects. There are few things more joy filled, as a pastor, than helping prepare a couple for marriage and seeing them come to their wedding day ready to make binding promises that will join them together as one. And there are few things more gut wrenching than being involved with a couple as the wheels come off their marriage and they discard those vows they once made.

Ash has written a book that should be of help to many people. It will help couples considering marriage, and if its message is taken to heart it should help keep together many marriages that seem to be heading for the precipice. Marriage is certainly not the only way in which to serve God, but in order to be fruitfully, faithfully and sacrificially married, marriage should be for God.

WALKING ON WATER

MOVING SWIFTLY ALONG

That was a weekend to remember. It left me feeling exhilarated and worn out, tired and energised, bloated and burst. On a purely domestic level it was a packed few days – Mrs Hosier & I went to two gigs, we had friends down to stay, church was intense… And then there was the surfeit of global-level news: The wedding, the beatification of John Paul, and then the death/assassination/execution/murder (delete according to personal political preference) of #OBL.

While he may not have had a telephone or internet connection, clearly Osama had not been wasting his time and had kept abreast of Hollywood story lines. We all know that the best place to hide is the most obvious place not to hide. A massive Bond villain style bunker just yards from a military academy and national intelligence department – genius! Of course no-one’s going to find that suspicious. It’s far too obvious to be obvious! “Hidden in Plain Sight – the Movie” will be hitting our screen sometime this summer. (If any Hollywood big shots are looking for a screenwriter for that one, I’ll happily take the assignment!)

Equally as confounding as the fact that Bin Laden wasn’t in a cave after all, was the beatification of John Paul II. I tend to be pretty sympathetic to Catholicism, and having had to read quite a bit of John Paul’s theology for my MA have some appreciation of Roman Catholic moral theology, but events like this reveal just how far Rome is from Geneva. The late Pope is now declared “blessed” because a nun has been healed after she prayed to him to intercede with God on her behalf – Huh? He will then be made a “Saint” if there is another verifiable miracle as a result of his intercession – What? In my Bible every Christian is already declared blessed (Gal. 3:9) and called a saint (Eph. 1:1), and Jesus is the only intercessor I need (Heb. 7:25).

And then that wedding again… Well, I’ve already said my piece on that.

But all these things will pass. As significant as these events are, life goes on. As Carl Trueman points out, “most of what goes on today in the name of earth-shattering paradigm shifts has no value, whatever the price tag.” That was a big weekend, but already #OBL and #RoyalWedding aren't even trending. We just keep moving swiftly along.