Category: York

What Shapes Us

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I probably shouldn’t be allowed in bookshops – perhaps, especially, the second hand variety. It’s not that I steal from them, but I am mesmerised by so many tantalising titles that whisper: ‘read me – come and see the world from where I’m standing’. All too often I succumb to the siren call of these exciting doors into new worlds of information; history; narrative and imagination. I am at a particular risk living where we are now, as the excellent Minster Gate Bookshop (pictured) stands less than a 3 minute walk away on the other side of the cathedral.

“A bookshop is an idea in time”

Carlos Pascual quoted in Carrión, J. (2016). Bookshops. Hachette UK.

Growing up there were few books in our house. These consisted of map books, a Bible, some children’s books, cookery tomes and a Readers’ Digest three volume ‘Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary’ (the latter now a mere £5 on Abebooks.com: I found it very helpful on many occasions). At my grandparents it was a different story. Bessie, my grandmother, had been a primary school teacher before her marriage to Robert. The small bookcase in the sitting room was crammed with novels by Walter Scott; Dickens and Thackeray. There was also an atlas with a remarkable number of countries shaded in red. It was here that my love of literature began, but its development and maturity came via a charismatic English teacher at secondary school. Before the first years’ long summer holiday Mrs Boll handed round a list of books. Apparently we were supposed to choose one to read: I misheard, and read them all (and I’m a slow reader).

When I look around the study where I am sitting, the books are a record of my evolving interests and passions. There are a few books from undergraduate studies in English Literature and Theology. A selection of novels and poetry titles. More books linked to my PhD research and subsequent publications. A Bible in Spanish. Copies of journals for which I’ve been an editor and a host of miscellaneous and probably ill-advised further purchases. Nevertheless, they are very good company and sometimes I’ll wander about looking for a title (which I know is somewhere) and become distracted picking up these old friends and reminding myself of their contents.

Some years ago I was given a copy of Jorge Carrión’s Bookshops. This recounts the author’s visits to bookshops in many different parts of the world. It has been described as an extended essay and ‘a vital manifesto for the future of the traditional bookshop’. Some of these bookshops are ancient; others are works of art in their own right, employing the skills of local carpenters to fashion the shelving. For Carrión such places are about more than the retail of print, they are the context for people to meet, debate, share new ideas and inspire one another. After all, books have always – to some degree – been dangerous. There is a reason that despotic regimes burn them. No doubt, today, the internet has provided another forum to share ideas and this can be shut down when authorities feel threatened. It’s much harder to track-down and deactivate inked paper.

My most recent visit to Minster Gate Bookshop saw me give in to temptation (twice). I could hide behind a facade of professional interest for one title, an exploration of Jeanette Winterson’s writing and its relationship to religion. I’ve always loved Winterson’s novels. The other is justifiable (I protest too much?) because it concerns Laurence Sterne, and his work is my current hobbyhorse. Incidentally, I have found on occasion that another advantage of second hand books is that they sometimes contain material from a previous owner. In one case this was a typed letter in which the author told a librarian that all his children had turned out to be nincompoops. Reflecting on the chronology, I suspect that they’re probably now all in high-powered jobs.

On the wall of my study is a work of art by Wilkinson. It contains a block of acetate pages printed with a novel, written by the artist: ‘The Alabaster Child’. The work appeals to me for a number of reasons. It gives physical expression to the fact that reading is not simply linear. Later chapters of a novel are in dialogue with earlier sections, or certain words, as they weave towards a particular conclusion. In the case of ‘The Alabaster Child: A Novel’, the sheen of the acetate captures the reflection of my bookshelves on the other side of the room. Books speak to books and the relationship is both constant and dynamic. All my reading, what I remember and what has shaped my unconscious imagination, is in dialogue. As Doris Lessing put it in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill”.

An Incorruptible Crown

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For many years the 30th of January was widely observed across England as the day King Charles I was executed. It is retained in the calendar of the Church of England, but the degree of emphasis attached to the commemoration has diminished. Charles King and Martyr is kept as a ‘lesser festival, 1649’ with a single prayer to be said. In the Book of Common Prayer there was a entire service provided for this day (removed in 1859).

“I go from a corruptible, to an incorruptible Crown; where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the World”.

King Charles I, spoken at his place of execution 30 January 1649

Following the Restoration the Church of England played a significant role in shaping official history and sustaining the belief and convictions that underpin monarchy. Sermons were preached and many were published. The date provided the occasion for bishops and senior clergy to demonstrate their loyalty and prevent any thoughts returning to the idea of a commonwealth. Across the land, from village church to metropolitical cathedral, it was expected that royal subjects would observe this solemn day.

There were other ways in which the return of the monarchy was welded into popular imagination. This included the creative arts, especially portraiture. One enterprising donation took the form of a recycled statue. Now sited at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire, the monument to King Charles II was previously a statue showing the Polish commander John III Sobieski riding down a Turkish soldier. In its revised form substantial work was done to modify the head of the figure, to resemble Charles II, but the trampled figure of Oliver Cromwell retains a decidedly unusual appearance (i.e. he’s wearing a turban).

There should probably be a maxim to beware of sycophantic royalists bearing gifts. The first attempt to donate the statue to a prominent London location (the Royal Exchange) was rejected. The statue’s owner, Sir Robert Vyner – who might be said to have a stake in the royal franchise (he created new coronation regalia for Charles II) – then offered the work to a City church. This was accepted (perhaps it was too hard to say ‘no’?) and the statue occupied space at the Stocks Market. It later moved to Lincolnshire, before settling at Newby Hall in Yorkshire.

The recycled statue used to depict Charles II, Newby Hall, photo by David Bridgwater

The 17th century poet Andrew Marvell made satirical comment on the statue when it was still in London. He suggested that there was more than a passing resemblance between the horse rider and the man who had commissioned the work:

When each one that passes finds fault with the horse,
Yet all do affirm that the King is much worse ;
And some by the likeness Sir Robert suspect
That he did for the King his own statue erect.

Andrew Marvell, A Poem on the Statue in the Stocks-Market

Having been shuffled off to the north country, London had performed that subtle process of sifting out mediocre work at odds with its ambitions in art and public monuments. Following the Great Fire the city was modelling itself as an international capital for trade and culture where, alas, Sir Robert’s reworked homage did not belong. Marvell’s intimation that the statue bore a likeness to its commissioner may also have helped seal its fate.

As it is one of my principal areas of reading at present, I feel bound to mention that Laurence Sterne published a sermon marking the 30th January. Compared with many of the thundering homilies delivered on this date, Sterne’s offering has been described as ‘innocuous’. Although thoroughly loyal, and referencing ‘our forefathers trespass’, Sterne adds the comment that: ‘to avoid one extreme, we began to run into another’. Perhaps this indicates a more critical understanding of what led to the Civil War and how future progress might be made without recourse to arms. This appears to be a lesson the world is still struggling to comprehend, let alone enact.

Common Sense

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In the 18th century the fortunes of the city of York, along with its Minster and clergy, were enjoying a rise in both wealth and status. This led to the creation of prestigious new buildings, sweeping away some of the more mundane Medieval dwellings. This was a time when the buildings surrounding York Minster began to change with dramatic effect. Demolishing – and in some degree, incorporating – 15th century cottages to the north-east of the cathedral, Dr William Ward built himself a fine Georgian townhouse (pictured). He was the chief legal officer (‘commissar’) for the Dean and Chapter of York, a role which brought many pecuniary benefits. The new house was a fitting expression of his wealth and status.

The role of ‘commissary’ brought both influence and financial reward. There is every indication that Ward used his position to become wealthy and further the ambitions of his family. His daughter, Sarah, married a baronet and become Lady Fagg. While little is known about Ward, like many gentleman of his era, we know that he had a significant personal library. This is indicated by an Item in the late lawyer’s Last Will and Testament in which he bequeathed to his wife and daughter, ‘Forty English Books each such as they shall chuse out of my Library excepting the large Bible’. Perhaps foreseeing that this could lead to some dispute over which books each should have, Ward adds: ‘my wife to have the first choice’. In all likelihood the large bible would have passed to his son.

The wealth of legal officer such as Ward was built on a considerable degree of misery. Misery, that is, for the poor souls who came before the ecclesiastical courts. The leading Sterne scholar Arthur H. Cash described these courts as:

‘weak remnants of what had once been a terrifying Protestant inquisition’

Cash, A. H. (1971). Sterne as a Judge in the Spiritual Courts: The Groundwork of A Political Romance. In English Writers of the Eighteenth Century (pp. 17-36). Columbia University Press.

The main purpose of these courts was to deter pregnancy outside wedlock. It often led to both fines and public humiliation. It is hard for us to understand the level of pastoral disregard and cruelty which this system could produce. For example, Cash cites an incident where Robert Milburn was tried in 1753 in the village of Alne, just north of York, for antenuptial fornication ‘with Jane his wife, now dead’. It is little wonder that these courts were abolished or that clergy came to have a very mixed reputation through their enthusiasm to become judges. It provides some insight about how Lawrence Sterne came to be so familiar with a range of conduct and human emotion. Perhaps the perceived bawdiness of Tristram Shandy owes something to the process of examining cases that were brought to the courts by church wardens. In addition to his responsibilities as a parson, as the son of an army officer; a sometime farmer; and a judge in the courts, Sterne must have heard and seen a wide spectrum of life. Additionally, as a frequent visitor to nearby York, he was also connected to middle class mores and cosmopolitan life.

Perhaps William Ward’s main claim to fame is that his death precipitated a decade long dispute between the Dean of York and the Archbishop’s chief legal officer. It was a disagreement concerning the many legal roles which Ward had occupied and how these were to be inherited on his death. The Archbishop’s legal officer believed that the Dean had promised them to him, a promise on which he claimed the Dean reneged. Finally, after heated public exchanges between these two worthies, the situation provoked Laurence Sterne to publish his first significant literary work – a satire on the dispute entitled ‘A Political Romance’ or, as it is often known, ‘The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat’. It was so accurate and effective that the Archbishop of York instructed all copies to be returned and the entire stock to be burned. Thankfully, at least six people either didn’t get the memo, or they decided not comply with the instruction.

Which brings me to common sense. Looking back it is easy to name the intolerable cruelties of another ago, or of a different place and people. In the style of Jonathan Swift, Sterne brings to the dispute a creative reframing that allows people to see their conduct in a different light. What may have appeared to be an obvious and inevitable response, suddenly becomes more complex and questionable. Creative writing invited the reader to wonder about the behaviour of those involved and the apparent inevitability of the dispute that unfolded. In many ways Sterne was an actor within events that seemed natural and necessary – and in the end he inherited some of Dr Ward’s legal responsibilities. However, he was also able to see beyond the near horizon of common sense and question the relationships and conduct which were doing little to promote the reputation of the church. Common sense in one age can appear as outrageously cruel in another – and I hope that in her new role of ‘minister for common sense’ Esther McVey will recognise the provisionality of her brief. The common sense of one group in society may be seen very differently by another group. Unless handled with the greatest of care, common sense can conserve and perpetuate some of our worst practices and behaviours.

  • The illustration of Dr Ward’s house, Chapter Yard, York, is by Allan T Adams BA FRSA FSAI

The Cut Air

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The garden is blissful in July late-in-the-day light. A blackbird calls in agitation from the margins of the lawn. The dog’s ears are pricked: perhaps there is a cat? Beyond the Georgian brickwork of the canonry the large mass of the Minster looms and the cry of a peregrine rises above the murmur of tourists in the precinct. Pigeons flutter hither and thither in alarm. At one point the scream of swifts breaks in, sudden and insistent, as three sets of scimitar wings slice the evening air. They appear and disappear in a moment. Bees toil amongst the lavender. In the walled garden the soil turns up fragments of clay pipes and not far below the surface there will be scaps of Roman detritus – ashes under Eboracum.

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world’s breathing. 
The grace to say they live in another firmament. 
A way to say the miracle will not occur, 
And watch the miracle.

Anne Stevenson, Swifts

Time stands thick in the bulk of the cathedral, the rustic garden bricks, and all that lies below. The long-dead masons and glaziers knew nothing about cluster bombs, and their small fires did little to harm the health of the world. Yes, there was fear of disease and the panic stirred by the silhouette of a longship appearing down the Ouse. Progress has dispelled misery but also birthed new anxieties. Now an exceptionally warm day can be an omen of humanity’s expansion and consumption, of heat that will change the way we live and drive the poorest to destruction. Our fingerprints are everywhere, with little but the length of days escaping some change wrought by our manipulation.

It is necessary to hold a balance between this becoming-future and the peace of an evening hour. Undoubtedly there is an imperative to act, but there is also a need to sit and stare, and savour the gift of all we must strive to save.

Behold, we know not everything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last – far off – at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

From In Memoriam A.A.H., by Alfred Tennyson

A Fleeting Shadow

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It is an incidental fact of the modern world that most of us are captured, unwittingly, in other people’s photos. Whereas once upon a time we might have dodged around the line-of-fire between camera and subject, there are now so many pictures being taken that it is almost impossible not to intrude. Outside York Minster cameras and phones are in all directions, with an almost continuous stream of snaps being taken from dawn until well after dusk. I’ve long given up trying to walk around.

No doubt my nonchalance about the risk of ruining an image is partly the result of technological progress. In my youth a photograph was a precious thing, involving physical film and a long delay between a click and seeing the image itself. If the camera was set incorrectly a whole reel of film could be lost, but you wouldn’t know until after all the photos had been taken and the cost of developing had been paid. As with all technology, there is a rearguard action against this progress and a growing interest in using film cameras, which market analysts expect to continue. Nevertheless, when I walk into someone’s line of sight today I know that more often than not the image can be deleted in a second, at no cost, and further attempts to capture the desired picture are almost unlimited.

In her new novel, The Hero of This Book, the novelist Elizabeth McCracken writes entertainingly about this shift in behaviour reflecting the altered state of the technology used in photography. At one point we find McCracken’s protagonist walking across the Millennium Bridge by Tate Modern:

I slowed but I didn’t stop. I strode out. “Well, that’s ruined it,” I heard a woman mutter as I passed. She was examining the screen of her camera – an actual camera, not a phone; she took herself seriously – and she wanted me to feel bad. The wind was pulling apart her ponytail in a quarrelsome way. I didn’t feel bad; I felt marvellous. For years I’d been polite around tourists taking pictures. I’d yielded, believing as many people did then, and some still do, that this was a moral law.

Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book, Jonathan Cape, London 2023 p. 38

Across the world millions of us will be captured on the edges and backgrounds of strangers’ photographs. In the Cloud there will probably be millions more – photos that will never see the light of day; be added to an album; or turned into images for cushions, mugs and mouse-mats. It is a theme picked up by the former doctor and hit TV script-writer Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty). In a semi-autobiographical novel that preceded his fame, Mercurio wrote about his time as a junior doctor in an NHS hospital. At one point he reflects on the fact that at the end of a patient’s life it is usually those closest to them who are present. However, there are also figures around the patient who have only appeared for the first time in the patient’s life at this critical moment: the clinical staff. As with many of the most significant moments in our lives, the images of this experience will be etched into memories for years to come. However, in those mental images – with key family members static by the bedside – the staff are little more than a blur:

Though I’m beside her I’m not part of the moment or part of another life ending for no reason I can comprehend. I’m a passer-by captured in a photograph who’s an out-of-focus streak of lines flashing through the frame and then gone. I’m a cold scalpel-sharp instrument slicing through scenes in other people’s lives and not ever being slowed.

Jed Mercurio, Bodies, Vintage Press, 2003, p. 134

I am less gloomy than Mercurio about the import and significance of the professionals’ fleeting presence. At our best we help foreground the key family members and the person whose life is ebbing away. By doing our work with suitable skill, attention and compassion we leave family members, not with the images of the clinical staff, but with an imprint of their loving concern and professional care. Many times I have heard people mention the commitment and dignity provided by professional staff when speaking about a critical moment in their life. The memory of faces may blur, but the impact of humanity and empathy remains. This isn’t only in the weeks and months following a loss, it can endure for a lifetime. What at the time may feel like a fleeting shadow, an intrusion into the frame of our family and friends, may leave a legacy of enduring goodness.

Repurposed

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Former generations excelled at avoiding waste. My grandparents, having lived through two Word Wars, knew how to make sure that seemingly useless packaging, or clothes that were coming to end of their life, found a fresh purpose. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s this seemed to me to be a needless attachment to things best thrown away. I appreciate now that if more of us had living with their attitude to possessions the world now might be a better (and cooler) place. The disposable society is minting new mountains of refuse every day. By and large, we have not lived carefully with the planet or appreciated the consequences of a cultural attitude of ‘buy-and-bin’.

Living in York I am reminded of the care and thought that has gone into repurposing things that have come to the end of one life, and begin another. Whether the eroded masons’ work, now removed from the Minster, that forms a border in the garden, or the spectacular pinnace – replaced in the last decade – which sits in the grounds of the Deanery. (It is pictured at the top of this blog, lit with tea lights). In some ways this recycling can be functional, in others a curiosity, like the stonework brought down to ground level from well over 100 feet.

Eroded masonry from York Minster is often used in nearby gardens to form borders.

Last week a news report feature one of the UK’s largest centres for ‘upcycling’. Here, items that would normally have gone into landfill are careful brought back to life and refreshed so that they can continue to be used. In some cases items find a new purpose – perhaps in a garden or elsewhere around the home. Seeing the large warehouse full of items awaiting attention was a salutary reminder of how much we dispose of without a second thought as to value, purpose or potential.

“Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I haste to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.”

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Physical ruins are a visible reminder of the fragments of re-purposed ideas; conventions; and language, which are part of our current reality. Like the rubble of Roman occupation on which York Minster is built, we know that the civilisation of two thousand years ago is visible in our road system and forms of political administration. Very little is without precedent and each generation makes use of the past in its own way. Perhaps we are rather better at recycling (or up-cycling) ideas than physical items. Certainly politics seems to offer little more than various re-castings of former ideologies. The process to find a new leader for the Conservative Party – and Prime Minister – has candidates raiding the perceived ‘glory days’ of Thatcherism to curry favour with a nostalgic party membership.

Christianity is a material religion. The incarnation fuses matter and spirit, flesh and breath. God is not separate from this reality and, when discarded and destroyed, Jesus is encountered in resurrection as a physical being. As the central event of the Christian faith, this divine refusal to abide in death suggests that even our most disastrous experiences can never be wholly written-off. Like Lazarus in his tomb, we may find ourselves unexpectedly dragged back into life. Whether it be the prodigal son; a disgraced woman cast before Jesus; or the sick separated from society, God appears to be unusually concerned with what we rubbish. As the UK heads towards what the NHS Confederation this week characterised as the risk of a ‘humanitarian crisis’ it is the responsibility of the Church to speak and act to ensure that we are not complicit in forgetting people below the political horizon. Healing and restoration abound in the presence of Jesus and the Church cannot be itself without fulfilling the same mission.

“Bricolage involves skill in sewing, mending, refashioning, and building, but it also involves perception of possibilities and imagination; one must wonder what things might become once they can no longer be what they were…”

Lang Hearlson, C. (2021). Theological imagination in a throwaway society: Contending with waste. Theology Today, 78(2), 158-169. Chicago

Summer Daze

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It is unsurprising that I have seen few swifts in the centre of York. One evening there were some high up above the Minster’s central tower – and now and then I spot a solitary bird above the garden. The preference of these birds is the open spaces of Yorkshire, rather than the urban quarters. Cycling back from Beningbrough recently we traveled beside open fields near Overton, a very small village mentioned in the Domesday Book. As I looked up to my right I suddenly noticed a sky full of activity – a large number of swifts darting and diving above the land.

They are remarkable birds to watch. High up, flitting among the clouds, swifts dart, spin and slice their path through dense summer air. They are in the element where they spend a remarkable amount of their lives. It is now well established that swifts can remain airborne for months at a time; eating, sleeping and finding moisture on the wing. Given this propensity for flight they aren’t the easiest birds to observe, often circling high up on a summer’s day. Their visits to the UK from Africa usually last about 4 months.

The poet Edward Thomas is not alone in responding to a mood that midsummer can stir in the hearts of many who rest and watch in a landscape steeped in life and heat. In Haymaking the poet is observing the countryside just before dawn, with the pre-mechanised task of harvesting about to begin. Birds in nearby thickets are already singing:

While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee
The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow
As if the bow had flown off with the arrow.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53746/haymaking Edward Thomas, Haymaking

The scimitar curve of the swift is perhaps its chief identifier, and the bird’s call is captured beautifully in Thomas’ ‘fierce glee’. An arrow’s flight is a good simile for the speed of the creature, and the idea of the bow going with the arrow captures the taut shape of the swift’s wings.

A swift I photographed last week against light cloud at Lanercost Priory, Cumbria

When you can see a swift at close quarters they become more noticeably different from other birds with which they are often associated, such as swallows. Swifts have a body shape that seems almost prehistoric – which reflects their early divergence from many other species. As Katherine Rundell put it in an excellent 2019 article in the London Review of Books, their antiquity means that they were on ‘nodding acquaintance with the Tyrannosaurus’. In this piece Rundell notes that swifts were one of the inspirations behind the legendary ‘martlet’, which never landed and was believed to have no feet.

In heraldry, the swift is one of the inspirations for the imaginary martlet, a stylised bird without feet. Unable to land, the martlet is a symbol of restlessness and pursuit: of the constant search for knowledge and adventure and learning.

Consider the Swift, by Katherine Rundell LRB Vol. 41 No. 16 · 15 August 2019

The North Yorkshire wildlife artist Jonathan Pomroy (@JonathanMPomroy) is a keen observer of swifts, and in the recent heatwave he noted the way these, and other birds, achieve some extra release of warmth: they dangle their feet in flight. Jonathan’s watercolours capture the detail, beauty and speed of the birds, which is certainly a challenge when the air is so hot that watercolours don’t perform as they should.

Our brief summer visitors were placed on the ‘Red List’ at the end of 2021, following a decline of more than 50% in the last 25 years. There are many reasons for this, with one major factor being the rising number of building conversions. Swifts are creatures of habit and return to the same site to nest. Renovation work might close gaps and holes that are essential for their survival. If the nesting place has disappeared it makes it less likely that a pair will breed. Many agencies are advocating the use of swift nest boxes and encouraging people to consider the consequences of building works. It would be a devastating loss if these summer visitors vanished from a landscape which they fill each year with life, beauty and dazzling displays of aerial brilliance.

Feature photo by: https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/avs_lt?mediatype=photography

Decennium Horribilis

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The Queen famously reflected that 1992 had been, for her, an annus horribilis. At the moment if feels like the 2020s might come to be known as the decade of horror. Even as we wobble (possibly), out of a devastating pandemic, the world’s worst nightmares of climate change are becoming a reality. In the coming days the UK will experience temperatures never before known. For several days, the sun will extend its scorching heat all the way from the cool cloisters of Oxford colleges to York Minster; from the industrial north, to the vast storage heater that is our capital city. In all their antiquity, buildings will be placed in the stress of temperatures for which they were not built, and from which they may not survive unscathed.

A word that became over-used in the pandemic was ‘unprecedented’. Yet here we are again, facing a very different health emergency. As is so often the case, Shakespeare expresses this experience with economy when he puts the following text in the mouth of Claudio:

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V

Michael Rosen, writing in yesterday’s edition of The Guardian, hits the nail on the head when he reflects from personal experience that we have not even begun to digest the catalogue of pains which have touched us all: “we are chewing over several levels of trauma at the same time: personal, social, national and possibly global”. I suspect that for many of us these traumas have been shelved, as much as they can be. The rapid succession of crises means that even as one drops from the headlines, a fresh assault has already muscled into prime position. It was all COVID; then a connected string of economic shocks, labour shortages and inflation; a war in Europe and displaced people to support; spiralling energy bills; and now a sustained period of temperatures we normally associate with Andalucía. I’ve probably missed some, and there are certainly other emerging concerns snapping at our heels.

Coastal resorts will offer some cool respite from the high temperatures, for those able to travel

For the privileged and well resourced these challenges are inconvenient, rather than definitive. Isolation for the well-heeled may not have been welcome, but it came with interior space; expansive gardens; and possibly gyms or swimming pools. Excessive heat might be worrying, but it will be tolerated in large rooms, behind thick walls and with high ceilings. Perhaps, even, with air conditioning. For the poor in our society it will be a different story. Small spaces, tower blocks, no private garden, an infrastructure of roads and pavements that will absorb the heat throughout the day and emit it during the night. In the 1980s I was staying in Argentina during a spring heatwave with temperatures in excess of 40°. I was in student accommodation, sharing a small room, close to the centre of Córdoba. During a sleepless night I reached out to touch the wall and found it still warm, stalling the drop in temperature for which we were all waiting. People survive in these temperatures, but they do not thrive.

There have been few decades in human history that have all been sweetness and light. In terms of the title of this blog, it is also worth considering the question: ‘horrible for whom?’ Just like the Queen, our perception of events can be very parochial. It may concern our home and our family, but touch little on a broader political context. Once out of the long Edwardian summer, European history of the 20th century is a sorry story of futile destruction; a second war that followed disastrous economic turmoil; the physical division of Europe and the threat of nuclear destruction. However, both with the pandemic and the UK weather forecast, there are measurable impacts which can only be described as ‘unprecedented’. This is not simply an endless human story of generational angst. These experience are either entirely novel or the fresh occurrence of a crisis last experienced a century ago.

As Rosen observes, talk of memorial events to recognise the 200,000 COVID deaths in the UK appears to have been kicked into the long grass. Our attention has moved on (but, perhaps, not our feelings or our analysis of events). I certainly meet many people who think of COVID as last-year’s news. As we move beyond the first quarter of this decade the signs are not good that peace and prosperity will be more prevalent by the end of 2029 than they were in 2020. The carousel of crises shows little sign of stopping and its pace certainly feels much faster. My hope and prayer is that we shall – eventually – begin to reflect on the cost of our inequalities and the toxic world they are creating. More importantly, that reflection and prayer leads to action and a stronger sense of how we, as a global community, act to ensure that the sorry story of the last couple of years does not become our permanent reality.

Holy God,
earth and air and water are your creation, and every living thing belongs to you: have mercy on us
as climate change confronts us.
Give us the will and the courage
to simplify the way we live,
to reduce the energy we use,
to share the resources you provide, and to bear the cost of change.
Forgive our past mistakes and send us your Spirit,
with wisdom in present controversies
and vision for the future to which you call us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


© The Anglican Church of Australia

The Smallest Twine

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At the central crisis in Much Ado About Nothing, Hero is not only jilted at the altar but disgraced by means of deception. While the Friar advises a counter-deception, to right the wrong, Hero’s father is bewildered. When advised to accept the Friar’s plan, he responds: ‘Being that I flow in grief,
The smallest twine may lead me’.

Clergy and pastors are often with people at a time of bewilderment. We meet people who are in the midst of grief, or turning to a minister as a source of trusted advice. Of course this is not only a situation faced by clergy. However, for some people the legacy of respect for clergy, perhaps instilled in childhood, may assume that any advice is divinely guided and lacks any other kind of motivation. Sadly, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Manipulation by appeal to divine authority is nothing new. In the York Mystery play of The Flood, Noah struggles to persuade Mrs Noah to get onboard. Finally he tells her: ‘It was God’s will without a doubt’. Understandably, Mrs Noah is unimpressed with this approach:

What, thinks thou that will let thee quit?
Nay, by my troth, thou gets a clout.

An unimpressed Mrs Noah, played by Helen Wilson, in The Flood, York Mystery Plays 2022

Recognition of distinctive dynamics in pastoral care is an essential step in recognising that the nature and form of abuse may be nuanced. Religions typically mirror forms of kinship, and at its best church can be a family of chosen association – with a strong sense of communal love, support and care. While this is commendable we also need to remember that most abuse takes place in families, and it might be that the prevalence of abuse in church communities reflects similar vulnerabilities of trust, inter-generational contact, authority and power.

I have quoted in a previous blog the caustic observation of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman:

“One of the most insidious of the many shapes of domination (pastoral power), as it blackmails its objects into obedience and lulls its agents into self-righteousness by representing itself as self-sacrifice in the name of ‘the life and salvation of the flock'”

Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics

Certainly this is a powerful summary of the consequences that emerge when pastoral or spiritual power is abused and goes unchecked. Virtue is an excellent facade for many kinds of vice. If a leader claims that what they are doing is directed by God, when an individual has been shaped to believe that God must be obeyed, the opportunities for malfeasance become almost limitless. It is the kind of thing that has persuaded elderly people to leave all their estate to the church (or the vicar); for people to be induced into forming inappropriate relationships; or engineered the acceptance of unreasonable expectations about the use of time.

There is a growing literature about the significance and operation of pastoral abuse. This field is in its early development and there is considerable scope for deepening both the scholarship, and the practical advice that flows from it. For example, in her consideration of abuse through an examination of Ezekiel 34, Amy White notes that ‘self-sacrificial leadership for the sake of the lost was clearly lacking’. However, I have known many self-sacrificial clergy who have been perfectly capable of spiritual manipulation.

The very discomforting question which needs to be addressed in any examination of spiritual abuse is whether God is ever capable of it? In the stories of both The Flood and Job, God is described as causing or permitting apocalyptic suffering. If church leadership is invested in literal understandings of Scripture this question needs to be addressed. Alternatively, if the Bible is understood as a collection of books describing an evolving discernment about the nature of God, then we arrive at a very different place, and one in which pastoral power in the person of Jesus is open to both questioning and accountability: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Given the weight and significance of religious ideas, the need to handle pastoral relationships with care is essential. Only in recent years, and largely when compelled to do so, have churches acknowledged the need for greater accountability. Ironically, it could be argued that this failure to take prompt action to prevent abuses arises from a limited understanding of sin. While happy to wag the moral finger at various minority groups, many Christians appear to have lacked a willingness to be curious about wrongdoings much closer to home. Although no system is a perfect solution to the misuse of pastoral relationships, a greater expectation and resourcing of professional supervision would go a long way to excavating and naming pastoral risks. This would both help people understand the bewilderment in which they often minister, and recognise the temptation to pull the twine to places where people should not be led.