What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Visitation and an Anniversary

31/05/2014

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. It also happens to be the anniversary of me coming to St Mary’s 8 years ago.

Those who were around then will remember that my ministry started here with a hugely exciting service of induction and installation. I had to be made the Rector and I had to be put in my stall as the Provost. It was one of those services where we threw just about every liturgical trick in the book at it and it worked.

To be honest, I find most induction services rather dull. We’ve got into the habit of using miserable liturgies for induction services in which there is a central drama of people putting gifts into the new priest’s hands to symbolise all that they are getting by coming to their new job. I hate it and tried to keep it to a minimum when it was my turn here. In particular, I refused to receive the keys of the church – one of the most silly symbols the church has ever invented, in my view.

I remember saying at one point in the planning of the service, “Well, you can put the keys on a nice velvet cushion and process them up the aisle and bring them to me and bow deeply and offer them to me and I’ll still say ‘No, I am not receiving these keys’”. In the end they never appeared and I didn’t have to publicly say no to them.

The giving of gifts symbolises things that I’m not comfortable with at all. It is an enactment of a system of power that exists in congregations which is very far from being healthy. (It is also a little bit of liturgy that doesn’t have a great deal of history to it).

When someone becomes a Rector in a congregation, they find themselves given a load of power right at the beginning. And right from the beginning, their success, or otherwise, will be marked by how they chose to retain that power, give it away or share it.

The appropriate letting go of power is one of the great themes of Christian ministry but one that is very rarely discussed when clergy are being trained.

I find myself now, knowing less about what is going on at St Mary’s than once I did. You have to learn to trust people and let go.

As it happens, I’m off sick for this anniversary and the church is coping without me. I wish I was around this weekend as I’d have enjoyed celebrating an anniversary mass this morning and would rather be worshipping at St Mary’s on a Sunday than anywhere else in the world. (We give ourselves permission to be excited by the worship in St Mary’s – when we are on form, the worship is allowed to be as interesting, moving, funny and passionate as it should be).

However, even though I’m not there, I’ve every confidence that all will be well without me.

Once upon a time, I’m not sure that would have been so. I’d have been off sick and still worrying about the place.

Looking back, there have been wonderful high points since coming here eight years ago. I think that the church is a happier place than it was then too. And I never think happiness should be dismissed. It matters rather a lot.

I’m happy here at St Mary’s too.

Eight glorious years.

Thanks be to God.

refusing the keys, the Visitation

52 responses to “Inclusive Language – again”

ryan

11/10/2010

Kelvin – that cracked me almost as much as your last tweet on the left of your blog ;-)!

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Jimmy

11/10/2010

Ryan, although you address your comment to Kelvin like I am not there. I assume you are referring to my poem, I can assure you that it does not crack me up watching you making any opinion you may have untenable.

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1. kelvin
  
  11/10/2010
  
  No Jimmy – I think Ryan was indeed referring to my last comment, above.
  
  Reply
Jimmy

11/10/2010

Thank you Kelvin and Sorry Ryan.

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ryan

11/10/2010

No worries! Was indeed referring to the v.amusing coming out day tweets at the side.

I’m not sure there’s ever existed anyone, anywhere,at any time, of whom it could be said that *all* their opinions are ‘untenable’, so such rhetoric is dehumanising at best. Apropos nothing, I was moved to google the poetic stylings of the great David Brent. Who needs Auden? 😉
http://murfinsandburglars.com/2009/04/14/bad-poetry-for-tuesday-david-brent-edition/

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Peter

12/10/2010

Kelvin; no, I think it distracts. It simp;ly reminds us that this is how your mind works: you make connections and delight in that sort of word-play. However, to sharpen up my point. Thank you for helping me to realise that, for some, ‘family’ is not a positive word in the way in which I experience it. For my part, this willl mean that I will be more careful about its use when others might feel excluded (and therefore hurt). Mutatis mutandi can you accept that I feel offended by what seems to be merely a casual linking between family and the f word? These are sensitive areas, but sensibilities are by no means confined to those who find family a painful or unhelpful concept.

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Simon

29/10/2010

I am slightly nervous aboaut the alternatives to the 1982 Liturgy, not because I don’t share the inclusive sentiments expressed above (I do). I fear that, as so often in the history of the church, the steps we take to avoid one kind of mistake in the way we talk about God can lead us into another. The avoidance of pronouns as a measure to achieve inclusivity produces inelegant, strained and stilted English. How would it be if one were to use it in day-to-day speech? ‘I saw John this morning. I asked John’s how John’s health was. John said that John was over his flu, and hoped to be back at work on Monday’. This may not in itself seem to be a problem. But in fact, what very quickly happens when we adopt this idiom in addressing/expressing God, is that the very idea of a personal God begins to recede. My basic instinct is that the church’s language of pulbic prayer is properly anchored in that of the scriptures. There are dangers in departing from this. The perceived problem (rightly perceived) is perhaps better tackled by good teaching about the nature of God, than by linguistic contortions that produce stilted prayers, and possibly a less real and vivid idea of God.

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Melissa

15/11/2013

About the family imagery – another reason to drop it in church is for the sake ones who, like me, do actually have the signifying family relationships.

There is too much pressure on day to day life with children when that life is forced to serve as some kind of example or testimony or witness to the world – or more likely one’s church friends – about the nature of God.

I think it sours love because in that kind of scheme loving children is more fundamentally a means to an end.

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