What is in Kelvin's Head?

Brexit – Five First Quick Thoughts

24/06/2016
- My first thoughts on waking to the news of the result of the referendum on membership of the EU are not with the markets nor about sovereignty but with individuals. In particular, my thoughts are with the considerable numbers of members of my own congregation who have come from the rest of the EU to make a home here and indeed those who have moved the other way and who are living in other European countries. There will be considerable numbers of people feeling very uncertain about their own place in the world.
- My second concern lies with those who will be the poorer for this decision. Financial volatility seems destined to affect the poor disproportionately. So far I hear no discourse in the media about the least financially secure. One of the reasons that this has happened is that there has been a collapse in trust in the ability politicians in much of the UK to speak for policies that would benefit most of the people.
- I don’t think that the economic questions facing Scotland got any easier overnight. The calls for a second independence referendum are surely coming our way but on what terms? A Scotland in Europe hitched to a pound out of Europe? An independent Scotland committed to a Europe that fractures even more? Neither position is terribly attractive. It seems to me that there will be further attempts across Europe to persuade countries to leave the EU. That becomes much more likely after this vote.
- I fear that there are more referendums heading our way whilst hating that way of making political decisions. We have representative democracy so that our representatives get to slug things out primarily so we don’t have to do so ourselves. Sadly I suspect there may be quite a lot of anger coming the way of our politicians. To some extent this result reflects the existence of quite a lot of anger already. However, politicians stand between the tyrant and the mob keeping both at bay.
- The most frightening thing I saw over the last few days was the relatively powerful in the country having no contact at all with the disaffected majority. Again and again I heard people of the intelligentsia (a group I’d have to acknowledge I belong to as a card carrying member) saying that they simply knew no-one at all who wanted to leave and didn’t believe that it could possibly happen. We are divided and in ways I fear.
There will be more to say later.

Very much more.
#brexit, EU

9 responses to “Who we are”

Susan Sheppard Hedges

26/10/2012

I have a question… What were the genders of these two persons?

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1. kelvin
  
  26/10/2012
  
  Person 1 was male. Person 2 was female.
  
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Suz Cate

26/10/2012

I arrived here in June, after graduating from the fine institution where you are visiting now and my subsequent ordination as transitional deacon. When I am ordained to the priesthood in December, I will be the first woman to serve as priest at St. James. I have sensed a growing excitement, especially among the women here, about the ministry of a woman priest–not unlike the the frisson expressed in the visitor’s statement: “Really? Wow! All this, and divorce and women priests.” We are figuring out together what difference it makes who we are, and on most days it is exciting!

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Calum

26/10/2012

I think the exchange is completely adorable. But also bang-on accurate. The Piskies are indeed “the ones with woman priests” – it’s not a bad moniker to be known by, is it? Although progress is still to be made in certain parts, I think it’s positive that that might be how some people identify and distinguish Episcopalians.

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Tracey

26/10/2012

The first time I attended an Episcopal church (in California), and they invited me to a picnic afterward on the church grounds. I agreed to stay on, but was kind of dreading it… and then I saw the ice chests full of cans of lager. So yeah, I have to admit that it was at first beer and later, divorce (both of which had caused me to become ostracised from my family) and women priests (i’d been brought up in a fundamentalist church where women were to keep silent in church) that made me become really interested in finding my way into this wonderful, welcoming, non-judgemental, and inclusive group where hell-fire and brimstone and damnation and punishment were never a part of the lovely, uplifting and inspiring sermons.

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NÃ¤dine Daniel

26/10/2012

Well in one way, the lack of awareness is pretty depressing, but the willingness to give the Cathedral a try would be encouraging, where it not for the perception that divorce made a denomination more acceptable. Frankly I don’t care what brings someone into a Church, any Church; just so long as we make them want to stay and discover the love of Christ once they get there.

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Rosemary Hannah

26/10/2012

I come to this from another angle – a liberal church background. It does not come to me as a surprise to hear women preach, teach and lead. I rejoice in it but the equality of women is no news to me

Divorce – well, to me it is never more than an admission of failure. Not something to be celebrated and welcomed, but a sad admission that things which started so very happily and hopefully and with such love, have ended in heartbreak. That my sometime husband left me for another woman in the church came pretty close to breaking my heart, and was one of those knife-edge things. A thing where either there will be just damage and misery and loss, or one day a resurrection, and you do not know which. That for me the balance finally tipped to life does not mean that divorce is something I want to rejoice in as I do in the ministry of women.
That God can turn evil to good is a blessing. It does not do however to continue in evil that He gets a better opportunity at such transformations. I would a jolly sight rather we were known for work for social justice, for respect for the environment, and for really positive things.

Beauty however – whether sound or image or architecture or the spoken word – yes I love us to be known for that and I rejoice in it.

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1. kelvin
  
  28/10/2012
  
  I suspect that what we may really talking about here is not actually divorce, but the question of whether divorce and remarriage bars one from communion.
  
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Rosemary Hannah

28/10/2012

Recently our Government had the stunning idea that ‘victims’ ought to be choosing the sentences of those who had offended against them. This is my idea of a utter nightmare – to have not merely the need to undertake one’s own recovery, for which one is of course responsible, but to then have to undertake some responsibility for the rehabilitation of those who have offended one strikes me as a bridge too far. I could never ask that somebody is turned away from communion because of an offence against me, and therefore I cannot ask that they are turned away because of a sin against others. I don’t really believe in that kind of God.

Yet there is a problem. Of all the bad moments I had over the divorce, one of the very worst was the moment I walked alone into church and saw in a prominent pew my husband, who had left but from whom I was not yet legally separated, sitting shoulder to shoulder with his new partner. I ended in the nearest pew on my knees, helplessly sobbing, unable to hide my distress. That should not happen to anybody and it should not be up to the ‘victims’ (however much we espouse a doctrine of equal blame for marriage failure) to protect themselves from such a thing.

I took communion every week with the lady with whom my husband now lived, and every week I had to forgive her anew in order to offer the Peace and forgive her. It was, to put it mildly, a big ask. That, to me, is the essential reality of divorce, and I really, really, really do have the right to say that we may have divorce and we may have to live with it, but the reality of it is pain and hard hard work. I find no ‘Wow!’ anywhere in it. It was hard and bitter punishment for all the stupid things I had managed to do in 30 years of marriage.

There is always a cost to be borne for such things. We believe in forgiveness and fresh starts, and I must suppose the ‘Wow!’ is for that – but such things are costly. I believe they are always costly for God, and most usually they are costly for humans too. I don’t want humans judged, but – but where the joy of person A is bought at the price of the pain of person B we need to tread exceedingly circumspectly.

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