In these curious and uncertain times I found this wisdom:

Ethics will be the best long-term investment

• John Reynolds
• The Observer,

I have read the heartbreaking news about the young man from the Midlands who has travelled to Europe for assistance with his death.

What are we to make of this – here are Libby Purvis’ excellent reflections:

Assisted dying is not the same thing as assisted suicide: we need to tread very carefully – and sympathetically

I am a very minor collector of books!  I am blessed with the ability to read and absorb material reasonably quickly.  Relaxation is a good book with my feet up and some music playing in the background.

My own collection of books particularly concentrates on the post Second World War political memoir and biography.  It’s fascinating to see how politicians give account of their lives.  At some point if I get a couple of free days I need to catalogue this ever expanding collection and put them in some kind of order.  Now there’s a thought – do I separate them by political party, age, importance or date of office?

In the light of all this it is not surprising that I came across Margaret Willes’ wonderful book published by Yale University Press entitled ‘Reading Matters: Five centuries of discovering books’.  This book looks at important book collections and what our attitude to books is. 

It is easy to forget in our own day of cheap paperbacks and mega book stores that until very recently books were a luxury item.  Those who could not afford to buy had to borrow, share, obtain second hand, inherit or listen to others reading. 

Willes covers several centuries and looks at a number of public and private libraries across a period – most of which have survived.  This is a very good book about books and splendidly well written.

The Cross of St Augustine was founded by Archbishop Michael Ramsey. It was first awarded by him on 19 February 1965. It is a circular medallion bearing a replica of the 8th Century Cross of Canterbury and on the reverse side is an engraving of the chair of St Augustine at Canterbury. The ribbon is of “Canterbury Blue” and it is worn around the neck by clergy and on the left breast by lay people.

This award has historically been awarded to clergy and lay people of foreign churches who have contributed conspicuously to advancing friendly relations with the churches of the Anglican Communion. More recently it has also been given for outstanding service within the Church of England whether centrally or in the dioceses, or the Anglican Communion as a whole, and to those who have contributed to advancing relations between the various Christian communions and churches.

Last Friday evening the Archbishop awarded the Cross to a freind of mine who has made an extraordinary contribution the the maginlaised of the Church – here is the citation:

The Revd Andrew Henderson

helped raise £4.5 million pounds to convert an old school to become the London Lighthouse which cared for people suffering from HIV/Aids. At its height it was helping over 1,000 a week and Andrew, who was the Lighthouse’s Chairman for fifteen years, went on to co-found CARA – ‘Care and Resources for people living with Aids.’ A non-stipendiary priest (he was a Director of Social Services for Kensington and Chelsea) his ‘secular ministry’ has been a brilliant success.

Well done Andrew! A very special and extraordinary man.

This is a really moving read about a woman coping with the death of her partner John Thaw. I challenge anyone not to be moved and enthralled by her lovely honesty.

‘Well now, prove it, Sheila. As John would say, “Put your money where your mouth is.” Be a depressed widow boring the arse off everyone, or get on with life. Your choice.’

In The Two of Us Sheila Hancock relived her life with John Thaw – years packed with love and family, work and houses, delight and despair. And then she looked ahead. What next? Gardening, grannying and grumbling, while they all had their pleasures, weren’t going to fill the aching void that John had left.

‘Live adventurously’, a piece of Quaker advice, was hovering in her mind. So, putting her and John’s much-loved house in France on the market – too many memories – she embarked, instead, on a series of journeys. She tried holidaying alone, contending with invisibility and budget flights. She tried travelling in a group, but the questions she wanted to ask were never the ones the guide wanted to answer. She tried relaxing – harder than you might think.

Finally, heading out of her comfort zone, she found her travels and new discoveries led her back to her past: to consider her generation – the last to experience the Second World War – and the kind of person it made her.Just Me is a book about moving on, but it is also about looking back, and looking anew.

Sheila, whether facing down burglars and easyJet staff (cross her at your peril) or making friends with waiters and taxi drivers, whether unearthing secrets in Budapest, getting arrested in Thailand, exulting in the art of Venice or mingling with the Mafia in Milan, is never less than stimulating company.

 Honest – because if you can’t say what you think at seventy-five, when can you? – insightful and wonderfully down-to-earth, she is a woman seizing the future with wit, gusto and curiosity – on her own.

Matthew 22: 15-22

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s: and unto God, the things that are God’s”.

And so they conspired to put to him their needling question “Are we, or are we not, permitted to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor?”   They were as ingenious as anything invented by the bright young inquisitors of our modern television screens.  If Jesus had said ‘yes – you must pay the Roman tax’ – then he would have been finished as far as the nationalists and the general public were concerned.  If Jesus had simply said ‘no – you mustn’t pay the Roman tax” – he would have been denounced to the Roman authorities by the collaborators.

Notice the terms in which the inquisitors seek to flatter Jesus: “Teacher, we know that you are a sincere man; you teach in all sincerity the way of life that God requires, courting no man’s favour, whoever he may be”.  The bland softening up technique is all too familiar: was is less familiar in our own days the recognition by politicians of honesty and plain speaking as an admirable rather than a threatening characteristic.

Jesus refused to be trapped.  “Are we, or are we not permitted to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor?”  He returned the question to his interrogators with a sharp brilliance which suggests the naivety is not the first of Christian virtues.  “Show me” he said “the tribute money”, and they brought him a penny.  Penny here is a mistranslation, coins equivalent to our pennies were, in fact, minted locally in Palestine, but they bore neither image not superscription.  What Jesus asked for was a Roman silver piece, the kind used for paying the tax.  They immediately produced one and in doing so they answered their own question: for simply to possess the foreign coin was to recognise the Emperor’s authority.

And for us – notice four things here.

First – he himself was far from meek and mild – he exposed his opponent’s hypocritical clap-trap.

Second – he refused to become a pawn in the sordid manoeuvrings of two major political parties.  Religion needs distance and perspective and judgement.

Thirdly – he recognised the reality of the political situation and the authority of the state in its own sphere.  We are to work out our discipleship in the world that is given to us.

And fourthly, and finally – he asserted that this sphere was limited and that over and above the authority of governments and the authority of God, to whom we are bound in obedience.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s: and unto God, the things that are God’s”.

People like ourselves, bearing the image of God our Creator, are designed to serve God’s purpose of love.  We are made by God for God; he is our hope, our journey and our journey’s end.  In the words of St. Augustine “Thou hast created us for thy self, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee”.

 There is nothing so certain as death and taxes!

A Recipe for Braised Carrots and Turnips.

Here is a recipe where vegetables are cooked with little water.  You will need to check the pans frequently so that the ingredients don’t catch the bottom.  The ingredients are as follows:

Carrots

1kg bunched carrots, trimmed and cut in half lengthways

50gr butter

1 tablespoon honey

15ml water

I tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Turnips

600gr turnips peeled and halved

50gr butter

1 tablespoon honey

50ml water

I tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Recipe

Use the same method for the carrots and turnips.  Put all the ingredients except the vinegar and parsley in a heavy based pan and place over a high heat until the mixture simmers.  Turn the heat down, cover pan and cook for about 10 minutes – frequently checking and stirring to make sure they don’t stick and burn.  When the carrots or turnips are almost cooked, uncover the pan, increase the heat and stir in the Balsamic vinegar and cook for 3 minutes; then turn off the heat and stir in the parsley.  The turnips should take a little less time to cook.  Combine both and season to taste.

Get ready for a delight – great in the autumn with a good slice of lamb!!

I had a fascinating conversation with a friend last night about the whole business of staying and moving.  This is, I think, related to the restlessness which we all share in to some greater or lesser degree.  I have friends who are constantly restless – who are almost incapable of staying in one place for any length of time.  They want to move on.  Their face is always looking forwards and towards something else.  They are never plagued with looking behind their shoulders!

One of the things that has surprised me in these early years of my middle age, is the degree to which I have been able to put down roots and to overcome the restlessness which we reflected upon.

What are we to make of greatness and how might you define it?  Well, for some people there are honours and there is status and there is acclimation and properly so.  But I think the Bible reminds us that greatness is as much to do with patience, the devoting of the soul to a definite place and a group of people as it is to do with the volume of business – and the busyness of volumes, or the variegated powers and distinctions achieved in a life.  It will be task of those who reflect on our lives at our funerals to make some decision about what has been achieved or what has been left untouched.

This is a challenge to me and I hope to you, to think about the place of restlessness in your life and aspirations.  It is inevitable. It is sometime very unsettling, but we need to put that restlessness into a broad perspective of who we are and what we hope to achieve.  Patience, perspective and the longer view are very important.

Since my sabbatical earlier this year it has been understandably quite difficult to maintain any time of regular rhythm of reading.  I am keen to want to harvest the privilege of those days spent in Washington and Chicago libraries absorbing and reflecting on narrative.

But some of this has practical implications for my work amongst older people here in Temple Balsall.  I am intrigued to know how might glimpse something of a person’s life – it’s shape and wonder.  Do we allow enough time to reflect together on the shape of who we are, where we have come from, and what we aspire to?

I am helped in all of this by those writers who have narrated their self.  Here is one writer, close to the end of his life, who looks back and comments:

            “It has been said that life must be lived forward, but understood backwards.  So it must be for me. My life has been like a jigsaw puzzle where it has often been impossible to see how this piece or that contributed to the picture, but as the whole has come together the purpose has been made clear”. Robert Llewellyn: Memories and Reflections)

I wonder what pieces of the jigsaw still remain to be put into place for your?  But most importantly, how do we help one another to construct the picture in such a way so that it comes together and some clarity is broken open?

Many of my friends are quite prejudiced about Birmingham as a place to work and live.  Well, of course, living on the edge of Solihull as I do many of my neighbours and parishioners have little to do with the city of Birmingham!  Indeed, you could argue that places like Solihull, and, to a lesser extent Sutton Coldfield, are defined simply by not being Birmingham.

While some of the planning and the architecture of the city is understandably rather regrettable – we should never lose sight of the vibrancy and richness of the city’s cultural life.

In particular we are blessed with the Symphony Hall and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.  In the middle on an unbelievably hectic and rather stressful week I travelled in to Birmingham to listen to some Schumann and Shostakovich with Heinrich Schiff who both played the ’cello and then conducted Schumann’s symphony No.2. 

Unlike some of my sophisticated concert goers I had never heard either of the pieces of music played.  Sadly, the programme did not seem to be popular enough to attract a decent crowd.  I felt for those running the Symphony Hall as I looked round the concert hall to see so many empty seats.  Such a crying shame – is there no way in which the Symphony Hall could offer these seats to any who might be interested?

Anyway, the stresses and strains of my ever expanding pending list were soon soothed by Shostakovich’s ’Cello Concerto no.1 in E flat.  It was wonderfully quiet, meditative, probing.  Strings and horn prepared the way for the ’cello, which enters with a sad, folk-like theme.

The Schumann symphony, probably the least known of all of his works, offered some wonderful themes and elements: the brooding, undulating string theme and a starkly simple tonic –dominant fanfare in the brass.  It felt like a call to arms – a challenge to us to connect with something deeper, more mysterious, profound.   It’s upward flourishes and songful melodies offer hope, calm and a language for the soul which is almost impossible to sum up in words.

I cannot comment on any technical excellence.  I do not know any background or even enough of either of these masters’ music to comment any further than to say this music was quite wonderful and has been ringing in my ears days later.

So before those people dismiss Birmingham, its accents, industry and people – I hope that the city and its life will continue to support the wonderful excellence of the Symphony orchestra.