Month: November 2024

Two miles this morning, but a lot of it was walking — my legs just resisted sustained running. Still, two miles is two miles. Hot breakfast, Morning Prayer at home, shower, trip in to the church for the Christmas Fair, home to work on tomorrow’s homily, back to town for groceries, now home again and that’s enough.

Today the Parliament will debate and vote on permitting medical authorities to assist patients with terminal diagnoses to commit suicide. I think it’s beyond doubt that palliative care in the UK has been devastated by austerity policies (policies that benefit the wealthy while grinding down people who rely on government services to get by in hard times); that much must be addressed regardless of the outcome of today’s vote.

The remaining question concerns the situation of terminally ill patients whose condition impels them to wish for death’s relief. Should the law permit medical staff to aid them in managing a quiet, deliberate death?

I do not oppose acts of mercy for people who suffer greatly and whose physical conditions show no sign of possible recovery. I’ll get back to this, but I want to acknowledge that their condition has to be met with generosity and understanding.

I am unswervingly committed, however, to protecting vulnerable people from cultural pressures to end their lives: people with non-terminal illness, mental illness (particularly acute depression), and any other cause of intense suffering. Most specifically with relation to this bill, I worry that terminally ill sufferers may themselves be led to suppose that it’s their duty to request medical suicide. For very terminally ill patient who desires suicide, there are many others for whom that prospect is not urgently appealing — who may plausibly fear death, or have other reasons for raging against the dying of the light. Once the bill becomes law, these patients will have to answer, every day at every turn, when they will ask to die, why they aren’t volunteering, what makes them so stubborn, and so on. The law is not simply permissive — it indicates a tacit commendation, and a distinct trajectory of change (manifest in every other polity that has allowed medically assisted suicide). It changes the role of medical staff from presumptively unalloyed defence of life to a consumer-service agent who in some cases will deliberately kill and in other cases sustain life, a vast change in the role of the vocation.

Add to this other circumstances that don’t fall within the ideal-case ‘dignified death’ of the unquestionably terminally, agonisingly ill patient: the patient who ‘doesn’t want to be a burden’, the patient whose relatives don’t want to support a determined terminal patient through their last days, the non-terminally ill patient whose suffering may, arugably, rival the pain of terminal illness, the patient with second thoughts who feels unable to voice their doubts, the medical staff whose bearing and whose workload communicate indirectly the ‘need’ to move the patient on to death.

Most pertinently: if there be any risk of any unwilling patient being moved to suicide by the fact that they and their medical carers have legal permission so to do, those lives must not be sacrificed in favour of the availability of suicide for thsoe who truly, honestly, top to bottom desire it. One unwilling life is not balanced out by any number of willing suicides. That’s murder, and a civil society may not make peace with murder.

Plus, religious reasons — but since many of my neighbours don’t share those, I haven’t advanced them here. Yes, it’s about religion — but it’s very far from being only about religion.

To return to the souls who demand the prerogative to end their lives of suffering: I do not favour prosecuting every sympathetic medic who in exceptional circumstances risks the force of law in order to relieve a soul in agony. I don’t endorse that, but I can envision circumstances in which the police or the prosecutors may not think it fitting to bring a case against a doctor or nurse. But I do think it very much for the best that such people know and understand that their position is at risk, that their actions transgress the legal norms of a society that values and supports all human life.

Vote against this private member’s bill. Lives depend on it.

Well, grey sweats in the morning. I ran and walked my two miles this morning, taking it very easy on my legs. I’m intrigued at how very different the treadmill felt from the pavement on which I usually run. Coffee, fruit, and getting ready to shower. I will head in to Oxford for the New Testament seminar toward midday.

The water is verging on lapping onto St Helen’s Wharf behind the church; it wouldn’t take much for the road to flood. The flood alert has been cancelled, though, so that the weather and river authorities must be confident that the water has crested upstream. Just for the record, this makes three near-flood events in 2024.

No run this morning, as I was marking essays that I’ll be discussing today with students; a cup of coffee and an apple got me off to a good start, and now I’ll shower and dress for Morning Prayer and work at Oriel. Then I need to work on parish concerns (homily, planning, future service booklets). All, of course, being hampered no doubt by the loopiness induced by jet lag.

Back. Boggled. And now, bloggèd.

I allowed myself a break this morning, and didn’t run. I mean, I hadn’t expected to run at all over the past week, so one day off is hardly a big deal. We will pack up, do our odds and ends, and head out to the airport for the usual plane flight full of British academics (if you’re a theology jobseeker, keep an eye on San Diego > LHR flights). It’s been a good meeting — I’m not in full fit conference form, but as a cautious return, it went well. Maybe I’ll even read a paper next year.

It was especially great to greet some friends from long ago, and to meet one or two scholar whom I hadn’t already known. Again, I’d like to do more of that.

Two miles on thee treadmill, shower, hot breakfast, and I’m spending the morning in a session about the Epistle of James. So far, so satisfactory a conference, and it has definitely been a pleasant return to international conference-going.

Two miles in the morning, a giant waffle with Margaret and Kate, some time wandering and meeting folks, three partial sessions (NT Christology, a book panel on Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus, and Luke’s Gospel and Judaism), more wandering and meeting, an hour catching up with Anne and her husband, dinner with Margaret, and we’re planning for three receptions, then bed.

That’s conference life for you.

For the last couple of days, Margaret and I have been participating in the NetVUE pre-meeting. She gave a short paper on assisted dying in the light of the vocation to peacemaking, and I gave a response to John Dear’s The Gospel of Peace in the light of a pædagogy of peacemaking. These both went well, we had good conversations with our friends among the attendees, and we had some monstrously large US meals.

Each morning I’ve run my two miles on a treadmill in the hotel gym; it’s a very different experience from running in the wild, especially when the gym gets crowded. I’m a little self-conscious when there are others around. Still, I’m getting the running done, and that’s especially valuable since my caloric intake has ticked upward.

I didn’t run yesterday morning, cos I was getting ready to catch a plane to San Diego to attend this year’s SBL/AAR meeting. (I’m also giving a paper at the pre-meeting NetVUE conference, about which I blogged last time, I think). Travel went smoothly, if not exactly comfortably. The first plane that allows regular access to a gym or masseur or some other concession to limber-ness will be a big hit, I predict. Ensconced in the hotel, all is well.

This morning I woke up early — really, surprisingly late, since it was around noon UK time, and I never sleep that late — so I ran two miles on a treadmill in the hotel fitness centre. That’s a first for me; it was interesting, and would have been a lot more interesting if the only screen options hadn’t been early-morning finance shows. Good breakfast, now off to run a couple of errands before coming back and changing for my presentation. Looking forward to seeing some long-time friends…

I didn’t run this morning due to the snow, but I did go in to Morning Prayer after a cup of coffee. Then I stopped at Throwing Buns for a cup in town, picked up toothpaste, came home to some errands, ran out for our Confirmation Class, back home for work and dinner. I have to proof this week’s bulletin before bed.

Two satisfactory miles this morning — started slow, limbered up gradually, then tired toward the end. Jolly cup of coffee, caught up on email, answered an online request for typeface advice (in the course of which I discovered Coelacanth (with Greek!) and Beuron, which I added to my repertoire), cleaned up and dressed (discovered another suit that no longer fits — wonder if it would fit Si — with a view to what I’ll pack for San Diego) (attention SBL, you should have a dedicated page for a particular annual meeting, just saying), before Morning Prayer I located and photographed the baptismal record for a former parishioner, then MP, now at R&R working on the service booklet for Advent Lessons and Carols. All in a day’s work.

At least, that’s what I did this morning. I did run short bits, but my body didn’t want to; I’d get a twinge in my knee, or ankle, or the place where I tied my trainers too tight (before I un- and retied them about a half mile in). And I didn’t want to try to override my body’s feedback; if I’m going to mess my legs up, or fall, or something, it won’t be because I ignored the warning signs. I did cover my two miles, though, because I am that stubborn.
Then coffee and crumpets, a really good shower and church, then home with Margaret. I finished my read-through of Wrede’s ‘Biblische Kritik innerhalb des Theologischen Studium’ and sent off my notes to the translator. We watched the last two episodes of Amazon Prime’s Cross series (which impressed us very positively) and we’ll have an easy dinner here at home, and get some rest tonight.

Today was a good day at church. My colleague and I work well together, and we’re blessed with a wonderful congregation, and although we haven’t (by any means) ironed out all the wrinkles for filling in gaps and imagining what would happen if a real Rector were in place, our shared ministry going forward seems sturdy and promising. A good day.

As I expected after yesterday’s good run, today my legs were heavy — slow to limber up, early to tire — but the run was fine, if slow. Hot breakfast this morning, coffee, cleaned up and set about drafting my response to John Dear’s The Gospel of Peace, for which I’m giving a response at an event hosted by the Council of Independent Colleges’ NetVUE (Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education) Gathering on ‘Nonviolence and/as Vocation’. After that, I set to working on my presentation on the Advent Collects for a meeting of the Sodality of Mary winter Sodality Day. Good thing I have a day off, so I can get some work done….

I had a very good run this morning — hardly any discomfort, and a good pace. Follow that with a cup of coffee (no fruit alas), shower, Morning Prayer at church, walk in to R&R to put something in my coffee while I work on my presentation, squeeze in a little productivity between parish mini-crises, then in to the New Testament seminar with Isaac Augustine Morales on the expression ‘those who call on the Name of the Lord’.

Reasonably good pace for my morning run, then a cup of coffee and fruit while I read applications, cleaned up and went to church for Morning Prayer, caught the X3 to Oxford, deliberated over applications, ran some errands, came home, and resumed parish odds and ends.

After Monday and Tuesday on the Church of England front, I’m pretty worn out. I’ll paste in some observations I posted on social media below. I ran yesterday with my knee support, and this morning with just bare muscle, ligament, and bone. Well, enclosed by skin. Gentle run yesterday, more straight-ahead today.

Before:
I have a fair number of friends here who don’t usually know or care much about the inside of Church of England, who may be wondering what I think about the Archbishop of Canterbury.
What I think is that covering up (even ‘soft-pedalling’ or ‘kicking into the long grass’) minor safeguarding failures is a sacking offence in many quarters. Lying about the timeline and extent of knowledge (if committed) is an aggravating circumstance.
There’s no excuse, no mitigation. The Church must handle his case as it would a minor cleric’s, and since no one can fire him, he must resign.
Fergus Butler-Gallie wrote the letter, and Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley of Newcastle spoke out (and brought the receipts when she was strong-armed). Integrity, clarity, and unwavering commitment to the pastoral care of all show who the leaders of the Church really are.

After:
So Archbishop Welby has resigned (eventually): am I happy now?
(a) I wasn’t in it for my personal satisfaction. I insisted that he follow the rules he set down, by which any church employee would have had to resign or be fired.
(b) So I’m not happy, because hundreds of young people have been abused and some apparently died, dozens or more clergy and other church staff have been complicit in covering up Smyth’s abuse, and many others have been sullied by association, partial knowledge, and popular assumptions.
(c) I’m not happy because nothing in this sorry saga has given anyone cause for joy, but only grief and a painful reminder of ways any of us could feel trapped into pathways that would shame us if discovered.
(d) I notoriously don’t have a theory of mind by which to intuit Justin Welby’s spiritual state, but reading his letter provides strong clues of ambivalence about how others have responded to a path he evidently thought was best. I would guess that he feels hard done by, mixed with some regret. I guess that I would, if I were in that situation.
(e) I’m not his confessor nor his judge.I have prayed for him as Archbishop every day and will continue so to do.
(f) Nothing — nothing — on earth balances scales for people who’ve had to live with abuse, or with the toxic knowledge of abuse. It’s our obligation to uncover, treat, disinfect wherever we can.
(g) I doubt many people would have believed that we’re really trying so long as he was Archbishop, however much good he did toward advancing toward that goal in every other case.
(h) I hope we can find an [arch]bishop with integrity and humility who will not shy away from this hard work.

I wish Justin Welby no ill. He has, and will for a long time have, a stain on his reputation, the basis for which only he (on earth) knows, and I can’t imagine how that feels. I also can’t imagine how it feels to be a Smyth survivor, an Iwerne survivor, or a Smyth-adjacent church leader who might have ring the alarm bell forty-plus years ago.

I tell my confirmation class (with regard to entering the church), and my marriage preparation class (with regard to joining two lives into one), that we can’t imagined how tightly our lives are interlocked with others, how many people our actions affect. This must be a hell of a way to find out. But survivors found out first, and no one was willing to pull the emergency brake. Sympathy isn’t ‘rivalrous’ entity that can only be parcelled out in small bits lest one run out; one can in principle have sympathy for all concerned. My sympathy goes first, and always, with the survivors (and, heaven help us, any who didn’t survive) — and on good days filled with grace, extends beyond them to the church that turned its back on them.

I’ll go back and fix the typos from Friday that are glaring at me from the editing window, but I want to catch up first.

Saturday morning I got my flu and COVID jabs (‘I’m giving the flu jab in your left arm because there’s an ‘l’ in ‘flu’, and the COVID jab in the right because there’s no ‘r’ in COVID’), then worked on some parish correspondence and homily-building. I noticed that a sermon from the past, a good one, provided the basis for a viable Remembrance Day homily. Then Kelvin, a friend of Nick Smith’s, came ’round to pick me up for a trip to Wolverhampton to see Bob Dylan’s renewed Rough and Rowdy Ways tour(!). I hadn’t seen Dylan since I caught his Street Legal tour in Augusta Maine in ’78, so this was quite a change indeed; he gave his all in the show, but at 83 that’s less ‘all’ than it was 46 years ago. The most striking aspect of the show was his decision to foreground the bluesy foundation of the songs he chose (all of Rough and Rowdy, with a few congenial selections from his back catalogue), beginning strictly at 7:30, ending at 9:00, no encore. He hasn’t been changing up the set list on this version of the tour, so we knew what to anticipate; I don’t know the album that well, though, so it illuminated the recent music in various ways. His always legendary gruff, somewhat indistinct vocals have not gotten clearer with time, alas, so that the live, improvisational changes he introduces in familiar lyrics went past me without registering. All in all, I was very thankful to catch him in the Black Country (thank you very much, Nick!), cos I’m sure I won’t see him again.

After a short night’s sleep, I scrambled to St Michael’s Sunday morning for the Remembrance Day service (Fr Paul conducted the town observance at St Helen’s), and then to catch some rest in the afternoon before preaching at St Helen’s for the evening Mass (to make up for missing the usual morning Mass so as to make room for the town memorial). All well.

I tweaked my knee Saturday morning, so I walked most of the two miles. Sunday I skipped, both to give my knee time to settle and to work on fine-tuning the homily. This morning I strapped the knee supporter on and ran my two satisfactorily, though my general tiredness (from weekend exertions and from the effects of the double vaccination) slowed me down. My arms have been very sore at the injection sites, but apart from that and the predictable tiredness, I’ve had no ill effects from the vaxes, and now I am able to repel infectious diseases before they reach me, so that’s good.

Two heavy miles, cup of coffee, shower, Morning Prayer, working coffee with Margaret at R&R, lunch at Oriel, New Testament seminar this afternoon, then home for the weekend. Sunday’s homily has been resisting me, I have some marking to do, admissions preparation…