Reflections Blog

DAFFODILS I've always especially loved daffodils. For a start they are the symbols of spring and after the winter that is as good a reason as any. They have a kind of golden dignity and they quietly keep on going, year after year. They also don't take any maintenance - while I annually toil on the second Tuesday of March pruning the roses (a ritual, weather permitting) the daffodils just stand up and glow at me. Somehow March looks forward in a way that doesn't happen at any other time of the year. Daffodils also remind me of the Lake District and William Wordsworth. 'I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, while all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils'. When we lived in industrial Lancashire in the mid-1970’s we often drove sixty miles, walked ten miles over the fells and returned in the evening, with petrol costing three gallons for £1 (remember that?!). One particular walk will never leave me, during a post Easter break about 45 years ago. We escaped the crowds on a brilliantly sunny Sunday, leaving Buttermere to the Scarth Gap and Haystacks. We worked our way round towards the Honister Pass and set between two ranges of hills and at our feet there was a breathtaking view to Buttermere, Crummock Water and Loweswater. Behind us was the Scafell range, the highest peaks in England. The silence was almost deafening. Nobody else was in sight and I could feel God around us in a way that I have never felt since then. Of course there had to be a let down because the crowds had gathered at the foot of the pass on our return. I wonder why I felt so smug when one yelling child slipped and fell fully clothed into a pool. Very unchristian no doubt but I am sure that God had mischief in His eyes that day. Happy memories. We are tempted to confuse solitude with loneliness. Loneliness is a curse of our times. There are countless people who just want a voice, someone knocking at the door - someone to care about them, to matter to them. Loneliness is brutal, it speaks of nobody caring about them. Solitude is about pausing and listening to our inner selves and what is spiritually around us. It is about tuning into the world around us, into God. 'What is life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare?' wrote the poet W. H. Davies. 2   As spring makes its welcome appearance after winter and we can look ahead to the summer with its warmth and long evenings we may remind ourselves of the importance of solitude and be willing to listen to silence and to listen perhaps too to God. For silence is arguably the most life affirming sound there can be, the most revealing one, the most peaceful one. To end a thought from a book I have just read telling of how the tomb of the Unknown Warrior was created. There was a quotation by one of my spiritual heroes, the Great War padre Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy. He wrote this: 'Love is eternal, death does not touch it. Morning gleams through the dark. Today - with me - paradise'. I used it recently when conducting the funeral of a dear friend; I leave it especially with you as the days start to lengthen and the air warms - but it applies to any day of any year. My very best wishes, Paul Lanham

ELIZABETH OUR QUEEN 70 years ago as a schoolgirl in Hitchin, I was given a book by Richard Dimbleby 'Elizabeth our Queen' and I quote from the chapter about her Father's coronation: ‘To an eleven year old Princess, no matter how well she may have been primed by her grandmother or aunt in the ancient rites of the ceremonial, the moment, thrilling above all, was the moment that she and her sister must have been awaiting. It was the moment when she saw the Archbishop of Canterbury raise aloft the Crown of England. As the Crown was lowered on to her father's head a thousand voices in the Abbey acclaimed him with the cry "God save the King!" A cry that at once sped round the world as silver trumpets, rolling drums, saluting guns and pealing bells heralded the news that a new sovereign had been crowned.......... One more presentation to the King remained, the gift of the Bible - ‘the most valuable thing that this world affords: wisdom, royal law, and the lively oracles of God’. Marjorie McCarley

Can you remember 6^th February 1952?  Not many of us can remember the young queen in black descending the steps of the de Havilland Comet (I think) from Kenya 70 years ago.  I was starting my first term at boarding school a few days later and my memory of that is clearer.  I saw the tail lights of my parents' Austin Ten vanishing down the drive and feeling utterly alone;  it vividly remains with me to this day.  The princess becoming a queen was irrelevant to a nine year old boy in short trousers.  Just that car vanishing down the drive with its lights vanishing and entering a strange new and frightening world.

Remembering the Coronation, 2^nd June 1953.  A tiny flickering black and white television, the event going on for ever and incredibly boring.  Our friends had one and we only had a radio.  Their son was a friend called Ronnie Ring (I wonder what happened to him?).  He had bicycle pumps which we filled and refilled from a water butt.  We spent the Coronation hosing one another with these pumps and from time to time reminding our parents that we were still alive.  Then back to prison in Bath (I hated school).  In 1954 we watched a film called 'A Queen is Crowned' (remember that?!) and colour film was new to me.  The Bishop of Bath and Wells who had played a key role in the Coronation later confirmed me.  His chaplain wanted to borrow the Bishop's confirmation sermon the next week at Gloucester Prison but found himself unable to do so because my clergy father was at both services, being the prison chaplain - that's another story! 

Now 70 years later we remember the same dedicated queen who has broken every royal record for longevity.  Always Queen Elizabeth, unshakeable, always there.  This month we remember her with thanksgiving as arguably the greatest lady the world has ever known, the most loved and respected.  This year will hopefully be a time when we can give thanks for her and rejoice with her - not as a duty but as someone we genuinely want to celebrate.  This is my first columnfor 2022.  The lasttwoyears have been difficult;  if these celebrations can shine a brighter light on this year, then we can look forward with optimism.

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Forgive my sentimentality but illustrating these memories may show how far we have come since the young queen came down those steps.  That aircraft, that car and the television were all state of the art, now they are only seen in museums - even the 'water pistol' is a far more sophisticated weapon of mass saturation than the one that Ronnie and I improvised to the despair of our parents 70 years ago.  It is as though we are experiencing a second (or even third) Industrial Revolution and the world changes at an astonishing speed year by year - my five year old grand daughter is teaching me things that I can never understand while I speak of slide rules and logarithms (remember them?) to people who have no idea of what I am on about.  Queen Elizabeth has remained constant while the world has changed in a way that children who watched the Coronation could never have visualised as such future things.  After all, remember Dan Dare from 'The Eagle'?  At least The Beano remains.

But not even she can last for ever while God is eternal.  Remember that hymn - 'Change and decay in all around I see, O Thou who changest not abide with me'.  God never changes, nor does His love for us.  2022 may be a difficult year for organised religion and for the Church of England as a whole, but He will always be with us, a spiritual rock in what lies ahead. That is our hope and we have confidence in Him.

                                                                                        Paul Lanham

Sunday 10^th October is World Mental Health Day.  Having in the past been a Trustee/Director of a mental health charity for over 20 years and currently being the patient representative on a multi-university mental health research project it is an issue dear to my heart.  People prefer not to talk about it, and dark grim psychiatric hospitals (such as Fairfield once was) sum up how it has always been seen.  Those with experience of any form of it are often scarred by it;  all but the mildest forms are horrific to experience. 

I reject the term 'mental illness'.  We do not talk about physical illness, only types of physical illness.  To lump all forms of mental disorder together in one to cover every condition from a mild phobia to paranoid schizophrenia (to name but the obvious) is ludicrous.  Like physical illnesses every form of mental illness needs a different type of treatment, a different type of drug, a different type of analysis, a different type of therapy. 

Furthermore, the very term 'mental illness' has overtones of stigma and being belittled.  We have come a long way since I became interested (and involved) in this field.  More treatments have become available, more research is being done, the stigma is being eased, society is becoming more tolerant and compassionate. But we still have a very very long way to go.  People are still being stigmatised, belittled, even penalised.  To me the belittling of those with conditions of the mind is inappropriate to a society in which all form of discrimination is rightly abhorrent.

It seems at times that we have drawn an arbitrary line just above the human eyebrows.  To suffer from a condition below that line is acceptable and evokes sympathy;  to suffer from one above it is to evoke scorn and even revulsion.  Yet every kind of illness demands and deserves equal sympathy and care.  Depression and diabetes - schizophrenia and sciatica are equally valid conditions and must be seen as such.  To meet someone with a mental illness may make us feel vulnerable, aware of our inability to be in control - and nobody likes that.  On the other hand it's scarcely a bag of laughs to have such a condition because (at least with some conditions) one does not lose total touch with reality.  One gets torn between reality and unreality, knowing that the latter is winning.

10^th October is a day for focussing our thoughts on this issue, and it is one that society (including the Church) must take more seriously.  Christ performed many acts of healing the mind as He did of healing the body.  We must work together for greater de-stigmatising of 'illnesses above the eyebrows', and for more compassion for those who have them.  We are on a long road towards lifting this darkness.  As Christians we owe it to God and to our fellow men (who are after all children of God) to do so.  If we do not believe, we owe it to society to try and make mankind more civilised.

Very best wishes,  Paul

COINCIDENCES ?

Since writing the last column I have changed our car.  The decision was forced on me by its predecessor which developed a quirk of deciding when it would start and when it would refuse to start.  Everything was checked and there seemed nothing wrong with it but the problem persisted.

Then it excelled itself.  We were on our way to a gathering of retired clergy with the Bishop of St. Albans and had reached the city centre.  Half way up Holywell Hill in heavy traffic it stalled and no amount of effort could get it going again.  Eventually I got out to apologise to the van behind - only to find it was a breakdown vehicle. The gentleman had a fiddle, got it going and refused payment;  we slunk out of the city praying it would not happen again and cringing with embarrassment.  This was the last time we drove it.  The garage still could not find what was wrong with it and as they had a model that was ideal for our purposes we broke the piggy bank and exchanged it for one that actually worked.

Ever since then I have wondered why when I finally apologised for holding up the traffic a car mechanic should have been directly behind us.  It was about as likely as Judy's Premium Bonds ever coming up - she has had a few for over 55 years and has won two tiny prizes, the last about 30 years ago.  Some might say that it was a bit coincidental that it was just outside the Abbey and I am a priest.  I don't buy into this, not least because at the time I was torn between frantic prayer and despair, a sense of utter helpless fury (shades of Basil Fawlty lashing his recalcitrant car with a branch in Fawlty Towers) I was not so much praying as massaging the Almighty's ear with a shovel.  In any case, life doesn't work like that.  God does not look after His own in ways like this, as though Christianity is a kind of insurance policy against the trials of life.  Being a Christian may help us to cope with trouble;  it does not protect us from it.

It was all so improbable.  But we expect God to have our standards of tidiness.  In a world of logic and reason everything has to add up, to fit certain patterns.  We expect God to conform to them when in fact we are human and He is divine.  Coincidences help some people, they harm others;  this is how life is.  We have to come to terms with the concept of an untidy and mysterious God.  One of my favourite parts of the Bible is the closing chapters of the book of Job.  Job wants to know why he has suffered so badly.  Then dramatically God answers Job out of a whirlwind.  His answer is that Job is human and has no right to know the mind and workings of the divine.  The book ends with Job accepting that there are no answers to the questions he is asking and finding peace there.  I would commend this amazing part of the Bible to you (if you read it in the Authorized Version you will also be swept away by some of the most majestic writing in all literature).  We have to allow God to be mysterious, to see Him as He is, and to love Him without understanding His ways.

So I am left wondering why I got out of the car at that moment and found help so improbably.  I do not believe that God sent that gentleman to help me - but my blood runs cold at the thought of how I could have got out of that mess without him.  In the last resort I was just incredibly and irrationally lucky.  The mystery will always remain.

       Very best wishes, Paul  

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