Assistant

I really don't like Americanisms. It's not that I don't like America...I've never been there, I can't afford it.

But it really urks when some church calls their ASSISTANT minister the Associate Pastor, and I really dilike the word 'intern'. I don't mind it when Americans use that word. After all it means something there, but over here well we don't have such things.

All of which brings me to this man

Mr Nicolas Bailey

Who emphatically is NOT the chaplaincy intern. He is now however recently appointed as my assistant. He is a post grad student who gets quite excited about the annihilation of all life on Earth. However in spite of that we decided that he might be a good choice of someone to work with us at chaplaincy.

So we did that. I'm not sure what he is going to do, but it is going to be fun watching him do it and obviously helping me to do what I do.

Nick was a member of CU in his first and second year and then become a founder member of SCM a few years ago. When we asked him for an idea of a chaplaincy welcome event at interview he had an idea involving a sofa and some Kleenex, which in all honesty, I was not expecting.

Now he has to finish a PhD and then in September he joins me in looking after the students.

This of course is something new for chaplaincy....

A beginning right at the end of term, all of which makes me slightly reflective...and slightly future focused

Admin

I only had one job to do today. Unfortunately it involved printing, photocopying, collating and stapling.

By the end of the day I had produced five packs for the interviewing panel tomorrow.

We have had a few applicants to be the assistant here in chaplaincy land and we are going to interview a couple of people tomorrow.

It has been a very long process, fund raising, writing job descriptions, having meetings about exactly what we wanted and now through the interviewing process.

It was quite exciting to put together the application packs and send them out, it was as exciting to get some back, but now I am very conscious of the need to get this right, it's not just the sums of money involved (which are not large by global standards but large as far as our budget is concerned), it is not just that it comes from about four sources but I know that what ever happens this will really change chaplaincy.

It is good that in our two candidates we have two very different views of chaplaincy, the question is now, which of those do we want?

Endings

Today was the final service in chaplaincy of the year.

The reading was 1 Corinthians 15, which is all about death.

So I spoke about endings. As I began to speak I realised I was addressing one person who has just broken up with her boyfriend another person who has recently lost her mother and another person who has just finished her first year and is going to repeat it all due to not having passed.

So some bad endings there.

Still I decided to speak about what constitutes a good ending and actually what followed was very positive.

Then I did some admin and went off down the pub with The Dave and left mostly sober and not having written an embarrassing blog post I was going to have to delete the next day but then everyone was going to look for it on google anyway so I may as well put it back.

So that was a good ending.

Just as I was off home Luke from SCM pointed out that this was going to be the last time we met....

....and then gave me a great bug hug!

Not a bad end to Wednesday...on which note...I shall go and find my bed.

AAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH

I'm in discomfort.

I'm having trouble breathing, my nasal passages are stuffed full of slimy crap and my eyes are on fire. Red raw and streaming.

The flowers, the plants and the grass are all having sex with my face, and it really hurts.

It really &*%$ing stings.

David Davis does something...um...sort of...er...weird

In 2001 following on from their humiliating defeat at the hands of Tony Blair a group of Tories got together and had a think. Almost unnoticed later that year their thoughts were published as a series of articles in a book entitled 'A Blue Tomorrow'. The names associated with the book, Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey and Nick Boles, are all now very significant, at least if you are a Tory

Within its pages there is a very remarkable argument that could be summed up as follows:

If Conservative Party ever wants to be re-elected then it needs change. The Party has a long history of economic liberalism, now it must be socially liberal as well. There is a place, they argue, for a centre right party which is prepared to get out of people's lives. This opens the way for a Conservative party with a much more relaxed attitude to, for example, homosexuality, single parents even recreational drug use.

This type of thinking is now firmly within the Tory mainstream but when it was written, back when Hague was about to hand over to Ian Duncan Smith, it was astonishingly radical. Radical because this sort of thinking flies in the face of what is traditional Tory territory: Family, morality and a tough stance on law and order. Which is why ever since the debate in the Tory party has focused on just how far this new thinking should go. On some things, homosexuality for example, the battle was easily won, but on any issues involving law and order this is still, behind closed doors, a very live debate.

Which makes what David Davis has done so interesting.

Read one way it seems a strange decision. To stand as a Tory, in one of the safest Tory seats as a risk all principled stance has an air of unreality about it. With the only possible challengers in the shape of the Liberal Democrats withdrawing, his re-election seems a certainty. It also seems strange to try to have a national debate in one seat which is hardly representative.

BUT

If this is an internal debate on the question of how far should social liberalism be a part of Tory thinking then there is no better place to have it than in a safe Tory seat. For Mr MacKenzie to run the campaign like that that represents his best hope of a win.

All of which leaves the question of why Mr Davis is doing this. As a committed supporter of the death penalty, and having voted against the repeal of section 28, he seems an unlikely champion of social liberalism. Which could be exactly why he is doing this. After all Cameron has firmly established himself as the standard Tory standard bearer in that respect. Perhaps Mr Davis seeks to outflank him on this issue. His position as Shadow Home Secretary has always been about his personal ability rather than because Mr Cameron particularly saw eye to eye with him but as a social conservative he was always more of the past than the future.

Now he can return parliament as another powerful modernising voice alongside Mr Cameron.

As this forces a public debate the Tories would rather have behind closed doors, and as it derails an otherwise smooth story of an unstoppable Tory revival I don't see how this can be in any way good news for Conservative HQ...

...but as snapshot of the private life of the Conservative party it could well make fascinating watching.

David Davis Conservative Party Kelvin Mackenzie

Dr Who

WHY WHY WHY? Would anyone with a time machine try and find out "...what happened here?"

Why would you even say "I wonder what happened here?"

It's just if I had a TARDIS I wouldn't bother with that one.

The girl with the one state solution

Vicars often hang around in church. Mostly their own. Occasionally they hang out in other people's. Ecumenism was a nice option when I was a parish minister.

Of course now my 'church' is also the Roman Catholic Church and the URC, Baptist and Methodist Church, which means that ecumenism is not an option it is a given. Sometimes however my 'church' is also the Gurdwara and even the Mosque, so unlike many vicars I do a lot more interfaith work. But most often my 'church' is the 'synagogue', our closest interfaith relationship as a chaplaincy is definately with J-soc who always meet in our space. We have hosted Pesach, Chanukah and a whole host of other things (including this one which involved shaking an upside down lemony thingy...go figure!)

Last week I got an e-mail from the J-Soc president asking me to show my support at an event happening on campus. This was organised by a the Southampton One State group.

This is a group set up to promote a solution to the Israel Palestinian conflict by proposing a single state presumably called 'Israel-Palestine' in which there would be two peoples but only one government. This of course would end the Jewish State.

My first reaction upon hearing about this was to be supportive of J-Soc.

Obviously on one level this sounds like a good idea after all it guarantees equal rights for all and makes brings a lasting solution to the conflict. But it seems to me the very raison-d'etre of Israel is to provide a safe haven for Jewish people from throughout the world. As long as that isn't guarenteed, as long as Jewish people are going to be a minority in this new state then the Israelis will not go for it. Obviously when we are trying to bring peace to an area the only way that will be lasting is if we take all parties into account. Not by forcing one party to give up their long cherished identity.

After all if it was that easy we would just have had united Ireland years ago, but we have to include everyone in the potential solution including those who think of themselves as British.

There may be some of those who do not like the existence of Israel, but pragmatically it does exist, it has existed for the last 60 years and it is made up of people who were born there. The main problem with this solution though is that neither side wants it, really, and since they have live together it is down to them. I think the one state solution is so unworkable that pursuing it could actually scupper the peace process.

However this is just my opinion, the problem however with the whole debate was a lack of diversity of opinions. It was a debate between four people who all agreed on the one state solution . No really much of a debate.

I wanted to support J-Soc, although I worried in an environment like that if I stood up and said anything it would just be read as right wing Christians standing up for Israel. That cliché that so many people believe is true of all Christians. Having sat through the debate I was right. Numerous comments were made about the fact that most Zionists are Christians and that the Jewish homeland was originally a protestant idea. One of the panelists even went so far as to call George W. Bush a born again moron ie Christian. In the end I can't compete against the sort of blind prejudice that assumes that all practitioners of my faith lack intelligence, so I said nothing.

I did want to support J-Soc though so I thought I'd do it here.

Oh FOR ****s SAKE HILLARY

The word is "CONCEDE" not "Suspend" not, "well I might be back. you never know...perhaps if the other guy gets shot or something".

Concede.

You stayed in the race far too long, you didn't even quit when it was obvious you couldn't win, even the day after he ACTUALLY won you couldn't bring yourself to do it. But now surely...surely, surely, surely! I mean you probably should have said it on Tuesday but still....you couldn't quite bring yourself to say 'It's over'. That's why you said suspend, just a little hint you might be back. And you might be, but just not this year, this year you have to move over. Completely.

Yes, we all wanted you to be president, but you didn't actually win, so you should probably have the grace to actually use the word.

Actually say "I concede". Unfortunately someone had to win and it wasn't you. Best to admit that.





(You'd make a great vice-president though).

Across the years

I had to prepare a sermon recently on the subject of Noah. So I got to thinking about Genesis. This most well known of Bible chunks.

When I was at college one of my tutors once pointed out that some people read Genesis as a sort of why-things-are-as-they-are story. Why is there day and night? Why do women have painful childbirths? Why doesn't a snake have any legs? Genesis gives an answer to all these questions and even tries to explain the origins of the world itself.

It is not alone in that. There are many creation stories from the ancient world. Indeed some of them are much more explicit about why the world exists. For example, in one of them, the gods have a battle and one of them is slain, not knowing what to do with the body, the remaining gods use it to make the world. (I wonder who gets to live in the bum crack). The Bible however doesn't directly tell us why, the point is the God of the Bible created the world simply because he wished to. So it is as much 'how' as 'why'.

The questions of 'why' did not stop there, it has been asked by scientists and philosophers ever since.

Perhaps there is something uniquely human about this question. “Why? Why am I here?” because that question seems to be something that we all share with those ancient people who wrote those creation accounts. Even if we ultimately do not accept their answers the fact they are asking the same question as us, over the centuries, over linguistic and cultural differences, over thousands of miles means that we share some common bond.

Even though there is no answer.

For, after all, if we reject the existence of God then there will be no answer but even if we do not we will never know in this lifetime. I have heard it say Aquinas thought ultimately his cosmological argument did not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing but merely made that question intelligible. It was in his opinion a good question to ask and whatever the answer was, was God. Which is why it is even stranger that we all have this question.

Perhaps I am wrong and there is nothing universal about this question, does anyone out there not ask it? Is there anyone who never wonders what the point of it all is? Maybe modern secular people have no need of such questions and it is only the religious among us who keep them alive.

I have spent much of my life wondering. Ever since my parents bought me a telescope when I was a child. I looked up into the night sky and wondered about those little points of light. Even then, I knew I was never going to have an answer to my unspoken questions.

But such is to be human. The fact that we can share this humanity across the centuries means of course that we can ask a question today and then someone sometime one day can answer it.

Just have to hope that somehow we will be able to hear the answer.

OOOO....look what I found

While rooting around behind the chaplaincy sofa the other day I found a few grand. Like you do. You know in among the coins.

At first I thought I might spend it on Peanuts, Play Doh and frivolous living, but then I considered doing something better with it.

So I thought "I know I've never been someones boss, let's do that!"

So applications are now invited and encouraged for the past of Chaplaincy Assistant at Southampton University. This would suit someone who is a recent graduate and wants to get a bit of work experience. Especially if you are thinking of one day going and becoming a vicar or something like that. It is not quite full time, but it does pay £6.80 an hour.

You get to hang out on a university campus and drink tea and talk crap. All while being paid. You also get me as your boss.

If you are good at organising things, and you want to know more there are more details here

A respect for the values of chaplaincy is essential, ability to work in a team also, a love of the colour yellow is not necessary, but would be an positive advantage

Hmmmmmmmm

I'm guessing Students