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 On Saturday I preached at St Denys Warminster at thge Annual Service for the Diocesan Guild of Bell Ringers. It was good to support them and to honour their ministry. This is what I said…

I am currently reading AN Wilson’s biography of Sir John Betjeman. I recommend it warmly. When I was preparing for my final exams at Oxford I began to read Betjeman’s autobiography in verse, Summoned by Bells. Given that he failed his Oxford exams, it was not perhaps the best person to identify with. Nonetheless, today we are as one as I, too, am summoned by bells to be with you.

Betjeman’s poem is very concerned to give cadence and rhythm to the story of his life at Oxford. The contribution of bells to our life in church and community is about the same thing. All websites about bell ringing encourage people to come along and have fun. Apparently everyone who can ride a bike can become a bell ringer. Of course, it should be about having fun. But it is not just a happy pass time. Why would people stick at it for fifty and sixty years were it just a distraction? The truth is that it is an art which compliments worship and mission - therefore our whole life as Christians.

I have been doing some textual analysis of the many variations around the world of the one basic joke about bell ringers which develops around being able to say ‘his face rings a bell’ and ‘he is the dead ringer of his brother’. It is fascinating how Quasimodo crops up in some versions and not others. What it suggests to me is that bell ringers are too modest about the difference between what really goes on in our church towers and the wider world’s meagre understanding of ringers as people who keep saying, ‘The bells, the bells’ in the voice of Charles Laughton or Lon Chaney Jr.

We are here to celebrate the reality of the rhythm and cadence which peals of bells offer to our life in community with one another. My own bell autobiography begins with my early memory as a young boy of the muffled bells tolling for the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. Quite apart from the addition which bells made to the solemnity of the occasion, the whole of London was shot through with the call of the bells summoning the capital and the country to appropriate mourning at the passing of the great man. The tolling of the bells evoked not only that sadness, but also all the grief of the War when the bells had been largely silent. As a parish priest, each week was marked at some point by tolling bells as we celebrated the life of someone who had died. All of us can think of occasions when the bell has cut through our defences and given sound to our grief. Bell ringing is at the heart of real life and emotion. The bell tolls for all of us and reminds us not only of our mortality but of our essential unity as human beings. ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

This is just as vivid when we think of the opportunities which bells have given us since ancient times to celebrate victory and new life after disaster. London and other cities rang with the sound of bells proclaiming victory and peace on VE Day. Today is a good example of celebration where ringers outdo themselves in providing the music of joy propelled across the community. When I was a parish priest we regularly rang one at least of our few bells for services. One Saturday morning, an angry woman in her dressing gown with wild hair rushed into the vestry demanding that the bells be stopped permanently. She had bought her house of this picture box village green with all its bijoux features like the church. The estate agent had neglected to tell her about Thursday’s two-hour ringing practice and ringing for Morning and Evening Prayer and the Eucharist. It was all my fault. I quietly got out the facsimile of the plans for a rebuilding of the church with a peal of eight bells. She flounced out without my having the chance to seek to convince her that the music of the bells was as much part of that village life as any other. Any reader of science fiction is familiar with the idea of our living in a number of dimensions. What the bells do is transport us to another dimension of the celebration of God’s creation.

I am not stuffy about how people dress for church; but wild-haired and in only a dressing gown was unusual to say the least. I have always celebrated, however, the role of the bell to call us to worship and to remind us that it is taking place. It has always been my custom to ring the bell for Morning and Evening Prayer both to invite people to come and also to fulfil our peculiar Anglican purpose to remind people that it is our job not just to be offering our worship for paid up members but for the whole community. For some years I was the associate at an anglo-catholic church which was accustomed to ring the bell to coincide each time with the elevation of the elements in the Eucharist. The holiest moments of our life are to be shared and the bells make that possible. The government is really hot on issues of inclusion. I would say that far from being a nuisance, the bells are a demonstration of inclusion in the life of the church with God.

The world of bell ringing is also a wonderful evocation of our unity as human beings and as believers. There is nothing which a group of ringers likes more than to investigate the tower and bells of other churches. Some of you just can to get enough of ringing and regularly turn up in different churches to ring. I am amazed how quickly ringers can blend in to a new group. What you demonstrate is a model of being united around a common purpose and a disciplined attention to other people. I am always delighted and fascinated to watch ringers in a tower absolutely rapt by what they are doing, looking and counting so that each is linked almost in a dance with the other tower members. As we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost this weekend we find what you do to be an eloquent visual and sonic parable of that dynamic circle of compassion and commitment which the Holy Spirit makes of the Church. We can claim that it is possible to be a Christian on your own privately. Nonetheless this means that one misses out on the benefits of working in community, of learning maturity and husbanding skills by taking account of others and aiming to produce a great sound together. Up a tower everyone depends on everyone else. All have a key part to play, regardless of the sound produced by each bell. Indeed, the sound of each bell becomes an extension of the person travelling up and down that rope.

I am a great fan of Lord Peter Wimsey and his wonderful sleuthing, including in The Nine Tailors. We know that bell ringers are not perfect. We acknowledge that congregations and ringers are not always on the same wavelength. What we always need to recognise that ringing is the heart of some people’s worship and the celebration of the skill does not always correspond with the tidiness of some Christians not tolerant of some ringers’ departure before the formal worship begins. Perhaps we have to be more generous about the range of peoples’ responses to the invitation of the Holy Spirit to become a person who lives in the Spirit. This Spirit bows where He wills. He hovers over us and breathes life into us like the flow of sound from our bells, always reminding us that there is more to this life than can be reduced to the contents of a box. Like the music of the bells, God’s life is always breaking out and pouring itself into our hearts and senses, inviting us to reach for more and drawing us into intricacy and a rhythm which plays into every facet of being human.

Many bells are treasured so much that they have been given names like Great Tom  or Tenor Jack or Fat Ned - I wonder what he sounds like? It is not only bells which are artefacts given personal names; but it is bells which come first to mind as objects so intimately connected with the life of a community that the affectionate name conveys centuries worth of appreciation of what the object conveys. Often bells carry the name of our Lord or one of the saints. Peter Baelz plays on this in his 1980 hymn, Ring Christ, ring Mary, Benedict and Bede, referring not only to the bells of Durham Cathedral but pre-eminently to the faith and joy to which their pealing relates. Anyone who been involved in the re-casting or re-hanging of ancient bells knows what a thrill and honour it is to restore the peal across a village or town. If we can invest such warm affection in a bell, just think how much more God invests love and grace in the life of each bell ringer. Any long-established tower captain knows the unique character of every bell and its contributory sound and uses the disciplines of the art with his colleagues to get the best out of each. So God uses the channels of grace which he has made complete in the offering of His Son to complete in us the good purpose of His perfect will. Ringers are richly blessed by God in their art and in the communities they make. Long may it be so.

I want to draw your attention to the selfless service offered to the frail and vulnerable by countless carers in this country.  Many of you who read this will be in this position yourselves, caring without applause for a member of your family or for a friend or neighbour.  It is likely that without this care the vulnerable person would either be in some institution or living in a degree of neglect.

Our conviction in the Diocese of Salisbury is that our life in God should be shaped by the Five Marks of Mission.  Various influences suggest strongly to me that the third mark, Tend, actually comes first.  Our credibility as those who desire to share God’s saving love comes from our readiness to embody it. 

The army of devoted and unsung carers saves the exchequer literally billions of pounds each year.  For many it is an unlooked for but natural extension of a marriage.  For me it involved taking responsibility for my very sick father.  There was no time to dwell on our preivuosly ambivalent relationship.  He had nowhere else to go.  His last 4 years governed my domestic life. 

I am no more looking for praise and sympathy than any of the carers whom we are asked to think about in Carers’ Week this June.  We just seek to do what is right and do it with a daily practice of love.  Such love is a small offering to a loved one for love and life received.  We hope that it can also be a gentle witness to that greater love which is not encumbered by our sin and regret, the love of the Blessed Trinity, the perfect relationship of care.

Carers do not ask for much recognition, but this month perhaps we can all pay attention to carers in our midst, not to lionise them as heroes but to offer the hand of friendship to the isolated and some respite to the exhausted.  This applies to carers of all ages including teenagers and some very elderly people. 

I qualify as Chair of Trustees of a mental health charity precisely because I was a carer.  I would never have become involved had it not been for my father.  I bless God for the time we had together however infuriating he could be.  He charged my passion to help the mentally ill and their carers speak up for the right to hope for a decent place to live, worthwhile things to do, and people to love.  It is about being a Church, whose identity is shaped by the Gospel of John Chapter 13.  Christians are those who proclaim the Gospel from their knees, washing feet. 

The delight of April was to continue celebrating Easter in many different languages. This began with a visit from our fellow bishops and deans from Latvia with whom we prayed and laughed and shared our stories as individuals and as communities. Some of the Latvians did not speak English and expertise in Latvian was at a premium. What interested me greatly was that the language barrier was not insuperable as Bishop Einars and Dean Aivars came with me to enjoy the hospitality of Sedgehill, Semley and East Knoyle on the Sunday. In fact, the fact the critical breakthrough moment during our shared theological reflection was a passionate outburst in largely untranslated Latvian from one of the bishops reflecting positively on what we were sharing.

Almost immediately after we waved goodbye to the Latvians, Bishop Tim and I were members of a group from the Diocese which went to represent Bishop David and all of us at the Enthronement of the new Archbishop of the Sudan, Daniel Deng. We also visited different dioceses: Sarah Stancliffe and Bridget Trump (President of the Mothers’ Union) went to Rokon and then to Mundri; and the rest of the party to Kejo-Keji and then to Torit, which as one diocese is as large as Uganda, with one bishop and twenty-seven pastors.

One of the most striking experiences for me was the opportunity to share with Tim in the ordination of a deacon and the twenty-eighth priest in Torit. My sermon had to be simultaneously translated into several languages. Even more significant was the context into which I was preaching about ministry, to a congregation of people who all knew what it was to be displaced. The heart of the congregation was a Mothers’ Union group who were all made widows by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Everywhere we were met by crowds of children whose English was limited to saying ‘Morning!’ at any time of day and ‘How are you? I am fine.’ One word for a white person is ‘Mono’. With the vivid lives even young ones have already lived, I think of the Sudanese children now as ‘Stereo’. The international language which I sought to employ was play. Everyone knew how to skip and how to be an airplane. When Tim and I started the Morecambe and Wise dance, the children seemed to know it. How’s that for globalisation!

The celebration of two of our partnerships close together was a wonderful way to keep the alleluias of Easter going. It was a great prism through which to see Pentecost and Trinity. True communion springing from the life of God is the only basis for any Christian partnership. This gives us the completely international language of year-long Pentecost, the proclamation of the good news in the person of the crucified and risen Lord whose faithful offering is the only constant in a stricken world. It is still worth skipping. Perhaps I need to do that next in Evreux.

Today I had a very productive deanery day in Devizes. I am most grateful to the rural dean, Sally Attwater, her clergy colleagues and to the Mothers’ Union for making it all possible. I visited three schools - Bishops Cannings Primary, Southbroom Juniors and Devizes Sports College. The visits were alike in terms of the hospitality I received but otherwise different in the contextual joys and challenges. Congratulations to Southbroom for the encouraging OffSted inspection yesterday. I look forward to further contaxct with all three. The promising contact in relation to my particular current priority is with the secondary school. John, Alan and I are trying to build a relationship with secondary schools across Wiltshire and looking for opportunities to meet staff and also to engage with students in Years 11 - 13. I am arranging such an opportunity with Devizes soon and already have plans to re-visit St John’s Marlborough.

The afternoon was taken up with a meeting with deanery clergy after a wonderful lunch provided by the MU in the Market Lavington Community Hall. This is a wonderful recent construction which has been in gestation since 1992. It has been worth the wait, I should say. I certainly have logged it as a future venue for ramsbury Area events. I applaud all those from the community involved in the development of the design and the project management. The church can only gain from association with it.

The deanery meeting gave the parish clergy and the Erlestoke Prison chaplain an opportunity to describe for each other and for me some of the current priorities in mission and ministry. I was very impressed by the fascinating mix and underlying coherence of what was presented. I commend my colleagues and all their lay leaders for their passion and imagination. I sought to stress that at the heart of what we are about is the building up of all of us as confident disciples and witnesses of and to Jesus Christ. We celebrated the variety of public ministries to which some of us are called as ordained and lay ministers, as LPAs and churchwardens. We also received lots of evidence in the course of the afternoon that most of what is offered as anonymous and brilliant service comes from people with no explicit role or office.

It comes naturally to people who have captured by the love of God and need to embody and share it. In thepast we have tended to think of ministry as a pyramid with hierarchies of ordained ministry at the pinacle. What we have learned is that God sees the pyramid the other way up. What is most important of all is our living our baptism. Bpatism is not only th ekey sacrament of belonging; it is the primary sacrament which validates our discipleship. Important as ordination is, it is subsequent to and subordinate to our baptism. Everyone understands that a bishop is still a priest and a deacon. What I and everyone needs reminding is that I have not departed from the laos, spiralling away from the People of God. I am still that baptised and confirmed disciple to whom God has said, “I have called you by name. You are mine.”

I also drew attention to a bid from the Chalke Deanery to work closely with young people across our rural churches. Youth work in urban areas is not without is challenges, of course. The rural challenge is amplified, however, not only by difficulties of transport and communications but also by the greater difficulty in drawing together a critical mass of youngsters and finding the most appropriate and engaging activities to draw them into. This is so important and we must address this urgently across the Diocese as well as in our Wiltshire patch.

It was pointed out in the meeting, as an insight passed on from the recent New Wine Leaders’ gathering, that we need to do more to encourage younger people to take a lead in ministry. This is not just or even at all about recovering the days of lots of young assistant curates which some of us remember being. It is about risking the engagement of children, teenagers and people in their twenties in our vision-setting and decision-making and also in the offering of ministry. David Howard from Potterne described for us how children were invited to devise and lead the worship and meditation upon the Cross for the whole church during the first three days of Holy Week. Imagine the effect upon parents hitherto only used to their children wearing tea-towels on their heads for nativity plays now to see their children reflecting maturely on what salvation means to them. Any of us who have allowed young people to experiment with liturgy and proclamation know that it can make us wince. Sometimes, though, that is because what we receive is prophetic and not because it is naff.

I also introduced the idea set out by John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, in his recent book, The Life and Work of the Priest, that the first component of mission is hospitality. Our commitment in this diocese to the Five Marks of Mission needs to begin with Tend and only then move to Tell and Teach once people are convinced that we really are embodied agents of transforming love who have offered without demand and who have listened without judging.

I returned home really fired up and encouraged by meeting with my colleagues and rejoicing in all that they are working on with their communities for God’s glory.

I can remember as a child going to any lengths to avoid going to bed at the right time.  I guess it was just perversity.  I didn’t gain extra time to watch television, read of book or paly with friends.  I was too busy avoiding being noticed, and the sense of achievement was short lived, since try as I might to avoid it, bedtime was one of life’s inevitabilities. 

It seems we are showing that same childish perversity in the face of our abuse of God’s creation.  We try everything possible to avoid the action that is actually inevitable.   

We are concerned about our profligacy with fossil fuels.  They destroy the environment, are in danger of being exhausted and are not renewable.  The obvious solution is to cut down our use of energy.  Drive less, fly less, cut down on waste.  Why go for the straightforward answer when life could be so much more complicated.  Hence we push for the adoption of biofuels.  We can continue our profligate use of energy at no risk to the environment, and with little danger of running out of fuel.  Of course land used for biofuels is often that which was used to grow food.  So we may have a plentiful supply of diesel for our cars, but the cost is paid for by those starving for lack of food.

A similar pattern can be traced with plastics.  Plastics are a great invention, but their durability means that once disposed of they do not rot down.  The sensible approach is to use less - no more plastic bags for shopping.  Then the arrival of biodegradeable plastics.  Surely this means when can have our plastics without gumming up the world with our rubbish.  The sad truth seems not to be so accommodating.  Biodegradeable plastics can cause as many problems as those from oil.

There is no side stepping the issues.  If we want to care for the creation God has entrusted to us, then we need a change of lifestyle - meaning you and me, not simply puttign the burden on someone else.  There are unlikely to be any painless shortcuts

We should not put our help in a technological fix which will allow to continue our current profligate lifestyles with no fears for the future.  We need to learn to consume less, waste less and appreciate more.

Thank you to Derek, Bill, Martin, Anna, Oliver, Anna, Gavin, Terri, Richard, Maggie, Ian and Chris for your welcome on my pastoral visit to Melksham today.  What did I learn

that each new born babies is truly a miracle

that with or without bursting balloons the Easter Story told with enthusiasm, energy and above all integrity will hold the attention of a whole hall full of children

that whether you are looking for rock and roll, canoeing, skittles or a night at the movies, Melksham is the place to be

that pub landlords and vicars have much in common in caring for communities and people

that Melksham has a thriving voluntary sector

that our schools need to be at the heart of our communities

that if you want to find out what is happening in Melksham look to your local newspaper

that the Family of Churches care sufficiently to make sure no one in Melksham need go without food

that Melksham is a thriving and caring community, full of life and vitality.

 What will tomorrow bring ?

Gillian and I took a few hours this afternoon to visit the Sandham Memorial Chapel near Newbury.  Unlike many National Trust properties the Chapel is early 20th Century - built by friends for Stanley Spencer to paint!  Having served as a hospital orderly in Greece during the First World War, Spencer recounted his experiences in an ambitious set of wall paintings in the Chapel.  The most well known - the Resurrection of the Soldiers forms the backdrop to the altar.

“The Burghclere Memorial redeemed my experience from what it was, merely something alien to me.  By this means I recover my lost self.”

 The paintings are truly remarkable full of surprising details - and yet for me there was something missing.  These paintings borne out of war lacked the horror, the pain, the dirt of warfare.  They are clean, almost antiseptic.  In her book, Wellbeing, Alison Webster draws a distinction between a sanitised world where we simply to brush all the dirt out of sight under the carpet, and a healthy world which acknowledges the pain, the suffering, the mess and the grime and holds it.  For me Spencer’s world seem more sanitised than healthy.

‘The Resurrection of the Soldiers’ is reminiscent of a medieval Doom picture - but it is all resuscitation - no judgment, no redemption and therefore no resurrection. 

A sanitised world can seem highly attractive, and yet ultimately wholeness and wellbeing comes through acceptance and integration, not through rejection and expulsion.

One of the emails that pops up in my inbox each day is a summary of any ‘church related’ stories in the press.  Otherwise I would not have spotted an article in the Sunday Times this week on some research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.  My immediate reaction was to go on the defensive - it’s not true, unfair, biased, unfounded, badly researched ….  But of course it isn’t any of that, and I recognised that these are views we need to take seriously, no matter how unpalatable that may be for us.

So what got me so uptight.  ‘a poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has “uncovered a widespread belief that faith - not just in its extreme form - [is] intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.”‘

 Not us we say.  But others will point to attitudes towards homosexuality, the continued and endless debate about the place of women in ministry.  Read for yourself at

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/tls_selections/religion/article3779988.ece

I am sure we can justify all this theologically -  but it sits uneasily with our perception of ourselves as inclusive, tolerant and welcoming.  Tough as it may be to accept that is not how many people outside the church see us.

With the strange phenomenon of the six term year and an early Easter, last week ended up being our post Easter break.  My mother presented us with National Trust Membership for Christmas - an indication that we are reaching a certain age! - so the week was spent exploring the glorious properties and gardens in and around Wiltshire.

Visits to Westwood Manor, Great Chalfield and Mompesson House introduced us not only to real architectural gems, but to stories of their saving from dilapidation with a common theme.  Each had been saved and lovingly restored by an individual and then given that it might be enjoyed by all. 

It has been fascinating not only to visit, to learn the stories behind the buildings.  Thank you to all the volunteers who took time to tell us the background that brought the buildings to life.

There is a lesson here for us as we look at our churches.  We can easily get trapped into seeing them as purely architectural gems, or simply as a stage for worship.  Yet each has a story to tell.  Stories of men and women of faith who lives have been interwoven with the stones of the buildings.  Rarely do we hear those stories and there are few places where they are recorded.  Yet they are often as great a testament to God as they buildings that they have cherished over the centuries.

I’ve just returned from the rehearsal in Durrington of a service to welcome and celebrate the beginning of new ministries in the Stonehenge Deanery.

Mark Zammit, who has moved from Shaftesbury in Dorset, will be licenced as Priest in Charge of Durrington, and we will also licence Rachel Bussey and Colin Fox as colleagues.  This is part of a new opportunity to work along the Avon Valley Benefice and Durrington, with a view to establishing a team ministry at some future date.  In order to work together, the clergy have agreed to be licenced to each other’s benefices, and the Licenced Lay Ministers will also receive new licences.

The actual service takes place next Tuesday evening, with the Bishop presiding, and we look forward to welcoming Mark, and his wife Amanda to the Area, and we look forward to working with the ministry team of lay people and clergy, as we develop the networks and relationships which seek to strengthen the work of the church and the wider community.  Mark brings with him the experience of working as Team Rector in a multi-church rural and market town team, as well as a wider vision as a former Rural Dean.  He will find a wealth of experience and expertise in his new colleagues, Colin and Rachel, and Christine and Chrysogon, and we wish them all every blessing as they begin their new ministries.