Always Hope

In my paper last week (sorry, can't remember which one) there was an interview with the author Michael Frayn who says that he always avoids literary festivals, as a punter or as an author. His point was that he doesn't want to meet the people who write the books he likes, in case they turn out to be less than he hoped they might be. "Authors are so often disappointing in person" I think was the quote. It's an interesting thought. When we read a book, especially a novel, as well as entering into the created world of the book, we also create a world of our own in response. If we are impressed by the book, it's often the voice of the narrator that we warm to, and we can invest a lot of affection or respect in that imagined person. If the author, incarnated, turns out to be less than we hoped for, does this spoil the book for us? Many great authors, of course, have been less than saintly, but that is not necessarily a blow to the reader. What is more fearful is ...

Yesterday I posted a critical comment on someone else's blog. It doesn't matter where, or why, because this is not about that blog post or the argument I had with it.  It's just something that the blog author said that got me thinking, along the lines of: "if you don't like this stuff, you don't have to read it". Now to be fair, I had been close to the bone with my comment, and much credit to him for publishing rather than quietly suppressing it, but at first I was a bit put out.  Then I wondered how I would have reacted if I had received that sort of comment on my blog. In the end, I felt a bit uncomfortable about it all, and was pleased to give him the last word, even though I didn't agree with him because it is, after all, his blog. It did feel a bit like going into someone's living room and shouting at them. On the other hand, why do we blog if not to get a reaction?  The internet is a public space in which anyone can see what you've w...

...just in case you wondered. The latest thing in Christian blogging seems to be to dramatically announce your retirement .   Over at The Beaker Folk, the Archdruid surveys the blogs that are left, and wonders who else might quit.  Whilst quite chuffed to be included in the survey - I noticed I got mentioned thus: Charlie Peer is an interesting (and   Always Hope ful) blogger in Cornwall. He hasn't blogged for a few weeks, but then he does that from time to time. Or at least I hope he's not stopped this time. I want to reassure readers of Always Hope that this is all part of the cunning plan.  Today I am announcing that I am not giving up blogging: there won't come a day when hordes of readers log on, only to be disappointed to find nothing new here - after all, how would they know the difference between that and any other day? Instead, I prefer to keep you in hope for the days when you visit this site and find, to your amazement, that I've written something...

In case you're following a link to piece saying that a well-known blogger has hung up his keyboard: it appears he has changed his mind.  As somebody once said, reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. I'm not falling for that one again.

Good stuff from Bishop Alan Wilson , who has a comment piece in today's Church Times on social media and blogging.  There is a slightly comic feel to it as he gently introduces the CT's readers to the big new world -  "Twitter: a site for comments and links in a tiny format of 140 characters, called Tweets" - but he does it well, and still has room for some more insightful comments. In particular he is very strong on the challenge that online media present to the Church's way of doing things. How about this: New media are inherently anti-hierarchical - some bishops may not take kindly to a world where nobody cares who any of them are, in which they are only as good as their last job. It's quotes like that which make Alan one of my favourite bishops, even if he is rude about evangelicals sometimes.  Most of our episcopal leaders have not yet grasped that, increasingly, authority has to be earned rather than assumed. Alan has, and he doesn't mind poking a b...

(idea courtesy of Clayboy , and others). There's nothing I wish I'd known before I started, mostly because I still don't know a great deal. There are some things I'd really like to know, though. Like: 1. Why sometimes you can write something good (modest as ever) which gets ignored, and then something really silly and ranty gets loads of attention. 2. How some people (you know who you are) post 900 times a year and still appear to lead an external life of some description. 3. Why one post that I wrote last year has had more hits than any other, by a factor of 5. 4. Why there is isn't a simple ranking site that ranks blogs by the most obvious criterion of quality - how many people read them. 5. Why backlinks don't work on blogger. 6. Why more clergy, especially those in public roles like Bishops, don't blog. Or, to put it another way, why we don't choose more who can.

Two posts worth reading appeared today. The first is by the inimitable Archbishop Cranmer . Cranmer is a bit florid, as he sometimes can be, but his post is basically a lift of a Facebook comment by Bishop Alan Wilson. The Bishop lets off a bit of steam about BBC2's Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, and her "Bible's Buried Secrets". The point being that there is nothing particularly secret, or indeed buried about the things she is revealing. It's all tired old stuff which has been doing the rounds for years, and in fact the Bible itself is consistent with the arguments she puts forward. The other is by Ruth Bancewicz on her " Science and Belief " blog, where she briefly lays out how she can be a scientist who believes in miracles. I think she would need to unpack the argument a lot more to defend it against a sceptical critic, but the basic point is clear - if God created the physical universe, he is not bound by its physical laws and is able to act outside...

Vic the Vicar reveals his hidden depths today with a post on the Trinity . Don't let his jokey tone fool you - this is actually a thoughtful and theologically rigorous reflection on doctrine and modern Christian preaching. Best of all is this diagram that he provides: As he says, not a bad summary of the teaching of the early Fathers. The problem we have is that explanations like this are hard for the quasi-scientific mindset which governs the way most people think in our culture. We have, by and large, bought into the idea that we can discover how things work by taking them to pieces and looking at the constituent parts. This reductionism is quite un-Christian. God is not a machine that can be disassembled, nor even a creature that can be dissected so we can see all His parts. He is Mystery. Christians are often reductionists too, and find it hard to accept mystery. This is what leads to bizarre sermon illustrations of the kind that Vic describes, which only serve to give false im...

Belated congratulations to Nick Baines , who was last week announced as the next Bishop of Bradford . In the world of Bishops this counts as an upgrade, since when he moves from Croydon to Bradford he will be in charge of a Diocese for the first time. Nick is one of the Bishops of choice for Anglican bloggers , being a blogger himself and a regular on Twitter. I'm aware that what I'm about to say may look hugely hubristic , but I'm going to say it anyway. I think that the appointment of a blogging Bishop to a senior post can only be a good thing. Nick is one of the very few Bishops who have a) shown any interest whatsoever in web-based media, b) had anything of interest to say once online, and c) successfully engaged with the digital world without saying anything inept enough to earn himself unflattering news headlines. Most of his colleagues haven't even got to a), and those who have, generally fell down at b) or c). That isn't to say that he hasn't made ...

Oh dear. Grossly unfair stereotyping of the Alpha course, but just enough truth in it to be eye-wateringly funny. Hop over to Phil's Treehouse and watch this: Vampires on the Alpha course Full marks to Phil for simultaneously posting a subversive clip and making a serious point. There is more to Alpha than this - have a look at their website . And nobody uses tambourines in church anymore (or do they?).

Bloggers have raised eyebrows at this article , a dreadful piece of hackery on the Guardian's Comment is Free , which takes exception to Iain Duncan Smith's use of the phrase "that's a sin". Our author draws two earth-shattering conclusions from this: one, that he is a Christian, and two, that his faith affects his politics. Cranmer is predictably acerbic and defends the political implications of original sin. The Church Mouse dismantles the journo's argument with forensic anger. Meanwhile, Suem , among others, is interested to hear that Rowan Williams has apparently decided to suspend the Primates Conference, the zoologically-named gathering of the world's most senior Anglican Archbishops. Apart from revealing that Suem reads the Church of England Newspaper, the most surprising thing about this is that the Conference is one of the so-called "instruments of communion" that are supposed to hold the global Anglican church together. What this say...

The recent post about the failings of synodical process has generated an unprecedented amount of traffic to these pages, even to a rare mention from the Church Mouse , and spun off all kinds of surprising conversations elsewhere in the online universe. Pleasant as it is to have the attention, it has made me re-examine what I said in the light of the knowledge that people are actually reading it, and I feel a few more thoughts are in order: Always Hope has never pretended to be offering fully thought through opinions. It's more in the line of "thinking aloud", and I do welcome people's feedback, because the conversation is interesting, and it helps me form the thoughts more carefully. It may even be that I sometmes deliberately overstate the point. This is not because I court controversy - it's just what I call humour. Regular readers may get used to this and perhaps forgive me for it. You might be interested to know that though I personally am in favour of women i...

A little blog-spat has broken out among the clergy bloggers over Harvest Festivals. The Church Mouse (who may or may not be a Reverend Mouse) started it , and now Thurible has weighed in on his side. What I'm really interested in are the comments on these posts, revealing a split between vicars who think Harvest is A Good Thing, and those who think of it in the same league as having a tooth drilled. This blog is firmly pro-Harvest. And to be honest, I'm feeling a little unsympathetic to some of the points of view that my fellow clergy are putting forward. Vicars who don't get Harvest? Next they'll be saying they don't like funerals (hang on a minute...) Anyway, maybe I've just been following the Conservative Party Conference too closely, but Always Hope wants to dish out some no-nonsense advice to these Harvest refuseniks. There seem to be several possible reasons for not liking Harvest: 1. "I'm not into country things". Yes, well, since you...

Last night here at Kea I ran an introductory evening for a group of people who I'm hoping will join me in a leadership course over the coming year ( CPAS Growing Leaders ). It looks really good and I'm hoping that they will take up the opportunity. I came to the evening with some concern about how it was going to go but ended up really enjoying it - and I think I know why (apart from the great company and good response, of course). The whole dynamic of a leadership programme in the church is something which breaks down the clergy/laity mentality in church. If I was asked to list the things that I find difficult about my work, that would be near the top of the list - the idea that once you get the round collar on, you somehow become a different species to the rest of humanity (and yes, I know some people really believe that, but I don't). I admit to being slightly in two minds about this. I'm actually all in favour of having professional clergy, who are not only gift...

... it's not necessarily because I don't like it. I'm fast becoming a blog addict, enjoying other people's half-baked ramblings almost as much as I do my own. It's just that now it's so easy to set up and customise a blog, some of your sites look a bit like the online equivalent of a Heath Robinson contraption, with so many gadgets, widgets, and objects tacked on that I can barely find the posts. My four-year old laptop can't cope with the amount of junk code you've bodged on to your site in your DIY madness. The fan almost flies out of the box and the whole screen freezes solid for five minutes while the machine has a strop. You've got gratuitous Youtube clips all over the place, one of those sidebars that tells me your most recent visitor was from Ulan Bator (it doesn't work, by the way - it always tells me that I'm from Berkshire), a widget that tells me I can share your pictures, more pictures under every post with links to other random p...

Time to tidy up a few loose ends, relating to the last three posts on Always Hope. Last night's post on religion and the BBC seems to have attracted a lot of interest (I say a lot, but it's all relative), although the general thrust of opinion seems to be in the opposite direction - Bishop Nick Baines and LankyAnglican make the point on their blogs. I think the case is well made but still believe that this is not a drum we should be beating, for the reasons I attempted to set out in my post. Meanwhile, I need to clarify something I wrote in Cameron's Cornish connection . When I referred to "the Duchy", I was of course describing the ancient and Royal Duchy of Cornwall itself, not the private hospital which is situated adjacent to Treliske, for the convenience of Doctors who need to fit in their NHS jobs between private consultations. One or two cynics have suggested that Samantha Cameron might quietly move across the road in the next day or two, to which Alwa...

Respect to the Church of England's premier blogger, The Church Mouse , who has managed to get some column inches on the Guardian's Comment is Free site today.    Read the article to see why Mouse has a beef with Richmond Borough Council, and see the predictable heaps of vitriol poured on the little furry head (in the comments section). I take my hat off to Mouse for his courage (although Always Hope understands this is not his real name) but hope that he was not expecting a reasoned and measured response to his piece.  Half the comments seem to have been moderated out already, a blood-curdling thought, given the level of animosity displayed by the ones that got past the moderator.  The comments section of online newspapers always seem to be populated by the kind of people who you wouldn't want to give free access to the knife drawer.  I just hope the Pope is grateful for Mouse's willingness to take up the cudgels on his behalf.