PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Fight the good fight
My mother was born Church of England, but then became a pillar of the Free Church of England when her mother and friends banded together to create their own church (berlow, right) as a breakaway from the one up the hill. Free Church meant that they could call their minister a bishop, so it gave them a bit of an edge.
Church was coffee and bun mornings, Sunday School classes where she was taught out loaves and
fishes, and haggis evenings once a year (because the bishop was a Scot). People of my mother's generation knew quite a lot about Jesus but nothing much about God (the two being quite separate in their minds). They respected the bishop but tended to keep him at arm’s length, because during the war he had turned his gaze heavenwards and announced, as he observed a barrage balloon, "Maggie!" Maggie was his housekeeper.
The biggest day of the year was Sermons Day because that is when the most money was collected. The amount flashed around the small town in which she lived - Oswaldtwistle - as if it were the result of a lottery. People imagined disciples up in heaven saying, "£350 this year - just fancy!" Her Christianity was practical rather than spiritual. It was mainly a question of sustaining the church at the bottom of the hill at the expense of the one at the top. And keeping "Cahtholics" (why the Southern pronunciation?) in their place, of course. That was something that had probably come down undiluted from Henry V111.
When my mother moved house, it was difficult to get to the old church on time, so she became Methodist - a sort of temporary spiritual parking lot. She liked the Methodists because they sang louder than anyone else, and she could actually hear the words they were singing (she was deaf). Their eyes tended to pop and veins stood up on the sides of their necks, but having noted this oddness, she joined in with a will, eyes popping, veins distending, fighting the good fight with all her might. Her experience of conversatziones where she delivered poetry in an accent totally foreign to her came in handy.
When the minister found that the communion wine had been stolen in the night he sent out for Dandelion and Burdock and communion continued without a hitch. My mother liked the pragmatism. She did not look when people were contributing to the collection but her ears were sharply tuned so that she could correctly identify every contribution on her row by the metallic sounds, single or multiple, or rustle of paper (seldom defined).
She expected that, when she died, her mother and father and sisters would be ranged up to greet her and that things would go on much as before, although, of course, there would be no need for loaves and fishes. And in this she was supported by her sisters. When my mother died, one of them would regularly break off in conversation and carry on another with the dear departed, so that life and death were neatly interlocked in the same moment of time.
Heaven, it would appear, was a more affluent earth, but without the cotton looms.
Whenever I see a hen walking I think of my mother. She had the same prodding progression, usually in a hat with a feather bobbing about, and on sermons day she wore the longest feathers in her collection. Lady Thatcher has similar hen-like qualities. She has something of the peck, peck, peck and cluck about her. And I was reminded of this when I saw a picture of a cock crossing a stream on a shaky sort of bridge. He was strutting, as usual, high-stepping, and the hens, about a dozen of them, were clustered at the safe end, not venturing a foot on the bridge until the boss had crossed.
Hens are under-rated. I found when I moved into my house 30-odd, very odd, years ago that I had been bequeathed a dozen hens. Each one, I discovered, had a definable character. One was plainly mad. It was an escapee from a battery farm. I found that people discovering hens in odd situations - injured, escaped, just plain lost - tended to bring them to me. I never killed one. Although at one point I did ask our local hen man to replace a dozen with a younger dozen since it was obvious I was running a nursing home.
He did it while I was out because I did not have the heart to say goodbye to them. And next day he was quite vicious. Why, he asked, did I let them out of the cabin in the morning? He had to chase all over a hillside after them. The hen man kept a stall on the town market and used to wash away the rigours of the day with copious draughts of ale at night. He always wore several layers of clothing onion like. I said to him, "What would you do if you died and found that God was a huge chicken?" He thought for a moment, then replied, "I'd probably pluck him and stuff him and put him in t' oven." He died eventually and I cringed a little at the thought of him meeting God. Not for God's sake. For his.
Nobody stole my hens, except foxes. They were uneatable. The hillside caused them to develop muscles like Arnold Schwartzneiger. You could not cook them to the point of tenderness, my pub landlord said when he cheated me and tried one. And they did not give a damn where they laid their eggs. I found dozens of them hidden behind weeds, or among brambles, or in hawthorn hedges. I had to throw them away in case they were months, or years, old. The cocks shouted all day long. The hens tried to fly into nowhere so that I had to clip one wing of each.
An old countryman advised me to polish the cocks' combs if I intended to sell them because it made them stand up and gave them a good colour. I never tried it. A farmer nearby was leaning over his fence when a cock flew at his midriff from behind and stuck its claws into his rural backside, to his great fury. Hens are not there to be ignored, cocks even more so. A small farmer could well find himself in a hens' oven, his legs trussed up with string.
Between my house and my neighbour's is a small wall. One hen took to sitting on it all night long staring into our kitchen. It never occurred to me that this innocent habit might be an embarrassment. But it was. The hen's rear was protruding over the fence and onto my neighbour's property and since hens are not potty-trained, he was not amused.
I forget why I got rid of the hens eventually - by natural death, incidentally. I might have needed the hen house for the donkey my daughter insisted on having. It was a deprived donkey and leaned on me whenever it saw me. I went to a neaby shop for some food for it. The shop was attached to some rather posh stables. The proprietor was a countryman-barrister. The hunt was gathering at a local pub that day. "Will you be out hunting today?" he asked matter-of-factly. The horror of the situation hit me like a rock. I was feeding a donkey. He was assuming I had a charging steed to be fed, and me one of the gentry. "No, I don't think so," I said, and exited as fast as possible.
My daughter often recalls the donkey with affection. I wish I could share her joy. I turn the conversation to hens.
The trouble with the established Church: now where do you start? With clergy so desperate for congregations that they bring in the banjos? With high panjandrums of the order who gather in conclave and bicker about gay priests and the place of women? (Oh dear - there were none among the 12 apostles..) I am surprised that the Church believes in anything, since it is forever questioning what we all assumed it believed in.
And now we are told, not much to our surprise, that Britain's churches will be well on the way to extinction by 2040.
I am saddened by that. I have a great affection for Britain's churches. I was confirmed into the Church of England by a bishop of Durham who went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury. But then came the Middle East, and the Army, and I had a thought: here I am, about to be launched into Palestine to help sort out its bloody (not an expletive) problems, and it is the cradle of Christianity and home of the Muslims. What do I know about belief?
The word "belief" troubled me. Why should I believe anything? Something, somebody, put me on earth with the capacity to think, and judge, and decide, yet on the most important point of all - why am I here and what am I? - I was expected to believe whatever I was told. Also, I was expected to be Christian because I had been born to Christian parents. Could that be right?
I began to look at the various religions, beginning with Egyptions, the pyramids and all that went with them - since they were on my doorstep at the time.
And I concluded that I needed something that would encourage me to progress spiritually while challenging everything I was told to believe. Hinduism seemed a good bet. But with its caste system, it lost appeal with me, although it has some awesome scriptures. Then to Buddhism. And particularly Zen Buddhism: the approach to self-knowledge from the steepest path. I had found my home, still challenged, but content with the journey.
But where were Christians all this time? It is a fact that Christianity flourished most where education was lacking. I do not wish to disparage it on that account. I merely point out that poor, uneducated and superstitious peoples are more easily led than others. I had a friend who was in charge of mills in Mexico long ago, and whenever they got new machinery it had to be blessed. That sort of thing does not appeal to me.
What appeals to me is leadership through strength. Many bishops drift about in the winds of compromise until there is nothing left to follow. The new Pope is fine by me. At least he has strength of will and belief and a proper regard for tradition. He might not produce more Catholics, but those he has will be the better for him. I still get inspiration and comfort from listening to Allegri's Miserere, a tune of Rome - and why not?
I talked at length with David Jenkins before he became Bishop of Durham, a post he held from 1984 until 1994. He had been a lecturer in theology at Oxford and was a professor at the Leeds University from 1979 until 1984.
I liked him. He was prepared to take a fresh view, to separate what was possibly myth from what really mattered. But of course, the Church is, if nothing else, a place for unquestioning tradition, and he was howled down.
Three days after his consecration as bishop on 6 July 1984, York Minster was struck by lightning, and some saw this as a sign of divine displeasure. To me, a superstitious nonsense.
How can the Church fail so badly when the entire population of earth is seeking spiritual answers? The land is teeming with people following yoga; and whether they like it or not that is part of Hinduism. Masses of people follow martial arts, and that is an offshoot of Buddhism.* There go the Christians! Who are we? What are we? Can there be any more important questions? And yet the Church paddles around in circles with too many oars.
I am out of it. I am allowed, through my choices in life, to challenge everything and seek everything. And if I do it long enough, and hard enough, I will get my answers.
But the Church, I fear, will still, at that stage, be following the trends, and bickering about them, and leading nothing. Well on the way to extinction by 2040? I hope not. But I can see it happening.
Geoffrey Mather © 2004
3 March, 2007