The following article was written for the Threemilestone Contact Magazine.
One thing is for sure we won’t soon forget these last few weeks, and we won’t soon forget the next few weeks. Schools and colleges have closed and moved to online classes, the country faces the economic pressure of everyone having to stay at home, entire nations are entering into quarantine, the NHS is under severe and life threatening pressure, and the care sector is seriously struggling. Tragically, people are dying. We haven’t faced such a crisis since the second world war. I find myself wondering “What next?” One possible answer to this question would be to follow the trajectory of shock and sorrow to its appropriate conclusion, in other words to expect the worst and to prepare ourselves for the worst. And some might say this is a fitting response, since it will lead to acts of self-preservation and the protection of what we care for most and who we love most dearly. Obedience to the government guidance on staying at home, self-isolating and social distancing are expressions of this, and are absolutely the right course of action. Another possible answer is to imagine an alternative trajectory that is not shaped by shock and sorrow, but by compassion and grace. This kind of answer takes seriously how the current experience shapes culture, community, and individual character. It looks for ways to flip the horror of a given situation into an opportunity to build something new. I’m talking here about growth, potential and progress. Consider the acorn for instance. The acorn is potentially an oak tree. It yearns to become what it is not yet but ought to be. We are no different. Out of the Winter comes the Spring. What will the Spring look like for Threemilestone when all this is over? Both answers are correct. But for me the overriding narrative in Threemilestone and the surrounding area is one shaped by grace, compassion and good will. It is a narrative that imagines what we might become when we all get through this. It is a narrative that tells the story of a community that cares for the whole, lives for the whole and defends the whole. Just take a look at what is being achieved through the local volunteer initiatives coordinated by Russell Keeble at Threemilestone Methodist Church and Cllr Tudor. And take a look at the small acts of kindness being offered between neighbours. It is evident that social distancing was never going to mean social indifference, and self-isolation was never going to mean self-interest. These kind of things are proof that good work for the sake of the whole does far more than it initially intends – picking up a prescription for someone when you do your essential trip to the supermarket helps one person, but it also shapes the whole community. It gives more water to the acorn! Further down the road in Highertown, Malabar and Penn an Dre things are the same. Malabar Residence Association are coordinating volunteers with a system to stay in touch with the most vulnerable, and here at All Saints Highertown we’re running a Community Comforter scheme to do the same. More water for the acorn! I call to mind the words of St Paul who reminded the early persecuted church that nothing can separate us from the love of God. He says, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If St Paul were writing today, he may well have even included Covid19 in his list. The point is this, the reality of our situation is horrendous and understandably frightening for many. But my prayer, my faith, my hope is that the narrative of love and compassion will suppress the fear we all feel, and comfort the mourning to such an extent that we see the oak fully grown, and our community life profoundly changed for the better. The work of the Church is more important than ever, to be Christ to others, to heal the sick, mend the shattered, befriend the lonely, lift up the poor, and liberate the captive. God’s love for us draws us into participating in that divine work with our own hands and feet. God’s love for us—and our love for God—expresses itself in love of neighbour. May we all give ourselves to this service. Yours in Jesus Revd Jeremy Putnam Priest in Charge at All Saints Highertown
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![]() The smell caught me off guard. I had already brushed off the powdery residue of toxic raindrops on my bear arms and wiped the crud off my cheeks as I came in off the streets. And now a fume that carried a sickening sense of forgottenness was scraping at the back of my throat as I crossed the threshold. This dilapidated orphanage in some backwater industrial zone of Suceava was nothing short of shocking. From no fault of its own, what once stood as a life giving infant sanctuary was now debased; spoiled by an arrogant death that smugly showed off its stench to any good intended visitor. P%$* and s*!& came to mind before the fact I was in the company of motherless children. I felt like a bloody tourist. I was 16 and had signed up for a Christian mission in Romania to build a church and do some street evangelism. In the summer of 1992, before the cotton wool world of risk-aversity emerged, I spent a few weeks with a Romanian family in a block of flats that overlooked the city. From this height I was expecting to see a city scape or maybe even the ominous Carpathian Mountains to the west, but instead nothing other than the thick layer of smog that covered everything. Pollution had saturated the clouds and whenever it rained it bubbled like a fizzy lemonade on the pavements. The smog acted as a oppressive reminder that nothing had really changed since the fall of communism and the assassination of Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989, well at least not yet anyway. The country’s economic system had collapsed entirely, barely getting by with a GDP growth rate of -12.4%, the lowest in Romania’s recorded fiscal history. Money had no real value anymore, so many people paid with items that had a much higher value, like milk, potatoes and beans. I had arrived in Romania as part of a mission team that carried aid like clothes and medical supplies. We also had kid’s toys, lots of kid’s toys. The UK had reacted with a knee jerk and there were lots of aid trips going over with all sorts of donations. After spending a week digging out a trench for a new sewerage system for the church build, the team decided to take our donations to a nearby orphanage in Suceava. Aside from the smell which was just simply impossible to ignore we were told that there were 10-12 nurses on staff at any one time, for the 400+ children that were accommodated. Children from new-borns to teenagers were separated on each floor of the concrete multi-storey complex. I remember the building feeling more like a prison than a hospital, but it had a similar layout to both. Long corridors with rooms off each side. Large windows in each door allowed you to look in on the desperate occupants. Some rooms had larger windows beside the door, so you could check more carefully without the need to enter. Light switches were on the outside of the room. As we toured the corridors I began to feel increasingly more uncomfortable with my own life at home. I felt embarrassed that we had thought to bring toys, and even ourselves. Mickey Mouse and I were about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. The smell was getting worse. We were led up the stairs to this first floor dedicated to children aged 2 to 4. We passed a room filled with cuddly toys and unwrapped gifts, we paraded passed another containing cot mattresses. Then after a few more paces we stopped outside a room with two children in cots. One, a girl, seemingly dead, still, pale and eyes wide open, the other a boy. If it weren’t for the other boy’s crying lament I would have thought it was a morgue. The nurse checked the girl and reassured us she was breathing. The boy wouldn’t stop weeping. I didn’t know who this boy was, what his name was, or where he was from; but at that moment I had never felt more connected to anyone else. His tears were my tears. I don’t mean in some westernised empathetic sense, the kind that signals to the virtue before the humanity, but in a sense that i was feeling lost, entirely lost. I don’t know why I did what I did next. Maybe I just felt compelled to do something, to prevent this 'feeling of being lost' entirely overwhelming me. Maybe it was the combination of the soiled mattress, the cold walls, the crying, the smell of urine catching the back of my throat, the girl laying lifeless, and Mickey Mouse in the room next door. I was nothing, I was lost, and yet I had to do something. As the nurse turned to leave the room, I walked over to the boy and held out my hands to offer an embrace. He reached over the cot side bar and I lifted him up and out. His arms clung to me like a limpet on a jagged rock. His head rested in my neck, shaking and convulsing, hyper-ventilating. His body had resorted to a kind of physiological revulsion over the circumstance and his surroundings. He wouldn’t let go. This was my conversion experience. The day that death died. I had come to Romania to share the good news, but I had at times slipped into thinking that I had brought Jesus with me. That I had something that others needed and wanted. The truth is I had nothing. I was lost. I hadn’t even contemplated the idea that Jesus might have already been there. Yes, I was a Christian. I had a sense of mission. I wanted to do good and share the message of God’s love. I knew Jesus was light of the world, and that his Church was like a prism refracting his light in the darkest of places. Yet, in this orphanage I was lost, I had nothing. I couldn’t even say Dumnezeu te iubește, God loves you. This boy. In my arms. He was like Christ to me. I’d read about Jesus appearing to Paul on the road to Damascus, I had heard about the fisherman being called out of their boats, and how Thomas had seen the wounds of Christ and believed. I didn’t think it would happen to me. This boy was Christ to me. I had nothing, and he held on. I was lost, and he found me. Most of the time humanity hates and attack what it has good reason to love. I hated poverty, I hated the stench and my lostness in it. And yet, in a worldly sense, this boy I held and every other child in that orphanage was more lost than I will ever be, and more hated than I will ever be – hated so much that their lives are seen as burden. But in that embrace and my conversation to really let Jesus into my life, I remembered that hope is not some vague belief that all will work out well, but as Richard Rohr puts it, ‘biblical hope is the certainty that things finally have a victorious meaning no matter how they turn out.’ Now I believe in generous justice, a God who met us in the poverty of Christ and spoke to us in the terminus between dark and light. I have always wondered about that boy, where he is now, what he's doing. In my searching for him, I keep finding Christ. If you want to know how to respond. Speak to your nearest Christian about Jesus, and/or lookup www.whitecrossmission.com Revd Jeremy Putnam I can’t prove it but I reckon there is always someone somewhere thinking about the next big thing. You know, ideas like the iPhone, or the electric car. Whether it be think-tanks, boardrooms, or the dreamer in the bath; someone somewhere is pondering on what the next and new big idea will be.
Grace is God’s best idea. Imagined and designed in the timeless think-tank of our Triune God, grace is the newest and the oldest idea on the block. If you’ve ever received grace then you’ll know what I mean when I say that it is the greatest gift. Grace is limitless, unlike the battery in your iPhone. Grace is unparalleled and unprecedented, it is available 24-7, more relevant than any human idea, more ‘in’ than any of the latest fashions. Grace is God’s trending tweet, the top result on the Divine search engine; and what’s more you and I have an equal amount of grace available to us, since grace is unmeasurable and unquantifiable. No matter where we find ourselves, what our needs are, what dreams we have, what mistakes we’ve made, what decisions we took, God is willing to bless us with his gift of grace. In the midst of my final preparations for the move to Highertown I’ll have the opportunity to reflect on the grace I have received from the church in Portishead, and also the grace I have received from you. I thank God for your faithfulness to the task He has set before you, and I thank Him for your patience in this time of transition. I regret I cannot be with you today but I know the APCM will be a wonderful celebration of what you have achieved in 2014. Transitions and vacancies can so easily become a rather testing period in the church’s life, and a time when reduction and consolidation become the key phrases. For All Saints this couldn’t be further from the truth. It seems to me that due to the passion and hard work of folk at All Saints 2014 can be seen as a time of growth and progress. I’m sure taking stock has been part of it, but what has come through loud and clear is your continuing desire to serve God and to grow in faith. I pray that tomorrow you will have a tangible sense of God’s presence as you meet, and that his abundant grace will fill your hearts as you celebrate a year well served. Most of all I will be praying that we will all know the grace of God as we continue this new journey together. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all evermore. Amen. |
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January 2021
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