Thanks to the Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery and of the Brandwood Pool, we gathered at the entrance of Jasmine Fields to be briefed by Brum Bats and the Park Ranger Service. As night fell we walked through the Fields to the Stratford on Avon Canal and watched quietly. The bat detectors told us the bats were close (you can hear them here) and we could make them out against the darkening sky, hunting insects.
We walked through the streets and then (with special permission) entered Brandwood End Cemetery. The detectors went into overdrive as bats we could not see hunted in the warmth of the tree tops.
Through the gate into Brandwood Pool and so many bats flying over the water, clearly visible when the torches were turned on, although, for me at least, impossible to photograph. An excellent way to spend an evening, getting to know the natural history of this area better, inhabiting it more deeply and with greater attention.
here are some photos of St Bede’s. I’ll post some reflections later this week on these two Churches and the Camino.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, community organising, Environment, wordsworth
One of the really enjoyable things about ministering here at St Bede’s in Brandwood is the relationships we have built up with various groups and organisations in the local community. We have done this as we have tried to catch a vision of what our community might become (Andrew Watson, the Bishop of Aston, once asked what a heavenly Brandwood would look like …) and sought to be the Church, working with the community, seeking a better quality of life for all.
One of our key allies has been Woodthorpe Junior and Infant School. Over the past few years I and other members of St Bede’s have been going regularly into the School to work with the children, helping them to see that they can make positive changes in our local community. About three years ago, the children decided that they wanted to green up the area. We identified three actions and worked with the Council, the Councillors, MP, local volunteers and bodies to make them reality. New litter bins were installed on some of the roads to help reduce the amount of dog mess. There were problems with young people using the school grounds as a short cut in the evenings and vandalism. The fencing was improved, but more importantly the Brandwood Youth Empwerment Project was set up and is about to start delivering work with vulnerable and deprived young people who spend their time on the streets (more on this in another post soon). And bulbs. We raised money for 5000 daffodil bulbs and planted them in street verges in the area.
I walked out to see them yesterday:
I’m fascinated by the theological questions that arise from this sort of work. About the relationship between this work and the Kingdom of God. About how it can be measured – what does it mean for a class of children to be taking some control of the neighbourhood and making positive change? About the relationships between God, poverty and caring for the world. About the nature of the Church. I could go on …
I’m also fascinated about how this fits in with the visions of a good society that the political parties are putting forward in the General Election Campaign. There was a really interesting article about this by Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian yesterday (click here). I am obviously all for empowered local people and communities working hard to improve the quality of life in their areas. I am not convinced that this can be done (at least at the moment) without strong voluntary sectors and strong government to help.
If we have daffodils, we need lines from Wordsworth:
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, David Scott, George Herbert, poetry, prayer, resources, Slowing Down, St Bede's, urban ministry
The last few weeks have been frantically busy. This has been for a number of good reasons and I am happy as a priest to work to the limits of my capacity at particular times. The danger for me lies in getting into a pattern where I work flat out all the time, become exhausted and then a liability. Walking the Camino, along with a commitment to walking and cycling in life, has been enormously important in ensuring I keep a proper shape in my life. I am enjoying an emptier diary this week, a chance to stretch, to reflect on and process all the busy-ness.
One of the important things that has been happening is discerning the direction of the next few years at St Bede’s, Brandwood, where I spend half my work as Vicar. 
We have been using the Diocese of Birmingham’s excellent Transforming Church initiative to help us in this. Over the last months, folk at St Bede’s have gathered together a list of all the ideas of things we would like to do. On Saturday, about twenty of us spent a day in prayerful discernment. We prayed for our parish and then looked at what we already do. We then considered future work. We are already active in our local community through our Community Project, particularly in working in partnership with local agencies and people of goodwill to give a better quality of life to all (click here to read the story of this). We are committed to this and especially to a youth work initiative that will be getting off the ground in the next few months. We also need to pay some attention to our finances so that all that we do and are is on a secure footing.
When we came to look at what else we might do, I was very happy that the mind of the meeting was to give attention to our life of prayer, both as individuals and corporately as a Church. We do pray at the moment, but this will be an opportunity to deepen this part of our life in Christ. It is also an opportunity for integration, to see that prayer and action are part of a seamless robe, that our mission is holistic, caring for all of a person’s being and needs. This became clearer than ever to me in that School of Prayer and School of Charity which is the Camino de Santiago. On it, we learn to pray more deeply; that prayer is tested and proved in our encounters with others, especially when it is difficult.
Here are two poems on prayer which give much to live out of:
PRAYER. (I) (by George Herbert)
PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.
A Priest at Prayer
From prayer to prayer involves
a dwindling, a way of being
that accounts for weariness, a regular
drawing in and letting out of breath;
the planting of a word and its forgetting,
a close examination of what is there
until it isn’t, a candle flame beating air,
love meeting Love before the house wakes up;
space body-shaped, time vacated,
the passive tense, a waiting to receive,
out-of-bounds of what is right
or wrong, subject to being surprised
by God on briefest sight.
from David Scott Selected Poems.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, Environment, Mary, poetry, snow
Yesterday I saw snow graffiti on the gable end of one of the flats on Brandwood Park Road. A poet had written
snow is a peace of heaven
This had disappeared by the time I got my camera, so here is Dawberry Fields at first light this morning:
The year before last, my friend Mark and I were cycling home from a conference in Worcestershire. It was a beautiful autumn day. An hour and a half from home we were hit by unforecast and unseasonal snow. We were OK, just very cold, but it made me realise that we could very well have been in trouble if we had had further to go. One of the illusions of modernity is that we can control everything. Snow shows that this is wrong. Nature is bigger than we are. Many people will know this at the moment.
Yet, we also find beauty and joy and fun – and heaven – in the snow. Here is Our Lady of the Snows from Santa María del Salvador in Chinchilla:
Again and again in Valencia and Castille I found shrines and images of the Blessed Virgin. Spending time with her was an unexpected and sustaining part of the pilgrimage.
The busy-ness of being a priest with responsibility for two communities at Christmas means I won’t be posting again for a bit. I’ve been playing over in my mind for a while the connections between God, the Cross, the environment, the urban and the rural and I owe a long post on this (perhaps a very early – or very late – new year’s resolution).
In the meantime, two things to enjoy. A snippet of John Clare and a photo of the Brandwood Tunnel, ten minutes from here, last Friday.
For everything I felt a love
The weeds below, the birds above.
Brandwood Tunnel, Stratford on Avon Canal, 18/12/09
