what next

 

What next?

 

 

 

In our culture many of us are very reluctant to talk about death and even more reluctant to talk about what happens next.  Until very recently I have shared in that reluctance, even though I have never been afraid of dying.  Three people have helped me to be liberated from this reluctance.

 

 

 

My first encounter was with a neuro-scientist called Peter Fenwick who listened to stories told him by nurses of what they had heard from dying patients.  One frequent occurrence was that they were visited by friends and relatives who had died and who were welcoming them into the next stage in their lives.  The nurses had previously been reluctant to talk about these things in case they were laughed out of court.  This I found in Conscious TV on Google which has a wealth of fascinating stories.

 

 

 

Then there was a book called The Witness, an autobiography of J.G. Bennett who was a disciple of the great mystical teacher Gurdjieff.  In this book Bennett tells Gurdjieff that he thinks that his mother is not doing too well in the next life.  Gurdjieff tells Bennett to do an exercise which will help his mother to get in touch with Gurdjieff’s mother who has also died but is doing rather better, and after several days of these exercises Bennett feels complete peace about his mother.

 

 

 

The third writer has the unlikely name of Todd Burpo, a Methodist minister in Nebraska.  He has a son who, just before he was four, had a near-death experience while seriously ill.  Clinically he did not die, but he did experience time in heaven.  The stories that he matter-of-factly told his parents over the next few years are truly amazing.  Among these was his encounter with two members of his family of whose existence he did not even know; one a great grandfather and the other a sister who had died in the womb.  Both of these were alive and well in the next life and greeted him.  But he was also greeted by Jesus and became aware of the three persons of the Trinity, a concept of which he had of course been previously totally unaware.  All this and much more in a book called ‘Heaven is for Real’ which I lent to a gentleman whose wife had just died.  This is a very powerful and moving account.

 

 

 

The cumulative effect of these testimonies has been to convince me again that there is plenty of evidence in today’s world for the reality of another world beyond this one.

 

sponsored walk on South Downs

A friend of ours, Hannah Caroe, is involved in fundraising for the Church Mission Society. She invited us to join her for a sponsored walk taking place on Saturday May 12th starting at Goodwood racecourse. As one of our daughters, who is expecting twins, lives at Brighton, we leapt at the chance to do the walk and visit her. We made our usual arrangements, booking trains from Corby to Bedford and from there direct to Brighton. We also booked a train from Brighton to Chichester.We went down the Thursday before so that we could have quality time with our daughter Susanna and her husband Jim. On the Saturday morning Susanna drove us to the station and as it was such a lovely day after weeks of rain she  then suddenly decided she would like to come too, so she drove us to Goodwood. We were two of ten Church Mission Society walkers, but there were 570 walkers in all, walking together for their different charities. We had the shortest distance of 10 kilometres which was about the limit of our capacity, but some were doing 20, some 40 and some even 60 kilometres. The weather could not have been kinder to us with blue skies and fluffy white clouds all day. The scenery was great, as we walked through woods bursting with spring, and across fields with great views which included looking down on two picture-book villages, East Dean and Charlton. Along the way there were two power stations which some of us thought involved cooling towers in a National Park, but which in fact only involved the dispensing of drinks and the provision of loos. We walked half the way with our friend Hannah and half the way with each other, but there was plenty of mixing at our various stops. We had a great welcome when we got back and then Susanna whisked us off to a friend’s house in a village nearby where we had a delicious lunch at the Georgian hour of 3.30pm.

Our next Saturday walk on May19, just a mile less at 5 miles, is from the Huntingdonshire village of Leighton Bromswold, famous for its connections with George Herbert, to the hamlet of Little Gidding made famous by Nicholas Ferrar in the 17th century and T.S.Eliot in the 20th. The day will be led by the Bishop of Ely and starts at 10.30 a.m. with Holy Communion at Leighton Bromswold Church. We then have lunch before setting out on our pilgrimage walk from the Leighton Hundred Stone at 1 p.m.  We then walk, with stops for readings, prayers and recollection, via Hamerton to Steeple Gidding.  From Steeple Gidding Church we process across the fields, singing the Litany, to Little Gidding Church where the Bishop will lay a wreath on Nicholas Ferrar’s tomb followed by sung Evensong in the Church.  We will then enjoy tea together before going on our separate ways.  Let us know on hodgsons@phonecoop.coop if you would like to join us.

catching tapwater

About thiry years ago I was listening to a talk about saving the planet and the speaker dropped out that he thought it would be a good idea if we all did something about the water we run off when we are trying to make it hot enough for whatever we are doing. That thought nestled in my brain and a month or two ago I decided it was about time we did something about it.
We are fortunate to have an assortment of large jugs so I commandeered them to fulfil my purpose. Three of them stand in the kitchen and now whenever we turn on the hot tap for wahing up one or more of them gets filled up and another jug which is in the bathroom is used in the same way in our one and only washbasin.
The contents can be used for a variety of purposes – watering our house plants, or seeds and plants in the garden in spring and summer, to top up the water filter or to put bowls, dishes and pans into soak, for handwashing and for cleaning our teeth.
We are constantly being reminded that in many parts of the country, but particularly in the East and South East we are suffering from drought conditions and this is a simple way in which we can all help to cut down our domestic use of water and make sure there is enough for the essential task of enabling farmers to keep their crops from dying of thirst.
If you have the energy to carry out such a complicated routine, the first thing you need to do is to go to Oxfam to replace the jugs which have now been put to this alternative use!

shantaram

My last post was about Mansfield Park. This one is also about a novel, but what a difference! The one thing they both have in common however is a high moral tone.

Shantaram is based on the true story of an escaped convict who made his way from Australia to Bombay and soaked himself in the life of the great city. If you would like to know what it is like for a foreigner to immerse himself in the life of a filthy but vivacious slum, what are the real conditions in a couple of Indian jails, how a person who is deeply involved in the black market can also show immense passion and compassion and if you can take some really tough episodes and dialogue then this is the book for you. It  is, after all, only nine hundred and thirty two pages, less than two thirds  the size of Vikram Seth’s blockbuster, A Suitable Boy, but an equally gripping insight into Indian life, even if it is from the point of view of an outsider who does his best to become an insider. The book was given me by one of my daughters at Christmas and I have been deep in it almost every night since. Last night I had to  stay up till  2 am to see through a particularly traumatic crisis. The name of the author is Gregory David Roberts and it is published by Abacus.

Mansfield Park

I have recently finished reading Mansfield Park. My wife who studied it at school calls it Manny P. Unlike her I have never read it or even seen it on film, so I came to it fresh. I read it in a Penguion version which had a long introduction which I ignored till I had finished reading it, as I didn’t want someone else telling me what to look for. It also had copious notes, some of which were quite enlightening. However, when I was half way through I came to a note which spelt out how it was going to end, which rather peeved me.

When I finally read the introduction it told me that Kingsley Amis had called Fanny Price, the heroine  ”a monster of complacency and pride”.  It also said that she was the most unpopular of all Jane Austen’s heroines.  I personally warmed to her as she was the only one of her generation who kept her head, even though she was continually being put down and snubbed while all about her lost theirs. I wonder if it is something about the cynicism of our age that a person of integrity is automatically dubbed a prig. Another critic, of whom I have always been suspicious since he wiped out all Dickens apart from Hard Times, F.R.Leavis, had a high regard for the novel, saying it was the first truly modern novel, dealing with important social isssues in a direct way. I too was gripped by it , but I was glad I left the Introduction till afterwards and I was sorry not to have been more cautious about looking at the notes. 

 

I have just returned from a day conference in Oxford organised by the Low Carbon Communities Network.  There were 200 people there from all over the UK and I did not recognise a soul!  However, I soon made contact with people from Leicestershire, the nearest to me, Shropshire – Church Stretton to be precise – Winchester, Exeter, Birmingham and, of course, Oxford.  We heard a lot about Low Carbon Oxford, with 67 low carbon community groups in the county and 36 community action groups (known as CAGs) holding 200 events annually.  We also learnt that there are no less than 900,000 community groups in the UK, not all of course concerned with green issues.

For me there were two high spots: one was a presentation on a proposed national campaign to decrease drastically the use of plastic bags, starting in Muswell Hill and targeting those supermarkets which are not already trying to cut down their use.  The goodish news is that in the last 5 years they have gone down from 10 billion to 6 billion, but they need to go a great deal lower than that; the other was a winding-up talk by Jonathan Porritt in which he said that the price of photo voltaic cells will probably halve in the next two years because of massive production by the Chinese, and that we don’t have to worry about nuclear power because no-one in their right mind, apart from the government, will invest in it!  He is shortly bringing out a paper on this showing that the government is planning 9 hidden subsidies for it.

I came away encouraged that so many people are dedicated to the cause of saving the planet, at least in certain areas, and that the outlook may not be quite as bleak as it is often made out to be, provided we all pitch in and do our bit.  I am now going to look out for community action groups and low carbon communities in case there are any in my area: I would like to share expertise.  On my way home by train I met a Chinese engineer developing heat exchange units in Bradford and an undergraduate who had two brothers working in renewables, one on wind farms in the UK and the other on solar power in Tanzania.  We had been told that a recently published book contains a list of 1 million green jobs which could be created.  The questions is: if this is so, why does the government look the other way?

I was able to spend two very comfortable nights in Oxford staying with a couple we have known for almost fifty years.  The husband, a priest and an energy consultant, is Chairman of a company called Ebico which enables customers to subsidise those who have to pay over the odds because they have gas and/or electricity on pre-payment meters. His wife, a psychologist, is involved in research looking at bullying in the Church.

If you would like to find out more about low carbon communities, the email is hello@lowcarboncommunities.net.  The website for Equipower is www.ebico.co.uk

WHY I LIKE BLOGGING

I like writing a blog for a variety of reasons:

1.  I can write about whatever I like without any editorial interference

2.  I get plenty of feedback

3.  I have a mentor to whom I can turn when I need

4.  I enjoy keeping it reasonably short and snappy

5.  I have a gradually expanding audience.

Having spent thirty seven years preaching I find this is all a great relief.  In all those years I can only remember one comment, which was by a churchwarden who had been a farmer in Wiltshire.  He said he liked my use of the word ‘dung’ instead of ‘manure’ as that was the word he had been used to when young.  A brilliant response, but only one in thirty-seven years apart from “good sermon, vicar”.  To my blog in only a few weeks I have received lots of comments, nearly all of which have been helpful and encouraging,  especially to my one on trying to keep warm without costing the earth.