Living in Love and Faith Part 12

 I never thought I would be less enthusiastic about going to London. Heading South for a another session of gay bashing, legal papers, amendments to amendments, pastoral guidelines to pastoral guidance, more canons than Edinburgh Castle, so many questions about sex it's probably put the Bishop of London off a Mills and Boon novel indefinitely if not forever. 

I quite fancy a standing order of my own, I'd like to get up and scream at everybody, stop this complete and utter nonsense right now, 'your letting yourself down, your letting your church down, your even letting Jesus Christ down. 

As General Synod disappears so far up its own bottom discussing matters of  genital activity, with threats and counter threats of what might happen if homosexual relationships are celebrated in the church of England. The battle lines are drawn, Middle Class, Conservative Evangelical men (mostly) smartly dressed, will speak convincingly about the need to treat every noun, verb and adjective, as the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but fail to pay the blindest bit of attention to the bit where Jesus said, 'Love Thy neighbor as thyself' 

Of course they will disagree and argue that not to be the case, but when you have seen and heard it with your own eyes and ears it's hard to pretend it never happened. I got called a Twat once by a conservative evangelical, or maybe it was just a Freudian slip of the tongue.

The truth is I never thought i'd be voted onto Synod, but now that I'm here i must tell you it is not a very pleasant or productive place to be. In my naivety I had hoped we might talk about the poor, or how we might work together to fight social injustice that I see in my own parish almost on a daily basis. I thought we might be working together to work out what we might do to stop people leaving the church of England in their droves, and finding better things to do with their Sunday mornings than worshiping our good Lord. 

But sadly not, we are too hung up on penis to penis or vagina to vagina attraction than living out the Beatitudes given to us by Jesus on the sermon on the Mount. We haven't got time for the poor at the moment because we need to resolve if it's okay to say a prayer for a gay couple or as we now describe in the church a covenanted friendship. 

The next week in Synod will confirm what most of us know already, the church is very much on the waiting list for palliative care unless someone can get this dying institution out of ICU as quickly as possible. Some romantically think the way to this is too restore our parishes to havens of intact hymens and young men politely asking the good ladies father if it might be okay to take her hand in marriage and then her virginity. Well good luck with that guys and gals, you might  get lucky finding a virgin but it's might be slightly more tricky accessing the girls father. That might be a little bit more of challenge in some parts of the working class estates.

As we wait to see where exactly the balls land, and I don't mean that to be in any way a euphemism I find myself discovery some optimism that God really is in this sorry mess.

I'm pretty sure God is, and it's pretty clear to me that God is telling us if you can't work out it, I will let it implode and then something good can happen to the church in England, Someone will be in charge of it, The Government! If that doesn't kick us into action nothing will!

God will decide our future, not a bunch self-righteous synod representatives. where all are amicably supported in spending an inordinate amount of money on discussing these matters.

Back at the ranch we need a new boiler, for our warm space church, we don't have the money, and I don't expect Synod to pay for that in the way it  does for my travel, tea and time. 

A shame really because I delight in that part of my ministry, it's seems good work, but hey, what do I know?

Well anyway do pray for us all. I must go I've literally hundreds of questions to read through before Monday. 

God Bless you all,

Alex