Last Sunday, November 1^st, was All Saints’ Day and I preached at St Agnes Kennington Park for the first time since the beginning of Lockdown. I gave my sermon a lot of thought – I usually do – but for the first time in more than fifty years of preaching sermons a totally new thought occurred to me. 

It isn’t what I say that matters. It’s what people think I’ve said.

And more than that. Perhaps there should be some feedback method for preachers not so that we can correct what people think we’ve said but so that we can understand more the people to whom we’re preaching and understand more of what they are thinking. Certainly on Sunday I found it very difficult to assess what the congregation of St Agnes made of what I was saying because everyone was wearing a face mask.

I know that a wise friend once told me to beware of self congratulation when someone says, ‘Thank you Vicar, that was such a lovely/wonderful/good sermon you preached this morning.’

‘The chances are,’ he said, ‘that all you’ve done is to confirm their already held prejudices.’

And another colleague said to me, ‘Surely you’ve had the situation when someone has repeated back to you something you’ve said in a sermon and in fact you thought you were saying the opposite!’ And I have.

But my most enjoyable sermon memory is from St Luke’s, Christchurch, New Zealand when I began a sermon with, 

‘I don’t like some of you and some of you don’t like me.’

I went on to develop the difference between ‘liking’ and Christian ‘loving’. And how Christian loving is an act of the will not an emotion. I thought it rather a good sermon.

One day in the week after I’d preached that rather good sermon I met, in the street, one of the Churchwardens who  commented, 

’That was an interesting sermon on Sunday, Vicar. I had some others from church for lunch afterwards and we spent quite a bit of time talking about it.’

‘Oh good!’ I said. ‘And did you come to a greater understanding of the nature of Christian love?’

‘Not really,’ she replied, ‘We just tried to work out who you didn’t like and who didn’t like you!’

I haven’t asked anyone for feedback on last Sunday’s sermon. I’m not going to take the risk. And I have an uncomfortable feeling that all too often the difference between what I think I’ve said and what other people think I’ve said,  may not only apply to sermons. And I haven’t bothered to find out.

OH DEAR!

I was so pleased with my Neck Gaiter Face Cover Scarf that protects me and others from Covid 19 and doesn’t pull out my hearing aids or knock off my glasses. Now a doctor friend, having read my THOUGHTS has expressed surprise and has told me they are not good and not at all effective. And he sent a link to a Washington Post article to back up his case. Oh dear!

ANOTHER LOCKDOWN

I will be going for my swim soon, my last at the Castle Centre for a while as swimming pools and gyms will be closed tomorrow under the new lockdown rules. There are a number of new restrictions that come into force from midnight and I suspect the real issue is whether or not people will obey them. In 2003 I broadcast ‘Obeying the Law’. I think it has a relevance to the latest rules. You can find it under my BROADCASTS.

Monday

The 1966, ‘I Look Down on Him’, Class Sketch with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett still makes me laugh. But I hadn’t realised until today just how far it extends beyond sending up the class system nor had I realised that John Cleese himself had reworked it in 2017 for Hacked Off in support of section 40.

My personal discovery, today, is that it applies just as aptly to lane swimming at the Castle Centre. We have three lanes, Slow, Medium and Fast. Usually I swim in the slow lane except when it’s Silver Swim and the slow lane is even slower than usual and I swim in the medium lane but that’s Tuesdays and Thursdays and today is Monday and that’s nothing to do with my discovery.

Today it was lane swimming open to all. I had booked for the slow lane. In the slow lane we are all good sorts. We observe pool etiquette and give way to those faster and are understanding of those slower. We say good morning and smile. We know that we are in the slow lane. We know our place.

When I arrived this morning there were already quite a few swimming in the slow lane, eight I think, so I thought I would sneak into the medium lane. There were only three others there. I managed to keep up as far as speed was concerned but swimming in the medium lane is different. It’s competitive. There are no smiles at the turn. In the medium lane swimmers eye each other with suspicion and the question, I think, ‘Does he really belong here?’

In the fast lane there is no doubt. They know where they belong and we know where they belong – in the fast lane. It’s all confidence and style in the fast line. 

I’ve discovered that I am happiest in the slow lane, where I know my place.

Tuesday

My second discovery of the week is my Neck Gaiter Face Cover Scarf. I bought it on Amazon. I doubt it existed before Covid19 and certainly not in this form. It’s a legging for the neck and has a pocket into which you put a carbon filter. It looks like a scarf and you pull it up over your chin mouth and nose when a mask is required.

They come in all colours to match your outfit. Mine is black. The bliss is that you don’t loop it over you ears like the masks I’ve been battling with, you pull it over your head and it’s round your neck, like a legging only I can’t call it a necking that’s something from the fifties and is quite different. The great thing with the neck gaiter is that hearing aids and spectacles are left alone. So I look like an elderly bank robber when I go into church or a shop but I’m comfortable and even though my glasses still steam up my hearing aids don’t fall out. I’m really pleased I’ve discovered the neck gaiter face cover scarf.

Wednesday

Sweet succulent tenderstem broccoli spears  were my third discovery of the week. I found them in their supermarket packet at the back of the fridge. 

‘Excellent for soup,’ I thought. 

Only after I’d sweated the onions and added the chopped stems of the broccoli did I look at the packet. ‘BEST BEFORE 21 SEP’. Best a month ago and they still appeared fresh. There’s something wrong somewhere. There must have been something else lurking in that packet to keep the broccoli looking good. There’s nothing to tell me what it is.

Of course it says on the packet, ‘wash before use’ and, ‘refrigerate after purchase’. It isn’t as if the broccoli needed special preservation because it came from Kenya or Peru. It is printed on the packet, Worcestershire UK. It didn’t have to travel far. I know from the vegetable garden of my childhood that vegetables once picked do not last a month. 

Rather shocked at my discovery I added the rest of the broccoli to the saucepan, then  stock from the bones of Sunday’s roast chicken and a lump of blue cheese. I’m having the soup for my supper this evening.

The 453 bus goes from Elephant and Castle to Deptford Bridge but the important thing for me is that it goes via Marylebone and that there is a bus stop right outside my dentist. I had a dentist’s  appointment, for a check up, on Monday. In the past I’ve gone on the underground but I’m not doing the underground these covid days and though the bus takes longer I have the time. 

The journey took me over Westminster Bridge, passed Big Ben very much under scaffolding, up Whitehall and through Trafalgar Square, practically deserted, through Piccadilly Circus and up Regent Street, hardly a shopper in sight. It is very strange. There are boarded up souvenir shops and closed restaurants. Outside Hamleys two of the staff were in costume dancing in the doorway. That was a cheerful sight.

There wasn’t much traffic so I arrived nearly an hour early for my 3 o’clock appointment. The rules for the dentist are fairly strict and you are meant to arrive on time so I did some exploring locally. There’s the gravestone of Charles Wesley in what I guess was a graveyard now a public garden in Marylebone High Street. On the gravestone the words,

‘HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF THE REVd CHARLES WESLEY M.A.

Only they don’t. On the bottom of the gravestone it states that it was removed from its original site in 1950 and placed where it now is in 1952. So I wondered where this great evangelist and hymn writer, he wrote more than six thousand hymns, had been buried.

I spent some time in St Marylebone Parish Church and lit a candle. Just as I was leaving a young priest came through the church so I stopped and asked him about the grave. He told me that its only six feet away from the gravestone, so that answered that question. Charles Wesley’s remains do lie there, sort of.

After I introduced myself to the priest he said  he thought my name was familiar to him. Unlikely, I suggested. However it turned out he knew well my successor, more than twenty years ago, at St George’s Campden Hill and that he was Chaplain to the Marylebone school where one of my closest friends is Chair of Governors. Small world. The dentist was fine.

On Tuesday, coming back from church, what a sight! A cyclist, cycling very slowly along the bus lane of Kennington Park Road towards the Oval, one hand on the handlebar the other holding his mobile telephone on which he was texting a message with his thumb. I could see it all. And I could see the bus behind the cyclist going equally slowly and not able to pass. The bus driver saw my amazed look and shrugged his shoulders. Clearly he couldn’t toot because the cyclist would have had such a fright he would have fallen off and been run over. I’ve a new mobile phone. I can only just text with my forefinger let alone a thumb. And I doubt I could now ride a bicycle,

Today it was Public Swimming at 10.30. It is a very different experience from lane swimming. Not so much because there are few people in the pool, this morning there were thirteen of us, it’s something else. When lane swimming is on there’s an almost cathedral like quietness in the pool. We swim. We regulars acknowledge each other and sometimes say ‘Hello,’ but basically, we swim.

Of the thirteen this morning five were small children, a father with two and three mothers, I suppose they were mothers, with one each. When children swim they really enjoy themselves and when children enjoy themselves they tell the world. The joyful noise that filled the pool this morning was heart warming.

By the way. There was another bus journey in 2003 that I enjoyed and spoke about in a broadcast. Here is is.

Simon Acland · The 159 Bus

Today was ‘Public Swimming’ for the 10.30am slot at The Castle Centre, my Elephant and Castle gym and swimming pool. I wasn’t sure what Public Swimming meant but as the time suits me I booked for the session on line.

I’ve discovered that I’m all for Public Swimming chiefly because there were so few members of the public swimming. There were no lanes dividing the pool of course, just the big open pool with the life guard on duty on his high seat beside the pool.

There were just nine of us in the pool and that included two mothers with two young children. They didn’t move away from the shallow end. Then there was one woman who stayed at the side of the pool doing exercises. An elderly man squatted at the shallow end with the water up to his chin and didn’t appear to be moving at all.

That left three of us to do our customary lengths. One was slow, one medium and one fast. I was the medium swimmer!

Up to thirty people are allowed for this session. As I was leaving I passed another regular coming in for the next session, ‘Lane Swimming’.

‘You went to public swimming?’ She questioned. I had the distinct impression she was rather shocked. We serious lane swimmers swim for exercise not for fun.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘It was bliss. Just nine people in the whole pool.’

‘Only nine!’ Usually there are up to ten for each lane. And I thought, 

‘Damn. Why can’t I keep my mouth shut. There’ll be ten next Wednesday.’

Clearly it has been a thoughtless past week or ten days. And yet on Saturday last when I went to the Farmers’ Market at the Oval I did note two conversations. Well, not so much conversations as, ‘exchanges’.

There was a long queue at the vegetable stall. I don’t go to the organic vegetable stall because the vegetables there are very very expensive. I go to the less organic vegetable stall – quite expensive enough. There  was a long queue. When it was my turn I commented to the very pleasant man at the stall,

‘You’re very busy this morning.’ 

To which he replied, ‘Ah yes, but it won’t last.’

I didn’t think much about it until a few minutes later I said to a woman in another queue,

‘Beautiful morning!’ which it was.

And she responded, ‘Yes indeed, but it’s going to turn nasty later,’ which indeed it did.

We do have a tendency, I suspect, to look to the negative even when the present is positive.

On Wednesday I swam at 11.30. A change because my usual 10.30 slot has been changed to ‘Public Swimming’. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I will discover next Wednesday when I return to my 10.30 time. However last Wednesday at 11.30, lane swimming in the slow lane was most interesting.

For the first time there were no lanes. That is there were none of those ropes with floats to mark the lanes. That must have been something to do with the ‘Public Swimming’ in the previous session. 

One of my co-swimmers in the slow lane, elderly and slow, prefers to do backstroke. The lane next to the slow lane is the fast lane. I don’t know why. It became obvious that doing backstroke slowly and without a floating barrier between lanes is hazardous – mostly for the fast swimmers. The backstroke swimmer, without a barrier as guide, drifted happily diagonally across the pool almost as far as the medium lane. There was a degree of chaos and confusion. This went on throughout the session as the backstroke swimmer continued his course, and continued to drift, regardless. 

It was a morning for firsts. Also in the slow lane was a swimmer who had a cord around his neck from which hung a pouch with something in it. From time to time the swimmer would stop, mid pool, and do something with the pouch, look at it and touch it. After a bit I realised it was a waterproof mobile phone and he was sending and receiving messages while swimming, well standing, in the pool. That caused a bit of confusion as well.

I’ve sometimes accused the young, accused in my mind that is, of not being able to be separated from their mobile phones. My fellow swimmer was not young and this was the first time I’d come across a phone being used while actually in the pool.

And now it’s grey, heavily overcast and raining, altogether miserable, and the forecast for the weekend looks like more of the same. But the forecast for next weekend is for sun!