John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

God in the material

What is the point of a goldfish? - that Stuart Henderson classic plus George Macleod's 'All is in flux; turn but a stone and an angel moves': in my talk at Bridestowe and Lydford today, God in the material.

Hedges with Hoskins

Various conversations recently on the subject of Devonshire lanes: ancient,  deep, sunken lanes lined by high hedges, reminded me that prior to arriving here I owed all I (thought I) knew on the subject to W. G. Hoskins, author of the greatly influential book The Making of the English Landscape. Blogging on Hoskins in June 2006 I wrote that

[The Making of the English Landscape is] one of those books which when it appeared, just did not fit into any existing categories, because it broke completely new ground. Or, to be more accurate, what Hoskins did was to go over old ground - the ground we tread on daily - in a lot of detail, investigating just how it got to be the way it was. His work was the consequence of a lifetime spent walking the hills and lanes of his native Devon and the Midlands where he lectured, asking questions of them: what created those ridges and furrows, why are those fields the shape they are, are those woods 'natural' (and what does that actually mean)?

Back then I took a Liverpool University course on Hoskins' work. I learned a lot about how human beings have shaped the land, and the outcome of it for me was a paper I wrote about the making of the Croxteth landscape [available to read here]. I've dusted off my copy of Hoskins' masterpiece and I'm ready to revisit it - freshly aware that he was a Devonian and that he is also the author of what seems to be the definitive book on the history of the county, Devon and its People and Industry, which will soon be on my desk and bedside cabinet too.

In tribute to Hoskins, in 2003 the people of Exeter placed a blue plaque on the house of his birth, Number 54 (now 26-28) St David's Hill. There's some Latin on it, 'HIC AMOR, HAEC PATRIA EST', which the Exeter Memories website helpfully translates as 'This is my love, my native land'. Hoskins really didn't like the industrial north (more here on that), which is where we differ. But even when I was living there I found his work helpful - so how much more useful a companion will Hoskins be in this place, which he knew so well and which I am starting to learn almost from scratch.

Turning cheeky with Walter Wink

Great to revisit the work of Walter Wink for this week's talk. The way he gets inside the presumed wimpiness of the 'turn the other cheek - give up your cloak - go the second mile' passage and turns it completely around is genius. I hoped to mimic that genius at Bratton Clovelly and Sourton today. My talk, called Loving your enemies - by turning cheeky, borrows heavily from Nonviolence for the violent, a talk he gave in 2001, and involves an invitation to the congregation to 'come and thump the vicar'. All this is based on a long-time appreciation of Wink's seminal trilogy, Naming the Powers; Language of Power in the New Testament, Unmasking the Powers; The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, and Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Go to www.walterwink.com for more from the man himself.

Hell is where you send other people

It was dusk, last Tuesday, and on the road out of Tavistock a car travelling towards us flashed us; we quickly realised that they'd done that to warn us that there was a hazard ahead.

We soon reached the hazard. It was a large vehicle at the side of the road, with thick smoke billowing from it. And as we approached, we realised that there were flames too - it was a tractor on fire. As we passed by we nearly ran over the young man who was haplessly dancing around the vehicle, cursing, crying, clearly agonised, and getting out of our car and running towards him in the darkness of the acrid smoke I realised that the tiny bottle of water which I had wasn't going to be enough to help him extinguish his burning engine, and no words I had for him would help him either, just then. It was a vision of hell, that burning tractor, it clearly felt like hell to the young man as he stood by helplessly watching the violent flames destroy not just his vehicle but his livelihood, causing him to cry out in torment at the roadside.

When we picture hell we often see it as an inferno, and some farmers who I told this story to, with their keen appreciation of the impact that fire would have had on the young man and his livelihood, said they thought that the young man had been through a sort of hell - the sort of terrible event which we wouldn't wish even on our enemy.

We wouldn't wish that hell even on our enemy - an interesting expression; we've all heard it and probably used it. It raises the question - what sort of hell would we wish on our enemy? And why would we, Christians, think about wishing hell on anyone at all?

- from Hell is where you send other people, my talk in Inwardleigh and Okehampton today

On feeling like a tourist all the time: but wanting to become an insider. New light on old matters - my talks at Bratton Clovelly and Germansweek today.

Nick, who in another part of his life was Dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Liverpool an educator of educators in languages, is my friend by connection with the church where I served my curacy, Holy Trinity Wavertree. Last year he turned his considerable academic skills to researching a topic which in the hands of a less skilled writer could be terribly dull or dry, but Nick's first draft has been unputdownable bedtime reading for me this week. He calls his paper Transformation: the remodelling and extension of Holy Trinity Church, Wavertree, Liverpool, 1911.

In 1911 the Georgian church, which had served the growing Liverpool suburb since 1794, was substantially altered. Pews were rearranged, balconies removed, electricity was laid on and a new organ installed. The east end Chancel of the Church was remodelled in "noe-grec" style by Charles Reilly, the celebrated Professor of Architecture at Liverpool University, who was a friend of the rector at the time, John T. Mitchell.

Reilly's skills and Mitchell's drive created something distinctive and impressive. When everywhere else in the rapidly-expanding city people were building gothic worship places, Holy Trinity was becoming  "Liverpool's best Georgian Church", as later described by Sir John Betjeman in his Guide to English Parish Churches. The great architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner described Reilly’s work as among “the finest of these years in Lancashire… his chancel of Wavertree parish church of 1911…grow[s] in stature the more one studies [it]”; “truly remarkable”. All of this is fascinating to anyone with an interest in such things, but from this narrow focus Nick's work ranges wider and deeper. As he writes,

Such judgments are primarily aesthetic: they assess the immediate impact of the building and view it as a reflection of the architect’s creativity and skill. There are, however, other ways of looking at the building. The changes of 1911 were the result of a process, a negotiation, and they were an attempt to solve certain problems. By studying the process and the problems we may arrive at a more nuanced appreciation of the architect and his work.

The paper he has written is far from being a dry description of a building project. It works on all sorts of levels: as a biographical extract from the life of John T. Mitchell, a remarkable, energetic rector of the parish for 53 years; as an indication of the interlacing connections in Liverpool society at the time of Empire which helped it to grow in stature physically and politically; as a great insight into parish life pre-WW1, when the church was at the hub of a great range of social, sporting and cultural activities for the upwardly-mobile occupants of the  rapidly growing suburb.

I'm so relishing Nick completing this project, and because it's a work in progress I won't write any more about it here, until it's published. One interesting detail it unearths for me is that two of the key clergymen involved in the story both subsequently continued their ministries in Devon and Cornwall: I discover that I'm in a lineage which goes way back; but the best thing about this work is that it shows how much can be drawn out of a single subject when it's researched with dedication to nuance.

[Thanks to the HTW website for the photographs]

Feeling like a tourist all the time

On feeling like a tourist all the time: but wanting to become an insider. New light on old matters - my talks at Bratton Clovelly and Germansweek today.

Nuanced views of the new Holy Trinity

Nick, who in another part of his life was Dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Liverpool an educator of educators in languages, is my friend by connection with the church where I served my curacy, Holy Trinity Wavertree. Last year he turned his considerable academic skills to researching a topic which in the hands of a less skilled writer could be terribly dull or dry, but Nick's first draft has been unputdownable bedtime reading for me this week. He calls his paper Transformation: the remodelling and extension of Holy Trinity Church, Wavertree, Liverpool, 1911.

In 1911 the Georgian church, which had served the growing Liverpool suburb since 1794, was substantially altered. Pews were rearranged, balconies removed, electricity was laid on and a new organ installed. The east end Chancel of the Church was remodelled in "noe-grec" style by Charles Reilly, the celebrated Professor of Architecture at Liverpool University, who was a friend of the rector at the time, John T. Mitchell.

Reilly's skills and Mitchell's drive created something distinctive and impressive. When everywhere else in the rapidly-expanding city people were building gothic worship places, Holy Trinity was becoming  "Liverpool's best Georgian Church", as later described by Sir John Betjeman in his Guide to English Parish Churches. The great architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner described Reilly’s work as among “the finest of these years in Lancashire… his chancel of Wavertree parish church of 1911…grow[s] in stature the more one studies [it]”; “truly remarkable”. All of this is fascinating to anyone with an interest in such things, but from this narrow focus Nick's work ranges wider and deeper. As he writes,

Such judgments are primarily aesthetic: they assess the immediate impact of the building and view it as a reflection of the architect’s creativity and skill. There are, however, other ways of looking at the building. The changes of 1911 were the result of a process, a negotiation, and they were an attempt to solve certain problems. By studying the process and the problems we may arrive at a more nuanced appreciation of the architect and his work.

The paper he has written is far from being a dry description of a building project. It works on all sorts of levels: as a biographical extract from the life of John T. Mitchell, a remarkable, energetic rector of the parish for 53 years; as an indication of the interlacing connections in Liverpool society at the time of Empire which helped it to grow in stature physically and politically; as a great insight into parish life pre-WW1, when the church was at the hub of a great range of social, sporting and cultural activities for the upwardly-mobile occupants of the  rapidly growing suburb.

I'm so relishing Nick completing this project, and because it's a work in progress I won't write any more about it here, until it's published. One interesting detail it unearths for me is that two of the key clergymen involved in the story both subsequently continued their ministries in Devon and Cornwall: I discover that I'm in a lineage which goes way back; but the best thing about this work is that it shows how much can be drawn out of a single subject when it's researched with dedication to nuance.

[Thanks to the HTW website for the photographs]