‘Fullness of life!’

Hi!

This page is a collection of all sorts of items which help me to ‘tick’ spiritually and might be helpful to you.Feel free to use

Deconstruction and Derrida.

“Deconstruction holds that nothing is ever entirely itself. There is a certain otherness lurking within every assured identity. It seizes on the-out-of place elements in a system, and uses it to show how the system is never quite as stable as it imagines. There is something within any structure that is part of it but also escapes its logic.” Terry Eagleton in Guardian Review (17 11.12.p.8) reviewing ‘Derrida: a biography’ by Benoît Polity.

There is something very constructive about deconstruction. It reminds us that no lifestyle, law, religious outlook, art form, theology, philosophy, science, or system of any kind, can claim constant consistency or infallibility.

It closely relates to and progresses our thinking on from what the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, that ‘everything is in a state of flux.’ We have to bear in mind  however, that this does not make structures of whatever kind they may be as unimportant. They act as tools to create shapes in society, holding people and ways of life together.

Whilst people need to hold on to the basic structures from which they work,   live, believe and think, all the time there have to be modifications to allow for new insights that are constantly coming into our experience. For all of us this is a lifelong learning process. Once we stop learning we stagnate and atrophy

Bible’bits.’

‘God saw that it was good’.(Genesis)
‘Start with ‘The Good.’

Words of encouragement.
‘May ‘fullness of life’ be yours.’

Cycling in city town and country.

I wonder how many of you here today have been cyclists at any time in your life?

I think that from the very earliest of my days I have been keen to travel around on two wheels. I had a scooter, yes, with just two wheels, then a three wheeled bike for a time – and then I wanted a proper cycle.

The main thing I remember about my first cycle was that I travelled to school on it when I was 11. Every school day, for the better part of five years I did the journey twice a day.

Mornings at school used to finish at 1215. I used to rush out of school, most of the journey being downhill, in order to see the train that used to take people down to the West Country from the West Midlands. The engine always had a name on it -for example’ Dudley Castle’, ‘Windsor Castle’, ‘Hewell Grange’, and many hundreds more.

Boys of my age then collected the names of ‘namers,’ with the same enthusiasm as twitchers today rush from one place to another to see rare birds. There was always the thrill of racing to get there at the railway bridge in time to see a train with a name.

But I want to talk mainly today about cycling in a pastoral and preaching role.

It really started during my National service when I was stationed at The Army’s Southern command headquarters at Wilton near to Salisbury. Although I had not been accepted for the Methodist Ministry at that time, I was already taking services as a Local Preacher.

I didn’t have a cycle at that time or if I did it was way back at home in a rather battered state. The first Sunday that I was there I went to one of the main Methodist churches in Salisbury and met people there for the first time. There was a very healthy young people’s Fellowship there. They made me very welcome, and one of the people who ran the young people’s Fellowship was named Ray Annetts. He owned a jewellery shop in the centre of Salisbury.

I went shopping during the following week in the centre of Salisbury and saw a second-hand cycle for sale there for £12.10 shillings. I thought to myself- that would be ideal for travelling to and from Wilton into Salisbury to go to church, and also to take preaching appointments. The Salisbury circuit had 56 churches in it and covered the whole of the Salisbury plain and more. You needed some kind of transport to get around, and many other Methodist chapels were in quite small and isolated communities.

I went into Ray Annett’s shop, and said to him ‘Ray, can you lend me £10 please. I want to buy cycle to get to church and my local preaching. Can you help me please?’

Now £10 over 60 years ago was quite a lot of money, and Ray had only met me once before. How was he to know whether I was genuine or not?

I think he was hesitant at first but he trustingly gave me the money

That cycle, with the three-speed derailleur gear, gave me good service. Allowing myself plenty of time on Sundays I would make my way to many of the small village chapels scattered around the Salisbury plain. Then in the intervening years, I used it to cycle to work early in the morning, and when I went to college I used it a lot then for getting around various parts of Bristol and cycling to pay a place called Patchway where I was involved in an mission band in the small Methodist Church there.

I used it in my first appointment when I went to Coventry but it’s most frequent use was when we moved for my first ordained appointment to Old Ford in the Bow mission circuit, in the Least End of London.

Going back to the 1960s, shortly after the period when the programme on television about the midwives East London was set, London was a very different place from what it is now. Many ministers in those days did not have a car and the use of a cycle was far more common than it is today.

The main church I had was in a place called Old Ford. My main church was about three quarters of a mile away. The whole area at that time was made up of lots of streets of small terraced houses where all kinds of artisans and industrial workers lived.

My second church was on the Isle of Dogs about 3 1/2 miles away. To  get there meant crossing several arterial roads bringing traffic into the centre of London. Cycling was no sinecure, and in bad weather rather treacherous, but it often meant that you saw all kinds of people on the journey-a bit like the bobby on the beat.

Cycling to the Isle of dogs in the heart of London’s Docklands, was also affected by the dock bridges which might be closed because of large vessels travelling into the docks. If I was travelling to the Isle of dogs to Cubit Town, at the other end of the docks, I could run the risk of being very late for a service-as a result of waiting for the bridge to come down.

However, cycling was one of the quickest ways of getting around east London and beyond. I remember on one occasion cycling to the Bermondsey mission on the other side of the river, arriving twenty minutes before someone travelling in a car.

Sometimes my pastoral work took me straight into the centre of London. Once I cycled round Hyde Park corner. I don’t think I would like to do that today!

I mentioned earlier that as you cycled round the streets you met all kinds of people. It was just at that time that large numbers of migrant people were coming to into East London. In one street there were several young Pakistani boys playing and they were rather curious to know who I was because I was wearing a clerical collar.

‘What do you do?’ One of them asked me. That was a rather difficult one to answer for some young people of another culture. I thought well ‘Minister of religion’ won’t make much sense to them, so I said ‘a priest.’

What’s that thing you’ve got around your neck?’

A clerical collar I said.

‘Take it off and show it to us’ said one of the others.

‘He can’t,’ said another, ‘his head will come off if he does.’

Removed from east London to Saffron Walden in Essex. A bigger contrast you could not have. In rural Essex now I had six small churches and an RAF chaplaincy. I used to produce a little magazine called ‘Letter to the Seven Churches.’ I did nowhere near so much cycling – just in Saffron Walden itself. To use a cycle going to church there meant rolling down to church to get there, and pushing a bike up the hill to get back.

Lincoln was not much better, although we did live halfway up the hill there. I had a church near the top of the hill, and my main church was near the bottom.

From there  we moved to the Shetland Islands. Travelling around there was impossible of course because of the long distances involved – 50 or 60 miles to the most northerly islands, and about the same distance to Fair Isle to the south, or even further south to visit a few Methodists who were in the Orkney Islands.

But I did do some cycling in the capital of Shetland itself. Many of the houses were huddled closely together, especially at the side of the sea. When we were there you had to choose your days for cycling, according to the prevailing wind. There was quite a bit of downhill in places, and if the wind was blowing into your face you were all right, but the great advantage was that coming uphill with the wind behind you, you hardly need any extra energy at all.

There was another problem however with cycling in Shetland, it was the sea salt. Eventually my old cycle became so corroded, that it was unusable. The wheels would no longer turnaround.

We spent 11 happy years in Shetland, in fact we found it very hard to leave. One of the things that the church in Lerwick bought me as a leaving present was a new cycle, a  mountain bike, and I still have it. It has an inscription on it which I have shown to many people.

He gave me good service in my last appointment in St Albans, and it has given me good service in my retirement in Nottingham.

When I had my 70th birthday, as a Thanksgiving, I decided to do a sponsored cycle ride. This is what I did.

During the month of February, I promised to do 70 miles for 70 years, and I invited friends and relatives all over the place to support this venture – especially friends in Lincoln, the Shetland Islands, St Albans, and around the churches in Nottingham too.

This raised £2100, which was divided between the Nottinghamshire Hospice where I have been a chaplain for over 12 years, Action for Children, and the UNESCO children’s appeal.

I had plans in mind for doing something similar for the celebration of my 80th birthday this February. I had the bright idea of doing 80 km in 80 days for ’80 years’, but after my major surgery last year, although I have made a good recovery, it was not a wise thing to attempt.

My hope is that when the weather improves, I shall get my cycle out again and do a bit more cycling. Mainly concentrating of course on the flat bits!

David Monkton