Our Barn Dance went off particularly well last Friday- even those of us who do not leap to our feet with great alacrity were seen to be smiling! It was an evening that reminded me how simple and up-lifting communal events can be. How different from being in a crowd or a gang, where group identity usually eclipses true quirky individuality. By touching, looking one another directly in the face , sharing food and drink, and allowing our bodies to make gleeful movement, we experienced an organised, but un-contrived communion.

A number of people alluded to the appropriate barn like quality of St Barnabas. I also thought of a tame version of Hrothgar’s hall, and without the monster.We all need our places of convivial security.

I spent a very interesting couple of hours at the opening of the new branch of the Islamic bank of Britain in Tooting. The bank has only a handful of branches but is expanding rapidly, usually in partnership with existing local businesses. To some ears the word Sharia brings on a touch of the vapours, but a bank which relies on ethical investment and has a policy of   building trust with clients, and insists that the first person you meet when you come through the door is the manager, might change that!

Welcome Shaheen and his team! One of your colleagues mentioned, with admiration the Christian bankers ,who sought to improve the world back in Victorian times; seeing profit as a means not an end. Hopefully a new breed of banks might follow your lead and bring about an ethical revival!

On the 13th May, which is a Sunday, I am glad to announce that two distinguished actors, both with a long association with the RSC, Geraldine Alexander and Jasper Britton will be performing in an evening on lovers in Shakespeare.Familiar and less well known relationships will be presented.
If anyone is interested in the ideas of Robert Putnam there are a number of resources on the Internet. A good starting might be his discussion with Madaleine Bunting, of the Guardian.

The church is often damned for being out of touch, but when it makes an attempt to engage with contemporary questions there is no shortage of pundits eager to accuse it of  forlornly chasing the coat tails of fashion. One minute it is mocked for being out of date, the next for not being out of date enough.

A fairly trivial case in point has been the reaction to the splendid beat- box nativity produced by the vicar of Uplyme- as improbable as it might seem he was an award winning beat-box performer before he ever contemplated ordination! More insidious is the habit of left wing commentators to applaud it only when the church seems to agree with them, and those on the right to behave in exactly the same way. The former salute only when a liberal cause is endorsed, the latter simply beg the church to turn all the poor respectable by excoriating the vicious from the pulpit every Sunday.

I am torn myself, in that I do think that the church needs to proclaim its key message, of the love of God and redemption wrought by Christ through his Incarnation, but must avoid the sort of defensiveness which turns it inwards. So that numbers and shoring up the doubts of its members, become its major concern; so that it becomes a bit like a kind of ex-pat community, comfortable in its own rituals with its back turned against those who don’t belong with their quaint alien ways of being and speaking. And when it does try to engage it finds that usually just speaking more loudly wont quite do.

Most of the money used to build the new hall and refurbish the old came from the sale of land owned by the Diocese of Southwark. Some kind individuals also donated funds so that we could transform the garden and install our stunning stained glass window, but without Elsie Horrell things would have been much more difficult. On her death, in the year 2000, Elsie left  our church £150,000 in her will, and at a stroke completely transformed St Barnabas’ finances.

For the first time in decades there was a financial cushion, which gave a modicum of security and hope. Repairs and development were both now thinkable! As we set about tackling the re-lighting, re-wiring, roof repairs and interior decoration during next year, it is worth noting that the money still available to begin that work is almost exactly the equivalent of Elsie’s kind legacy, plus interest, given all those years ago!

Elsie was born in 1904 and began attending St Barnabas when she was a child, within just a few years of it being opened, and attended up right until 1998. Never a wealthy woman, she led a simple life, anchored by a deep faith, and centred on her husband and close circle of friends and family. As we try to build a stronger church community and witness to the Gospel here, the example of people such as Elsie, are to be cherished. Like Denys Jones, who died more recently, Elsie was one of the people who has given St Barnabas its distinctive character.

Although I had to slip in late I still thoroughly enjoyed Riversdale’s Christmas play, which, although incorporating a lot of humour and some marvellous Bollywood angels,told the familiar Nativity story with authenticity and sensitivity.It concluded with the singing of my favourite contemporary anthem from school Christmas plays, ‘Hold your banners high’, which I first heard years ago when living in the Hertfordshire village of Pirton. So thanks to the school for the joy of the event, its retelling of the Christmas story of hope and peace, and for the nostalgia!

One of the bug bears of the more vocal type of anti- theist is the respect agenda. They consider it to be ridiculous that any person of faith should object to having their feelings hurt by , what they deem to be, rational criticism. Oddly the National Secular Society is now trying to use the High Court to ban prayers at the beginning of Bideford Council meetings because of the offended feelings of one of its members, who serves as a councillor.Although he is  free to miss them, or leave the chamber while the prayers are happening, and the council has twice voted to keep the tradition, the argument is that he is having his human rights violated. In typically analogically challenged fashioned the NSS has compared public prayers to Wicca or pornography! It must be very difficult being someone who , in the name of integrity, is duty bound to rage at the names of the days of the week ,and boycott shopping in December because of the perils of canned carols!

On a very different note today’s Start the Week, brought together 3 philosophers of very different stamp and notoriously firm opinion; Roger Scruton, Mary Warnock and Bernard- Henri Levy. Polite and reasonable in all their disagreements they concluded on a note of concord- in praise of the notion of original sin!

Our book club has been a success and we have explored a number of interesting books. Jim Crace’s Quarantine was a beautifully crafted novel, conjuring up the Judaean desert,introducing, in Musa, one of the most frighteningly believable literary villains, and creating an enigmatic Jesus, who might be holy or mad. But it would be good too to try and tackle some of the meatier philosophical or scientific books that come out for poular consumption. Here are some that spring to mind- Michael Brooks’s Free Radicals: the Secret Anarchy of Science,Bryan Appleyard’s : The Brain is wider than the sky, or Steven Pinker’s The Better Angel’s of our nature. All writers who skilfully communicate complex ideas and questions in a manner that don’t require a degree in rocket science, but can really get anyone thinking. Anyone interested for next year?

Looking for a bill that had gone awol I discovered a file in the vestry. It turned out to be PCC minutes for 1993 to 1999.Reading through there were a lot of familiar themes- having trouble contributing to the running of the diocese and problems with lights and heating! But also I came across the notification that a new Cof E Secondary school was being mooted and the first plan to re-develop the church site in collaboration with the local doctor’s surgery.
The demographic shift, partly resulting from the arrival of St Cecilias , and the boom of Blair’s Britain, was hardly taking off just 12 short years ago!The church only began to become financially viable in about 2003, when the congregation finally reached a size that meant it would no longer require help from other parishes.With our plans to do the outstanding work required to the interior of the church and the parapets, and a committed, able and faithful membership, the next few years could be very exciting.

It was good to see a few people joining us just for the 2 minute silence. Certainly since I have been here that has not happened before, so a welcome step in our aim to open up the church to those who live locally, but are not regular worshippers. I had many appreciative comments about Anthony’s bugle playing, so thanks to him.