It is not a paid gig but it comes with year round access to the University resources and library, engagement with an interesting academic team in CPRS and, what is more important, a university staff card which gets me 10% academic discount on my Apple products!

Then this evening it was a two hour conversation on the local implications of the legislative process within the Church of England on the consecration of women to the episcopate. It provided a real insight into Anglican polity and was a good honest conversation. And in case I become too seduced by life in a Cathedral, a useful reminder of why I remain at heart Anabaptist in theology and church polity!

Both involved considerable reflection and discussion of what is involved in compromise and accommodation. What can we compromise on to reach agreement and when is it a case of finding ways to accommodate deeply held differences? What and where are the limits of accommodation when compromise is not possible?

So would the election in May of Sinn Fein as the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly break the compromise and accommodation embedded in the Belfast Agreement and its subsequent renegotiation? In short would accepting Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as First Minister (the nomination goes to the largest party) be an accommodation too far for Unionists, even for the sake of political stability and strengthening the peace?

Indeed, this must be the ongoing dilemma for the UK Coalition government. Having compromised to form a government and then found a way to accommodate ongoing fundamental differences, at what point do events and political tensions make the accommodation untenable for the two parties?

For the church it remains a critical question. When all is said and done there is little room for compromise between the various positions. Yet is space for accommodation possible? Holding deep convictions, while remaining in a structured relationship with those who differ is difficult when the convictions we hold, in practice even if not in intention, question the values and even the essential personhood, of the other.

It is tempting to look to St Paul for an answer, especially in his handling of the question that vexed the early church. Can Jews and Gentiles be authentic followers of Jesus together while retaining their essential identity as Jews and Gentiles? At first glance it seems that the relationship between faith and handling such difference set out by Paul should provide a way ahead.

A closer look requires us to think again. When it comes to the question of eating a bacon butty, those matters of cultural practice, ritual, tradition and sometimes belief informed by our cultural values, then there is room for accommodation and even on occasion compromise.

Yet for Paul when it comes to the fundamental question of human personhood, then there is no room for accommodation, and certainly not compromise. Paul is insistent and willing to argue strongly with Peter, that whatever cultural or liturgical limitations he may take on for the sake of others, he will not back down on one fundamental issue. No one will be considered second class in the company of those who seek to faithfully follow Jesus because of who they are as a person.

This was the new thing that God had done. Jesus is good news for Gentiles as well as Jews, and Paul would not accept any practice or ruling from the church leaders that undermined this reality.

We enjoyed the pancakes the day before of course. There was some sort of talk about what had to be given up – chocolate, sweets, drink! Lurking in the background there was suspicion of some of the Church of Ireland types, who were meant to be Protestant, but they too could be seen with the dark smudge. Might as well be Catholics, a comment that I now realise many of my Anglican friends would have taken as a great compliment!

It was somewhat special therefore when the first formal service of worship in a Catholic (Roman that is!) Church that I fully took part in, apart from attending to observe, was an Ash Wednesday service when I too received the smudge. It was 1993 and I was 34.

Clonard Monastery in the heart of West Belfast as the guest of my friend Father Gerry Reynolds where I was spending time getting to know its Redemptorist community better as part of my induction to my new job as Cross Community Co-ordinator at Belfast YMCA.

“From dust you have come and to dust you shall return. Turn from sin and be faithful to Christ.”

Powerful sobering words. Some of my Ulster Protestant friends would no doubt question the last injunction, indeed would believe I was doing the opposite. Yet this short and simple act marked a major step on my journey of faith in community with those of a tradition I had been brought up to suspect of such grave heresy that it no longer bore the authentic marks of church.

That journey began with another simple act. Lighting a candle as a conscious act of worship in a Coptic Orthodox church on the banks of the River Nile in Cairo. That was in 1988 in response to an amazing set of Coptic Icons painted by one of the first western women to have officially studied as a Coptic iconographer. This church was at the site where the holy family was said to have landed on their journey into Egypt.

Since coming to Coventry Cathedral I have now received ashes on each of the three years I have been here for the beginning of Lent. The first was in Claremont Parish in Cape Town, just before being taken on pilgrimage by the team at St George’s Cathedral to their chapel on Robben Island.

Ash Wednesday has rich associations for me. So in the stillness of the service I reflected on the journey that it represented; of personal faith, for the people of Northern Ireland and South Africa and today for a journey begun for the people of Egypt. And I wondered if it is often the church with our sensitivities over doctrine and desire to impose ecclesiastical authority and order, that too easily fails to see the radical nature of the journey that Lent calls us to.

Listening tonight to Allegri’s Miserere Mei I was struck afresh by the phrase the Imposition of the Ashes. Quite an evocative term, but resonant with the fact that we need to be forcefully reminded of sin in all its complexity to get us to stop, take note and begin the journey of renewal.

Today began with breakfast in Berlin, lunch in Dusseldorf, followed by afternoon tea at a Chapter meeting in Coventry and pancakes for dinner at home in Meriden!

Diary and plans had allowed for a break from air travel from now until after Easter, except for the honourable exception of a weekend visit to Belfast over the Palm Sunday weekend for my mother’s 80th birthday. The travel diary for the first few months had also been well synchronised to allow for rugby weekends at home.

Alas however the best laid plans have come unstuck as I now have to travel to Hanau just outside of Frankfurt for a presentation of a Cross of Nails to a new CCN partner (Community of the Cross of Nails) church on 20 March. The devastating point is not so much the extra travel, but that I miss the last weekend of the six nations championship AND the critical Ireland / England game. Critical not in the sense of the tournament, but in the now living in England and needing the home team to win sense! Just like Ireland cricket last week.

However it is time to stand still for a season to catchup. Since leaving my previous job and beginning the process of taking up the job at Coventry I have travelled on 124 separate flights to 31 destinations using some 17 airlines and over 40 different beds! The sky blue or night blue view from the plane has been made up for with 3000 photos, 10 car hires, numerous taxis, trains, buses and car rides with new friends.

Herein lies the blessing, the countless hours in the company of the most amazing and inspiring people. Projects that challenge the status quo of hate and prejudice, initiatives to create the space for peace to take root, risks in reaching out to the historical enemy for the sake of a better future, moving acts of worship in German, Russian, Icelandic, Arabic, Dutch and Hebrew. With this comes the challenge to try to at least learn the Lord’s prayer in some of these languages of my new friends. Something to take up for Lent?

For now, time to slow down.

To cook up this pancake of memories and ingredients of movement across the globe.

To clear out the trivia of frequent flyer points and fantastic food.

To hold in my mind’s eye the wonders of nature.

To listen again to the stories of peoples and communities, division and hurt, suffering and loss.

To give thanks for those things that make for peace in communities, especially in the church.

To remember with gratitude the people, their hope and pain, which has made it all worth while.

Tomorrow Lent begins.

Now another ritual of Christian discipline approaches – Lent. I’ve never been much for giving up but three years of the rhythms of an Anglican Cathedral are beginning to have their impact. Yet the contrarian in me has decided to take something up rather than setting something aside. Writing a blog comment everyday for Lent.

Of course to do this does indeed require me to give something up – an impulsive unstructured approach to reflective writing – and to take on board a disciplined approach to setting time aside each day to reflect and to do so in an ordered way that will make some sense on this blog.

So as Ash Wednesday approaches it is time to get rid of some of the old ingredients in the cupboards of my head – pancake blogs sound fun – and prepare for the fresh perspectives that the discipline of a blog may bring.

But what has intrigued me has been the response of many Christians in relation to the ‘prayers’ offered for their safe extraction from the mine. Of course I have prayed, asking God to be present to them as the trauma unfolded. But what causes me to despair is the interpretation many are putting on the supposed outcome of such prayer.

Let’s be blunt, until relatively recently they would have languished in their hellish predicament until death came dropping slow. And no amount of prayer would have saved them – the technology just did not exist and this end has been the all too frequent outcome over centuries of mining for precious resources. God has not yet spirited anyone through tons of rock to the surface despite the ernest prayers of many families and communities over the years.

So what are we giving thanks for? In what way have prayers been answered? And why is it important for us to answer this well and correctly?

We thank God that today we have the knowledge and technology to make this rescue possible – that communities, countries and even mine owners have the compassion to care to rescue a group of miners like this – that people gave of their skills, knowledge and expertise to make it a succesful outcome. Incredible professionalism and commitment was demonstrated. Such goodness and ingenuity is God’s gift to us and the human family.

But without human agency they would still be in the mine. God required us to be creative, constantly exploring the limits of technology and human endurance. People needed to have warm and compassionate hearts to be prompted by their care for each life. For all this we can give thanks to God. But please can we skip the simplistic notion that God rescued them in direct intervention and answer to our prayers.

And this is important for how we understand God at work in our world and in our own lives. It is human beings who often need to be the answer to our own prayers – too many are simply waiting for God to do something when we are the something God wants to do!

God was present in the agony and the triumph – in the skill of the drill designer, the counsel of the psychiatrist, the bravery of the paramedics and the endurance and hope of the miners. Thanks be to God and well done to everyone involved.

I had been an enthusiast for the visit – indeed I had lobbied for the pope to make a stop off at Coventry Cathedral – in the 70th anniversary year of its bombing by the Luftwaffe I thought it would be good for a German pope to come and ring the peace bell and lead the litany of reconciliation. A constructive PR engagement if nothing else.

On reflection I am glad that the lobby did not reap dividends on this occasion. The visit produced some unexpected reactions which I have found interesting to reflect on. The first is personal, in that all the ritual and ceremony reminded me of how Protestant I really am. Rather than being awed and moved, I found it cold and remote. I wasn’t present in person at any of the events, but I usually enjoy big occasions from the comfort of my sofa – and as political theatre it was grand. But spiritually it left me cold, despite my new-found enthusiasm for high church drama in a sterile secular world.

Secondly, I got very grumpy. Some of what the pope said does need to be heard – by us as a country and by the church. And if said as part of a PASTORAL visit, then fine. But this was a STATE visit and no other head of state would be able to make such a critique of the host country without causing a major diplomatic incident. It should not have been tolerated – if visiting in papal political mode, then criticising the country should be off the agenda. The Vatican cannot have it both ways. And this made me unexpectedly cross.

Third, I became increasingly dismayed. It actually was the service at Westminster Abbey that did it. Apart from the exception of a female Abbey Canon, Rev Canon Jane Hedges, the cameras revealed an overwhelming facade of male bishops and clergy. And this is where we have to say that the church – both Anglican and Catholic – doesn’t get it. Before anything is said, whether prayers, sermons or words of worship, the picture has said everything. And that everything not only puts the church in a place of cultural irrelevance, as it fails to honour and promote women in leadership of the body of Christ, it more significantly presents a distorted witness of God’s self and the nature of the human community for which Christ died.

Maybe it should be more pope here, for it reminds some of us what we truly stand for!

Warrington was a symbolic place to stop. It had shared in the conflict in N Ireland, being the location of a devastating bomb attack by the IRA in March 1993. Coming in the midst of ceasefire negotiations it was a critical moment in what became the peace process.

This week another ‘symbolic’ moment of that conflict became the centre of media attention. The Police Ombudsman’s report into the Claudy bombing of July 1972 was published. The involvement of a Catholic priest as a major suspect and likely local commander of the IRA in South Derry at the time, has rightly raised many questions for the IRA, the government, the police and the Catholic church.

1972 was possibly the worst year of the conflict and this is the second major report into events of that time to be published this year, the Saville Report on Bloody Sunday having been released in June. 38 years ago…the journey from then to now has been full of suffering and tragedy. And the more we learn the greater the need to develop a constructive process for dealing with the past.

If the people of N Ireland are to journey together into the future there can be no shortcut on a more demanding road – the journey we must make together into our past. At present both the Westminster and Stormont governments, the later including as it does ministers who can shed more light than most on the events of 1972, have no desire to begin this painful process. Yet they delude themselves if they do not recognise that the past corrodes both people and institutions, including government and the church. If we don’t tend its wounds then their poison infects us today and will make us ill tomorrow.

However the fact that today now marks the longest we have been in any house for 17 months, and we have been in three, there is some hope that a routine may begin to settle in to life for this Ulster Scot in Coventry. Not that there won’t be travel and its accompanying dislocation. Plans are already in place for trips to Germany ( 3 times), Russia and the US as well as regular travel to Ireland for various ongoing commitments.

But it is not just the physical dislocation that I anticipate as the year starts – it is the ongoing reshaping and crossing of boundaries that comes with the job that I most look forward to. Getting to know new people and new communities, facing new challenges and understanding anew what it may mean to live within the grace of God for another year. All of this brings opportunity for growth and sharing as well as the occasion to mess up, something that being older does not always eradicate through being somehow wiser.

In particular this is the year when the dreams and vision for what it is I am in Coventry to do must find their tangible outworking in the launch of new initiatives and a clear sense of purpose in investing the limited reserves of time and energy.  There are good things which will distract and knowing which to lay aside to focus on what will make the greatest difference will continue to be a challenge.

As I look into the year ahead it is with a huge debt to the years that have past and the people that have left their thumbprint on my life that makes it even possible to contemplate what lies ahead. One of those who passed away this year was Theo Williams, an evangelist and bible woman who 33 years ago as a veteran missionary about to retire took an interest in a young upstart and had an influence of which she was probably unaware, in kick starting the journey which has brought him to this place in 2010.

The english are peculiarly ambiguous about this day. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, a Ugandan by birth, has provoked the usual round of chest beating when any enthusiastic voice is raised in support of the day being given a greater profile than it currently enjoys. It is singularly appropriate that the Archbishop rallies to the cause. For what is English identity if it is not the shared narrative of the many peoples who have made this part of the British island their home. 

For many, matters of nation, land, ethnicity and the story of their people are irrelevant. Yet for the vast majority of cultures these matters are a potent force for shaping identity, creating belonging and understanding the experience and dignity of their people. This is not to say that concerns of community and belonging don’t count in english society. They do. It is simply that people are divided as to how they matter.

In the west we have become what one commentator has called ‘consumer nationalists’. What matters most is what we are ‘consuming’ in the moment, whether that is family, friends, entertainment or possessions. Even religion and our spiritual experiences have become part of this embrace of the moment. As long as we are ‘free’ to enjoy what is ours to enjoy we aren’t too bothered by the narrative that helps us understand how we got here. A narrative that is about enterprise and sacrifice alongside deep historical oppression, hurt and injustice. 

Left unexamined the deep rooted anxiety about who we are and who are our people can easily distort and disfigure our relations in the present. When circumstances leave us feeling threatened we expose our gut hates and prejudices. It takes surprisingly little to uncover the primal mistrust and suspicion of the other that lies beneath our  civilized exterior. Diversity, if it is to be valued and celebrated, needs to be set in context by  powerful shared narratives of all that has made our society what it is today.

It seems to me that this is a major part of what a national day is for. To ask the big questions – who are we? Who is modern England? And what is the story that its peoples tell that gives meaning to their belonging and participation on this island and in the world at large?  How we tell these stories to each new generation is important. We cannot avoid the story, saying it doesn’t matter in today’s world. It always matters. Left unexamined and not renegotiated in the retelling , we only leave the narrative open to those who are less nuanced and engaged with the different other.  Their wish is to exploit fear and nurture community tension. 

The story of the many peoples who in the twentieth century have made this island their home needs woven into the english national story. How they have come to be here and their contribution to making us who we are today and will be in the future is profoundly important to us all. Our ability to both hear and embrace these stories of migration and settlement is critical to us as a society. 

Nor can the church wash its hands of responsibility for this process. Being citizens of the kingdom of God emphatically does not mean we somehow don’t belong to this community. In fact it is the opposite for it is Jesus who sends us as he was sent to be embedded in the life of communities and to bear as witness to the rich diversity of humanity. 

The Archbishop is right to require the Christian community to take our place in this particular conversation.  Not least because we believe there is a deeper story that people can draw from that brings healing and life to the complex mess of hope and despair that marks the story of all peoples.  And also because we too, as the church, need to take the opportunity to retell our story as people of faith who have variously been partisan conspirator, complicit bystander and occasional redemptive presence in the story of the english nation. 

St George, the patron saint, could indeed provide a focal point for community cohesion if only we weren’t so afraid of letting the genie of identity out of the bottle in this mongrel nation that is England.