beLOVED ceremony pt 2

Last Saturday was my wonderful 'beLOVED ceremony' at Liverpool Cathedral. I've already blogged a bit of an explanation about it, and shared the opening words that I said on the day to set the scene. Now I want to share a bit more of how the service actually worked.

Basically this is just a service that I created myself (with advice from the rather wonderful Bishops of Liverpool and Sheffield). It seemed to fit me, and who I am, and what I was wanting to do. Obviously it wouldn't suit everyone!

This is how it looked:

• Welcome and opening prayer (Bishop Paul)
• Songs of worship (led by the uber talented Martin)
• Ten Thousand Reasons
• This I believe
• What a beautiful name
• My opening words (the ones I blogged the other day) 
• Confession
• Bible readings
• Song of Songs 6:1-3
• Philippians 4:4-9
• Luke 18:28-30
• Sermon (Bishop Pete) - this was all kinds of brilliant. Pete explored all the different occasions in the NT in which the word 'beloved' is used. Fab, fab, fab. He also used possibly my favourite phrase of the whole day, when he told me that I am 'chronically beloved'.
• Reflection - we listened to Wesley's 'Lead me Lord'
• Spoken word (written and performed by the entirely wonderful Miriam)
• Songs of worship
• Cornerstone
• Nothing but grace
• My vow of commitment (see below) 
• A response from my friends to the vow (basically a liturgical thing where the Bishop asked if they'd support me and they said WE WILL!)
• Prayers - firstly my 3 gorgeous Godchildren each read a prayer that they'd written for me, and then a number of my friends gathered round to lay hands on me and pray for me. It was really special.
• Sharing the Peace
• Holy Communion
• Song - How Great Thou Art
• Blessing (Bishop Paul)

It was SUCH a special service! My friend Phil said he cried "more than I did in Paddington 2"!! In fact someone asked me why I hadn't cried and I said it was because I'd outsourced it to everyone else! I did feel emotional but there was such an amazing sense of rightness to it all that was just lovely. Each of the different parts were so special, and it was amazing to be surrounded and supported by so many wonderful friends. That was probably the part that felt most overwhelming actually - the moments just before the service started, when I looked around and saw all those wonderful friends, and my mind boggled at the realisation that they were there just to support me, in my thing. Wow!

And so the vow. This was the hardest part of the whole service to write - that's probably not surprising. I wrote it myself, without reference to anything else, so it's certainly from the heart - but it was still hard to do. In fact I didn't write it until the Tuesday before the service, when I went away on a retreat day. There was so much that I wanted to say to God in that moment - here's what I went for:

Loving God, today I come before you in response to a calling on your part, and a choice on my part. I'm so grateful to you for the journey that you have brought me on.

Today I vow to live a life of dedicated singleness.

Today I give myself completely to you - wholeheartedly, unreservedly, single mindedly.

Today I know myself to be called and chosen and beloved.

Today I choose to walk into the path that you have laid out for me, wherever it may lead, embracing your best plan for me.

I vow to live a life of chastity and celibacy, to remain single, and without children, to dedicate myself fully to this life, and to embrace its sorrows and its joys, to seek to live always in a way which is generous and open and loving and kind and gracious.

I choose to set aside my desires for a husband and children, for sex and marriage. Instead I choose to embrace a life of wholeness - of joyful, beloved intimacy with Jesus.

I seek to live well within my friendships and relationships in a way that honours you and other people.

I trust my future completely to you. It isn't the future that I thought I would have. It isn't the future that I would once have hoped for. It is the future that I now joyfully choose and embrace.

I trust you, loving Lord, for all that lies ahead, both good and bad. I trust you for your love, your friendship, your forgiveness, your mercy, your comfort, your grace.

I trust you because you know me better than I know myself. I trust you with my pain and grief and sadness as well as with my expectation and excitement and joy.

Today, as your daughter, precious and loved, called and chosen, I vow to live always and only for you.

I thank you for calling me beloved.

So there it is - the words that I vowed to the Lord. Even writing them out again feels special and precious! I have framed a copy of them, signed by me and the Bishop.

After Bishop Paul received my vow, I received a ring (it's completely beautiful - it was my great grandma's engagement ring), and he anointed it with oil and blessed me. I started to wear a ring on my left hand ring finger 2 years ago when I began this process, so I'm wearing this new ring on the ring finger of my right hand - and still getting used to it.

5 days in, and it still all feels rather wonderful!

beLOVED ceremony pt 1

A little while ago now I blogged about my 'beLOVED ceremony'. Well, it happened! Yesterday, in the Lady Chapel at Liverpool Cathedral, around 100 very dear people gathered together for a really beautiful ceremony. It was exactly as I had hoped it would be! Such a joyful and special day. If you read the other blog you'll know what it was all about, but some people have been asking to know more about what happened, so I thought I'd share some of it here.

Below, then, I've copied the words that I said on the day near the beginning of the service, to explain what it's all about. It's therefore similar-ish to my last-but-one post but I thought it would give a flavour of what happened yesterday. More info will follow if you're interested, as I'll blog more about it in the days to come. This isn't the vow, this is just some background and explanation to it all.

So this is what I said:

Well, this is fun isn't it? I've been planning today for such a long time and I couldn't quite imagine what it would look like in reality, but here it is, and here you are, and it's wonderful.

The past few years have been quite a journey as I've thought and learnt and written and taught and prayed about singleness. It's Ian's fault, actually, for starting it all off... He's the one who asked me - what, probably almost 10 years ago now - whether I'd do a seminar at New Wine on singleness. I said no, obviously! The thing was I'd just never heard a talk on singleness that didn't leave everyone feeling considerably worse at the end than they had done at the beginning. I couldn't even envisage what a positive and helpful talk on singleness would look like.

But then I had a dream, and this really hardly ever happens to me, where I woke up, and I absolutely knew that God has spoken to me, and I ended up telling Ian I wanted to do not one but two seminars. And I began to explore what it looked like to live a God obsessed life in a marriage obsessed church and in a sex obsessed world.

I did those New Wine seminars, and then some more, and before I knew it I was being invited all over the country, and indeed all over the world, to speak about singleness. It's certainly an interesting and unexpected thing to have accidentally become a world expert in!

And while I definitely didn't see it coming, I am actually extremely grateful for it, and it's been an amazing privilege. It didn't take long for this subject to become a major passion of mine. I saw just how important it was. I saw how many people were really wrestling with this issue, trying to figure it out, trying to live well in the midst of it. I saw how, very sadly, church had often become a really hard place to be for single people.

It has been a joy to spend the best part of 10 years now journeying with this topic - academically, theologically, spiritually and personally. You simply wouldn't believe some of the conversations I've had with people, as they've dared to share with me their innermost struggles. I hope it's been, and continues, to be, a bit of a wake-up call for the church.

And of course in the midst of all that, I wrote a book. If Ian is to blame for the seminars, Kate is to blame for the book - why not, she said...?! And Graham, too, who helped me to find a publisher and didn't just laugh in my face.

I think though (naively, I now realise) that I thought I could keep all of this, to a degree, at arms' length. I mean obviously it was personal, and one of the things I decided right from the start was that I'd always try to be completely honest. There didn't seem to be any point in doing this and not being, and people seemed to value that. There may at times, of course, have been too much honesty - I don't think I have a fully functioning 'TMI' filter...

But I think I thought nonetheless that this was something which was 'out there'. I assumed that my own personal journey would be separate from the speaking and the writing.

But God, of course, had a different plan. He began, bit by bit, to show me what that was going to look like.

It came firstly as a sudden, unexpected, surprising but definite certainty that I wouldn't get married. I won't tell you the whole story again - I'm assuming you've read the book! If you haven't, I'll be more than willing to flog you a copy before you leave.

To be honest I still struggle to find exactly the right words to describe what happened. Was it a calling, or a choice, or just an understanding of the circumstances? I think it was sort of all three, in a way. Certainly I feel that this is God's best for me, the path he wants me to follow. And certainly I feel too that I did have a choice. I could have rejected it, and chosen a different path. But I wanted in this area, as I want in all areas of my life, to do what he wants me to do. To live his best for me.

So, for a while, I lived in that reality. I tried to find ways to articulate it when people asked me whether I still hoped to get married. I tried to blog about it in a funny way, and sometimes got accused of being bitter when people didn't get my sense of humour. I tried to figure out what it would mean for my future, and to seek to live well in the present.

And then, gradually this time, I became aware of a growing sense that God was asking me to 'go public' with this. I've got to tell you, it's a good job that he took a while to work up to this because if I'd known from that start that this is where it was going, I'd have run. Fast and far.

As I look back now it's amazing this even happened at all because I didn't even know this was a thing. I'd certainly never known anyone who'd done anything like it. And I'm incredibly grateful to those of you who were there from the start as I first began to imagine what it might look like. Thanks for helping me to work this all out.

And so 2 and a bit years ago I gathered with my closest friends and I made a bit of a vow and we all prayed together, and laughed and cried a bit. And I've spent the 2 years since then sort of sitting with it and seeing where it went. And this - this is where it went. This just feels so completely right.

If I'm honest, I still don't really understand why. Why me, why this, why now? I don't know. But I don't think it matters, really, because I'm certain that God does. He knows me better than I know myself, and if this is his best for me, as I think it is, then I'm all in, Maybe it'll just be this one off event between me and him. Maybe it'll be the start of a worldwide movement, as people do their own 'beLOVED' thing. Who knows?

Certainly I don't think this is right for all single people. But for some, for me, it is. And I'm really grateful for the clarity and the freedom of that.

If you're wondering about the name, I did wrestle for a long time over it. For quite some time I just referred to all this as The Thing. But then I was drawn again and again to Song of Songs, and I remembered a phrase I'd heard someone say in a talk - that "God calls you beloved, and he says Be Loved." So there it is.

Someone once said to me "it must be great to know you're called to singleness, so that it isn't painful any more." Ah. No. Sorry about that, but that isn't how it's gone down for me. The only wobbles over the past 2 years have been when I've been wrestling with this, and struggling, and thinking, "should it really be this hard?" But then I've remembered what it always looks like to follow the Jesus Way - the joy and the pain and the hope and the hardship and the grace all mixed up together. And I think that's ok. I think that's how it's meant to be, and how it always will be. I think I can be utterly certain that this is the way I'm meant to live, and still sometimes burst into tears at random moments because it flipping well hurts and I'm lonely and sad.

So anyway, thanks for being here today. Thanks for being on my team. Thanks for not thinking I'm bonkers for doing this - or if you do think that, for hiding it really well. I guess I'm going to need your help in the future to keep on this path, so please stick around. You're all lovely.

Whom shall I fear?

I've been thinking a bit about fear today. This is mainly because yesterday I did something that absolutely TERRIFIED me - a 120 foot freefall abseil inside Liverpool Cathedral. I realise some of you have already had to stop reading, look away from the screen and take a deep breath. Others of you are thinking "ooh, that sounds like great fun!" Isn't fear a fascinating thing? We're all scared of different things (I don't think I believe there are many people who truly aren't scared of anything at all).

For some people, spotting a spider in the corner of the room brings them to utter, paralysing terror. For others they would pick up the spider without a care and put it outside, or carry on with their business while ignoring it (I'm in the second group). I do however have a huge phobia of snakes. I realise a lot of people aren't wild about snakes, and we'd probably all be a bit scared if one crawled in through the door. But I'm almost as scared of pictures of snakes as I am of the real thing. I simply can't stand to look at a snake. It reduces me to shrieking horror and I genuinely feel sick. It's the very essence of a phobia - a totally irrational fear. A photo of a snake, or a snake in a glass case, cannot do me any harm at all, and yet I am terrified. Why? I have no idea! Where did that fear come from? It's been there as long as I can remember.

Some of our fears are rational and logical; others totally irrational and maybe a bit odd. We can be cruel about others' fears, too. I'm always a bit nervous about telling people about my snake phobia (I thought twice before typing the last paragraph) because all my life when people have found out there have been some who have thought it would be hilarious to immediately show me a picture of a snake. Why on earth would you do that? I know, I'll terrify this person half to death - that'll be fun. People can be strange...

Who am I to judge what someone else finds scary? Of course there are times when it's good to try to get over our fears. or to tackle them head on, especially if they're stopping us from doing something we want to do, or holding us back in some way. Fear can really hold us back so trying in some way to conquer it can be a good idea.

So... the abseil! I'm pretty scared of abseiling. I did it a few times when I was in Guides, and I was NOT a fan. I generally had to be persuaded/coaxed/shoved off the top of wherever we were, and I was always incredibly relieved when it was over. I hoped that as an adult I could steer clear of such ridiculous pastimes and all would be well. Then a couple of years ago on an outward bound day the dreaded moment arrived once again - abseiling! Various options presented themselves - I could simply not do it. I was an adult, after all, and if there were any benefits to that state surely one was the ability to simply opt out of those experiences we do not wish to have. But no, I'm too much of a rule-follower for that to really work. We were all abseiling, so I had to abseil. I told myself it was fine. I was older now, wiser, more mature. It was mind over matter. I could do it. I was wrong. I won't bore you with the details, or we'll all be traumatised, but it did NOT go well. I got in a muddle over the bit where you have to lean back and keep your feet flat, and then I got scared, and ended up with my head nearer to the ground than my feet - which I'm pretty sure is not what's supposed to happen! Of course it was fine - that's what the ropes (and the man at the top holding them) are there for. I made my way down (whimpering!) and arrived safely at the bottom, shaking like a leaf but essentially unharmed. I did however swear off abseiling for the rest of my life.

At St. George's, we are in the middle of spending an awful lot of money on getting our roof fixed. Last year we spent c.£250,000 stopping most of the leaks. We're about to begin work which will cost another £250,000. We're one of the most deprived CofE parishes in the country to fundraising is tough. We get grants from HE and HLF and other charities and grant-making bodies but we still have to raise a fair bit ourselves. Often people have suggested something like abseiling but I've always just said there's no way I'd do it. But before Christmas I saw on Liverpool Cathedral's website that they were doing an indoor abseil and something in me just said "do it." I completely surprised myself by signing up, enlisting fab curate Ashley along the way (although she thought it was just great fun!).

Life had been busy so I hadn't had much chance to think about it (apart from begging requests on social media re sponsorship!), especially in the week leading up to it, which had been, I must say, a bit of a pig. So it wasn't until the Thursday night that I really had chance to think about. I seriously questioned my sanity at this point. I vividly recalled the last time and how terrifying it had been. What was I thinking? And yet I knew I couldn't pull out - too many people had sponsored us.

The day arrived and Ashley and I arrived at the Cathedral. A few lovely people from church had come to cheer us on (and take photos. And laugh, really). I was genuinely petrified. I really didn't know whether I'd be able to do it, and I was considering how humiliating it would be to get to the top and then have to beg to be allowed to go back down (the long way!).

I've always wanted to go up to the Corona Gallery in the Cathedral, so that part was quite fun. The view was amazing. I know that for some people their dreaded fear is heights, but I love being really high up and looking down. We got our harnesses on and stood on the edge. There was a genuine possibility I would lose my porridge over the edge. The man in charge was so very lovely and calm and somehow made the whole thing seem entirely normal. And before I knew it, I was over the edge - the most horrifyingly terrifying bit done. We were in front of brick to begin with, then it finished and the freefall began, which was odd as there's then nothing to kick against. I stopped to look around but realised if I thought about it for too long I'd remember I was meant to be terrified, so I cracked on, and reached the bottom to gratifying whoops and cheers. I'm fairly confident that if they'd times everyone who came down that day I would have been the fastest.

It felt amazing! I have always been a bit of a scaredy cat, even as a child, never one to go on big roller coasters or jump off high places. We often say of small children that they have no fear - well, I did! But when I'd completed the abseil I felt so good. If it doesn't sound naff, I felt really proud of myself. I had genuinely been afraid and yet I had done it anyway. And it was ok! I would actually do it again, too. Although maybe not for a day or two...

There's been an interesting response on social media - lots of people declaring they wouldn't do it in a million years, but a fair few others wishing they could have had a go too. There are definitely some things I can't ever imagine doing - a parachute jump and a bungee jump are both most definitely out of the question. I'm not saying everyone should leap off a 120 foot building to face their fears. But, knowing I was afraid, and doing it anyway, felt pretty good.

When I was a teenager I had loads of 'No Fear' posters in my bedroom - "Don't let your fears stand in the way of your dreams" and all that business. I can't say they helped. What did help, after the abseiling horror story of a couple of years ago, was when God quietly and gently reminded me that he had me, that I was safe, that he was never going to let me go. I could "fall off a cliff" (I like to exaggerate a bit when I tell the story!), but God was not ever going to let me go.

So, yesterday, on the top of that abseiling platform, that was what got me over the edge. I'm safe. I'm always safe, even when life is difficult and scary and everything seems to have gone wrong. God has hold of me, and he's not going to let go,

Psalm 118:6 in the Message says: "God's now at my side and I'm not afraid."

Just so you can be really impressed, here's what it looked like: 

And you can still sponsor us, too: www.justgiving.com/stgeorgeseverton

Going solo

Tonight's been an interesting evening. I've been at Liverpool Cathedral, for my first ever live performance of Handel's Messiah. I've wanted to hear it for as long as I can remember, but for various reasons have never managed to do so until tonight. It was spectacular! It featured the combined choirs of the 2 Cathedrals, plus the Chamber Orchestra. I knew much of the music already, of course, but hearing it live was as wonderful as I'd hoped it would be - and what better place for my first time than our fabulous Cathedral, one of my favourite buildings in the world, and a venue with more than enough drama, attitude and acoustics to carry it off.

As well as enjoying the fabulous music and singing, I was doing a lot of reflecting this evening. For those of us who are single, the 'going to events on your own' dilemma is one which is never fully resolved. I imagine there are some super-confident and self-assured people who will cheerfully arrive at events by themselves, chat breezily all evening to perfect strangers, and then happily make their way home alone again afterwards. I don't, however, imagine there are many!

I also imagine there are some people who never go to events alone, and consequently, don't go to many events. They're nervous about arriving alone, having no one to talk to, feeling awkward, coming home alone again... It can feel very hard.

I've wanted to hear Messiah for a really long time. Last year, it was on at the Philharmonic. I was excited, and emailed lots of friends to see if they were interested in coming along. Some couldn't make it, some weren't interested, some took forever to reply! Eventually one friend said she'd like to come, and I set about booking tickets - but I'd left it too late, and it was sold out. This year, quite a while ago, I saw that it was going to be on at the Cathedral. Determined not to miss out again, I booked a ticket. Just one. I didn't even bother to invite friends! I wanted to go, and I was going to go!

Fast forward to today, and it's been a heck of a day (and a heck of a week!). I (still!) haven't finished preparing for the all age service tomorrow. I'm getting a cold (I think - although for most of the past week I've felt like I'm getting a cold and then I haven't). I had a flat tyre & had to spend far too much money on a new one. In some ways all I wanted to do was stay in. But I was excited about going to Messiah, and so I went. There was that familiar pang about going by myself - that sort of jollying along that you have to do to persuade yourself to get moving. Of course, it was a fabulous evening, and I'm more than glad that I went.

But. You see, it's not easy to do the going solo thing.

Don't get me wrong, there are great parts about it. I decided I wanted to go, I booked my ticket, and I went. I didn't have to check what anyone else wanted to do. There's something fun and freeing about being able to please myself on occasion. I chose when to arrive, where to sit, when to leave. I could chat to the people either side of me if I wanted to (with the exciting dual possibilities of meeting a lovely, fun new person - or being labelled a crazy, eccentric nutcase).

But there are also rubbish parts about it. I didn't have anyone to look forward to it with beforehand. I didn't have anyone to offer to drive and do the stressful last minute squeeze-in-a-tiny-space parking for me. I didn't have anyone to save me a seat while I went to the loo. I didn't have anyone to make small talk with and gossip about why the cassocks of the girls on the right were 5 times brighter than those of the girls on the left. I didn't have anyone to talk to in the interval so of course I messed about with my phone and pretended to be popular. I didn't have anyone to whisper to about how fabulous it all was. I didn't have anyone to debrief with afterwards (I know it was only a concert, but I'm an extrovert, I have to talk!). I didn't have anyone to drive home with. I didn't have anyone to make me a cup of tea when I got in.

Gosh that's a list of moans! Except, I don't mean them to be moans. They're just facts. Loads of you will understand them, if you're single yourself, or ever have been - or perhaps even if you're unhappily partnered. It is what it is, I realise that. Good bits and bad bits. Fun times and tough times. Life, basically!

This isn't a moan, or a rant, or a sympathy plea. It's just a reflection. My mind wandered to it as I drove home. I'd love to know if it resonates with you. Basically I'm writing a diary entry and sharing it with the world...!

I'm glad I went. Messiah was fabulous. An item on my bucket list is ticked off. And I got to come home and finish the box of chocolates a friend gave me the other day, with no one else fighting me for the orange creme - so it's not all bad!