Isle of Wight Law Service
St Thomas’s Newport
Monday 3rd October, 11.30 a.m.
Read by the Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight
Readings: Micah 6:6-8/Romans 13:1-10
Many, many centuries ago, at an exact date unknown, what we now know only too well as the Isle of Wight came into existence. The sea gradually divided it from mainland Britain, and the old Celtic name ‘Vectis’, meaning ‘place of division’ came to be used to describe it. Even then, people were fascinated by the short strip of sea that made up the separation, as if Southern Britain could not quite get used to having islands nearby – unlike much of Scandinavia. That journey across the water is a fact both of your life and mine, and we either enjoy it thoroughly (which I invariably do) or we regard it as at best a distraction, at worst a confounded nuisance.
It’s true that Southern England still does find it hard to enter into the ‘island-mentality’, because there’s so much of the mainland, and in any case, Portsea and Hayling don’t really count because of those bridges. Even allowing for the fact that this part of the world, which comprises the Diocese of Portsmouth, is affected by water in a way not true of any other, we still can’t get away from that Celtic name, ‘Vectis’, ‘Wight’, place of division. And even those of us who come here regularly as part of our work, and leisure, have to reckon with something separate. I can use points of reference from childhood holidays in Denmark, where ferries were part of life and expected to be so, but it’s different, because everything is unique, every island included.
That dual sense of involvement and separateness I suspect is shared by many people here this morning, because the Island depends on the mainland for some of its economy, and for what seems like the rest of the world during the summer season as well. Law, Police, Probation Service, Fire Service, the Social Services, Education and Schools – all these, and many more, require at least some degree of interaction with the mainland, and even for some extra resourcing. And the same is true for the Churches. As far as the Church of England part of the equation is concerned, when an appointment is made to a parish over here from the mainland, a great deal of care is taken in helping the person concerned, and the family as well, to settle in. It’s not always easy to get everything right, including schooling for the children involved, but on the whole we get there; and there may even be times when the spouse and family settle into Island life more easily than the vicar! I don’t like the word ‘resourcing’, and I dislike ‘human resources’ as an expression even less. What was wrong with that wonderful word, ‘personnel’, accurate and symbolic in one breath? But never mind: we’re lumbered with it, and as long as we keep realising that we are dealing with people, and not paperwork (recycled or not!), we can’t go far wrong. In that connection, it’s interesting to note that during the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the Royal Navy was being built up as an international force, the Island was exempt from the press-gangs, because of its own economic needs.
This, however, does not mean that the Island, in all its separateness, lacks challenges. Informal conversations with heads of services can be revealing! But what we need to avoid is a polarized situation, between those who appear to have made up their minds already, come what may, and for whom the word ‘consultation process’ is little more than a farce, and those who dig in their heels and refuse to change. As Cardinal Newman once eloquently put it, ‘to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’ In order to face the future, whether we are thinking of any other of the walks of life I mentioned earlier, from Law to Education, and including the Church as well, we have to look, coolly and strategically, at where things are going, and do our best, with all the faith, trust and imagination that we can muster, to take control of the situation. I have an obvious concern for the Island’s schools, not just the big successful ones, but the small rural ones as well, because schools are likely in the future to become centres of community in a way that they haven’t been in the past: and that holds true whether or not one swallows the latest Government new idea.
These themes spring to mind because they are at the heart of why we meet for this service year by year. A recent report on the Island’s schools makes challenging reading, because it makes some critical observations about low esteem, and a lack of a sense of wanting to achieve on the part of at least a proportion of students. You could, in fact, say much the same about parts of Portsmouth too. But if I have learned one thing in my years in ordained ministry, which began in rural Lincolnshire, continued in urban Manchester, carried on in suburban Guildford, and keeps going (somehow!) in the Diocese of Portsmouth, it is that the best way to help change a local situation is to win hearts and minds, and to get the people concerned to do it in a way that properly suits but also adequately challenges the local context. In the Diocesan Review which we are undergoing at the moment, the Bishop’s Council, effectively the Standing of our Diocesan Synod, met for two long days in order to hear about the plans proposed by each of the eight deaneries – two of which comprise the Island, East and West Wight. There was a moment of truth when West Wight, in which we are at the moment (!), was given the chance to say what it was like to minister in its rural parishes: the vicar of Shorwell going to Chale for a bereavement visit prior to a funeral takes far more time to get there, and come back, than the equivalent, say, in Havant. All this is, in one sense, obvious, but it needs to be articulated. None of us will achieve much if we go in heavy with a plan that doesn’t bear any relation to what the local terrain is really like, and few of those ‘on the ground’ are going to respond creatively to the future by instinctively mistrusting every new plan.
Today’s readings, which were chosen for me, and not by me (it’s always a relief on such occasions to have something put in front of me!), live somewhere in this strange world of decision-making, the ‘management of change’, and the like. For we have the contrast of the Prophet Micah’s call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God; and St Paul’s practical advice to the Christian community in Rome, who were, like any congregation, a mixed bunch, not unknown to fall out with each other big time. Micah provides the paradox – it’s not easy to mix justice, mercy, and humility. In fact, some folk would deny ever having seen the three in one person, so self-important and pompous as some of us seem to be! Paul, however, walks the tight-rope of exhorting his hearers to be loving, patient, and at the same time obedient. They should pay their taxes – if only to show that this new religion did not mean being unpatriotic.
But the combination of these readings is uncomfortable. Of course we all aspire to justice, mercy and humility; and of course we want to be loving and patient, and at the same time obedient citizens. But there always comes a time when we either fall short of these ideals. Or else we end up only being just, merciful and humble by challenging how things are, and asking awkward questions. I suppose I quite like uncomfortable questions – especially when I’m the one asking them rather than having them asked of me by someone else! But the real ‘Vectis’, or ‘place of division’, that we are looking for is not between peoples and communities. It is to be found between a more realistic, and just, merciful and humble future, where people are indeed enabled to be more loving, patient, creatively patriotic, and much more – and somewhere else, another place, another culture, a more destructive dynamic, which we all try to resist, because it is the road to nowhere.
May God bless all our endeavours, in his service, now and for ever.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth 11/viii/05
