Not a vicar

When he knew I was leaving a Pentecostalist minister, for whom I have a lot of respect, said,

I trust that you can cope with the fall out of not being a vicar, as I suspect there is little support towards this major transition. It is a huge change to go through.

Well, I'm sure I can cope but it's a kind thought.  The reality has been a total lack of support while I was a vicar and so there's not likely to be any when I leave.  Some people have had much worse.

I find I go shopping thinking to myself how good it is to be anonymous, not just that I don't know anyone but also that no-one will know who I am irrespective of whether I know them.

One day I hope to shop without bothering.

New life, new start, new questions

It's a new start.

I've moved from the small market town of Retford in rural Nottinghamshire to Newcastle upon Tyne, home of MadPriest and not so far from themethatisme.

I've stopped being a vicar. I haven't yet sorted out a new identity, but I'm pretty sure it won't elide job and life quite so thoroughly.

It will be strange, after almost 12 years, to squeeze the vicar out of me as water out of a sponge. It's not just the day to day work (some of which I might continue anyway) but the assumptions people make about vicars, the relationships that are possible and those that are not, and the spectacles through which I see the world.

I went to Church in Walker on Sunday. I was surprised to find a Common Worship 8.00am service. There was no reason why I should have been surprised except that I am accustomed to BCP at that time of day. It will no doubt take a while before I can stop looking at things from, so to speak, the front of the Church and learn to see from the pews (well, chairs in this case).

The walk there and back evoked a haiku:

Early morning light
body and bone long for warmth
willing the sunrise

Eternity, Blake

Eternity

He who bends to himself a joy

Does the wingéd life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

From Proverbs from Hell

No bird soars too high,

if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake (1757-1827)

Ceaselessly

Falling as rain falls

on a mountain

storm, shower, mizzle

words cataract through ravines

stream across hills

pour into the wide embrace of rivers

as wild woodcarvers gouge, plane, polish the land

till, with a child’s delight,

dissolving in the indefinable, illimitable sea.

Ceaselessly.

Infinity

I cannot

reach the end of words :

when words are ended

                            so am I.

Bigger brother than ever

It is, I think, inevitable:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion project to build the world's largest computer database of biometrics to give the government more ways to identify people at home and abroad, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The FBI has already started compiling digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns in its systems, the paper said.

In January, the agency -- which focuses on violations of federal law, espionage by foreigners and terrorist activities -- expects to award a 10-year contract to expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives, it said.

At an employer's request, the FBI will also retain the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, the paper said.

If successful, the system, called Next Generation Identification, will collect the biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes, the Post said.

Those who have the capability and the budget will be driven to compile ever increasing information about ever more people.  It gives a feeling of comfort to the powerful, a chimera of safety, the feeling that if enough is known about enough people then harmful actions can not only be punished but even prevented.  

A combination of ever-increasing processing power and the capacity to know biometric and also genetic information about people means that (other things being equal) the trend will be to recording every individual in an accessible form.  Who would ever have the power or, having the power, the will to stand up and say 'Stop now, we don't need to know.'?

It won't be enough to shout 'privacy' or 'liberty' as though these slogans will stop this trend, nor 'transparency' or 'safeguards' as though these will legitimate the amassing of data.   It will be important to know who has access to what information and how it may be used.  (In fact it may will be in the interests of the security services to let people know just how much they know, so long as they are vague about the limits, in order to deter malevolent action.  But it will be impossible to state the limits of how it will be used - once collected the data will be maipulable in ways currently unconsidered.)

We are, I believe, on the threashold of a vast change in social and political relationships embodied in the capacity to digitise people (in effect) of which Facebook is to future databases as an abacus to the computer.

How will we live with the assumption that everything is known and nothing forgotten?  Will we be ruled by shame - or will shame be a thing of the past as everyone is shown to do shameful things?  Will we find ways of public forgetting to enable us to grow - or will teenage excess, misjudgement, rebellion always be held against a person?  Will forgiveness become a new public virtue?  Or will the sophistication of data lead to crude divisions of people into, say, those who are a threat and those who are tolerable - white and black hats again?

It will not all be bad - the possibility of individualised medicine may well be one advance, the impossibility of racism another - and it may (despite the present structures creating these systems) tend towards egalitarianism.  But such extensive change is unlikely to happen without social turmoil and pain.

When

Balanced on sea-edge.

Between.

Land ground fine between

duration and oblivion;

unstable, edge-less.

Sea sand turning underneath;

an old new tide

erases my mark.