In the next part of our guest blog series from singer/songwriter Haydon Spenceley, we hear how his global collaborative recording process is progressing, and Haydon reflects on the collaboration between God and people.
Greetings everyone
Thanks for sticking with these blogs, even as they’re spread out by vast expanses of time. It gives you an insight in to the length of time it can take to make an album if nothing else!*
A quick update on what’s happened since we last spoke to kick things off. Keyboards have been recorded in Northampton. Guitars put down in Indianapolis, Nashville and Southampton vocals in South Carolina and Seattle. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a place for cowbell on this record, but there’s still time! We’re (the “we” I refer to here is an ever-increasing group of wonderful people) coming up to the mixing phase of the project, which is always exciting, as it’s the moment when I hear mixes for the first time that I can first sense the end in sight and the final realising of the vision I set out with just around the corner.
Because I’m not (by any means) a full time musician, the process of making this record has been long, perhaps even slow, but at each stage it seems to me that just the right thing has happened at the right time. From initial tracking in the summer with some of my closest friends, who are also hyper-talented, through to making wonderful new acquaintances this autumn, this process has been my favourite album making experience. I’ve been able to have Thom Daugherty (Agitproper, The Elms, as well as a tonne of other cool stuff) lend his signature style to the guitar parts. They’re awesome. I’ve achieved a long-held fanboyish ambition and had Anna-Lynne Williams (Trespassers William, Lotte Kestner, Ormonde) sing on a song. She is wonderful. I met Erick, who I blogged about last time, virtually, in New York, and had him lay down some incredible drum parts. Ben Lewis, who is a stupendous bloke, played bass like only a stupendous bloke can. Harun Kotch blew my mind with his special Harun Kotchness (you’ll know what I mean if you know him) and then there’s Kevin Bruchert. Kevin is a great producer and a great musician. He’s an even better friend.
There’re loads of other people who’ve been involved too. This has been the most collaborative recording process I’ve ever been involved in. Before this turns in to some kind of pretentious awards acceptance speech though I want to get to the point. It isn’t showing off, honest.
No, the point is this: as we come towards the home strait and I’m thinking over the experience of making this record, I’ve been struck by a couple of things. Namely the sheer privilege it is to have people from all over the world, who are stuffed full of talent, want to work with me on something that is so personal to me. It really is something to behold to think that these songs and thoughts that I’ve composed in the (mostly) darkest parts of the last couple of years, on my own, in my house, have been brought to life by such a wildly diverse bunch of people. Music has a wonderful way of forming communities. I’m fortunate to say that I’ve made a lot of friends, and deepened a lot of friendships I already had, in the process of making this album. This building and deepening of relationships makes the whole project worthwhile as far as I’m concerned.
Which leads me to the second point. Something I’m exploring is the wonder of collaboration between God and people. In a similar way to being blown away by how many people have wanted to work with me on this project, I’ve been increasingly caused to wonder at how God wants to relate to me, transform me, bless me, affirm me, challenge me. Really it’s all of it. We are made to live together, with God, together with other people, to love ourselves, not to be isolated from God or from one another, and certainly not to focus our anger inwards towards self-hatred. I’ve been prone to this in the past, and still struggle with it quite a bit. I justify it by thinking and saying things like “well, if you really knew what I was like, what I’d done, who I’d been, then you’d think the same”. The thing is though that God does see, know, even feel the consequences of all of that and yet the seemingly outrageous move He makes towards me, towards us, is one of transforming, of drawing together, towards living and being together, to bring in the kind of life and hope which has always been the plan.
It’s quite a thought, the process of making an album as a sign of the eschatological hope of humanity. Have some of that!
*For those of you who just want to know when the record’ll be out, I hope it will be the end of January!
Haydon Spenceley
Tag: Haydon Spenceley
In the second part of the Haydon Spenceley guest blog series on the journey of recording his new album, he updates us on the recording process – and how the band are connected despite being on opposite sides of the world. Haydon also explains how he is learning from God the importance of loving yourself.
Hope everyone out there in internet world is doing well. Dave and Jono from LTTM have been telling me that the response to my last post here was really strong so thanks for your encouragement. Feel free to translate that into listening to/buying the new record when it’s done!I wrote the first post for this about 12 days ago, the day before we started, in the midst of a heatwave. Now as I think about what to share with everyone today and it is pouring with rain outside, I’m really struck just how much has happened in a relatively short space of time. We’ve certainly packed a lot in. Here are some edited highlights:
- We spent some time in writing and pre-production, out of which came an extra, brand new song, Mirrors. Mirrors is almost certainly the most aggressive song I’ve ever written. I’m just about to sing the vocal for it when I’ve finished this, which will be a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it!
- Kevin (who has an awesome record of his own, check it out) led worship with Ben and I, plus a couple of awesome friends, at Lee Community Church last week. It was an intensely powerful and moving time.
- We spent two nights Skyping in to a studio in New York on a phone whilst the drums for the record were recorded by a dude named Eric, and Brian, the engineer, entertained us by dancing with action figures (this really did happen). It is crazy to me that we’ve reached the point where you can connect to a studio via Skype and interact and work on parts for songs. Crazy. What’s even crazier is how good the drums sound. Eric is the man.
- Ben, our resident bass maestro and master of gyrations, nailed his bass parts for the whole record in a day. He, too, is the man.
- We spent a great day at Ford Lane in Arundel recording a rather splendid sounding upright piano. There is a lot of piano on this record.
- I’ve sung 5 out of 7 vocal performances. 2 more to go…
Much more important than all this, we have introduced Kevin and Christian, our visitors from the States, to the correct way to speak the English language. Kevin calls the toilet “the loo” now. Our work is done. We’ve eaten a lot of premium biscuits. In fact we’ve just eaten a lot.
We’ve also received generosity from loads and loads of people, and spend a lot of time hanging out with friends, new and old. It’s been a real eye-opener to me to see how many people have got behind this project in a variety of ways. Really humbling.
Much more important, even than all those things, is that we’ve spent a whole tonne of time talking about life, faith, hope and family. It’s been one of the key characteristics of this process and this project. God made us for relationship with Him, ourselves and one another. At various points in my life, I’ve been pretty rubbish at all three of those, with no real sign of improvement. However, these last two weeks have reinforced to me that we’re only really doing life anywhere near right when we get the concept of loving God, loving our neighbour and loving ourselves in to balance.
I’ve experienced much love from God, and my neighbours, whilst making this record, and it’s been fantastic to see the community around these songs grow and involve people all over the world. More than that though, I’m having to learn the discipline of loving myself, something I find pretty hard for a variety of reasons. Without love for myself it’s not possible to love God. Without love for God I can’t love others. Without love for others I can’t love anything or anyone. It’s a huge deal. As God is love (it’s not just an emotion He has, but a state of being) He can’t not love me. He can’t not love you. He wants to give you a new identity, a new name. Son or daughter of God. Cherished, beloved, adored, set free to be who He made you to be.
All the other identities we give ourselves, or have given to us, even the important ones like husband/wife, friend, brother/sister, parent or whatever, these come second, a distant second, to that of child of God. It’s bonkers that it’s ours for the taking. Seeing the working out of this in action, as we all, individually and collectively, try to learn what is to live and work, walk and love, as children of God, is a real privilege, as well as being a little scary. It’s a privilege because I get to marvel as I watch God at work in a whole bunch of other people (including some who don’t know Him yet, or even think He exists). It’s scary because when it’s all said and done, it’s easier for me to retreat behind the identity of being a musician, or even of calling myself a failure or a disappointment, a disabled person. These things don’t define me though. God does. I wish we were part of a community of faith who really got hold of this.
We have two more days here to finish the vocals and do some guitars and a few other bits and bobs, before we disperse around the country and the world to finish the record, and get back to our (long-suffering) families. As we get back to some semblance of normality I’m pretty hopeful that some of the spark of hope, of identity, of freedom and joy, will go with us. Wouldn’t that be something.
It’s unlikely that I’ll be remembered in history for my songs (although that would be nice) but wouldn’t it be great if we, this generation, were remembered in history as people who knew, as far as they could, that we were loved, so that we could love, that we’d heard the call of God to shine His light, love and hope into the lives of those who are around us. If the songs on this record go any distance to helping you to do that in your life, in your family, in your workplace, then it’ll be a job well done.
Haydon Spenceley
Two years ago British singer/songwriter Haydon Spenceley wrote a series of guest blogs for LTTM about his band Ghostree going to Nashville to make an album. In this honest and revealing first blog of a new series, Haydon starts the process again with a fresh set of ideas.
Around two years ago, I blogged a few times describing the experiences of recording the Ghostree EP with Kevin Bruchert and Brandon Perdue in Nashville, TN. The times and experiences those blogs chronicled were some of the most enjoyable and exciting, challenging and stretching experiences of my life. I loved the whole experience, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Reading the first blog back this morning, I remembered some of how I felt as I wrote. We were excited, we thought something was going to happen.
Well, something did happen. The EP we made is, I think, pretty flipping good (I still like it, unusual for me!). We got some of the best reviews you could ever hope for, from all over the world. We’ve had opportunities to play and talk to a whole bunch of people, particularly at the wonderful Big Church Day Out this year (you probably didn’t see us, Rend Collective Experiment were playing at the same time, but we loved it anyway, and so did the discerning hordes who spent the afternoon with us). A lot of musicians from bands I have had fanboyisms about have told me they love our record. A lot of other people have too. But here’s the rub, pretty much no-one bought it. This isn’t a complaint. I’m not whining or muttering or anything else. We made a record, no-one bought it. Happens all the time. There are bands and artists massively more talented than me who will tell you a similar story. My point is that the something I was hoping for when Ghostree started, which was to build enough to have a following and make enough money to make another record, to do something that the Christian “scene” here hadn’t seen for quite some time, just never happened. It probably wasn’t ever going to happen.
Fast-forward two years, and I sit at the beginning of another recording process. Where there was drive and focus on the last record, this time I’m relaxed to the point of not even having written all the songs yet (we start tomorrow). This isn’t a Ghostree record. This is something else. Something new. Something that I’m very excited about. Friends from my musical past are joining together just to make a record and see what comes out. It’ll probably end up coming out as a solo record, but I really have no idea. There’s no plan. We’re actually making the music because we like making music. What a revolutionary idea.
There’s a tendency in my thinking as a kind of lapsed conservative evangelical to think that it’s only ok to do something if there’s a clear vision, or if God has confirmed the plan in triplicate. I don’t say this to be facetious. This is actually how I’ve lived and thought in the past, and I could happily proof-text you into the middle of next week with regard to why this is a good way of doing things. The thing is, the last two years have taught me (amongst a whole lot, I’d recommend a spell at theological college if you want your life turned upside down) that sometimes it’s ok to do things because we enjoy them too. I’m excited about this record. We have some really good songs. I’m more excited to hang out with my friend Kevin, and a bunch of other awesome dudes and their families for two weeks and to see what God is going to do.
I don’t get everything right. I get quite a lot wrong actually, but so much has happened over the last couple of years and I’m looking forward to sharing some new songs about all those experiences with you.
All of this might sound a bit serious. Sorry about that. It’s what training to be a vicar, getting engaged and realising you’re not as cool as you thought you were over the course of a two year period will do to someone. I hope that the record we’re embarking on will be something that people will enjoy listening to. I hope I’ll like it too (!) and most of all I hope that it honours God. It’s such a privilege to be given the gift of writing songs and the opportunity to sing them. It’s so much more of a privilege to have so many people who want to stand with me and make something from my ideas. When I started in bands back when I was 18 I would never have thought I would have had all the experiences I have had, and I’m profoundly grateful for them. If this is the last record I get to make, I hope it makes a difference somehow, preferably an eternal one, but I’ll leave how that happens to God.
So, I’m making a new record. Kevin Bruchert is producing. We’ve got a cast of thousands primed all over the world ready to be involved, and no idea what to do with it when it’s done. What could possibly go wrong?
Haydon Spenceley
Categories
I Am Not….
Over the last couple of days, I’ve sat in Gosport and Southampton, listening via Skype while a dude named Eric, who I’ve never met, played in a studio in Rochester, New York, recording drums on a bunch of my songs. This strikes me as somewhat crazy. While I’d rather be in New York – who wouldn’t rather be in New York than Gosport? – this is a pretty good deal. It’s meant that the EP I’m working on has had the drummer who fitted it just right play on it. It’s also enabled us to welcome Eric, and Brian, who engineered the session and entertained us royally, into the community that is building around the songs and the vision behind them.
Writing and recording songs has been one my favourite things to do since I started in bands around the age of 18. There are loads of reasons, but one of them is that the moment when you realise that you have a good song on your hands is unlike almost anything else. A good song is a good song, whether it’s written by the latest production line pop strumpet, or a grizzled veteran. When it comes to music, the fact that I’m a wheelchair user is of no consequence at all. If my songs are good, they’re good. If they’re not so good…
My cerebral palsy is a big part of my life, but it does not define me. I’m not Haydon, the disabled ordinand (trainee vicar), or Haydon the wheelchair singing guy (although I’ve been called that before). I’m Haydon, the son of God. That’s the whole of it. Not a mention of disability anywhere in that identity is there? We’re identified first, foremost and only by the loving action of God, through Christ, in our lives. Nothing more. Nothing less. It’s funny in a piece on inclusion to say something like this, which you, the reader, may perceive to be exclusive. Sorry about that. For my part I’ve found that every label other than son of God that either I’ve used, or has been used about me to identify me gives me, or others, the opportunity to either think of myself as better or worse than other people. All are equal in the eyes of God. All. No one is better. No one is worse. That is inclusion. That is an enabled society. Anything else is a pale reflection of God’s intention for society.
I strongly think that we, in this country at this time, have a key role to play in the development of a new kind of society. Not only can we be primary movers in social change, so that the loving kindness and justice of God can prevail in our broken society, but we need to learn to live, love and act in such a way as to make our communities real and whole. Just as no one is excluded from the offer of life in Christ, so no one should be excluded from our church families, from the communities we build together. Whether that means you change physical elements of church life, open up to the possibility of people around you being depressed (there will be some depressed people that you know, whether you are aware of their depression or not) or you consider what an inclusive, enabled community that features people from all the parts of God’s glorious creation might actually look like, this is something that we need to get stuck in to, in this place, in this time.
Let me not be known as Haydon the wheelchair singing guy (please, not that). Let me be known as Haydon, the son of God who abounds in loving kindness and partners with God in bringing about His kingdom. Let us be remembered in history as the generation marked out by our abandoned love for Christ and all of His beloved sons and daughters, including those who our society and, God forbid, our Church, currently disables.
Read the original post here: http://www.threadsuk.com/i-am-not/
Categories
We Don’t Know God
I want to let you in to a little secret. I understand God a lot less well than I used to.
It might be something to do with having spent two years at theological college. It might be that my brain doesn’t work as well as it used to (this is quite likely). I could be being disobedient and weak (sadly, this is quite likely too).
Whatever the reason, the truth remains, looming larger and larger day by day in my mind (ironically): God is bigger, more glorious, more wonderful, more merciful, loving, frightening than I can really get my head round.
George Herbert really nails what I’m trying to get at here when he suggests: “Knowledge is but folly unless it is guided by grace.”
Proverbs 3 calls us to this: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body.”
It strikes me that the call is to a life of seeking God day by day, thanking Him for His love and mercies every single day, and asking Him, through His grace, to guide me into what it means to be a son of His, to be the person He has called me to be.
I think there’s a danger in thinking that we know too much, that we see with too much clarity who God is and what He wants. Romans 12:2 exhorts us to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect”.
I believe that this renewing of the mind is to cause us daily to let go of our own pictures of God and who He is, or might be, that we might allow Him to minister to us in His grace so that we can learn to truly exercise faith and trust. Every human has a different level of understanding. Some of us are never going to understand very much at all. And yet God is for us all. We are all known by Him, whether we know Him yet or not. And so the question remains, what if there’s more to faith than knowledge? What if it’s about letting go of the need to know?
Today, as you go about your daily stuff, ask God that you might grow in knowledge, sure, but ask Him too that you might get more opportunities to exercise your faith muscle, as we walk together in the glorious unknown, into the arms of the one who will give us the answer to every question we ever had, that we might, finally, know Christ and the power of his resurrection, sharing in his life, death, sufferings, and glorious, final, victory.
And yes, I do get the irony of using understanding and knowledge to write a blog questioning the value of understanding and knowledge. I’m just asking a question.
Don’t flame me…
Read the original post here: http://www.threadsuk.com/we-dont-know-god/
Recently, on an evening off from recording my new album, a group of family and friends gathered in the living room of Ben, the bassist in my band, and his wife Sharon. We were talking about theology, as it happens, and debate was predictably passionate. At one point I committed the cardinal sin of telling a friend she was “just wrong” with her point of view (she wasn’t).
Things were tense for a moment, and then they moved on and the moment was forgotten. Except in my head. I was gripped with guilt and remorse for having been so immature, stupid, prideful and much more besides. Quickly I felt myself sinking in to a feeling of worthlessness and pointlessness that is fearfully familiar.
Within five minutes I was quietly making a list of pros and cons as to why I shouldn’t kill myself.
This kind of thing has happened many times before. I have a problem. I am depressed. I have thought about killing myself many times, many times daily during some periods of my life. I tried once. I failed. I hope never to try again. I’m sure many reading this would be able to tell their own stories of what it feels like, or perhaps doesn’t feel like to want to die. Sometimes my thoughts, my senses, are so heightened, that I feel as if I can’t cope. Other days I feel nothing. If anything, for me this is more frightening.
The occasion I described above was all the more poignant because the morning after my list-making, I was to play as part of the worship band for the morning service, and also to ‘share’. Waking up, glad that the evening had passed to the new mercies of morning, I lay in bed and asked God what I should speak about that day. The only thought/answer I could perceive was: depression. This wasn’t part of my plan. Depression is something I hate talking about. Showing my weaknesses to others is a frightening prospect. What will they think of me? Will I lose my job?
The service that morning was intense. Musically, something happened. Kevin Bruchert, who was leading, did so in such a way that there was little in the way between God and His people. Andy the pastor preached, and then it was turned over to me. I had no plan as I began speaking. All I did was honestly relate what had happened the previous evening. I found myself talking about Romans 8:10-11, about the Spirit who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, who is at work in our mortal bodies, our spiritual bodies, our hearts and minds, to bring us to true identity, peace and freedom in him. It struck me how little in church we talk about depression and suicide. I encouraged the church to talk, to pray, to live in uncertainty and pain, as well as joy and hope together.
And then something else happened. People began to come forward and pray; for me, for one another, for themselves. It felt like something broke through that morning in me and in the lives of the people in that church. So many of them had stories of depression and suicide attempts, and had never had the opportunity to talk about them in church before. This is a problem we can deal with. God knows and cares for us all, intimately. He knows what we are going through, what we can bear. As this is World Suicide Prevention Day, let’s make a commitment to talk to each other, take care of each other and entrust one another to the grace and mercy of God. Sometimes suicide happens, and it is horribly painful. It is often, very often, no one’s fault. Often it is the final outworking of a horrible illness. We need help to remember this.
I want to make a commitment to continue to fight, daily, to look to Jesus for my strength and wisdom, for healing. More than that, I want to be a grateful worshipper. Sadly, however much I pray it seems that some days I cannot escape these thoughts and feelings. Each time they seem to come back more strongly and more overwhelmingly. I know, though, too, that my redeemer lives, that he is my refuge. People who know and love Jesus commit suicide. I believe it does not change his love for them, or the victory of his death and resurrection in their lives. Regardless of this, as a Christian, a future vicar, and someone who feels as I often do, I long for a church that is able to live in such a way as to point to the hope of the gospel for those who feel as if their hope has run out.
This has been a difficult article to write. I fear I have not expressed myself clearly. I also fear that some of what I have said might not be correct or accurate. Please forgive me and my clumsy honesty.
Read the original post here: http://www.threadsuk.com/i-have-thought-about-killing-myself-many-times/
Greetings to you, the good people of the land of the interweb. It’s a great pleasure to have been asked by Dave and Jono at LTTM to do some guest blogging for the site. I’ve got a new album, Heart Strings, out on November 22nd and in the run-up to the release I thought I’d write pieces about the process of making the album, some of the highs and the lows, to give some insights about the great things about being a musician who is a Christian, and some of the not so great stuff too.
I thought I’d start with the theme of dreams for this first one. Dreams are something we all have. Some of us want to be musicians, some of us footballers, or film stars, or TV evangelists (if that’s you, it’s time for a re-think), but we all have dreams at some stage. Even God had a dream, which was realised in the beauty of creation, and He has a dream for the reconciliation and restoration of all that He has made into the relationship of true life, hope, love and freedom that we were made, and redeemed for.
Well, my dream was always to be a musician, from the first time, at age 13 or so, that I played a song I’d written in public, I knew that what I wanted to do was write songs and play them to people. Even though I thought I was pretty rubbish at it, it gave me such a joy to play that I carried on anyway. So, then my dream became to release a record, which I did in 2003 with FreeSlave, and help from Whizz Kidz enabling me to write and record Project Freedom, which was followed the next year by Remember the Day, and a couple of years after that by Songs for the Dying and the Save My Day EP. During that time, I was privileged to travel all over the UK and Ireland, and have my songs bought and listened to by people all over the world, as we, as a band, got to the point of being featured on Radio One and playing gigs in nice places like Trafalgar Square, and I was asked to be a Cultural Ambassador for Britain’s 2012 Paralympics, as one of the few wheelchair users active on the music scene in the UK. We were blessed to be able to take our songs to a lot of places that Christians don’t get to go, and make a difference in some lives.
Sadly, around 2007, things started to go wrong. I don’t know if it was because I got more concerned with having good hair than a good heart, or if that particular season just naturally came to an end, but it seemed to fizzle out all of a sudden, just when we were on the cusp of big things. Even with the release of Circles, my first solo record, which received a lot of acclaim critically and from fans, something seemed like it was missing, not quite adding up. It was in this context that I set to work, towards the end of 2008 on what became Heart Strings. Back then, I thought, vainly, that this record would be the one that would finally ‘break’ me. Certainly I, and my brilliant team of musicians and producers worked hard on it, I am very happy indeed with the finished record, and I hope sincerely that you like it when you come to hear it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, and, I think, a very good album.
Thing is, God’s dream isn’t for me to be an amazing musician. It’s not His dream for you either. Neither is it His dream that I get rich, or that the whole world thinks I’m the coolest four-wheeled person on the planet. No, God’s desire is for relationship with me, for my life to be submitted to Him and for me to live daily seeking to follow in His way. Music is important, and can be crucial in leading people to and encouraging people’s relationships with God, and also simply as a means of enjoyment, but I needed to learn that it wasn’t as a musician that God wanted me to be defined, but as a child of His. Wherever you are today, His primary call on your life is that you be a child of His, and love Him as He loves you. What comes out of that life of love can only be more fruitful as a result.
It is from within this developing sense of identity that Heart Strings, the finished album, has emerged. As a picture of where I’ve been, and where I am now, I think it’s about as complete a piece as I could manage at the moment, and I can’t wait for you all to hear it.
Next time I’ll write about some of the songs, the recording process, and some of the fun that I’ve had recently trying to work out the best way to release the album, but for now I want to thank you for reading, supporting my music and the music of other people who are seeking to follow Jesus, encourage you to check out my stuff, and most of all, to take some time today to consider this man Jesus, whose dream for your life was so outrageously astonishing that He changed the course of human history, just so that He could spend eternity with you.
http://www.louderthanthemusic.com Read the blog here.
Our guest blogger today is Haydon Spenceley. He is 28, a musician, a son, brother, fiancee, Church of England ordinand, wheelchair user and a strong writer about himself in the third person. Really though more than all those things he is a son of God who’s trying to learn to trust and not figure things out.
He writes for us on the abuse he has recently faced due to his use of a wheelchair.
The other day, as I was paying for my shopping in a well known supermarket, a lady pushed past and called me a “stupid spastic”. I think. I say I think that’s what happened because, although I heard the phrase being used, I had no idea that it was directed towards me, until later on. It seems that perhaps I got in her way. Perhaps I just wasn’t supposed to be breathing the same air as her. When I realised, a lot of things happened at once. I was shocked, surprised, disappointed, hurt, and even a little bit amused.
One of the first reactions which came to mind when I did realise, was to wonder how the lovely lady could possibly know me so well having never spoken to me before, or met me, to my knowledge. You see, I am indeed a stupid spastic. Stupidity is, of course, a relative and subjective term, but I have to say that I have, on many an occasion in the past, both recent and distant, behaved in such a way as to be deemed “stupid”. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my time. I expect you have too. Even further than this, I am, too, a spastic, given my condition, Spastic Diplegia (a type of Cerebral Palsy). I must admit that I am impressed as to the diagnostic skills of my verbal assailant, who must have analysed my physical abilities and posture very swiftly in order to render such an accurate diagnosis. Of course, I had no time to applaud her obvious medical skill, but I hope to meet her again, so that I can suggest an immediate change of career path.
After my initial defence mechanism of humour died down (see sample above) I quickly got to be quite sad. First of all, I don’t like getting in people’s way. I am self-conscious about such things. Second of all, I really don’t like being called a spastic, however accurate it might be. It seems to me that no-one ever means it in the medical sense and that, instead, it’s a kind of cheap points scoring, one-up-manship, where the point is to once again draw to my attention that I am not as good as other people, even though I know that I am.
You’ll be pleased to know this isn’t a bleating peace. I’m getting to the good bit. As the evening wore on, my mind turned to Jesus (aren’t I holy) and the story at the end of Mark chapter 3. Here, Jesus’ family have decided that he’s lost the plot and come to “take charge of him”. Upon doing so, they’re met with some of Jesus’s best parabolic wordplay. Who would seriously have known what He was talking about at the time? “Who are my mother and my brothers? he asked. Well actually, they were standing outside, as well as being well known in the area, so it should have been obvious. The point perhaps, was that they had failed to understand who Jesus was, and what He was about. Whilst not rejecting His family, He also wanted to make it clear that He was about His Father’s business, and wanted to surround Himself with those who would share in the work with Him.
Proverbs 12:18 talks about the responsibility that goes with speaking words over people and in to their lives.
“Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
Even though, in the story in Mark 3, no words of the family are recorded, it is possible to see that what was spoken towards Jesus that day by His family were indeed akin to sword thrusts. It was the same for me on Saturday, as I fairly quickly had to return once again, to the question of identity, and whether I see myself as more than something stuck to the bottom of the shoe of society. I know many people go through much, much worse on a far more regular, even many times daily basis than I do, but it was a jarring, difficult experience.
Over the last few days, I’ve been challenged in two regards:
1. Jesus went through much worse than anything I ever do as He was misunderstood, insulted, unloved and denigrated by those that He loved. He stands with people who are marginalised, even if they are only marginalised for a fleeting moment, and continually lavishes grace, love and peace upon us, that we might truly see that we are who we are because of who He is, and that it is who He is that is crucial.
2. He lavishes all this upon us so that we might be people who are wise, and have wise tongues, or wise ways of communicating. We are to be people of love, charity, kindness, mercy and forgiveness, whatever people do or say to us. This doesn’t mean we always have to be nice. The Church should get righteously angry in its stand for justice for all people that the kingdom might come. It does mean, though, that we need to think about the words we use, the labels and values that we give people. Most of all, we need to remember, at all times if possible, that we are beloved children of God, made to be loved by Him and to love others. So is everybody we meet. So, even as we season our words with salt, and agitate for justice as salt and light in the world, we should know others, and know ourselves, as children of God. That way no words or labels that others place on us can truly hurt us again, and nor should we be guilty of doing likewise.
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Ministry as a Disabled Person in the Church of England: A Vision
Haydon Spenceley
20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member
1 Corinthians 12:20-24 (NRSV)
You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling-block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:14 (NRSV)
In the church of the modern day, perhaps more so than any previous stage in Christian history, diversity is a key driver. By the grace of God, people of all backgrounds, experiences, outlooks, strengths and weaknesses are continuing to be drawn into communities of faith, relationships of discipleship and intimacy and drawn along into the glorious, mysterious journey of life, faith and hope that is our response to the wonderful Good News of Jesus Christ. The church has always been for all, just as Christ died once and for all, but as the Church of England seeks to maintain and develop its calling to be a Christian presence in every community, the challenge remains for us as an institution, as the church, to reflect the wondrous beauty and diversity of God’s creation and the redemptive, reconciling work of Christ in how we are led and how we lead.
As a disabled person, I find passages such as those quoted above to be both exciting and daunting. Whether I see myself as one of those parts of the body which is weaker or not (and I think this is something which is difficult for each individual person to rightly perceive about themselves), it is more than true that my journey towards and through training for ordination in the Church of England has not been an easy one. Indeed it should not be easy, not many of the most worthwhile things in life are. However, as I have been humbled, formed, taught and most importantly blessed, by both the opportunity of being at theological college and being granted the privilege of time to stop and specifically focus on growing in my relationship with God and my love for his church, I have spent much time thinking about how disability can play a part in ministry. Not merely is disability something to be dealt with or worked around, as part of ministry. Rather I would argue it is something to be celebrated, as Paul seems to intimate in a passage from Corinthians 12 above. Disabled people are part of the church. They should be. They must be, in order for the church to be healthy, to truly reflect the will of God for his bride and most of all, to be holy. A church which puts a stumbling block before a disabled person, which does not allow them to fully integrate, participate and, where appropriate, lead, is not a holy Church. It is not the church that Christ envisaged, that he called us to be.
It is my contention that the church has an opportunity perhaps greater than at any previous time in its history to be a force for social change in this generation, in this time. As social care and welfare continue to be under review and discussion, I believe it is time for the church to take centre stage as the one actor in society through which people, whatever their levels of functionality or impairment, are treated with equal levels of love, respect as creations loved by God, made to look like him, known to him by name and delightful to him. It was never God’s intention for social disability to enter the world. I believe passionately that one of the key potential roles of the Church, hopefully spearheaded by the Church of England in the coming years, could be the attempt to eradiate social disablement, through loving acts of kindness, service, education, and through the grace and power of the Spirit. This is something which I think God is calling me to, calling us to, as people who work in this area in His Church. It may seem an impossible task, but nothing is impossible for our God. The day when our Churches, our communities, do not put a stumbling-block before those whose functionality is not at a level that the outside world would deem “full”, when someone might be able to lead the Church, regardless of their physical or emotional strengths and weaknesses if it is deemed right for them to do so, is closer than it has ever been before. Let’s work hard to give everyone in our Churches an equal opportunity to join in and play the game!
Haydon Spenceley
This article was originally published in The Church Times, July 5th 2012
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Please stop Pretending I’m Not Human
Please Stop Pretending I’m Not Human
“Good morning sir. May the Lord God grant you the healing that you need. Amen”
I had an interaction this morning, of which this was the sum total. As I was pushing along towards Abington Street in Northampton, a man walked towards me, said those words, hit me on the shoulder and carried on walking. He did not look back. I know. I checked.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to me in my life (I figure I must need an awful lot of healing, but then don’t we all), but today, in the light of a lot of things that have happened in the last couple of years, the camel’s back has been broken by the straw. And so, unusually for me, I’m posting a blog on Facebook, to make a plea:
Please, stop pretending I’m not human.
There, I said it. I have Cerebral Palsy, it is a neurological condition, through which I have decreased mobility, increased spasticity (I have a great deal of spasticity, I’m sure you’ll all agree) and use a manual wheelchair to get around. As any of you who know my story will be aware, I am, in fact, very fortunate to have the level of ability, lifestyle, prospects, loving friends and family and everything else that I do have. I could easily, very easily indeed, be dead by now.
So what’s the problem? Well, it turns out that, in spite of the fact that the government and welfare system are pressing in on disabled people to a greater extent than ever in recent times, this isn’t the problem. It also turns out that, in spite of the fact that it is still demonstrably harder for disabled people to get jobs, build relationships and find, be accepted in to and maintain and develop community than it is for virtually any people group in our society, this isn’t really the problem either. It also turns out that, in spite of this being the easy answer to any question or desire to apportion blame, God isn’t the problem either and, wonder of great wonders, neither am I.
No, in actual fact, to my increasing disappointment, it turns out that Christians are the problem.
Now, I am a Christian. I should be, I’m training to be a minister (I know, ridiculous, let’s talk about that another time shall we). I also, those evangelicals amongst you will surely be pleased to know, believe that God is living, present, active, intimately interested, in love and involved in the lives of His people, and that He is engaged in the healing, reconciliation and redemption of the world, and the people, He made for Himself, as He delights in us, so that we might delight in Him. God heals. Now, today. I’m living proof of it. I know many of you are too.
But I’ve reached a point where I’m not sure I can put up with the dehumanising theology that many of us have foisted upon us by weak, possibly even false teaching. We all have a need. That need is Jesus. No less, but no more either. Jesus, I believe, fulfills every need that any of us has, or will ever have. More than that, He is who we were made for. We don’t really have any other purpose other than to love Him, accept love from Him, love ourselves and love others. Nowhere, not anywhere, in all of Scripture, the experience of humanity, or just common sense, does it say, anywhere, that we will not have troubles in this life. In fact, when the Spirit is sent to be our friend, guide and counselor at Pentecost, isn’t it actually because we WILL have problems in this life, whether they be being persecuted, sickness, relational difficulties, or even just living in a Conservative-led country. I’ve been thinking, and saying for quite a while now, that actually, it is a misunderstanding of God and His purposes for us as people, to think that difficulty shouldn’t be part of our daily life. It should. It’s crucial. It leads me to lean on Jesus in humility. It causes me to realise I can’t do life on my own, and even if I could give it a go for a while, I don’t want to, because it’s a pointless waste of energy and time. The healing that I need, I am more and more convinced, is a healing of the heart, of my mind, of my perspective. I long to have a right sense of my own identity and importance, and to respect and honour God, as I seek to respect and honour others.
So, yes, I do need healing. As someone said to me recently, Jesus willingly allowed himself to be demeaned, slandered, hurt, criticised, insulted, even killed and, even as He (humanly)must have been frustrated and crushed in His disappointment, prayed “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” The gentlemen with whom I had my brief encounter has no idea what he has done or continues to do to me. He probably thinks he’s doing a good thing, following a teaching, being obedient to God. He has no idea of the hurt and distress, questioning, and anger his actions caused me. I too, have no idea what led him to say what he said. I do know that, whether he meant for my physical body to be healed or not (I strongly suspect he did, but want to give him the benefit of any doubt) there’s much in me that would benefit from being different or changed: character, temperament, behaviour, language, sense of humour (!) and so on. I need to be humble and keep coming back to God with those things and parts of my life.
At the same time, I need you, friends, brothers and sisters, to help me out. We’re all people. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and as I said above, I personally believe we all have a need. We all have the same need, whether our bodies are good, bad or indifferent. It remains the same whether you are a PhD toting MENSA member, or whatever the opposite of that is. It remains the same whether you have a Masters (or even an MTh!!!) in Theology, or the extent of your theological education and knowledge is thinking “this life is a bit crap, there must be more than this.” Whoever you are and whatever you’re doing with your life, we’re called to life, to love, to hope, and to freedom, because of the God-man Jesus Christ. We need to come to him and ask, and receive, the life that he offers to us, afresh everyday. I honestly, truly believe, and not just because of pigheadedness or unwillingness to change, that to limit the view we have of what God wants to do with us to some kind of higher state of humanity where all the guys end up like George Clooney in his mid ER period, and all the ladies can strut their stuff like Angelina Jolie, but that in both cases we’re also much more pious and Biblically literate, is just hogwash. But so many of our Churches look like they are aiming for this. Why is that?
Jesus, when he was resurrected, was recognisable by his wounds. They weren’t shameful, they were signs of victory, of a war won once and for all. I’m proud of my weaknesses, the physical ones, and the ones you can’t see. I rejoice in them, because they show me that I am real, I am alive, that I have experienced life, the way God intends me to experience it, warts and all.
So yes, I do need healing. So do you. But I don’t need healing in the way you think I do. Nor do you, my friend, necessarily need healing in the obvious ways that I can see. We need to relate to ourselves, to God, to one another, and come in humility to the grateful place of receiving whatever God has for us because, and I am certain of this, it’ll be much better than any plan I can come up with for how I’m going to make my life better.
Please stop pretending I’m not human. To be human is an enormous, wonderful privilege and blessing, as well as a responsibility. It is to identify with God. God loved humans so much, He became one and came and lived among us, just so we could have a common experience and share in the wonder of it together. The fact that I am alive and breathing today is fantastic in itself. Jesus breathed in the same way that you and I do. He struggled in the same way that you and I do. He felt pain, loss, joy, elation, sorrow, excitement, the whole nine yards. He was also probably quite short, and not much to look at (check the gospels) and virtually everyone he ever spoke to misunderstood what he was doing, what he was about, and what the outcome of it all would be. He could have done anything he wanted to, but he loved humans so much, he let them make mistake after mistake after mistake in how they dealt with him, just so that they, and we, might have our own opportunity to see him as he really is, and respond to him. I don’t need to walk to be human. You don’t need to be a brainbox, or musical, or have people validate you by buying your CD, your book or anything else. We could all do with understanding the stupendous blessing and opportunity we have and pray that the whole world, not just those that look “broken” or “sick” might be healed, so that we can all enjoy it together.
Even as I finish this, I’m a bit nervous to post it. Some of you are Christians. A lot of you aren’t, and may think this is all a bit silly, or ill-advised, or downright dangerous. I’m also a bit nervous because my theology isn’t all neat and smooth-edged. I’m probably not exegeting correctly in parts. My hermeneutics are very suspicious, and I’m being entirely postmodern in a) thinking that anyone should give a monkeys (I nearly wrote something else there) about this, or b) that my opinion matters. But even so, this is honestly how I feel today, and I’m fed up of feeling like this.
As I’ve been writing and thinking about this, I’ve been really struck by a song from the new album from The Ember Days, Face in the Dark. The chorus says,
You healed the lepers when they called your name
You healed the broken
Will you heal me?
Now, Janell and Jason are acquaintances of mine. Their band is awesome, and I have a pretty good idea about the circumstances which led to this song, which give a huge amount of added poignancy to these words, which would otherwise seem pretty simple. Later, Janell sings
Take what’s broken
Heal the pain
Take my heart
Have your way
What’s broken in me? Is it my lack of ability to walk? I don’t think so (you might have guessed that by now).
So let’s do a deal ok? Next time you walk past me in the street, if you feel led to pray for me to be healed, think again. If you still feel the need to pray for me to be healed, be ready for me to do the same to you, and be aware that I’m asking for a lot more than just to be able to walk when I pray for my own healing, and for yours. New life, transformation of character, personality, behaviour, situation. Let’s go for that instead shall we. I think God’s a lot more bothered about that. He’s already raised the dead, so re-instating my dead brain cells probably isn’t that big a deal anyway. What He really wants is for both you and I to understand more of who he is, who we are, and the wonder of what life together, and with him looks like. You can’t do that while you’re walking away from me in the opposite direction.
Walking’s for losers anyway.