My talk on Sunday was based on this (click on title) magnificent painting by Paul Martin, called The Restorer, which he has loaned to St Luke’s ‘until we get tired of it’ – hmmm, don’t hold you’re breath Paul! 

Icons of Harvey Milk and Damien the Leper by Robert Lentz, mentioned in the podcast talk. Click title to view images.

It’s been said that ‘The Church is the Fifth Gospel’ and in our services we sometimes include an extra Gospel reading – from the Gospel of this Church. On Sunday March 4th we heard The Gospel According To Adrian,  who thought he was going to become a priest. But was wrong.

‘When I was young I was sure I was going to be a priest. In fact in my teenage years I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful to do with my life.

That might seem a little odd when you learn I’m from a poor, working class family in Newcastle. My mates only ever thought of football. My brother, for example, he was one of the lads but I was never one of the lads. I was an avid reader and our school had a fantastic library which I just read my way through. I especially loved poetry and my favourite Aunt, Nellie, introduced me to opera and classical music. A family friend even took me to the ballet.

I knew there was something different about me to everyone else in the family. I had this feeling that I would have to get out and get away.

With my mother being a devout Catholic, I also really loved church and the drama of serving as an altar boy. Someone mentioned I might like to visit this Catholic Fayre in Newcastle where all the monasteries and religious orders were getting together. That’s where I came across the Passionists, who had this wonderful junior seminary, Blythe Hall, 120 miles away in Ormskirk. The photographs of this beautiful C16th mansion in its own grounds, were so unbelievable compared to where we lived that it seemed almost too good to be true that a boy could go there and be trained as a priest.

My mother was over the moon when I passed the exams. I was her favourite and there was nothing she could want more than for me to become a priest. My dad was less keen. He’d always been suspicious of me. Why was I always in a book? Why did I want to go to the ballet ? Given this was the 1950’s and I was so fond of the arts, I think he’d earmarked me as a homosexual. What else would you think in those days ? I’m sure he was glad to see the back of me.

For six wonderful years I was taught by these bright, university-educated Passionists. I was the sacristan, I did all the flowers, I was in the choir, I loved the gardening, the football, the cricket. I loved the books and I loved all the other boys. Pete Postlethwaite was one of my friends, plucked, like me, from working class obscurity. The two of us were in all the plays together. The heroic Father Aidan, our English Master, used to write a brilliant Christmas pantomime and one year we were the ugly sisters. In fact I think I played women the entire time I was there.

I was very devout. I was in church every morning and I loved Holy Week because there were so many services. We all knew we were going to be priests and I saw a fantastic life ahead of me full of gardening and reading in the week with a bit of singing and doing communion on Sundays. Perhaps some stamp-collecting on the side. That’s how I thought of it.

But as I got older, a problem emerged. Girls. They started to look more and more attractive and I began to doubt that I could live a celibate life. It was after leaving Blythe Hall, on the night before I was due to start seminary and train as a priest, that everything changed. I was staying in a Worcestershire village with Auntie Nell. I was serving in the village petrol station that they ran as the late summer sun was falling over the hills, when walking down the road towards me came the most extraordinary vision. Jenny Proctor was a peroxide blonde in a polka dot dress and petticoat. Without thinking twice I abandoned the petrol pump and walked with her, right up to the top of Snows Hill where the view took in seventeen counties. We lay down, side by side, on the grass and talked all evening until the stars were twinkling in the dark sky above us.

I never laid a hand on her but when I got back to Nell’s I knew I wasn’t going to seminary the next day. I knew I wasn’t going to be a priest. Nell insisted I rang my mother who told me not to bother coming home again.

But discovering the priesthood wasn’t for me started me on the path to discovering what was. I had a job with Dunlop and when I was transferred south I got in to AmDram and then, another lucky break, a part in Treasure Island at Birmingham Rep, while I was in my first year at Drama School. After that you couldn’t stop me. I learned everything I could about theatre and I could do a lot of things quite well: I could sing, I could dance, I could act. I could do Shakespeare or comedy. Before I’d stopped to catch my breath I was in London, it was the swinging 60’s and I was starring in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at The Ambassadors in the West End.

Being an actor and then director in London in the sixties and seventies wasn’t really compatible with churchgoing. I fell by the wayside as the Catholics would say. I didn’t go to confession because the priest would tell me to stop doing so much partying… but I couldn’t. I stopped going to church instead. Not that I was closed down spiritually, not even in my wildest days. I was active in politics, in demos, campaigning – maybe social justice was how my faith was expressed then. The trouble with being a Catholic is that you can stop going to Church, but you can never really stop being Catholic. Sometimes I’d just drop into a church and sit there. I was always so moved by these places.

By my mid-forties I was having a ball, living in my Highgate flat, earning good money, directing documentaries and commercials. There were any number of girlfriends but never that special person. I was sometimes a little sad thinking I’d never met the one special person, that the time for having a family had passed. But then I had to pitch a script to this very attractive, high-powered, woman running her own company. She was quite different to the other women I’d been drawn to – not least because she wouldn’t let me get my own way. Twenty five years later I still can’t get my own way with Bridg and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She changed my life again and gave me two wonderful children, the family I never thought I’d have.

The strange thing is that for nine years we lived three minutes from St Luke’s without ever going in but when Ellie and Luke came along there was a school we wanted which insisted on a religious connection. They didn’t care what kind so we thought maybe even that church up the road might do. Malcolm Doney was preaching on our first morning and I remember after the Bible reading he said, ‘Well that doesn’t make any sense does it?’ That was it for me. This was my kind of church, where people can admit that sometimes even the Bible seems odd. The people were so friendly too. We never left. That was ten years ago.

Finding St Luke’s was like coming home, like completing an arc in my life, coming back to Church after all that time. But this time I’d found a community where I could be more honest about faith, where religion wasn’t about guilt but more about supporting each other, not about heavy doctrines but about friendship. I’d always loved the singing and drama of church but less so the catechism but here you don’t have to worry if you have all the right beliefs. It’s helped me find faith in a new way and it’s hard to imagine how that might have happened anywhere else.

People always tell me I’ve been lucky in my life, that I’ve had a lot of really good breaks and it’s true but I’d rather use the word blessing. Even though I wasn’t cut out for the priesthood, I’ve always felt someone was clearing a path for me through life, I’ve always felt blessed, that maybe God has travelled with me, even when I wasn’t aware of it.’

More like this in The Gospel According to Everyone.

Following our Lent tradition, we are planning to create a series of stations that will be the basis for our Good Friday devotion – made by members of the community. Our theme during Lent and Holy Week is ‘Christ in the Margins’, so stations will represent in some fashion the ways in which Christ identifies with and is present in the poor and the destitute, the homeless, the abused, people discriminated against – those excluded or marginalised on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, disability, disfigurement, religion etc.

If you’re interested in creating a station – in any form or medium – please contact Dave, and if you’d like to bounce around your ideas and maybe get a bit of inspiration or help, please contact Meg Wroe. You don’t need to be an artist, and you don’t necessarily need to make a station on your own – group work is encouraged.

A Service of Ashing – Wednesday 8pm

It’s been said that ‘The Church is the Fifth Gospel’ and in our services we sometimes include an extra Gospel reading – from the Gospel of this Church.  On Sunday Feb 4th we heard The Gospel According To James, who’s been sleeping in St Luke’s on Saturdays this Winter, thanks to the Islington Churches Night Shelter Project.

‘It can be deadly living rough. You’re not safe anywhere. Anyone can come and kick you or stab you. People can be on drink or drugs, they can be out of control. No-one is safe. That’s my opinion.

The Churches Nightshelter is very helpful, in fact churches are generally good if you’re homeless. If I wasn’t in the Shelter tonight I’d probably be sleeping out in some church grounds or somewhere where it’s a bit warm, an underground car park or a squat in a house if I could get into one.

It’s hard sleeping out, the winter cold is the worst of it. Even in my sleeping bag I might sleep four hours at the most. Worst of all is getting your head down in a nice sleep, then being woken up by the police and told to move on.

I look back on me life sometimes and think it went wrong somewhere. If I could turn the clock back, I wouldn’t be in the situation I am. I’m from the North East originally, born in Bishop Auckland. I didn’t know me mam really, she died young. She was 34. I was 7, me brother 10. Me dad raised us, he was a miner and a gravedigger but he gave up work to look after us.

At school I was good at athletics, beating boys who were older than me. I was a medium-distance runner, 10,000 metres, 15,000 metres but I couldn’t get into PE college because I didn’t pass me history. I wrote a letter off to Dennis Smith Stables in Bishop Auckland to try and become a jockey and I was apprenticed for two years. I’d be getting up at five, mucking the stables out, getting ready for riding out, going to race meetings. It was hard work for £19 a week. I gave me Dad £9 or £10 and spent a lot of what was left on alcohol. You could get four pints for a pound in those days.

I didn’t make the grade as a jockey and I came to London looking for work. Me first job was in a Gentlemans Club, Boodles, on St James’ Street, near the Ritz, it’s still there today.
The chef said, ‘You’re a pretty good worker there James.’
‘I said, ‘I try me hardest chef.’
He offered me a job and I was there about five years: kitchen porter, helping the chefs prepare the food, doing the wash-up, mopping the floor, stock-taking. It was hard work, nine in the morning till nine at night, so no socialising till the weekend but I loved it. I was taking home £200 a week, living in a hostel in Dean Street.

The eighties was brilliant, I’d turn back the clock to them anytime.
Later I was a security guard in Fitzroy Square, then at Liverpool Street Station. But, as I say, the alcohol got to us. Vodka, Southern Comfort, vodka, lager as well, strong lager. I don’t know how much I drank, too much. It was getting out of control. After work I would head to an off-license for some cans and go back to the hostel. I started missing shifts at the security place, they started getting cross. I lost the job.

In 1992 I was diagnosed with epilepsy and I’ve not been able to work since. I had a flat in Waterloo, but it was on the ninth floor so when the lifts weren’t working it was a bit hectic. I couldn’t manage the climb and I left.

I lived with a girlfriend for some years but when we split up she kicked me out. I’ve been sofa-surfing ever since.

Then something happened.

It was about eight year ago.

I was feeling really hopeless one night, really down, I felt like I was going to kill meself, felt really washed up, thought it was time to go… but something happened which has changed me life.

I was actually drunk, out of me head. It was somewhere in Camden, a car park – to this day I’m not sure where – and I just went on me hands and knees and asked God for help.

I said, ‘Please help me, I need help desperately, get me out of this mess I’m in. Please.’

There was no booming voices, no opening of the heavens, no choirs of angels but something happened to me. I had a feeling, something inside me was trying to get out and tell me something.

It was like me soul was trying to get out and say, ‘You’re a naughty boy James – help yourself ‘cus people will not help you, you’ve got to help yourself.’

I believe that was God.

That experience made me really believe I was going to change me life around and it has changed me life.

I’ve not done drugs or had a drink since, I’m teetotal now.

The paranoia, the drugs and beer that was poison to my body have all gone.

I used to have rages, shouting, punching the wall, whatever, I stopped all that.

I’ll never forget that night. I went home, got the Bible out and read Psalm 13.

‘How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long…. But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.’

I prayed for help in that car park that night and I got help. It has given me strength and a sense of purpose.

I’ve made some good friends on the Churches Nightshelter. We’re all in the same boat, everyone has a problem but everyone has a different problem. I’m 51 now so I’ve a lot more experience of being homeless than others living rough and I say to people, ‘You have to help yourself, no one else can.’

I do wonder why I’m still living rough, living in hostels, on the streets. It’s because of relationship breakdown isn’t it? And finance and drink. There’s a few things…

I’m still asking for help, I’m still homeless. Sometimes it’s tiring, exhausting, and sometimes I get cross with God, I say: ‘It hasn’t gone my way today, why don’t you help me?’

But I believe I will get my own place and start again. That slowly my life is getting back on track, and things are changing for the better. I read my Bible and say my prayers and I feel as though God is helping me, that it’s like he’s speaking to me and he’s got a twinkle in his little eye…’

More like this in The Gospel According to Everyone.

Historically, All Souls is the season in the church calendar when Christians give thanks for their departed loved ones. Once again, we will be holding an All Souls memorial service this Sunday 30th October at 4pm. It gives the opportunity to read out the names of the deceased and to light candles in their memory. If you plan to attend and would like any names read out, please contact Pat with names by emailing patriciatomlinson@mac.com before Sunday.

Come to the fourth ever Saint Luke’s Speakeasy…

A social evening for friends, family & neighbours, with a cabaret & live band, singalong, Speak-easy listening music & drinks available.

8pm – 11.30 pm Friday 14^th October 2011

Bring a joke to tell (optional) Age 16+ (not optional)

£3 donation on the door (£2 concessions)