Southwark Cathedrals

In 2012, the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy wrote A Human Haunt,

a poem about London's Southwark Cathedral.

"St Mary Overie, St Saviour, Southwark,

over the river, a human haunt in stone,

thousand years here, the sweet Thames well recalls."

The poem is a reflection on the cathedral

and the generations who have filled its pews.

"Who came?" the poet asks.

"Nuns, brothers, in good faith, saints, poets."

She writes of Chaucer and Shakespeare,

both associated with this stretch of the river.

And finally, players, publicans,

paupers, politicians, princes,

all to this same persistent, changing space

between fire and water, theatre and marketplace.

Morning. And a very warm welcome to Southwark Cathedral in so many ways.

A big welcome especially if you're visiting us this morning.

And to a group of students from Italy at the back over there, it's lovely to see you.

-The Lord be with you.

-ALL: And also with you.

-Lift up your hearts.

-ALL: We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

Christians have worshipped on the site of Southwark Cathedral

for nearly 1,500 years.

The current building dates from the 13th century

and has welcomed generation upon generation,

a persistent changing space serving a persistent changing community.

Jesus answers the question, "Who is my neighbour?" like this.

You make another person your neighbour

by treating him or her as such.

In reaching out to a person who is separated from you

by creed or class or race,

embracing that person, caring for them,

you make that person your neighbour.

Southwark Cathedral is a busy, thriving cathedral

in the heart of a modern and diverse city.

In July 2013, I spent a week filming at the cathedral,

seeing how this human haunt in stone

attempts to reconcile persistence with change.

How it tries to remain relevant to the community that it serves.

Peace be with you. Peace be with you.

So it's a Monday morning.

And this morning's services will be in the Harvard Chapel.

We like to use every altar in the cathedral.

-During the week?

-During the week.

-Right.

This is the St Andrew's Chapel.

And it has a particular dedication to praying for those people

suffering with HIV/AIDS.

This is my favourite part of the day.

Opening the cathedral,

making it available for people.

Southwark Cathedral sits at the southern end of London Bridge,

the oldest crossing point of the Thames into the City.

It's an area of London that is transforming fast.

Regeneration, renovation,

restoration. New buildings now dwarf the old.

The cathedral is one of the few stable landmarks in this community,

engaging with all its neighbours, new and old.

Multinationals, local businesses, residents,

a process it sees as fundamental to fulfilling its mission.

Welcome, and thank you for coming along today.

If I can find my blippy thing.

Um, I'm Andrew Nunn.

I'm the Dean here at the cathedral,

and we have a vocation to work alongside community

in sort of delivering the kind of support that people need

in order to live well here.

And when we were thinking about social mission

we suddenly realised

that we have an un-utilised resource

within the parish, and that's All Hallows Church.

It looks like a rural idyll.

And in some ways it's as close as you can get to rural idyll in SE1.

And that's why it's particularly important that we make

the most of the opportunities that All Hallows presents.

So this is our vision for All Hallows.

It's within a larger vision, as I say, of development,

but also of where the cathedral is going in the next period of our life

in terms of what we're calling Living God.

How do we live well within the city where we are embedded?

Southwark Cathedral is Mother Church to its diocese.

Some 300 parishes, two-and-a-half million people.

But the cathedral is also a parish church in its own right,

serving its own immediate neighbourhood.

Within that parish it has two other churches.

St Hugh's in Bermondsey, and All Hallows,

partially flattened by the Luftwaffe

and not used for worship since the 1970s.

-This is what you were talking about at the meeting?

-It is. This is All Hallows Church.

And where we're actually standing is the South Aisle of the church.

-But that is the North Aisle there?

-If you just come up here,

you see this was an entrance to something within the church.

But that was within the church.

So you want it to return to church function?

Yes, but not in the way that it was before.

So not just sort of clearing out and then rebuilding it.

I want, at the heart of what happens here,

it to be a place where, um...

..where people can go and worship. So a chapel within it.

Obviously, everybody who wants to come to church could get into the cathedral, I know that.

-You've got a big cathedral.

-A big cathedral.

-Yes.

-But although it's a big cathedral

you can't necessarily do all the things you'd want to do,

particular in terms of social mission. All those rooms we've got,

-we're using for, basically, income generation.

-Right.

So if we had a mothers and toddlers group, for instance,

or a fathers and toddlers group,

that would take away income potential.

But this gives us loads more opportunities,

and the opportunities for doing the sorts of things like Messy Church.

-Messy Church?

-Messy Church is one of these new, fresh expressions

of Church that has been encouraged, rightly so,

within the Church of England and the Methodist Church.

So different ways of worship for different groups of people.

Messy Church is for working with younger children.

Now if a cathedral does Messy Church, it's a disaster. Do you know what I mean?

-Because you're not very good at it?

-We're not very good at it cos we do different kind of church.

And I just want us to be able to offer, in the cathedral,

at St Hugh's, here, different sorts of things, as appropriate.

-Good morning. Welcome to the cathedral.

-Thank you.

-Is it your fist time visit?

-We're just lighting a candle, thank you.

OK.

In this historic church,

which is both a parish church and a continually used House of Prayer,

it is our custom to have a very short period of prayer every hour,

starting with the Lord's Prayer.

"Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be Thy name..."

So we've got a memorial here to William Shakespeare.

Did he ever worship here? We're not too sure.

Certainly the theatres in the first Elizabethan period

were on this side. They were driven out of the city onto this side,

so we had the Hope, the Rose, the Swan, and then the Globe Theatre.

Welcome to the Education Centre. My name is Alex Carlton.

My role is to welcome the, well, 9,000 last year, schoolchildren

through our doors.

This is the coat that's worn by bishops.

The is the Bishop of Croydon's coat.

There are certain, or quite a lot of people who resent the fact

that the clergy are all dressed up

in their fancy clothes, as some of them will call it,

but, I don't know, it's knowing that there are certain things

that are stable.

Life changes so very quickly,

particularly these days.

But, no, it's a good thing to have the churches round the place

that people can go to, particularly cathedrals,

and, er, see that

there's a peaceful area where they can hide,

or sit and think,

and then go out into the mad world again and cope with life.

I'm sure of that.

Southwark Cathedral is the oldest surviving cathedral building

in London. Along the Thames, to its west, is Bankside,

once home to some of the city's oldest industries. Docks, tanneries,

breweries. It's now a mixture of playground and business park.

Tate Modern inhabits the old Bankside Power Station

next door to Shakespeare's rebuilt Globe Theatre.

Riverside wharfs have become expensive apartments

and prime office space.

Today the cathedral is firmly located in the largely secular world,

serving a community of old and new,

faithful and faithless,

all remembered every morning in the cathedral's prayers.

"Loving God, as we give You thanks for the gift of this new day,

we pray for our own local community

and those who live and work around us here,

for those who find every day a struggle against overwhelming odds,

for them and for ourselves we ask Your blessing this day."

The analysis of the stats that have come out of the census

have been circulated, and I just thought it would be really useful to

bring those to this meeting because,

given everything that we're wanting to do with Living God

and with All Hallows and stuff that's happening at St Hugh's,

as well as in the rest of the parish,

there were some surprising things and some things that, you know,

one could've anticipated from what we know of the parish.

The one that stuck out for me was the 50 percent rise in population,

assuming they've done the mapping properly.

But from 4,800 to 6,000, which bears out what it feels like

in terms of new developments and loft conversions

and new flats going up.

So that, relatively speaking, that's a major demographic increase,

-isn't it?

-It is. It's a kind of... Yeah.

-It does move it onto another sort of level really, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

I think it feels like more people live here.

The neighbourhood planned stuff, all the projections, is that's

going to increase exponentially.

It's going to be four times the current levels within 15 years.

-Much more residential.

-Yeah, much more residential,

and much more packed, much more high-rise.

They're quite likely to pull down some of the lower-rise developments,

like Maiden Lane Estate,

in order to build high-rise stuff, in order to get

better land use out of it.

So some of the nicer council housing and family,

what are they called? Housing Association developments

are likely to disappear.

Does your mission change at all as the area around you is changed?

I think we've needed to become

more acutely aware of some of the issues

that, once upon a time,

might not have been the general preserve of the Church.

I mean the highly complex areas of planning and development that go on,

the deals that get done between

multi-million pound developers and the council.

You know, there are local groups and resident's group,

local planning groups, trying to make sure that those processes

remain both democratic but also remain, um, er,

good for the local people. So we're not prepared simply to stand by

and watch the area ethnically cleansed of its poor people.

We want to try and make a noise about that and to try to make it clear that

that's neither right, nor is it good for the community in the long run.

I don't think the forum will be lobbying planning,

the Forum will be just making sure that the plan is being followed.

What do you see the Neighbourhood Forum's role

in the earlier stages of planning applications?

Well, the planners deal with, will be dealing with the neighbourhood planners

-at planning the document.

-Yes.

It will be up to them to interpret that document

against every development that comes forward.

A lot of the better Bankside members are small businesses,

and they're as threatened by some of the new development

and some of the knock-on effect of new development

as our residents sometimes.

I want to say, if I'm going to be involved with it,

we're going to be putting pressure on you to show the residents

who are appointed to the Forum

-are appointed in a democratic and accountable way.

-Right.

-To somebody.

-Yes, OK.

-Well...

-Because that -

-What I'd say is that anybody can come.

-Quite.

-So that's democratic.

-That's pretty democratic, isn't it?

-No, that's just juggled.

-THEY LAUGH

-Not accountable to anybody on that basis. They can do what they like.

SIREN IN DISTANCE

Southwark Cathedral's reputation is as a radical cathedral,

actively engaged in helping the poor and more deprived areas

of the community that it serves.

In this vein, ten years ago, the cathedral took on responsibility

for another church in its parish. St Hugh's.

St Hugh's had started life as a Victorian mission,

founded by Charterhouse public school to support the poor of Bermondsey.

In July 2013, it was being rebuilt under the auspices of the cathedral.

This is Vintry Court, as it's going to be called.

With social housing on the first floor up there,

and private on the top, with some penthouse developments on the top,

which pays for the rest of it.

The entrance will be just across here,

where it says "pedestrian access",

and that goes straight into a fairly good-sized community space.

So that we hope that will be people like...

It will feel like a neutral space.

And we'll have coffee tables and sofas and things.

There's a kitchen there. That'll be where the community activities happen.

Then there are glazed double doors into the church area,

which will be modern and simple and clean - and we hope very beautiful.

-And...

-I think it's Charterhouse School that had bought it.

Charterhouse School was one of, there are six or seven mission settlements, they were called,

at the end of the 19th century, where Oxford and Cambridge colleges and English public schools

felt they needed to do something for the people in the East End,

so they would invite local children from here to go and watch them

play cricket on the green lawns of Charterhouse,

and they would come down and run clubs in the winter and in summer,

and teach them how to box and how to do sports

and play football and suchlike.

But that was part of the long tradition,

and people here remember it with great affection.

There are 85-year-olds who met their sweethearts when she was in the sewing club

learning how to hem shirts and he was learning how to box

or to play snooker or whatever it is.

And there are a lot of very happy memories,

and whole generations have been through this place.

And when you're living in a rat-infested slum, as they were

in these housing blocks before they were rebuilt in the Sixties,

then this really would have been both an oasis

and contact with a local priest

who was young and came from a different world,

and could open people's horizons, I think, to the fact that life

could be different for people

and equip them for, you know, greater ambition in the future.

So we're hoping that the cathedral in the north,

and St Hugh's here in the southeast,

and the All Hallows Copperfield Street development

in the southwest of the cathedral parish

will create a really exciting sort of triangulation of

three different kinds of resources

but working together for the local community.

There is even a cross on the side of the building,

in the brickwork up there, just to remind us of what's going on.

It's a very old-fashioned kind of notion of parish ministry, really.

How do you sum it up?

I'm... I suppose I would sum it up by saying that God...

Sorry, this is rather...

That God has a purpose for creation, and the purpose of creation is,

ultimately, the reconciliation of everything

in Heaven and Earth to himself.

So there's kind of a notion of completeness

of all that is currently unfinished or broken or damaged.

And that, I think, is what the New Testament has in mind,

what Jesus has in mind when talking about things like the Kingdom of God.

There's a kind of finishedness that God is working towards.

And when we're in the business of helping to improve

people's quality of life,

when we're in the business of building bridges and mending fences

and bringing people into honest and just relationships with one another,

whether it's got a religious label on it or whether it's in domestic

and personal circumstances, whether it's in marriage preparation

or good neighbourliness within a community,

I think it's all part of that same, bigger project

of bringing everything back

into a sort of coherent and articulated whole.

WHIRRING OVERHEAD

-I'm going to walk with you.

-Are you?

-I don't know how I'll manage it.

-Don't fall over the barrier here.

Cos that would be a disaster.

London's most salubrious address.

The house is a fantastic house to live in.

But when... When we bought it, that was after the war.

And it had been bombed,

firebombed, and it had been rebuilt.

But the road ended where the house stood.

Because the Bankside Power Station was then operating.

So this was... um...

just a dead end, and there was a builder's yard here,

where the Globe Theatre is. And the Jubilee Walkway was opened up,

-and that sort of transformed the whole area.

-That's the Jubilee Walkway along the Thames?

This is the Jubilee Walkway, yes. Where everyone's running.

And cycling.

But it makes for a lovely commute.

And it's nice to wake up looking at St Paul's in the morning.

-The opposition.

-Well, if you look at it that way.

-I'm sure you don't.

-No, course not. I'm too... Too nice for that.

Completely different beasts. Does London need two cathedrals?

It does. I mean, does London need two cathedrals and an abbey?

Yes, it does, because we all perform different functions.

The Abbey is the one dealing with the, sort of State affairs

and the royalty, and St Paul's deals with those huge kind of events

in the life of the nation that wouldn't suit the Abbey.

And I think it enables us to sort of be the cathedral

for south of the river,

but in a kind of more... accessible way, easier way, you know?

That's not depriving at all, you know?

But they do think, I mean over the river there now,

-they'll be getting ready for morning prayer?

-Oh, yes. Yeah.

We all do have that routine.

I mean that's part and parcel of what it means to be a cathedral.

That the prayer,

the Opus Dei,

the work of God, goes on and on and on,

-and has done for generations.

-Yeah.

-And that's the primary duty,

you know, that's why I'm leaving at this time in the morning.

Isn't the river beautiful? I mean, it's just such a...

It's a fantastic resource for this city.

I mean, I just... And it's always different,

that's one of the things I've learnt about living by the river,

that it always looks different, feels different, you know,

-its moods. So...

-Yeah.

In the morning you kind of capture just a bit of that,

what the river's like. And I think, when I get to this point here,

you suddenly realise all of the impact of the developments

around London Bridge, when you just see The Shard there.

Absolutely dominating everything there.

We pray for our mayor, Boris Johnson,

for the leaders of the local borough.

And of all the boroughs that make up this diocese.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of truth, whose wisdom set her table and invited us to eat the bread

and drink the wine of the kingdom,

help us to lay aside all foolishness

and to live and walk in the way of insight,

that we may come with Gregory and McCrina to the eternal feast of heaven,

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

-The Lord be with you.

-And you, sir.

How many this morning, there were two? No, you, the verger.

Well, I counted in so there were three of us, um... and... uh...

-Including the verger and you?

-Including the verger and myself.

So, yeah, there was only one other.

But it's kind of, um... It sort of speaks of faithfulness in a way

to it, because you could, in some circumstances, go out and say,

"Oh, there's not enough people, let's not bother.

Let's go and have a coffee."

You know? And if you're thinking of it in those terms, you know,

-of your audience.

-Yeah.

-And the kind of resources that you put into it,

-it sort of seems a bit...

-Yeah.

-Mad.

But it's not because, I mean, that goes on and on and on and on,

all the time, and because it's not dependent upon

who's going to turn up,

apart from the fact that you need a priest,

but given that that's going to happen, those who can't come

I hope feel sustained by those who can,

and the fact that it sort of goes on,

and goes on with the rumblings of the... of the trains going past.

And then I could hear the sort of start-up noise from the stores,

on the Borough Market, cos they seem to have an increasing amount,

you have to have music along with buying your chorizo sausage or something.

So there was always, I could hear them testing out their sound system.

-I wondered whether... People have ideas about religion.

-Mmm.

That keeps them away from religion.

Yeah, all those people outside, why don't they come in? Well...

Perhaps they feel that it's not for them. They're not worthy,

they're not welcome, this that and the other.

And that's quite difficult because you want, you want... You need walls

in order to create space, in that strange way,

but you want them to be porous. And I think that's the real challenge.

So do you get sort of exhausted by the Church of England's sort of

attitude towards, you know, the women's bishop thing,

gay marriage, these things which tend to sort of dominate the headlines

about the Church.

Does that frustrate you? Because it makes your work here more difficult.

It frustrates me on a load of levels, I mean it does...

A lot of that is what's keeping people outside probably, isn't it?

-Possibly, I don't know.

-Yes, possibly.

I think it doesn't really serve us well.

For instance, the failure of the legislation

to be passed last November on women bishops.

And the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan at that stage,

did, on the following day,

speak about a loss of credibility within the nation.

And I believe that to be true.

Is it important for you that Southwark Cathedral says

what the Church of England says, or it says what the Dean feels,

or the Dean and the rest of his colleagues on Chapter feel?

-There's a...

-You see what I mean?

-I do know exactly what you mean.

-Is that a fair question, I don't know?

-No, it's a very fair question,

because we have tried to live an inclusive way of being the Church,

and to welcome everybody, regardless of who they are,

and because of who they are.

You know? It's not sort of saying, oh, well, we will put up with you

even though you're a woman, even though you're black,

even though you're gay.

We're saying that actually your presence here

makes us more of the community that God has created.

So we want to welcome you for who you are

-and not simply put up with you for you.

-So how do you do that?

How do you become known as this cathedral which welcomes everybody?

Well, I think at various stages we've been pretty outspoken

about some of those issues. So that gave us a bit of a profile of that.

At the moment what we want to do is to live that,

rather than grandstand it all the time.

So rather than be, you know, "The Pink Cathedral" in London,

or something like that, I'd rather be

a place where everybody would find a home,

whatever their sexuality, whatever their ethnic background,

whatever their gender, whatever their age, whatever their...

Wherever they exist within the sort of, the range of wealth of poverty,

or, you know, if it can truly be a community that's broad.

And where people know how to live together

with real quality and understanding and care for one another.

I think that's very powerful.

-Good morning, hello. The first time you come here?

-French.

French. Soyez le bienvenu.

(SPEAKS FRENCH)

Voila.

Thank you very much, gracias.

Thank you, bye-bye, thank you. Adios.

-Have you been doing this for ages?

-Yeah. For... about six years now.

-Six years?

-Yeah.

-Goodness me.

-So... I enjoy it, it is very nice.

How did you get involved in doing this?

Um, I was doing the tour guide in courses,

and I was doing my placement here.

After that, after my placement, they asked me to stay here,

to do voluntary here, with... because I speak different languages,

-to make everybody happy, you know?

-Right.

-So it was very nice, yeah.

It's a different thing, but I enjoy it.

Are you part of the congregation here?

-Um, no, I'm just volunteering here.

-Right. Are you Christian?

-No, I'm Muslim.

-A Muslim, OK, right.

I mean it's a lot of people, they come in here from Arabic country,

from all the world, you know? And as soon as I start talking to them,

they say, "How's come you Muslim and you are working here?"

I say, "Yeah, I'm Muslim but I don't speak in... You know,

everyone respect the other religions,

so I try to make other people happy and I show them what they want here.

And so make sure they enjoy their day on their visit to the cathedral.

-Do you practise your Muslim faith?

-I'm Muslim, I'm fasting now.

-Oh, cos it's Ramadan?

-Yeah, it's Ramadan, I'm fasting.

Yeah, it's very hard but I come here to help my colleague and to help,

-you know?

-Long days to fast in at the moment?

It's a long day, yeah, but with strength

and a love of my religion, I am happy now. Yeah.

TRAINS RATTLE AND SQUEAK

SIREN IN DISTANCE

Hm-hm. Yeah, telling me, asking me if I'm coming down.

You're meant to be deaf, you're not meant to be able to hear that.

SHE LAUGHS

-Thank you, my dearie.

-There we go. A summer treat.

-You're summer treating here every week, then?

-Yes, I am. Yes.

And I've also got these extra volunteers from the cathedral

as back-up for, supposedly, when I'm not here.

Right. This is official cathedral business, is it?

That's right, it's our... We feel, because this unit is in our parish,

we have a, you know, a duty of care to the people who live here.

And I've been coming for about seven years now,

an afternoon a week, and trying to build up social activities

and this sort of social interaction and so on.

-Is it important for the cathedral to have a presence in the community, is that it?

-Yes, yes.

I mean, if we say that a lot of the people who live in the parish are elderly,

-what are we doing for the elderly?

-Yeah.

And this is what we've been doing for the elderly here.

We had requests from the warden about seven or eight years ago,

saying, I've got lots of very depressed and isolated people here,

-can you come and help me?

-Right.

-So that's what it started off doing.

-Ann, are you from here? Cos we know you're from Southwark.

-Yeah.

-Yeah?

Born and bred, Great Dover Street, Tabard Street.

I was confirmed at Southwark Cathedral when I was 17.

-Really?

-Wasn't I? I told you.

-Yes, not that I was there at the time.

I wish... I knew if they have a book and keep things like that.

Well, there must be the register of baptisms. Yes, yes.

-No, but ours was confirmation.

-Oh, confirmation, yes.

-It would be, yes, yes.

-Me and my younger sister.

I can find out from the person who keeps the archives

if there are the records, if we've still got them.

-I was a Charterhouse girl as well.

-What does that mean?

-Charterhouse is...

-A school.

-A charity.

-Here it was run by the Charterhouse School in Godalming.

-Right.

But also the church, St Hugh's Church, which is also...

-Anybody from there used to come to our church, didn't they?

-Yeah.

-They pulled it down last year, or the year before.

-Yes.

-They're rebuilding it now, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-But I was there.

What did the charity do, what did Charterhouse do for you? Did it pay for...?

-They took us for one week's, they'd got that beautiful school at Godalming.

-Yeah.

You know, where all the posh, rich people went,

and one week every year they let us go down there.

Looked after us and give us some food.

They used to teach you ballroom dancing,

they done everything for you.

Make your life, you know, nice.

Did you go into the cathedral at all, or not?

Only if they took us, something like that,

-but...

-So for special events you might go.

-Yeah, go there. Yeah.

-Like confirmation.

-Yeah.

-Did you used to go into the cathedral, Jim?

-Ever?

-Not to the service, no.

Right. HE CLEARS THROAT

I've been in just to look around, you know?

TRAINS RATTLE OVERHEAD

"Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, is now and shall be forever.

Amen."

"Remember your promise of mercy

to Abraham and to his children forever."

Let us pray.

We pray for all those who have come to this cathedral today,

we pray for this Holy place and especially for the meeting of

the Chapter this evening.

We give thanks for the privilege of serving You here

and worshipping in this Holy place.

Um, I'm actually locking the churchyard now. Sorry, thank you.

I'm about to close the churchyard now.

OK, thanks.

So we're not happy about the bird,

"holy matrimony" is a better wording.

But it seems like the general feel is that it's a nice window.

Thank you very much for that. Right, if we go on to item 13, Living God.

You remember we, um... we talked about

the various stages we'd gone through as a clergy team.

Um... And then, beyond that,

looking at where we wanted to be going in the next five years,

really. And how we would describe that to the congregation,

in theological terms,

but also in terms that will embrace

every part of the life of the cathedral.

Bruce, do you want to sort of tell us where

you think we've got to in all of that.

I hope you've all received and read

a kind of summary paper

that went round to a Chapter meeting, to Chapter members,

ten days, a fortnight ago

which just sets the thing out for the whole year,

in very broad terms.

It explains the first term is about

inviting as many members of the cathedral congregation as possible

to a kind of, I don't want to call it a brainstorming session,

but to ask some very fundamental, contemporary questions about

how do you talk about God today? Can you talk about God today?

And the interesting question is, what are we actually talking about

when we talk about God?

Let us pray.

Underpinning everything at Southwark Cathedral is theology,

the study of God. In the Sixties, the cathedral was a driving force

behind a liberal theological movement,

South Bank Religion, that argued for a rethinking of God

as that which is at the heart of people

rather than simply of being out there.

Today, Living God is the name given by the cathedral

to its latest initiative,

to re-examine the fundamental question of faith,

what is meant by God?

It's a question the cathedral, as a community, wants to ask of itself.

But it's also the question it wants to get out into the neighbourhood,

into the minds of those who stream across London Bridge on their way to work each day.

Into the minds of everyone in their dioceses.

# Keep me travelling along with you

# Give me courage when the world is tough

# Keep me loving when the world is rough

# Live and sing in all I do

# Keep me travelling along with you

# And it's from the old I travel to the new

# Keep me travelling along with you! #

On Thursdays of this term, I know it's been an exciting end of term,

but if you can think back, on Thursdays of this term

we've been thinking about ways of keeping fit, spiritually.

Remember? You know how to keep fit physically, with exercise,

how to keep fit when you're playing football and other things.

Keeping fit spiritually is important too.

So click, please, let's have our little reminder

of what we've done this term.

Talking about God, I showed you some pictures about the way that people

have thought about God, and how God is really interesting to talk about,

and to argue about, and we've all got different ideas about God.

If you're able to get into those conversations, to really think and talk about God,

it helps to keep your faith fit and alert.

It makes you interested in the big questions and to ask the questions

that haven't occurred to you before. Then there was one more.

At the Chapter meeting last night you said something about

how it wasn't really possible to, or was it possible, to have a conversation about God these days.

-I wonder what you meant.

-I think, until relatively recently,

there's been a kind of conventional vocabulary

that people have used to talk about God or not God.

When people have said, I do believe in God, or I don't believe in God,

maybe they've been talking about approximately the same thing.

I think that vocabulary, that common vocabulary has disappeared now.

And I think, given the philosophical and metaphysical complexities

of talking about God, it's a really important question

-because we can't take anything for granted, and as I...

-Yes.

Well, yeah, and people have got such funny ideas.

I mean they've got a very clear idea of the God they don't believe in.

And they've rejected an image of God which is often a caricature

of the God that people of faith actually do believe in,

and many people are, you know, there are the secular fundamentalists,

like Richard Dawkins, who was still bashing a Mediaeval notion of God

that really most thoughtful Christian believers

haven't believed in for centuries.

So does that mean, at the school, for example, this morning,

you can't say to the children, "Does God love you?"

Cos that seems quite an old-fashioned way of talking about God.

-It seems quite anthropomorphic.

-Does it?

Um... Well, I'll talk to you about that some other time.

No, not at all, because God is a "you", not an "it",

in terms of Christian theology. God is someone with whom we relate,

God is not the background radiation noise in, you know, the cosmos.

This is an active presence with whom I have a relationship.

Together we have a relationship.

So I think... OK, I don't think God has hands and eyes

and nostrils and ears and stuff,

but I think it's still appropriate to talk about some of

those qualities. I mean, the language of God hearing

or God speaking or God prompting or God loving,

I think as long as we know we're using language

in a pumped up kind of way, I think that still works.

I should point out it's coming up to half-past 12.

And at half-past 12, in the Harvard Chapel,

we have a brief service of prayer

that's followed at quarter-to by Midday Eucharist,

when you can receive Communion.

The body of Christ.

The body of Christ.

The body of Christ.

So good afternoon and welcome to our summer Day Chaplains' Meeting.

Chris mentioned vulnerable people.

As you'll know, on Monday this week the new welfare benefits cuts took effect,

so there are now people in this area who, a month ago, were coping,

and this month won't be coping.

And whether it's about whether they're having to leave their home,

whether their jobs are threatened, whether they're not able to feed their children,

you might just pick up a slightly different range of issues

that people need to talk about when you come in.

-So just please be aware of that.

-Is there a local food bank, Bruce?

If we get asked, this is Day Chaplains,

is there a local food bank, or is there someone we can,

or they can't feed the children, is there some, like, resource we can give them?

I think there's one at Brixton, there's one at Peckham.

But they would expect their so-called clients to be referred

by another organisation.

So you cannot arrive there on the doorstep, saying, I want something.

-You've got to live in that area.

-It's got to be referred by another agency.

Unfortunately, when Peter John, the leader of the council,

came to a meeting here a few months ago,

he was predicting, in his own colourful phrase, he said,

"We'll be returning to near Victorian levels of street poverty

as a result of the current government's benefit reforms."

So I'm afraid we've going to see a lot more of that.

But stay in role,

you're not here to...

..to repair the Government's stupidities or mistakes or policies.

You're here to be a pastor of the spiritual resource

for people who need to talk about their life.

You can't feed them, you can't house them, you'll be left,

as we've often told you before,

you'll be left with a sense of enormous dissatisfaction

at the limits of what we can do for people.

But that's, you know, part of what goes with the territory.

Think of what God must feel like.

I'm just going to turn the service back. Thank you.

"Glory to the Father, and to the Son,

and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever,

Amen."

"You have filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty."

Let us pray.

SEAGULLS CALL

(You're not emailing, are you?)

-(Are you emailing?)

-No, I tweet a prayer

from my stall, so I've committed to doing it, so when I get in

I'll look at what the Psalms are and then I'll just write a short prayer

with the characters and the tweet.

(Do you do that every day?)

-Sorry?

-Every day?

Yeah.

If you follow me, you'll see it.

So what's today's? What have you written today?

Well,

the part of the Psalm I chose was from 119.

"O, give me life according to Your word." And I said, "Lord, You promise us life through Your word,

bless us today in all we will do."

It's pretty basic, but then I've got 900 and odd followers who...

It's just a way of sharing morning prayer with a wider congregation.

I wasn't emailing.

The very thought.

You're not checking Facebook?

HE LAUGHS

We always keep one back just in case.

-What have you got here?

-These are, um, Asiatic lilies.

It's called yelloween. So a nice bright colour.

And the eremurus, foxtail lily.

And then nice large monstera leaves to give a nice bit of impact.

So did you buy them this morning?

I've been to New Covent Garden Flower Market this morning, yes.

-The hope is, will they be open by Sunday?

-Absolutely, in this heat.

I mean, they give so much joy.

People come in and see the flowers, and say, "Aren't they lovely."

And we get little notes left, "To the flower ladies,

thank you for the lovely flowers." Which is lovely.

Have you been doing this here for years?

I started as a bucket girl,

which is you just have the flowers in the bucket

and you just pass it up to the arranger.

-Right.

-And then, of course, you then think that I could do that,

and then you try and it's not as easy at it looks.

Because you stand back and look and think, "Oh, that needs moving," and you move that.

And then you think, "No, that's not right," so then you move that,

and when you're supposed to have your mind on higher things,

you're thinking, if only I'd put that gladioli over to the left more.

We're very critical of our own work.

Everyone comes in and just says, "Oh, the flowers are lovely."

But you just look at it very critically, we're very critical.

So when these all come out they look fantastic.

That was a conversation as well, cos that seems like

it's going to be some engagement in terms of people talking about life, God, Living God,

in various different ways. It's quite nice, where you get that, again, the doubling up,

so it looks like a brain as well as a cloud.

-Or a baguette.

-Or a baguette.

-With something to fill it.

-THEY LAUGH

-The other imagery of God...

-It's a bit funky.

Yeah, the sort of spark, the sparkle,

the sort of the genes, the God particle,

that sort of language of...

It's basically an exciting process to be a part of,

Living God, trying to engage with the living part of it

as well as the knowing God.

Living it out every day, again, what language the people use

to describe that, and sometimes it can be slightly woolly maybe

because people don't necessarily know how to express it.

Bruce was saying the other day, in the meeting, about this Living God programme

to try and get conversations going about what, presumably, it's about no longer taking for granted

what you all believe, is that right? It's about...

Well, it's allowing people to start in different places.

So with the basic question, when we talk about God,

what are we talking about, what are you talking about.

What do you mean by God?

I mean by God... One of the problems, I think,

when you've... when you're in the business is,

I was going to come out with an immediate sort of phrase,

like "the ground of my being",

because that is what I believe,

but it kind of sounds a bit slick, doesn't it?

God is the ground of my being...

That sounds a bit about you. That sounds like the Andrewness of Andrew.

-That phrase does?

-Yeah.

-That God is...

-You said "the ground of my being".

It's... I mean, God is... is...

..my creator, God is the life I live,

God is an ever-present reality,

sort of, for me but beyond me.

I... God in Jesus is, I mean I think,

at.... at the heart, hopefully, the heart of my life.

Is the cathedral here to try and encourage people to have

these sorts of reflections and depths

and understandings as much as

to provide community centres in forgotten bits of Bermondsey?

Is... Are they competing, kind of...

They shouldn't be competing. The one should flow out of the other.

But if we did nothing else,

providing community centres in "forgotten bits of Bermondsey",

as you've described it, is not the core activity of the Church.

-The core activity of the Church is worshipping God.

-Yeah.

The Opus Dei, as we call it,

so that is where the primary, so if we did nothing else

and we worshipped God, we could be doing what we were called to do,

both as human beings but as a cathedral community.

But I can't... You can't... I don't believe you can worship God

without that then affecting every step you take in every direction,

and leads you to set up community centres

in forgotten bits of Bermondsey.

-But...

-But the prayers are every bit as important as the actions.

If you think about it, we've been here for a week and every day we've watched the Opus Dei,

we see the prayers in the morning, prayers at lunchtime, prayers of the evening,

and interspersed you see people dashing around, going out into schools and going...

If we didn't have all of that, if we didn't those fixed points,

I think you would get lost. You would forget your primary purpose.

-Lord, in Your Mercy...

-ALL: Here our prayer.

We pray today for all who are living with AIDS,

or HIV,

for all who are affected,

for all who have lost loved ones,

and all who are orphaned.

Merciful Father...

ALL: Accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour,

Jesus Christ.

God's Holy gifts for God's Holy people.

ALL: Jesus Christ is Holy, Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God, the Father.

GENERAL CHATTER

Just to begin with, one graphic,

I don't know whether people have seen Leanne's work,

what Leanne managed to draw because she'd just got a new app.

-THEY LAUGH

-That's all it was.

That's all it was, wasn't it?

God can work through apps as well, clearly.

What... What we came up with were these three levels on this.

So we were looking at what the values of Southwark Cathedral were.

We're got a mission statement in order to draw some values from that.

So you lots there about transformation, authenticity,

kingdom, honesty, passion,

vocation.

So we saw that as the kind of the ground stuff.

Then there's what we called Engine Room.

So what sort of enables the cathedral to function,

so we've got "prayer" and "fundraising".

And one of the things that we were talking a lot about was,

and this, I suppose, was a starting point in many ways,

was how do we live well, as Christians?

How do we live well in the city? How can we actually encourage people

to live well, because we believe that you can live a very good life

here in the city. That the city is a good place to be

and that, ultimately, it is the destination of Scripture

in that the final vision

of the kingdom is not around a rural idyll of

nicely washed sheep in lovely fields, it's the city of God.

And it's the heavenly Jerusalem coming down.

So there's a very urban feeling.

So the city must be a place where salvation and restoration

and resurrection takes place for everybody.

-Lord be with you.

-ALL: Lord be with you.

-Lift up your hearts.

-ALL: Lift up your hearts.

Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.

I'm not saying that London is the city of God,

but potentially it can be.

Are you saying Southwark Cathedral is?

I'm saying Southwark Cathedral can be an agent in trying to transform

the lives of people who are living in the city,

and we want to be committed to living well in the city,

and giving them that greater vision of how good life can be.

We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.

ALL: Though we are many, we are one in body

because we all share in one bread.

Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Blessed are those who are called to His supper.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd