Upon Westminster Bridge

I read a captivating memoir of ministry in Hackney (one of London's poorest boroughs) over the weekend. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-city-God-Diary-East-Parson/dp/1853118826 It is an honest, funny, human book about what you can achieve even with very little faith.

Then on Monday went to a meeting in the one of the 'airless rooms' in Church House Westminster, to review ministry educational policies with a small group of like-minded, middle-aged WASPs. I wondered about the relevance of what we were doing for ministry in the multi-cultural, multi-faith, decaying-and-being-gentrified world of Hackney. I was certain what we were doing had no purchase on the world outside the building we were in....

Beside Westminster Bridge, workers on minimum wage tout tourist fantasies to bewildered multitudes, speaking (it would seem) every language under heaven. The visitors mill around, photographing themselves in front of Big Ben, a symbol not of order but of the neglect of time by the mortals swirling below its tower. I imagine the scoundrels within the gothic Palace of Westminster, guarded by police, visible only on television either asleep or posturing, untroubled by the few good people in their midst.

Below the bridge, the iron-grey Thames swirls menacingly, its surface whipped by a sharp wind and its strong currents challenging the bridge supports.

Westminster seems a dirty and expensive place, sending visitors the message: this is not for you, but we will tolerate you for a while if you pay, pay, pay. The effect is life-sapping. Here it is not death that undoes so many, but the place itself.

Nothing is on a human scale, everything reminds you of the power of others, even two huge churches, the Abbey and Central Hall. Both seem given over to tourism, if you are poor, or conferences, if you have money. I am tempted to dismiss them too, yet I know two people who ministered with integrity at Westminster Abbey, without losing their humanity.

Perhaps there is room for a miracle somewhere between Whitehall and Millbank.