One day as I came from what I can only describe as a long bout of praying in church one of my children said to me "Tell me Dad, why is it that all that time you spend praying doesn’t make any difference to the way you are at home?" It’s a show stopper isn’t it! Our children can be our most penetrating critics. And family rows have been punctuated down the years by the comment "why don’t you practise what you preach?" How many of us have heard that one! And how are you at cutting people dead? (a terrible phrase). I’m quite good/bad at it, as some readers may testify! Someone once came up to me after a church service when I was feeling quite pleased with myself and said "Look, don’t ask me how I am if you don’t really want to know".

I also remember when I was once having a particularly hard time and trying to talk it through with a bishop. And I said "I feel as if l’m two people in one body sometimes, a real Jekyll and Hyde". There was a long pause followed by a sigh from the bishop who then said "Just like me". Then he went on to remind me that some of my gifts which he also saw, arise out of the parts of me that are not right, damaged if you like.. My gifts which are just as real are the flip side of the coin called ‘me’. I am quite certain that I am not as God intended me to be, but it’s not either/or. I’m not either horrid or holy, it’s both/and, I am both horrid and holy.

Yet I flourish and am allowed to flourish. The contradiction at the heart of any/every life is that, if we are aware of them are open to them, our flaws can be turned into gifts, our weaknesses into joys, indeed into strengths, happinesses.

And that’s how it is. I am a flawed being. We all are. Not as God intended, not as real Love means us to be. To pretend to be perfect, pure, original, virginal is the road to disaster. Part of me will never be right, my flaws, such as I know them, are my perpetual companions, yet they can be changed into glory and that is also my experience of myself and others. Fancy a person like me feeling called to be a minister of the Church. What cheek! Yet I know my weaknesses have been part of the reason why the Church has continued to accept me.

Constitutionally aspects of me cannot be changed, much as I might wish it. I am as I am. It’s part of the mystery of me. Indeed they are not there to be changed but, if l am aware of them and honour them are there to reveal to me truth and beauty and goodness. Perhaps also to some others. And, if that is true of me, what about paralympic athletes whose whole physical existence is cast in a certain mould?

The whole of creation is damaged. One way or another. What is amazing is what people make out of their limitations. Deformities beget great kindness and great heroism. Blind people do indeed ‘see’. The deaf do hear, the dumb do speak; and the lame do leap for joy. Not as I leap but they leap. How they leap! It is so. It happens. Beautiful music comes out of the most unlikely people. It is out of this context that I mention homosexual relationships. Many gay men and women are homosexual not because they choose to be but because that is how they are and they cannot change as they please. They are not perfect, they are damaged just as I am and you are, only in a different way. That becomes the frame for their happiness and fulfilment.

And the whole Church is in a real mess about it. For centuries, out of ignorance and prejudice, the Church condoned slavery, for centuries the Church condemned Jews until growing human experience interpenetrated the Church’s teaching (based on the Scriptures) and honesty had to prevail. For long ages the Church has been engaged in a cover up relating to homosexual relationships in order to try to move towards some sort of specious unity.

Bishop Spong is a retired Anglican bishop who has campaigned all his lifetime for honesty in Church affairs and teaching and what we actually believe; indeed to bring into closer focus what the Church preaches and what it practices. In America he says what we have is the "first honest gay bishop. We ‘have had hundreds even thousands of gay bishops in Christian history. We have also had homosexual popes and homosexual archbishops of Canterbury. Do church leaders really believe that closeted living covered by overt lies is a virtue?" (Celibacy is bound to attract large numbers of homosexuals into its ranks). He points out "Cultural differences between the first and third worlds are enormous. There is no western nation that would allow women to be treated as they are in many parts of the world. In Africa the spread of AIDS is rampant because the culture of many parts of that continent proclaims the right of males to have multiple sexual partners. Polygamous marriage is still practised. Female circumcision is not unknown in that continent."

Finally, he pleads, unity based on the Bible "is not about God reconciling different points of view among church members, it is about God in Christ reconciling the world to God. If that is the task of the Church, then the Christians of the world and their leaders must face both their ignorance and their prejudices in the light of truth and reality."