tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47652012350547736442024-03-18T21:05:35.795+00:00The Hearth of Mopsus"Gothic Isn't Just the Spiky Bits on Churches"WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.comBlogger2045125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-7364638446203191892024-03-18T20:58:00.007+00:002024-03-18T21:04:33.714+00:00Sham Rock<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiAKYx7VV-WBUx_oq_J4V5am7Ez-opj-mVKkLkaFQnobCvLnJZtCaTSrwMN1wlmlfxHKjqRT2RU2cq33QklMf_zpIOjH3Kvy11t5ro88691zP0wDrvefUvVDzM_9OxBQiEr1WYL1H03fm2crZU2JQ2c5DrsfkbokhNYIbWeU6_SuedADsM72EUmgHyzYw" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img alt="" data-original-height="198" data-original-width="390" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiAKYx7VV-WBUx_oq_J4V5am7Ez-opj-mVKkLkaFQnobCvLnJZtCaTSrwMN1wlmlfxHKjqRT2RU2cq33QklMf_zpIOjH3Kvy11t5ro88691zP0wDrvefUvVDzM_9OxBQiEr1WYL1H03fm2crZU2JQ2c5DrsfkbokhNYIbWeU6_SuedADsM72EUmgHyzYw" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Years and years ago I may have railed about the nonsense pedalled by pagans (and some Christians) about <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2013/03/believing-easter.html" target="_blank">Easter</a>, but I hadn't any idea that St Patrick's Day was the subject of similar balderdash until a friend of mine posted on <i>LiberFaciorum</i> yesterday. I should resist going down these kind of rabbit holes, but here's the original statement, with my own responses interposed.<br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"St Patrick's Day - a very very bizarre celebration indeed. A
British and Roman priest <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>That’s the last accurate statement in the passage.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"who attempted to annihilate the Druids, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>There’s <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Paganacht/comments/11ntyxd/st_patrick_a_false_genocide_and_paganism_in/" target="_blank">no evidence</a> of anything approaching this. All the
evidence (as opposed to later mythologising) suggests that Patrick’s mission
was relatively limited. His </i><a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#01" target="_blank">Confessio </a><i>makes it clear that he was <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2014/09/real-story-saint-patrick/" target="_blank">highly dependent on the goodwill of the powerful</a> in Irish society, and instead (very, very rarely
among Christian missionaries) he says ‘towards the pagan people too among whom
I live, I have lived in good faith, and will continue to do so. God knows that
I have not been devious with even one of them, nor do I think of doing so, for
the sake of God and his church. I would not want to arouse persecution of them
and of all of us’.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"conducted exorcisms to banish the great Irish faery deity
Ainé, who told lies about the faery, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>The only information we have about pre-Christian Irish
deities come from later sources produced within a Christian context, such as
the </i>Book of Invasions<i>. But Ainé doesn’t appear there: she occurs in the 11th-century
</i><a href="https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/fitness_of_names.html" target="_blank">The Fitness of Names</a><i>. There, she isn’t treated as a goddess, and isn’t a
supernatural personality, just a powerful woman. In <a href="https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922070/4849763" target="_blank">Limerick folklore</a>, she
becomes ‘an old woman who was in with the Good People’, not ‘Queen of the Fairies’
as old-style mythologists such as Charles Squire in </i>Celtic Myth and Legend (1919) <i>claimed, or the ‘goddess of summer, wealth, and sovereignty’ as she is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81ine" target="_blank">now described</a>. There is nothing that links St Patrick with any supposed worship of
Aine and his own writings do not mention her.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"who claimed he threw Pagan women who would not convert into
the ocean<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>He doesn’t. We have all the words Patrick wrote about
himself in his </i>Confessio <i>and </i>Letter to Coroticus<i>, and that story isn’t in them.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"and they became
mermaids, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>This statement sounds like it might have come from later
hagiography of Patrick, but it seems to be derived from a garbled amalgam of folk
stories. I tried to chase it down. </i>In Legends and Superstitions of the Sea<i>
(1885), FS Bassett <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N3QRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA157&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q=patrick&f=false" target="_blank">refers to a legend</a> of people who dwelt under the sea (not
strictly mermaids) in Wales because their ancestors had refused to believe St
Patrick and so had sunk beneath the water, but that’s the closest I can get to
any old source for this story. It’s not Irish, and it doesn’t have anything to
do with the historical Patrick. I came across references to ‘old women being
thrown into the sea on St Patrick’s Day and becoming mermaids’, but they’re all
from <a href="https://www.silver-insanity.com/en-se/blogs/stories-behind-the-symbols/history-of-mermaids" target="_blank">modern sources.</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"who "drove out the snakes" (the Pagan ways)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Indeed an older generation of writers accounted for this
legend, which doesn’t date any earlier than the 11th century, by claiming it
referred to Patrick exterminating paganism, and therefore by extension pagans
themselves. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Paganacht/comments/11ntyxd/st_patrick_a_false_genocide_and_paganism_in/" target="_blank">You come across more elaborate versions</a> such as the claims that the
Druids had snake tattoos, or revered snakes because they represented the circle
of life (that seems especially odd, as snakes don’t naturally curl into circles, and the Druids couldn't have revered animals that weren't around in the first place).
There is no evidence for any of it. Today most commentators accept that it’s a ‘just-so’
story concocted to explain the fact that Ireland has no snakes, in the same way
that by the 6th century there was a legend circulating that St Hilary had
driven the snakes from the island of Gallinara in Italy. The snakes in the story
aren’t druids, or even paganism more generally: they’re just snakes. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"and attempted to turn
the great bright god Lugh into Lugh-chromain (Little stooping Lugh)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Apart from Lugh being a genuine deity who appears in the
</i>Book of Invasions<i> and versions of whom are attested in Britain and Gaul,
similar remarks apply to him as to Ainé. There’s no record of St Patrick having
any dealings relating to him, and there’s no evidence that the holy mountain
eventually called Croagh Patrick was a sanctuary of Lugh. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> "which would become
"lephrecaun". <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49579940" target="_blank">Etymologists now derive</a> </i>leprechaun <i>from the pagan Roman
feast of the Lupercalia, so this name for Irish fairy people dates from well into
the Christian era of monkish writers who knew what Lupercalia was. It’s nothing
to do with Lugh.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I adore the Irish. I revere Ireland. I have that old blood
singing within my veins. But this day is a day to celebrate the survival of the
Old Ways despite what this "Saint" represented and the cruel action
he took. Today, I wear the green, for the fae, for the Old Ways, for the
shining ones and the deep love of the land. Blessings to you all my friends. A
blessing on the survival of the old ways, and of the Truth emerging from the
distortions of history."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">One despairs at people's willingness to take garbled misunderstandings, utterly ahistorical garbage, and other guesses and falsehoods, which could all be corrected with a modicum of curiosity, and call them 'Truth'. At least <a href="https://intothemound.blogspot.com/2015/03/st-patricks-fakelore.html" target="_blank">thoughtful pagans</a> aren't taken in.</span></i></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-17987712951756530792024-03-14T22:20:00.002+00:002024-03-14T22:20:20.472+00:00Bottom Up (or another part of the anatomy)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSD-13qOYTSHbb9umoE3FX2wTf3b21Jvy3ouzshTg7kIBe50VHejcnz25BWdGNiSgm2C1nrGzFN1Zxm_-Uu839vewznq6Gfm04vHPIi1xVT9YiXdHA4zlP5yvfgZ9YKoDrIO3qlNIxq2pKHAn7ca4--1LaoR9lkKDFg7dpTp-HbCUv_nvpllqOhpYIeA" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img alt="" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="615" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSD-13qOYTSHbb9umoE3FX2wTf3b21Jvy3ouzshTg7kIBe50VHejcnz25BWdGNiSgm2C1nrGzFN1Zxm_-Uu839vewznq6Gfm04vHPIi1xVT9YiXdHA4zlP5yvfgZ9YKoDrIO3qlNIxq2pKHAn7ca4--1LaoR9lkKDFg7dpTp-HbCUv_nvpllqOhpYIeA" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Deanery Chapter gathered yesterday to hear the head of the Mission Department at the Diocese talk about lay ministry. That's what the deanery secretary had told us, but he didn't, except in passing. Instead he said he was there to 'begin a bottom-up conversation about how we resource parish ministry in ten years' time'. 'I want to record these conversations', he went on, putting a small flashing device on the floor, 'and I'll feed it all into an AI processing program to pick out the details later'. That made sure most people didn't want to contribute anything at all. He outlined his impression of the pressures on parishes, particularly in terms of finding laypeople to fill important roles, and suggested that we were working within a structure designed for a time when 45% of the population was in church on a Sunday at a moment when that figure is more like 1.5%. The diocese would work with parishes to try to provide for the continued existence of worshipping communities into the future, 'developing creative solutions tailored for local circumstances', etc. etc. It would all have sounded more convincing did we not know that the parish of Manton, which fell vacant just before Christmas, has already been told there's no question of their previous full-time incumbent being replaced and instead they will have someone on house-for-duty. Bottom up? Certainly, if you'll excuse the vulgarity, the phrase 'my arse' comes into any response. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Still, there's a serious question to be asked about the pattern of Anglican church life in a choppy and uncertain future. As some of my colleagues complained, worshippers simply will not willingly be relocated from one church to another, even for a Sunday, and the reason for this is not just cussed awkwardness but because their experience of Christian community, and therefore of Christian discipleship, is deeply linked to a particular place. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The point is that we are called into community, and that community, the group of people with whom we journey and experience what it means to be Christians, has to have a degree of continuity over time. It has to be deep and committed, especially because, in the Catholic way of looking at it, it isn't something we fundamentally choose ourselves, and Christian churches are not
primarily voluntary associations of people who come and go as they decide. We
acquire obligations and those obligations shape who we are becoming. We enter
into a something which existed before us and will exist after us. The primary way the life of the Christian community is shaped is the action of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments. Each community is eucharistic and baptismal; each community hallows time through the rhythm of its daily prayer. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Signs of continuity are not absolutely necessary, but they are helpful. They
include the buildings we worship in, which acquire their own personalities. We
have a relationship with those physical surroundings and they come to shape our
spiritual lives and imaginations. Ordained ministers are another sign of
continuity because they are sent into the community from outside it, and occupy
an office in a visible sequence unfolding across time. </span>Bishops are the paramount mark of the continuity of the Christian community, linking together individual, local communities into an Apostolic lineage. You can imagine Christian communities
persisting without historic buildings or ordained leadership, but their
presence makes continuity easier to maintain. Without them, they may well drift in many directions, and the task would be all the harder. </span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-12359208060378590472024-03-05T22:33:00.001+00:002024-03-05T22:33:06.763+00:00A Problem Shared<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjRiFcz8OtsoYwxp7-xX25MI9wSrYSDdv9id2EbwJ-cAnMcOPtkot68sh0dxJTjP_909xpE5-5lPX2TYtn3eI6Iw_ZF2GJs39Gm454N0KefyD8BcjKy28V9geUbMQEhMSBjHWuejz1_7VGFhQ1_9IFM0rHHmGKCJJCqMCx1KfzFFm6GTjHz4XkmUE6Z2w" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img alt="" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="612" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjRiFcz8OtsoYwxp7-xX25MI9wSrYSDdv9id2EbwJ-cAnMcOPtkot68sh0dxJTjP_909xpE5-5lPX2TYtn3eI6Iw_ZF2GJs39Gm454N0KefyD8BcjKy28V9geUbMQEhMSBjHWuejz1_7VGFhQ1_9IFM0rHHmGKCJJCqMCx1KfzFFm6GTjHz4XkmUE6Z2w" width="240" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Faye started attending the church quite recently after her mother's funeral, and attending quite frequently. She even brought a friend to one of the masses on Ash Wednesday, and took part in contemplative prayer sessions more than once. I knew from conversation that she was reassessing aspects of her life and wondering where she might go next. She was full of ideas and reflections and I thought she might be a useful person to have around, even if this initial burst of enthusiasm might not last. I began to speculate about what I might ask her to do.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Then having emailed out the weekly news sheet I had a reply from Faye: 'Please remove me from the mailing list.' That was all. I'd seen her at a service two days before and she'd spoken in the usual friendly, thoughtful manner. What had happened? I said I would if that's what she wanted, but also suggested she might like to speak to me. Was it some kind of disappointment? Something she expected to happen and hadn't, or someone who'd said something stupid and unhelpful? (I couldn't see how it could have been me). Although I'm used to people who come to worship for different reasons and seem enthusiastic, but then disappear after a short while - the sort of disturbance that impels souls towards church often impels them away from it again - this was a particularly extreme version of the phenomenon. I couldn't think of anything else that afternoon. How sad it was if Faye had had some sort of negative circumstance and it was never addressed, and she was left to deal with the disappointment.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In the end, after an evening service, I spoke to Estelle who was one of the people who'd spoken to Faye at the prayer sessions (another faithful person who turns up to everything, but has done so all her life). She reminded me - without being able to cast any particular light on the matter, as she last saw Faye exactly when I did - that Faye was in an uncertain place and subject to all sorts of questions and upsets that were nothing to do with us. I commended Faye to her prayers and was very grateful. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It would be easy to think that as pastor I should keep this all to myself and deal with it. In fact merely by hearing what Estelle had to say, which was nothing very remarkable, I found I was able to break out of my cyclical gloom and move on. 'We are the body of Christ', we say: it's not just me alone. We may never discover what happened to Faye, but the Lord has the prayers of a better soul than me.</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-19007165392404390932024-03-02T21:25:00.004+00:002024-03-02T21:25:53.147+00:00Jaws 2<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpShq0xig4j7UncW95tAvrOmtZvGZUWfL3vlaioHuvKP5tpxozFALyXn1pi9A0WhqzSuuRY2vBAsAQUP1ZM5LEh5vsT7DXn3_FXqlmmCDVOX2PfgAANQS-yM2BSlR7wLuM8gji31NwhNMgG56CCcztwsVtu_paIHeylPxmAQ6GDwULbKJ7x2NuwVHXtg/s3648/IMG_7055.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="2736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpShq0xig4j7UncW95tAvrOmtZvGZUWfL3vlaioHuvKP5tpxozFALyXn1pi9A0WhqzSuuRY2vBAsAQUP1ZM5LEh5vsT7DXn3_FXqlmmCDVOX2PfgAANQS-yM2BSlR7wLuM8gji31NwhNMgG56CCcztwsVtu_paIHeylPxmAQ6GDwULbKJ7x2NuwVHXtg/s320/IMG_7055.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A return visit on Thursday to St Augustine's Aldershot gave me the chance to check through the vestry there. I found my second local instance of one of the 'Jaws' chasubles promoted by the Church Society and made by Watts during the 150th anniversary of the Oxford Movement in 1983 (the other one's at <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2022/06/st-pauls-nork.html" target="_blank">Nork</a>); a range of Slabbinck/Vanpoulles creations of varying tastefulness; and a couple of battered fiddlebacks the current incumbent knew nothing of. There's a drawer labelled 'BLACK' with nothing in it, which tells its own story.</span><br /><p></p><br />WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-50567911414890323222024-02-27T08:22:00.004+00:002024-02-27T08:22:48.040+00:00St Catherine in Guildford<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCxNCFQzl0yQmCy7CYDA7Q4IFdQKEB7UvJlylmykik6zvArSGLj-SwZZUE8TfFWkY3wUAET3J9-qkD_oFH6SRpk5YSMM24Phisb-mtRA8K02ujO6oBvRkrxpYFIhyphenhyphenL5qJHz192o69KQnR90AG-mtmPm24Pxo2wa1TtNLRpR0lw2PCWBxDIJli02QHZYA/s3648/IMG_6987.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="2736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCxNCFQzl0yQmCy7CYDA7Q4IFdQKEB7UvJlylmykik6zvArSGLj-SwZZUE8TfFWkY3wUAET3J9-qkD_oFH6SRpk5YSMM24Phisb-mtRA8K02ujO6oBvRkrxpYFIhyphenhyphenL5qJHz192o69KQnR90AG-mtmPm24Pxo2wa1TtNLRpR0lw2PCWBxDIJli02QHZYA/s320/IMG_6987.JPG" width="240" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Although I am posting here less these days, it's still the only place I have to disseminate images of the blessed Great-Martyr Catherine I happen to have found. My researches into Surrey Anglo-Catholicism are now taking me on return visits to some churches to check their kit as well as the buildings themselves, and last week I was rifling through the drawers at St Nicolas's in Guildford. One contained this stole embroidered with what <i>seems</i> to be St Catherine even if the wheel isn't all that clear - just a broken fragment emerging from behind the figure, and, oddly, in front of her sword. That must predate about 1930. I wonder why it was made; an awareness on someone's part of the medieval chapel just south of the town, perhaps?</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Happily at St Nic's they have just uprooted the slab-like nave altar installed in 1978 and moved it to a side chapel where it serves the Romanian Orthodox community who use the church on Sunday afternoons very nicely. The central axis of the building is now clear again all the way up to the high altar at the far end. </span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-66852276301433422242024-02-22T16:00:00.002+00:002024-02-22T16:00:27.719+00:00Erasure<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaa-q6524ATW5smslDfePmcxXav_9vkHni02Duf9ooi_TqbGxR4rxOL0paLIJc02SKmV_NnvUidAQuXzE8ggciENYDYwFQE4Nz58n9RHuGFVGCNUmOZS75kEHYmgJdtloMbU1qISiqv9RWXMXE9BTqwTM2zrUail9lGIXNZvPfNa1dESFcQc0jKIDoFQ/s203/crosscrossed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="200" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaa-q6524ATW5smslDfePmcxXav_9vkHni02Duf9ooi_TqbGxR4rxOL0paLIJc02SKmV_NnvUidAQuXzE8ggciENYDYwFQE4Nz58n9RHuGFVGCNUmOZS75kEHYmgJdtloMbU1qISiqv9RWXMXE9BTqwTM2zrUail9lGIXNZvPfNa1dESFcQc0jKIDoFQ/s1600/crosscrossed.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A longstanding member of the church dies before their
time after a short illness. There is tension in the relationships involved, although
all of them are of longstanding too – no suspicious new partner within the last
few years, for instance, as sometimes happens. But their experience <i>as </i>a Christian
is part of this; for some reason, which is never stated (at least to me), their
blood family have problems with it. Unless the deceased was, towards them,
utterly different from the sweet and gentle person they appeared to me and
everyone else, it’s hard to account for. Anger against the relationships that went
along with their church life? Anger at God for letting them die?<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It's arranged that I will do the funeral, and I have an
initial meeting with the deceased’s children. Their requirements are not easy
to meet but I prepare to try. But a week beforehand the undertaker phones me
and, clearly embarrassed, tells me my services aren’t wanted after all. There
will be a civil celebrant instead. It would be untrue to say I’m not saddened,
but it also relieves me of the impossible task of having to keep everyone involved
happy. I imagine I won’t be welcome at the funeral and so stay away: many other
members of the church do attend, and find there’s no mention at all of the faith
that was such a central part of the deceased’s life from childhood.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The family got what they presumably wanted, but they
will always carry the awareness that, at the moment when most people try to sum
up the life of someone they love, they chose to scrub out whole areas of the
life concerned. Saddest of all, I imagine it will never be talked about, never
dealt with, a rage that’s never questioned, a wound that never gets healed.</span></span></p><p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-32146512795342688332024-02-11T17:07:00.006+00:002024-02-12T19:06:17.018+00:00Further Observations on the Abyss<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkcmVUTdgcHTd67-v_4crUQLWY4dv2SZoxrPT8FOFrsx4sGtUkw6xf_WT0-x5bfbGBJmAQqAJvRDjwpBCyNi2-D-kyiWDqh163ynGy-cqSzjv9KKMJW4TpXXNmdWQLgoR0WQU2B9Fi9c1wrTHo0R8N7nBYgf9iHLMufcn_0f9UORRH8vTmJkT8UE5xQ/s259/blackscreenofdeath.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkcmVUTdgcHTd67-v_4crUQLWY4dv2SZoxrPT8FOFrsx4sGtUkw6xf_WT0-x5bfbGBJmAQqAJvRDjwpBCyNi2-D-kyiWDqh163ynGy-cqSzjv9KKMJW4TpXXNmdWQLgoR0WQU2B9Fi9c1wrTHo0R8N7nBYgf9iHLMufcn_0f9UORRH8vTmJkT8UE5xQ/s1600/blackscreenofdeath.png" width="259" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Being overtaken by black moods and in fact
talking about them is nothing new for me or this blog, but I have some revised
or additional things to say about it. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">1. The episodes seem to get more intense as I get
older. It may be because they are now tangled up with my sense of mortality and
the question of how far I might or might not fight a serious illness should it
come my way (or when it does), or with issues of how far I’ve made the best use
of my life hitherto. I say more intense: that doesn’t mean longer in duration,
rather that they feel more dangerous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">2. There is nothing positive or useful about them.
They bring no new insights or sympathies – except perhaps for other people who
are afflicted in the same way – and in fact they clog up and obscure clarity of
thought and vision. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">3. There is no shifting them by effort, or by
trying to spot and avoid the conditions that give rise to them. This is because this
enemy is subtle, and can make use of any stimulus to achieve its result, no
matter how innocuous. Most of the time you won’t even be able to spot or
isolate the origin of the mood: it moves as quick as thought. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">4. But if there is no guilt either in suffering
from black thoughts or being unable to dispel them by will (and that kind of
guilt can just deepen and intensify the thoughts), neither should they be
acquiesced in. They need to be positively closed down whenever you find yourself
caught up in them (and ‘find yourself’ is the correct characterisation, because
it will happen before you know it), or they will deepen. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">5. In fact, I am reticent about talking about them
at all, for fear that they might catch! The cunning of this condition is such
that recognising that others suffer from it could itself be an encouragement
not to resist it when it comes, not to treat it as the adversary of all things
human it really is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">6. It absolutely needs outside intervention to
cure. If nothing the sufferer can do will shift the black mood, and it can be
fuelled by absolutely anything, the best kind of intervention is a surprise,
including to the person (if there is one) who brings it about.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">7. The contribution the sufferer makes is therefore
to be open to intervention, to be willing to put themselves in the kind of position
where something surprising, unchosen and unanticipated can take place. A
deliberate exposure to (say) the company of other people may not work, but it provides
the space and occasion for <i>something </i>to work, and that’s about all we can do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">8. We must always rejoice and offer thanks whenever
the danger passes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Now then, does that help!</span> </span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-3211960646438406782024-02-07T20:27:00.002+00:002024-02-07T20:27:28.730+00:00Is There Anybody There? Yes, There Is, Says The Lord<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj05ad8MaRrMbDu2Tvl5-Ee1UD2zM8b2g9HW8HCIjxW4qMHSNU5Hx9wY9jm19MecUk8HLMt1EtL_OC6XojOhw_Q-Il1CrxD_ydYgbmh8rJJYg93spNqHFXBp1rzUaazMX74Na3cVNlGBIpA5W9Nxkupy_C9UtTjxHb2sFK7AvZtS2tExi1_b-uBfkxzA/s222/Screenshot%202024-02-07%20202448.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="222" data-original-width="217" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj05ad8MaRrMbDu2Tvl5-Ee1UD2zM8b2g9HW8HCIjxW4qMHSNU5Hx9wY9jm19MecUk8HLMt1EtL_OC6XojOhw_Q-Il1CrxD_ydYgbmh8rJJYg93spNqHFXBp1rzUaazMX74Na3cVNlGBIpA5W9Nxkupy_C9UtTjxHb2sFK7AvZtS2tExi1_b-uBfkxzA/s1600/Screenshot%202024-02-07%20202448.png" width="217" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Once we got beyond the basics, the conversation with
the woman who’s joined the team of one of our regular events went in an unexpected
direction as she described the comfort she’d derived from visiting spiritualist
gatherings, and how Christian friends had reacted (she said) with horror. We
discussed why someone might want to engage in spiritualist activity and what
the problems might be from a Christian point of view. She agreed that there
were possibly malign things lurking in the hidden world, but stressed how her
experience had been positive. ‘You’re not going to hear this church announcing “And
now we’ll have a séance”’, I said, ‘but I’m not shocked’, which I’m not.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Curiously the readings at mass the day after were the
consecration of the Temple from 1Kings, and Christ’s critique of the concepts of
clean and unclean practices in Mark 7: these led into a reflection about one of
my recurring themes, the contrast between two opposed approaches to religious
life. The first is that you ring-fence the sense of the divine with rules and
structures to prevent it being contaminated by the profane world and eventually
eroding altogether; and the second that you use the sense of the divine to find
its presence elsewhere. In my own Bible reading in the morning, too, I found
the Lord assuring Moses in Exodus 4 ‘I will be with your mouth and teach you
what you are to speak’, encouraging a degree of trust in God which I fall short
of all too often. ‘He reigns’, I concluded to our small congregation, and if he
reigns there is little to fear in the sometimes wayward spiritual practice we
encounter in others. One of the issues, in fact, with seeking solace in talking
to spirits is that it’s based in a basic lack of trust in God that we are
called to grow away from.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If we are critical of what others do, we must surely
know that they aren’t simply going to change as a result of something we say.
Nobody is going to blink at us and reply ‘You know, I never thought about it
like that. I’m going to stop from this point forward’ – although they might, at
some point distant from now, shift their ideas and reflect that perhaps we were
right. If we don’t expect change in that way, it raises the question of what we’re
doing when we react ‘with horror’ at someone else’s behaviour. I think it may
be that we fear that if we don’t rebuke the sin, God will blame us for not
distancing ourselves from it. The sin will contaminate us and we need to
protect ourselves, to signal to God that we want nothing to do with it, to put
up a protective barrier between us and it. It’s not the other person that’s
uppermost in our minds.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Now, there might well be particular sins that beset us
and from which we do need to flee. When Christ says to St Peter ‘get behind me,
Satan’, it’s because the Apostle is raising something that’s a genuine
temptation for him: it’s actually important. Knowing this is just proper
spiritual self-awareness. But that’s not the other sinner’s fault; most of the
time it’s not at issue (I have no desire whatever to contact my long-dead
relatives); and our words are seldom as much to the point as the Saviour’s.</span></span></p><p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-64805939129045452032024-02-04T20:39:00.003+00:002024-02-04T20:39:41.683+00:00Locating Christians<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIXKFXgnqGsj6DT1oRgXI-UDI0NniyxQkbtArd1jxXizCq4LsiCbEsCzkpQOFpOTmw5rbey5Z8AD_RR5pw6L5LR5xyg42OXg_Tp86Q6qR5wgfotn8gB88ZxarVVOsh8y5GQORPakbGB5dqY7omds9FSS8S-0dlKDTeSf9aMtoy7XwM21jlmHhkicqxIQ/s274/onionlayers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="184" data-original-width="274" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIXKFXgnqGsj6DT1oRgXI-UDI0NniyxQkbtArd1jxXizCq4LsiCbEsCzkpQOFpOTmw5rbey5Z8AD_RR5pw6L5LR5xyg42OXg_Tp86Q6qR5wgfotn8gB88ZxarVVOsh8y5GQORPakbGB5dqY7omds9FSS8S-0dlKDTeSf9aMtoy7XwM21jlmHhkicqxIQ/s1600/onionlayers.jpg" width="274" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2023/12/christmas-revival.html" target="_blank">A few weeks ago</a> we touched on Will Self’s reasons for
going to church, and this morning on the magic wireless journalist Sara Wheeler
<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001vsqm" target="_blank">decided to share hers</a> – ‘not because a bearded old man lives in the sky or
because I want to hear a sermon of the “dearly beloved” variety’, whatever she
means by that, but because church supplies ritual that ‘helps me cope with anxieties
about the gas bill’. Repetitive symbolic behaviour, Ms Wheeler speculates with the
aid of Emil Durkheim, is about imposing structure on essentially structureless
experience and so reducing anxiety; ‘public telling of morally-charged stories’
helps us understand ourselves; and being aware that you’re doing the same
things as others have done before you and will do after you puts your own
experiences into a longer, and more realistic, perspective.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Clearly not every ritualised action will carry out
these personally and socially worthwhile functions, although you can see shades
and reflections of them in everything from the Brownies to golf clubs. Religion
is a bit more all-embracing in its explanatory narratives, and has that element
of pointing to eternity which is harder for the Brownies to manage. But although
many of us may not find it a sufficient reason to engage in religious practice
or to persuade others to do so, for others, perhaps lots, it will be enough.
You don’t have to believe to get something out of it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Most of modern evangelistic practice is focused around belief,
about bringing nonbelievers to the point of believing, and making sure people
who are already <i>in </i>believe harder, as it were. Now, there have to be <i>some </i>who
believe in order to make the whole thing work, which is why clergy have to make
vows and are encouraged to sharpen and hone their spiritual lives, but perhaps
we ought to be less fixated about belief as such. Experience seems to be that
people who develop what you might call a dogma-based faith are recruited from
the larger number of Will Selfs and Sara Wheelers who have a practice-based
faith, and always have been: they ‘catch’ it as a result of doing it. We seem to need
more of the latter to generate the former, and not the other way around.</span><o:p></o:p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-32738569554834545892024-01-31T21:25:00.002+00:002024-01-31T21:25:29.287+00:00Poustinia Practice<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiEQezU8vtiTmAkI3_HPSnBqdfDoqeIau_J5-k3cJAzUwCaGIA5JlqS6umNqa44z94i4brOe_8VvUqDDPe1XX7k7RQ2Xqr3lMBkqvzeQokIHcbzeKUuFnQVvGSQFMJ3dNvohMpLXbU5SgSZG70PstEEuaynlv9f2F-W3YvoptAWW5QLfiD01yIGannAw/s170/oratory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="118" data-original-width="170" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiEQezU8vtiTmAkI3_HPSnBqdfDoqeIau_J5-k3cJAzUwCaGIA5JlqS6umNqa44z94i4brOe_8VvUqDDPe1XX7k7RQ2Xqr3lMBkqvzeQokIHcbzeKUuFnQVvGSQFMJ3dNvohMpLXbU5SgSZG70PstEEuaynlv9f2F-W3YvoptAWW5QLfiD01yIGannAw/w320-h222/oratory.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My spiritual reading at the moment is Catherine de Hueck Doherty's <i>Poustinia</i> from 1977, an examination of the Orthodox Christian conception of physical withdrawal to a particular place from which distractions are banished in order more effectively to encounter God, and how it might work in a Western context. Typically I had never heard of it until very recently but discover it as a 'spiritual classic'. When something is written exceedingly simply but those simple sentences are dense with power it's a good sign. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I'm not called to be a <i>poustinik</i>, at least I don't think I am. I gib a little at Bd Catherine's injunction that the bed in the <i>poustinia</i> should be 'a board, with a blanket if necessary', as someone who currently has three blankets on their bed as well as a duvet and a top sheet (the weight helps me sleep). But basically she is outlining how the whole of the Christian spiritual life works, for every Christian, in concentrated form, and so there are lessons to be drawn even for a poor secular priest like me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The lesson I'm thinking about most is the idea that 'the <i>poustinia</i> has three walls'. In the classic Russian model, the <i>poustinik</i> who takes this on as a long-term vocation rather than an exercise for a day or two, is always available to whoever wants their help, and that help might be spiritual or very practical. Someone might come and seek the <i>poustinik</i> out and say 'Friend, I need some help putting up a fence' and the <i>poustinik</i> must leave their prayers and do as they are bidden. That's the point. To a person willing to exploit, they're free labour. Yet they mustn't complain or resist, but leave it to God to deal with. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">One of my Minor Patron Saints (as opposed to my Major Patron, Great-Martyr Catherine) is St Serafim of Sarov, the very <i>doyen</i> of <i>poustiniks</i>, who was wont to greet anyone who turned up at his hut with a beaming smile, outstretched arms, and the words 'My joy! Christ is risen!' I could do with a little more of that spirit, so I am trying to offer <i>thanks</i> to God when the phone rings or the doorbell sounds, treating interruptions as the work of the Spirit. Who knows? I might be entertaining angels unawares. I confess, friends, that I am not there yet!</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-23961018490070262902024-01-28T21:58:00.000+00:002024-01-28T21:58:03.287+00:00What Prayers Mean<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZNB-qx8c9Ky4nbio-twwNc_nMCV_wBKlr1HAWKr-JIlxObbMFGGwYIy3JpRstbba6DSca5rnMzO6g03jH17sABQhJn8Q_jjHOeUsHK_0wfY4COZO7CTTCJFt-pzh1FpaOEe-aTpviaX0DWEQ7qFO4zhnjAPKZAQAfT44MzQ_-wvjEniXTkKWKevahA/s400/Screenshot%202024-01-28%20213024.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="221" data-original-width="400" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZNB-qx8c9Ky4nbio-twwNc_nMCV_wBKlr1HAWKr-JIlxObbMFGGwYIy3JpRstbba6DSca5rnMzO6g03jH17sABQhJn8Q_jjHOeUsHK_0wfY4COZO7CTTCJFt-pzh1FpaOEe-aTpviaX0DWEQ7qFO4zhnjAPKZAQAfT44MzQ_-wvjEniXTkKWKevahA/s320/Screenshot%202024-01-28%20213024.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We prayed for Sheila - of course we did for such a loved member of the church, hoping that somehow the fast-developing cancer had been caught in time, that the doctors had got the right treatment. She died, nevertheless, early one morning, a gentle, generous and positive soul of the kind the world could do with more of, not fewer. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What are we doing when we pray for someone with an apparently mortal illness? We all know that most of the time these illnesses take their normal course, but also that it doesn't always end that way, and that just occasionally there is a recovery that defies all expectation. Is that what we're praying for, for Sheila or anyone else? The old texts I use when I administer the Last Rites are a masterly blend of fortitude and hope:</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">We know, O Lord, that there is no word impossible with you;
and that, if you will, you can even yet raise her up, and grant her a longer
continuance amongst us: Yet, forasmuch as in all appearance the time of her dissolution
draws near, so fit and prepare her, we pray you, against the hour of death,
that after her departure hence in peace, and in your favour, her soul may be
received into your everlasting kingdom ...</span></i><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Yet our attitude can't be simply one of balancing probabilities, hoping for remission but facing up to the likelihood of dissolution. We know, more radically than this, that something will, sooner or later, carry us out of this world. That event could be disease or accident, fast or slow, sudden or long-anticipated. It would be anything: but, notwithstanding the people I sometimes encounter who seem astonished and bewildered that Death has come seeking <i>them</i> - it will eventually arrive.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Is what we want full and perfect health until we finally peg out silently, in our sleep, at the age of 112? Even granted the inevitability of death, why can God not concede us <i>that</i>? Is it too much to ask? Perhaps praying for that is a bit like praying for someone in a different, less medical situation, like Carly. We know that nobody is suddenly going to intervene in such a way that everything is made all right for her, and that it probably wouldn't work if anyone tried. But the way society is arranged offers the possibility that her difficulties might be made a little better, as might those of many other people in the same boat. Are we intended to advance not as isolated individuals, but generally, together, in the direction God has show that he wants?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In many ways, we <i>are</i> generalities, statistics: the kinds of things that befall Sheila, or Carly, or you and me, are the same sorts of afflictions which happen to millions, a common human lot that nobody escapes. If only the Lord had not been the very one who taught us we were more than that in his Father's eyes, such a truth might be easier to assmiliate. </span></p><p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-80688543773860957422024-01-21T22:19:00.003+00:002024-01-21T22:20:22.014+00:00This Weekend Was Brought To You By A Popular Variety of Cough Remedy<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvTBvja-u_4UdJkDKDVMv-FAaDaOqjwuIlbMjlfZI9WQfr6Y7ZEtmKvq5bWza4FMVnfOrrljwpf0hNLGowYtpQqjF-relNVsg9rOx9RSY4C2voeBVe98DbR8nS2pwNrEvZ_hxPvTbsGvxgnq4-vyZE_7vjVk_BAjl_EUEtyR6aCOn2PqpZ4GMqsQJgA/s445/Screenshot%202024-01-21%20214954.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="445" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvTBvja-u_4UdJkDKDVMv-FAaDaOqjwuIlbMjlfZI9WQfr6Y7ZEtmKvq5bWza4FMVnfOrrljwpf0hNLGowYtpQqjF-relNVsg9rOx9RSY4C2voeBVe98DbR8nS2pwNrEvZ_hxPvTbsGvxgnq4-vyZE_7vjVk_BAjl_EUEtyR6aCOn2PqpZ4GMqsQJgA/s320/Screenshot%202024-01-21%20214954.png" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It's the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and we have been doing more than our bit at Swanvale Halt. The couple getting married on Saturday are members of Vineyard, an independent congregation in Guildford, and they took the service over rather, providing all the music and the preacher, a young woman who appeared about 17 to me but couldn't be as she referred to her teenage children. It's the bride's second go and she has a small son who at one point led his mum and stepfather-to-be on a little dance during one of the songs. I pointed out that during the Orthodox wedding rite the priest leads the couple on a (very stately) dance around the altar, but sadly I never got the chance for that. The couple wanted to take communion and that made it all very High Church even without my cope and biretta. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Today it was the annual United Service at Hornington Parish Church, now itself united with evangelical Tophill. Tophill, it's worth pointing out, hate Vineyard Church as lots of their young families have defected there because they have a better band. I preached and told them all two stories about Nusreddin the Sage - it was relevant, honest, but I did get the impression that many people might only take away the final line, 'Who knows? The horse might sing' (you'll have to look it up). In my cassock, I was the only clergyperson who wore anything other than ordinary clothes. From my point of view, it was a bit sad to see that Hornington's aumbry is empty and surrounded by stacks of chairs, and there's no longer anything that you can point out as a Lady Chapel.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Technically, the Roman Catholics aren't supposed to come to the United Service (go to Mass, is the rule), and so in the evening we had a joint Evensong at Swanvale Halt so they could take part. That worked very well, and it was all to the good that the choir were augmented by some RCs and they managed to find someone to coax them all through the plainchant, as my vocal chords are still misbehaving as a result of a cold earlier in the week. I did warn the remarkably healthy congregation of nearly 60 that it would probably be more Evencroak than Evensong, but I got through it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Then at 8pm I had an email to say that Sheila might not make it through the night. Sheila is Malcolm's partner, they are both 60-ish and they are the loveliest and sweetest couple you can imagine. She has been in hospital undergoing chemotherapy and the situation has not looked too bad until today. I found her fast asleep and unresponsive in the ICU, and did what was necessary, managing to get through it, as I had the rest of the weekend, with the aid of vicious Volcazone pastilles. At least they seemed vicious when I first encountered them not long after I arrived in Swanvale Halt: now I seem acclimatized to the wretched things and, like a junkie, need an ever-higher dose to have any effect.</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-13198524341595053932024-01-13T22:49:00.006+00:002024-01-13T22:49:42.592+00:00Election Time<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjciapijYWThpWF1mg4N1PsNsq643tX3aZoFlBA77OjocFpSd0HLksJGNu6gE05gWugRr8tgNdSFYwpGMMr4esmgKEM9eIYMq0dzFPe6_roHUsx7-OU__Th112FvzI_TF86yi99AxzYkmi2I1DLASH-BVjcAsyBpiYJxpvfbk08sPJ_On2pNt-s_GkSqQ/s514/Screenshot%202024-01-13%20222232.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="514" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjciapijYWThpWF1mg4N1PsNsq643tX3aZoFlBA77OjocFpSd0HLksJGNu6gE05gWugRr8tgNdSFYwpGMMr4esmgKEM9eIYMq0dzFPe6_roHUsx7-OU__Th112FvzI_TF86yi99AxzYkmi2I1DLASH-BVjcAsyBpiYJxpvfbk08sPJ_On2pNt-s_GkSqQ/s320/Screenshot%202024-01-13%20222232.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I have never, ever voted in a Synod election, either Diocesan or General, but now we have a vacancy for a Clergy representative and Fr Benedict from North Corley, a fellow SCP member, is standing. This is rather to my surprise, and it seems to his as well. He told me someone else was lined up as the catch-all-bit-progressive-something-other-than-conservative-evangelical candidate, but with something like half an hour to go before nominations closed they turned out to be ineligible because they only had Permission To Officiate in the diocese, prompting a frantic set of phone calls and Benedict emerging from the smoke, as it were. 'We so often lose out because the evangelicals are better organised', he complained, and this episode doesn't really do anything to dispel that.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We have 'hustings' coming up, though they take the somewhat bloodless shape of electors submitting written questions online which the candidates then answer, also in written form. Fr Benedict has encouraged me to ask something but although as we all know the burning issue is the General Synod's stumbling muck-up of <i>Living in Love and Faith</i> I really can't think of anything I might ask that could possibly be illuminating. He further points me towards the Evangelical Council's suggestion that parishes who find themselves out of line with their bishops might divert some funds from the diocese towards other organisations, and suggests I might ask the candidates what they think about this. I wonder: left to my own devices, I might want to ask something like:</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Why do the candidates think God might want the Church of England
(as opposed to any other ecclesial body) to continue to exist?</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">... but that might be too abstract!</span><p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-1565969882052608722024-01-09T21:15:00.003+00:002024-01-10T07:49:29.487+00:00Post Offices and Pointy Hats<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnDUs_NqpD06nJTT7ex2H7nZdTjzAJqh4InMIfMnV-58a1_P1grHz7vzxKiTNI5dTCV6wmqtDBd_X76fVCxLMhKSXV-wB2wxJz5fr23sePlXn_otnDkydBlUz9PGYMxYNjR6smCHXkcFneWiZTSVPBxpp-8R6lfqXlyDpgF42IqHxJJsdbUDsbVBj04w/s402/postmitre.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="338" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnDUs_NqpD06nJTT7ex2H7nZdTjzAJqh4InMIfMnV-58a1_P1grHz7vzxKiTNI5dTCV6wmqtDBd_X76fVCxLMhKSXV-wB2wxJz5fr23sePlXn_otnDkydBlUz9PGYMxYNjR6smCHXkcFneWiZTSVPBxpp-8R6lfqXlyDpgF42IqHxJJsdbUDsbVBj04w/w208-h247/postmitre.jpg" width="208" /></a></span></div><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">At the time,
the time being early 2018, Paula Vennells’s personal involvement in the case of
our Swanvale Halt <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2018/02/closer-to-home.html" target="_blank">subpostmaster’s suspension</a>, and the transfer of the license
(or whatever it is technically) to a relative so the post office could reopen,
seemed like an act of generous flexibility. Having written to her more than
once to complain about what was happening, I felt it was only fair to write
again to thank her for finding some way for the service to resume, without the
subpostmaster being prosecuted. Even then, only about 18 months before <a href="https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/01/horizon-trial-judgment-is-handed-down.html" target="_blank">Mr Justice Fraser’s excoriating judgement</a> on the Post Office’s behaviour since introducing
the Horizon accounting system in 1999, Ms Vennells maintained to me that ‘I can’t
go into the circumstances in this case, but we never suspend a post office
without good reason’, and to others that there was no problem with the system
at all. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A long
while later, when things were clearer, the redoubtable <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2021/04/part-vindicated.html" target="_blank">Estelle </a>had discovered
that Ms Vennells was also the <i>Revd </i>Vennells, holding a license to officiate in
the diocese of St Albans. Estelle wanted to write to the Bishop there to protest,
and asked for copies of my correspondence. As I had, indeed, written, I felt I
couldn’t say no, but I warned our Bishop that I was agreeing just in case the Bishop
of St Albans might corner him in a corridor at the House of Lords waving my
letters at him and shouting ‘What’s this?! What’s this?!’ I can’t recall how our
Bishop replied to me – I think it must have been in person at a rare moment we
were in the same place at the same time – but I do remember he said something
to the effect that he’d ‘always found Paula Vennells very impressive’, which he
may have done, but it was an entirely otiose thing to say. And what were the circumstances in which he came to any conclusions at all about an NSM working in an obscure parish in another diocese?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We now know
exactly <i>how </i>impressive the hierarchy of the Church of England found her –
enough to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67923190" target="_blank">shortlist her for Bishop of London</a> when that position was being
filled in 2017, and for the Archbishop of Canterbury to support her candidacy
personally. When the BBC reports that Ms Vennells is ‘an ordained Anglican priest
but does not hold a senior position in the Church of England’ this is a bit of
an understatement. She’s never been anything other than a Non Stipendiary
Minister, part of a team in a group of rural parishes. To catapult such a
person into the Church’s third most senior bishopric would be the most gobsmacking
promotion since Thomas Becket. That it could even be thought of, let alone that
it could reach the point of her being interviewed, is quite stunning. Thankfully
there may have been angels making sure it didn’t happen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">For quite
some time, the Church of England has been in an episode of bewitchment by the
world of business and management: I hesitate to say it’s now passing out of it.
Of course having a variety of backgrounds and experiences in your leadership to
bring other viewpoints to the table is not a bad thing, and I wouldn’t want the
Church to be composed entirely of Oxbridge arts graduates like me. Assuming
that this equally narrow band of expertise is exactly the one which is going to
save your organisation is quite a different matter, but that seems to be what
the current cohort in control of the Church of England has thought. The
Archbishop of Canterbury supports one individual businessperson-turned-priest’s
promotion; another bishop thinks they’re ‘very impressive’; a third <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/paula-vennells-post-office-horizon-scandal-crown-netflix-tv-drama-itv-church/" target="_blank">speaks up in their support</a>, while carefully and typically not saying anything actually
untrue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You see what’s going on here. The first instinct of
the hierarchy of the Church is to support the powerful, because that’s
who they mix with. A priest made bishop can be ever so good and upright, but
from the moment of their consecration they enter a world of MPs, Lords Lieutenant,
CEOs and Chief Constables. They talk to them and get to know them. They can see
their good points. Eventually they can see nothing <i>but </i>their good points,
because they have become like them. The last sentence of <i>Animal Farm </i>comes to
mind.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And here I am, a small and lowly counterpart, bathed
in the beguiling warmth of the Establishment in this one place. It is a great
privilege to be invited to schools, to turn on Christmas lights, to sit on
committees, to bless this and that – to have an established and settled role in
a community. A privilege, but a temptation. It is a great mercy that I would
never, ever be a bishop, because I know what would happen. I’m exactly
the same as them. I would kid myself that I could resist, and a year or two later
would be as rusted and corroded as anyone else. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-47350631647632100692024-01-05T22:09:00.004+00:002024-01-06T11:42:39.092+00:00Rebuild the Boundaries!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnPKGpHZ6EM_7cOJSHY9CA_dWt7sCsfT8iicVPUsvglWLBUkljaUuKUHU_hx2_EmnkfA9LziqPCXLOPzdAarW2075WefUtvYj4Izt_mXMK6imzQSXKJM3MkvR6I9jT3GHyPs-oJwV6PGxPsPMvAKdsgv-6tPQGcb7UTxbpE4XPVvT4e4xmY7G27LMqaA/s448/Screenshot%202024-01-05%20221303.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="448" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnPKGpHZ6EM_7cOJSHY9CA_dWt7sCsfT8iicVPUsvglWLBUkljaUuKUHU_hx2_EmnkfA9LziqPCXLOPzdAarW2075WefUtvYj4Izt_mXMK6imzQSXKJM3MkvR6I9jT3GHyPs-oJwV6PGxPsPMvAKdsgv-6tPQGcb7UTxbpE4XPVvT4e4xmY7G27LMqaA/s320/Screenshot%202024-01-05%20221303.png" width="320" /></a></div>Amazingly,
it’s a full seven years since </span><a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2016/12/holding-on-to-both-ends.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Carly told me </span></a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">she was dying of leukaemia, a belief
she now says came from a wrongly-addressed letter from the hospital. Since
then, she’s been in and out of prison, has orbited around Swanvale Halt but never
resettled here, and eventually was offered a place in a shared house managed by
an alcohol recovery charity. We (the church) took her for her interview and I’d
arranged moving her stuff there before she said she’d found someone else to help
with it. Her troubles carried on, however. She maintained she’d had her food
and money stolen, and yet again I was drawn into sending her a sub – at first,
a one-off as she was moving in to the new house, then another one-off because
it was Christmas, and then … A couple of days after Christmas I gave her a lift from the
house to the village because she’d been beaten up there and her money taken, and
was going to stay with a friend and see her family; on New Year’s Eve, before zooming
to London, I took her <i>back</i> to the house after a row with her family and,
supposedly, the ‘friend’ again beating her up and taking her money. Now she has
to leave the house having broken its rules, not, her social worker who has
again made contact with me, for the first time.</span></div></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This is
wearyingly familiar stuff and tracking back in the blog you can piece together
similar stories. What made it slightly different this time was that Carly was in
a meeting at the probation office yesterday and asked me if I could send her
the fare home. The problem was that I was, at that moment, in Reading seeing a
friend and not just <i>in </i>Reading but temporarily <i>stranded</i> in
Reading. On Tuesday I’d been marooned in Portsmouth due to the storm closing
down the rail network, and finally boarded a bus that took me to Victoria Coach
Station from where, via train and taxi, I made it home; Thursday’s problem was
rain flooding the line to Guildford, and while I <i>did </i>get home it required
another diversion to the capital to take a different route. Carly proved very
unwilling to accept this, asking me repeatedly <i>why </i>I couldn’t send her
the money and then <i>why </i>I was away from home for a second time in a week.
As soon as I got back at 10.30 I did, and even offered to give her yet another
lift, but heard nothing. I still had to clear away the Christmas decorations in
the church and set up for the Toddler Group in the morning (our churchwardens
are both indisposed). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I couldn’t
send her the money because I am old-fashioned and use a physical key to access
my bank account. I don’t see why I should order my financial arrangements around
the possibility that someone else may want an emergency transfer while I’m out.
Also, I was absent for more than a day in a week because I was on leave. I had
explained this already, but Carly couldn’t grasp the relevance of it. I thought
of saying ‘What the hell business is it of yours to dictate what I do?’ </span>During an earlier episode of the same sort of thing Ms Formerly Aldgate once fumed ‘These people seem to think they’ve got an absolute right to your money’, and Carly appeared to believe I should put myself in a position always to meet her <i>potential </i>needs, as well. In fact
I’m afraid I got very annoyed about it, albe</span><span style="font-size: large;">it only to myself.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I
know maintaining boundaries is important, but here I am in the same kind of situation
as so many times before, with (unlike the Lord) an account of what it is I’m
supposed to do or not do that’s so fuzzy it’s barely workable. At least I didn’t
have a chance to tell Carly just what I thought, as I would have spoken out of
tiredness and bitterness that was nothing to do with her at all.</span></p><br />WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-66246671014509493892024-01-03T22:26:00.004+00:002024-01-03T22:26:33.708+00:00Having Said That ...<p><span style="font-size: large;">... I was at the V&A today to see the "Diva" exhibition, mainly tempted by PJ Harvey's <i>Hope Six</i> drum which is on show there, but I also dropped in at the medieval gallery and was astonished that I'd never spotted several representations of my patron saint, not Polly but St Catherine. There's an English alabaster panel showing the Martyrom, a German wooden statue, a golden reliquary, and a tiny plaque no more than an inch across.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB40hyphenhyphenv2fiZHlxDKIkFHjnPVmnhyphenhyphenJooZ9uIkNN6VxsAOwtbryhyzc18bkqLd0FCV2LTRPYPA6Ltq8036pznFMT_CZrzf5oRWj7fXAMk6epeoBC2MpDKkkmjqj2aeXCLMsjqmXmtDRkRan4JBsL_-_5q1Q2lZF3ViMaITLQyLdkpa5wzVFSXQMW4JdXCA/s730/IMG_6827.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="730" data-original-width="547" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB40hyphenhyphenv2fiZHlxDKIkFHjnPVmnhyphenhyphenJooZ9uIkNN6VxsAOwtbryhyzc18bkqLd0FCV2LTRPYPA6Ltq8036pznFMT_CZrzf5oRWj7fXAMk6epeoBC2MpDKkkmjqj2aeXCLMsjqmXmtDRkRan4JBsL_-_5q1Q2lZF3ViMaITLQyLdkpa5wzVFSXQMW4JdXCA/s320/IMG_6827.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi23LstJaRyUfQeG4yk1EBfNxpVymyXlHrB1yr_xgq4Onb91eWdPRWiXcPDGLsQMfkf1gR-v3mGvPpNQmRy0glBIHGZZ5_98D1CPQqFBrB9pi3hjGGe6v8uG_Fe4K0hZJD5tgstCrV4tZSBxOt3Sl8aYe212EWQGzHe7YjUCN9pGAXoSVlnFqTFI-e3Mw/s1070/IMG_6828.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1070" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi23LstJaRyUfQeG4yk1EBfNxpVymyXlHrB1yr_xgq4Onb91eWdPRWiXcPDGLsQMfkf1gR-v3mGvPpNQmRy0glBIHGZZ5_98D1CPQqFBrB9pi3hjGGe6v8uG_Fe4K0hZJD5tgstCrV4tZSBxOt3Sl8aYe212EWQGzHe7YjUCN9pGAXoSVlnFqTFI-e3Mw/s320/IMG_6828.jpg" width="157" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-QFZB9lAnApej30S5BYe8Rq2hhcRyZoOKBjABLSqLZMh39kR4HNbPgC7krD1HC6szNybssWZYiKsbmC3YGjiPYtU9E0BYlCuugtahSmfG8TGB7gep6sGEqzLMuimEmjrHwAWjdyXYXB5Y9yuHnuxCALJSpd0AuCbHJibamNOmsKOrPrgetrXhyphenhyphenefQg/s730/IMG_6840.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="730" data-original-width="547" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-QFZB9lAnApej30S5BYe8Rq2hhcRyZoOKBjABLSqLZMh39kR4HNbPgC7krD1HC6szNybssWZYiKsbmC3YGjiPYtU9E0BYlCuugtahSmfG8TGB7gep6sGEqzLMuimEmjrHwAWjdyXYXB5Y9yuHnuxCALJSpd0AuCbHJibamNOmsKOrPrgetrXhyphenhyphenefQg/s320/IMG_6840.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqFydYMHzi9ZE4jTqPkpqa8wF2zzMRdqqBDwm_JjTMn9t5XXE_L2dg79OFm-HDj9EYc2mRQdUB_C8QT7H6jAkLGdsvvLMCYsooK7Pro0wcQs9hvBuMgJ4CHojsVeETm-WsC9BocZlaH0kUlqxjyalZWKb-wMlv_Ra2qlYyYiXXH5EIy7H95fBze_daA/s979/IMG_6839.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="979" data-original-width="692" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqFydYMHzi9ZE4jTqPkpqa8wF2zzMRdqqBDwm_JjTMn9t5XXE_L2dg79OFm-HDj9EYc2mRQdUB_C8QT7H6jAkLGdsvvLMCYsooK7Pro0wcQs9hvBuMgJ4CHojsVeETm-WsC9BocZlaH0kUlqxjyalZWKb-wMlv_Ra2qlYyYiXXH5EIy7H95fBze_daA/s320/IMG_6839.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-5496617836454047012024-01-01T14:15:00.003+00:002024-01-05T09:53:28.185+00:00Rerum Novarum<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4YWuIQqtjuHh7cqpBd_UVHzZYXfB3yAala4s3L_kvgGIDQyx2F-h-BKpz6mjmQr3fbPuUAnCWANxuYZXx0rh6CVQGZcMhrGrhng1xPs57qPKrOy9i9XHI8CrOOXVZ1vZmC_Q7bCS7M-tmLTTJ_qt6s2KozSwvy-mUm2SkXietyBGYbvNOQ-uU6qNl0g/s3648/IMG_6776.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4YWuIQqtjuHh7cqpBd_UVHzZYXfB3yAala4s3L_kvgGIDQyx2F-h-BKpz6mjmQr3fbPuUAnCWANxuYZXx0rh6CVQGZcMhrGrhng1xPs57qPKrOy9i9XHI8CrOOXVZ1vZmC_Q7bCS7M-tmLTTJ_qt6s2KozSwvy-mUm2SkXietyBGYbvNOQ-uU6qNl0g/w400-h300/IMG_6776.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Even a couple of hours beforehand, I wasn't convinced about setting out to London to see the New Year in at <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2019/01/changing-calendar.html" target="_blank">Tarantella</a>. It wasn't just the usual Sunday services in the morning, or even preparing for my week off to come (in fact today <i>Il Rettore </i>warned me he has covid, so I'll be doing the Tuesday mass after all), but I was a bit weary. It didn't help that I came to lock up the church at tea-time and found Carly on the Lady Chapel step surrounded by bags and charging her phone. Only on Friday I'd given her a lift from the shared alcohol-recovery house ten miles away where she has a room to Swanvale Halt, because she said she'd been beaten up there and her money stolen. She was going to stay with a friend and see her family for Christmas. This didn't go well: the friend also beat her up and stole from her, and she got into a row with her brother who hit her for good measure. Could I take her back to the shared house again? At least it being New Year's Eve the roads were quiet. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Well. I set my teeth and drove to Guildford to catch a slow, late-running train that got me to The Albany on Great Portland Street at 10.45. And it was rather fine: the couple of hours I spent there were in the company of friends expected and unexpected and I learned a little about what's going on with them, in so far as you can grab some intelligible words in an environment of loud music in a dark, enclosed space. After the customary countdown to midnight, whoever was DJing put on 'Heroes' - most of the time I can't abide Bowie, but the song's melancholy defiance was most apposite and brought a bit of a tear to the eye. Back at Waterloo and dreading the usual exhausting diversion around the massive pedestrian gyratory system that, one time I and Ms Formerly Aldgate braved it, took us as far as Blackfriars, I found there wasn't one. I went straight up the escalator from the Tube and onto the concourse. I was so surprised and pleased I had to find a member of staff and congratulate them, much to their confusion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I think I will be posting here a bit less in 2024. I began this blog way, way back in 2009 because I found that clergy blogs essentially told you nothing interesting. I was especially thinking of someone who was at Staggers at the same time as me and whose posts on a blog that was supposed to be about hs parish essentially described whatever feast day it was according to the Roman calendar and then out of the blue announced he was crossing the Tiber, and that was that. I wanted to give at least a flavour of what looking after a small and unremarkable parish church is like, and after a couple of years settled into a discipline of posting basically every other day as all the advice in those days suggested that was how you built up an audience, even if I ended up showing readers pictures of the garden or some dimly-lit club as I am today. But all these years later, a blog of this kind is something of an anachronism - hardly anyone does anything like it now. Sometimes it's been a helpful mechanism for settling my thoughts on a particular topic, and just now and again I've posted something which people have been specifically interested in. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Far and away the most popular of these has been <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2013/08/beyond-fringe.html" target="_blank">my examination of fringe churches</a>, as the algorithms pick up on David Farrant, Sean Manchester and the saga of the Highgate Vampire very readily. The runners-up are:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">- <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2012/08/chapel-house-blackfen.html" target="_blank">My account of Chapel House, Blackfen</a>, an East London folly;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">- My speculations on the real identity of <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2018/04/harez-rvnn1ng.html" target="_blank">Witch House musician Hvcci Gvcci</a>;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">- A description of what happened to <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2015/01/st-saviours-poplar.html" target="_blank">the burned-out church of St Saviour, Poplar</a>;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">- A post about a handful of <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2014/10/norfolk-wells.html" target="_blank">holy wells in Norfolk</a>;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">- A few words about <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-forgotten-anglo-catholic-artist.html" target="_blank">Anglo-Catholic artist Thomas Noyes Lewis</a>; and </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">- <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-hascombe-dragonstones.html" target="_blank">My visit to the Hascombe Dragonstones</a> in 2020. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Presumably this is because there's not much else online about any of them! Anyway, a little while ago I passed the symbolic milestone of 2000 posts and as themes and ideas begin to repeat themselves it's time to slow down a bit. I will still post when something occurs to me, but be driven more by events and concerns than by that alternate-day discipline. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Every blessing in 2024 to any reader I may have!</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-33054308825202887312023-12-30T21:58:00.007+00:002024-01-01T14:19:48.297+00:00Far East Gothic<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Radio 4 is redoing
<i>The Wombles</i> at the moment, though I can’t see (or rather hear) Richard E Grant narrating
as any kind of credible replacement for Bernard Cribbins. Still, rather like
the Wombles ‘making good use of the things that they find’ as the song goes, Goth
fashion was originally a matter of salvaging bits and pieces other people
discarded or used differently – lace, and velvet, and torn fishnet-stocking sleeves,
that sort of thing. By the late 1990s and early 2000s some Goth scene participants
had realised they could make some money (and maybe even a modest living) out of
the things they enjoyed wearing, by making them for other people to buy: every Goth
girl (and a lot of the boys) knows how to sew, though actually making stuff
anyone might want to wear required a bit more application. There were of course
the one-stop-Goth-shops in Camden where you could pick up desperately cheap corsets,
skirts and coats that were only one step up from Halloween fancy dress and would
fall apart after a couple of evenings out; but there were the serious makers like
<a href="https://www.thedarkangel.com/pages/about-us" target="_blank">Darkangel</a> too. Based in Tavistock, Darkangel* was the brainchild of Carri who
began as a photographer and has cycled round in that direction again now that, <a href="https://www.thedarkangel.com/" target="_blank">she says</a>, </span>it’s ‘very difficult for small independent labels such as ours to
survive when competing with low cost overseas manufacturers’. In fact, my only item
of clothing from any Goth retailer is a Darkangel brocade frock coat – it has
a suitably clerical collar, not that I’ve had a chance to wear it for a long time,
since S.D. gave me a vintage frock coat from the 1930s. Good, heavy wool, that,
keep you warm if nothing else.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I hadn’t noticed Darkangel’s claims to be an ethical
manufacturer, specifically ‘avoiding using any fabrics, trimmings or other
components that are made in China’. I wonder what Carri makes of one of the makers
whose wares were flashed across my <i>LiberFaciorum</i> feed the other day, the Guangzhou-based
fashion house <a href="https://www.punkrave.org/" target="_blank">Punk Rave</a>. They’ve been going since 2006, though I’d never heard
of them (in contrast to Poland’s well-known <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2018/05/not-so-nu-goth.html" target="_blank">Restyle</a> brand, with its big round
hats, huge hoods, and astronomical imagery). Punk Rave’s founder and head designer,
Zhi Yi Kim (or sometimes Kin) comes from Chinese/Korean ancestry; she started
out (she says <a href="https://www.punk-rave.co.uk/pages/about-us" target="_blank">on the company website</a>) from a poor background and was always interested
in clothes. An early clothing store business didn’t work out, but after a stint
slaving in a Beijing restaurant Ms Kim went back home to Guangzhou to try again, having discovered punk and Goth culture through a friend and realising that
the styles she kept being instinctively drawn to had a name and a meaning. Dissatisfied
with the clothes she was selling – mainly, then, for export – Ms Kim took a design
course at Baewha Women’s University and set up Punk Rave. In 2010 a sub-brand,
PyonPyon, was started to market clothes specifically in the Japanese-oriented Gothic
Lolita style. Further lines ‘Fashion Series’ and ‘J&Punk Rave’ now cater
for a Chinese home market as, Ms Kim says, ‘domestic young people acceptance of
punk Gothic culture is far greater than when she first started designing’. Punk
Rave <a href="https://fashionmagazine24.com/events/punk-rave-vibes-at-london-fashion-week/" target="_blank">came</a> to pre-lockdown <a href="https://www.dstngr.com/article/2019/9/18/london-fashion-week-spring-summer-2020-punk-rave-x-light-amp-shadow-x-esa-liang-fashion-show" target="_blank">London Fashion Week</a> in 2020 (you can even see a
catwalk video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PZPgjY1ZMs" target="_blank">here</a>) and now sends its wares to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=853aVBUcIn0" target="_blank">online Goth influencers</a> to try
out, and the founder has a go at <a href="https://www.punkrave.org/blogs/news/what-is-gothic-fashion" target="_blank">describing Gothic fashion</a> for anyone in doubt
on the matter. So this is not a local cottage industry outfit, nor a mainstream fashion house which occasionally uses Goth ideas, but a basically Goth retailer <i>becoming part</i> of the international mainstream.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But what are the clothes like? Unlike Restyle, Punk Rave does
try bravely to cater for chaps, but although there’s a range of dramatic
cloaks, coats and shirts, such as the <i>Halifax </i>jacket below – with integral weskit, as
far as I can make out – on offer, what I really want is an interpretation of
the traditional gent’s suit. Ah, if only I had the talent to do it myself, or believed enough people
would buy such an artefact.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSji19folvg5w97S80LTKL5NF9AZzC00N39WCZqsxPPXSTrn56qhQXsPYP7ZAya71cUTYQw1wdOu76MRnq262skT5_foQZ8sOM0dc4LMYtAQNVSdNacuMSZzEMlfAehVLVkprrCEl_CqLhPoLJT5HeNzL11VXUD4adqUnNeXK5v-lEFmp9Z1Lw4R5c_Q/s1029/PRhalifax.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="823" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSji19folvg5w97S80LTKL5NF9AZzC00N39WCZqsxPPXSTrn56qhQXsPYP7ZAya71cUTYQw1wdOu76MRnq262skT5_foQZ8sOM0dc4LMYtAQNVSdNacuMSZzEMlfAehVLVkprrCEl_CqLhPoLJT5HeNzL11VXUD4adqUnNeXK5v-lEFmp9Z1Lw4R5c_Q/s320/PRhalifax.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Predictably it’s in the women’s range that Punk Rave is most
interesting. We might legitimately claim that ‘all Gothic life is here’ (it's not even all black), but in
amongst the more familiar Victorian and punky-influenced stuff we find some
really beautiful items such as the <i>Cheongsam </i>jacquard dress (trad Chinese style,
Gothically reinterpreted with buckles and lacing), the <i>Amaterasu </i>kimono dress in cotton
and leather, named after the Japanese sun goddess and which you can easily imagine
<a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2015/04/revelations-of-divine-love-of-kind.html" target="_blank">Yuuko-san from </a><i><a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2015/04/revelations-of-divine-love-of-kind.html" target="_blank">xxxHolic</a> </i>wearing, and this lovely asymmetric velvet coat the company
just calls ‘<i>Avant</i>’. I don’t know what conditions this schmutter is made under, but
it’s no cheaper than Darkangel was.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyKw1B-vo6-rBrojiosuyyIhTUwqczbFB8emjpJfz3d0n1BA3bI7e3DBgSYwC4UL-dRnDjOcvv-oHlMc9gD_8PLyLIfLyGIITEZtoeksfJfk_kSdUEuY1VbTSWmGHTjK69SCRByaekPaWHyB-9qPypif-3WyjMNrKUPpCZ95rz7e45BXpYDzr1w0K4wQ/s1024/PRcheongsam.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyKw1B-vo6-rBrojiosuyyIhTUwqczbFB8emjpJfz3d0n1BA3bI7e3DBgSYwC4UL-dRnDjOcvv-oHlMc9gD_8PLyLIfLyGIITEZtoeksfJfk_kSdUEuY1VbTSWmGHTjK69SCRByaekPaWHyB-9qPypif-3WyjMNrKUPpCZ95rz7e45BXpYDzr1w0K4wQ/s320/PRcheongsam.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhxvFmb9PMNxToNY7pMEb2nB01SNfhhN0jtSmUbuKGbQqU_vHF8B5XUPnirgxx8x9B6u51l20W2J7ixPYQrOfv5tvv3X9cTgcJzPySHXm1m3Ys8OUUPKB4zsWiVvMJrWEx2AHsxb4SVrdrT0SWHZYzkwTfs3ZI18-kj4g0SCV0nuzF9YPsb1OmceO_g/s1029/PRamaterasu.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="823" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhxvFmb9PMNxToNY7pMEb2nB01SNfhhN0jtSmUbuKGbQqU_vHF8B5XUPnirgxx8x9B6u51l20W2J7ixPYQrOfv5tvv3X9cTgcJzPySHXm1m3Ys8OUUPKB4zsWiVvMJrWEx2AHsxb4SVrdrT0SWHZYzkwTfs3ZI18-kj4g0SCV0nuzF9YPsb1OmceO_g/s320/PRamaterasu.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhem25qL3ZVNfHlU2yJ5uYE4I7zRcoWtUEEgj0EPWwM8MheAQNWdBtgV7SoFLJHybuI5Fvq1QxVAFtC46odubDfWIViBWvGQyqZ_06aHopIuN9UFvGy15nbuEhbRBoatmmHk9RKv1dKFNw99Y22pl2AvymYbhEqLtY5nJdR6QVA1RXkKedWWjdsd19xew/s1000/PRavant.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="717" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhem25qL3ZVNfHlU2yJ5uYE4I7zRcoWtUEEgj0EPWwM8MheAQNWdBtgV7SoFLJHybuI5Fvq1QxVAFtC46odubDfWIViBWvGQyqZ_06aHopIuN9UFvGy15nbuEhbRBoatmmHk9RKv1dKFNw99Y22pl2AvymYbhEqLtY5nJdR6QVA1RXkKedWWjdsd19xew/s320/PRavant.jpg" width="229" /></a></div></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">There’s another political aspect to think about, too. Ms Kim
seems to envisage fashion as <a href="https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/punk-rave-advocates-getting-woke-at-china-shenzhen-fashion-week-882121273.html " target="_blank">having something to say</a> about ‘promoting a future-oriented
consumption model that achieves a cultural, environmental, scientific and
technological balance’, and sums up the punk ethos as ‘never depressed, never
slavish’. Such comments are two-edged in modern China. She’s probably safe as
long as she carries on making money and doesn’t comment too much. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">-<span> -<span> -<span> -<span> -<span> -<span> -</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">*[I notice an increased emphasis in parts of the Goth world
on ‘fairy’ motifs. You find this in Carri of Darkangel's current photography, in events including the annual Fairy Ball in Glastonbury, and the styles occasionally adopted
by my friends such as Madame Morbidfrog and Lady Wildwood. There’s some
crossover with pagan and medieval themes, and enough material for a short thesis].</span><o:p></o:p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-22518704994531189772023-12-28T20:08:00.001+00:002023-12-28T20:08:23.930+00:00Drop Down O Heavens<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM9jr4MYT_zu_dEAx2KYe0z54nGTEOu8CYj5bVo4uWLtaF3Pspx5RnnJ_RPSrvdb2bddVg2Zxv54ZHVyH8VCH4qRoXIiEXlsdj013oh1QaSknj0ISXqrp1lHmOdgvjX8HJXgQy0GMl2qttoF89cKcomyZ_uq4OJ95mdIV2QWOnNEhrVZkeW5UHwYEjhQ/s3264/IMG_20231228_173651008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM9jr4MYT_zu_dEAx2KYe0z54nGTEOu8CYj5bVo4uWLtaF3Pspx5RnnJ_RPSrvdb2bddVg2Zxv54ZHVyH8VCH4qRoXIiEXlsdj013oh1QaSknj0ISXqrp1lHmOdgvjX8HJXgQy0GMl2qttoF89cKcomyZ_uq4OJ95mdIV2QWOnNEhrVZkeW5UHwYEjhQ/s320/IMG_20231228_173651008.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to my entries - which are the only entries - in the service register at Smallham Chapel, numbers at the annual Christmas service were about 30 for the last couple of post-pandemic years, but I thought there were about 50 people this time, including a variety of children. I recognised some faces, including that of Clarice who used to organise the event and who moved to a care home last year, brought along in her wheelchair, but as always there are new souls. For the first time ever, there was a deluge just as we left the church to head down to sing to the sheep, and so we were allowed into the barn to shelter (very Biblical). In this photo it looks as though we are advancing menacingly on the unfortunate beasts, but that's just the distorted perspective of the camera. Honest. The pompom on my biretta will never be quite the same.</span><p></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-14925780289785935772023-12-26T21:52:00.001+00:002023-12-26T21:55:21.708+00:00Christmas 2023<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It was pretty similar to last year in terms of numbers, the Cribbage and Midnight very much the same, 8am a bit down, and 10am a bit up. The fact that it was one of those years when the Fourth Sunday of Advent magically transforms into Christmas Eve at mid-day didn't seem to make that much of a difference to anyone except me and the team of souls who staff the services, who were spread a <i>bit thin</i> between six services, not to mention Carols by Candlelight last Friday night. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">After last year's experiences, I rethought the Midnight: rather than attempt a grandeur we can't manage, we went for intimacy instead, abandoning the old high altar, not having anyone in the choir (two choristers were present but sat in the congregation), and having subdued lighting and lots of candles. I was just thinking that for the first time I could remember the service had gone without any mishap at all when Margaret who was one of the eucharistic ministers knocked one of my huge pillar candles over and sent wax spinning over the dais the altar sits on. At least it hadn't been Tim the crucifer as, in his polyester robe (we still use the ones a churchwarden made in 1975), he would have gone up like a candle himself. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">On Christmas Day I attended the Churches Together Christmas Lunch, ending up giving three of the guests a lift after various people went down with a norovirus. I ended up sitting with a Nigerian gentleman, a woman from Sierra Leone and her small daughter, and a Sri Lankan nurse working in one of the local care homes. Somehow we began talking about Reformation history, and it was quite agreeable to explain about Lady Jane Grey and Henry VIII's wives to people who wouldn't have been able to pick me up on the bits I'd forgotten about. They still knew more about the history of the British monarchy than I do about those of West Africa or Ceylon, though. They had no idea about the UK Christmas tradition of the monarch's speech. The Lunch organisers had some trouble with the audiovisuals and so we ended up watching Chucky Boy on the TV while his <i>words</i> were played through a mic off someone's phone, with a delay of about 3 seconds which was most disconcerting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Down in Dorset for Boxing Day, I, my sister and elder niece went for a little walk over Turbary Common, that <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2020/09/revisiting-past-haunts.html" target="_blank">charismatic landscape</a> of my childhood. As I and Lady Arlen <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2022/07/holiday.html" target="_blank">discovered last year</a>, there are cows there now, and they were there today. I can't tell you how odd it is to see these bovine presences so close to a very suburban environment I am very familiar with.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pBrSnZ6w5qvgErXK7uJ9ifvKOKwsm7_QU_AsnrRCm8JVpRRi35Wg53D3pg6iHonKgArl2uXZKouazZMXD3FFOYhb6h4jmg-L4nBQlvanxAxsJ4HIvNrhf62qsiirTPXA77fgFiWQKKAZIdDaB-NTsGvGizLqEQumkCkmJidOv0yQ_DAjZwq-TrJT9A/s730/IMG_6772.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="730" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pBrSnZ6w5qvgErXK7uJ9ifvKOKwsm7_QU_AsnrRCm8JVpRRi35Wg53D3pg6iHonKgArl2uXZKouazZMXD3FFOYhb6h4jmg-L4nBQlvanxAxsJ4HIvNrhf62qsiirTPXA77fgFiWQKKAZIdDaB-NTsGvGizLqEQumkCkmJidOv0yQ_DAjZwq-TrJT9A/w400-h300/IMG_6772.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-44854370075742811462023-12-23T20:52:00.001+00:002023-12-23T20:52:12.790+00:00Real Presence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUCCkx_4-yBibjCOY_WCwJCbnrxMy7lpu0sEE_7VDMrEi967j1EygND1Pqw3pHdjYv4NbkZnuwWk33chfaG0xcE0duxIMLIjDDX982U2peOWJ7mL2jN_IMB6jNf8jV-shRoLknuJIdDfxEM2_scWJGOZcl57TAjG1M2dAqG2nqYf0W-RdQpUOwImNCg/s730/IMG_6761%5B1%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="730" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUCCkx_4-yBibjCOY_WCwJCbnrxMy7lpu0sEE_7VDMrEi967j1EygND1Pqw3pHdjYv4NbkZnuwWk33chfaG0xcE0duxIMLIjDDX982U2peOWJ7mL2jN_IMB6jNf8jV-shRoLknuJIdDfxEM2_scWJGOZcl57TAjG1M2dAqG2nqYf0W-RdQpUOwImNCg/s320/IMG_6761%5B1%5D.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The approach of Christmas is about concerts and nativities, but it's also about taking communion to members of the Church who won't be able to make it any time over the season itself. It's strange that this is more a Thing in some parishes than others; I once spoke to a priest who looked after two rural Oxfordshire parishes with completely different traditions, the one where there were lots of home communicants, and the other where they assumed that being brought the Sacrament in their own surroundings was a certain prelude to death. At his training parish in the mid-1980s, <i>Il Rettore </i>was once charged with taking communion to 14 people in one day, and surviving that without derangement was quite an achievement. Here in Swanvale Halt, my illustrious 1970s predecessor Fr Edward introduced the Roman Catholic practice of communion being taken to home communicants by lay ministers directly after the Sunday mass, an ideal long since gone by the wayside, and now it's almost invariably me visiting a fluctuating group of souls. </span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">So yesterday found me visiting two homes with two people in each, and today I've seen five more in four visits. Tomorrow I'll call on Sarah who has just been discharged from hospital. It's helped me feel that I've been doing something worthwhile on a day which began with looking for my keys and grappling with an unco-operative photocopier. I suppose delivering Lemsip tablets to Mad Trevor also counts as 'worthwhile', though his insistence that he has flu is undermined by the fact that he insists it every other week. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Seven home communions over three days isn't twice that in one, and I don't know how I'd react to that: I probably wouldn't want to do it every week, either. But curiously it doesn't seem wearying (any more than I already was weary) or tedious. Each encounter, which has exactly the same shape, feels different. It involves a different person or persons in specific surroundings, each with a special history of their own that they bring to that moment. Tomorrow we begin the great celebration of the Incarnation, so the presence of the Christ in each unique individual is part of the point. The Sacrament brings him together with them. This is the best way I can imagine of making it real.</span></div>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-83053801248787627422023-12-21T20:43:00.004+00:002023-12-21T20:45:22.170+00:00Christmas Revival<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFie9TTM0uZawx_Tsh1LwgTpO3sspV3-Yft-TPzmVKLD_qfnNoZUKRwripU0mNkVIbMya2wJJyNB7N8tORvaeh_2jv-Paru8_27E_fhmp5Ikz9cInmAQS0y7-rhoVfN_ENy4bK5SNUuUT_88eKtz6RyyFIlFc431QRY9FLBBAX9AstU3cUbMu3E4T6Yg/s410/revival.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="410" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFie9TTM0uZawx_Tsh1LwgTpO3sspV3-Yft-TPzmVKLD_qfnNoZUKRwripU0mNkVIbMya2wJJyNB7N8tORvaeh_2jv-Paru8_27E_fhmp5Ikz9cInmAQS0y7-rhoVfN_ENy4bK5SNUuUT_88eKtz6RyyFIlFc431QRY9FLBBAX9AstU3cUbMu3E4T6Yg/s320/revival.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As Christmas approaches there is often a spate of journalistic
comment about religion that doesn’t necessarily bear on the season, but on the
state of Christianity as a whole. Dr Abacus recently called the attention of myself
and other clergy he knows to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5a72474c-9b8b-42ef-b708-e669fdf11956" target="_blank">a piece for the </a><i><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5a72474c-9b8b-42ef-b708-e669fdf11956" target="_blank">FT</a> </i>by Camilla Cavendish, about the
benefits of religious observance, while in <i>The Scotsman </i>Tory leader in Scotland Murdo Fraser <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/richard-dawkins-new-atheism-has-run-its-course-with-early-signs-of-a-christian-revival-in-uk-murdo-fraser-4451001" target="_blank">tilts at the long-toppled windmill</a> of Dr Richard Dawkins to allege ‘early signs of a Christian
revival’ in the UK. I thought both were a bit questionable. Baroness Cavendish describes
herself as an unbeliever but prescribes religion for personal wellbeing, while Mr
Fraser, while also declaring Christianity’s utility in answering what he reports
as Nicky Gumbel’s summary of human needs – ‘to be loved, to have a purpose, to
belong’ – adds to them its role in underpinning 'Western values', basically
roping God into culture-war discourse. His description of Christianity’s ‘inspiring
message of hope and light’ rings every bit as hollow and unconvincing as you might
predict. I’d never dream of using arguments like this. The first amounts to ‘come
to church and you might feel a bit better’, while the second translates as ‘come
to church and together we can stop the Muslims’. Never satisfied, me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Meanwhile over on Radio 4 we have a somewhat more rewarding and
intellectually hard-edged <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001t9v4" target="_blank">diatribe </a>from Will Self:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s precisely in order to hear [these
ultimate questions] posed that I attend church services of all denominations,
and ones in mosques, ashrams, gudwaras, and synagogues as well. Other non-believers
may go for aesthetic reasons, and especially at this time of year, for a live
enactment of some Christmassy reverie; I go, as I say, to test the mettle of my
own understanding of my self, and its relation to others and the world, and for
this to work for me, I require a sermon! Often, I’ll find the sermon in the
established churches so woefully bad I have to restrain myself from heckling.
It’s not just a matter of banal popular cultural references, it’s the reduction
of the majesty and awe that should be associated with this extraordinary belief
system to a kind of weak humanist <i>jus</i>. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">… which all acts as some sort of cautionary warning as I
compose the five sermons I will preach across Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,
just in case someone like Will Self is there, ‘believing that any sermon I hear
could be the one that triggers some profound conversion experience’. At least
he was mildly approving, despite one throwaway reference to Nigel Farage, of
what he heard ‘on Advent Sunday as I sat with about forty others in the
exquisitely beautiful St Jude’s-on-the-Hill’, preached by, as it turns out,
<a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/heavy-metal-star-london-church-curate-a4522686.html" target="_blank">Revd Emily Kolltveit</a>, former Mediaeval Baebe and leader of symphonic-metal band
Pythia before she caught religion. I wonder what sermon got to <i>her</i>.</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-25729742221409863042023-12-19T22:41:00.004+00:002023-12-19T22:41:50.464+00:00Coffee, Interrupted<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIdjqfUl30Epyr9gTEbMSEySbxZqky3jteFk5zak5x91qga7n9huqy7e4YfqN9zh8JD6dapmZ2DDi4bYJXIIqSX3hVeNCwSXkzKc8X85r4STJnkKngDGLxSeUnRC9bpY2QdnlizyjlY9z0Bz93ExwkFTXxE2Wqg96lsgBo9tOuqjGa1HmClemz9L1XA/s237/Screenshot%202023-12-19%20223702.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="237" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIdjqfUl30Epyr9gTEbMSEySbxZqky3jteFk5zak5x91qga7n9huqy7e4YfqN9zh8JD6dapmZ2DDi4bYJXIIqSX3hVeNCwSXkzKc8X85r4STJnkKngDGLxSeUnRC9bpY2QdnlizyjlY9z0Bz93ExwkFTXxE2Wqg96lsgBo9tOuqjGa1HmClemz9L1XA/w200-h189/Screenshot%202023-12-19%20223702.png" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">'Are you working on sermons for Christmas?' asked the older gentleman who entered the café this morning, saw me, and came and sat at my table, leaving his companion scanning the menu at theirs. As a matter of fact I was, but I was quite happy to have a conversation with someone new.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">He was a Quaker, he said, and asked what our church was doing to support the Palestinians. Not a great deal, I had to admit, although at the start of the war I'd observed the Patriarchs' <a href="https://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2023/10/prayer-and-fasting-sort-of.html" target="_blank">call for prayer and fasting</a> in a somewhat thin way as you may remember. My interlocutor was very disappointed at the Churches' response to the Gaza war, 'whereas they've fallen in line with what the Government's told us to feel about Ukraine, and that's a situation completely of the West's own making'. He was wearing a <i>keffiyeh</i>: although I think for a Christian to wear a <i>keffiyeh</i> as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinians is a bit like a White person blacking up to protest against racism, people will have different opinions about that and I didn't raise it. 'It's a terrible situation in which there is much evil', I offered, 'But there are many terrible situations in which there is much evil around the world, and I never quite see why so many people who aren't involved feel so invested in <i>this </i>one particularly'.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I was being slightly disingenuous: I have a pretty definite suspicion why, and there's a kind explanation and a less kind one. The kind one is that Christians read about Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and all these other places in their Bibles, and feel a sense of connection with them as a result. (I am curious about the fact that I don't. I have absolutely no interest at all in travelling to the Holy Land, walking in Jesus's footsteps or anything of that kind, not when the whole point of the Christian religion is that you can walk in his footsteps perfectly well here rather than burning up hydrocarbons to visit a war zone. But anyway.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As for the second explanation, my unsought companion was about to prove it. 'Well', he said, 'How would you like it if someone was to hand your country over to the Jews? - Or anyone', he added hurriedly, editing his instinctive opinions in a way that made the original outburst worse. Thankfully by this point the café staff were very keen that he should return to his seat before it was time for him and his friend to leave.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It's not the first conversation I've had with a <i>keffiyeh</i>-wearing Christian who's made an eye-stretching comment about 'the Jews' - not just some Jews, not <i>those </i>Jews, note, but <i>all </i>of them. That this hides among ordinary people who talk a lot about Peace with a capital P shouldn't perhaps provoke such shocked disappointment, but it does.</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-11223528311582941322023-12-17T13:57:00.005+00:002023-12-17T13:57:30.139+00:00What A Difference A Year Makes<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw4_SflUg1hNeo13gNfo9cbK72mJTkptgwHzY2RIg8ZZhco1pyX85ZkYVw2Lxsz0gvrCcYXJZv5W8AF-r4WBlM6jl-AERpYpbpBUUFTT-NewaWsTQPXGaB8FXI6nybIMAYXzL4E25iWc1HWIqL0rLU0ox8YXNtivnrwuqZ1ZtRkqvGlmiHAIwcorVGwg/s352/music.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="352" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw4_SflUg1hNeo13gNfo9cbK72mJTkptgwHzY2RIg8ZZhco1pyX85ZkYVw2Lxsz0gvrCcYXJZv5W8AF-r4WBlM6jl-AERpYpbpBUUFTT-NewaWsTQPXGaB8FXI6nybIMAYXzL4E25iWc1HWIqL0rLU0ox8YXNtivnrwuqZ1ZtRkqvGlmiHAIwcorVGwg/s320/music.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It is the time of Christmas concerts at the church - schools, choirs, councils, all doing roughly the same thing and getting lots of people through the door, although the GCSE music students from Widelake Secondary doing <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> was moderately unusual fare. The latest of these events came from the Hornington Singers. I left last year's concert midway through the first half, not because I had other things I absolutely needed to do or because I was any tireder than usual, but because it was an aesthetically challenging experience and I couldn't help concluding that putting up with it was an Advent penance I could manage without. When anyone talked about the concert I managed to come up with circumlocutions which obscured how bad I thought it had been.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This year they have a new director and instantly you could tell matters were very different: two hours later and they were understandably a bit tired, but even then it was OK for a bunch of amateur singers. Today I've had a couple of conversations with people who were there. Typically my interlocutor has opened with 'It was good last night, wasn't it?' and I have ventured a cautious 'Yes, and a bit improved on last year I thought', <i>and then it all comes pouring out</i>, the sense that this person has waited for twelve months for someone (presumably someone they don't live with anyway) to share how dreadful an experience it was. How much of life is like that, he says in 'Thought For The Day' mode. </span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4765201235054773644.post-91441802203000128172023-12-15T08:31:00.001+00:002023-12-15T08:31:47.581+00:00Moving In the Past<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMPs-3Y1oOfhd35mVSTSxYwybhLFFjk8thQ3XH5MB_7oGgZlz9nb-yRTdX43EYVo2a2pF3JaNLzWebkS0vVTvRakYavYyA7vKyIqs1IgNhyakNPA6f-vQoT1J2fXUoviBNpm_dlBXmZsQ42Ui_wNr1Tm7xnJop_w40F74auv13EDtEZXKh0F9oOjn0Tg/s2892/1969_00_007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1927" data-original-width="2892" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMPs-3Y1oOfhd35mVSTSxYwybhLFFjk8thQ3XH5MB_7oGgZlz9nb-yRTdX43EYVo2a2pF3JaNLzWebkS0vVTvRakYavYyA7vKyIqs1IgNhyakNPA6f-vQoT1J2fXUoviBNpm_dlBXmZsQ42Ui_wNr1Tm7xnJop_w40F74auv13EDtEZXKh0F9oOjn0Tg/s320/1969_00_007.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I have no idea why my Mum decided to use a recent letter to describe how it was that she and Dad came to live in the house in Bournemouth that she still occupies, but it seemed worth recording for posterity. Here's what she said, with her own approach to capitalisation as that seems important to me, too: </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>I was 26 years when we moved in.
We had a Cooker a Bed an old TV & Settee. Mum & Dad </i>[hers] <i>Bought us the Table
& Chairs. Dad </i>[mine] <i>laid the Paths all round & mixed cement & Carried it
in a Dustbin Lid haha Couldn’t afford a WheelBarrow.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We had £200 put Back to Buy
things But. They charged us £200 for Road Charges So that was that. Still we
got there in the end. I’ve bought a New Washing Machine cum Tumble Dryer. I’ve
got to laugh as it was a quarter of what the Bungalow cost, 8 Times Dad’s
Wages.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Before this, Mum and Dad had had a caravan in New Milton, their home from their marriage in 1962 until the bungalow came up. In the past Mum's related how Dad's employer agreed to inflate his wages so they could successfully apply for a mortgage, and how because the street was newly carved out of a chunk of waste land the gardens of the bungalows were an expanse of mud and the road hadn't been properly laid out, hence the 'road charges'. The 'table and chairs' are an Ercol set which is still serviceable 57 years later.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course these are all challenges and delights that modern couples in their 20s are never likely to encounter at all ... !</span></p>WeepingCrosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00220836185673764089noreply@blogger.com0