One Hand Clapping

It happens remarkably seldom that I have proper theological conversations with anyone at all, much though that may surprise people. Yesterday my visiting brought me to a council tenant in some of the new houses down the hill who was somewhat bemused to greet me at the door, a young couple relocating to the parish from Fulham and who were apparently very excited to have a visit from the rector - or it may have been hysteria caused by the stress of moving - and a new member of the congregation. Conrad is of mixed Polish-Irish extraction and had a traumatic education at the hands of an authoritarian group of Jesuits some fifty years ago, and spent thirty years as a Buddhist before finding his way back to Christianity over the last year or so. 

"I kept waking up and feeling thankful," explained Conrad, "and no matter what I did the feeling wouldn't go away. Gratitude makes no sense in Buddhism: the world is something to be liberated from, and in any case there is nothing to be thankful to. Gratitude implies a relationship."

Conrad went at first to a church not far away, then "feeling I ought to go back to the True Faith" visited a local church of the Roman observance on the morning the hapless priest had to read out a statement from the bishop denouncing same-sex marriage. So he dipped his toe in the water at Swanvale Halt and decided to stay. 

I doubt, sadly, his experience is especially typical ...

(Not Quite) 99 Red Balloons

It's amazing to think that 2015 is the sixth year Pentecost has been celebrated at Swanvale Halt following the 'restored' pattern (restored only in the sense that I assembled it from other liturgical material), notwithstanding being missed out in 2012 when we weren't worshipping in the church itself. As usual, almost everyone forgets from year to year what it is we do. This year I hung strings of red balloons between the pillars, necessitating some neat acrobatics with the processional cross on the part of the crucifer. 

We did the 'speaking in tongues' performance of Acts 2 in which a group of people stand up during the reading to read verses 11 to 13 in a variety of languages, all at once. It introduced an element of pleasing chaos and silliness, added to by me sloshing water about from the font and then spattering the congregation with it before being spattered myself by a younger member of the company. Well; the Holy Spirit is not chaotic, but he may appear so to our limited human apprehension. A surprising number of people said how they enjoyed it all.

However in view of our reflections about the mission of the church I did think about how inward-looking it was. Silly though elements of the Pentecost liturgy may be, it focuses on the serious business of reminding the populus dei of their apostolic task as Christ's disciples, to heal, reconcile, serve and preach. This is a good thing, and a needful thing, but it also emphasises the distance between Christians and everyone else. Reminding people of their baptism by means of the asperges, to take only one element, assumes they are baptised, and I know for certain that not every adult present was; it assumes that they are within the system, and committed to it, not trying to work out what it is they might think and believe. It's definitely the discipleship aspect of the Church, rather than the missionary. 

When In Doubt, Post About Vestments

I am in doubt, so I am posting about vestments. 

All these sets were offered for sale recently by Church Antiques, where, strange to tell, I often find myself. This first black requiem set comes from a church in Batley, and shows the silver orphreys one very often finds with such vestments. These look Spanish in their form, though that by no means entails that they come from Spain!

I think the pink aspect of this vestment set is a function of the photography rather than the nature of the fabric: I suspect it's red. It too comes from Batley and has a South German form, indicated by the extra bit of vertical braid just below the neckline.

In contrast to the above Roman sets from Batley, this red chasuble from Margate is in Gothic shape. That fabric looks 1950s or 1960s to me, but what stands out is the heavily embroidered silver boat, so nicely appropriate to a seaside town. 

This set from a church in Southampton you might define as 'gold', but yellow was used in some medieval English churches for feast days of confessors - saints who were neither virgins nor martyrs. This is definitely not medieval, though, although late nineteenth-century is a possibility. We had a similar set at Lamford, so tattered it was unusable though you could see what it once had been. Shame this has only what looks like alb apparel in addition to the chasuble rather than a stole.

And finally back to Roman vestments for this requiem set from Southampton. The combination of black and green is rather handsome.

There's a Story Here

The other day it poured with rain and hail in Swanvale Halt, and water pattered gaily through the ceiling of the church vestry. I was fairly sure this was because the downpipes were blocked and so when the coast was clear (and dry) I went out to check.

In the shrubbery by the vestry wall I spotted something grey and powdery among the leaves. Cursory investigation suggested that this was almost certainly cremated remains. The quantity was, I queasily reflected, about what one would expect if it was the leftovers of a human being, as the alternatives were an Irish wolfhound or quite a lot of cats. How long had it been there? Some weeks, according to the chap who does the gardening. 'I did notice it but didn't know what it was.' So we dug a hole in the Garden of Remembrance across the path and buried as much of the pulverised bone - because this is what 'ash' actually is - as I could manage to collect. 

Had somebody come into the churchyard and spread Auntie Flo around a bit it would have been more understandable, and we might not even have noticed anything untoward, but simply to deposit her in the bushes among the beer cans and bottles is something nobody else I ask has ever encountered. Was it someone who didn't know how to go about asking the church, or who wanted to avoid the fees (which we could have waived had they had trouble), or who had a family quarrel about what to do with the ashes or who couldn't face deciding? We did what I think is the 'right thing', but there is uncompleted work here which I imagine we will never manage to do. 

Signs & Wonders - 4

The final chunk of my complicated reflections on the lives of a Christian and an occult practitioner.

Anyone who prays accepts that part of the business of prayer is the effect it has on the one who does it: thus Christians say that prayer is less about telling God what you want than about listening to him, learning to align one's will with his. This is of course nothing less than the truth; but putting all the emphasis in this direction turns away in some discomfort, perhaps, from those Scriptural insistences that prayer is also supposed to make very concrete things happen, or at least play a role in them happening. ‘The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective', says St James, ‘the prayer will make the sick person well.’ ‘If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer’, says Jesus quite baldly. Generations of Christians have been driven to angst and anguish by trying to reconcile such statements with the apparent deafness of Heaven to what they pray themselves.  

People, by and large, want to help, want to be able to do something practical for others. What originally propelled Dion Fortune towards occultism – strange though this might seem to those of us with a rationalist frame of mind – was the feeling that the psychotherapeutic techniques in which she was trained were actually inadequate to help her patients, and something was needed which took a rounder view of the human person and its mental components. Throughout the history of the Society of the Inner Light there was a persistent desire, never fulfilled, to develop something along the lines of an occult healing centre that would combine a variety of therapeutic techniques to heal, and that sometimes this would include physical as well as mental disorders. One of the Higher Plane teachers who regularly contacted the Society, known as ‘the Master of Medicine’, would occasionally remind the members of this aspect of the work. Dion Fortune and some of the adepts did indeed deal with individuals and their problems on this basis, but the plan for a more corporate healing centre never materialised. For Agnes Sanford, the whole impetus of her ministry came from the experience of healing and being healed.

The similarities between the two – the focus on visualisation and mental training, for instance – are striking. Furthermore, although the occultist may seem to concentrate more on an internal journey towards adept-ship which doesn't necessarily have any obvious purpose beyond the person concerned, it’s clear that Dion Fortune, at least, intended the purified soul to be more useful to their fellow beings rather than just enjoying some individualistic communion with eternal reality. Agnes Sanford’s teaching, obviously, was even more concentrated on discovering ways, often very old ways, of ‘clearing’ the human will to be more open to the will and power of God.

If both spiritual disciplines do seem able, at some level, to help prayer produce sensible effects, an important question arises for Christians: what’s happening? The fact that Dion Fortune’s first mentor in the occult world, Theodore Moriarty, was an accomplished exorcist, raises the issue in a rather acute form. Remember how Jesus is challenged about this very matter, accused of ‘casting out demons by the prince of demons’, and responds to the religious authorities, ‘then by whom do your sons cast them out?’ pointing out further that if Satan is casting out devils his end can’t be far away. Christians who might want to argue that good supernormal works wrought by non- (or heterodox) Christians are in fact delusions of dark spiritual powers have to cope with the Church’s ancient and Biblical insistence that those powers cannot do anything wholesome and good, except by accident. You can’t draw fresh water from a salty spring, states St James; by their fruits you shall recognise them, says Jesus.

Assuming this is not all the purest nonsense, there seem to be two possibilities. First, that there is some sort of innate spiritual power in human beings which can be activated and energised by certain techniques, whether they are framed within a Christian or an occult context, or something entirely different. Second, that God responds with generosity to prayers offered to him with compassion, without necessarily insisting very much on the person offering them having the correct belief structure. The first omits God and can never form the basis of a Christian approach to the matter;  the second leaves the initiative with God; but still unsettles Christian assumptions about their own specialness. It would make God more open-minded, perhaps, than we might be comfortable with, or can afford to be.

Keep Up At The Back

A text conversation.

Cylene: Is Pastel Goth one of our relatives or are they just neighbours who only really do a similar look but have their own scene (like Gothic Lolita)?

Me: I don’t know – I don’t think I've ever met anyone who described themselves as a PastelGoth, or pointed someone out to me who was!

Cylene: I've only seen it online! Hence why I don’t know if they’re ‘us’ or not

Me: Or whether they exist at all?

Cylene: Well, if major newspapers are doing reports on Health Goth I've just come to assume everything exists now

Shoulda gone with Hula Goth while I had the chance

Me: I hadn't heard of Health Goth either. I’d argue it’s not Goth until Goths wear it, regardless of what some idiot fashion journalists with a Tumblr think

Cylene: It’s literally just Goths who go to the gym; and it was covered I think by the Telegraph

Me: As far as my in-depth study of the last 5 minutes suggests, there’s no indication that exists outside the pages of said newspapers

Cylene: Your eagerness to disprove almost sounds like elitism ;p

And actually Irena had Health Goth in her belt, but first and foremost she considered herself Rivet

Me: It’s not elitist really, because I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘real’ or not real Goth – except I don’t think it could conceivably be ‘real’ unless people beyond the imaginings of fashion journalists or designers were actually wearing anything like that style. There’s a parallel with CorpGoth which has been a definite ‘thing’ for many years but was originally just a matter of Goths trying to dress in a way acceptable to both straight employers and their own tastes. I’ve seen people with pastel hair and clothes but it doesn’t become Pastel Goth until people consciously think ‘I’m going to look like that’. If Irena wore something that said ‘Health Goth’ that she or someone else had made it does suggest it’s more than just a designer’s label of convenience or what Goths wear in the gym …

Cylene: Agreed, actually. I feel mainstream is all too eager to stamp Goth on things just because there’s black in it or a Goth did it once, and it’s always worst in Autumn

Me: Exactly! Goths go to bed and might well have one or even more pairs of black pyjamas but that doesn't mean there’s a sub-style called ‘Bedtime Goth’ you can get in Debenhams

(And then a couple of weeks later when I and Ms Formerly Aldgate went to the V&A for Alexander McQueen I spotted a young couple the chap of whom was a typical off-duty example of one sort of Goth - beard, long hair, long black coat, big boots), but whose companion retained Gothy eye makeup but was wearing a pink wool 1950s-style coat and a maroon beret - the overlap of Goth and (slight shudder) Vintage). 

Signs and Wonders - 3

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Gareth Knight's book about Dion Fortune introduced me rather helpfully to the way an occult society operates. He refers repeatedly to the 'work' the Society of the Inner Light did, and one might wonder what that work actually consisted of. I was sufficiently intrigued to try to express it thus.

The initiative is held to come from the Masters (Hidden or Secret or something of that ilk) who have died but are keen to encourage the spiritual development of humankind. They reside above the wavy line on this diagram. The occult society draws inspiration from the broader occult tradition (the scroll) but also directly from the Masters via the medium - in this case, Dion Fortune herself. The Society's members meditate on the trance communications and the tradition, and together develop a system of imagery and practice (the Qabalah symbol on the right) which in turn feeds back into the meditative cycle, providing a means for the society's adepts to interpret and improve their lives. 

As far as the Inner Light was concerned, the communications with the Masters tended to take a back seat as time went on, even while Dion Fortune was still alive. There were three, in the main: Lord Erskine, as mentioned previously, Socrates, and a former First War officer called David Carstairs who had a disconcertingly chirpy manner and in latter years even dictated a rather well-received stage play. After Dion Fortune died, the Masters had less and less to say, or perhaps the adepts spoke to them less; at any rate, mediumship became of progressively dwindling importance and, as Gareth Knight says, under successive mediums 'the type of trance seemed very light, and a condition that was entered and left with considerable facility'. Am I right in detecting something of an edge to this statement?

Well, this is all somewhat extra vires to my main interest, but intriguing nonetheless.