Leaning Into God

Today's Big Topic in the Moot House: "Leaning into God - What does it mean if we fall over?"

Leaks in the Church

A Folkstone Church discovers the cause of its leaky roof - a World War II bullet.

Worth watching to wonder why it didn't occur to the congregation at the time - there being a war one. But I suppose they could have been distracted by the Home Guard amusingly getting caught up in the bell ropes while shouting "Don't Panic".

Which reminds me - for those of Anglo-Catholic persuasion especially  - isn't the verger's attitude towards the vicar spot on in its portrayal? And shouldn't it have been stamped out back then?

I digress. The piece also has a niche bit of subtitling failure, as "flèche" gets rendered "flesh". You just can't find a subtitler with an interest in church architecture when you need one.

But it does remind me of when we had a similar problem with leaks. Took us months to find out the source. Then it turned out to be Denzyl on the Pastoral Committee, sharing what he shouldn't down the White Horse. We soon plugged that.

"Any Answers" - the Nation Speaks

Anita Anand: Welcome to "Any Answers". And we have a call from Eloise from Ealing.

Eloise: Hello, Anita

Anita: Eloise, you had something to say about the changes to the pension age for women?

Eloise: Yes. I'm just the age that will suffer from the latest Government change. And I think it shouldn't apply to me. It should affect people slightly older.

Anita: Thanks, Eloise. Anything else?

Eloise: Yes. I think people named after songs by The Damned should get extra pensions.

Anita Thanks.  And now we've got Arthur from Acton.

Arthur: Hello, Anita. I'm in Acton. And I've noticed that houses in Acton are more expensive than those in Herefordshire or parts of Alfreton.

Anita: OK Arthur. So what should happen to deal with this?

Arthur: I suggest a massive subsidy for people in Acton, to restore the balance.

Anita: Thanks Arthur.  Rodney from Rockingham?

Rodney: Like all the people in Rockingham I live on a hill.

Anita: So what do you think the Government should do about this, Rodney?

Rodney: Oh, nothing. I just thought the nation deserved to hear my beautifully modulated tones and incisive analysis.

**** Nation turns to Radio 5 and wishes the football season had started again ****

Service Commemorating the Obsolescence of Microsoft Paint

Archdruid: Woe are we. For the simple tool for drawing is no more.

All: What shall we do? Where shall we go?

Archdruid: No more shall we make graven images.

All: And save them in a variety of poor-quality formats.

Archdruid: For we don't want to pay for Photoshop.

All: And we don't like googling "GIMP", though it is free, because it's hard to pick the right page without having to wipe out our browser history afterwards.

Archdruid: How shall I tweak images just enough that they still look roughly like they're supposed to, but not so much I get in copyright trouble?

Trekkies: How shall we spend hours creating detailed pictures of the Starship Enterprise, one pixel at a time?

All: Don't you lot all have Macs?

Trekkies: Oh yeah. Good point. Just ignore us.

All: We usually do.

Archdruid: And so shall I resort to creating pictures in Powerpoint.

Charlii: And exporting them as PNGs.

Archdruid: Or JPGs.

Charlii: Or GIFs.

Archdruid: Or WMFs.

All: Enough of the different image formats already!

Trekkies: Actually, we think you'll find JPGs are as dead as DVDs.

All: We thought we were supposed to ignore you?

Trekkies: Oops.

All: Isn't your "Paint Gravestone" just the same idea as the BBC one only not as good?

Archdruid: Yeah, I copied it then changed it a bit...

All: ....to avoid getting done for copyright.

The Church of England - Ahead of the BBC since 2013

The BBC has announced its salaries, and it is apparent that it systematically pays women less than men for their "talent".

There are some valid objections you could make and they go like this:

"Talent at the BBC gets paid too much" - you could make this argument, and the counter to it is that the BBC is competing in a market where it needs to pay what is appropriate. You can choose which is right - you could argue (in my opinion rightly) that I could read an autocue just as well as the average BBC newsreader. But there's a counter to it.

"The men at the BBC should be paid less, not the women more" - you may be right, see my comments about the market, above.

"Nurses deserve more than Charlie from Casualty" - you may be right, but we can't afford to pay them it. There's thousands of nurses and only one Charlie from Casualty.

"It's wrong that men should earn more than women for doing the same job." Yeah, that's unarguable. Consder this. The Church of England pays women bishops the same as men bishops. They pay women priests the same as men priests. More women are Self-Supporting, which opens up all sorts of disussion, and there's still catching up to do in numbers for bishops, but for the same job, men and women get paid the same. Likewise the Methodists and the URC. And the Methodists have been ahead for years. I'm sure that once the Catholics have a woman as Pope, she'll get paid the same as the male Pope.

The BBC, in short - that bastion of equality, progressiveness, fairness and all the rest - is way behind the churches. Just as it was behind the Anglicans (and miles behind the Methodists) in having a female bishop / superintendent / Time Lord. The Church of England - ahead of the BBC in equality since 2013.

Reasons why the Congregation is so Small Bingo

You may be a visiting preacher, you may be a visiting worshipper, or you may be the Bishop of Little Brickhill.  But one thing you can be sure. Wherever you go to church, the congregation size will be, according to the welcomer, vicar or steward, a bit smaller than could normally be expected.

Well, if you're a regular visitor you'll need something to relieve the sense of wondering why the congregations all seem to be avoiding you. So feel free to take this cut-out-and-keep "Reasons why the Congregation is so Small Bingo". When you have five in a line, shout "Half Empty House of God!" 

* Replace "Joan" with "Elsie" as appropriate
+ Or appropriate nearby holiday location. Especially appropriate in residential retirement home communions.

"Bossy Woman"

Quite an evening yesterday as Marston Moretaine, at our Micro-Moot, said he was fed up with Charlii being "bossy".

Naturally Charlii asked for specific evidence as to bossiness.  Which Marstone told us was a specific example of bossiness. Took us quite a long while till we found out what he really meant.

When I say quite a long while, I mean: until now.

Turns out that when Marston said Charlii was "bossy", he meant she has opinions which she is prepared to support with reasoned argument.

We've had to put him in for re-training. This could take a while.

Gather them in Barns to be Burnt

Bad news for Young Keith, as just in time I discover his planned physical illustration of tomorrow's Gospel of the wheat and the weeds.

I mean, full marks to him for planning ahead and planting so long ago - to make the illustration so much more realistic.

Again, well done for bringing it bang up to date: a contemporary twist that maybe some people could relate to.

And full marks for creating a fully interactive event that everybody could take part in.

But "The Cannabis and the Tomato Plants"?  I'm sorry. It's not gonna happen.

Cod Only Knows : The Guardian Reader's Conscience

The Guardian asks the all important question - can we eat cod with a clear conscience?

And I guess the thing is, if you're the Guardian there's actually nothing you can encourage your readers to do with a clear conscience. Or there would be no point being the Guardian. No food is clean enough, no relationship good enough, no attitudes progressive enough to have a clear conscience. If the Guardian were around when Jesus fed the hungry by miraculously  multiplying fish and bread, Polly Toynbee would have  popped up to tell him that the bread was not accredited GMO-free, and asked why Jesus hadn't handed it all over to the Roman authorities for more equitable distribution. George Monbiot would write an article complaining that the uncontrolled disposal of fish bones was artificially changing the fertility of the local soil.

Then Andrew Brown would write that, while clearly the whole loaves and fishes thing was fictional, Jesus was using the miracle to distract our attention from the pressing need for a more inclusive 1st Century Church.

This among a load of dating ads for "Rich men looking for slave girls/boys."

So no of course you can't eat cod with a clear conscience. You can't do anything with a clear conscience. The law of unintended consequences means there will always be some downside, that you can't imagine, that the Guardian will make you feel bad about later.

But still, bright side. You may not have a clear conscience. But at least you'll know you're still morally superior to the people who don't read the Guardian.