Football is Purgatory

Diego Maradona: So I'm still here...

St Peter: Yes.

DM: Outside the pearly gates.

SP: Yes.

DM: Waiting to come in.

SP: Yes.

DM: Yet I can't.

SP: That's right. You have an unexpurgated sin.

DM: Is it the coke?

SP No. It's bad news for your heart. And it damages your nose. And your body may have been a temple. But it was always a short-legged, ugly little temple anyway. It's not that.

DM: Is it the illegitimate child? 

SP: The boss says, who's not had a child where the parentage is a bit... complicated?

DM: So what is it? It's not the hand....?

SP: Hand...?

DM: Of.....

SP: Of...?

DM: Is that it?

SP: Yes, first up, borderline blasphemy. But beyond that, cheating.

DM: Cheating? Is that such a sin?

SP: You know that God really is an English man?

DM: Oh no. 

SP: Yes.

DM: So what do I have to do?

SP: A high ball will be crossing the Miami Stadium. All you've got to do is knock it down to Anderson.

DM: So you're telling me to cheat to change the result of a game?

SP: Well, it's not like you haven't done it before.

DM: But surely people will see it on telly and know that really was the "hand of God"? I thought God refused to show proof of his existence.

SP: Don't worry. They'll blame it on a cable.

DM: So this is it? Just stick my hand out... 

SP: Well done! Nice finish from Bellingham.  Do you want to watch the rest of the game?

DM: Do England lose on penalties?

SP: No.

DM: Miracles do happen then?  Open the gates, Pete boy!

Gifts to the Clergy

You know how it is.

You have an item you no longer need in your house.

And you have a choice.

You could try and sell it on Vinted. But it's old and/or broken.

You could take it to landfill. But that would involve lugging it onto a trailer, or hailing a (wo)man with a van to get it there.

Or  you could give it to your local church or clergy.

It's so easy.

'But I thought St Murgatroyd's could use a sixth out-of-tune piano.'

'Why would St Jude's in the Wold not want a sixth book case?'

'If you replace the broken leg, and deep-clean the cushions, that would be the perfect manse settee. It was great for my great-aunt Angie for the last 60 years.'

Just no. Dear innocent clergy person, who wants to be thought well of by everyone - if you say 'yes' you will be mopping up your settlement's used TV cabinets, filing cabinets, computer desks, Sodastreams and crappy paintings forever.

Just say no. Ignore the siren voices saying 'it's only an old air fryer. What could be the harm?'

Just say no.

Your garage will thank you.

Liturgy for the Day after Summer Solstice

Archdruid: Nights are drawing in.

All: Soon be Christmas.

The Beaker Collect for the World Cup

Inspired by the Church of England's prayer, the Beaker Folk of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (but not Epsom) has released its own World Cup Prayer. I am delighted to share it with you.

Nativity of Thomas Hardy (1840)

(two besmocked yokels lean over a gate)

Yokel 1: It be that Thomas Hardy's birthday then 

Yokel 2: That it be.

Y1: Shall us goo and wish en well?

Y2: Mortal craters like us voäkes can't do that.

Y1: Why's that?

Y2: Because he's dead and gone, as we all shall be.

Y1: Shall us wish en "Happy Heavenly Birthday" then? Like on Facebook?

Thomas Hardy: No. For an afterlife is but a human invention, to make the modern life more bearable for us as we walk the shaggy heaths below the empty Wessex skies.

Y2: How come you can talk to us then?

TH: Because I am but the personification - the anthropomorphization, if you will - of your hopes for what comes beyond the grave. Incidentally, any chance of getting my ashes back from Westminster Abbey? I'm weary of people treading on me, and never wanted to be there.

Y1: If this is our imagination how can you say words like anthroponilification which we unlearned yokels don't even know?

TH: Bugger. I knew I'd get caught out if I got sucked into the discussion.

Y2: Art coming to Peter's Finger for a pretty drop of tipple?

TH: No. I've got tea and crumpets with TS Eliot.

Y1: And Peter's Finger has been turned into a trendy suburban house.

Y2: The Convivial Rabbit then?

Y1 Wi' all ny heart. It's more expensive than the Royal Oak, but a much nicer place.

When Trinity Sunday coincides with Brian Harvey Day

It occasionally happens that Trinity Sunday coincides with Brian Harvey Day.

On 31st May 2005, Brian Harvey of the boy band East 17 ran over himself with his own car after eating too many jacket potatoes.

And I looked into the history - sometimes troubled, it has to be said, of Brian Harvey and East 17. And I noticed that after many line up changes, only one original member of what is called E-17 now is still in the band. I'm not even convinced that they're all from Walthamstow.

And this isn't unusual, of course. People of a different generation will remember Syston's finest, Showaddywaddy. Still touring. Only one member left from the good old days though.

Or Genesis fans will argue that Genesis weren't Genesis when Peter Gabriel left. Or Steve Hackett. Or Phil Collins. And were Take That still Take That when Robbie left? Or when Jason did?

We don't apply the same criteria to other groupings of course. Nobody claims Liverpool aren't the same football club because the original line-up aren't still playing. It's the club that matters. Nobody says the London Symphony Orchestra aren't the same organisation as when they were founded, or Marks and Spencer fundamentally changed when Spencer left the band.

And I think we can learn a lot about the Trinity from that.

Melt Down in the Moot House

And so as the temperature passed 90°F in the Moot House this afternoon, we had to face a terrible fact.

Not that the world is becoming increasingly hot, though that is disturbing.

Not that the most powerful men in the planet are engaged in a ceaseless flurry of activity to stoke up the warming. Through "drill, baby drill," and endless unnecessary data centres, churning out pictures of trolls carrying badly-rendered Union Jacks and American flags in the cause of "patriotism". Because what says "authentically Ingerlish" more than trolls with bizarre fingers and back-to-front Union Jacks in a computer-generated image that costs the earth?

No.

Worse even than that.

The tea lights have all melted.

So we have spent the afternoon combining them into a giant tea light in the shape of Andy Burnham, "King of the North". Whose puzzled looks and puffing cheeks are now topped by a flame rising from the top of his head, as we celebrate the Feast of St Andy. So we will eat us black pudding pies this evening, and prepare for the liberation of England from something undefinable by a bloke we'd half forgotten. Or, at least, its liberation until in 2 years' time the Labour party panics at the state of the polls and installs Angela Rayner, Jess Phillips or Nigel Farage.

Still - I hope all the Beaker Folk enjoy the Northern Pie Experience. We've packed plenty of tripe in with the black pudding. You can't get much more authentically northern than that.

Trinity Sunday Sermon - pre-release

Every year we get the stress from the people preaching on Easter Sunday. The illustrations that are blatantly heretical. The crying because the vicar has gone away and left the curate to preach (mostly the congregation crying rather than the curate).

So I'm saving you the trouble.

Before you even get near Trinity Sunday. 

It's a traditional three-point sermon, based on insights from three theologians:

1. 'Tis mystery all (Charles Wesley)

2. It's a mystery (Toyah Wilcox)

3. A mystery it is (Yoda)

We may have the wrong Yoder.

St Walpurga's Blight

That's the trouble with such a dry spring.

We lit the Walpurgisnacht / Beltane Wicker person. Next thing we knew the Moot House was surrounded by flame. All the dry grass was just asking for it.

Thankfully the Moot House is safe. After its repeated explosions in the Noughties, we built it fire proof. 

But the potatoes we put in for baking at the bottom of the Wicker Person are probably not fit for consumption.

Looks like it's large fries from McDonald's in Kingston again.

Doored Ash

Why do Anglicans talk about "Communion by Extension" and "(Care) Home Communion"? 

When they could just  call it "Delivereucharist"?

The Local Primary Visit to Church

It is a Truth Universally Acknowledged that any Primary School trip to see the local parish church will end up with at least thirty minutes' worth of focusing on death.

You will tell jolly stories about harvest festivals. About marriages. You can let them splash water in the font.

Feel free to point out the stained glass windows, showing happy tales of Noah's Ark (kids aren't the slightest gone-out about the mass drownings). Let them see happy scenes of hills and sheep.

"Please - look at the lovely sheep. Not the inscription."

Explain what a pipe organ is for. Show them a hymn book. If of the right churchpersonship, discuss the electric guitar on its stand, and the drum kit.

It will be of no avail.

Let them have one nanosecond to consider. And you will hear the fateful words.

"My grandad was buried here."

That's all it takes.

You will be asked why it is that all dead people conveniently die in churchyards.

You will be told that "Nanny died." You will sympathise profoundly that they have lost their grandmother. Say a prayer for Nanny. Offer to help them light a tea light for Nanny.

Then find out that "Nanny" was the gerbil. The grandmothers are respectively called "Gaga" and "Granski" or somesuch. But still, maybe the helium balloon you were conned into sending up for Nanny will have helped with the healing.

Likewise with "Poppa". You thought it was a much-loved family dog? It was great-grandad.

You will be asked if the altar is that size because coffins fit on it so well. You will realise that small children think the only reason churches exist is to provide a portal between this world and the underworld. You will be asked how quickly people become skeletons, whether the "memento mori" skulls on the wall are real. Some children will become nervous of walking on the church floor in case they're treading on dead people.

You wanted to share a happy story of living worship, a living God, a living church.

But the six-year-olds will tell you that you walk among the dead. That the shades are around you. That your building exists only to propel souls into the next life. You will reflect that, based on the inscriptions on the wall, they may be right. You will be drawn into the vortex of realising that all life is doomed to end, all efforts consigned to futility.

And then you'll give them each a bookmark.