Telling it Like it Is

With all these sneak previews of various stuff you get from Mouse and Maggi Dawn, I'm glad to share with you a little sneak preview of our own today. I've just been re-drafting the Community leaflet that we use to advertise in local hotels, pubs and Tourism Information places. I've left the adjustments in, or "tracked changes" as Young Keith put it, but here's how it now looks:

The Post-modern worship paradigm

The cyber-coenobitic religious community for the 21st century - and now with added tealights violence!

Where creation is respected; where the divine is encountered; where trees are sung to. Where no bunny goes un-hugged. Where Druids worship in the oak groves of Aspley Heath. Where mistletoe is cut with a gold-covered stainless steel sickle (pure gold is just too soft....) Where even thick places are thin. Where you can meditate on peace and tranquility, as a florist sticks a gladiolus up the nose of the violinst that is trying to strangle her. Just five miles from Milton Keynes, handy for the Midland Mainline (change at Bedford), the Bedford-Bletchley Line and M1 Junction 13. Or, for the more affluent eco-tourist, there's Cranfield Aerodrome.

St Bogwulf's Well. bomb shelter.

More traditional frightening than Celtic Christianity (like that's hard...); more Arran Sweaters than the Highlands and Islands; more facial hair than a convention of Dubliners fans (and that's just the Archdruid). Scarier than a busload of Cardiff City fans.

The origins of our community came out of discontent with the spurious nature of modern-day "Celtic Christianity". A movement that thinks the best way of recreating the environment in which hairy monks sailed across wild oceans, conducted three-hour services in Latin and were martyred for their faith when they weren't being flogged by the abbot for minor indisciplines - is for people to sing along to dreamy choruses while accompanied by badly-played guitars and flutes. Wimps.

Enjoy a traditional First Nations experience, in the heart of the English countryside while an aggrieved trombonist lets your tent down in a traditional Beaker ritual.

Here at the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley, we know that the search for spiritual fulfilment is one of the great quests of modern men and women.
* Cut off from their ancestral roots;
* Out of touch with the rhythms of the season
* Living the length of their lives under artificial light, so that even day and night are false concepts


We wanted to find a better life; a more natural way of being; closer to the Earth and yet also closer to our own spirits.  We found that pattern in a group of people who lived in this land more than 3,000 years ago, and yet are our own ancestors: the Beaker People.

Looking for a more authentic spiritual experience led us to the Beaker Folk. Consider what we know about the Beaker Folk:
* They were earlier than the Celts, so they must have been even more exotic and spiritual.
* They built Stonehenge.
* So they must have had druids.
* And the use of stones in worship.  (We tend towards pebbles rather than 20 ton sarsen blocks.  Easier to move). throwing them. )
* We like the word "folk".  Makes you feel all comfy and Arran-sweaterish.
* They probably had tea lights.  Obviously, not like our modern tea lights.  Probably made of tallow and smelt disgusting, and they hadn’t discovered aluminium.  But in an era before electricity, and without access to olive oil, they must have made use of some kind of tea light-related technology.
* They were peaceful and gentle - except when massacring their neighbours to steal their wives and sheep.
* Which makes them not much better than our Quire and Flower Arrangers. 

So welcome to the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley. A place where you can splash in the spiritual shallows without ever worrying about getting your moral feet wet. A place where a badly-cobbled-together ceasefire will take effect on 6am, and probably won't make it past lunchtime.

We welcome people of all faiths. And nuns ninjas.