Heading for 3,000 Posts

It was as I was looking at the Blogger dashboard that I realised how close we now are to 3,000 extant posts. They have appeared over the last six or so years - although the earliest posts from this community were lost in the Time Wars, which is why the earliest post reflects a fellowship which was already being thrown out of the camp after a disaster at Pouring out of Beakers. So in fact there have been well over 3,000 posts - but the early ones do not exist, except in the dusty bowels of Google.

I remember well the day I decided we should make these chronicles public. It was at an inter-denominational event. That very day the Archimandrite, had celebrated the life of St Ephrem. A beautiful experience, in the original Syriac. I remember thinking how wonderful it must have been for Ephrem and his contemporaries, being able to worship in a foreign language like that - so much more mysterious than having to use English. A Celtic Christian sidled up and asked me what I thought of "that". And I realised that, with far less authenticity than the Syriac celebration, the Celtic Christian had struck on something much more marketable. And if Celtic Christianity was marketable, then how much more my own variety of Christianity - at once authentic, traditional and yet infinitely flexible to modern conditions? I knew instantly that I needed a blog to publicise our little fellowship.

Well, a lot of water has flowed out of Beakers since that day in 2006. The Moot House has been blown up repeatedly, Burton Dasset has gone from being a prime pain in the backside to being a fundamentalist minister. The Hnaefs and I have gone back in time and alternate dimensions, to a form of Hardy's Wessex where the characters came to life and the Great Man was just a bit-part. We have been attacked by aliens, savaged by badgers, and celebrated Earth Hour with liturgical dancing in the dark. We have prayed with pumpkins. And I have shared all this with you, to show the way our community life, based around the cycles of the seasons as it is, is grounded in truth and reflects reality. We may never be as surreal as the life in the closes of most cathedral, but we enter into the daily round of existence - mundane as it may seem - with serenity, devotion and - above all - a deep desire to achieve satisfaction and personal fulfilment, regardless of the moral consequences.

Now I just need to think of something special for the 3,000th post - some time on Wednesday or Thursday, I reckon.