Mixed Motives

In the light of yesterday's celebrations, I've taken a quick audit of the spiritual environment. Afraid to say I'm not really happy with what I've found.

To put it simply, I'm not sure that most Beaker People are really here for the spiritual encounter and experience of the Divine for which we strive.

Jabbro, for example, simply comes because we're the only fools that let him play a ukulele in public. Odric has a thing about post-modern architecture, so likes being in the Moot House. Burton, as is well known, is here because he loves to count and we needed a treasurer. While Gallifrey says her main motivation is a retro-chic desire to recreate the 60s, by drinking instant coffee out of Beryl crockery.

Among the leadership team, it's no better. Hnaef's often said to me that if it wasn't for his desire to smash the paternalist structures of post-secular Christendom, he'd stay in bed of a morning. Daphne mostly comes because it's the place in rural southern England most highly populated with Liverpool FC fans, and she feels at home. Young Keith only started attending when I told him I'd make him Chief Pyrotechnician. And Charlii pretends to the spiritual - but I reckon she realised her old job as a High Street Regeneration Consultant was just whistling in the wind.

So when I exclude all the lonely people that just want a chat, those who'd get bored otherwise and the one or two with a worrying fixation with lighting candles - and the poor deluded soul who thought a 21st-century religious organisation was just the place to meet men - there's only me left. And I'm only in it for the money.

It makes you wonder what sort of God we think would put up with a shower like us. Needy, uninterested, selfish beings - how's the Divine going to stoop down to encounter a bunch so completely interested solely in themselves? How would the Holy Fire ever burn in a place like this? Well, if it depends on people like us, it'll never happen.