Thursday 31 May 2018

Feast of Covfefe Transferred

Since today is Corpus Christi and the Feast of the Visitation, we're going to have to transfer the First Anniversary of Covfefe to Sunday.

Monday 28 May 2018

The Festival of Faculty Reversal

A modest proposal.

The good people of the Trim Valley are celebrating their Faculty Reversal Day this week. A day when they can quietly undo everything their last vicar encouraged them to do to improve things.

Now the Trim Valley has a very relaxed attitude to clerical censure. Not for them panicking that a Diocesan Registrar might write a sarcastic letter.  The Mothers ' Union may declare  that they are cancelling Pagan rites. But, without making it to the church Magazine,  even now a pin-pierced wax effigy of the Archdeacon is being cast into a barbecue.

But what about other more law-abiding churches, struggling under the yoke of an over-enthusiastic incumbent with plans to change the world? Because you know how it is. There will have been a number of well-meaning changes from the go-ahead vicar. All of which will have been approved by the PCC but grumbled about behind his back. With three people leaving to go to a different church with every change.

I would like to suggest that every parish, in every vacancy, gets one special day. The Festival of Faculty Reversal. It would start at a nominal "sunset" - 6pm. And for 24 hours the parish would have the chance to do everything it could to put absolutely everything back to where it came from. No faculties, no snotty letters from the Registrar, no annoyed Archdeacons.

The timetable might be like this:

17:50 -  A reflection on Ecc 3: There is a time for bold new innovations, and a time for reversing them. A time to move with the times, and a time to defy them. A time to make a more accessible, flexible worship space, and a time to put the pews back.

18:00 - The Shifting of the Nave Altar down into the Crypt (where people will claim in 12 months' time that "it's always been there.")

19:00 - The Invention of the old Pricket Stand. Accompanying replacement of battery-operated tea lights with proper candles.

20:00 - Midnight: The Return of the Pews from sheds, pubs, and back rooms in the surrounding area.

Midnight: A meditation on Psalm 134: "Ye who work by night in the House of the Lord."

01:00 - 03:00 - Combustion of the Common Worship Books (a more recent liturgy, replacing the traditional Combustion of the ASB)

03:00 - 06:00 - Introduction of a load of random moth-eaten vestments, later to be claimed "that was given by my aunty. She'd turn in her grave if priests stopped wearing that beige fiddleback."

06:00 - 08:00 - Removal of the Drum Kit. Carefully timed because what's the chances of the drummer being up?

08:00 - 08:15 Morning Prayer (BCP, missing out the first bit)

08:15 - 11:00 -  Re-installation of the Rood Screen

11:00 - 13:00 - Jumble Sale

13:00 - 16:00 - Removal of the Modern Stained Glass

16:00 - 17:00 - Addition of the photo of the departed incumbent to the others in the vestry. Everyone may say "we thought he was great."

17:00 - 18:00 - re-laying of the battered old carpet that was pulled up as a trip, fire and hygiene hazard.

18:00 - Evening Prayer. Meditation on Job: "The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away".





Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Saturday 26 May 2018

Trinity Sunday - Preaching Hints

I love Trinity Sunday. One of the best weeks of the Christian year. My chance to thoroughly lapse into tritheism for the day. Just chucking in the odd "one substance" to keep you out of Athanasian Jail. But for those struggling, here's a few hints and tips.
  1. Any analogy you use will almost certainly be heretical. Since 50% of the congregation won't be listening, 25% are effectively Arminian and the other 25% are only there because their nan was married there in 1924, this may not be as much of a problem as you think.  But please not the eggs. 
  2. Preach the text. It won't directly mention the Trinity so away you go.
  3. Do not confuse grammatical and real-life gender. If you don't know what I'm trying to say - consider that a female cat does not gain testicles as it crosses the Rhine from Offenburg to Strasbourg.
  4. Everyone's seen the St Patrick thing now.
  5. Don't speculate about what angels and Doctors of the Church could not understand.
  6. And certainly don't be sure about such things.
  7. God is love. This is both true and worth saying. Don't break the spell by explaining it. And don't start talking about the "DNA of the Church".
  8. Perichoresis does not mean what you think it does.
  9. Keep it simple
  10. The Athanasian Creed really is very long, isn't it? Personally I'm not convinced you have to get this exactly right to avoid Hell. But feel free to preach on that if you don't want a congregation next week. Unless you're a pastor in the Quivering Brethren.
  11. If you don't understand quantum mechanics, don't use it as an analogy. Just because you don't understand two things doesn't make them alike. If you do understand quantum mechanics, remember nobody else does.
  12. Feel free to use the Rublev "Hospitality of Abraham". But remember Fr Fred did last year. And every year since it was painted. And use a projector. If you try and use the real one, you'll get in trouble.
  13. Modalism isn't a capital offence any more. But maybe it should be.
  14. God is love. Did I mention that? 


Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Friday 25 May 2018

Liturgy for Queuing Behind the Person with the Giant Water Bottle at the Water Cooler

How long, O Lord?
How long must we wait in this queue
While this person who has the world's giantest drinking bottle
fills it with cold water?
After all the working day's only 8 hours long.
Or nine, if we're trying to impress the boss.

I mean, just how big is that bottle?
It is so wide that the seas in their boundlessness could not fill it.
If all the floodgates of heaven were opened
yet the bottle would only be filled slowly.
If the fountains of the deep were broken up
they would barely fill it to the "10am" line.

In vain we queue across the kitchen
Waiting for just one plastic cup of water.
The women from Merchandising pass out in the heat
and the men from IT sulk, and wish they had any communication skills
for then they could share with their friends how much their thirst bites
if they had any friends.

And now I am fifth in the queue.
And my tongue cleaveth to the roof of my mouth.
I pant like the hart that longeth for cooling streams
Even for the Wadi of Egypt or the Great River.
But behold what do I see?
You must be having a freaking giraffe.

For behold the bloke at the front
Now has pulled out a bottle the size of Nubia
The Queen of Sheba could sail on the surface of the water in that bottle.
The Leviathan could sport and play in its deeps.
If poured out, it could wash away the King of Egypt's armies.
You could drop a couple of Noah's Arks in it, and nobody would be any the wiser.

So I shall hie me to the chocolate machine
and pay a quid for a can of Tango.
The sugar sticketh to my teeth
and I don't like the taste of orange.
But at least I won't be crumpled on the floor of the office kitchen
Like Mandy from Accounts.

Selah


Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Thursday 24 May 2018

Bonfire of the Details

In celebration of GDPR day, we'll be holding the Bonfire of the Details on Saturday at 4pm in the orchard.

There's a rumour we may accidentally lose a few invoices as well. Obviously that wouldn't be deliberate.

But. Could happen.

That Final-24-Hours Desperate GDPR email

We realise you've probably never heard of us.

And that's because we've just realised it's GDPR Day tomorrow. And we've got a load of emails we just found on a server. And it's SPAM TIME!

So please please please click that magic subscribe button. Or a kitten dies.

Not just an ugly kitten. A nice one.

And we'll be moderately horrible to a Shiba Inu. That's how we roll.

But stay with us and think of the fun we could have. The workshops you can get invited to. The exclusive cocktail parties in a skyscraper overlooking the Thames. The book offers.

Of course this is just the "general comms" button. In a moment you're gonna get another email just like this one, from the Marketing department. And another from the Education department.

And one from Envisioning. He sits in an office on his own. But he's building his own empire. And he's copied all our files. I know he has.

Then Brand Awareness. And Re-engineering.  They're all going to be rushing in with their own GDPR emails. I know. I've seen what's lined up on Mail Chimp.

But I got here first. So surely you'll want to stay in touch with me?

Only I get so lonely. It's just me in this office. I used to have a team. I loved having a team. But what with downsizing and outsourcing and decentralised cloud-based things, I'm on my own.

Yes, Envisioning is down the corridor. But he scares me a bit.

So please click on that button. Or the hamster gets it.

Did I mention the hamster? He's so fluffy and lovely and trusting.

And so innocently sitting on that shredder.

Go on. You know you want to stay in touch.

Yours in love

Bishop Bernie

You're not hovering over the "Spam" button are you?

Westworld: If you don't like it Should You Stop Watching It?

Yes.

There you go. Saved you reading hundreds of words.



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Wednesday 23 May 2018

A Good Wedding, and a Good Marriage

The BBC shouldn't publish items like this, should they?

"I’m 24 and I think marriage is pointless – and have done my whole life. It’s just an excuse to have a really expensive party."

Yeah, you see what you've done there - you've confused marriage with a wedding. A good marriage lasts 40 or 50 years and consists of growing together having made a commitment that fundamentally says you will continue to love one another - in the old, Christian sense of love - whether you're in love with one another or not, through thick and thin, through fallings out and making up and even if one half of the party decides watching 2 hours of  "Last of the Summer Wine" every evening is reasonable behaviour.

Whereas a good wedding is one that ends with the police being called after one new spouse's aunt has hit the other new spouse's father over the head with an empty Prosecco bottle because he won't dance to "Agadoo". A bridesmaid has broken her ankle hurdling over beer cases in the car park. The Ring-bearer has kicked the best man in the shins because he keeps calling him "Bilbo".  And the page boy has thrown up after eating his own weight in trifle and then spinning round in circles.

I don't quite see how the BBC allowed this article to be published. Because it's obvious the author doesn't know the difference between two very different things.



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Sunday 20 May 2018

A Levelled Churchyard

If you can, imagine the scene as you pull into St Pancras Station, on the East Midlands tracks which run past - on the right - St Pancras Churchyard. The Churchyard that Hardy was partly responsible for flattening, and tidying up the gravestones of, as part of the work to create the station. Just a few gravestone are scattered around. Although these are the posh people's. Mary Wollestonecraft, for instance, has a monument here. Although in fact Mary herself isn't here. She's in Bournemouth. Her grandson moved her remains 60 years later.  But mostly, it's a flattened, mown-grass, tidy little patch.

The tidiness of Old St Pancras Churchyard

And now you've got that in your mind I'd like to introduce you, if I have not done so before, to the poem "The Levelled Churchyard" by Thomas Hardy.

"O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones! 
"We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
'I know not which I am!' 
"The wicked people have annexed
The verses on the good;
A roaring drunkard sports the text
Teetotal Tommy should! 
"Where we are huddled none can trace,
And if our names remain,
They pave some path or porch or place
Where we have never lain! 
"There's not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final Trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some local strumpet! 
"From restorations of Thy fane,
From smoothings of Thy sward,
From zealous Churchmen's pick and plane
Deliver us O Lord! Amen!" 
1882.
The levelled churchyard is tidy. It's well-kept. It's low maintenance. It's a place where the dead have been erased for convenience and easy management. It'safe. It's sanitised. It's dead.
Lots of gravestones arranged "tidily" in a circle round an ash tree
"The Hardy Tree"

The River Fleet used to flow through Old St Pancras churchyard. But it got smelly. And it used to flood when there were storms on Hampstead Heath. So they stuck it in a pipe. Nice and tidy.

The levelled churchyard for me is an analogy of where a church ends up, if its aim is the convenience and safety of its members. Nothing new, nothing unexpected, no unsafe gravestones toppling over, no trip hazards. But no unexpected wild flowers in a corner. No long grass where wildlife can hide. No change, no movement, no spirit, no adventure.

The young Church could have settled for a quiet, happy life. Jesus is alive. Isn't that great. Jesus goes back to heaven. Well, let's stay in the Upper Room, quietly praying. We're a disciple short. Let's get the committee structure right - and they elect Matthias. No need to do anything. Did Jesus say something about preaching the Gospel to the nations? Yeah. But that's a bit ambitious. Let's have another pray.

Then on the Day of Pentecost. 50 days after Passover. 50 days after Easter Sunday. They're quietly having their morning meeting. And fire falls from heaven and a rushing wind fills the room and they're blown out into the streets to praise God. And they're finding new languages to praise God - and as the commotion grows the people of the streets rush round and find that they're hearing God praised in their own languages.

And Peter stands up and tells them that this is because Jesus - who was dead - is alive. And these are the end times. Pentecost is the beginning of the end. And nothing is going to be the same again.

And the Church now will have all sorts of problems to deal with. Samaritans believing in Jesus. Gentiles being filled with the Holy Spirit. Persecution. Opposition. Martyrdom.

It ain't tidy. But it's where God is.

We can light our tea lights. Make a quiet space. Let people feel comfortable.

But the disciples had to come out of the Upper Room. Had to give up the safety of those closed doors. Had to share their experience of a Living Christ, fired into them by the Holy Spirit.

You know, all the images we use for the Holy Spirit involve movement. Water - flowing water, or springing up out of the ground. Rushing wind. Fire. You can listen to the still small voice of the Spirit - like Elijah did - but you'll still end up being pushed out to confront the world, to make plans, to go where the Spirit leads you.

Three English people - three different ways the Spirit worked.....

On this most royal of weekends, I was thinking about St Thomas Beckett. The King's side-kick, Chancellor of England, a great administrator. Henry II made him Archbishop of Canterbury, thinking that he'd have his own man keeping the Church in line. Instead Thomas seems to have had some kind of a conversion - saw the seriousness of his spiritual role - stood up for the Church and wouldn't let the King dip into the Church's money to fund his wars. Sure, Beckett had no diplomacy. He probably caused the crisis that led to his martyrdom. But when he took his faith seriously, he found a depth and meaning that went past the safety of being the King's man.

John Wesley - a good, safe Anglican. MA of Oxford University. But he couldn't rest in his family's clerical comfort. He looked for more. Found his heart "strangely warmed" by the story of salvation and turned the religious life of England upside down.

Christina Rossetti - quiet, posh, restrained, apparently a bit scared of the idea of marriage. And yet God gave her the ability to write for me the greatest, most theological of all Christmas carols, "In the Bleak Midwinter." Within a quiet, constrained life, then through terrible financial difficulties, yet through the Anglo Catholic tradition the Spirit gave her mind the restless power to produce so much beauty. The Spirit blows into all our ways.

As long as the Church is open to the Spirit we'll need new languages to tell out God's glory. New ways to know God's love. New excitement that Jesus is alive. It can be scary, messy, challenging. But it's the only reason why the Church exists - to be filled with the Spirit, and faithful to Christ.



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Saturday 19 May 2018

Quentin Letts Himself Down

I know of an Anglican priest who worked in a school as an RE teacher.  He taught children aged broadly 11-13. And he used to beat them up.

When they misbehaved. Not all the time. But children that age do misbehave. And if they know the teacher is actually incapable of controlling a class, and they might send him over the edge, they'll go for it.

He bashed someone's head on the desk while holding their hair. He pushed people's arms behind their back. And everybody knew about him. Everybody knew he was a danger to the children.

He taught there for about three years, before he had to leave.

After all, he was a teacher. And a priest. Highly respected, both those professions in those days. Who'd believe a snotty twelve-year-old with a patch of hair missing over a priest who was a teacher?

Which is why Quentin Letts really shouldn't have, should he?

Tried to be funny about child protection, I mean. In an article in the Mail.

Obviously, the headline is already wrong. Not all church volunteers are obliged to take an abuse prevention course. Certain are. Those who work with children and vulnerable adults. Clergy. Other people in a position of responsibility. Quentin Letts is apparently a "deputy churchwarden". I'm not sure if that's an official post in the C of E, But presumably it comes with the sort of responsibility where children and vulnerable adults may be involved. So safeguarding training seems reasonable.

Quentin Letts lives in Herefordshire, I presume. So I imagine he went to the Hereford Diocese training, which means his making the trainer anonymous is a bit pointless. He tells us that she is a former police officer - as if, in the eyes of the Mail, that could be a bad thing. (Where has the Mail sunk to?) He tells us that the training lasts 4 hours. Most diocesan websites say it's between 2.5 and 3 hours. You can be the judge of who's right there. Maybe the 4 hours included 90 minutes of Quentin Letts telling everyone what a waste of time it all is. I don't know. I wasn't there. Just guessing.

Incidentally, judging by the picture in the article, Quentin Letts attended his training in Wells Cathedral. That's a heck of a schlep from Herefordshire. Maybe that's why he was so grumpy.

Not a small church in Herefordshire
Apparently what was outrageous was that "Wendy" told them that they should be alert to the signs of abuse in their community. I'm not sure what is so wrong with that. Quentin Letts thinks that noticing a child turning up with signs of bruising, and considering it might be best to point this out to the authorities if it looks like a pattern of abuse, is akin to what the Stasi did.  Looking out for other people, protecting the vulnerable - isn't that the sort of healthy community self-protection that the Daily Mail would be in favour of? Each looking out for the other. And informing the police of any criminal behaviour might be going on. Best of good old Britain, I would say. Wouldn't the Mail?  Use it for any  other alleged or suspected crime  and see if it works - "I was running a  crack den and someone called the police. Is this 1984?"

Quentin is next outraged about the idea that an organisation that potentially has children visiting it, should adopt a safeguarding strategy. In fact, might even go so far as to pin up the "small print" on the church notice board.

Frankly, stuff the small print. Make the cover of the safeguarding strategy bright fluorescent green, with the title in 6" pink letters, and put that up on the notice board. It sends a simple message - we take the welfare of our children seriously, and if they are in this building they are protected and watched. You may be able by doing so to inform the parishioners of their responsibilities. You may even make a potential offender go away. They'll go somewhere else, sure. But hopefully that somewhere else is equally robust. I know which parish Quentin Letts has advertised as being not too bothered, however.

The centre of Quentin Letts's sheer wrongness, in my opinion, can be summed up in this statement:
"But others, in the politest way, started to bridle. The Austrian countess told me afterwards, rather perplexed: ‘I thought the English believed in minding their own business.’"
So listen. There are abusers in the Church, as there are in all walks of life. The Church, because it often has children associated with quires; uniformed organisations; as servers; in Sunday Club, is attractive to some abusers. So are other organisations that serve or involve children - sports clubs, schools, the Social Services. In the past all of these organisations, including the Church, have let children down. Some of this has been the misguided putting of the organisation above people. "You can't investigate that - it will give the Church a bad name." Well guess what. Not acting has given the Church a worse one.

But Quentin Letts cleverly links two ways to protect offenders into that little central whingette. The first is his (repeated) identification of one of his fellow delegates as an "Austrian Countess". The Austrians are by and large very nice people. But "Countess". Why is this important to Quentin? Because it suggests she is beyond reproach. A member of the aristocracy. And not one of those nasty British Lords who keep making the Government think about Brexit. A faded aristocracy from a republic. A well-meaning person who maintains noblesse oblige, or whatever that is in German. Why should such a genteel person be soiling her noble mind with such thoughts of vile behaviour? The sort of vile behaviour that could not imaginably happen, apparently, in the rolling acres of the rural backwaters of this green and pleasant land?

Well that's why assorted vicars and quire masters and other offenders have got away with it, isn't it? The "Father Knows Best" routine - also practised by evangelical church leaders in parts of the world. The vast vast majority of church leaders are of course innocent. But the ones who got away with it did it by assuming the mantle of holiness. "Old Fr Bernard? He could never do that. He's so nice and always talks to Nan about the War.  I couldn't believe it of him."

And then the classic old Mail "The English are the best" trope. "I thought the English believed in minding their own business."

Yes they often did. And that was the bloody problem, wasn't it? When Jimmy Savile's caravan was rocking with his latest teenage victim inside it - people minded their own business. When Rotherham schoolgirls were claiming rape, people minded their own business. When the NHS, the NSPCC and local churches noted signs of abuse in Victoria Climbié, they minded their own business.

 When "Wendy" tells them all that she believes no-one, as an ex-copper she's in about the right place. If someone comes to say they are being abused or suspect abuse, take it seriously. Report it. It's not your job to judge right or wrong. Not unless Quentin Letts is on the PCC with an Austrian countess, a centenarian, and Miss Marple. When someone tells you they definitely didn't do it, or when someone else tells you someone else isn't that kind of person - don't believe them. Again, it's not your job to believe them. It's not your job to investigate.

To summarise - using another paragraph from Quentin Letts:
"I know several PCC members in our diocese, including a churchwarden who is a pillar of the county, who intend to quit rather than succumb to any safeguarding course."
A "pillar of the county". Like Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall were pillars of the BBC. Like Bishop Peter Ball was a pillar of the church. Being a pillar of anything is irrelevant if you're innocent - which most pillars are. But if you're not, being a pillar of something is an opportunity. A chance to use your power against somebody who won't be be believed because they're that famously "loose" girl, that trouble-making boy, that child of a single mum, that person with special needs who could be making it up.

Why would you quit rather than succumb to a safeguarding course? Because you're too good? Because your pillarness of the county makes you immune to suspicion? Then your threat to quit is a symptom of the problem. Not a heroic reaction to oppression.

Full marks, really. Quentin Letts has written one of the worst, smuggest, most ignorant, wrongest columns I have ever read.

Oh, and never use the term "kiddy-fiddling". It makes the crime sound so much less important that "child sexual abuse", don't you think?

Oh and yes, Quentin Letts. You want an Archbishop to promote Christian values? I'd go right back to Jesus. He liked kids. And he wanted them protected. What do you want, exactly?



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Friday 18 May 2018

Scare Your New Curate with "Writes of the Church"

As we near Petertide, you may be wondering what to buy as an ordination present for that soon-to-be-Curate or about-to-be-priest in your life.

You could buy them a wonderful serious book on their future ministry. But then they've had 2 or 3 years being serious. Or you could get them a Bible. But then who doesn't?

Alternatively, you could decide to get them a book to scare the wits out of them. In which case what you really want is "Writes of the Church" - a book to tell them what it's really all about.

If you don't like to support "The Man", can I recommend purchasing from The Bible Reading Fellowship shop. On the other hand, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you can get a copy at a very competitive prize from Amazon at the moment.



You may think that this was a bit late, and you should have got them the book ready for their BAP. And you may well be right. But still. Better late than never!

Anyway, thanks for this. And it'll go back to an advert at the bottom of the posts again.

Thursday 17 May 2018

A Traditional Wedding

The BBC, as is its way, has shared with us somebody's explanation of why she walked herself down the aisle at her wedding.  Which is an improvement, to be fair, on the Guardian. Which would have had an article from somebody who would have walked herself down the aisle, only the men she meets on Tinder are for some reason only interested in sex and not marriage and anyway marriage is such a patriarchal thing yah. 

So I'm wondering about the whole "traditional" marriage concept in the article, where women are walked down the aisle by their fathers to be given away - as a form of property - to their new owner.

Now, I'm not likely to be a blushing bride. Not at my age. And there's no chance of Young Keith's dad ever making an honest woman of me. Not if he ate those olives I sent him. And no chance of my dad walking me down the aisle. Not after that incident with the hay bailer. But still.  Traditional? 

So the original BCP (1549) has the following: 


Then shall the Minister say,
Who geveth this woman to be maried to this man?
And the minister receiving the woman at her father or frendes handes: shall cause the man to take the woman by the right hande, and so either to geve their trouth to other:

I have no idea what a trouth is. But it's good to know they both give the other one. But that's 1549. And already there the minister can receive the woman at her father or frendes handes. It doesn't have to be Dad. Even then. OK, so there's a good chance that Dad would be dead of plague, or burned for heresy, or something. So Dad's was more optional than you'd think. 

So go ahead. Walk yourself down the aisle. Take your dad, your mum, your springer spaniel, your pet Dalek or your favourite chair. It doesn't matter. The C of E has never said it has to be your dad giving you away, and since Common Worship the vicar doesn't even have to ask that question. "Traditional"? There's no such thing. Be yourself. But don't kid yourself you're radical. 


Wednesday 16 May 2018

Michael Gove - The Thinking Tory's Idiot

You can't beat Michael Gove's self-importance or lack of awareness.

He's told the Tories that it's no good harking back to the golden days of the 80s if they want to appeal to the young. Margaret Thatcher is no role model for those who want a gentler, kinder, less profit-centered kind of Tory.

I'm mapping back to when I was 20, in the 80s. The 80s are thirty or so years ago now. So the equivalent would have been Norman Fowler, lets say, telling us the Tories shouldn't hark back to Anthony Eden.

Even to say that is ridiculous, of course. The Tory grandees of the 50s were mediocrities and failures. Unfit even to buckle Thatcher's slingbacks.

And now the generational cycle of history turns. And Margaret Thatcher is in the distance past while Gove, as he poses in the mirror in the morning, imagines himself the new, kinder, consensual Tory.

You know what Margaret Thatcher did? She was tough with Europe, but believed in it.  She was a driver for the single market. She wasn't some chancing mediocrity become, against all possible logic, a cabinet minister, with the charisma of a breeze block. She was somebody who knew that cooperation and easy trade, with our nearest neighbours, was the  best bet for all concerned. She was,  unlike the current shower of flag -wavers and incompetents, pro-business.  Not in a "freedom to poison  your  workforce"  way, like Jacob Rees-Mogg. In a "let's make business easier" way.

 You  know what  young people want? They   want to enjoy all the benefits  of being part of the EU  that their grandparents did. Before a bunch of  people  whose touchstone in history  is a war almost nobody can remember,  took it away.

If Michael  Gove   wants to get down with the kids, he should  remember Maggie. Maggie knows best.


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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Tuesday 15 May 2018

Gammon and (Br)eggs(it)

It has been suggested that calling angry white older people "gammons" is racial abuse.

Now obviously you can have a serious political debate without insulting people and comparing them to tasty cuts of cured meat. In fact it's much better to. But if you are calling someone "gammon" it's not the world's worst slur. I mean. You could do something much rasher.

Much rasher. Never mind.

But maybe you are an older white person who has suffered as a result of being called "gammon"?  Are you worried that your pride in the superiority of the English boiled sweet or bicycle has caused others to discriminate against you?

Then you need our "gammon embitteredness test".

1. Has the Government deported you or anyone like you for being of pink complexion and having a raised blood pressure?

2. Do grumpy men who want to bring back National Service suffer a higher rate of stop and search?

3. If your name is Geoff, are you less likely to get a job interview than if your name is Shahid?

4. If you got a major job in local government, would trolls claim you were using your position to help fellow nominal Christians evade the law?

5. Did thinking that Alf Garnett was one of the 20th Century's leading intellectuals and not a fictional character ever prevent you from being considered for promotion? Well it should have. But I digress.

6. Are you working as a despatch operative in a warehouse in Peterborough despite having been a trained engineer in your native Spalding?

If the answers to questions 1 to 6 are "no", then stop crying. Snowflake.

An Hairy Man

Good news. We've managed to resolve the issue with the drains and all the plumbing should now be working fine.

Bad news. Hnaef had been shaving his chest ready for the sun.

I apologise for telling you this.

Monday 14 May 2018

Tebbs and Ipps - Norman Gets on His Bike Again

Norman Tebbit makes the Mail by telling us he's not attending worship at St Edmundsbury Cathedral because the Dean is a "Sodomite".

An ancient institution whose central tenets nobody believes in, that has no young members though it tries to act "hip" sometimes but is always embarrassing, the Conservative Party has had Norman Tebbit in its ranks for over 60 years.

Nigel Farage said he wouldn't be surprised if the head of the cathedral staff were a Sodomite. Thousands of immigrants try to get into this country every year and it's time we controlled our borders.

Meanwhile the Mail Online readers congratulate Tebbit on his believing what the Bible says. Well, what does the Bible say about Sodom?

Genesis 19 tells us that Sodom was destroyed because it was a hostile environment for visiting foreigners. While Ezekiel 16 says that the sin of Sodom was to be  arrogant and unconcerned for the poor and needy.

Avoid Sodomites? I'm amazed Norman Tebbit's not calling for a Free Trade Agreement after Brexit.





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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Thursday 10 May 2018

Ascension Day

As happens every Ascension Day, I see Major James has forgotten they don't do the climbing on the roof in Tremlett any more.

It's one of those major rituals of Ascension Day. The complaint that people don't go up on the roof any more. This always seems to me to fall into two categories:
1. Nobody goes to the Ascension Day service any more because they have to go to work.
2. Except the sort of people that are best encouraged not to climb onto church roofs.

The Ascension: Hans Feibusch
Ascension Day seems to be the forgotten major feast. This is probably down to it not being a secular holiday, and being on a Thursday. I know the Catholics sometimes like to experiment with moving to the weekend. But, like transferring the Annunciation out of Holy Week, this always seems wrong to me. There's a sense in divine chronology. It was on that day - none other - the 40th days of Easter that Jesus ascended. Those 40 days matter. That's 40 days of the risen Jesus with his disciples, walking this world as a new kind of human - like us but raised beyond death. One day for each day in the Wilderness after his baptism. One day for each year that the Children of Israel wandered. 40 days of completeness.

You know the problem I have with most depictions of the Ascension? They're all a bit airy-fairy. There's a certain naffness to them. I think especially of the Chapel of the Ascension at Walsingham, where the soles of our Lord's feet are disappearing into the cloud in the chapel ceiling. It's really hard to do an image of Jesus floating off into heaven with clouds and angels, without it getting a bit that way. Which is why I like this image so much. It has echoes of those Resurrection paintings where the guards are asleep and everyone's a bit confused. There's noise and movement and in the middle of it, an Ascension happening.

The Ascension is enormously important. It's the next stage in the story of restoration and renewal. God has become that tiniest thing, a newly-conceived human. God has known our double agony - birth and death. Forgiveness, atonement, unity of God with humanity - however you want to put it, our salvation has been achieved.This one human body has defeated death. And is fit to enter heaven. Forget the idea that the body, the world is evil and to be ignored. Forget the idea that you are to be saved "from" the earth. Heaven has opened and taken in a living human being. One with a body just like ours, and bearing our scars.

Now there's a time for waiting, till the Spirit is poured out. We will be renewed. We will be made like him.

Tuesday 8 May 2018

About the Size of a Squirrel

And a happy Julian of Norwich's Day. The Beaker Saint par excellence. We can enjoy her hippie musings while being secretly glad we're not bricked into the wall of a church.

Now, years gone by have seen a terrible failure on the hazelnut front. For those of you who don't know about this (and I'll be honest you have simply no excuse), Julian had a vision of the whole of creation being about the size of a hazelnut. But her day is in May. And nuts are available in the autumn.

So after the anaphylaxis issues of using shelled hazelnuts from Waitrose in previous years, this year we decided to be prepared. We invested in a special "Hazelnut Room". Into its climate-controlled, air-cooled womb we put, last November, fully 10 bushels of the finest fruits of the Forestry Commission. And a few chestnuts. Figured they be nice, roasted. A little bit of Yule in May.

One word. Squirrels.

I regret to say that instead of rows of gleaming hazelnuts, all ready to be contemplated as symbols of the fragility of Creation and the loving hands of our compassionate God, we have a round dozen of the sleekest, most well-nourished squirrels you could imagine.

I'm not advocating anyone holds one of them and contemplates Creation. As John Cleese nearly said, contemplate that and you'll never light a tea light again.

I'm trying to think of what Julian might have had to say about squirrels. I'm sure it would have been wise, kind and godly.

Does anyone know the best way to cook them?

Monday 7 May 2018

Faith and Summer Wine

The recent discussion about the average Poshness of Church of England Clergy has converged nicely with the re-awakening of the marvellous "Summer Winos" blog with the lads' review of "Dried Dates and Codfanglers." The intersection between the two being me wondering about the Summer Wine clergy.

There were a lot of them. Apart from the occasional one officiating at funerals or weddings.1
John Horsley's appearance in "Three Astaires" can stand for them all apart from one. Super-posh (with an incisively posh wife in Dilys Hamlett who could cut the glass in her front door with the scorn in her her voice). Just the one non-posh one. In the very first episode. The excellent Michael Stainton plays a proper Northern working-class vicar. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, he's the only vicar in the series actually to discuss faith  - with Clegg.

There were fewer as time went by, of course. Between the early 70s and 2010, the English people lost their assumed link with the Church that bears their name. Maybe the gap with the posh people in the pulpits just became too obvious. Or more likely it was the working-out of the previous 70 years' retreat of faith. Foggy or Blamire could be default Anglicans, making it for "Church Parade". Clegg could discuss theology with the confidence of a forced attender at Baptist church teas.

And yet the Church carries on thinking. Hoping that "people will come in". Assuming that there's nobody there just because they're all busy at football or the car boot. I mean they may be. But the more important matter seems to be that we've lost a shared imagination. The Church doesn't share a language with ordinary people any more.

I don't have any answers. I'm just reflecting. Maybe the Church could do with fewer posh people fussing over or not to really rock up "One More Step Along the World I Go" to bring in the young people. And more vicars with Yorkshire accents, talking about God in the midst of real life.


1Never baptisms. There are no baptisms in the Last of the Summer Wine. Barely any babies at all. I often think to myself that in fact, with the exeption of Chip and Connie Simmonite, there is no sex going on anywhere in Holmfirth. Sure we know that Compo and Wesley were fathers. But the main characters are unmarried, widowed or divorced. The married men have wives who don't seem very interested in it. And, in the case of Jack Harry Teasdale, he doesn't seem that keen either. And if Pearl were going to sue for divorce from Howard on the grounds of adultery, she wouldn't find too much evidence.



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Saturday 5 May 2018

Toby Young Has Written Something

Toby Young has written something.

You don't know want to know what it is.

It will almost certainly be something that extrapolates from being a man who has been profoundly privileged all his life, extrapolating to assume that he understands everybody else. Whether that's profoundly unprivileged men who should probably be kept under close supervision, people who are just normal, or women.

If you read what Toby Young has written, you will wish you had not read it.

Thinking about it, you will then wish nobody reads it.

It may cross your mind to wonder why anybody would pay Toby Young to write what he has written. That would be a reasonable thought.

Toby Young has written something.

You really don't want to read it.



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

A Guest Sermon from Simon Jenkins

Our keynote sermon from our "Festival of the Church for the 20th Century"

"First of all I'd like to thank you for inviting me to preach on Psalm 14:1. Obviously I've not read the Bible in a while, as this would use valuable time that I could otherwise spend proving that I am, since Giles Fraser left, the Guardian's expert on religion for people of the right sort. Oh I know that Andrew Brown knows about religions and what have you. And has sympathy for those with any faith and nuns.   But my opinion is more important because I've got my finger so much on the pulse.

As a man who has spent a lot of time working with heritage bodies, I have a wide experience of people who spend their leisure time in old buildings. And I have to say they are mostly just like me. Many of those old buildings are churches, of course. Which is why I know all about English religion. And I can tell you that the future of the Church in this country looks just like its present. Buildings where you have to find the key off someone who's living in what used to be the Post Office,  which you visit in Saturdays with maybe a loveable old labrador.
A Guardian reader considers the possible uses
 as an art gallery or car park for Toyota Priuses

 But wait, Simon, you say - this view of Christianity in England you have just given is terribly lop-sided and misses out so much more!   To which I have to admit you are right. It doesn't have to be a labrador. It could be a spaniel. But, in my opinion, which  is of course  utterly correct,  this is a risk. Spaniels are excitable animals. Thrilled with the sight of a piece of stunning church architecture - a font, or something -  they might relieve themselves on the church floor. Which would be a problem potentially when the parish council of Grinton-In-Swaledale or wherever gets its act together and converts the place to a children's ball park with attached welfare society for  the widows of lead miners. You see, you didn't think it through. But don't worry. That's what I am for.

But it is really important to me that we don't just use church buildings as squash courts, velodromes, funplexes, leisuredomes or whatever else the parish council have the money and time to create. We must respect the traditional Sabbath observances of everyone that is just like me.

Sunday is a time for traditional, quiet reflection. For reading the Observer. And then going out for a lovely artisan meal, knocked up by the chef in the Manoir aux Quat' Evangélistes (formerly the Church of St James and St Oliver). There while eating our mignonette de poulet rotie petit duc a l'Anatole, we can consider the beauty of the architecture. The limpid beauties of the stained glass. We can reflect on the simple faith of those medieval worshippers, that raised these works to the glory of their non-existent God. And give thanks to ourselves for being cultured enough to know and savour all of this.

And so, to you Beaker Folk. I want you to consider the Guardian as the model for the Church of the Future. We have an outlook that is gentle, considerate. Middle class and ageing. Living on the glories of the past. And yet, in an attempt to appeal to young people - whoever they are - we have Owen Jones, as our youth worker. For churches may rise and fall. But the empowered being patronising endureth forever."




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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Friday 4 May 2018

Simon Jenkins Writes Drivel (#3 in an endless series)

Simon Jenkins tells us the Quakers are right, and we don't need God.

Now this isn't drivel yet. Which probably means a sub-editor wrote the strap line.

And he goes on to tell us of the importance of seeking peace regardless of one's belief or otherwise in divinity. And in the Beaker Folk, of course we agree. The important thing is the ritual and the collections. Belief is strictly optional. Albeit if the C of E were to take Simon Jenkins seriously you'd be seeking that silence among the pop-up libraries, Universities of the New Age, creches and doily -making facilities with which Simon Jenkins was proposing that Stalinist parish councils should fill the church buildings only 5 weeks ago.

So that's not the drivel. Nor is it because he praises Quakers who are nice, gentle, thoughtful people. These days.

No, the reason he's writing drivel is implying that the Quakers are in some way the cutting edge of a new religiosity, in line with the Zeitgeist. To put it brutally, the number of Quakers total in this country is very low in the tens of thousands if that. The  C of E attendance is more like 700,000. Worldwide there are about 2.4 billion Christians, and 0.4 million Quakers.  The Church worldwide is half Catholic, a third Protestant, with a growing proportion of Pentecostal/Charismatic churches.

To put it another way.  Only someone writing with a liberal, atheist, Western, British outlook would think Quakerism is the future. Basically, Quakerism is  to religion what the Guardian is to the media. Well meaning, nice but effectively irrelevant. Simon Jenkins is generalizing from himself to the universal.

The future of religion is either Muslim, or it's Bible - believing. It's not Simon Jenkins.




Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Thursday 3 May 2018

Coffee-Making Rita

Thanks to all the people who have contacted me to let me know about the typo on the May newsletter.

Rita is a specialist barista and an expert in making coffee in the Portuguese style.

I've never met anyone called Rota, so I don't know why you're all recommending I meant her.



Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Wednesday 2 May 2018

A Poem for St Athanasius

The trinitarian theology of Athanasius
Was orthodox, not fallacious.
But how terribly nefarious
Was the heresiarch Arius.

Tuesday 1 May 2018

The Morris Dancing Menace

Pleased to say we've rounded up the last Morris Dancer. Thank goodness. It was starting to get very messy.

We had the usual Beltane celebrations last night. And I'll be honest. After we all had a bit of a primal scream and then a few cider and rums, heated in beakers on the embers of the Wicker Person, it turned into a bit of a night.

Then woke up this morning to find the croquet lawn infested with Morris Men.

They're resilient little bleeders. The fire-hose and a few half-bricks removed most of them. But one snuck into the Moot House and claimed sanctuary by sitting on the Worship Focus table.

Problem you see. By being on that table, he became the Worship Focus. Not the focus of worship. But the thing that, by looking at, we learn something about God.

I'll be honest. An overweight real-ale-drinking Java programmer is not going to help me learn much about God. Except maybe that God's love is even greater than we imagine. But what can you do? We couldn't poke him with pointy sticks. He is protected by the rules of the Moot House.

So we switched all the taps on and flooded the building. Say what you like about Morris Men. But the hankies don't half weigh them down once they get wet. Abandoning the hankies, he legged it for the Orchard.

He was clearly hoping to hide in the hedges until the hunt died down. But as he snuck along, the bells on his ankles gave him away.

And now the pointy sticks were liturgically acceptable.

I've received my annual letter declaring war and threatening unending vengeance from Big Morris. I've filed it with all the rest. I guess it's same time next year.

Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.