Saturday 29 June 2019

On Half-Price Pimms and Priesting and Deaconing Day in the Church of England

Just got in from our Half-Price Pimms Day celebrations.

It's a certain day every year. Like flying ants day. Or, when we were children, the start of the marbling season. You don't know precisely when it will be. But one day, not quite unexpected but certainly impossible to predict with accuracy, it will be Half-Price Pimms Day at a local supermarket.

At which point Hnaef fills his Toyota Pious up with the stuff, a tankerload of lemonade, several chickens and the remains of an entire cow, and the Liturgical Barbecue breaks out. Which is what happened today at Tesco in Kingston when he popped in for the weekly shop. And now a bunch of gin-sozzled, protein-imbued Beaker Folk are currently staggering across the lawn, tripping over the assorted cairns and croquet hoops.

There's a clash this year. I note that Half Price Pimms Day has fallen on the same day that a lot of the Church of England dioceses hold their services for priests (and the following day deacons). Which must be a terrible wrench. I mean, you can hang around the Close, nibbling cucumber sandwiches and telling your new parishioners that you're very blessed, or you can be two pints of Pimms down and the only cucumber is the bit you removed from your first glass. You can't do both.

Peterborough Diocese has moved its ordination services back by a fortnight, I notice. And yes, the rumours are it's something to do with a celebration at Launde Abbey so they've had to reschedule the ordination retreat.

But I've another theory. I reckon it's Pimms.



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Saturday 22 June 2019

Thursday 20 June 2019

In Memoriam: "Sykes" from Midsomer Murders

Creepy Vicar: And so we come to say goodbye to the only normal character in Midsomer Murders.

New Age Cultists: Not a creepy vicar.

Angry Pub Landlord: Nor a New Age Cultist.

Adulterous Farmer: Nor an angry pub landlord.

Smug Copper: Nor an adulterous farmer.

Patronised Sidekick: Nor a smug copper.

Woman who is improbably involved in the local community: Nor a patronised sidekick.

Spurned Lover: Nor a women who is improbably involved in the local community.

Scary Shopkeeper: Nor a spurned lover.

Sykes: Nor a scary shopkeeper. Woof! Bye!


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Solstice Eve

A reminder to all Beaker Folk that, since the standard of getting up on Solstice Morning is so appalling, we have transferred the Solstice Sunrise ceremony to tomorrow noon in the Moot House, where Young Keith will be projecting a video of the event onto the wall.

I know it doesn't have the raw spiritual experience of shivering in a damp meadow, peering at the horizon and wondering if the cloud will ever lift. But on the other hand, it means we will be able to watch it while warm, and wide awake.

If the recording's not very good tomorrow morning, don't worry. Keith has a selection of "best of" solstice sunrises, including from Stonehenge, Karnak and Lowestoft.

For those at work during the day, the Solstice will be repeated at 7pm. There will also be a matinee showing on Saturday.



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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.

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Monday 17 June 2019

Liturgical Blessing of the Lawnmower

The Liturgical Lawnmower is wheeled from the Lawnmower Shed to the Moot House.

Hymn: Spare us the Cutter (E. Bunnyman)

Archdruid: Behold the new community mower!

All: Oooh!

Archdruid: We ask that blessings be poured out upon this mower like oil.

All: And not drop from the heavens, like unto the not-so-gentle rain which falleth like that which would cause even Noah to furrow the Noahic brow.

Archdruid: Let it not cut so short that the grass suffereth in times of drought.

All: Nor so long that we can't spot the gifts with which Grendel the Community Cat blesses the lawn.

Archdruid: Let it cut those light and dark stripes which are so clever we think it might be magic.

All: Let it be a lot less bovver than a hover.

Melissa Sparrow: Let it be loud enough that it scareth off the little beasties that lurk in long grass. Let us not find the dismembered remnants of hedgehogs, the limbs of toads, eyes of frogs, livers of shrews, spleens of field-mice, death death death death death.

Archdruid: But let us rejoice in the smell of new-mown grass.

Melissa: Which is the smell of the grassy fear of death! Death death death!

Archdruid: Surely not?

Melissa: Yeath! I mean, yes! Death! Death! Death!

Archdruid: And let us pray for good weather to cut the grass.

All: For the rain it raineth every day.

Archdruid: For surely it is  an electric mower.

Melissa: And to use it in the rain would mean....

All: Death?

Melissa: Death. Death. Death. Death.

All: You know, this isn't as lighthearted as we'd expected.

Hymn: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Sunday 16 June 2019

All those other Trinity Sunday illustrations you really shouldn't use


  1. Three-pin plug (live, neutral earth - oh the wondrous plugginess of the bakelite. Aren't plugs made of bakelite these days?
  2. Perichoresis. Unless you really understand what it means.
  3. Bubble machine (the soap, the water, the air inside... and... ooh the surface tension. Is that 4? Or is the surface tension like the all-God-together bit? Look! Bubbles!
  4. Potato (chips, mash, roast)
  5. Clover (see cartoony St Patrick)
  6. The Toyah Wilcox song, It's a Mystery
  7.  "And the Son does what he's told because he's a good Son who always does what he's told. And the Spirit's like the tomboy who's always up a tree or running through a field of wheat when she should be making tea...
  8. Boris Johnson (two faces but talks out of somewhere else entirely)
  9. A nice cup of tea (milk, water, tea and - who's put sugar in this? You know I don't take sugar.
  10. Liverpool's front 3. You may think they're divine. But totally inappropriate. Especially for two of them. 
  11. Pebbles. I know what you're thinking. Limestone/Chalk/Marble yet all CaCO3? Then add some vinegar and only the marble remains? Heretic. Heretic.
  12. That video featuring a cartoony St Patrick
  13. The triple point of water. Unless you understand phase diagrams. In which case you will know not to use it anyway. Never use an illustration that is outside people's everyday experience.
  14. The lifecycle of a frog or butterfly. 
  15. Tea lights (the flame, the heat, the light).
  16. The three members of the Jam.
  17. A family (mum, dad, child, other child, dad's other children in other families, some totally unknown, because it's Boris Johnson's family etc).
Basically my advice is, never use an illustration for the Trinity. As Toyah Wilcox one said, "It's a mystery". And don't forget. An egg is just for Easter.




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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.

Saturday 8 June 2019

In Other Tongues

"In the beginning was the Word", says St John. And the Word was both with God, and was God. That's how powerful words are - that God's son is the ultimate Word.

Because words are so natural, so normal, so everyday we forget how powerful they are. Using words, I can tell someone what I would like to eat. Can tell someone where the station is. Or scream for help if I've fallen off a cliff. I can use words to describe something to someone else who's never seen it. I can use words to tell you how I burn my hand on the mocha pot earlier. I don't need to burn it again to explain. If I want to tell you about fire, I don't need to set fire to your curtains. It's when someone's language is limited that we realise just how powerful it is. When a child is learning a new concept. Or someone after a stroke is struggling to find the words they do know to explain something they once knew.

In the Tower of Babel, God says - given how bad for each other people are - imagine how much trouble they'd be if everyone could communicate freely. And it's got to be said, Twitter and Facebook suggest God had a point.

 So words are not just powerful for good. They're a source of hurt and division. We can use people's languages and accents to try and put people - literally - in their places. George Bernard Shaw said that "it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. " Given my accent - a typical Bedfordshire combination of East of England and pre-war Cockney - people can have trouble pinning me down. Most people from elsewhere assume we're just Londoners. Someone once accused me of being from Norfolk. But one person was so much more specific "are you from Bozeat?" I mean. Why Bozeat?

The way we talk - the words we use, the language we speak, the accent, the dialect words - they give us identity. We don't just express ourselves in words, we define ourselves.

And so the gift of tongues is given at Pentecost. But firstly - the disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter goes on to tell us this is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Job. In the old days, the Spirit was only given to certain to people - to the prophets, to David, to Moses, to Saul pretty much by mistake. But now, says Peter, he's available to everyone.

And when Peter says everyone, that's what he means. "Even on God's servants, both men and women". The old and the young, and - incredibly - all nations.

So the disciples praise God in other languages, and all the people gathered hear them in their native languages. God has reclaimed the power of language, reversed the curse of Babel, and opened up God's love to everyone.

Remember how, when Jesus died, the veil of the Holy of Holies was torn? This was God saying that the perfect sacrifice was made for everyone. And now, in the Spirit's power, God's love is poured out on everyone. The priesthood isn't just for the people born into it, it's for all people. We can all come close to God.

So there is - as Paul tells us later in Romans - no Greek or Jew. No slave or free. No male or female. And I'd personally add, no gay or straight. Everyone is God's child. There's no barriers to God's love, no special language, no right set of genital equipment, no class, no race, nor right age that makes you further from God or any closer.

I worry. My whole lifetime - and I know I've had a relatively privileged lifetime - the world has seemed to become more open. The Soviet Bloc which was such a menace when I was a child fell, bringing the Berlin Wall with it. The European Union opened borders in a way we had not known in centuries. People travelled quite freely over large parts of the world.  We saw increased respect and equality between men and women, between races.

And now it's closing in. The language of the hatred of immigrants, of people of colour, of Jews - from Britain to Austria to the USA - has hardened. People shout abuse at each other on Social Media. A young gay couple is attacked and robbed on a bus in London, just for being gay.

But I do believe God is always leading us the other way - to light the fires of Pentecost, to be open to people not like us, not near us. To believe that at the end - and Pentecost is the beginning of that end - the tree of life will be for the healing of all nations, and God will make us all one.

God's Word made the world. And God's words in the story of Pentecost are a song of freedom and love. God's love flows like fire, pours down like rain, blows away cobwebs like the wind and hovers like a dove. It makes all things new, and all things good.

Letting Women Preach

There's been some noise about whether women should preach.

And I guess we should consider the words of Our Lady:

"My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;

As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever."

And consider that the first to preach the Resurrection, according to all the Gospels, were women.

And then ask ourselves: given women were the first to preach Jesus's Incarnation and Resurrection: at what point did anyone think it appropriate to let men take over the job?

Sunday 2 June 2019

Brexuality

The year is 2022. The Conservative and Brexit Party of Great Britain has triumphed in the snap election called by Prime Minister Jordan Henderson. And now the population is reduced to living on the remaining Welsh lamb, prawns that can no longer be exported to the European Union, and Yorkshire rhubarb. In the Enoch Powell research facility (formerly the Oxford Biochemistry Laboratory), Ann Widdecombe, Minister for Science and Re-education, is checking out the progress of the new research project.

Anne Widdecombe: So how's it going? Have you worked it out yet?

Very Brainy Scientist: Listen, minister.... are you sure this is where you want to be spending what's left of the Government's money? Since Dominic Raab cut income tax to 4%, the value of sterling has plummeted, and the only export we can still get out of the country at competitive rates is Ed Sheeran downloads, we don't have money to spend on vanity projects.

AW: Vanity projects?

VBS: Turning gay people straight. I mean, it doesn't help the economy. It doesn't further human rights. The Republic of California will refuse even to discuss a trade deal. And it's an infringement of human dignity.

AW: Never mind that. Have you built the machine that stops people being deviants or not?

VBS: Yes. Yes we have.  If by "stops people being deviants" you mean "changes their fundamental sexual orientation."

AW: And does it work?

VBS: In Beta, yes. Though we need to run some trials with a more significant cohort. But there's an interesting effect we've noticed.

AW: Which is?

VBS: Well, you've assumed this is a one-way conversion.

AW: Abnormal to normal, yes.

VBS: Let's say "gay to straight"?

AW: That's what I said.

VBS: And yet you went on Strictly Come Dancing?

AW: Yes. Why?

VBS: Sorry. Not really relevant. Anyway. The machine we've built subtly reprograms certain neural responses to external stimuli. It acts upon the brain cells, if you like, like a magnetic switch - changing the selected neurons from "on" to "off" or vice versa.

AW: The neurons have always been "off" in my case.

VBS: So we gathered. In any case, it's like the RAM in a computer. We can change them one way or the other.

AW: So you can turn normal, red-blooded, English people into those who indulge in the love that dare not squeak its name*?

VBS: Indeed we can. And to test that this is indeed the case. we've been transmitting the "gay rays" into the chair you've been sitting on for the last ten minutes.....

AW:  Ridiculous. You seriously think you could affect the resolute mind of an upstanding member of the Brexit Party?

VBS: Maybe not. I guess it was always going to be hard to hit a target so small... Well, goodbye minister.

AW: Goodbye. Hold on - who's that on the TV in the common room?

VBS: That's Sue Perkins on a repeat of "Bake Off", minister. Why?

AW: Oh, nothing. Carry on...



* with thanks to Mike McShane in a very early "Whose Line is it Anyway?"


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Liturgy For Thomas Hardy's Birthday (1840)

Psalm the Hundred-and-Ninth, to the tune of Wiltshire: verses ten to fifteen 

Yokel: It's that Thomas Hardy's Birthday then.

Other Yokel: Aye, same as last year.

All Yokels Together: And the one before.

Yokel: He'm still dead then.

Other Yokel: Aye, same as last year.

All Yokels Together: Dead and gone, as we all shall be.

Yokel: Shall us down to the Quiet Woman for a drap o' summat? And then a pretty drap o'tipple at Peter's Finger?

Other Yokel: And afterwards ride the Skimmington round young Farfrae's house?

All Yokels Together: Wi' all my heart.

Yokel: And shall us collect Christian Cantle on the way?

Other Yokel: No, he've eloped wi' that Miss Fancy Day.

All Yokels Together: Ah, the shame. And she new-married to Dick Dewey.

Yokel: But what's Dick thinking?

Other Yokel: He've bunked up with Tamsin Yeobright.

All Yokels Together: And Diggory Venn the Reddleman have gone off with a milkmaid.

Yokel: So shall we bring Granfer Cantle instead?

Other Yokel: No. His ear's fallen off o' the ague.

All Yokels Together: What? Again?

Yokel: It's a shame young Thomas Hardy's dead though.

Other Yokel: He probably wrote a poem about it.

All Yokels Together: 'A were like that. Always writin' poetry. Bit weird.

Hymn: Haste to the Skimmington



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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.