Bringing Beaker Worship into my Home

I think it is fair to say that I have always discouraged the Beaker people from entering the Archdruidical suite. I feel it is fair enough that, with great personal generosity, I let people live - for a nominal rental on very reasonable long-term leases - in the former servants' quarters of my ancestral home. I provide the Moot House, Orchard and Holy Oak Grove (under construction) for collective worshipping activity, and the Rainbow Room for people to hide under their hoodies when suffering from earth-destroying hangovers.

Hence the sign on the door that divides my rooms from the common Druidical Administration Office, "Private - stay out. Beware of the Killer Doberman". Within that door, is the corridor where Rosebud the Doberman ran free. Sadly he's getting on a bit now, and spends his life mostly sleeping in his basket, dreaming of former massacres. So I've had to install the laser detection and tear gas canisters instead.

My Archdruidical suite is my very own hidey hole. My place to lay down the cares, fears and tears of pastoral life, and watch "Pointless". A place to invite my friends for a meal, or a quiet drink. And when I say "friends", you can be sure I mostly don't mean the Beaker Folk. So you can forget angling for an invite after the lockdown is over, Burton.

When we had to suspend public worship, it was a real problem. After all, is the Community to be treated as one houshold that can still meet, or as a number of discrete units that can be isolated as best as possible? I went for the latter. Not least as it means I get a bit of peace and quiet. But in a very spiritual sense, those Beaker Folk that do not live on site should not be disadvantaged even if they do pay less. So we decided to go to streaming all worship.

And I felt that it was wrong I should sit in the Moot House all on my own to stream worship. I know the Beaker Folk have a deep affinity to the place. It is very much a thin place. But frankly, it's effort. And I might meet some Beaker people on the way there or back. And if it got a bit dusty, I might have to clean it.

So I made the decision to stream worship from my suite. Now that is a major effort for me. I have to rearrange the entire sitting room. All those Bertie Wooster and Blandings books apparently look "too flippant" so they're all dumped on the kitchen table during the service, while I have to get all those old boxes of Schüssler Fiorenza, Moltmann, Eusebius, Kierkegaard, David Irving and Saint Augustine out of the attic, dust them down, arrange them into colour sequence, check there's no Mr Men lurking in there. And then remember to take the David Irving back out. Definitely shouldn't be there. That takes a couple of hours. I then have to borrow the pictures of Charlii's family from her and Young Keith and hang them on the wall, so it looks like I have some kind of personal life. And get some fresh flowers in to put in a few vases.

Then of course I have to get two Beaker People, suitably wrapped in cling film, to carry the Worship Focus table up from the Moot House and place it on the right spot around the house. This does involve them moving the three piece suite, dining table and possibly having to remove the Home Cinema setup from the wall.

And they have to set the Worship Focus table up in the correct place, so that I can use the

A passing Beaker person, enjoying the early-morning Rose Garden

lighting just right. I find that, for Filling Up of Beakers in the evening, it's best to sit with the sun streaming in from the west window. This gives a generally peaceful, all's-well-with-the-world feel to the worship, I find. And just before dawn, for the Pouring Out of Beakers, it's best to be by the balcony if possible. That means I can pour the water straight out of the beaker and onto the rose garden below. If you occasionally hear a shout, it means somebody has walked underneath as I've poured the water out.

Then, I don't really like the performance aspect of the whole thing. I mean, I've never enjoyed liturgical dancing at the best of times, But having to do it yourself is frankly embarrassing, and those jumps ain't good for my ankles. The liturgical juggling is OK, as long as it's just something simple like bean bags. There is nothing worse than getting hit on the head by a juggling club during the singing of "Will you Come and Follow Me." And sometimes when sword-swallowing, I wonder whether the service is really becoming all about me.

And when it's all over, I have to get all the stuff back, the books all back in their place, the Worship Focus Table back to the Moot House, fill in the holes in the wall where I hung Charlii's family photos, and have everything disinfected and deep cleaned.

And it worries me that, in focusing on the domestic normality of this whole thing - in acting as if what is going on in an ordinary little home is like a public act of worship - maybe I'm withdrawing worship from the public square. I mean, it's nice that people get to see me worshipping naturally, on a small scale, unaffectedly, at home. But it's not real church, like sitting all on my own in a cold Moot House with my smartphone.

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