Faculty for the Creation of a Storage Room for all the Things we Can't Face Raising Faculties For the Removal Of

The vicar and church wardens of St Kelvin the Less petition for the building of a new room, to hold all the things we can't face raising faculties to get rid of.

The church is full of altar frontals, freestanding bench pews, assorted panels that used to be on the wall somewhere, paintings of the Last Supper, random replicas of Flemish altarpieces, and similar detritus either "gifted" by parishioners or procured by obsessive former incumbents.

We don't need them. They're in the way. They're getting on our nerves.

But every time we try to get rid of them, the diocesan bric-a-brac advisor asks for their "provenance".

How should we know? Our predecessors in these jobs were far too busy shooting partridges and chasing foxes to bother themselves with documentation.

And we don't know whether our predecessors put what records they did keep into the diocesan archives, hid them under their beds, or ate them, frankly.

And a fair amount of it seems to have been pretty much fly-tipped over the years. There's rumours that a vicar out in the Fens once hired a removals lorry and dropped off six pews and a lectern he'd removed from his own place to clear some room for a children's corner.

And experts are rare and expensive. And the diocesan archives only hold records written by drunks, so you can't read a word. And then everything takes so many backwards and forwards to get done.

So, since life is too short to do any disposals properly, we propose to build a new room, to the west of the existing north aisle. From local ashlar. With lime mortar, of course. All the right components. From the outside you'd never know it were new.

We will put all the stuff we can't get rid of without too much trouble in there. And close the door - a replica of the south door, in oak, with brass fittings.

And never think about any of it again.

Calling Bunny 17, your time is up

Little thing to remember for next year. 

Don't use an area the size of a football pitch for your Easter Egg Hunt.

All the Little Pebbles went out on the Big Meadow at 3 pm yesterday, eager to fill the Holy Saturday void with sugar highs and chocolatey excitement.

Purswill is still out there.

It's been twenty-five hours now. He knows there are more eggs out there.

And with all that sugar and caffeine in him, nobody can catch him. We can see him scuttling around, but he's like the Duracell Bunny.

I mean, it's not really a safeguarding issue. He's forty-seven, and can look after himself. I've got no idea how he obtained. a set of the official bunny ears to enter the competition.

He's just getting really annoying.

Seemed like Nonsense

 “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” (Luke 24:11)

Well, it is nonsense, isn’t it?

The idea that a man who has been killed by the Romans – experts at killing people – whose death has been checked by a Centurion – who before crucifixion suffered a flogging that was often severe enough to kill people….

The idea that this dead man would rise was nonsense.
And of course – the message came from women.  And who would listen to women?

Apart from Luke, of course. Who paid attention to the women in Jesus’s story throughout. Surprising to be honest that there’s not some group somewhere trying to remove Luke’s Gospel and Acts from the Bible on the grounds that he’s the Woke Physician, not the Blessed Physician.  And now it’s the whole group of women who’d been to the tomb – led, of course, by Mary Magdalene - who come back with the news. Luke has shown us women as prophets: the Blessed Virgin Mary, Elizabeth, Anna – now he shows us women as apostles – sent out from the tomb to give the apostles the good news.

And I believe that nonsense that the women brought to the apostles, today. Yes, of course it’s impossible.  But then it wouldn’t be worth telling if it weren’t impossible. It wouldn’t make any difference if it weren’t impossible. It wouldn’t be a miracle if it weren’t impossible. If Jesus weren’t raised from the dead, as Paul says – what would the point be?

But on the basis of those women, then of those apostles, of the weird inconsistencies within the Gospel resurrection accounts even while they are so consistent in what really matters – on basis of the message of the church, of the mere existence of a church that should have ceased to exist when Jesus died, and on the work of the Holy Spirit within my heart – this is what I believe. That Mary Magdalene and all the rest went to a tomb, found it empty, told the apostles – and the apostles then had it proved to them that it was true.

And so everything has changed. There is a purpose to this world beyond the world we see. There is a purpose to our lives deeper than the lives we live. Death is not all there is, and we are called by our loving Saviour to follow him – through the death he died like we all do – into the life that he offers. That new life starts now – and goes through death and on in God’s love into eternity.

It's nonsense isn’t it? But it’s beautiful, powerful nonsense. It’s nonsense that makes sense of this life – and makes promises for the next.

And I believe it’s true.