All the special Sundays

It was Catriona's blog, rightly and reasonably marking a special Sunday, that caused all the trouble. You see, the Beaker People knew about Easter Sunday and Palm Sunday but didn't realise that so many Sundays are "special" - Healthcare Sunday, Bible Sunday and so on.
They felt a bit left out.  So they demanded their own set. So what are you to do?  Stick to my firm principle, that's what - always allow democracy to rule on things that don't really matter (I stole the idea from the European Union, if truth be told). And Catriona's right, we're dead good at remembering doctors and nurses (and, I would add, missionaries, clergy and teachers) - but we forget the others.  Here, therefore, are the special Beaker Sundays for the next year.  You can feel free to use them if you like.

24 October 2010	Apple Sunday - when we remember all the special people that grow apples or make cider.
31 October 2010	"Out in the evening Sunday"
07 November 2010	Street sweepers' Sunday
14 November 2010	Fish & Chips Sunday, when we give thanks generally for all takeaway food
21 November 2010	People from Kettering Sunday, when we remember those less fortunate than ourselves
28 November 2010	Help a Hedgehog Sunday
05 December 2010	Fear and Trembling Sunday
12 December 2010	Last Judgement Sunday
19 December 2010	Let's give up on Advent and sing some Carols Sunday
26 December 2010	Skip the Service it's the Sales Sunday
02 January 2011	Back to work tomorrow Sunday
09 January 2011	Black Sunday (also known as "eight months till we get a holiday" Sunday)
16 January 2011	Supermarket Assistants' Day
23 January 2011	Post-it Notes Sunday, when we remember the gift of stationery
30 January 2011	Train drivers' Sunday (cancelled due to weekend engineering works)
06 February 2011	A day of prayer for TV Presenters who have no discernible talent
13 February 2011	Looking meaningfully at the cards in Tesco Express Sunday
20 February 2011	Still regarding our husbands in icy Silence Sunday
27 February 2011	Web developers' Sunday, when we give thanks for all the people, who with little reward, write websites
06 March 2011	U2 Sunday
13 March 2011	Rabbit and Guinea Pigs Sunday
20 March 2011	Tambourine Sunday (book a day off)
27 March 2011	Clown Sunday (a day of terror and/or embarrassment if any of our friends turn up)
03 April 2011	Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunday
10 April 2011	Stewardship Sunday, when the bloke in the suit comes round to tell us we're all doomed
17 April 2011	Palm Sunday
24 April 2011	Easter
01 May 2011	Dance around the Maypole in a pre-Victorian, Fertility Festival kind of way until the Police intervene Sunday
08 May 2011	People who maintain telegraph poles Sunday
15 May 2011	Eurovision Sunday (except Slovenia)
22 May 2011	Come to Church on a pogo stick Sunday
29 May 2011	Hospital visiting Sunday
05 June 2011	Dairy and related Bovine industries Sunday
12 June 2011	Day of prayer for people called Christian and Unity
19 June 2011	First nice day of the year, let's slink off to Sunny Hunny* Sunday
26 June 2011	Playing the banjo badly Sunday
03 July 2011	Short-sighted airline pilot's Benevolent Sunday
10 July 2011	People who live in Droitwich Sunday
17 July 2011	Biro manufacturers' Sunday
24 July 2011	First week of the holidays Sunday (congregation reduced to 4)
31 July 2011	County Cricket 2nd XI players' Sunday
07 August 2011	Garfield cartoon Sunday
14 August 2011	Be nice to an atheist, however repulsive you may find their anorak, Sunday
21 August 2011	Waiters and Waitresses Sunday
28 August 2011	Greenbelt Sunday
04 September 2011	Leylandii Sunday
11 September 2011	People who drive fork lifts and other warehouse workers' Sunday
18 September 2011	Ford Super-Sunday
25 September 2011	Nights are drawing in Sunday
02 October 2011	School cleaners Sunday
09 October 2011	Judy Garland day
16 October 2011	Harvest Festival
23 October 2011	Postal delivery people's Sunday

* Hunstanton, for those that don't know.

All Soul's Commemoration

Well I'm pleased to say that the All Soul's Day Commemoration is finally over.

We thought it would be nice to co-incide with the Full Moon by starting at moonrise, assuming the Occasion would just take the normal half an hour or so, as the name of each Departed Beloved was read and a tea light lit in their honour.

But as I reached the end of the list I was expecting to read, I noticed that somebody - I suspect Young Keith - had stapled a fairly sizeable chunk of the 1891 Census for Islington onto the back.

What was I to do? There's no denying that all the people on that list were among the Departed. Some were probably ancestors of Beaker Folk present. So I just kept going.

Some time around midnight we started to run out of tea lights, but Burton kindly nipped over to Tesco's at Kingston and bought in a couple of pallets.

Just now, as we filed away from the Moot House tired and dizzy from lack of sleep, someone registered a complaint. "Don't you realise?" he asked, "It's not meant to be about Them. It's meant to be about Us."

I must reflect.

A meditation for All Souls' Day

And so what do we make of All Souls' Day, in our post-Christendom paradigm?  In an environment where the most popular funeral songs, as previously discussed, are such songs as Robbie Williams's "Angels" and Celine Dion's "My Love Must Go on"*

The Roman Catholics use the day to remember the souls that are still in Purgatory, fighting their way to the surface, as it were.  But for most of us, in these days we have lost a sense of Purgatory.

And souls.

Now the aim of the Beaker People is to meet people where they are, and allow them to give a name to that place.  To help them find their spiritual voice.  So if we meet them where they are - where are they?

Firstly, they seem to be rejecting the sharp certainties of atheism.  Just as well for us, being a religious community and all that - it would make us totally redundant and even more pointless than we often seem to be already.  But whatever else they believe, they don't think Auntie Vera has actually ceased to exist.  They seem to have an implicit belief that Auntie Vera is somewhere, even if she is not physically around.

Naturally we'd have to rule out any mention of a resurrection.  How are we going to explain that?  Especially to a generation that finds the best way to deal with the dead is to convert them to more manageable ashes.  And while many people seem to believe in reincarnation in theory, we find they don't really want to go into the details.  After all, that would mean considering the possibility that, Uncle Ernest having come back as a chicken, they ate him for tea. 

We also find it best not to dwell in any detail on the concept of heaven.  It has a nasty habit of reminding people of hell.  And we don't want to go there, if you see what I mean.  Just allow that a few people - Hitler, Stalin and Mao, for example - are in hell and where would you draw the line?  You start drawing lines and suddenly you're talking about judgement and sin and salvation and all kinds of other things we really wouldn't want to get into.

No, the best place to assign the spirits of the dead, on the whole, would appear to be to a kind of insubstantial, almost-heavenly place, where the dearly beloved ones are held in a kind of - if you will forgive the misuse of the word - limbo.  A kind of commuter suburb of heaven, really.  Based on the vague recollections of other people attending seances or medium shows, most people see this as where the dead live.  Our former friends and much-missed family members are probably best imagined sitting in someone's ectoplasmic front room, on a rainy day in the 1970s, just after "The Big Match" has finished, for all eternity.   Without even a set of dominoes to relieve the boredom.  No wonder the Dead spend all their time, if the mediums are to be believed, worrying about how their budgies are doing, if their niece's bad back is bearing up and whether they switched the gas off before they died.

And so we nod sagely, and encourage people with the assurance that their loved ones are "in God's hands".  But we make sure we aren't too specific about what exactly God is doing with those hands.

So on All Souls' Day, the Beaker Folk will light a tea light for all the dead people we want to remember.  And we will desperately hope that when we light one for Uncle Ernest, Auntie Gladys won't be too upset, because we didn't light one for her - because if we did that then Cousin Wilf would want one as well.  And before you knew it we'd be lighting one for every dead person we'd ever met (before they died, obviously).  Because where would you draw the line?  Honestly, it would be like writing Christmas cards.

Have a contemplative All Souls' Day.  Wherever you are.

*with special thanks to Albatross for his remembrance of "Please Release me", and to David Keen for his (hopefully satirical) suggestion of "Living in a Box".  Oh - and to Anonymous and  Sally for "Smoke gets in your eyes".