Quick Epiphany Joke

And so the Magi entered into the house and saw the child and his mother. And they worshipped him and offered their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
And Joseph said unto them,
"Can you come back in a couple of days? Only we're transferring you this year. Makes it so much easier."

Back to Work Tuesday

"By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made." (Gen 3:19)

And so as the Christmas break ground to a halt, and in obedience to the Biblical command, many returned to work. Except those who were working last week, like bin-people and shopworkers and warehouse people and firefighters, the police and ambulance - and the Scottish, of course, who get the extra day. And vicars and the like who, after days of sleep deprivation through Midnight Communions, Masses of the Dawn, Watchnights and what have you, need a few days off to get some sleep.

We've packed all the Beaker People with standard office jobs back off today with a sprinkling of water from the Pouring Beaker, and the ironic strains of "I wish it could be Christmas every day".

And yes, as I said in my short address, it's tempting to think wouldn't it be great if there were no work - just sitting round eating Turkey and listening to the Wombles.  Always Christmas but never getting to Easter. But life's not like that. And for all the back-break or mind-ache of the jobs some do, those with no jobs aren't always so happy. Some are blessed with the health and imagination to lead fulfilling lives; and some are blessed with the cash to make idleness happy if they don't have the imagination. But for most of us, worklessness is as bad as drudgery and work part of the rhythm of lives - a place to meet others, a change of scene, and sometimes a place to enjoy.

So I sent them off with those cheering words, then put my feet off and spent the rest of the day dining off crumpets and black coffee and reading "The Return of the Native". I like to think it's not slacking - it's exercising a prophetic ministry.

Mistletoe and Whines

Phil Ritchie comes over all Beaker on the subject of dying Christmas trees, and this seems as good a time as any to remind Beaker People about our Twelfth Night tradition.

Due to our constant confusion over which night is the Twelfth Night when all the decorations should come down, we always leave them up on 5 January, and take them down first thing on the sixth. Then in keeping with tradition (not ours, someone else's) we burn them in the evening on the Twelfth Night fire. Or sometimes not. Sometimes we take them down and burn them at midnight on the fifth, on the assumption that it's safest.

But this year can we please just stick to the evergreens. I really don't want the fairy lights going on the fire this year.

Epiphany

In a flurry of activity and Twitter in-jokes, the Beaker People celebrated Twelfth Night in the traditional manner tonight.

First of all, we dined on our traditional Epiphany meal, Kippers a la Buckingham. We ate these around the Christmas tree, or Yule Besorry in the original Norse tongue. Then we cut it down with loppers, and trimmed it down with clippers before turning into a mulch with the chippers.

Then out to the Orchard for our Wassail.

Wassailing has a long and noble history in the annals of these islands. For full 30 centuries long people have assembled in orchards to sing to the spirits of the apple trees and drink lots of hot cider. In the belief that through this sympathetic magic, the trees will be encouraged to a good crop the following autumn. And to express the truth of the circles of nature, the cycle of the crop, the windmills of your mind, and the need to drink some hot cider when it's cold. And who are we to argue with a tradition like that? In good Beaker fashion we headed out among the trees, armed with mulled cider, toast and Ugg boots, to sing the Beaker Wassail song:

Wassail wassail we are so cold
Our toes are turning black
Hats full, caps full, cups full, buckets full
Why don't traditional songs rhyme?

Then we shot our shotguns into the trees. Or we would have done. But for Health and Safety reasons, we weren't allowed to use shotguns in such a confined space. So we would have used replica guns, or starter guns, but Edith Weston objected to us using any kind of gun-shaped object on the grounds that it was glorifying violence.

So we threw toast at the trees, drank their health, and piled into the Room of Viewing to see the BBC Special "Ooh it's cold". Tradition. Don't you love it?

"King for a Day" Day

In glad recognition that they weren't described as kings, and there weren't necessarily three of them - we are happy to declare today "King for a Day" day.  Please attend all Occasions today dressed as the King of your choice.
Currently we already have people coming as King David, Tarzan King of the Jungle, Santa King of the Jingle (clever, Keith, like it), Don King the boxing promoter, King Henry VIII, King Kong, Elvis the King of Rock & Roll, Adam and the Ants (Kings of the Wild Frontier), The King and I (neat double act, Edith and Burghley!) and King Gustav Adolphus of Sweden (slightly off-beat, but full marks for imagination, Piotr).  Hnaef's coming as Wonder Woman (Diana Prince, of course) but I think he's making a political correctness point there.  That and he likes the nail varnish.

Pouring out of Beakers is cancelled again this sunrise.  I've just been down to St Bogwulf's chapel and can confirm that, in line with tradition, earth is standing hard as iron and water like a stone.  So we'll just push on with today's scheduled "Tea Lights at 10", a kind of Cafe Beaker approach where we all sit around drinking coffee and lighting tea lights, followed by the end of the world (aka Hnaef's Epiphany Incense Meltdown) around about 12.  Would you all please bring buckets of sand, gas masks, asthma inhalers and Mars Bars.  I get the feeling it's going to be one of those days.  Again.

A Beaker Epiphany Sermon

And so, in those liturgically-minded communities that have Wednesdays off, the Christian calendar will mark Epiphany tomorrow.

And the Beaker People can learn a lot from Epiphany - not so much from the story, as from what goes with Epiphanytide.

I often see Husborne Crawley as a little like the Bethlehem of the Gospels.  Like Bethlehem, it is within easy walking distance of a place of great national significance, where kings and queens and nobility act out their mighty roles.  In Bethlehem this was - and is, of course, Jerusalem.  In Husborne Crawley's case - Woburn.  In Woburn, Queen Eleanor's body laid in rest for a night on its sad journey to London for burial.  In Woburn the Dukes ruled supreme, spinning off the Russell clan of fame - Betrand Russell, Edward Russell 1st Earl of Orford, and of course Russell T Davies.   But the centuries ticked by in Husborne Crawley.  A few miles off on the King's Highway, or A5 Watling Street, the world passed by.  And with the new A421 improvements from Milton Keynes to Bedford, once again we are ignored.  And we like it that way.

Into that tiny backwater of Bethlehem come the Wise People, each carrying an appropriate gift - gold, frankincense, myrrh, a nice pair of bootees and a tiny "Hapoel Tel Aviv" replica shirt (the last two ignored by Matthew, and all of them by Luke, for theological reasons).  But the story changes as Herod gets angry - the little household in Bethlehem is broken up, the Wise Men go back east.  The Nativity set is put back away, as Mary scrabbles behind the couch wondering what happened to the other shepherd.  And life changes.  The Old King is still in charge and the new King is a refugee on the road to Egypt and exile.

So too in Anglican parishes throughout the land, the day of Epiphany is a kind of reversed Magnificat.  The Reader is cast down from his throne, where he ruled supreme since Boxing Day.  His Christmas 1 sermon is returned to its folder with its two companions, ready to be re-used in 3 years' time.  All over the country retired priests are put back in their boxes, their pensions topped up for another year - or at least till the next funeral.  The Girl Bishop goes back to school.  All the Glory of Lebanon is dumped in the skip and the hierarchy is restored once more as the Vicar comes back from a week when she's been hiding in the vicarage and pretending to be on holiday, while secretly writing January's Church Magazine.

And outside the confines of the holy few, those who have lived on liqueur chocolates for breakfast and turkey risotto for lunch go back to the preparation of the lunchtime cheese sandwich.  The first drink of the morning is once again the coffee of awakening, and no longer the sweet Carlsberg Export of forgetfulness.  The Lords of Misrule are once again the Clerks of Invoice Passing.  Order is restored.

But have we gained nothing else from this time of rejoicing, than an unsettled stomach, a kidney stone, a tendency to wince at the sight of Chartreuse or an extra 9lb on the waistline?  Did we not hear an echo of angels?  Catch a whiff of the smell of shepherds?  A glimpse of a world that was, in a horizontal sense, is, in a mythical sense, and will be, in a temporal sense?  Was our world enlarged to another dimension?  Our vision made X-ray, just for a moment, as we saw things as they really are - upside down?

Afar off I see Hnaef and his Incense-burning team drilling for tomorrow.  Those 360 degree loops are concerning me.  That's surely no way to swing a thurifer?  I'd better have another word.