Doxomultiplex

I am pleased to announce the coming into being of the Beaker Doxomultiplex. The answer to all those issues where you have different traditions but wish to preserve a semblance of unity, without anyone actually having to encounter anything they don't approve of. It's kind of like the Church of England, but without separating different traditions by the length of a parish.

The Eastern Quadrant of the Moot House is now to be given over to Pebbles 'n' Tea Lights. The South Quadrant to Smells 'n' Bells. The West to Praise 'n' Worship. And the Northern, to Drum 'n' Bass. I'm not sure about the Drum 'n' Bass, but Hnaef has convinced me that it's just the thing to attract the bright young things.

The great thing is that those who are passionately attached to one kind of worship can stay in the one place - meditating on a pebble, or enjoying the aroma of incense according to preference. On the other hand, in the interests of "fluid worship", you can wander from quadrant to quadrant, chilling or raving or falling flat on your face as the mood takes you. So if you're bored of pebbles, get your hits with the Non-stop Undiluted Praise Party! And then when your arms ache from being in the air too long, go and join in some Gregorian Chant.

Due to the modular way in which we designed the Moot House in the first place, it's just a matter of installing the soundproofed partition units in place. It could be a long night, so please ensure you're all equipped with hard hats, hi-vis, safety boots and Thermos flasks of builders' tea (6 sugars).

In the interests of satisfying all worship demands, we have also pitched a special Sydney Carter Tent. It's in Leighton Buzzard.

Who knows, if this goes well it could be the future of Church. If that's the right word.

Any religion you like as long as it's not Beaker

Sometimes I swear that we are being persecuted for our Beaker faith.

As is widely known, Hnaef runs an archery school for people with no thumbs.  It's a worthwhile career, albeit he sometimes comes home with arrow marks.


This afternoon, he had a not-uncommon occurrence, when one of his customers was accidentally shot.  A mixture of the frosty conditions and a lack of thumbs took its inevitable course.  Thankfully just a flesh wound.  But as the time was coming on towards 4pm, it was starting to get quite dark.  Being out on the range, there was no electric light to hand.  But as fortune would have it, Hnaef had some tea light supplies he had picked up from Morrison's "Stone and tea light" section on Westcroft this morning.


Naturally, Hnaef lit a few tea lights to try and see the severity of the injury.  However the injured customer, realising he was now laying in a ring of tea lights, thought he had died and woken up in a severely constrained version of heaven.  This caused a certain amount of panic.  He then realised he was in fact alive but decided that Hnaef was trying to coerce him into taking part in a Beaker ceremony.


At this point, he decided to try to fight Hnaef off to stop himself being, as he imagined, brainwashed.  Ironically, since he tried to keep Hnaef away by throwing stones at him, it could be argued that he had in fact joined the Beaker Folk himself at this point.


In any case, Hnaef has now been banned by the Health and Safety Executive from bringing tea lights onto the premises.  And the local council has said he will receive no funding until he can prove there are no essential oils anywhere on the premises.  As I said, it feels awfully like persecution.

Pebbles

Bad news on the pebble front, I'm afraid.

On the Community trip for a few days down to the West Country, Archdruid Eileen gave me the job of collecting some pebbles from the beach for future ceremonies. I though that being an accountant would help me to ensure that I collected an appropriate number of pebbles. So looking through the Beaker Folk records, I found that in 2005, just 1 ceremony used pebbles. In 2006, clearly the sense of meditation on the Creation and sheer pebblyness had started to strike a real chord, and there were 3 such ceremonies. This year we are on track for 27 pebble-related acts of worship. By June 2010, we will be heading for pebble involvement every day, as far as I can tell.
At the same time, the size of the community is growing. So the number of pebbles per act of worship is now growing exponentially. In short, by 2015 I calculate the community will require something of the order of 20 million pebbles to satisfy its worshipping requirements.
That's a lot of pebbles.
So I filled the back of my beaten-up old beige Saab with as many pebbles, cobbles and other related small stones as I could from Bude beach, and headed up the Atlantic Highway en route to Husborne Crawley. Unfortunately, my calculation of weight is not as accurate as my calculation of pebble requirements, and I broke my back axle just outside Bideford. In coming to my assistance, a policeman noticed the cause of my predicament. I am now undergoing investigation for driving a vehicle over its maximum legal laden weight, and mining without a licence.
If only all policemen were related to Young Keith.