Marriage - some other definitions

An institution...

.... used by Charles II so his mistresses' husbands could bring up his children.

.... which people in rural Bedfordshire used in the early 20th century, once they'd proven they were fertile (though sometimes they'd have three or four kids first, just to be sure).

.... ordained by Edward the Confessor and his wife to avoid having sex with anyone.

.... which the rich could have annulled while the poor could put up with it.

.... which would have little meaning to bees. Don't know why I mention this, it just struck me.

.... which the South Africans had to redefine to allow black people to marry white ones.

.... although some American states weren't too far ahead.

.... which Henry VIII didn't redefine at all - he merely had a row over the terms of an annulment.

..... which is crying out for a decent definition, dependent neither on Natural Law arguments nor on the emotions generated by Richard Curtis films. A definition that is reached slowly, carefully and sensibly.

Sowing Seed

Our MoSCoW (Must/Should/Could Worship) analysis for tomorrow has unexpectedly thrown "a sermon" up as a strong "Could". And so I thought I'd do a little preparation, through the excellent "Text this week". I actually got the recommendation for this site from Drayton Parslow. Well, when I say recommendation - he said there was no real godly discipline over the links on the site, and they allowed all sorts of liberals to provide suggestions. So I adopted much the same method as when I needed a good solicitor - I used the one Drayton's first wife had employed.

But I'm a little concerned over the choice of texts that the Common Lectionary has put together for tomorrow. The Gospel is the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, and the New Testament reading is Romans 8.

Obviously no problem with the Epistle reading itself - a powerful exposition of salvation and resurrection to come:

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death....But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you."

But I'm thinking of this canonically. If my Beaker Folk stay awake through both those readings, they're going to decide that they're the good seed who are now growing to eternal life. And they're gonna be shouting "we want to be those seeds for you, Lord!" Then they'll light a tea light, kick off their shoes and settle in for a nice quiet life of blessedness.

But where's the hundredfold return on that? Or, from my perspective, the knock-on sales? If the existing Beaker Folk were high-yield customers, that would be great. If they were. But I need a better marketing - sorry, evangelism - strategy than that.

It may get me hauled up before the Big Lectionary Committee, but I'm gonna say it. I think they should have teamed up the Sower with Romans 10 -
"'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'"

That's a better match. Now they've got some imperative. Now they know they've gotta get out and sow. And maybe I'll get my hundredfolk return.

I think the Sower sheds a little light on the Church of England wedding fees debate as well. The Sower cast his seed to the wind, and it fell where it fell. Today, we have a variety of tools at hand to be more scientific. Where the soil's good we can use a precision seed drill. Where there are weeds we can use organic methods to remove them. And when that fails, there's glyphosate. Where the soil's rocky we can use a dirty great mechanized plough to break it up. And where it lands on the path, we can throw the "Public Byway" sign in a ditch and let the seed grow on undisturbed.

But the proposals on wedding fees are the equivalent of declaring that all fields are a light, sandy loam - and then issuing every farmer with a rake.

Weddings R Us

I read an excellent article on the concept of centrally-set fees for Church of England weddings in the Guardian.

And I totally agree with whichever C of E people came up with this idea.

Because if I wanted to make the Church of England irrelevant, while simultaneously alienating people in poor neighbourhoods, and hitting expensive-to-run churches in expensive places - I'd do exactly what is described. I presume that's what they're aiming for?

Let me put it this way - if I had a Moot House on a 1960s housing estate in a London overspill town, and I wanted people to hold weddings in it, I'd keep my prices pretty low. People in those environments don't earn much money, and living unwed is always the zero-cost option. So I'd want a low entry point.
But if I were running, let's say, the Beaker equivalent of St Martin in the Fields or somewhere - or a nice little 13th century place in a small village with not many people but a steeple with expensive running costs - I'd want to keep my prices up a bit. These people like to have a nice background for their wedding photos, and I'd have a lot of running costs - and I'd want to do everything I could to keep that pretty background for the photos open as long as I could. Let's face it, one day somebody might be saved.

The Guardian accuses the Good Old Church of England (someone's got to keep the phrase going) of "managerialism". Which I don't really agree with. Managers in real businesses have to get their pricing policies right, or they go out of business. I wouldn't really call this suggestion "managerialism". I think I'd call it a cartel. And the problem with cartels is - they don't work if someone can compete with you. Like the hotels with wedding licences and the Registry offices, and just plain old - as it was once called - living in sin. An oil cartel would be a terrible thing to try and run if electric cars were efficient. How do the people who came up with this barmy idea think it would be any different?

And we will build Jerusalem

Clayboy tells us about the underpants-wearing former vicar who warns all straight couples not to marry in church if they want to sing "Jerusalem".
Tripe. Not Clayboy, who talks much sense. But the underpants-wearing former vicar.

If you care that much about "Jerusalem", I suggest you ask the vicar - not the underpants-wearing former one, but the real one you're presumably meeting if you're getting married in church.  Before getting into the important questions about "obey" or not and Common Worship vs older language - ask does (s)he allow Jerusalem? If the answer is "no", tell him/her that (s)he is a communist-sympathising apparatchik of the New Labour state. Ask if they'd rather live in Russia. Realise what a stupid question that was, struggle to think of a currently Communist country, and walk out. Don't slam the door, that's just petulant.

The good news is, with the new rules there's a good chance that you'll be equally qualified to wed in at least one nearby church where the incumbent will allow this goodly song - and if not there's always the Methodists. And they're lovely, although a little short on 12th century church buildings. Honest, there's almost certainly no need for you to convert to being gay in order to sing "Jerusalem".

Here at the Beaker Folk we're particularly happy to sing "Jerusalem" at all times. For did those feet in ancient times not walk on Glasto's mountain green? If that's all eyewash (and some of us suspect it might be, in our darker moments) then the whole Beaker project is endangered by the suspicion that it's only powered by wishful thinking. And then where would we be? Broke, that's where. We're gonna stick by our principles no matter how hard that is - as long as we can keep turning over the handfasting ceremonies.

Thanks, Prince William

Another handfasting today. And thanks to the Big Day the other week, now everyone wants trees and nuns. The former excluded for reasons of Health 'n' Safety, the latter due to a lack of Beaker Nuns.

Still, we're sorted for today, in a kind of way. We're going for pot plants and penguins.

The management of wedding guests

It must be the pointy hat. Every time I conduct a handfasting, I attract the argumentative drunks afterwards at the reception. And you always have to be polite, even as they're breathing Chardonnay fumes all over you. Because of course, being the holy one there, you can't just put them in a headlock and throw them in the pond. Or so they told me after the first time. You just have to look for the right polite time to make your excuses and go to find another person to talk to. Feigning cramp can help you to get out quick if you need to.

This one tried to persuade me that Science had disproved religion. I saw his one GCSE in Sociology and raised him a Masters in Chemistry that it hadn't. He asked me if I can categorically prove God's existence, which of course I can't.

So I asked him if he'd ever heard of Pascal's Wager. Turns out he hadn't.

Easiest 50 quid I ever made. That Geoff Pascal is a genius.

A good weeding

I do love a good weeding. There's nothing like getting down on your knees in front of the Almighty, next to the one you love, and giving some clear, long-lasting commitment to the process. That way, you can get some serious growing done, though you need to keep working at it together, or things can start getting neglected, and then you're in real trouble. If that happens, you may need to bring in an expert third party to get things under control and help sort things out: there's no shame in that.

Although some might disagree, I also think that a couple of cats are useful in this regard, as they can keep the number of uninvited guests down to minimum (it can sometimes be difficult to control the birds, in my experience, as they can be _very_ persistent_ around bedding time).

On a completely different note, I'm told by those in the know that there's a big wedding going on today in London town. I'd not noticed any coverage myself, and was due to take a turn in the Doily Mines today, but apparently it's a Bank Holiday, so I've declined. The Archdruid, who's a bit grumpy about the whole thing, tried to insist that as it's "volunteer work", there should be no time off, but, taking my life (and my shins) in my hands, I have over-ruled her, declaring the day a Community Holiday.

The Archdruid, you understand, isn't a big fan of weddings, but Mrs Hnaef and I coming up for our 16th wedding anniversary, and we're very happy. No, really. We take time together, we take time to ourselves (the entirety of Lent, this year, as it happens), and we wouldn't be without each other. And the wedding was the start of that. We did the "big thing": partly for us, partly for friends and family. I mean, you only get married once, right? Well, that's our plan, and we invited all of those we love, and those who love us (of whom several of the latter, including my father, who was conducting the ceremony, kept asking my bride-to-be questions such as "are you really, really sure?", and giving her helpful advice like "it's not to late to change your mind, you know"). The future Mrs Hnaef started on the champagne at breakfast (that's _real_ breakfast, at 8 o'clock, not the one after the wedding), but I was too scared to have more than a half of stout before the service. But we both went through with it, she nearly gave my grandfather (the one who thought eating ice-cubes gives you leprosy) a heart attack when he thought she winked at him, the choir sang, the organ played, the preacher (my previous director of studies) gave a _terrible_ and theologically very suspect sermon, and we said our vows in front of the assembled multitude. And I was the happiest man in the world. As was the new Mrs Hnaef. Well, woman, anyway: it was a Church of England wedding, and they aren't putting up with that sort of thing then, though I'm sure they're entirely happy about it these days.

Even my mother-in-law was happy - not a phrase you'll hear me utter very often - and not just because she'd also been on the champagne (and possibly gin) from breakfast time. Happiest of all, possibly, were some of Mrs Hnaef's Liverpool-based cousins who my father mistook for porters and tipped for carrying some bags. Aunt Amy (a Liverpool aunt) lost her handbag and a high-heeled shoe in the flowerbeds, but found them in the morning, and one of the afore-mentioned cousins slept in a bath on a college staircase somewhere, so what more could we all have hoped for?

And in the morning, Mrs Hnaef and I headed off to a little cottage in the Cotswolds for the week of rare breeds farms, hawking, torrential rain, powercuts, cribbage and being forced to read my favourite science fiction novel ("If I'd known it was this rubbish, I wouldn't have married you: is it too early for a divorce?") that would characterise the rest of our marriage.

Was the wedding a big hoo-har? Yes. Was it a nightmare to arrange? Yes. Was it expensive? Yes. But I've never regretted it for a moment, and, I suspect, despite her protestations, that the same goes for my lovely bride. Who never did say "obey", in the end.

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