The Fairytale of Theological Training

It was the Summer Term, in Vicar Factory
A leaver said to me, "won't see another one"
And then we sang a song,
"The Lord of Sea and Sky"
made it through Evensong
then had a little cry.

Kenosis does my head in, as philosophy
I'd rather specialise in Queer Theology
And now my faith is sure
In Jurgen Moltmann
Though Bruegemann's my man
for post-modernity.

[Mandolin Break]

Got a tome big as Rome, I've got books by de Rad
But enculturation just makes me feel bad
And through thinking eschatologically
I thought that the Rapture was waiting for me.

The chapel choir was singing "Will you come and follow me?"
And we shared our doubts over a cup of tea.

"You're a Liberal, Socinian,
Sold-out to modernism
Sitting there, you're so wrong, reading books by Jack Spong."
"You Tractarian rat, you just like gin and tat
And from me you won't hear once we get out of here."

The chapel choir was singing "Will you come and follow me?"
And we shared our doubts over a cup of tea.

Why do we waste our time on this theology
When we're ordained it won't help on the church committee.
Are we so sure we need to seek eternal truth?
We should be learning how to fix boilers and patch the roof.

The chapel choir was singing "Will you come and follow me?"
And we shared our doubts over a cup of tea.

---

Disclaimer: 

No ordinands were harmed in the making of this pastiche. Theological training is actually more worthwhile and fun than depicted here. But a song about being worthy and having a vision for the future wouldn't be very funny.

Mixed Motives in Worship Attendance

Interesting results from our "worship attendance" questionnaire.

54% of people said that they were either in agreement or strong agreement with the statement "I like it when the whining noise from the front stops." I'm hoping they mean the heating unit, and not the sermon, but I'm not sure.

23% said they thought using tea lights in worship was "cutting edge and creative". 19% said "dull and pointless". 15% said "dangerous". And the rest said "why can't we have proper candles?"

Asked the question "what is the main reason you are a member of the Beaker Folk?" a scary number answered "the biscuits". 9% are lovers of Woods Ware crockery, and only come because they "like drinking instant coffee out of a proper Beryl cup". 12% mentioned "friends", nobody came expecting "a firm line on penal substitution."

14% had only come in by mistake, thinking we were Newport Pagnell Services. As it happened, we took the questionnaire after Burton's "Spirit of 80s Gary Numan" session. Which meant that, given the sense of alienation, pointlessness and bleak nihilism Burton conjured up, they actually left still thinking they were at Newport Pagnell.

25% said the songs were "too unfamiliar". 25% said they were "too old". 25% said they were "too fast" and 25% said they were "too slow". This was a multi-tick option, of course. So 14% said they were both "too old" and "too unfamiliar". 19% just didn't like songs.

76% said they thought there were too many women involved in leadership. However, when this headline figure is broken out, turns out they just meant me. I'm thinking we phrased this question badly.

45% wanted the Tea Light Stand moved. 55% wanted it left where it was.

Asked what the best part of the service was, 70% said "the Worship". Thus betraying woeful theological deficiencies which would be supported by the mere 5% who said  "the Preaching". The 25% who said "The end" were not considered statistically significant.

Asked to explain which type of theology they felt most affirmed by, 7% said "conservative evangelicalism". 19% embraced traditional Catholic theology, as long as they didn't have to do what the church or the Pope said. 44% liked trees, while 30% said they were in favour of extended analogies involving what it would be like if God were a squirrel.

A Commemoration of the Nativity of John le Mesurier (1912)

The Reading is from Exodus 32

7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

Response: Do you think that's wise, Sir?

False Idols

I don't know who's been selling the life-size inflatable Marcus Brigstockes, but can you please stop?

Most of the time, catching the sight of a bearded posh comedian out of the corner of my eye makes me worry that he's going to rush out and start shouting at me about the Little Pebbles Academy for the Children of the Believing Underachieving, accusing me of setting up a school for the purposes of indoctrinating the young and impressionable. It's not true, of course. I set the school up to make a profit by exploiting the "Free Schools" policy to soak money out of the tax payer, while marketing our exclusive range of school uniforms and compulsory worship aids. But still, it makes me nervous.

But the rest of time, I just find myself thinking that David Tennant has let himself go a bit. Now that is worrying.

Astonishing Things You Never Knew

The original Fozzy Bear from the Muppets is now used as the Standard International Kilogram, and kept in an airless canister in the International Bureau for Weights and Measures in Paris. Due to shedding, it gets c 4µg lighter every year.

The entire population of Slovenia is left-handed, except for foreigners and a man called "Roger", which means "Righty" in Serbo-Croat.

The first generation of interballistic missiles were guided by cats, who were trained to be attracted to specific Eastern European cities. A large tabby called Geordi, for example, was trained always to be attracted to Gdansk. In the event of World War 3, the Western effort could have been seriously derailed by a Soviet spy  armed with a tin of anchovies.

Due to Continental Drift and peat drying out, Peterborough gets three feet closer to King's Lynn every year. Nobody is very happy about this - especially the people of Wisbech, who are wondering where the end of it all will be.

When archaeologists dug up the skeleton of Goliath of Gath, he was only 5'11", leading experts to conclude that the ancient Israelites were on the short side.

The future Pope Francis and Margaret Thatcher met at an international Chemistry Graduates' convention in 1954. When Margaret licked a litmus paper, it went blue.

The Moomintroll stories were originally based on a family of hippos living in the Zambezi. When Nordic crime stories became popular, the author cashed in.

St Paul's injunction on women speaking in church was a reaction to his mother and Peter's mother-in-law being in his congregation. They would sit at the back, discussing which of Peter and Paul had the best job during sermons.

The composer Engelbert Humperdinck was originally called Ernest Hemingway. Needing a new stage name to avoid confusion with the author, he chose the name of a young singer, who he never thought would amount to anything.

Swallows fly south in autumn, because their beaks are magnetised.

Averaged over a three-year period, wind turbines are a pointless eyesore.

"Noggin the Nog" is illegal in Norway and Iceland. But compulsory in Sweden.

The "Lambeth Walk" was originally the official method of walking procession used in Southwark Cathedral for four centuries. It was abolished when all churches in south London adopted the Sarum Rite.

Mother Julian was a pretty handy brick-layer, with just one flaw. She could never remember which was "outside".

The male cast of "Last of the Summer Wine" was entirely made up of people who failed in the last round of Papal Elections.

Bluebottles are allergic to lint.

Of the 48 strains of Influenza known, three can only be caught from reindeer.

The best way to keep religion out of politics (and vice versa) would be to build a church on the Moon. And then not fly anybody up to it.

Hope Springs

Sometimes you look at the world and want to go back to sleep.

On top of the ongoing saga of the Philpott trial, there's the North Korean sabre-rattling, the Saudi idea that it is rational to paralyse a man as a legal punishement.

And it's still freezing cold. The frogs have started spawning, but I reckon that's just a desperate attempt to keep warm.

And yet not only does the sun keep rising -at least for now - it's a little earlier every day. The birds are very definitely flitting around in meaningful ways. And in Husborne Crawley, Woburn and Hockliffe, lambs are being born that will delight us for months to come. At least, until it's time for us to roast them.

Ah me, the world has always been a place with mixed good and bad. And against all apparent common sense, I choose to assume that the bad is the aberration, and good is the natural trajectory of things. Not a 19th Century, Progress-worshipping trajectory, where good is coming in to supplant the bad, based on Reason and Science. The 20th Century taught us that Progress and Science may be good servants, but they're dreadful idols. I'm going to cling onto the hope that says this world will always be bad - and sometimes it will get worse. If we're brave and good and keep our minds and hearts open, sometimes we can mitigate with some good - create islands of good acts in a sea of despair. And when the sea is done away with, then we'll find out whether we're clinging to the safety of a tropical paradise - or we've mistakenly pitched our tents on the back of a whale.

All I'm saying is - don't be surprised at bad things in life. Constantly to expect that the world should be better than it is, is a mark of the One that will make all well in the end. But never lose hope that all will be made well. It just needs a better Maker than us.

"Disciplinary Wife Book"

With a curious synchronicity, a visitor arrived on my blog last night looking for "disciplinary wife book" and found my post ranting on the subject.

I say "synchronicity", of course because yesterday a man and his wife in Derby were found guilty of the manslaughter of their children - a hideous but, fortunately for the papers, salacious case involving them setting fire to their own house as a means of getting some leverage in a custody dispute but being unable to rescue the children.

And I used "man and wife" rather than married couple because I really did want to indicate the man's apparently leading role in this. We're talking a man who served time for serious violence against a former partner, who seemed to specialise in relationships with younger women without the sort of family or friendship support that would have led them to realise his abusive nature.

One paper that I'm not going to link to goes so far as to suggest that the British benefits system is to blame for this.  That sort of logic could also conclude that it was the Class system that meant Lord Lucan thought he could get away with killing his servants. No, it was a monumental abuse of power, combined with unutterable stupidity, that was to blame for this. Somebody had managed to persuade himself that he was the only one that mattered. Two others - one whom he abused to the point of compliance -  abetted him in his delusion. And now six lovely children are dead.

No real point to these comments, really. The irony is that the paper that talks about the system being to blame, misses the chance to talk about responsibility, about knowing right from wrong. You could argue that, by association, it's actually putting the guilt on the innocent dead - "scroungers" that their class apparently are. If it's the benefits system that caused this tragedy, then clearly the system needs changing - ignoring the fact that the guilt lies somewhere else. Six kids are dead, a number more are without their father - albeit not a father you'd wish on anyone. And instead of that grief and sorrow, our nation focuses in on the sexual activities, and the endless debate about benefits.

Making Tracks

Unexpected end to the evening.

We had such a nice time at our "Apocalypse Now" evening, as I explained to the assembled Folk that the book of Revelation is not a timetable for Armageddon, but a recasting in picture-language of the politico-religious situation of the late 1st Century.

Came back across to my rooms via the garden window - it was a lovely walk, in that cold hazy starlight.

And across the flower bed - where just a few determined daffodils poke through, half-opened - I found a series of hoof prints. I say "a" series. As far as I can tell, there were four different sets, across the bed and then over the lawn and off towards the gate.

I hope someone's in training for the National. The alternative would be disturbing.

Nativity of Brian Glover (1934-1997)

Archdruid: Keith! Will you stop faffing about with that kestrel?

(Panicked flapping)

Keith: Ey up, Kes!

Archdruid: I read a book once.

All: Green, it were.

A small car screeches up the drive, with a mattress strapped to the roof. A terrified old man is clinging to the mattress. As the driver slams the brakes on, the old man flies over a hedge, colliding with an old man and a peroxide blonde who are smooching behind it.

Archdruid: Ogden Butterclough, tha's a barmpot.

All: Tha's been tekkin' a sherry out o' wedlock. Ogden.

Ogden: Just because I've been indulging in  some freelance underwriting with a certain Mrs Dugdale of 22, The Crescent...

Archdruid: Of course, Brian Glover started off as a wrestler.

Compo: Oo, I love a grapple. That Nora's a lass wi' nowt tekken out.

Nora: And you're definitely not taking me out.

DISMISSAL

All: Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated!

Gaffer: Tetley make tea bags, make tea.

Those Biblical Headlines in Full

Caiaphas announces 10% increase in needle sizes, 10% reduction in camels.

"In my father's house are many rooms" - Jesus of Nazareth faces unprecedented benefit cut.

Meek suffer inheritance tax increase.

Can the Ark of the Covenant cause tumours? (Answer - Yes)

Lazarus told, "Forget the sores, you're fit to work." Dives gets unexpected final demand.

"That ointment could have been sold and the money given to a rich person" - Judas

Jeconiah warns Nebuchadnezzar - "Jewish spears are capable of striking the far side of the Jordan. Just. If we try really hard".

Zadok the Priest resigns as Absolom takes over as manager of Jerusalem Utd.

Eve naked - those racy shots by Michaelangelo.

And Thrice Woe

We truly live in miraculous times.

Beyond the Woodshed has a new post. It has been a long winter.