The Reverence of the Stapler

On St Coleman the Stationer's Day each year, the Beaker Folk celebrate the Reverence of the Stapler.  This is a truly moveable feast, typically occurring whenever the Beaker Bazaar feels the need to sell some more authentic Neolithic Stationery.
Unusually for a religious service, the Orders of Service actually take a leading role in the liturgy.

All assemble in the Moot House, clutching orders of services.  These will be held together with paper clips or, as it may be, treasury tags.

Archdruid:   Lift up your Orders of Service.

Orders of Service are lifted.

Archdruid:   Behold the inefficiency of paper clips!

All:   Manifold and woeful are the inefficiencies of the paper clips.  They hold together paper, sure.  But is it permanent?  We moan and bewail the insecurity of our metal-based-paper-holding-together implements.  They are as the idols of Babylon, which spoke not.

Archdruid:   Cast off your paper clips!  Thrown them away!  Turn from your paper clips and let your paper flow free!

All:   We cast off our paper clips.  We allow our paper to flow free.

Beaker Folk cast their paper clips on the ground.  Those wearing sandals without socks or flipflops, as opposed to steel-toe-capped boots, may suffer slight flesh wounds.  Serves them right - but they are still required to fill in the Accident Book afterwards.  The floor fills with paper clips.  Well, OK.  Not fills.  There is a light scattering.

All:    But wait!  For the sheets of our Orders of Service are as manifold even as the grains of the sand of the beach at Hunstanton [or they may say "California Cliffs" or "Lowestoft"].  How do we stop the sheets getting into the wrong order and chaos covering the earth - even unto the walls of the Moot House?

Archdruid:   Behold the wonder of the stapler!

All:   All hail the bearer of the stapler!  We will line up and have our lives more organised.

The Orders of Service are stapled

A voice from the back [which may be German, or possibly South African]: Well I'm not totally convinced this is a good idea.  The use of Staplers is very badly attested in the ancient Annals of the Chancellors of the University of Ruskin.  Shouldn't we use plastic envelopes?

Archdruid:   Is it not written in the Book of Gazza, no matter how much the Chancellor of the University of Ruskin demandeth that thou shalt not use staples, - know that staples are pleasing unto the Lord, and plastic envelopes be flimsy and not so environmentally unfriendly?

Marston:   Archdruid, I'm afraid I mucked up the stapling.  Behold how my paper still is not fixed unto itself as is pleasing to heaven and earth.

The Archdruid shall staple Marston's Order of Service to his chest, to ensure he does not lose it.

Archdruid: And now we sing our closing hymn: From London Colney's Frosty Fountain to Fiji's Coral Strand.

Sheer thingy-ness

When I was a very young pre-Druid, even before "Dave" Cameron had joined our happy band of scholars at The King's Hall And College of Brazen-nose, I went along to Oxford's Museum of Modern Art.

And I saw there a remarkable piece of art.  Much abused in the popular press - and yet, as is the way with artists who are cleverer than their critics, the insults had been taken in the artist's stride - and the abusive press cuttings displayed along with the piece.

It was, if I can describe it accurately, a gigantic ball covered in trainers.  Soles out.  About - what?  Maybe eight feet high, I guess.  It was bizarre, odd, mad, stupid, insulting to the eye of the beholder - and utterly brilliant.  I've no idea where it is, or even if it exists, now.  But it was so big, and so round, and so covered with shoes... it was an inspiration.

At much the same time, one frozen Saturday before Hallowe'en, I cycled up to the Rollright Stones.  Not the greatest stone circle in the world - the main thing that can be said for them is that they are in some ways the most domestic, stuck on an outcrop of the edge of the Cotswolds between Oxford, Stratford and Birmingham.  They just nestle there quietly against the hedge.  But that same sheer thingy-ness.  The sheer wonder that they even exist.  It cries out to you.

And then you look to the heavens - to the work that's displayed up there. The stars, the planets, the phases of the moon.  The sheer thingy-ness of it all.

And then you look at the micro level.  Not too small.  Just at the level of - say - the protein structures of a Haemagglutinin molecule on the outside of a flu virus.  Stunning.  Absolutely stunning.  Sheer thingy-ness.

Or the smile of a child,  Or the way clouds hang in the air, just the way bricks don't.  Or the way the sea goes in and out.  Or the knowledge, almost beyond doubt, that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

Well, it just makes you think.  That's all I can say.  It just makes you think.

Burton's Worship Meter - The Rapture

Dear Readers, always nice to be home. Even though the Archdruid is, for reasons best known to herself, sobbing and throwing darts at her special "Rafa Benitez" dart board.

I've just got back from the Bedford Reformed Church of the Coming Advent. Every Thursday, these faithful and lovely people hold their Service of Waiting for the Return of the Lord. And every Thursday they go away disappointed. So I had to get the old Spurgeonometer out and see how they rated

Bless their hearts, they don't grumble. Even though their notice board proclaims that all church events are provisional - "3pm Ladies' Bright Hour - Unless he comes". And yet every week all their events come round.

Note that for these highly spiritually-charged people, mere Spurgeons are not sufficient to measure the Worship Temperature. Even Wimbers aren't sufficient. The chart above is plotted in the natural log of the Spiritual Temperature in Wimbers.

I do wonder though. If every Thursday they expect the Rapture to come - why do they have notices? And why do they bother putting the water heating urn on at the start of the service?

On a comparison of Rafa Benitez and Gordon Brown

It's not the fault of either of them.
When all the action is happening elsewhere, they both stand around flapping on the side lines.
They both basically do what Americans tell them.
In the circumstances, they're both doing very well.  Or, at least, that's what they say.
They are both at risk of being out of work in May.
But Rafa has more chance of being re-employed.

A very long service interval for a Hadron Collider

The Conspiracy Theories will run amok over the latest announcement of a closure of the Large Hadron Collider - this time for a twelve months overhaul.

We've suggested a few below:

• They've discovered that if they run it any faster, they'll actually make the God Delusion - a particle that's been around since the Dawk of time.
• They should have gone for one of these new Japanese Large Hadron Colliders.  They go much further between services.  Albeit the brakes don't work.
• The scientists have realised that if they close it down for 12 months, they can spend 12 months on the beach doing "research" into "global warming" and still get paid.  As Deep Thought put it, they're on the Gravy Train for life.

From the Independent Online :

"I wouldn't call it a design flaw. It is just that some of the copper stabilisers are not up to the quality needed to go to the full energy level," said Steve Myers, director of accelerators and technology at Cern.

Right.  That's like Mr Toyoda saying "I wouldn't call it a design flaw.  It's just that occasionally your car ends up in a lake".

The shadow of your wings

"How precious is your loving mercy, O God!
All mortal flesh shall take refuge
   under the shadow of your wings."


A deeply inclusivized - if the word exists - version of Ps 36:7 (NRSV, if you couldn't guess). 


"How priceless is your unfailing love! 
Both high and low among men find refuge in 
the shadow of your wings." (NIV) 


So you see that all mortal flesh becomes "both high and low among men".  Or vice-versa.
Can't be bothered to care.  It's interesting that NRSV inclusivizes both the gender and the class implications, but that's interesting in the way it's interesting that some people are quite tall, or can run quite, fast, or look quite geeky, or look like a gorilla's doing something unexpected to them.  i.e. it's interesting but doesn't really matter.


The thing both translations have in common is "the shadow of your wings".  A thread across to a previous post on here of gathering chicks together.  My good friend,  micropetrophile (i.e. she likes pebbles) Sally has more to say on this.  And better than I could.  I can only comment that most female animals are docile in general, and mad as hell if you go near them when they've got young to protect.  You don't go near lambs or calves in a field unless you're daft (and if you're our Beaker Folk you don't go near farm animals full stop - you know how scary they can all be, unless they're on a plate with a suitable dressing).
All a hen's future is tied up in her chicks.  She doesn't know they'll end up roast anyway, or they'll be stuck in a cage the size of a copy of Private Eye until their laying drops to 80% at which point they'll be minced and turned into cat food.  She just knows they're hers.  They're her sons and daughters and she is going to hide them.  If a fox comes she'll protect them.  If the coop burns down she'll cover them.  She'll even protect them to death.
I wonder why that's an image of God? 

The difference between one and three

Thoroughly enjoying the great JND Kelly's Early Christian Doctrines.
Just reached that exciting part where the Romans start to get into Monarchianism while the East start to flirt with extreme trinitarianism - trying not to topple over the edge into tritheism.
Trifling hair splitting?  Or something really important?

Monotheism - the belief there is one God.  A belief that if you had more than one god, one must surely have been there first, so the other could be created.

Trinity - belief that God comes in three Persons.  Not totally independent persons like a human "person" - not the atomized, community-less "persons" of modernism, the captains of their own souls and correspondingly shoddy, lonely and isolated.  But three Persons in community, self-giving, eternally sharing, forever loving.

Somewhere between those two in tension is where the Church (mostly) drew its line.  Not one God with Jesus the unlucky bloke and the Spirit a nice feeling or inspirational miasma.  Not three gods squabbling, fighting and challenging for priority - and begging why not four, or five, or three thousand.

Three persons - one God.  Mathematical nightmare,basis of being, challenge to our world.

Steaming Live Video

I really should learn.

When I read in the programme that Young Keith was planning "Steaming Live Video" from this morning's Pouring Out of Beakers (now back on due to Spring) I made the assumption that the title was a misprint.  I was expecting that people from as far afield as Fiji, Indiana and Howling would be able to watch via a streaming video feed as, clad in our Lent-tide red hi-viz, we poured out last night's Waters of Receptiveness to watch it flow down the Husborne Spring on its long journey to the sea.

But no.  Young Keith really meant "Steaming".

The Pouring Out of Beakers is a solemn event, and the start to all Beaker daily programmes unless there is an important sun- or moon-rise to observe.  Heating the water up to near-boiling point and then adding vast amounts of Dry Ice to it is not really in accordance with this solemnity.  I should have guessed when I saw the oven gloves.  As the water was poured into the Well of Opening by the Eternal Flame, CO2 fog rose sharply and unexpectedly and filled the whole Moot House.  Those watching the Live Steaming Video from the Internet Cafe tell me that all they saw was a gray, swirling cloud.
If people want to stagger around in a fog, trying to work out which door to leave through they should join the General Synod.  That's all I can say.

Old Jokes Rehashed

There are 10 kinds of people in the world:

People who understand binary
People who think an old joke's still funny if you "twist" it slightly
People who think if you rehash an old joke it's still an old joke
People who liked the original joke and would rather hear it again
People who watch old jokes on UK Gold Jokes +1.5
People who don't understand binary
People who still don't know where this is going
People who stopped reading after the first line
People who opened this page thinking it was about drinking Alcohol with Swine Flu
People who have an interest in Gibbon Moons but don't know they got it wrong
People who think that even with this joke this should definitely be the last type of person
People who aren't reading this anyway
People who will think this is funny and link to it
The other 6,692,030,276 (as of writing)
People who were hoping to read a liturgy for the deportation of Archbishop Makarios

And people who started their careers reading Cobol dumps.

Channel Firing - April 1914

"Channel Firing" is a great Thomas Hardy poem for Lenten themes.  The idea of the dead being awakened, thinking it's the big day - but in fact, nothing's changed.  Humans are still killing each other and the world still waits.
Was Pa'son Thirdly's preaching all wasted?  Does the Prince of Peace still wait to bring it?  Is eternal rest the best thing for all of us?  And when will we ever learn?  (breaks into hippy pacifist song accompanied by Young Keith on the banjo).

---

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

'All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

'That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening....

'Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).'

So down we lay again. 'I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,'
Said one, 'than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!'

And many a skeleton shook his head.
'Instead of preaching forty year,'
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
'I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

Burton's Beer Tasting Notes - Circle Master, Wayland Smithy

So two very Beaker-ish beers to consider here, dear Readers. Both bottled, as I'm a bit afeared to go out tonight, what with the Shucks, Badgers, Toads etc wandering the place.
Wayland Smithy - named after the Neolithic burial chamber on the downs above the Vale of the White Horse. Dark-ish, more-ish, pretty nice. On the Sarsen rating, I'll give it a 2.2.
Circle Master from the ubiquitous Hobgoblin brewery of Witney. And why does the Hobgoblin pub in Bedford not sell decent beer? I only ask... but Circle master, described as a "Golden Pale Ale" is spicy, dry as a piece of sandpaper on a warm July evening. Lovely, light, but on the evidence of "just the one", quite refreshing and thirst-quenching but above all... yes, hoppy. "Target" hops, apparently. On the Sarsen scale I give it the full trilithon.