Venn I Survey

It is often said by our esteemed and slightly frightening Archdruid that I am a bit of a nerd. And, Gentle Readers, who am I to disagree? Especially when Eileen herself is threatening me with the Slazenger of Wrath.
But today it seems that this nerdishness, if indeed it is, has been rewarded. For the Archdruid has asked me to do some serious mapping of the socio-demographics of religious groups, through the power of Venn diagrams.
Accordingly, let us start with a simple example: the preference of some people for the use of pebbles vs tea lights in worship. I think the lesson to be drawn here is pretty clear. Some people like tea lights, some like stones. But lots of people like both. Who are the people that like only stones? My guess is that they are fundamentalist evangelicals on their way to deal with an adulterer or blasphemer.

Let us move outside our beloved Beakerism, and into a more mainstream denomination. Take Methodism, for example. In my experience, Methodism is strongly associated with people singing very loudly, and women who wear hats that look like they were once small furry animals. And indeed that is what the diagram shows: Moving ecumenically on, and considering the existence of the Coptic Church, we can consider the way in which the science of Vennology can shed light onto some of our favourite sayings:  Now let us consider an example seen in many fellowships across the land - the relationship between Worship Leaders, people with no sense of embarrassment, and people who assume fake American accents. Now there are Worship Leaders who speak perfectly normally in the accent of their own area of upbringing. There are those who do not feel obliged to tell you stories about their personal lives and development and their spiritual viewpoints. And... well, let's let the Venn Diagram tell its own story.
Finally I'd like to move to an area where the difference between men and women is quite marked - but not as much as we always realise. Consider fellowships where it is not considered sufficient quietly to cross oneself, or to look respectfully at the floor, ceiling or leader during the closing blessing. Consider those fellowships that expect us to engage with our fellow men, women and Beaker People during this activity. What do they look like in Venn format?
So I hope this little expedition into Venn world has been enlivening for you.  Tomorrow I'll be using the same techniques to investigate the behaviour of ursine animals in an arboreal environment.

Disorganised religion

Young Keith says he's become disenchanted and disillusioned with Organised religion.  The rest of us say that "disenchanted" and "disillusioned" mean almost exactly the same think, so he is merely using flash words to make himself sound intellectual.
But be that as it may, he's decided to do something about it.  He feels the need to get back to a simpler, more spontaneous time when the Spirit moved as he/she/it would and the follower followed the prompting.  "Like a tuned aeolian harp in a gentle zephyr" was how he put it.  Which we thought was quite nicely put. 
Hence this morning's exercise in "Disorganised Religion".  He turned up at the Moot House with a copy of the "Wee Worship Book" and some pebbles.  Meanwhile, only two hours later, Stacey Bushes alarmed the Watchers in the Watching Hut by arriving with a branch of ivy, a banjo and a small earth-moving machine.  And Chesney Wold appeared in the Dining Room at two o'clock with an Enya CD and the Book of Common Prayer.
Personally I would say it hasn't worked too well so far.  But Young Keith says I'm just old and out of touch with where the "kids" are in the worship arena.  Well we'll see.

Lark Rise to Eden

In the background "Lark Rise to Candleford" is playing.  A story of simple countryfolk whose accents are approximately 150 miles to the south-west of where they are supposed to be.
There's a dream of  rural utopia, where communities were together.
Where people walked around in sepia.
Where every problem could be solved by a bit of community feeling.
Where the reapers head out into the golden corn with a "hey nonny" and the silver, flashing sickels.

And the Beaker People look back to a golden age when we were in touch with the Earth.  When our spirits were as one and the whole world sung with the glory of the earth-power.

And the Pentecostals tell stories of the days after Pentecost, when life was just like it is in a dusty church hall in Derby.

And the pagans try to recreate the days when everybody knew the Earth Goddess - or Diana - or Apollo - or Odin - or whoever.

There's a deep longing in all of us - a pull back to a world that once was - yet never was.  Where we were innocent, and free, and in tune with God and the world.  A time when all was right.

But is it a pull backwards - or a pull forwards?  Is our Eden in the past - or in the future - or is it in our present?  Horizontal or Vertical?  A dream to build a new Jerusalem - or the safe place we retreat to when the world is hard and harsh?

Well, I hope you weren't looking for answers....

Laetare Sunday

It being Laetare Sunday, no need for a Lenten posting this morning.

Other facts you never knew

Hot on the heels of the news that some children thought the Queen invented the telephone, we asked the Junior Beakers and our visiting Imagineer, David Lewis, for some other "facts" that they knew.  They kindly provided the following, but we think they may have made some of them up.  Rather like the answers to the original survey.  After a great deal of analysis we reckon that one and a half of these are true.

• Albert Einstein invented Pringles while working in the Bern patents office.
• St Paul developed the prototype for the game we now know as "Ludo" - which is why it has a Latin name.
• Both the poet John Milton and economist John Keynes were born in John Street, in Milton Keynes.
• Thomas Hardy's job in early life was as a drag queen  He told his friends and family that he was working as an architect, although this was only slightly less embarrassing in 19th century London.
• Due to the rotation of the earth, if you stand at the North Pole you are more likely to die of dizziness than cold.
• In Essex, white socks are a sign you are looking for a fight.
• If you lit a line of beacons from Wallsend to the Solway Firth you'd cut Northern unemployment by 25% 
• It was originally planned that the M1 would connect London with Skegness.
• Jensen Button was named after a character in Button Moon.
• All the lions in the world are descended from one original pride that lived at Longleat Safari Park. 
• Night Nurse is used in the Turk and Caicos Islands as a form of hallucinogen 
• Phil Mitchell of Eastenders invented Thin Layer Chromatography.
• Carrots are actually fruits.
• If you live south of the Equator the hands on a clock go anti-clockwise 
• You can never have too many piercings.
• Homeopathy has been properly peer-reviewed and it turns out it's better than real drugs. 
• It has been proven that Rhubarb and Custard chews are a cure for Swine Flu.
• Wallabies are the only type of marsupial living wild in Bedfordshire.
• Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is based on the same chord progression as "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols 
• People from Corby don't really sound Scottish
• Due to the Coriolis effect everyone in New Zealand is left-handed
• From space, Ipswich looks like the face of Simon Cowell.
• Samuel Pepys got his nickname because he used to climb up a ladder outside Nell Gwynn's chambers 
• Lager tastings are serious events. Masters of Lager mark 17 different categories of taste, body and aroma 
• Wombles really did live freely on Wimbledon common until 1649, when Cromwell put a price on their heads.  
• Ducks are actually good at cricket, and regularly make centuries in matches against chickens.
• Moats in mediaeval days were filled with custard, thus providing a defence and sustenance for those inside.
• If you are playing against Arsenal it is within the rules to kick their players with the studs of your boots. 
• Sheep are slightly more intelligent that Dolphins, and can count up to 12. 
• George IV was a world-class chemist, which is why he was known as the "Prince Reagent".
• Plans are afoot to rename Prestwick Airport 'The London Airport at Prestwick' 
• The Corby Trouser Press was invented by a Corgi called Norbie.
• The Celtic Tradition in worship is both "Celtic" and "traditional".
• The first person to land on the moon was Alice Cooper. But the CIA hushed it up. 
• Due to a mirroring effect in the upper atmosphere, the Great Wall of China can sometimes be seen from Japan.
• Australia was towed into its present position by a large fleet of tugboats.  Originally it was an island off the Kent coast but it was towed away to be used for convicts.
• Due to the roundabouts, car tyres in Milton Keynes wear out on the Left Hand Side. On alternate days you have to drive backwards 
• You're safer in Bedford town centre than in your own bed at midnight on Fridays.
• Fireworks and glass were invented by an ancient civilisation in Croydon, 2 millennia before the Chinese. 
• Being on Twitter on a Saturday night is a sign of a fulfilling social life.
• Anoraks are so named because they were made up of the complete skin of an orak (a now extinct type of yak) 
• Kerry Katona worked as a designer on the Large Hadron Collider.
• Frogs aren't actually reptiles. They're arthropods. 
• When Rafael Benitez signed Lucas Leiva for Liverpool, he thought he was signing a different Brazilian called Lucas who is good at football.
• Buckinghamshire is the only English county where pineapples grow in the wild.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer discovered Fiji.

Late Football Result

The dust has finally settled on this afternoon's Traditional Beaker Football match. We believe (or at least we strongly assert) that this is the latest outbreak of an annual event going back to 2421 BCE.  A run broken only by the invasion of Britain under Claudius and the Black Death.

Hnaef once again played in a pair of hiking boots that we thought were outlawed by the Geneva Convention.  However I'm pleased to say that the casualty list is only three injured and - as of sundown - two missing.  A vast improvement on last year.

As ever the Folk divided into two groups - the Corded Wear Folk and the Rounded Bottomed Folk (referring to their beakers, not their anatomies).  It was a challenging match.  The Corded Wear Folk's left flank was always the stronger, and pushed the right side of the Rounded Bottomed people back throughout the game.  However the centre of the Rounded Bottomed midfield held very strongly, with Young Keith once again very effective in the "hole" between the holding defenders and the strikers.

At the end of 127 minutes of total carnage the score was 0-0.  You know, just a thought - but maybe next year we could introduce a ball?

Assemblies of a Broadly Beaker Character

It is a requirement enshrined in English Law, and presumably signed by the fair hand of Our Queen, that schools provide for a regular act of worship which will mainly be "of a broadly Christian nature".  I hope I've quoted that correctly.

Being occasionally invited to conduct assemblies, I find that a Beaker approach is best.  It is of a "broadly Christian character", I am quite a broad character,and given the lack of specific Christian knowledge within schools in general (I am not talking of schools in the Milton Keynes or Mid-Beds areas in particular), and given the diversity of children's backgrounds and political sensitivity of schools - I would guess that something woolly, well-meaning and unspecific is just what a lot of ministers around the country are providing.  Something that is indefinitely deist, tries to inculcate a sense of goodness, but steers clear of any discussion of sin, redemption and Jesus.

Of course, you may know better.

Meanwhile, we've agreed that our local Beaker Secularist is definitely not taking any more assemblies.  After his last outing, when you may remember he informed a group of primary-age children that there was no Santa, he is on a special "unofficial" blacklist of people that they'd rather not see back.  In fact, he may be the blacklist.

Bring on the Fatted Calf

Rather touching story of the Hitchens Brothers' reconciliation - at least seen from one perspective.

And at this Lenten time what could be more appropriate than to think of brothers - of the Prodigal Son and the Boring One and the Father with Poor Judgement.

Now I think that one important character has been missed out in traditional tellings of this story.  I don't mean the Selfish One.  We all know his side of the story. Enough with the pea-pods and all.  And I don't mean the father. Yes, ancient societies, father running down the street, not very dignified blah blah blah.  And I don't mean the Older Sibling.  Although, let's face it, we all know what it's like to have a younger, irresponsible, annoying sibling.  And very few people have the resources to be able to lock them in the attic with their own friendly housekeeper.  (But thanks, Mrs Rochester).
And I don't mean Mrs Prodigal either - who, for all we know from the story, may have been dead or run off with Lazarus or the Good Samaritan.  Indeed, in 1989 I remember doing the Prodigal Mother sketch in Woburn Sands Methodist.  So she's not been forgotten.
No - I mean the Fatted Calf.  When all's said and done, this is one character in the story who's really bought in.  Everyone else is just dilettante-ing around.  The Fatted Calf's in this for good.

This Artistic, Gentle ISFP Blog

I have a big thank you to Scatter Cushions for the typealyzer link to the blog's Myers-Briggs analysis.
Feeding in the URL of this site, I was unsurprised to find that we are "The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need."


Or perhaps all blogs are written by ISFPs?

Hemispheres

Sometimes good old-fashioned, pretentious pomp-rock can put its finger on the pulse of the human psyche* in a way that mere religion, psychoanalysis or science can’t.

Take, for example, that overblown shrink-fest of a mythological album, Rush’s “Hemispheres”. The story of the terrifying warfare that breaks out between Dionysus and Apollo – respectively representing the emotional and logical sides of the human personality – the right and left “hemispheres” of the title. And then Cygnus, the smug little god of balance, gets everyone into a cool groove. Well, three cheers for Cygnus. Well done you. Now get the Middle East sorted and everyone can go home.

The battle continues – in the arts, in the sciences, in the heart – Romantic vs Classical. Roundhead vs Cavalier. Rapier vs broadsword. Damien Hirst vs Colleen Roonie. And here in Husborne Crawley we have much the same dividing line on which to balance**. Do we embrace the cool, rational, clear thought of a Richard Dawkins Forumite – or do we crash screaming into the right-brained miasma*** of emotional religion? We must choose – as the metaphysically-minded of the 19th century would have told us – between the sublime and the ridiculous. Sorry, not the ridiculous. That other thing. The beautiful. That’s it.

There’s a certain enjoyment in a well-calculated maths equation. Of that there is no doubt, for how could there be any doubt? It’s what it is. And yet there’s a wild abandon in just seizing the moment and howling at the moon, knowing it’s just a lump of rock, not a deity, but going with it for the heck of it.

So we sit in the Moping Room late at night, and hear the sound of the Gabble Ratchets going overhead. And we know that they’re really geese on their way to Furzton, there to be eaten by the Duckman – but on the other hand, maybe Gabriel really is chasing the souls of the lost ones across the sky. You just don’t know.

When the last ounce of mystery has been squeezed from the last crack of ignorance by the last smirking atheist, I suspect we’ll be the poorer. So it’s important we make fun of them now, living as they still do with their parents, with their duffel coats and their B.O. and their lack of friends, to try to stop them smirking.

So walk the woods and let every shadow be a Shuck – they’re safer than the motor-cycle-stealing hoodies that they are in reality. Let every strange noise be the music of the Goblin Dance from the bronze-age burial mound that is in fact just what’s left of the old toolshed when it fell down. Let the wall of unreason stand firm against the tide of rationality that seeks to drown us. Light the tea lights to scare away the darkness of certainty. And let Enya’s soothing harmonies replace concrete concerns with wimbling touchy-feeliness. You’ll feel better for it, and that’s what’s important.

And remember – whatever horrible things you can dream of in the unimaginable supernatural – a human being is capable of worse****.

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* Yes I know. A human psyche probably has no pulse, being unequipped – as far as we’re aware – with veins. This may well be a mixed metaphor, but I’ve no way of confirming this as I can’t take the pulse of a human psyche to check.
** Another poor metaphor, I know. “Tightrope” would be better. But talking about tightropes just makes me think of that Clown Mass and I don’t want to go there. In any sense.
*** You can’t really crash into a miasma. By definition you’d go through it. Unless it were obscuring a brick wall. However in that case it’s not the miasma you’d be crashing into, it’s the brick wall.
**** Obviously you can’t dream of it if it’s unimaginable. Or, if you can dream of it, it’s imaginable. Either way – that’s my point exactly.

Sweden - an Apology

Digs on Ridgeway Hill, Weymouth have revealed that the mass burial of beheaded young men recently uncovered during eathworks for a new relief road was of Vikings.

It would appear that the men were captured in battle, stripped, then beheaded in a mass execution.  Given that the site is of important Hardyan relevance*, and on a Ridgeway with known Beaker associations - there's a possibility that the people who carried out this act of vengeance may have been, not Anglo-Saxon, but a hillside enclave of the Beaker People.

Obviously, we can't be sure.  But to be on the safe side, and to get in before Gordon Brown, I would like to apologise to any living descendants of these no-doubt innocent Scandinavian tourists, and also to the whole Swedish people.  I will happily sign any on-line petition that the Vikings' remains be repatriated to Uppsala or Malmo, although I hasten to add we won't be offering any reparations.

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* Being not far from where Dick Dewey became engaged to Fancy Day in Upwey, and indeed not far from the settings of The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion, and with relevance to The Trumpet Major as well.  This is deep Hardy country.  If only he'd known about this.

** Image © Copyright Nigel Mykura and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence at http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1085853