The Hermit of Continuity

Skipping through the duller stuff from yesterday's Synod on the Comment is Free live-blog. There's no point getting excited about women bishops, as it turns out that the vote on that is in July. The Church of England now seems to have been "opening the door to women bishops" since the Flood.

But I discover the stunning information that the Church of England has 12 "enclosed hermits". Who knew that these godly people still existed, taking their religion so seriously? The world seems a better place for knowing this, somehow. There's no indication as to how or where they are enclosed, however. The details are sketchy. Are they enclosed in the manner of Mother Julian, or our own nearby and blessed Christina of Markyate? Are there twelve of them  because that's the "right" number, and whenever one wanders off to do other things or receives her/his eternal reward they have to elect another one? Presumably they don't all live together, although if they did that would be an "observance" of hermits, I discover. As opposed to a "mutual contradiction" of hermits, which would make more sense.

By contrast, here in the Beaker Folk, we used to have a small group of Hermits of Suspicion. A fairly unpleasant bunch, they had a habit of looking at you like you'd been doing something wrong and generally making you feel pretty sinful. They all had to take the name "Herman" on their inclusion in their order. But after Drayton set up his Funambulist Baptist Chapel they discovered that his was a stricter and more world-denying form of religion and joined him. All except the one remaining Hermit, Herman, who refused to deny his vows. Since he's keeping the order going all on his own now we call him the Hermit of Continuity.

A Strange Internet Community

I don't know if you've noticed an assortment of strange communities on the Internet? It seems to bring out odd, allegedly factual but possibly fictional or even allegorical religious sects - one thinks of the Quivering folk of Beyond the Woodshed, for example.

But another has caught my attention (I say caught, this one seems to have set out deliberately to have been noticed), still it's original and quirky and apparently non-conformist. What more can you want? I don't know where the Demitasse Community is heading, but it might be worth a watch.

Fish & Chip Church

I think Young Keith may be onto a winner with this one.

His "Pizza Church" was a total failure, as everybody just phoned up for delivery. And getting a music group, three stewards and preacher into that delivery van was a real squeeze.

But the point about Fish & Chips is that the tradition is for people to come out and buy it - particularly on a cold evening like tonight. We've been writing the songs up on scrappy sheets of A4 paper in marker pen, and the "wisdom nuggets" we're using instead of proper readings are scribbled up on brightly-coloured, badly cut-out stars.

We encourage people to stand around, eating out of their hygienic, faux newspaper wrapping. This gives the worship that effortless informality we associate with the chippie. And also imparts a sense of nostalgia for a simpler past. Albeit it makes the sharing of the peace a bit greasy. And it's tricky to clap during the livelier songs - splintering batter going everywhere.

All in all though, we'll give it another go. Today's sermon "Why faith is like a pickled egg" went down a storm. Which, to be fair, is better than the pickled eggs.

Burston's Beer-Tasting Notes - Blue Monkey "Ape Ale"

A fine tasting ale, this.

A pale beer with its strength belied by its pale yellow colour. However it's a remarkably hoppy beer - I'd say the brewery's description of it as having "moderate bitterness" is putting it mildly, if you will pardon the pun. The bitterness - clean, citrussy bitterness from hops that had enjoyable lives - is all over this delicious, light-tasting beer. But it's 5.5% alcohol - so be careful!

On the Grebbels scale I'd give it 4.5 Cardinals.

Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance

Interested to read in the Evening Standard a confusion between tax evasion and tax avoidance. It's important because it kind of relates to the law, without which the country would no doubt descend into anarchy.

Sebastian Shakespeare describes plumbers working for cash-in-hand, and Amazon's cunningly-contrived tax status, as "Tax avoidance" - thus putting them on the same level, give or take the amounts of money involved. Well in the law of the land, these aren't the same.

A plumber working for cash in hand and not declaring his or her income is guilty of tax evasion. This is a crime. Amazon's current rate of tax payment (none, if you're interested) is not tax evasion. It's tax avoidance. Unless they're breaking the law, in which case it's evasion. Although, to be fair to Amazon, the money they pay to their warehouse and other workers, web designers and so on is income taxed, and the Amazonians then spend their money in shops, so it's not all bad.

You may think I'm a bit tetchy on this subject, but that's only because I am. Beaker (Cayman Islands) is a 100% legal offshore tax avoidance vehicle. It may be unethical, dodgy and mean. I may be fleecing the Beaker People to a degree that's unwise in the current weather conditions. But I'd hate to think it was illegal. That would be wrong.

Festival of Snow-related Bad Theology

Since we had to cancel the  Global Warming event we were quite excited at Young Keith's suggestion of a "Festival of Snow-related Theology". His idea was that everyone in the community should have to stand up and give us an insight into humanity and its relationship to the Divine, using a snow or ice-related illustration.

What he didn't tell us was that he had a crack team of snowballers, ready to strike if anyone toppled over into whimsy or bad theology. Which, let's be honest, was always going to be likely.

Goffrey was first. He explained how he always saw the nature of God in terms of the threefold nature of water - that the Father is the steady, regular pattern of ice; Jesus the living water; the Spirit is like steam, which bloweth where it will as it comes out of a kettle. I think Goffrey is quite lucky. In the old days he would've been burnt at the stake for modalism like that - not just covered in snow.

I took a fair number of snowballs myself for my response to Goffrey. Iexplained that a more reasonable analogy to the Trinity can be made in terms of the triple point of water. Turns out when explaining a mystery, one shouldn't use an illustration nobody can comprehend. Even if you use a phase diagram. The last words I heard before things all got a bit confused was "what state is this then, O Wise One?"

Hnaef was up next. He explained how he also used ice-related illustrations for the trinity. So there are six sides to every snowflake, recognising the sixfold nature of the water atom (I let this go - it probably wasn't worth arguing with). And then there are two natures of Christ - human and divine. And two times three is... well, thankfully he was cut off at that point by a hail of snow and had to take cover before he got into any more trouble.

Charlii stood up and said  what did snowflakes and fingerprints have in common? To which Young Keith's uncle, the police officer, replied that they can both give away the identity of a criminal - footprints in the snow being a means of following the miscreants back from the scene of crime. No, replied Charlii - they're both unique. Your fingerprints are yours and nobody else's and no two snowflakes are ever the same - so we are all special and unique. To which Burton, reasonably I thought, asked how did she know this and how could she prove it? Which scientist, asked Burton, had ever measured and categorised every snowflake that ever fell or will ever fall? Charlii stuttered a bit as she wondered whether these two "facts" were really true after all. Which was fateful. We had to dig her out the snow with a spade. Still, she's still a vast improvement over our last trainee druid, who was tarred and feathered after that talk on the Christian roots of Margaret Thatcher's politics.

Mansfield Woodhouse butted in at this point. He has always been one of the more moral of the Woodhouse family - especially compared with his mother, who sits at home day after day having successive fits of the vapours and failing to make matches for her sons. Should we not, said Mansfield, rather see morality as an icy landscape - where if we take a step from the straight and narrow we may stray onto a slippery slope and shoot off downhill to disaster?

I'm afraid by this stage I was cold, grumpy and fed up with theology. So I switched on the sprinkler system in the Moot House. Everybody's a lot closer to the nature of frozen water now, although their theology's no better than it was. Still, I feel we've all learnt something.

An Inconvenient Truth

Today's lecture "God, Gore and Gaia - the roles of populist science and post-modern religion in confusing weather with climate' has beenl cancelled due to snow.

I blame all that Global Warming. Someone Up There must be very angry with us.

Knowing your Onians

As the snow buckets down across England, tonight we in Husborne Crawley will light a paraffin-wax, fossil-fuel tea light in honour of Charles Onians.

I believe that Charles is still a working journalist, although I've not noticed much in the way of his work lately - especially around the subject of global warming. But every time snow breaks out in England, all the people that don't believe in anthropogenic global warming link to Charles's item in 2000 - "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past". As an Independent article it was a perfect example of its kind - of the highest Green potentials, scare-mongering in an intellectual kind of way and ahead of its time. At least 12 years ahead of its time as it turns out. Although, of course, he could turn out to be right in the end.

And so once again, as on many similar days over the last few years, we remember Charles Onians. And all across England, others will do likewise. I suppose you could call it his "Michael Fish" moment. We will celebrate by singing Marillion's 1989 song, Season's End. Makes me melancholy to think it's nearly a quarter of a century since they made this terrifying prophecy.


Getting close to Season's End, I heard somebody say
That it might never snow again in England.
Snowflakes in a newborn's fist, sledging on the hill
Are these things we'll never see, in England?

(Answer - No).

Gathering Winter Fuel

Foolishly, as it turns out, we burnt a lot of our firewood on Imbolc as we celebrated the forthcoming end of Winter. A little early, as I now realise.

So we're needing to proclaim the Beaker equivalent of Martial Law here. Or, for the group of people on retreat this weekend who are members of the Jedi faith, Martian Law.

So can everyone get out and find every bit of available combustible material to keep the stoves going? Fresh-cut wood is not going to help, so please leave the Avenue and the Spinney standing.

I'm thinking more of any more old pallets from Marston Gate that may be laying around, the half-burnt remains of tea lights that we can melt the wax out, briquettes pressed out of doily lint, and any old tyres you can find? I know they're a bit smoky, but in environmental terms they're actually more sustainable than wind turbines. And nobody's going to know it's us burning tyres, as it's going to be too cold for anyone to come out and check.

I'll be in my office knocking up a quick "Liturgy of it still being Winter". I love the changing of the seasons - but why does it have to be so changeable?

Quick Chris Huhne Joke

Obviously I can't comment on his upcoming court case. But I would say Chris Huhne's a rubbish Climate Change Secretary.

He's been in the job for nearly 2 years, and the climate's barely changed at all. What's he been doing?

Theological Reflection on a Derailment at the Points in Bletchley Station

I am pleased to hear that there was just the one injured person as a result of the derailment of the train at Bletchley station this morning. And it would seem that the driver's injuries are light, so that is good news.

Network Rail have indicated that the train may have travelled into the points too fast. Which may or may not be the case - I am happy to await the results of the enquiry which I am sure will be arranged. But it gave me thoughts of how we can learn lessons of life from this kind of unfortunate incident.

To be sure, for many of us our lives, dear readers, can appear to be running on rails. It is not that we have no options - simply that they are a sensible and finite number. For those of us with railway-like lives, there is no question of wandering off down by-ways, taking unwise detours or driving at high speed across playing fields, scattering screaming footballers in our wake. No, we have a choice of high-speed mainlines or attractive quiet branch lines. And wisdom consists in making the right choice when approaching the points.

For if we do not approach points with caution, we can choose unwisely (I realise that for a real train driver the points are chosen for him or her but Eileen has warned me what can happen if I get too Calvinist). We might choose a wrong route and, instead of rolling through the attractive Pennine valleys of life, be presented with the nightmare of a Friday evening on the East Midlands Line. Or, if we are going too fast to be careful we can simply derail and end up explaining to Eternal Controller how it came to be that our lives came off the rails.

For myself, I would be happy to spend my life in the sidings, helpfully pushing carriages around. I would be happy to know that I could never cause a day's disruption on the Euston Line. Quiet, useful and above all safe. For if we do not move too fast, Dear Readers, we can be sure that we will never overturn. Although we may rust solid.