Salt vs Light

Now, I know what you're thinking.

Being salt of the earth - and being light to the world. Aren't they, very much, opposites?

Salt - a mineral so useful that people could be paid in it. When pure it's shiny, white, bright. When bought by somebody who thinks it's more "organic", "natural" to buy as sea salt - what do we think we're doing when we buy sea salt to put on our chips? It's not like it's been organically raised in free-range salt farms, where the salt can live a happy, natural salty life. Skipping around the fields in its salty way, grazing on free-range sodium. No. Or even, Na. Basically, sea salt is salt with dirt in it - because the sea is not pure and unadulterated. It's got other salts, and fish droppings.

In Jesus's time, I reckon the salt would have come from salt pans - areas where they let the sea in, then evaporate it off in the Mediterranean sun. In this country, most salt is mineral salt. It's mined under Cheshire, where it forms quite literally a rock formation under the ground. And the air in the tunnels of salt mines is so pure, so dry, that the tunnels are used for document storage - because it's too dry for microorganisms to grow.

But how can salt be kept pure, and salty? Or, to put it another way - what makes it lose its saltiness? Well, salt has a property called "deliquescence". It absorbs moisture, it gets clumpy. That's why salt in shops also contains sodium or potassium hexocyanoferrate - to stop it clogging up. So if salt gets damp, it's not so useful as salt. If it gets grubby, it's not so salty, because there's all sorts of stuff going on.

I remember doing an experiment, long and merry enough now, in the old Dyson Perrins lab in Oxford. And being a very bad chemist, I didn't make enough of the product I was making. My yield - we're very keen on yields, in the chemical community - was not good. What to do? I wasn't going to do the experiment again. I had a busy life. But I wasn't going to hand in my test tube, with just 20% or so yield.

So I took an executive decision. The thing about labs is, there's always some kind of kind of chemical crud laying around on the benches. So I scraped some of that off with a spatula, shoved it in, pushed the yield up to 50% or so, and went off to see the supervisor to get my experiment signed off.

But it wasn't the thing I was trying to make, was it? It was half made up of random chemicals, bits of lab bench varnish - not the thing I wanted at all. The melting point was all wrong. The next step in the experiment was to use that chemical to make another thing. And I had a product that was largely varnish. It did not augur well for the future.

And so, to keep the right chemical composition, to keep our salt pure - salty - it's clear what we have to do, isn't it? We have to flee away from the things that contaminate us - from the evil in the world. Like the communities that lived around the Dead Sea - with all that salt - in Jesus's time. Staying away from the World. Staying away from the compromises. Not getting grubby, not living lives that were clogged - there's still communities out there now, trying to do the same thing.

Or the 21st Century equivalent maybe? Only listening to Christian music. Only having Christian friends. Only going to Church activities - filling your life with church meetings and "socials".  As Steve Taylor once said, only drinking milk from Christian cows.

It's tempting. And it's been done. And it's right, that there are things in the modern world - behaviours and attitudes - that we don't want to pick up. And if you're thinking I mean certain lifestyle choices and sexual attitudes - well, I don't really. I was thinking of selfishness, judgmentalism, self-righteousness, grudges and pride. We should certainly want to run away from the world to get rid of them, shouldn't we?

After all , we don't get those in the Church, do we?

But we have the call to be salt - shiny, pure, clean, uncontaminated, best kept protected in a plastic bottle - alongside the call to be light - shiny, pure, and shed over dirty and clean things alike. If you're light to the world - shining out, not protected under a bowl - ten you can't hide away. In fact, if you put a candle, tea light, oil lamp or other fire-based light source under a bowl, you're running the risk of putting it out, through lack of air.

If the Church in this area disappeared - would anybody notice? Would it mean a vital spark had gone, a precious light that had gone out, a vision that others could catch - was no longer available?

Or would it be more like when the bingo hall went - just another leisure alternative that lost its market? Just a slight sadness that something had gone, combined with the reflection that instead of evensong - or the evening bingo sitting - or the Junior Temperance League - or roller skating, or whatever it might be, now you'll have to sit at home and watch Downton Abbey? Is that all it would be?

So what are Christians known for - squabbles over robes, rules about gay priests, where people get to sit, the precise wording of liturgy - all those other attempts to stay "pure", like a shiny kitchen condiment in our glass cruet?

Or street pastors, food banks, genuine day-to-day living alongside people in need - fund raising for schools and hospitals and charities just as much as for the tiles on the vestry roof?

I think I may have set a false dichotomy. You see, salt may be pure, and shiny and white and crystalline when it's sat in its box or bottle. But it's not much use on the kitchen shelf.

Salt is most salty, most tasty and useful, when it's poured out. It's still salty when you're gargling with salt water - when it's used to dab on a sound - and don't we know it. It's still salty when it's poured out on chips, it's still salty when it makes corned beef.  Maybe Jesus was using the same story twice. The way to let salt get unsalty is to leave it on the shelf to get damp and caked and grubby. And then it's not so useful - you may as well use it to pour out on the drive, if we ever get a frost this year. But poured out, used, made visible and tasteable, salt and light are things that change, that reveal new things, that make a difference to the world in which we live.

A Liturgy of Dave

Archdruid Dave: On this "Call Everyone Dave Day", may peace be with Dave.

Dave's: And also with Dave.

Psalms ( A song of King Dave)

The Liturgical Dance of the Eternal Brooms

Naming Ceremony

Archdruid Dave: Name this child?

Dave: Well, if it was a boy we were going to call him Rodney, after Dave. But seeings it's a girl, we're calling her Dave.

Archdruid Dave: Good luck, Dave.

Daves: You're gonna need it.

Hymn: When the Spirit of the Lord is within my heart, I will dance as David danced.

Archdruid Dave: Eww.  Can you please all put your clothes on again?

Daves: Sorry, Eileen - we mean, Dave. Just taking the song seriously.

Archdruid Dave: I've warned you about crude literalism before. And that was literally crude. And in front of little Dave. Lucky she was asleep. Clearly what the songwriter meant - figuratively speaking - is that you should all upset your partners and celebrate killing Philistines and Jebusites.

Daves: Righto, Archdruid Dave.

Archdruid Dave: Now go out into the world, sweep the floor for the kingdom - following the example of Trigger and of Dave Herbert - and be Dave to the world.

Daves: Righto, Dave.

---

Serious Note: I believe the recent Pancreatic Cancer advertising campaign is crass. The implication of "I wish I had X cancer instead" is insulting, trivialising other cancers and treating their sufferers, the people who die from them and their families with disrespect.

But. Pancreatic cancer is a dreadful disease, which has taken a disproportionate number of creative people. It has a dreadful mortality rate - which could be explained in all sorts of better ways. Let's get behind the fight against all forms of cancer. And wish all the best, on what would have been his 70th birthday, to one of our funniest actors, Roger Lloyd Pack, aka Trigger. May his broom be lifted up, and sweep forever.

Cancer Research UK

10 Commandments of Commuting

I. Thou shalt not curse God when the train is late. It's probably the train operators.

II. Thou shalt keep ploughing forwards inside the train once it's started, despite the fact people are walking the other way doing the same thing.  These three abide: Faith,  Hope and Charity.  But hope's the only thing that will keep thee going here.

III. Remember the Sabbath day.  Thou dost noy have to go in. Unless thou'rt really unlucky.

IV. Thou shalt not make eye contact.

V. Remember the widow, the orphan, the infirm and aged in the land. But remember also that it's thy seat. Thou gottest on early to grab it. And it's a long way to Reading.  Especially since FGW run the service

VI. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass. He or she might notice.

VII. Thou shalt let detraining customers detraining before thou dost entrain. Thou hast to have a system, dostn't thou.

VIII. Thou shalt not bear false witness to the ticket inspector.  They know.

IX. Thou shalt not sing in the Quiet Carriage.  Thou shalt not speak on the phone - not thou, nor thy wife,  nor thy maidservant, nor thy ass nor thy ox. For if the Lord looks down from heaven, and hears a clamour as of that of trumpets, then shall he tut.

X. If through a kind employer or the Unions thou getst to work from home one day, don't sit all day in thy pants working on thy laptop.  For God can see everything.  And so can the neighbours, O thou fool.  Thou'rt in the conservatory.

Bad Timing for a Native Ritual

I'd like to thank Sneef for leading our morning Pouring-Out of Beakers this morning. But I can't help thinking he'd not really thought it through.

Sure enough, it was a traditional Native American First Nations Indian ritual (though I want to check that actually is the proper ethnic term). And it was performed with conviction.

But a Rain Dance? A Rain Dance? Really?

The A-Z of Technical Church Terms

There's only one thing sadder than somebody using a technical church term, knowing that there are people in the church who don't know what it means. And that's somebody using a technical church term, thinking everybody knows what it means. Let's see if we can help.

Ambo	South American form of liturgical dance
Apse	A lapsed asp
Asperges	Italian variety of asparagus
Aspergillum	White flower that only blooms when it's raining
Biretta	Italian squash eaten while riding a Lambretta, and firing a Beretta
Cassock	A long Ukrainian tunic
Compline	What you do to something that isn't compled.
Hassock	A long Ukrainian with a spasm in the diaphragm
Laetare Sunday	The Sunday when the clocks go forward, and everyone turns up... yeah, OK.
Laity	Horizontal church people
Lectern	An electric duck
Lectionary	Pushy dictionary
Legilium	A narrow ledge, for perching eagles on
Misericords	An overweight person's shoelaces
Narthex	The plastic you make notice boards out of
Oxford Movement	Down to the bar when you give up on the essay
Oblation	Blowing up an oval balloon
Pulpit	A doll's pullover
Reliquary	Somebody who collects retired vicars
Rogation Days	The chance to go round in odd-shaped circles
Spandrel	A breed of small dog, popular with vicars
Supererogation	Ritual blessing of local senior police officer
Thesaurus	A terrifying, verbose dinosaur
Transept	Vicar with a wide nose
Vestibule	An inflatable lifejacket, in case the font overflows
Vestry	Where to hang your vest

Midsomer Bingo

You know how it is. You're watching Midsomer Murders. You're wallowing in the perfect English countryside, as piles of bodies cover it. You're knowing that, at some point, somebody called Barnaby is going to come up with the solution to the mystery. You've got a glass of wine.

But you need something to keep your brain just ticking over, just enough to stay awake long enough to find out that the most famous guest star was guilty. So here we have Midsomer Bingo! Just settle back, keep an eye out for the Midsomer detail, and when you get a line - you shout out "Stately Home!"

Because Apples Are There to be Eaten

Fascinated to read Andrew Brown's piece on "Help me overcome my unbelief". Not sure it tells us the cause of his unbelief, but then that may be my problem, not his. I've a notoriously bad attention span, unable to read even the simplest sentence from George Herbert without wishing I could meet him on the road. And don't even get me started on that "Sweep the Floor for Jesus" hymn he wrote. I sang that at an advent carol service once where somebody set herself on fire. I'm not totally sure that wasn't to avoid singing another verse. Also, Andrew's got a cracking aphorism about bishops, about halfway through.

Andrew is right, of course. Sin doesn't cause all the pain in the world. Mind, I'm not sure the Bible writers all thought that. Some of the wisdom and Psalm authors, maybe. But try telling it to Job or old Ecclesiastes. I reckon they'd be saying they'd meet Georgie H in the road, as well. Next thing you know, there's George Herbert in the road and a whole bunch of people wanting to meet him. Could be quite a queue.

Our Lord's suggestion is that, in cases of unexplained suffering, and where no circumstantial evidence such as a dagger in the Dining Room is found - that "nobody sinned". In fact, that the suffering is so that God's glory can be better revealed. And that's great, inasmuch as the man born blind or anyone else who's blessed enough to be in the firing line of a miracle goes. And praise God, when a miracle hapoens. But for the rest of us, struck down with some genetic condition the doctors can't treat or randomly having meteorites land on our heads or whatever - there must be something else. Not to mention those knocked down in the rush to get at George Herbert.

And it was Douglas Adams (it often was) who remarked that what the story of the Fall tells us is that God is the sort of Person who'd put a brick under a hat to see if someone was gonna kick it. And I wonder if he's got a point.

We are exactly the sort of people who, told not to eat an apple, go ahead and eat it. Later on we'll come up with a rubbish excuse, and later still acquire a need for a Saviour. But, for now, it's an apple. Juicy! Tasty! Forbidden! And we live in a world where crappy things happen, everybody dies, random stuff occasionally falls out the sky and the whole thing's gonna end in heat death.

But what if that is what it's all about? What if this world is the way it is, because it has to be? That we need Time's Entropic Arrow, driving us to chaotic homogeneity, because that's the only way things can happen? So the mess is inevitable. The drive is one way. And hats are there for kicking, and apples for eating, because that's what we do? We just need to be told not to eat the apple. It's the only trigger we need to get a sudden craving for Ashmead's Kernel.

And yet the world is so beautiful, its maths so elegant, and we are so resoundingly here, in all our beauty and stupidity, that I can't believe this wasn't meant. I do believe the whole thing was designed so reasoning beings could crawl out of the slime, and make up myths about their own origins.

In which case, I'll cling to that voice that tells us we don't need to eat the apple - that, given the right example and right support, we can leave the hat un-kicked. That this universe is wrecked and doomed because, this time out, it has to be - because this is the way first-time universes are.  That a universe can't be good until it's done the whole Big Bang-Heat Death thing. Because life only comes through death, and nettles make good fertiliser.

And I will believe that because God knows this is how universes work, God is there in every bit of the pain - shuddering over our stupidity but knowing that the stupid, cruel and evil are all part of it.

I can't believe in a godless world, because it rings with an ungodless glory. But I can believe in an emerging world, in a first-time world. In a world that is still reaching for where it should be, and still reaches for perfection as it dives into oblivion

Through the Mystic Door

In Bogwulf Chapel, the little family place of worship my ancestors built on the estate, there is a door. It's in the wall, halfway up the steps to the pulpit, small and features a fair degree of oaky solidity and ironwork.

So what, you may ask. You've seen doors in church before. Doors are not unusual - they're an everyday occurrence. But it's one of those doors.

See. That made some of you think. Those that know what I mean.

See, Bogwulf Chapel isn't much use to us Beaker Folk. It's too small, too cold, too leaky. We prefer warmth, comfort and seating that's not the subject of a preservation order. So we let it out to Drayton Parslow, and his bunch of Funambulist Baptists. They positively enjoy discomfort and pain.

Anyways. I was walking down past the Chapel after Pouring Out of Beakers. And I heard screaming. So I ran in and found Drayton, white-faced and sweaty. Which is not a way to start the day, believe me.

I'd told him not to open that door. I said it would be foolishness. I told him - leave it. Many old chapels and churches have these doors - made of oak, lurking in a corner of a vestry or side chapel, only four or five feet high and - very importantly - never opened.

If you ask a passing flunky - a verger or Warden, or curate or something - they'll mutter something about it formerly holding incense, or robes, or cheese or something. If you ask if you can have a look in, they'll tell you the key's lost, or the vicar has it, or it's health and safety. And if you ask why the door is so small - they'll tell you it's because people in the old days were shorter.

But if you follow up their logic, and ask why the main door isn't tiny, and you don't have to duck to walk under the rood screen, they won't have an answer. Because what the vicar may know, and isn't letting on - and what Drayton discovered today when he ignored my instructions, thinking there might be some backup tea bags in there - is that the door isn't small because people were short in the old days.

Oh, no. The door is small because it was built by hobbits.

Hobbits over the centuries have built a series of tunnels, connecting many of the ancient churches in the country to their own world. They use churches as portals into our world because they're very beautiful, and there normally aren't any people about. They nip out occasionally, in search of decent hassocks - which are in terribly short supply in the Shire.

But what they're not for, is Baptists stomping unwisely in the other direction, in search of tea bags. And so it was that, merrily singing a snatch of something from the Redemption Hymnal, Drayton Parslow found himself in Smaug's lair.

Well, no wonder he looked so shocked. He's got a nasty burn in the seat of his suit trousers, and no eyelashes. He says if a bunch of dwarfs hadn't turned up and started arguing about how to pronounce "Smaug", he'd never have got out alive.

Still, he's learnt his lesson. You don't open That Door. You just don't

All-Purpose Midsomer Murders Spoilers

The vicar will be creepy, and will apparently live in the church.

The neo-pagan cult will be sinister and yet oddly cuddly. They won't be guilty.

The landlord will be suspicious and unfriendly.

The pub locals will be suspicious and cliquey.

The Indian take-away is unlikely to feature.

The Barnabys' lovey-dovey act will be annoying.

Somebody's ex-lover will be somebody else's current lover and somebody else's current spouse. And vice-versa.

The People in the Big House will get involved.

The most famous guest star will have dunnit.

A Traditional Beaker Imbolc Groundhog Candlemas Day

It's a well-known fact that the Christian Church first chose 2 February as the date for the Presentation of Our Lord, to co-incide with the ancient Beaker ceremony of Groundhog Day. Groundhogs were a special deity for the early Beaker Folk, representing the fertility of the Earth where they lived, and the little gnawy teeth of the Rodents of Retribution who lived in the Beaker Hades. Groundhog Day has been celebrated halfway between Xmas and Easter for at least 4,000 years, and was originally a celebration of the lactation of groundhogs. Why this was anything particularly to be celebrated is anybody's guess, but the Celts, needless to say, got in on the act, stole the date and invented their own festival, "Imbolc" - which in the Brethonic tongue spoken around Dunstable means "Rat Yoghurt". An odd bunch the Celts. What with them not actually having existed, and everything.

The European groundhogs subsequently went extinct in the Ice Age, and it was left to the German colonists of Punxsutawney to reintroduce the festival when they found some fresh groundhogs. These days, the Beaker Women mark the day by wishing the Beaker Men were as charming as Bill Murray.

There being no groundhogs around, as usual today's Groundhog substitute was the ever-reliable Earless Beaker Bunny. As is the tradition, we started trying to get her out of her cage on the Feast of the Epiphany, and finally succeeded last night. In a new record low, she only inflicted three bites that required hospitalisation this year.

The Groundhog

Once put on the grass outside the Moot House, she looked grumpily around, gave us one of her evil stares, "binked" round in a circle - which is the Bunny signal for more rain - and then went back in her box. And so, as the Beaker Quire sang "I Got You, Babe", we concluded that, it being England, we have no idea what the weather's going to be like for the next six weeks.

Feast of St Brigid

Sure and doesn't the Catholic Online website omit all Druidic references to St Brigid?  Just gives her saint number 453 in the url. I don't know whether that is her official Vatican number, or just a function of the site's Content Management System. But I notice that #1 is St Monica, rather than Our Lady or St Peter, so I'm guessing the latter.

According to assorted legends, Bride was born to the Catholic slave of a pagan lord, raised by a druid and baptised by a bishop. As well as being the midwife of Our Lady and a Pagan Goddess.

See, I'm reckoning a few stories have got mixed together there. I reckon she wasn't "also" the pagan goddess, but more likely "named after". And unless one of her saintly gifts was time-travel then Our Lady more likely had a totally different midwife. St Joseph, I reckon, in those circumstances.

Still, she's certainly one of those brilliant Celtic saints that stand on the edge of faiths - rejecting the old one while still being remarkably adept at absorbing its traditions and powers. Today we are renaming the Well the Bride Well, dressing it with waterlogged snowdrops and last year's fuchsias, and praying that Storm Brigid doesn't blow us all the way to Ireland.

Note that as Brigid was associated with milk, not beer, we shall not be celebrating her day with Guinness, as with other Irish saints. Nope, today it's milk stout. Except for the lactose intolerant, who can have Guinness. And the barley intolerant, who can have wine.