Painted into a Corner

Quick question about the recent House of Bishops statement.

Two gay people marry.

Then, intrigued by the love of individual Christians for one another, or liking the liturgy, or whatever - they start going to Church. They are struck with love for Jesus Christ, and become Christians.

One of them has a call to ministry. But people of the same sex, lawfully married in this country, are not allowed to be ordained. Even if they promise to abstain from sexual relations. Even if they become convinced that, in fact, they were in the wrong and repent. (I'm not saying anything about rightness or wrongness - go with me here, for a minute).

And it seems to me that, given the current rules regarding ordination, if they were so convinced that one of them had a calling to the priesthood, they would have no choice. They would have to get divorced.

And have a Civil Partnership instead.

This isn't going to work for very long, is it?

Speaking the Truth in Love

Is it just me, or is it too early to have to go putting my foot down this hard?

Don't know what got into Dolorez. She asked me over breakfast if we can sing "They Will Know we are Christians by our Love" at this morning's Pouring-out of Beakers.

Well, I spoke the truth in love. I told her that song is the most drivellous, hippiest, unpostmodernist, daisy-chain-making piece of tosh that was ever sung in a forwards thinking, worship-lite context. We're not wasting our time singing stuff that a four-year-old would consider theologically shallow.

Nope, as it says in the pre-printed and therefore immutable order of service (which is for me - everybody else faces the other way, so can use the screen), the song we are singing to reflect our status as a respectful, loving and above all middle-class, intelligent congregation will be "Brother, sister, let me serve you."

Sadly I won't get the chance to be as Christ to Dolorez this morning. She went off in a huff and said she won't be there. How am I ever going to get to model Christlike behaviour to the Beaker Folk if they're always going to take offence? Dolorez has made my job really hard today. I hope she reflects on that. Still, I can be graceful. I'll go round after the Occasion, give her the chance to apologise.

On Living with Fools, as a Fool, but not calling them Fools

I always reckon it's the way to tell a biblical literalist. When Drayton Parslow is telling me that he's somebody who takes the Good Book seriously - every jot and every tittle* - whereas I'm a wet, softy liberal who bends the eternal message to the Spirit of the Age - I always count his eyes and hands. Last time I looked, I counted two of each. Proving that either he is missing a couple of other vital organs, or else he doesn't take the Bible as literally as he thinks.

It's a challenging old passage, to be sure, in which Jesus takes the Old Testament commandments and adds his own twist. And it's worth noticing that Jesus is doing the opposite to what we are frequently told he did.

You know the old story - that the Jewish people were so oppressed by the Law, so busy carrying their burdens, spending so much of their lives measuring out tenths of everything, so desperate to walk a couple of extra stadia on the Sabbath if the weather was nice - that the Gospel came as a fantastic release. In that kind of narrative, it's a wonder the Jews didn't just give up, wholesale, and head for the hills with the Baal-worshippers and Beaker Folk. And yes, I know some of them did. But consider - the prophets weren't going to waste their time denouncing the nice people. They were going to be moaning about the bad ones - they were like the Michael Goves of their times, driven by a message and determined to make things better and bring justice and fairness to everybody. So maybe not as much like Michael Gove as I thought when I started that simile, to be fair.

Instead, consider the words of Psalm 119:

Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end.
Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.
Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things, preserve my life according to your word.
Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared.
Take away the disgrace I dread,  for your laws are good.
How I long for your precepts! In your righteousness preserve my life.

So I don't reckon the Psalmist's sounding so crushed there? Weighed down by the commandments? Struggling with a sense of sin? Nope. Loving it, wishing to hear the Lord's commands. Generally living the Torahic dream.

And Jesus comes along and, contrary to what we're often told, makes it all a lot more difficult. Did he misunderstand his mission, the more antinomian of us might ask? We can get along - most of us - from day to day without murdering anybody, or sleeping with somebody else's partner. Mostly. But you've set the bar too high, here, Jesus. How can we get to the point of not thinking somebody's a fool, or not even looking at somebody, thinking you wouldn't mind, and then deciding you'd better not as the other half would kill you? And also, the object of lust concerned is twenty years younger, far more attractive than you, and more likely to water-ski across the Somerset Levels pulled on silver cords by unicorns than look at you?

But Jesus is at the root of the matter here - of course. He would be, wouldn't he?

In fact, not committing adultery on a daily basis isn't that hard. It takes a real failure of self-discipline to go committing adultery. Likewise, not killing people on a daily basis isn't hard. Mostly we go whole weeks on end without murdering anyone. Generally, you've got to have some mental disability - or else be seriously evil, which is a totally different thing - to go killing people. We just don't do it.

But putting somebody down - we do that all the time. Thinking the person who's driving at 30mph down the road from Ridgmont for no apparent reason should be banned from the road - that's something we do. In fact, that's how we manage to justify it. Being British, we tend to avoid telling people to their faces that they're fools, cheats, wallies or talking drivel. It's not the way we do things - unless we are at a football match and the person concerned is dressed in black. Oh no. We like to make sure that the people we think these things of are slightly disconnected from us.

• So if somebody is driving, and we are driving, it's OK to think what we like about them.
• If we've never actually met them, but they are from another country and looking for a job - that's fine.
• If  they're in the office, but not actually in front of us - we can say what we like.

And if they're in the same church, the place where we should show most charity, the place where everybody should love each other, the place where we all worship the same God who - from a cross - asked forgiveness for the people who put him there - then naturally we're not going to go fighting and hating each other, are we?

At least, not too openly. Let's face it, if we took Jesus literally we might argue that, if we think someone is a fool, we should save ourselves the trouble and just kill them. But we wouldn't do that. We're British, after all.

Christianity could die out in England. It could. It won't happen for a long time - the believers from Eastern Europe and the developing world, all of whom come here - so the conventional wisdom has it - to claim dole and steal our jobs and use our Health Service - will make sure of that.

But one day, it will. If only because the world will die one day, if only because this country becomes uninhabitable - or maybe because the way Christians live their lives becomes incredible to normal people.

Let's call the last two Christians in England Maurice and Vera. I don't know why. Not married - just the last two of this grand old body of children, women and men to inhabit this lump of rock.

I'd like to think that the last think that passes between thos last two Christians in England, would be the reflection that, after all, God is with us, that God loves us, and that the important thing is not whether something is successful, but whether or not it is true.

I have a fear that the last thing will actually be, that Maurice will attempt to score a point over Vera. Maurice will remark that, after all, if the Church had moved with the times - like he had always been saying - then it would have survived. Vera will counter that, if the Church had stayed true to the Rock on which it was built, and if it had clung fast to the old ways - then it would have flourished. Maurice will point out to Vera that, in the leaflet for the last-ever Old-Form Mass that was conducted, while there was still a Catholic Priest left to preside, there was a spelling mistake and they had solemnly recited the "Agnes Dei". Then he will die with a smirk on his face. And Vera will get her revenge by getting the words "Requesciat in pace" inscribed on his Protestant headstone.


Isn't this what Jesus is trying to tell us? Getting the big things wrong, given the right mental state and a bit of discipline, is quite easy to avoid. But getting the little things right - that's tricky. We can hypothetically love our neighbour, but that doesn't stop us thinking they're a bit of a prat. We won't bash their head in, but we'll quietly patronise the life out of them, obstruct the things they'll like to do, demand cheap Tesco tea if they want Fairtrade (got to look after Church funds), ensure they don't sit too near to us in Church, cunningly dive behind a pew when we could be sharing the Peace with them, agree to their face that their desire for mission is essential - then go home and denounce them as a fanatic.

It's a real challenge, is this stuff Jesus came up with. Like, even going to Church is something we shouldn't do if we're not right with our neighbours. Like, not thinking our neighbours are twits, even when they self-evidently are. Like, just being people who can be taken at our words, and not resorting to twisting what we mean, or getting it half-right, or crossing our fingers or whatever.

You know, on the whole, I reckon we're gonna fail. Let's just hope it's not us that does the judging. We'd never let us off.

---

* Just what is a tittle? Is it a very small garden bird? Or something else?

Telegraph Not as Clever as It Thinks it Is on Americans

"One in four Americans 'do not know the Earth circles the Sun'", the Telegraph tells us.

Firstly - the Earth does not "circle" the Sun. It orbits the Sun, sure. In an ellipse.  A kind of egg-shape. Not a circle. That's different. I suppose one could say it "ellipses" the Sun, but I'm not sure that verb exists.

Secondly - it's "One in four Americans does not know....."

Thirdly - for the same reason - it's not "One in four Americans are completely unfamiliar with Nicolaus Copernicus's theory" - that would be is completely unfamiliar.

And fourthly - just for historical balance - astrology is  "sort of scientific". It's an -ology, after all. It's just a failed, very bad form of science. It tries to make predictions based on observations, and it's testable. So it is a kind of science. Just rubbish science.

Yes, points 1 and 4 are quibbling and hair-splitting. But to criticise a nation's astronomy with grammar that bad? Public school education, Telegraph? (Doesn't excuse the Americans, mind)

You're Having a Girafffe

Shock-horror, as a Copenhagen zoo kills a giraffe and feeds it to the lions (Warning - picture of dead giraffe in this link) an article tells us that European zoos kill lots of animals every year.

Well, of course they do. That's the thing about those slow-moving herbivores, not especially endangered, that they keep in herds. If they breed, they have 50% bulls/males/cobs/bucks/dogs and 50% cows/females/pens/harts/bitches. But, especially in herd animals, you don't need that many males. Like Russell Brand at a not-very-bright-women's convention, one male can cover a lot of females. Leaving lots spare.

And yes, you could leave the poor old souls wandering around castrated. But let's face it, if you don't feed lions with spare giraffes, bison, wildebeests and penguins, you only have to feed them dead cattle, sheep etc. Lions eat meat. It's a fact.

Strikes me there's two ways to look at this. We either accept that we keep lions, tigers, cheetahs etc in zoos until the point in the future when somehow we can guarantee they'll be OK to survive as species in the wild, and we believe that the unnatural situations in which we keep zoo animals is justified by protection of biodiversity and/or the educational and/or entertainment value of these creatures.

OR we decide that zoos are so bad, we should close them all and just leave wild animals to whatever protection we can give them in the wild.

But the argument that you can't feed a giraffe to lions because it's gangly, endearing and spotty doesn't hold water. To us, it may seem that cute Marius the giraffe is more worthy of life than a clapped-out Friesian cow. But to a lion, they're both lunch. Spots do not make you more worthy of life.

My Rotten Valentine

So just the one valentine.

You move with the grace of "The Mallard" swooping down the line northwards into York
On a day when the Black Sheep Bitter has hit perfection in the barrel.
Let me count the ways I love you? 3C ways.
(I love you as much as hexadecimal).

It's not signed. But I'm guessing I know who wrote it.

Skating on Thin Ice

Reading this illuminating article (I use the word "article" advisedly) this evening, I reflect on the Beaker Roller-blade Dance competition we held earlier, and reflect the author is so right. Skating really is a reflection of  the godly order of creation.

I had been wondering how to get a partner for the competition, earlier.  I know my readers see me as a sage of a certain age, dispensing wisdom and godly scorn. But there was a time when I was the belle of the Dunstable Leisure Centre Saturday morning roller disco set. Actually,  probably second belle - there was a girl called Heather who had nicer legs, and was rumoured to wear jodhpurs in her spare time.  Still, the point is that going round a badminton court on wheels while Donna Summer croons " I Feel Love" is not unknown to me, and I wanted to feel the thrill of rubber on parquet again.

Now,  Burton Dasset is not my ideal skating partner. But he does have all the advantages of the male sex. That is; he's convinced of his own masculinity, and he's gullible. And, if you're a woman of middle age needing some prat to pick you up while scooting round the Moot House on wheels, they're pretty much prerequisites. So he had to do.

In the event, it was worse than that. Burton naturally thought that my choosing him was a sign of sexual attraction rather than desperation, sure.  But we must not forget that the pasty-faced little son of a COBOL programmer is basically, deep down, a clerical worker.

And so it was that I ended up having to pick the annoying little beggar up and carry  him around for the duration of the "Bolero". I mean, obviously we won. After all, I'm the Archdruid. Nobody was going to give me less than a 6. And that just about made up for having the clammy, lustful little get clutching my waist.

You know,  it's left me realising that Roller-blade-dancing is a lot like the gender relationships we find in the Bible. You get a bunch of strong but unconventional women - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth,  Mary.  And a bunch of useless blokes who go around preening and causing bloodshed - David,  Judah, Solomon. Somewhere down the line, through God's assistance, finally we find one man who can actually do something right. But we know who's done the hard work up to that point.

So Burton can preen all he likes, with his bunch of flowers and his gilt tiara.  And he can enjoy the fact that, just for thirty seconds, I had to hold his leg to get him up in the air.  But don't forget who's taking the other half of the prize home. Oh yeah.  That Laphroaig bottle looks lovely on the mantlepiece. And its contents taste even better.

Speaking the Language

Burton Dasset, on one of his rail journeys,  sends me this picture of a church notice board.  I should say that it's very shiny and reflective, so I've cropped Burton out of it the bottom of it

And I guess I've mixed feelings.  It's a pun sure enough, quite a neat one, of its kind.

"God's not interested in your sin - he's got it covered! "

But who's it aimed at?

My suspicion is that this is quite an evangelical church. Now, the average passer-by won't get it. Quite a lot of them won't have much concept of "sin"; and won't worry nights about an abstract theological concept. They might know they're short-tempered when tired. Might be short on patience with the kids. Maybe they don't like the way they snark about their workmates and wonder why they can't stop doing it. But they probably don't worry, as such, about sin, as such.

And then we have "covered". In this context it's probably even a bit of an obscure concept to the average passing Anglican or - for someone who grasps "sin" as a meaningful thing, rather than an outmoded idea best dealt with by psychiatry or self-realisation means - Catholic.

So an unfashionable concept followed by a pun fathomable only by someone deeply immersed in evangelical redemption theology. I think it's pretty clear whom they're trying to attract, consciously or not.

The Baptists up the road.

Celebration of the Nativity of Charles Darwin

Archdruid: The Inexorable Power of the Unseen, Blind Hand of Selection be with you.

All: Aren't hands normally blind?

Archdruid: Oo, yeah.  I've mixed my metaphors right up there haven't I?

All: Crack on, we've all got a lot of evolving to do.

Archdruid: Okey-dokey. So today we're marking the birth of Charles Darkins, who went round the world on a beagle.  Which, needless to say, died of exhaustion - well, wouldn't you, trotting round  the world with a famous Oxford professor on your back?

The untimely death of the beagle led Dawwin to realise he should have picked a fitter dog  In retrospect, the one he chose didn't have a wet,  shiny nose. But it was a lovely colour, and reminded him of one he'd had when he was a child.  So you could say  it was a natural selection.

Stranded in the Galapagos, the naturally observant Darkwings noticed that the tortoises were extremely large. This contradicted everything he had learned in the Bible, which nowhere mentions large tortoises. Furthermore it was obvious to him that, given the slow-moving nature of his new shelly acquaintances and their size, they would have obstructed the gangways on Noah's Ark. There was nothing for it - clearly Religion was Untrue.

Charles Darkling was aided in his discovery by the Finch family, whom he encountered on the islands.  He noticed that Cytherea Finch had a small, attractive nose. Her sister Tiberia had a much larger, Roman nose while Claudio Finch,  their older brother, had a big spot on his nose after being stung by an Ichneumon wasp. Young Charles only found himself attracted to Cytherea, leaving him to conclude that it was the Finch's beaks that decided the likelihood of them successfully finding a mate.  Especially Claudio who, having a bright red nose and accordingly grumpy attitude,  had no mates at all.

And so Charles and Cytherea were married by Fr Mendel, a local monk who ran a pea farm, who explained the concept of genetics to Charles. Charles thought it was all a bit far fetched, and became a Unitarian. After going blind from eating too many tortoises, he had to scrape a living as a watchmaker.  The end.

All: Thanks,  Eileen. Suddenly the whole story makes sense.

Archdruid: No worries. Just two notices. If anyone's wondering what happened to Alfie the spitting alpaca, he was in the "Traditional Ethnic South American Curry" last night. I think the community alpacas are going to find that spitting is not a good trait to pass on. And on the way out, please don't scare Recessive Jean. She's always a bit nervous,  and she's hiding in the cupboard.

Why Project Managers Cannot be Good Christians

An unemployed IT project manager, who is also a devout Christian, contacts me to ask my careers advice.

Turns out her job prospects are being damaged by the Twitter account "Baptist Bible Hour". As it told her:

"Beware of Worry: your inability to plan the future is your strength, 

if it leads you to rely on Christ"

Can you imagine, she asks, how her job interviews have gone lately?

"So, Ms P.M. Candidate.  Under what circumstances would you put an entry in the risk register? "

"I wouldn't. Because a risk is a symptom of worry.  It implies an uncertain future, and that would mean I had no faith."

"OK. Can you tell me about your planning tools?  Are you used to MS Project, or Open Workbench?  What do you use to track dependencies?"

"No, I am incapable of planning.  I find that being unable to plan leads me to depend on Christ"

"So - surely - a complex project.  Standard waterfall, or maybe an iterative approach?"

"HERETIC!!!! REPENT OR BURN!"

Thirty-eight interviews. No second interviews.  Despite the fact she's never prepared for them, because that would be planning.

I've suggested she adopts an Agile methodology.  That regards planning as a loss of faith, as well.

Where You Place the Blame

It was the younger of the two history dons at Brasenose College in the late 80s - the one who wore, if memory serves, corduroy and in his spare time used to dish out fines to undergraduates for such minor misdemeanours as dancing on the roof of the college, letting off fire extinguishers in the library and stapling people to New Quad with croquet hoops.

He it was who had a poster on his wall, which seemed apposite to the jobs both of History tutors and Junior Deans.

"It's not about whether you win or lose. It's where you place the blame."

And at this time of flooding, I can't help reflecting that David Cameron must, at one time or another, have stood in there shelling out 50 quid for doing handstands on the Principal,  or converting the pool table into a beer-pond or whatever, reading those words of wisdom and reflecting that,  at about 4 quid a word, they were cheap at half the price.

When everybody is neck deep in alligators, you deal with alligators. The time to ask who filled the room with alligators is later. For the time being, the issue is not forestry, or dredging (unless there is somewhere it might facilitate drying-out without wrecking a town downstream.  It's not about the EU. It's not who cut what budget. It's not who broke what promise. It's certainly not about Climate Change. It's getting people out of water and protecting property and facilities.

Let's learn the lessons, and take the necessary actions, when energy can be used on that, rather than worrying about the problems directly ahead of us. As Basil Fawlty wisely once said, we can deal with the sackings later.