Preparation for Morning Devotions

Having conducted a rapid 7-year "Shared Conversation" on the experiences of people who fit spiritual devotions into their morning routine, the Beaker Liturgical Group are pleased to share these experimental rubrics for devotional preparation.

The Pre Preparation

At the sound of the alarm, the worshipper may press the "snooze" button.

At the sound of the second alarm, the worshipper may swear fluently.

[If the worshipper shares their room with a spouse, partner, sibling or other (who are we to judge) the following may be used:

Worshipper: N (or, as it may be, "Sweetie", "Hon", "Bae" or "Me'Duck", do you want a coffee?

N: I do.]

Liturgy of Multitasking

The worshipper may start the bath running, go downstairs to the kitchen, plug in the iron and switch on the coffee machine [Methodists may put on the kettle and put some "instant" in a cup, as may Catholics since Vatican II]

Discovering they have forgotten to bring their blouse/shirt down with them, the worshipper may run back upstairs,  to discover their smartphone alarm is now going off.

Going back downstairs the worshipper realises they were distracted by the phone and forgot to get the shirt/blouse.

The worshipper retrieves the shirt/blouse to discover they forgot to switch the iron on when they plugged it in.

Ministry of waiting for the iron to warm up

During the waiting time, the worshipper may feed the cat or switch the TV on briefly to check out the news.

A Time to Move Swiftly

Noticing water coming through the ceiling, the worshipper will run upstairs very quickly.

A Time of Mopping Up may be introduced at this point.

A Time of Completion

The worshipper irons the blouse/shirt, pours out the coffee [Methodists etc pour boiling water on coffee granules making a vile brew] and takes the coffee and shirt upstairs.

Full Immersion

The worshipper may run enough water out of the bath to accommodate their own volume, in accordance with Archimedes' Principle.

Revelation

The worshipper realises the smartphone is still on the dressing table.

A time of improvisation may take place, until the worshipper realises they have left the iron on and switched off the freezer instead.

From an original idea by Paul Stead

Wise Words from Oscar Wilde

"Religion comforts you in your illness. But antibiotics make your better"
- Oscar Wilde

Being David Walker

In a world containing billions of people, it's not surprising that some people have the same first and second names - the premise on which the entire book "Are you Dave Gorman?" was based.

But there's only one famous Dave Gorman (two - if you include the erstwhile assistant manager of East Fife). But a name that is statistically slightly more common, apparently has a much greater success rate in people of moderate celebrity.

There's

• David Walker, Bishop of Manchester
• Dave Walker, Church and Cycling cartoonist 
• David Walker, Civil Rights activist
• David Walker, Catholic bishop in Australia
• David Walker, Expert in Leisure Centre Safety for RoSPA
• Dave Walker, vocalist with Fleetwood Mac
• David Walker, astronaut
• David Walker, bon viveur and partner of Polly Toynbee

This is quite a selection. I have only met one of them (David Walker). However I do wonder. Is the Walker clan unique in that all its members called "David" are successful? Or is there a simpler explanation? Is David Walker simultaneously the Bishop of Manchester, a Catholic bishop, a cartoonist, a rock singer, an astronaut, a 19th Century Civil Rights activist and Polly Toynbee's accident-preventing partner? 

Nah, probably not. Nobody could cope with the pressure, surely. Not even David Walker.

---

Football is Defiance

People think football is a religion, and supporters worship players.

I've never seen it that way, and I think Nick Hornby put it best when he said that footballers are our representatives. That's why we are so rude when they don't perform.

Our respective French and English representatives did us proud this evening. Here are some symbols of defiance against darkness:

The sun rising
Forgiving
Baptism
Loving somebody from another religion
Thinking things will be better this time
Trying again
Kicking a football when some loser tried to bomb the last game.

The darkness has to be defied. Ever since Michael threw Satan out of heaven.

The darkness has to be defied. That's the only positive thing it's for.

(Title taken from Hugo Lloris's post-match interview).

Can't Take it With You

A really interesting session this afternoon with the Little Pebbles, looking at the story of the Rich Young Ruler.

We spent a while working out how you'd get a camel through the eye of a needle. The Tardis being the best suggestion, in my opinion. And then some lovely imaginative stuff about what we thought happened the Ruler after the encounter with Jesus.

Smirffette suggested he maybe just went off to count his money and make himself happy about his decision.

Dreyland said maybe after he'd thought a bit more about it, and joined the church later on, becoming a prominent backer after Pentecost.

But Eustace suggested that the Rich Young Ruler "died of sadness." You know, I reckon he may well be right.

Just the Birth Pains

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” 

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs. (Mark 13:1-8)

The people of Paris - the ones indirectly affected, not those who are grieving or injured or worrying for loved ones - the vast majority of the people of Paris, I guess, feel much like I did 10 years ago. 10 years ago when a bunch of fantasist losers killed dozens of people in London. That numbness, the anger because - whether we like it or not - we kind of hanker after revenge and there's none to be had when the emotionally-stunted adolescents who committed the crimes have always intended to die in the act.

And now it's happened again, like in Mumbai, like in Westgate in Nairobi, Kenya. Like in Beirut, or Baghdad, where it was Muslims killed not Christians or Hindus atheists or death-metal fans. Like in Oregon last month where the narcissistic loser looked for eternal life on the Internet, not with a bunch of alleged virgins.

I don't blame Islam - don't blame "Muslims" - for what's happened in Paris. Like I don't blame Christianity for the endless series of massacres in American schools and workplaces. Like I don't blame atheism for the purges of Stalin, Lenin and Mao. I do wonder about the selection criteria used by Islamists middle-management for people on suicide missions - they must have a particular combination of moderate ability, expendability and gullibility. You wouldn't, if you were a murderous co-ordinator of an evil cell, want to throw away your good people, or your genuinely intelligent ones. Islamism - as revealed by the vile organisation of losers and murderers and liars called Da'esh - that's nothing in common with the talented, peaceful Muslims I know. You might as well say I am in alignment with an American "prepper" or Anders Breivik.

In the reading, Jesus is in the area round the Temple. Remember what happened just before? Everyone's been putting their cash in the collection boxes. The loadsamoney collaborators with the Romans have been waving their wads about, and dropping them in - conspicuous contribution. The widow has put her two penn'orth in the box. Jesus has been indefinitely angry about the situation.

And when the disciples tell Jesus - "look at this lovely building" - this building which is still being built, on the boasts of fat-cats and the last hopes of widows - look how it's going up - what a beauty!

And Jesus tells them - not one stone will be left on another. You; the rich kids; the widow with her mite - they're all investing in a failed venture. The widow should have spent her mite on a decent bagel. The rich kids could have thrown their cash out  the window to the poor, or chucked it down the drain, for all the difference it makes. This temple will be gone in a generation.

Reminds me of Ford Prefect, in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, when he realises the thing that nobody else stranded on Earth, two million BC, knows. As they try to work out what colour the wheel should be, and how people might relate to fire, and they burn down the forests to stop their currency (the leaf) depreciating, Ford loses his temper, and delivers the following speech:

"I have got news for you. It doesn’t matter a pair fetid dingo’s kidneys what you all choose to do from now on. Burn down the forests, anything. It won’t make a scrap of difference. Two-million years you’ve got, and that’s it. At the end of that, your race will be dead, gone, and good-riddance to you. Remember that. Two. Million. Years."

To which the captain, who's spent the entire trip to Earth and the time since they landed, in the bath, responds: 

"Just time for another bath. Pass me the sponge somebody will you? 

Actually, the captain's not so wrong. If you know you've only got a limited time, might as well make the most of it... Jesus is telling them that temple has a limited shelf-life. No point investing time, money or awe in it.

And every violation of peace in this world is a reminder that the things we are tempted to put our faith in, have limited shelf-lives. The Twin Towers - those symbols of capitalist confidence. The temples of Palmyra - smashed up by the same satanic narcissists who apparently sent those stupid narcissists to Paris this week. The statues of Stalin that were smashed up as people celebrated the end of the Iron Curtain. The Temple of Jerusalem went because a bunch of bunch of Zealots - Jewish revolutionaries - became convinced they could throw off the oppression of Rome. They couldn't. The Romans took terrible revenge. Not one stone left on another? Not quite - the Western Wall still remains, a place of sadness and remembrance. A reminder that things that look like they might last forever - don't. Sometimes peace is good, sometimes it's oppressive. But always those who say "peace, peace" discover there's no peace.

And for 2,000 years we've known there is no peace. Thomas Hardy was satirical and spiky in his poem "Christmas: 1924" - reflecting on the war that had recently been fought. A few lines so appropriate today:

"Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as mustard gas".

We don't stop fighting, we just come up with new ways to do it.

Jesus effectively said - this is the way it's gonna be to the end. The wars and rumours of war will come. Nations will fight. The earth will shake. But none of these mean the end is here. Fools who think they're going to kill their way to heaven, and fools who want ten minutes' fame on Facebook, will murder innocent people. Politicians who think they're doing the right thing - or just want their moment of glory - look to foreign fields. And they always have. People who think that their latest system will last forever will be sadly disappointed.

130 deaths in Paris seem pointless - a murderous interruption of a Friday night out. 8 fools who never grew up, taking out their adolescent angst, their loser mentality, on better-balanced, more successful, all-round nicer people. How's that fair? A cyclist out for a ride on a country road is wiped out by a driver who's not looking where he's going - how's that fair? The American-led coalition tries to hit Taliban soldiers and instead wipe out an MSF hospital. How on earth is that fair?



These are just the birth pains.

Love is cast like a thread of gold through the blood and dirt. The Parisians last night had a hashtag - "Porte Ouverte" - offering a place to stay to those who couldn't get home. Those of us who love freedom mourned for the dead of another country. The ones who have Muslim friends love them no less today than we did yesterday. I remember the man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II - whom the Pope forgave. I remember endless stories of German and British soldiers who, after the war - sometimes long after - came together in friendship.

The Kingdom doesn't come in violence and hatred. It comes in love. It comes in those who mourn. It comes in knowing that, though this world is a bloody, bitter, unreliable place - though men (nearly always men) do evil things - the world is conceived in love and held in love and has love shot through it. It comes in believing that a coherent story is woven into the chaos of the threads of pain and war.

The Kingdom comes when an innocent man, who preached peace and loved foreigners and women - against all the local social rules - is nailed to a cross and dies in front of a baying mob. How was that fair? Our religion is centered on a meaningless, unfair tragedy. And in the middle of that tragedy, he says the words, "Father forgive them - for they don't know what they are doing." And he turns our self-justification and our claims of revenge and our victim mentalities upside down.

These birth pangs may last a very long time. We don't currently know whether they're proper contractions or just Braxton Hicks'. We can't predict when the Kingdom will finally arrive in its full glory. But we can live on its borderlands and be true to our King. Love our enemies, give to those who have nothing, offer shelter to the alien and forgive.

The Temple didn't last. Our Western civilisation won't last. ISIS - that evil, vicious combination of victim mentality and teenage narcissism - won't last, either. Our structures, our companies, our political systems, our world for that matter - won't last. Love and hope remain. The things we cling onto, against all sense. The things that stop us hating others, if we only stop and think and reflect. The things that make us get up in the morning regardless - that get the sun up in the morning. God is eternal, and his eternal love is woven through all things.  Through revenge, through senseless tragedy, through pain and hate and despair. Through to when the birth pangs are over and the new world is born. Love still remains. Love still remains.

Prime Ministers' Question Time

Speaker: The Prime Minister!

David Cameron: Is the Prime Minister aware of the appalling effect of austerity cuts on the services provided by Local Government? I have been speaking to a council leader in Oxfordshire who is unable to provide front-line services.

DC: Look, we all know that the Right Honourable member has opposed everything this Government has had to do to clear up the mess the previous Government left. Councils will have to find savings in administrative posts, and greater efficiencies.

DC: It is typical of the Prime Minister to blame the previous Conservative Government for everything. In my own constituency, cuts have been so severe that the entire Environment, Social Services and Lighting departments are run by one woman, a Mrs Goggins who also runs the sub-post-office. Is the Prime Minister prepared to come to my constituency to see for himself the damage his policies are causing?

DC: I am pleased to say I very recently visited the Right Honourable Member's constituency. I spent a Saturday afternoon in an antique shop and a tea room, and then left one of my children in a pub in Stow-on-the-Wold. And neither my family, the shopkeeper nor the Portuguese waitress in the tea room complained about a lack of social services. At least, I presume the waitress didn't. She was speaking Portuguese. But I promise the Right Honourable Gentleman that she is just the kind of hard-working person that we will be stopping accessing any services at all once we have completed our negotiations with Europe.

Speaker: The Right Honourable Jeremy Corbyn!

(Cries of "God save the Queen", "Did you kiss her" etc)

JC: I have a letter from Tracy in Amersham. She asks, "Please could you play Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade, and can you say hello to my sister, Angela who's just starting work..."

Happy Christmas, Mr Starbucks

There's been a lot of fuss about nothing over the Starbucks Xmas cup. Apparently having no Xmas-related imagery on it is rejecting the whole feast and with it Christianity, motherhood and apple pie.

Whereas obviously putting a snowflake, reindeer or penguin on the cup is just like having the lickle baby Jesus in the room with you. Which of course, in a very real sense, he is. Though he's not the hipsters behind the counter. Except in a very real sense, obviously.

The good news is, it looks like Christians are getting their rebuttals in early to prove we're not all idiots. In fact, I reckon Starbucks, being sellers of coffee, are under no obligation to do anything "seasonal" at all with their mugs. We don't expect restaurants to change all their crockery to feature nativity scenes every November, after all.

But the logo is still on the mugs. And as that link shows, the logo is meant to be based on a siren. That's right, a vicious woman who sits around looking attractive and singing seductive songs on rocks, and then destroys the sailors who are lured into her clutches. Though these days she sits on a cardboard cup on the premises of a purveyor of average-quality coffee, luring hipsters and office workers into telling the barista what their name is. Which, if you think about it, is basically a gigantic, low-tech phishing exercise. She must feel she's come down in the world.

But look at it another way, O people who like to feel more Christmassy. Maybe, like many of these things, the whole "pagan" link is a lie. This is, after all, a woman with a star on her head, with watery associations - at Christmas. .And Starbucks are encouraging their customers to scribble on their cups.

I suggest when you go Starbucks, if that's the kind of thing you do, you tell the barista that your name is "Stella". And then grab your green pen.... 

Surely what they've actually done, unknowingly, is paid their respects to "Stella Maris", the Star of the Sea - a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Even if it's not, let's face it, we're good at repurposing pagan ideas. We've been doing it for 2,000 years, apparently. So that mug's a bit more suitable for Advent, innit? Happy Christmas, Mr Starbucks!

Bling it On

Now it's Christmas, the Beaker Folk have been asking me what precisely they are allowed to use in a festive manner, from what date.

I should say I'm not a keen celebrator of early Christmas. Partly because I appreciate liturgical cycles, and partly because of that time eight years ago when I tried to pull down the bling from the then-Moot House and ended up in MK General having thatch removed from various awkward locations.

Still, Guy Fawkes is over now. And the Diwali celebrations are going to be muted now our trained monkeys are working in the Labour PR department. So we may as well remember the reason for the season. Which is, of course, having vague feelings of goodwill with no moral or eschatological implications.

9-14 November "Season of Pre-selling"

Decorations in designated commercial areas (Beaker Bazaar; Offering Plates; Canteen)
Woolly hats, fleeces with images of penguins, polar bears, reindeer, Bambi.

15-30 November "Little Bling"

• Lights on all available roofs, in trees, on walls and shelves. But, only in red in keeping with the liturgical season. We're not evangelicals, after all.
• Mince pies
• Wall-to-wall Xmas films on the Beaker TV channel.
• Santa hats, but not full outfits. 
• Mince pies
• Sweaters with pictures of holly
• "Spaceman came travelling" by Chris de Burgh
• Xmas trees on desks, in the Beaker Canteen and the Moot House.

"So that the villagers can say, 'The Church looks nice' on All Saints' Day"

31 November (Delayed Halloween)

During this conceptual period between two real dates, we will light candles in punkies and hang them in trees to scare off evil spirits. Also eat Christmas puddings.

1-12 December ("Greater Bling")

• Violet or bright blue LED bling
• Slade
• Dancing reindeer
• Singing snowmen,
• Ties with festive pictures
• Santas, 
• Fully-decked trees.
• Christmas jumpers
• Reindeer onesies
• Full Santa outfits
• "It's a Wonderful Life" loop on the Wonderwall.

13-24 December (proper Christmas)

• White LED bling (and blue, red, yellow, green)
• Frankly, anything vaguely Christmassy you like.
• Life-size Stephen Fry suits
• Massive baubles the size of beach balls
• Dressing up as holly bushes
• Nothing but Kirsty & the Pogues
• Crocodile onesies
• Ronnie Corbett masks

25 December onwards (Easter)

Creme eggs

Buying bling in the sales

Marriage in the Image of God

Somebody linked to this article on "Marriage is a Mirror" (of God's nature presumably). Which was interesting. It's apparently published by the "Gospel Coalition", but I'm guessing the Liberal Democrats weren't part of this particular coalition.

It's mostly interesting for being an example of arguing backwards from what you've decided, to how you'd like God to be. Its basic argument being that (heterosexual) marriage is what God wants, and anything else probably isn't. Apparently, "among God’s people marriage is no longer a battleground", which will be a bit of a shock to Drayton Parslow and Marjorie. Although, to be fair, their marriage is not so much a battleground as a massacre. Marjorie owned that relationship a long time ago. Let's pick some bits out.

"There’s a tendency to jump straight to the hot-button issues of headship and submission when considering a passage like Ephesians 5." 

Yes there is. But the passage does that by tucking the hot-button issues firmly away under the category "ultimate goals", while doing a bit of theology.

There's stuff that I agree with  - our identity isn't rooted in our sexuality. Although sexuality is a part of our identity, it is just part. Albeit if you're not straight and married, it's still going to be the part some people in the Church focus on more than others. Which will always make it more of your identify than you really planned.

But then there's a non-sequitur. If being created in the image of God grounds our identity (I think it does) then how does that suddenly jump to God designing "marriage to be the lifelong union of one man and one woman working toward a shared goal"? Where is the logical step between those two? If it is that God made us all, male and female, in the image of God - then there might be some logic to that. If it wasn't for everything that follows.

This is what does it for me.

"The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in a permanent, plural, equal, complementary, ordered, and loving union. And since we’re created like God, we thrive in marriage relationships that mirror his trinitarian union."

Since we are created in the image of a God who is in three persons (all of whom, according to this article, are implicitly male) we thrive in a marriage relationship that mirrors God's union - as a pair, one male one female.

Is it just me?

I'd like to take the following statements slowly. Here we go.

"Since God is permanent, he designed us for lasting marriages, not divorce."

Except that God is eternal, and Jesus makes it quite clear that our marriages will not survive the resurrection. I like CS Lewis's attitude to this (apologies, I forget which book, and I'm not going to look it up at this time of a Monday night), where he suggests that marital love will be caught up into the universal love that is what makes up life in heaven.

"Since God is triune, he designed us for marriages of intimate companionship to counteract loneliness." 

So to be unmarried is to have greater loneliness than to be married. This may or may not be true. But it does go against the statement that "Christians celebrate the dignity of childhood and celibate singleness and widowhood". Because if marriages are what makes us more like the image of God, then clearly any other state makes us less like God. Doesn't it?

"Since God is three equal persons, he designed us for marriages in which husbands and wives are equally dignified." 

I don't want to be crass. But the arithmetic is awkward here.

"Since God is diverse and complementary, he created marriage to be diverse and wonderfully complementary within a heterosexual union, not a homosexual union."

Not once in this passage does the Gospel Coalition attribute feminine characteristics to God. And yet apparently God's diversity (which is, I really do believe, expressed in the three persons) is only reflected in the human diversity of having different sexual organs.

I mean, I say what? We as humans are diverse in all sorts of ways. We are different heights. We are male and female. Black and white. Some girls' mothers are, apparently, bigger than other girls' mothers. I have no idea what Morrisey meant like this, But it does emphasise the intrinsic truth that even women who are mothers have diversity. I have a love for words, theology and molecular biophysics. You may be a guitarist, or a certified accountant, or posses an FLT licence. You may be good at football - I was always fond of hockey. Our diversity is manifold and often unexpected. To reduce that to the possession of XY vs XX chromosomes is a bit reductive, isn't it?

"Since God’s Trinity is ordered (the Son and the Spirit gladly submitting to the Father), he designed all human relationships—including marriage—with authority to be exercised lovingly and submission to be given willingly without any implication of superiority or inferiority." 

OK. We've got to that hot button now haven't we? The Son and the Spirit gladly submit to the Father. Two (implicitly male) persons in the Trinity submit to the Father. Which makes them "equal" and yet, as it turns out, subordinate.  I'm not sure there is any Biblical authority that says "women submit to your husbands, just as Jesus submitted to his Father." If you want to find the Biblical warrant, it is that the Church submits to Jesus. That is, as we say these days, problematic, although it opens up all sorts of discussions about sacrifice - about the way Jesus actually put the eternal life of the Church above his own life. Personally I'd say that Paul is arguing from the present reality of married life as lived to the way God is.  But the idea that the relationship of Jesus to the Father is like that of a woman to a husband - nowhere. The concept that a woman is to submit to her husband like the Spirit obeys the Father - nowhere.  And to jump from that to the following: "a woman may exercise loving authority over her children or her colleagues—or willingly submit to the authority of her employer, church elders, and husband". That's dangerous. To willingly submit to the authority of any of them is to open her up to the possibility of spiritual or other abuse. To take the employer as an example - we don't "willingly submit" to our employers. We negotiate a contract. We expect respect, and reasonable pay, in return for doing what we're told. And if what we're told to do is unreasonable, we're legally allowed to refuse it. That's not submission - that's negotiation.

I'd like to leave you with the Athanasian Creed here. I find, apart from the anathemata and the repetition, it tends to help.

"And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped." 

It's in worshipping the diverse Trinity as the full diversity of humanity - male, female, black, white, brown, able-bodied and with disability, gay, straight, struggling and sure, emotional and intellectual and autistic and logical and irrational and utterly incoherent - that's where we reflect the Trinity. We don't reflect God's diversity by just having two different sets of genitals.

And yes, marriage is a great thing. And yes, when it works and it's loving and sacrificial and relationally creative and fulfilling it tells us something of the Trinity and something of God's love. But it ain't everything.

Jonah and the Owls

Jon 3:1-5;10. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

Obviously, that version of Jonah was in our reality. Jonah hasn't done much really to get his message a hearing. After all the refusal to go and preach, after all the being eaten by a giant fish, he's just walked a day into the great city and shouted out "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown."

Maybe the people of Nineveh were in a very edgy mood for some reason. Maybe the beat groups playing rock and roll that had made God, when he heard it, say "Bless my soul" - maybe they'd stopped the cheery rock and started down a more bluesy theme. And the Ninevites were just ready for Jonah's message.

We know that the decisions we make can be very borderline. I mean, I remember when we did the "Jonah man Jazz" at St Mitholmroyd's School for the Children of Distressed Gentlefolk. I really wanted to be Jonah, but my friend Sue got the part. Apparently the reason she did so well at audition was that she wore tennis pumps, whereas the rest of us were in standard strappy sandals.  These are the narrow lines that divide major decisions. I was relegated by a pair of plimsolls to singing alto and plotting revenge.

So maybe there was another dimension where another Jonah turned up to another Nineveh. But in this Nineveh, the beat groups were still playing a rock and roll and the good times were still rolling, and when Jonah turned up he got different responses.

"Overthrown? By what agency? The Babylonians have been in a right mess, ever since the plague struck. We've thoroughly discounted the risks of global warming on account of our lack of cars, coal-fired power stations and airplanes. We're nowhere near any volcanoes. There was an earthquake three years ago, but our best seismologists have slaughtered a chicken, and according to its entrails there's no danger of another for thirty years.

"Also - we've had a whole series of prophets over the last few years. That Hammurabi Camping - he threatened a disaster of " Biblical proportions. " Well, we pointed out to him that any disaster is gonna be of Biblical proportions. We are, after all, in the Bible. Then someone threatened another flood, and we explained to him that Noah's Flood is a creation myth shared by many Ancient Middle Eastern cultures - or, as we call them, Modern Middle Eastern cultures. And so we see it more as a metaphor for an angry, irrational deity than as a real climatological threat. Somebody said we are in danger of being invaded by Luxembourg. So, anyway, we've taken to just locking them all up in the rooftop cell of Nineveh police station. "

By a coincidence or maybe not - it was as Jonah passed his fortieth day on the rooftop - arguing with Hammurabi Camping as to whether the world would end with a bang, or a whimper - that Nineveh was overthrown by the attack of a large flock of blood-crazed owls.

It's so fine, the balance of our decisions. The Church of England has apparently published research saying that the last thing you should do, if you want people to know about Jesus, is tell them anything about him. Unsure if they have any further advice on how we should fulfil the Great Commission in that case. Maybe print the Sermon on the Mount on a set of coasters or buy one of those toasters that burns an image of Jesus's face onto the bread? But the point is - it's not an easy thing these days, telling people about your faith. I mean, with 40 days to go, Jonah could hardly have started a Church of England school and hoped that, after 5 or 6 years of singing Lord of the Dance in assembly, the word of the Lord might have seeped into the population by a process of osmosis.

No, it's a hard thing to do, sharing God's message - whether a nasty one, like the one for Nineveh or good news about Jesus.

But it seems to me that it's about our own closeness to God in the first instance. You can only share what someone is like if you know yourself. You can only be sure of God's love and Jesus's being alive, if you're letting the Spirit rest in you. You'll know better when to share and better when to be quiet. And if you're spending time in proper prayer - prayer where you accept that God can change you to be as God wants, not necessarily just change the world to be as you think it should be - then maybe some of God's love will flow out in a natural way, without you putting on the beaming smile and shiny eyes and silly voice to tell that simple truth that Jesus loves you.

And sometimes we share a message that can simply be rejected. There's no shame or harm on that for us. We have stood on a watchtower, done our job, been faithful messengers and we can move on. Other people have a right to make their own minds up - to welcome the action of the Spirit in their own spirits, or not. In our dimension, Jonah sat under a marrow plant and fumed that Nineveh had repented. In that other dimension, he laughed as the sinful city was torn apart by the Owls of Destruction. Although, as the few survivors fled the city, he panicked as he remembered he was locked on the roof.

It doesn't matter. Unless you are locked on a roof while homicidal owls swoop around, thirsty for blood. Then you've other things to worry about. But you've done your job. As St Francis definitely didn't say, preach the Gospel. If necessary, use lemon drizzle cake. As Our Lord said, if the  message isn't received, shake the dust from your feet and move on.

And look out for owls.