The Universalist Missonal Resignation

Odd little discussion just now with Bertrand.

You know Bertrand? Lives just down the road. Opposite the Reading Room. In the imaginary cottage nobody from Husborne Crawley really lives in.

I was doing the old missional thing on Bertrand. Responding to the Great Commission. You know, going to all nations, pouring out Beakers etc etc. Telling him that God loves him and Jesus wants him to come along to the Moot House on Sundays and what about it, eh?

And Bertrand says, "What about if I don't?"

And I go, "You what?"

And he goes, "Since God loves me so much he'll let me into heaven regardless, and Hell is empty if not non-existent, and I find it hard to get up on Sundays - why do I need to do anything? Can't I just sit around drinking Greenwich Brewery beer, and flicking  left over silver-foil pie cases from the  Woburn Sands chip shop at the picture of Richard Bacon I've nailed to the mantelpiece I put in  specifically to flick pie cases at pictures of Richard Bacon on?

And I've had a think about it. And he's got a point.

Anyone got a spare pie?

The Ghost of Kenneth Williams Stalks Regents Place

When Kenny Williams of most joyful memory departed this vale of tears - with a most enigmatic entry in his diary - he was living in a flat in Marlborough House, in Osnaburgh Street, London NW.

Ken died in 1988. Too young, too funny, too unloved. The flat was, after a while, demolished. His blue plaque was removed but replaced, when the site was redeveloped, by the plaque which is in the Diorama Theatre.

Regents Place is a typically modern London environment. Gone are the flats of Kenneth Williams' ken. In their place are shiny office blocks, trendy pubs with glass walls, and a health club. Because nothing is more useful to London's thrusting executives than a fitness suite they never have the time to get to.

Of a late evening, the Union bar stops selling overpriced lager to stressed Santander bankers and Atos executives. The concrete canyons fall silent. The striding-woman art installation stops walking and has a breather. Only the BT Tower, looming over the scene, is unchanging - and mostly as Kenny knew it.

It is then that Kenneth Williams stalks the estate, in eternal search of a cooker preserved in a wrap of polythene - of a toilet used by no other human being. Or of a fumble with a muscular builder of ambiguous preferences.

People who have walked through Regents Place in the small hours have reported their experiences. A chill, both unsettling and yet childishly vulnerable. The sense of a presence that is both lovable and yet, oddly, unloved. A spirit reaching out for love and yet pulling away from contact.

And the sound on the wind as the restless soul looks forever for the place, now gone, where he and his Louie found their temporary peace. Accounts differ but young Cockney men - mostly maintenance men of a certain build - are convinced of what they have heard.

A nasal intonation, a mixture of sarcasm and the desire to please, and the sound that echoes across the square and its glass passageways:

"Oooh Matron! Stop messin' about!"

A Festive Crown of Thorns

"The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn."

Walking out in the half-light this morning and struck by an image. A door with four glass panels, and hung on a nail on the central cross of wood, a crown of thorns.

The analogy is not new, as the carol reminds us. A north European tree - symbol, so they say, of enduring life. An evergreen tree, carrying hope and life through the shortest days and darkest nights of the year.

And in bending those prickly branches to a welcoming circle, an everlasting truth and a horror is woven into being. A festive dance becomes an instrument of torture. A crown of thorns, through all centuries awaiting the coming of the true God, priest and king.

The berries - the things that give food to the birds of the air (whose very feathers are numbered). They carry the ones who feed on them through the dark times, shining bright even in snow and the hardest of frosts. They shine as red as wine. As red as holy blood on a Judean hillside.

And so they hang on the doors this expectant Advent morning. The thorns of pain, the bloodberries. A crown awaits the baby king before his birth.

And I walk down the lane, and in shadow each festive door carries its own, unknowing message of incarnation and sacrifice.

A crown of thorns
A crown of thorns
A crown of thorns.....

Frog in Nando's - a Tribute Song

Did you see the frog in Nando's?
It's been quite a while since I have seen a chicken-leg in your hand.
And I don't blame you in Nando's
Cos batrachians aren't what you expect when eating pitta bread.
And I'm glad we saw the leg
And didn't try and eat its desiccated head.

There was something in the salad that night
It wasn't right - in Nando's.
It was laying there for you and me
We didn't see - in Nando's.
Though I never thought that it could croak
- there's no rivets
If I have to do the same again
I'll take my friend
somewhere else.

Praise Him on the Blue Suede Shoes

Just because...


Well praise God in his Temple.
    Praise him in heav'n.
Praise him for his strength and greatness too.
And praise him with a harp and kazoo.
You can praise him with the organ
and the tambourine too.

Well you can praise him with lyres
praise him with dance
praise him with plainsong, choirs and chants
and praise him with the loud cymbals too
Yeah you can praise his holy name
with your songs and blue suede shoes.

The Cycles That Ate London

Lord Lawson tells the Lords that cycling has done more damage to London than anything since the Blitz.

It's true enough. My grandmother was a Londoner. And I remember her stories of her laying awake at night, whenever there was a "Cyclist's Moon", terrified that someone would wipe out her street with a new cycle lane.

She said the great thing about the Blackout was it completely eliminated red-light jumping by cyclists. But when, late one night, a bunch of cyclists came round and knocked her house down, she knew it was time to get my uncle evacuated to the countryside, where there were fewer bikes.

As my uncle waved from the train window at St Pancras, he remembered seeing, far off, the ARP wardens desperately trying to keep cycle helmets off the roof of St Paul's.

Seriously, Lord Lawson, among the things that have had a worse impact on London than cyclists are cars, lorries, 60s brutalist architects, the modern generation of planners who have made the Thames waterfront look like a playroom for a giant baby, the Subway sandwich chain, the people who put ads for prostitutes in phone boxes, acid rain, car parks, pigeons, rats, Margaret Thatcher, the Al Qaeda-inspired narcissists of 7/7, the IRA and the people who knocked the old Euston Station down.

If you want to see something causing more delays than cycle infrastructure, Lord Lawson, then why not go to Soho and Fitzrovia and see what Crossrail and endless gentrification and redevelopment are doing to traffic flows?

And if you really want to avoid cycles, why not do what my Nan did during the Blitz?

Go down the Tube.

How the World Ends - Not with a Bang but a Whisper

Fascinated listening to this morning's Start the Week - including a discussion about the possibilities for preserving and maybe re-creating extinct and dying languages.

It draws analogies, as it probably should, with seed storage facilities (I'm talking plant seed here, you understand, not... oh, don't worry) or places for keeping animal DNA safe for future generations. But it leaves me wondering what life will be like for those future generations. Why are we saving this stuff up for them?

After the global-warming-induced flood/ice age, or the great ISIS v Time Lord War, what will life be like for our descendants, for whom we are keeping the Guernsey-French dialect and the DNA of the lesser-spotted ringworm safe?

We must be assuming they are going to be long-lived. Nobody with a normal life span is going to be wasting their time teaching themselves Patagonian Welsh.

And there will be fewer of them than us. If they're going to be releasing dodoes, great auks, Siberian tigers and jabberwocks about the place, they're going to be needing to believe that there's enough space to let them into the wild, so some farmer doesn't immediately shoot them.

And they'll need to be confident of peace. Which again implies not many people - so no race movements, no fights over scarce resources.

In this world where everyone lives peacefully for ever, people will be able to record the mating practices of woolly mammoths in the Frisk language, confident that their potential readers will have the time to learn Frisk in their unlimited spare time, to gain the essential mammothy knowledge for themselves.

Basically, this future for which we are saving things is just another eschatology - a happy world of quiet, immortal seekers after obscure truth and knowledge-based excitement. The future is a library.

Festival of Pink Trousers

A reminder to all Beaker People that today is the Festival of Pink Trousers. Not red. Especially not red. Terracotta is acceptable, as are salmon and rose. But not red.

I'm not quite clear on why today is the Festival of Pink Trousers. But it is. And you're all supposed to be happy.

So cheer up. That is not optional.

Burning Chaff and a Brood of Vipers

"John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? .... Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”"

Which is a version of the baptismal liturgy that, in the Church of England for instance, can be omitted "for pastoral reasons."

They don't seem over-stressed by it all, the crowds. Where a post-modern bunch of Brompton Hipsters would be all, "Easy, John dude! Let's have a craft beer and an artisanal locust and artichoke rice bowl! Then  we can maybe take the fixies for a spin - there's these lovely wind-y roads just inside the Hebron Gate - chill out and have a chat about this whole "brood of vipers" concept. Nice beard, by the way."

No, the crowds just take it on the chin. "Brood of vipers? Well, John - you're the Baptist. You should know. Careful with that axe, mind. Got sensitive roots, we have, at this time in our race's history."

Which is a heck of an intro for what becomes a fairly uncontroversial list of instructions,  What must they do? Share their coats with people who need coats. Share their food with hungry people. Tax collectors aren't asked to do anything wildly virtuous. "Just do your job. Don't take what you're not supposed to have". No more. Soldiers - don't beat people up and demand money off people.

All sounds entirely reasonable. Even for a brood of vipers. We all know we should share with those who need it more than we do. This is not news. All the major religions agree - you should do unto others as you would be done by. Or not do to others what you wouldn't be done by. Soldiers not beating up people is not a shock.

But in fact that's exactly what doesn't happen. Soldiers oppress the people they've defeated because they persuade themselves they're not as human. They're the enemy. People without coats - how often can it be rationalised that their coat-lessness is down to their own fecklessness? People with not enough food - they have dodgy governments, or if they're in this country they're lazy. How come they're going hungry when they have mobile phones and cars? What's the matter with these people? Burundi is a reminder - not for the first time - of what happens when people decide other people are other than them - a threat and a danger.

John's instructions, frankly, are good and worthy but they don't work. He's just restating the Old Testament Law. Deuteronomy 10:18 for instance: "He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing." Yet 1,000 years on from Deuteronomy's events, people still need telling. 2,000 years on from John the Baptist, people still need telling. Nothing changes from simply telling people what is good and what isn't - because we pretty much all knew it already. It's written in our hearts, that's why it's written in our religions already. And because we know it but don't always do it - that's why we have police, and peace-keepers, United Nations and social services and food banks and charities.

Everybody knows there's more to come: they're waiting for the Messiah, and wondering if John's the man. And John knows he's not, and he also seems to know that the  moral stuff isn't the heart of the problem: "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

John's the greatest prophet the land and people of Israel have ever produced. And the best he can come up with himself is: "be nice to people." There's something far more fundamental that's needed - and he kind of knows what it is.

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

John knows that whoever comes after him - that cousin  he presumably left behind as he headed for the desert, maybe one he's never met since that blessed morning in Elizabeth's house - has to do more than just tell people what's good. Moses did that - and they promptly made a golden calf. Jeremiah did it - and they threw him in a muddy cistern. Whoever comes, will have to be able to change the very depths of the human heart.

He'll have to burn out all the evil - all the tendency to know what is right and make up reasons why it's OK to do wrong. All those excuses that you don't have to love your neighbours because, let's face it, they're not good neighbours.

I don't know how allegorical "chaff" is here. Is Jesus clearing the threshing floor and throwing the souls that are chaff into the fire? Maybe. Hardly the gentle Jesus meek and mild of fable, but on the other hand, if anyone is ever going to decide who does and doesn't enter the fire, I'd rather it were Jesus. He, after all, is the one that all sorts of people ran to and he welcomed them. If you reach out to him and see him as the Saviour, as the real Baptizer who will change your heart and your eternal destiny - he's the one that can do it.

But also (or maybe instead) - he's the one who will clear the chaff out of the threshing floor of your heart. There's only good grain going to be any use in the kingdom - all the rest needs to be left behind, thrown away. You don't store chaff away in a barn - that's what you do with grain. Maybe if you open your heart to that Baptiser, then the Holy Spirit will come in and burn out the excuses, and the hardness, and the clinging to your prejudices and the self-centredness. Maybe if you open up your heart to the Baptiser then what is left in there will be pure, and holy, and useful - and worth keeping with you into heaven. But maybe it won't be a quick process - because we make it so hard, we cling onto all the rubbish that we've grown with. Maybe it won't be till the End, or until we are called home, that we finally bear the fruit that we are called to do.

Lovely irony from Luke at the end of the passage. "So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people." John's just told them that they're baby vipers, that they have to watch out or they'll be cut down like trees for burning, that the one after him is the one that really means business.

That's the good news, people. God loves us so much that God is prepared to go to a lot of trouble - on God's behalf and on ours - to bring us to him. It caused God a lot of pain - rejection, desolation, the Cross. And it brings us struggle - surrendering to God's will, putting ourselves last, picking up our own crosses. And we fail - often and quite often badly. But at the end, it's worth it. There's only one way to live, by welcoming in that one who baptizes, seeing our darkness and letting the fire of his Spirit burn it away. Then when the Day comes, we'll know the one we have loved, and who loves us so much he gave the world for us.

The Law is an Ass, not a Bike

[Justice Charles] Wide continued by saying: "I'm very conscious, as all judges are, that no sentence I can pass can bring a victim back...."

He didn't finish by saying "...so what's the point of even trying?" But he might as well have done. A lorry driver turns left unexpectedly without checking his mirrors and kills a cyclist. The judge gives a year driving ban and community service. Cos motor vehicles eh? They just kill people. The driver of the lorry is just a helpless pawn in the hands of fate.

A BBC traffic report this month described how a man escaped injury when his car "mounted the central reservation." You'll notice the chap didn't drive onto it. The car just did it. Motor vehicles are like that. Minds of their own.

In the old days before giving the death sentence a judge would put a black cap on. I expect Justice Wide will be putting on Christmas Cracker hats before he sentences in future.

The Liturgy of the Fairytale of New York - 2015

** Warning - people who are arses may find the following disturbing **

Archdruid: You scumbag, you maggot.

All: You cheap lousy faggot.

Archdruid: Happy Christmas, your arse - I pray God it's our last.

All: Are you sure about that?

Archdruid: What?

All: Bit offensive?

Archdruid: Offensive to whom?

All: Are you being offensive to people who are arses?

Archdruid: WHAT?

All: People who are arses are people too.

Archdruid: Wasn't it bad enough when we worried about people who are maggots?

All: This is Dave Cameron's Britain.....

Archdruid: But I didn't even say the person concerned was an arse. It was more of a Royle-Family type of expression...

All: Can't be too careful.

Archdruid: OK. We would like to apologise to any people who are arses who were offended by the making of this liturgy....