Land of Confusion - Wars and Rumours of Wars

Now did you read the news today
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fire's still alight
There burning into the night.

As long as the world turns, and as long as there are men on it - I'll mostly blame men here - there will be trouble.

The Genesis boys were just the right age to have grown up with optimism. The flower-power bunch thought that given enough love, enough acid, enough sex, enough flowers and enough hair the world could be put right.

There was just one problem. 

Human nature.

A quote from a famous man: 

"Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: 8 all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs. "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come."

Or, to put it another way,

There's too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion.

This is the way the world is. Let's use the hands we're given to make this a place worth living in. But we'll never quite get there - the fire will still be alight. To be fair, we didn't start the fire. It's always burning since the world's been turning. And it will still be alight at the end. Hold fast, love your neighbour - and one day a super man will return to sort out the men of steel. Corny? Yeah. I don't even like the song.

But I do like the video.

In Too Deep - Love Shared and Love Given

It seems I've spent too long
Only thinking about myself - oh
Now I want to spend my life
Just caring bout somebody else.

It's a song about sexual love. About a really committed love. About somebody who realises that love is not just about self-gratification, about taking, about what makes us feel good.

The time when love is real love, is when it's about giving. About caring. About looking out at the other  instead of inwards at oneself. To ask the question - what I am giving here? Instead of what can I get out of this?

That's true love in a sexual relationship. But that true love is also a model that says - if I love the special one in that way, I need - in a less exclusive way - to give more than I take, to view the rest of the world in a way that is giving instead of contractual. To move from thinking about yourself to caring about another is a start. But love is shared, and then shared again - to children, to neighbours - stop being smutty at the back there - to all those that need love.

Jeremy Hardy "Not Very Funny"

Controversy has broken out after a comedian at a Jeremy Corbyn rally was not very funny.

A spokesperson said, "When we knew that Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel were appearing at our Justice for Jeremy Corbyn rally, we were very excited to have two such famous celebrities. But turns out we were confusing Mark Steel with that bloke David MacCallum played in the 70s. And he'd barely even met Joanna Lumley.

"And then when Jeremy Hardy spoke we couldn't believe it. Almost everything he said was totally unfunny. Though he made some joke about a Blairite being bonkers. That was quite good."

The organisation's organizer's are now said to be concerned that the comedian, who is believed to live up to his politics by being largely state-funded, has in fact never been funny at all. Members of J4JC believe he may have been funny on "The News Quiz", but can't find anyone who has ever listened to it.

Said the spokesperson, "We could go through the BBC archives trying to find examples of Hardy being funny. But we would have to listen to all that low-grade snark and whining for so long trying to find something. It's inhumane."

 J4JC were temporarily encouraged by Jeremy Hardy's Wikipedia page which said Hardy's impressions of posh people

 "have often prompted great mirth and recognition in live radio audiences."

However without any citation on that remark, it is impossible to know when that may have occurred. Sobbed the spokesperson, "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Last night Jeremy Hardy gave reporters his own account of events. But unfortunately nobody could remember what it was.

The Leader of the Opposition last night gave his reaction: "Gosh! Harumph! Let's get out of jolly old Europe and put me in charge!" 

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn was unavailable for comment, as he was at a "Justice for Jeremy Hardy" rally.

Blood on the Rooftops: The Mundanity of Media Horror

Blood on the rooftops, Venice in the spring
The Streets of San Francisco, a word from Peking
The trouble was started, by a young Errol Flynn
Better in my day, oh Lord!
For when we got bored, we'd have a world war, happy but poor
So let's skip the news boy (I'll go and make some tea)
Blood on the rooftops - too much for me.

The couple in the song seem to have no interest in the news because it's too much hard work. They don't want to sit around listening to a discussion on current affairs. They'd probably hate Question Time. I can't blame then. I hate it.

This song was written in the 70s. The news was pretty grim - "Arabs and Jews, boy". So some things don't change. So they turn to anything else. Blood on the rooftops is OK, apparently, as long as it's tomato ketchup.

Today The Twitter is full of news. People share pictures of decapitations. so we can know just how evil decapitation is. The Blood on the Rooftops couple would put on a sensitive media filter, and just follow kitten accounts.

But are we so different? The horror that floods social media - the horror that is choreographed on the news. Either the horror becomes mundane, or we have to turn away. Nobody could be that horrified, or that outraged, that often. We don't have the energy. So we can collect the horror up and do nothing - apart from a few retweets or one of the endless petitions that make no difference. We can surf the mundanity of horror. Or we follow the kittens.

"Drop of wine?" Let's skip the news and look at some "amazing things that happened when the photographer was filming." It's incredible, apparently. I see the cricket's not improved.

The Christian EU Exit Flowchart

With absolutely zero verifiable facts about what the EU will look like after a Brexit - we all have that problem. How should a Christian approach the forthcoming "Exit" referendum for the UK in the European Union?

With a flowchart, obviously.....

Guide Vocal - Letting Go

I call you for I must leave,
You're on your own until the end.
There was a choice but now it's gone,
I said you wouldn't understand,
Take what's yours and be damned.

This is the one where Genesis write quite a similar song to the Human League's equally classic Don't You Want Me, but in a Genesis kind of way. We're not told if Duchess (I presume it's the Duchess) has been working as a waitress in a cocktail bar until she met the Guide Vocal (Duke Albert?) but that seems to be the genuine idea.

And there's nothing wrong with mentoring. People need advice, guidance, pushing forward. Kids have to be shown the ropes, told not to play with fire, kept away from deep water.

But the day should come when the student is free to flourish alone - the child becomes an adult. It can be hard letting people take their wings. But it's unhealthy to clip them - for the clip-er and the clip-ee.  And sometimes the student overtakes the master.

And the right things to say is "take what's yours and be blessed". Don't stop you worrying, don't stop you caring. But when the lead vocal is laid down, the guide vocal isn't needed in the mix anymore.

Liturgical Tribute to George Martin

In tribute to George Martin, the liturgy was chopped into three second chunks, then threaded backwards through a tape player and set to a heavily phased 13-string guitar with white noise and a tenor horn section.

Beaker Folk stalked purposefully across a zebra crossing accompanied by famous faces from the past (George Martin, The Beatles, Sir Alex Ferguson, George Galloway, Audrey Hepburn, Stephen Fry etc).

Imagine a fairground hurdy-gurdy in a snowstorm.

Better that than listening to the liturgy. That was incomprehensible.

Cul de Sac - The Rich Sent Empty Away

You know you're on the way out,
It's just a matter of time.
You thought you'd rule the world forever,
Long live the king, but don't spare the loser now...

The one in charge shudders as they wonder how long they'll last.

There's a fair amount of this Messianic kind of stuff in Genesis - The Knife, One for the Vine. Goes with that kind of swords-and-sorcery prog-rock stuff I guess. Thinking of the Battle of Evermore from another heavy band of the era.

There's a clause in the Gospel of Luke, expressed through the words of a teenage unmarried mother-to-be: possibly the least powerful thing in her society. They're defiant words, and they're a promise rather than a threat.

He hath shewed strength with his arm : he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things : and the rich he hath sent empty away.

 We don't know whether the things that are "far below, where shadows fester as they grow" are a good freedom force, or a bunch of trolls. We do know that the one in charge is on the way out. But they they always are. Sometimes as the revolt grows (Gadaffi, Ceausescu); sometimes as their pride drags in external enemies (Saddam, Hitler); sometimes they live in constant fear of an internal conspiracy - and, wondering when the knife will slip between the ribs, they take out their real or perceived enemies - until one decides to take them out (half the Roman emperors). And in the end, age will get them all. At the End of Times, the one Mary brought into the world will raise up the humble, and thrown down the week; complete the revolution that he wrought on the cross - the humble and meek raised up, for sure.

Ripples - Time Slips Away

Saw two cats on the roof of the shed earlier. Not the Beaker cat, Grendel, or his even more fearsome mother. Just a random ginger tab and a tortie. 

And the cats are up there, looking at each other and around the garden, like they would never do anything different. As if the world is as it always is, and they will always growl at each other and sneak around after the pigeons like they do today. A cat has no concept of passing time. Age must come as a shock to it, which it adjusts to slowly.

Not so bluegirls.

The face that launched a thousand ships
Is sinking fast, that happens you know,
The water gets below.
Seems not very long ago
Lovelier she was than any that I know.
Angels never know it's time
To close the book and gracefully decline,
The song has found a tale.
My, what a jealous pool is she.
The face in the water looks up
She shakes her head as if to say
That the bluegirls have all gone away.

There's a piece at the end of Hardy's most cheerful book, Under the Greenwood Tree. The vicar has just discovered that Fancy Day is engaged to young Dick, the tranter's son.

"Why, she's my sweetheart, and we are going to be married next Midsummer. We are keeping it rather close just at present, because 'tis a good many months to wait; but it is her father's wish that we don't marry before, and of course we must submit. But the time 'ill soon slip along."
"Yes, the time will soon slip along--Time glides away every day--yes."
Maybold said these words, but he had no idea of what they were. He was conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he reasoned was this that the young creature whose graces had intoxicated him into making the most imprudent resolution of his life, was less an angel than a woman.

Parson Maybold wanders to the bridge, and rips up the letter he was planning to send to a friend, telling him of his plans upon marriage to Fancy Day:

Maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been put into his hand, and Dick's footsteps died away towards Durnover Mill. The vicar's first voluntary action was to read the card:--
   DEWY AND SON,
   TRANTERS AND HAULIERS,
   MELLSTOCK.
   NB.--Furniture, Coals, Potatoes, Live and Dead Stock, removed to any
   distance on the shortest notice.

 Mr. Maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the river. He saw--without heeding--how the water came rapidly from beneath the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread itself over a pool in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among the long green locks of weed that lay heaving and sinking with their roots towards the current. At the end of ten minutes spent leaning thus, he drew from his pocket the letter to his friend, tore it deliberately into such minute fragments that scarcely two syllables remained in juxtaposition, and sent the whole handful of shreds fluttering into the water. Here he watched them eddy, dart, and turn, as they were carried downwards towards the ocean and gradually disappeared from his view. Finally he moved off, and pursued his way at a rapid pace back again to Mellstock Vicarage.

And so Maybold's dreams rush downstream from him. Ripples that have gone to the other side.

The book - cheerful as it is -  is full of warnings of what happens to young, flighty women. Mrs Leaf, widowed and having lost all of her many children but one, looks out of the window like a pot-sick plant. Mrs Dewey worries about appearances, and the fact that she has only had five kids. Liz Endorfield - smartest of them all except, maybe, Fancy - is a witch.

Is it just me sees Fancy and Lizzie Endorfield reflected in the mirror on the album cover? The young girl hungry for love and the crone who has seen it all. Gotta be said, despite her evil reputation, that Lizzie the Witch is a bit less stressy than Flirty Fancy, the hottest school-ma'am in South Wessex.

It's not just young women whose looks don't last. Any lad who has put his efforts into being particularly toned must know that one day those muscles will turn to dust. The sharpest-minded thinkers may lose their wit more slowly than the bluegirls see the ripples run away. But it will come, one day. One day, when we don't depend on our beauty, our strength, our speed or our brains. What rock can we cling to that day?

Ministerial Selection Update

Bit of a backlash to this evening's "Winnowing of Candidates". Some said we'd hurt their feelings.

Every year we get the candidates for the Druidic School. And we assess them for the degree to which their potential for ministry is about making themselves feel good by doing good things, being the centre of attention etc - and the degree to which they believe they can do good.

At the end of a rigorous interviewing process, we divide them into two groups based on this criterion. The members of the former group have the word "NEEDY" impressed on their foreheads with a stamp and a lump of bitumen.

The latter group are stamped "HUMAN BACON" with some butchery tool. It doesn't really mean anything - it just freaks them out.

The distinction doesn't mean much, either. The Beaker selection process is mostly determined by whether you're self-assured, with a posh voice. So all have won this year, and all will receive prizes.

The Logical Conclusion

Some of us swear by logic. They say intuition and emotion, faith and instinct are all fallible. But logic is immutable.

Whereas I think even the most cast-iron  logic is only as good as our starting point. If you are arguing from false premises then you will end up at the wrong destination.

And so with Burton's phone call this morning. The train announcement said if he had any concerns, or saw anything unusual, he should talk to staff or report it to the police.

So he spent ten minutes telling a ticket inspector that he wasn't sure whether, if salvation is by faith, he has the right kind of faith.

And then the train turned up on time.

So he's been arrested for wasting police time. As I say, logic only works if you start from the right place.