Rend Your Terracotta Hearts

And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. (Eze 36:26)

Ezekiel had a lovely turn of phrase, of course. But he wasn't a 21st Century Prophet. What does he know about our 21st Century hearts?

Whereas Damon Albarn and chums know exactly what so many of our hearts are like in these brittle days. This is possibly the only bromance pop song that's worth listening to.

Our Social Media is full of it .We shout and stomp and sign our petitions - endlessly sign our petitions. Mostly put on the impression that we're tough as hell. We have our principles and we'll go to any lengths to live up to them, as long as it involves a retweet or a bit of a pile-onto someone we didn't agree with.

But all the time, our hearts aren't the stone that Ezekiel warned against. But then it's not like they're the flesh that may be soft, yet yields and beats on. Our hearts are terracotta: hard, but brittle. Thump them too hard, and they'll break. Porous, so the emotions can leak in and out - but susceptible to a hard frost, when the lost of a friendship can cause a nasty crack that widens as the winter draws on.

Or is that just me?

After the Gove Has Gone

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

Brrrrrrr

Hi - Boris!  Bozza! Bojo! It's Michael. Mikey. Mikey Gove - you know, Govey? The Govester?

I've not got a lot on this evening all of a sudden - wondered whether you fancied going out? Couple of beers?  Talk about what a great victory we had in getting the "Leave" victory? What a blinder you played. You were awesome and - I'd like to think - so was I. Me with the brains, vision and strategy and you with the..... hair......

Boris? Whaddya say? Night out - just the two lads? The rebel boys of the London Tory Massive? What do you reckon?

Boris? Boris?

Pioneer Minister: The First Service

So our Pioneer Minister, Brad, has conducted his first service - "Tex-Mex Church". In which he handed out spicy tacos and declared that he would never forget the Alamo.

This is going to be a long training attachment.

Exploring Pioneer Ministry

It is with much joy that I welcome Brad, who is joining as Assistant Druid, with a pioneer ministry.

Brad is easily recognisable as he has a raccoon skin hat and, instead of a car, drives a covered waggon which he puts into a very small circle when he thinks Apaches are about.

We had a nasty moment yesterday when he joined the wood splitting team and thought Harborough's hatchet was a tomahawk. Still, the surgeon thinks the wrist should heal in 12 weeks or so, so no lasting damage done.

Anyone wanting to talk to Brad about his ministry is invited to sit round the camp fire and enjoy some beans. But be careful when you approach the waggon. Some of those animal traps are ferocious.

Chilcot Report - Sneak Preview

When the highly trained philosopher-politicians open the Chilcot report it will just contain the number "42".

At which point we will realize we never really knew what the question was.

We are going to need to build a new, and bigger, Chilcot.

God Created the Earth

I was thinking about a creationist friend of mine today, and reflecting upon creation and meaning.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." With this short sentence the author who would be called "Moses" pierces the pretensions of Babylonian religion, and co-opts a victorious empire into the praise of the God of a defeated people.

There is no method ascribed to God in the verses that follow - no recipe that we could understand. God just says, and it happens. No fine detail, no instructions.

I think there's power here. Sure, the story of Genesis is compatible with the Big Bang Theory  (dreamt up by a priest) but in the great scheme of things it's compatible with any scientific model of the origin of the Universe.

Even steady state theory. Because even if the Universe has existed forever this is not incompatible with a God beyond time and space creating it.

Because the Creation story is not about science. It's about meaning. A bold statement that, in the midst of chaos, we believe in the God of logic. That we believe in a God who makes in a sensible order. We don't believe in Tiamat the chaos dragon, killed and ripped apart so the universe might exist. We believe in a God so powerful that ripping the fabric of reality would be no problem. So logical and rational that doing so would be out of the question. So like us that God says the stars thrown across the carpet of space are 'good" - so longing for company that humans are made in God's image.

We don't really believe in any particular model of how God created the world.

We just believe the world is how God reveals meaning to us.

Farage / Evans: A Nation Mourns

Where now are the leaders?

Who are the prophets who can guide us?

To whom can we look to insult a foreignor 

Or to shout "brum brum" excitedly?

It's Blokerdammerung

The twilight of the Blokes.

Again.

Things as Yellow as Boris Johnson

2. A Coldplay song.

EU-sing our Religion

A piece in the Guardian tells us that everybody in Europe thought they were our best friends until the Referendum vote.

I dunno. Over the years we've exported Thatcherism, football hooliganism and drunken lads on stag nights to Riga. The people on the Continent who count the money might have liked us - but I don't know if anyone else did.

I know. I've got stats. Hard stats.

I've seen the scoring on the Eurovision Song Contest.

No-one likes us, we don't care

"Scooch" from Wikipedia.

First Find Your Church

On Thursday I gave you some advice on how to find a church. Now, here are a few tips to help you out when actually in a church service.

First up you will be offered some kind of paperwork - some combination of notice sheets, psalms, hymn books, service books. If it is a leaflet calling you to support Jeremy Corbyn, you have either accidentally joined a political march, or you are in a church in South London. It's easy to confuse English Christianity and the Labour Party. Both ascribe unlikely powers to an old bloke with a beard. And both should care more about the poor.

Having established that you are in fact in a church service, do not be fooled into small talk with the welcomer. Anything they can wring from you in the way of personal information will have been converted, by coffee time, into a series of invitations to ring bells, trim gardens, lead the Sunday School or do something incredibly dangerous involving roof maintenance. Give only your first name, and concede that you live "locally". As Paul Merton once pointed out, we all live locally. Wherever we live, that's local.

Hang around near the back. This gives you a wide view of the congregation. DO NOT SIT DOWN. Wherever you sit will be somebody's pew, in which they have prayed ever since a close friend was involved at Dunkirk. Give it until after the first hymn - then sit down. STAY AT THE BACK. Then you can see what everyone else is doing, and not look like a complete raw prawn for everybody else to laugh at for the next week.

If the rest of the congregation stands up, stand up. If they sit down, sit down. If they kneel - sit down. Your knees ain't what they were. On your first trip to church you don't want to have two people have to lift you back to a sitting position. If they all start hopping, sit down and look wise. They're just trying to fool the newbie.

If at any point a child runs around, or a baby screams, look very hard at the parent/s and tutt loudly. In this way, the congregation will know that you're fitting in already.

If you are in a modern Charismatic church, you will be forced to sing songs in the kind of musical style that were popular 30 years ago. Church ministers who are into Grime are far and few. But everybody loves an 80s revival, don't they? Grief, people go to Butlins for special weekends of this kind of stuff.

If in the Church of England or the Catholics, you will likely be at a Communion service. If the priest says "Peace be with you" to the congregation before Communion and everyone gets up and runs around shaking hands with each other...  DO NOT PANIC. You may be an extrovert, and happy to go around saying hello to everyone. If not, then here's the drill. Don't just stand there looking like a drip with your hands by your sides. Someone will run up and shake your hand. Don't sit in a wheelchair with your hands in your lap - someone will pat you on the head. Or stick their hands into your lap to grab your hands. If you are someone with reasonable agility, the best bet is to crawl under a pew and lay there screaming "Leave me alone! You're all weird." In these circumstances most people will leave you alone. Most of them.  If you are a wheelchair user, get the heck out of there as fast as you can. If necessary, run over people's feet.

Some churches will announce that everyone is welcome to receive communion. If  you don't know what any of it is about - I'd just stay where you are and observe. If you go forward "for a blessing" because you're not baptised / confirmed, and you've not learnt the precise local bodily posture that means "I'm coming here for a prayer not to receive communion" then the priest might assume you're just holding your hands at an odd angle and.... oh, well, all sorts could happen. Just watch for a week or two.

After the service, you may be offered a cup of instant coffee in a green cup. If I were you I'd just take the cup on its own. Woodsware "Beryl" is a mystical form of earthenware that has the ability to transport you through time and space into a Methodist Church Hall in the 1960s. Or that may just be me. The coffee, on the other hand, is a reminder of the things that await us if we do not repent and follow the narrow path. Instant coffee is the only beverage on offer in the Smoky Place.

Mystical vessels containing an infernal substance

If all of the above makes no sense at all to you, don't worry. Just follow the instructions above. You should get out OK. And if you liked it, found something peaceful or uplifting or somebody was friendly - maybe go again. One day it will make sense. One day.

The Somme: Elegy for a Great-Uncle

I could have known my great-uncle Ernie, had he lived. Tough types, those North Londoners - against all the odds, given their poverty, they all made it into their eighties. That's if they didn't die under enemy fire.

In 1916, he was just in his twenties. I have no idea what he looked like. Short, I expect. They were all short, that side of the family. Probably the result of being working-class, in the days when London overspilled all its boundaries, pouring out from the centre and washing over Kentish Town, Holloway and all points north.

His name is on the "Cromwell Road" memorial now to be found in Whittington Park, Archway - where his parents and his sister and his nephews and nieces lived, before it was flattened for improvements.

He died because an overstretched empire fought a frustrated one. Because rich men and politicians always want more.

He died because war was now mechanised. Men mere pawns to be pushed together in the centre of the board, swapped off until one side could gain an advantage - or ranged in defensive positions across the board, preventing progress.

He died because he joined a regiment from a long way from his home, and went to a battle field even further than that. Dying in a country whose language he couldn't speak, for an empire from which he had never benefited.

His was just one story - just one North London mother receiving the feared letter. One footnote, one corporal, one more laid to rest, unidentified, in a grave that nobody now knows. Remembered in Thiepval, and in a scruffy park in North London, where the kids smoke dope and the tough guys work out,

There is a corner of a foreign field which is forever Holloway. At the rising of the sun, and its going down, I will remember him.