Liturgy of Not Passing on Social Media Scares

Hymn One Shall Tell Another, and he Shall Tell his Friend

(Anthem to the tune of "Hallelujah Chorus")

Archdruid: Jayden K Smith

All: He's a hacker! He's a hacker!

Archdruid: Jayden K Smith

All: He's a hacker! He's a hacker!

Archdruid: They say if you accept his friend request he can also hack all your friends.

All: And their friends.

Archdruid: And their friends.

All: And infect them all with squirrel pox.

Archdruid: And steal your credit card numbers.

All: And delete your entire past life so you don't know who you are or what you're doing there. Like that bloke in Talking Heads.

Archdruid: And he's secretly a dolphin.

All: Which is why he's trying to corner the entire world mackerel supply, by taking Britain out of the Common Fisheries Policy. By becoming friends with Portugese fishermen.

Archdruid: Like a Fisherman's Friend.

All: But evil.

Archdruid: So please pass this on to all your friends.

All: And their friends.

Archdruid And their friends.

All: Even unto the friendtieth generation.

Hymn: O Snopes, Our Help In Ages Past

Running of the Fools

Three men injured at the bull run in Pamplona. One man was gored in the scrotum. So he was lucky not to suffer serious brain damage.

It's a real moral challenge though. We bring up and cosset these uncontrollable, angry creatures,  basically only fit for breeding and fighting.

And then we let bulls chase after them.

Beaker Moot Agenda: Saturday

1. That this Moot demands the G20 recognises Beakerism as a world religion, having as it does more members than the Ba'hais.

2. That the people of Camden, having voted to Remain, should have their own referendum as to whether they should leave the EU, or whether street food should receive funding from the Arts Council

3. Something confusing about sex. The Archdruid will tell us what to do anyway. Hopefully without diagrams this time.

4. A demand that, in the light of the recent upsurge in antibiotic-resistant sexually transmitted diseases, Fisherman's Friend sweets should be used as a way of putting people off sex altogether.

5. Freedom for Tooting.

6. Quieter doors to be fitted in church halls.

7. The Government be asked to put extra funding into identifying who is the Lone Ranger.

Holland and Barrett Discount Scheme: One in a Million

Intrigued by Holland & Barrett's appearance in a list of the worse companies to work for. Then the penny dropped. If you'll excuse the obscure, multibuy-based joke.

At Xmas, H&B double the amount of discount they offer their staff, for products including their extensive homeopathy range.

Ridiculous thing to do. If they reduced staff discount to 0.000000000000001% the staff would all clearly be massively better off.

On the Wearing of Pointy Hats

Burton Dasset has questioned why I wear a pointy hat. Pointy hats, he points (haha) out, have been associated with oppression and social control since the Wicked Witch of the West.

But I believe Burton has pushed his case too far. After all, others have worn pointy hats without ever oppressing the inhabitants of Oz. The Pet Shop Boys and Grotbags, to name but two. What Burton has done is confuse the wearing of an item of clothing with a form of behaviour. To take an example, Doc Martins Boots can equally be worn by skinheads, IT project managers and female vicars from Wiltshire. And of those three, one only needs seriously to fear the latter.

So I will wear my pointy hat with style. For did St Kirsty herself not wear a pointy(ish) hat in the video for New England? I'm not trying to change the world. I'm just trying to keep the Beaker Folk under control.

Let Down at the Funeral

"Thousands may be let down by funeral plans", the BBC tells us. Which, ironically, is one of the services a funeral plan is supposed to provide.

People using these plans "could find their relatives faced extra costs after they died", says a consumer group. I would say that, in an earthly sense, that's pretty unlikely. The finding out, that is. Not the extra costs.

"Many customers buying such plans are elderly or vulnerable, and will not be around to check whether the product met their expectations, Fairer Finance said."

I think it's fair to say that all of them will not be around to check. But this is a serious issue despite the poor wording. As the article notes, these are financial products so should be policed appropriately. Or, failing that, there's always haunting?

The Unbearable Brightness of Being

Quite a profound time of considering "God, the Universe, and Everything."

We thought of the death of stars bringing life as heavy elements were cast across the universe like thistledown. Of the yawning aeons of time before this world coalesced. Of the unimaginable depths of God's being, before the worlds were forged in the heart of stars.

We cast our minds across a teeming universe of life - the colour and variety of our world, and who knows what wonders beyond. The thrill of intelligence - the sheer wonder of self-awareness springing from insensate origins.

We imagined the low, dark scream of the heat death of the Universe, as entropy drains the vitality from stars, worlds and even heavy elements - for a billion billion years.

And then we sang "Bind us Together." It seemed right.

Liturgy for Flying Ant Day

Archdruid: Oh, look! A flying ant!

All: Ugh!

Archdruid: And loads of other flying ants!

All: Ugh!

Archdruid: And... wow - look at those flying ants!

All: Ugh!

Archdruid: And a big flying ant! That must be a queen!

All: Ugh!

Archdruid: After mating, the males crawl away and disappear.

Women: Yeah we've all been there.

Tolerance and the Clash of Religious Idiots

Blooming annoying, the whole Community being woken up like that.

Beaker Folk of more regular habits may not be aware that we have two dedicated prayer groups. The Late Night Prayer Group meets after Filling up of Beakers to pray for the good of the community as a whole. While the Early Morning Prayer Group, its "lark" equivalent, meets before Pouring out of Beakers with the same purpose.

Of course with these short nights, the groups' meeting times move closer together. And the late night bunch went on a bit late last night - right up to the point, at 4am, when the early morning crowd arrived intending to have an extra-long pray for the Festival of Stones and Tea Lights tomorrow.

Well, when two groups of devout but sleep-deprived pilgrims meet up in the small hours in the same space, a kind of spiritual Pauli Principle occurs. So a massive fight broke out for possession of the Moot House.

Anyway, we've treated all the song book and prayer bead injuries. And they're all going to bed. I guess they need to put in a few more prayers for world peace tomorrow.

Filling up of Beakers at Leicester Forest East Services : Aqua Sarum

Woe is me for I am a clergy of very little brain.
For behold I am but a pilgrim on the way
From Salisbury Diocese to the clergy conference at Swanwick.
And lo the command went out
"Bring thine living water from the River Avon
or the Froom, most-blessed of Hardy's bournes
or the other Avon, that one near Stonehenge, the one that isn't the Avon that floweth through Sarum fair.
Or the Piddle, that river the Victorians sometimes called the Trent
because Queen Victoria might not be amused.
Or the Axe or the Wey
Or the sea at West Bay
or another Avon. There's probably a few more."

But I forgot.
So here am I, at Leicester Forest East.
Peeling the label off a bottle of Evian.
Which is rich in many minerals.
But comes from a land of people that speak in strange tongues.
And though I'm sure no-one else will notice
God will.
God's like that.
God cares more than is strictly necessary.

Testing Abraham

God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And Abraham said, ‘Here I am.’ God said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning,
saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt-offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.

Abraham took the wood of the burntoffering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And Abraham said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ Isaac said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.’ So the two of them walked on together.
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ The angel said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’ And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt-offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place ‘The LORD will provide’; as it is said to this day,
‘On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.’ (Genesis 22.1-14)

And so our natural tendencies can be applied to this passage. The one who sees God as an irrational projection of our minds - as a meme used to enforce a patriarchal, oppressive society - reads into the passage the ghastliness of an all-powerful, monotheistic deity. A God that demands total obedience. A God that, like Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, hands out life and death as he sees fit.

And then the one who sees God as the one to be followed sees this differently. In this, God is always infinitely just and right. God is by definition able to tell Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham in his turn is right to fear God and do what he is told. As he marches, wet with sweat, full of apprehension, up Mount Moria, he must hate the thought of killing Isaac. He must wonder what the point is - God, after all, promised that through this son Abraham would bless all people. And God's intervention - once Abraham's faithfulness has been shown - is to save the son and provide an alternative.

There is a third, post-modern view on all this. In this reading, God's saying - OK, you've followed my call. You've kept accepting my promises. Now then, how far can I push you? At which point Abraham's like, "Sarah, hold my beer..." And it's only when God realizes that Abraham is only gonna go and do it, that he says - OK. This nonsense had better stop. I played chicken and turns out Abraham is better at it than me.

Whatever the motivation, Abraham didn't sacrifice Isaac. God did provide a substitute. And Abraham's children through Isaac went on to become a great nation and, through their worship of the true God, the Light to the Gentiles.

Much later, out of mythic time and into a historical world, on another morning, one of those descendants of Abraham came to a hill. He like Isaac was carrying the wood of his own sacrifice. He too climbed the mountain, and was readied for death.

But this time there was no substitute, no Doctor Who style get out of jail, no ram or even Barabbas to take his place. This son of Abraham went to a cross, shed human blood, broke down the walls of death and went on to live again. And in that man, God had come to live among us. To share our lives and deaths, become like us and make us like him. A second time, on a hill, God provided the sacrifice. But this time, it was God himself.