A Triumph of Palms

I mean, really there's a number of options when it comes to entering a city as a king.

You can drive in in glory, with everybody awed by your magnificence and worshipping the ground you walk on. This seems to have been the story that Vladimir Putin and the Russian army swallowed with regards to Ukraine.

Or, if that doesn't work, you can maybe go to option 2 - marching into a cowed and wrecked city with people fearing your presence.

Jesus chooses neither. He takes a donkey - not a war horse. You may remember how Princess Fiona in Shrek thinks that Donkey is a mighty steed - until she notices that Shrek is an ogre. Donkeys are beasts of burden, hard to deal with, and more your middle-class Judean transport, perhaps.

With a side-order of prophecy, from Zech 9:9 -  "Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

And here is that king. No armour. No arms. No captives being brought in for slaughter or sacrifice.  A strange and peaceful triumph - of palms, not armed might. A dusty army of dreamers. And their King of Peace. Being welcomed as if he's the one to free Jerusalem.

Which he is, of course. Just not the way anyone is expecting.

I was discussing this week the ever-pressing question of Safeguarding. And reflecting that one thing that put and puts men in power in the position to abuse is a system that encourages deference. That pumps up the bloke up the front. And puts him on a box that says, isn't he great. That says Father - or else the bloke wearing the poshest suit - is always right. That puts people beyond challenge.

Well, here's the model for leadership. Vulnerable - anyone can take him out anytime they like. When he sat round a table he was surrounded by his friends. Not up one end for fear of Judas.

Approachable - anyone can reach out and touch him. Nobody is too small, too poor, or two mired in misbehaviour for him.

He sat and ate with the leaders. Herod wanted to see him. But he turned all that round. Went to Jerusalem. Turned his face to the cross. And died with criminals.

Our God is still hope for the poor today. Even after nearly 2,000 years of the Church using power to reach them, not love.

But the love of God is shown in the face of a man on a donkey. Going into the city in expectation of battle. But a battle nobody expected, against the enemy nobody dreamed would be fought, and which would look a lot like a defeat before a victory was discovered.

I Have Measured Out My Life in Hallelujahs

Intrigued by the response - mostly of laity - to this reasonable question, from the @OurCofELike account about how many C of E clergy say the Daily Office regularly (twice a day being the legal requirement, as it were). I should at this point add the #NotAllLaity hashtag. And also, in these circumstances, the #NotAllClergy as that's how many say two Daily Offices.

And as an illustration, I'd like to borrow - if nobody minds - the brilliant adoption of the "spoons" terminology that people with, some medical conditions sometimes use to describe what they are capable of today. The concept taken from Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons." 

Now, it should be pointed out that some clergy do suffer from diseases that involve the management of fatigure. Some are suffering from Long Covid. Many are just plain exhausted after two years of ministry in a strange world with more funerals, a divided society, people not going to church for fear of catching a deadly disease, and yet the demands for Parish Share and Statistics for Mission being unchanged. Many are exhausted from sheer caring.

But remembering that many aren't - I'm sure - let's invent the unit of Clergy Energy and Effectiveness. Let's call it the Hallelujah (symbol Hj). The Hj has a close relationship of course with its SI equivalent, the Joule (or the Calorie, for clergy that prefer BCP). And let's assume you're a fit, healthy, 50-year-old Clergy starts the day with 1,000 Hj - if you will, a kilohallelujah.

And the day is as well planned as can be. There are meetings in the diary, but space is left for prayer, and for the preparation of (and recording of) sermons. Study is of course pretty much excluded from the daily clerical routine. But you're intending to plan a study day. On the Noneteenth of Someuary.

The day starts brightly with ablutions. A cup of coffee sits steaming on the study desk. The 8.30 am Morning Prayer in church is blocked out. For which a ten minute walk is required. Healthy, bracing exercise. The perfect minister's day.

The phone rings. It's one of the 10 Wardens. Or, strictly speaking, 7. Little Tremlett has only the one, nonagenarian, warden. And at Great Tremlett they have an annual service to remember the day the Last Warden died and, like the nation of Gondor, they eagerly await the day when Elendil's Warden's Wand will be repaired and claimed by the Warden-That-is-to-Come. So the vicar's got the job.

But this is Melissa on the phone. Apart from her deathly poetry, she's a very capable Warden. But she went for a walk in the  churchyard at Grilsby-on-the-Hill this morning and there's a badger. Or, rather, traces of badger. Diggings around some of the graves and some rather unpleasant droppings. She goes into unnecessary detail.

Melissa says Jeb (local gravedigger, handyman and suspected lurker in the woods) is asking what poison is best. You tell her it's illegal to poison badgers. She then says OK - what about hitting them with a spade when they pop out? You tell her that is also illegal. She'll have to live with it, maybe repair the holes, and refer anyone worried about the remains of Aunt Flossie to you.

It's time to go church. In fact it's just past time. You leave your cold coffee and set off on your walk. Having been refreshed by a reasonable night's sleep, in which you only woke screaming about faculty rules twice, you don't notice the 25 Hj that just went out of you.

Heading down the road, you meet Arthur. Arthur wishes you a good morning. Says how nice it is to see a vicar about the place. Then takes the time to tell you that old Parson Marson did things properly. Would never be seen in public without his cassock. Ten minutes, and 20 hallelujahs, have gone by the time he goes off to catch the bus.

You now don't actually have time to finish the walk to church, say the Office, and then walk back. There is an assembly shortly. So you go back to the paraonage. Put the kettle on for a cup of tea. And stream the excellent Facebook morning prayer from All Saints with Holy Trinity, Loughborough.

While you're at it, you fill in a burial form to send to the Registrar. Then have to double check via Google how the Winklesea Registry Office is operating under the fag end of Covid changed rules - the deceased died while on holiday.  Turns out they've moved Registrar operations to the big office at Spilefleet, but not changed their form. You've not got a paper form via the funeral directors, in case you catch Covid. So you print off the form. But the form's green, and your printer has run out of coloured toner - you've prioritised Parish Share over luxuries since you've missed 9 months of plate offerings over the last two years - so you spend twenty minutes cancelling print jobs, and rebooting computer and printer so they're talking to each other again after the cancellation.

The form comes, out and you deal with it. You wonder vaguely what the reading was in Morning Prayer. But it's ten minutes till assembly. So you put the kettle back on, click on the Zoom link for the Assembly, boot up the PowerPoint and scramble for "special thing" that is used as a prayer focus. It's a stuffed hedgehog, for no obvious reason. You wonder how you'll fit it into the camera, but realise that's academic as the Zoom screen is just whirling sadly at you and no meeting is appearing. You wonder if it's quicker to wait or to reboot Zoom or the computer. You notice that 50 Hallelujahs oozed out of you while you were scrambling under the printer to find a new pack of paper, while it was shredding the last pages of the current pack.

By the time Zoom is working, the teacher i/c assemblies is playing library recordings of Hillsong music. You put the  task of telling him why that is problematic into a box marked "next time I'm in school." Scrap the PowerPoint - which you spent three hours creating - and summarise the story of Ruth and Naomi into "Ruth was very loyal. Her sister-in-law not so much. They all lived happily ever after." Some Hallelujahs escape from you as you say the final prayer and shut down Zoom 

You have a Pastoral Meeting in ten minutes. You put the kettle on, and feed the cat.

The Pastoral Meeting is via Zoom because Maisie Daisie hasn't left the house since March 2020 except for vaccinations. As far as you're aware, she has no actual medical conditions, and she's only 35. She just thinks you can't be too careful. She appears on screen in two masks and a visor. The phone rings. For the 14th meeting running, Melanie has forgotten to plug her camera in. Gabriel is trying to Zoom using 3G from his phone, because he believes broadband causes scabies. There is a ten minute delay while he drives to Melissa's. Melissa spends an hour telling everyone about the badger.

You have a funeral visit. It's a tough one. You chuck 100 Hallelujahs on top of the the fifty that the badger ate.

They didn't offer you a coffee so when you get back home, via a trip to the shop where a parishioner asked you at great length why you're never seen in the village, and where you bought a pasty to eat on the go, you put the kettle on before you have to go out to talk to the architect about the crack in the tracery at Great Tremlett. You get a call to ask if you can stop walking your dog in Little Tremlett churchyard. You spend twenty minutes explaining that, though it's your churchyard and you'll walk your dog in it if you like, you don't actually own a dog. Your will to live is creeping out along with some more Hallelujahs.

You have dreams of one day cycling round the parishes - the full Father Brown job, resplendent in cassock. But as usual it's drizzling and you're short of time. So you drive to Great Tremlett and look sadly at the crack in the tracery. The architect asks why your Wardens don't deal with this kind of thing. You reflect that at least if you ever murdered an architect, you'd be able to find somewhere to hide the body.

It's 3pm. You left the pasty on the unit in the kitchen, next to the cup of coffee you made at 8 am. And your next call is to Woodby Chapel End, where you are taking Mary Mandible her Home Communion. Only there's no answer at the door. Panicking, for Mary never leaves the house, you phone her. You can hear the ringing inside, but no one picks up. You knock on her neighbour's door. 

He tells you that Mary's gone away for a week to Winklesea. You mention that you've heard that's a dangerous place. But - more to the point - how on earth has she managed that? Apparently her boyfriend's taken her for a week of sun, sand and whatever else can be accommodated with her dodgy joints. You go back to the car, wondering how, when the time comes, to tackle the subject of whether Mary might like to actual come to church on Sundays in future.

It should be Evening Prayer, but nobody has joined you in church since last October. And that was someone who was hoping to steal the lectern. So you figure you'll say it in your study. So you go home and put the kettle on. Throw the pasty - warm from the sun - in the bin. Your spouse - back home from work - asks which of you will make dinner. You suggest, given the day you've both had, that you order takeaway. Again. You give thanks that your spouse earns enough to be able to afford to buy takeaways. You put the kettle on, to boil while you say Evening Prayer. You need the time and space - your Hallelujah levels are running low. The Grilsby-on-the-Hill Facebook page, you notice from your phone, is full of uproar about the badger invasion.

As you go to the study, someone knocks the door. There's nobody there. It's just the time of day when students returning from school think it's funny to "play knock-up ginger".

The fourth time, you tear out just in time to catch, on the doorstep, Doreen. She's coming back from the doctors, having discovered what she's got. You spend a couple of hours with Doreen in prayer and chat. And get your first cup of coffee of the day, finally.

As Doreen goes home, your spouse asks what you'd like as a takeaway and when. You remind the spouse that you have a PCC meeting in Woodby, but it will surely be over by nine.

At the PCC there's a major fallout over whether to put an LED light into the toilet in Woodby church hall straightaway, or to wait until the existing 30W incandescent bulb finally goes and then replace it. There is a long story about how Parson Marson installed that bulb in 1957.

 

At 10.30 pm you are eating cold Prawn Madras out of the tin tray. Spouse has gone to bed. You remember that you haven't said Evening Prayer yet. You go into the study, and find - somewhere deep down in your soul - one, remaining, cold and broken Hallelujah. You can't face the thought of finding your pages in Common Worship, and your eyes are too tired to read from the screen. So you switch on the recording from 6 pm's "Shrine Prayers" from Walsingham. You enjoy the silence for a few minutes, as you await them start of the Angelus.

 

You wake up at 3 am with your face in the Madras tray.

Liturgy for the Death of June Brown (Dot Cotton / Branning)

Introit: Eastenders Theme Tune

Archdruid: Oh I say.

All: I ain't one ter gossip.

Archdruid: I ain't one ter gossip.

All: Oh I say.

Filling-up of washing machines

Young Keith: 'Ello Ma.

Archdruid: Young Keef! Yer've come back!

Young Keith: I'd only been to Tesco's.

Archdruid: Well, you know me.

All: I ain't one ter gossip.

Stubbing out of fags

There is a time for everything.
A time to live and a time to die.

A time to load washing machines and a time to tumble dry.
A time to call the boss Poppydoppyloss and a time to call the boss Poopydropoliss.
A time to do 30 minute episodes on your own and a time to have a fag.

And a time to have another fag.

And another fag.

A time to enter stage right and a time to fade.

A time for intro music and a time for the doof-doof-doofs.

God: Doof-doof-doof.

Pouring Money Down the Drain

An act of devotion, cost, and beauty. Mary of Bethany pours a jar of expensive perfume onto Jesus's feet, and wipes it with her hair. An act of worship. An act that would fill all the senses - the amazing sight of this respectable woman pouring out her love. The sound of the oil pouring. The smell of spikenard filling the air.

But. There's always one, isn't there? One with the hot take? One who says, "I wouldn’t have done it like that if I were you." Sort of person who'd listen to Beethoven's Fifth being premiered, sidle up to the stage door afterwards, and go, "I reckon dah-dah-dah dum is a bit samey as an intro, Ludwig? And maybe just drop a little bit of the 3rd violin?"

And here we have, of course, Judas. Leaping into that role with "You could have sold the ointment and given it to the poor, dear. You're just pouring money down the drain, there."

Now we're not told what Mary says in reply, having been Judasplained about her priorities. But I like to think it was something like, "that was my jar of ointment that I can use for what I like. And you can keep your opinions, mate."

Because it's not Judas's ointment. He has no authority here. Mary has done something wonderful and beautiful and costly, and Judas hasn't. He has no right to criticise because this hasn't cost him.

Isn't that often the way when we criticise? It's not costly to us. We've not taken the risks or paid the costs. It's not us that's learned an instrument or practised for however many hours or put our heart and soul into the thing we've decided isn't good enough.

All the armchair generals telling us how Ukraine should defend itself are very definitely not having to plan a war while bombs rain around them. All the people in media and social media, telling us that they got by in the 1930s with just a candle to warm the house and ice so thick on the windows they had to scrape polar bears off to get the curtains open in the morning. They're criticising those who are struggling with heating and food bills, but they're doing so from positions of comfort. There's no cost for them. No risk.

Mary of Bethany is not taking the low-risk option of sitting back and snarking about others. She's got an expensive bottle of perfume and she's gonna pour it on Jesus's feet. She's seen something  - an opportunity - that we don't have. You know how in his first Epistle, St John says, how can you love the God you haven't seen if you don't love your neighbour whom you can see? Mary is able to see God before her. And she has poured out to him the costliest thing she has.

And the room is full of the beauty of the love she has poured out. This is pure worship - heartfelt, beautiful, and costly.

And prophetic. Jesus is Christ, the Anointed One - and here he is, being anointed. But this anointment is against the day of his funeral. Mary’s pre-empting his death. And doing the job that all the other Marys, and Salome, won't do later - when they go to a tomb to anoint a dead Christ, and find against all science and reason that their services are not required.

So what does this passage tell us about worship? That it's beautiful, personal and costly. That it involves our whole selves and all our senses.

What does it tell us about loving God and our neighbours? The old story. That we love God with all our lives, and then our neighbours as ourselves. After 2,000 years, the poor are still with us.

What does it tell us about cheap criticism? That it's safe for us, destructive to others, and not pleasing to God.

And what does it tell us about Jesus? That he is the Holy one. The Anointed one. The one worthy of all our hearts' and lives' possessions. And yet the one who though deserving all things will bring us to his Father through a cross.

Very Mild Commination on Someone Who Stole the Sachet of Seeds from a Poundland Grow-Your-Own Chilli Pot

Woe is me, for I am as a woman bereft of chilli seeds - but not many. 

Slightly saddened am I, and a bit bemused.

For behold, the pot in which I was to grow my chilli plants, 

which I bought for just a quid from Poundland

is empty of chilli seeds

and the contents are incomplete.

There are the little pads of coir compost on which I was to scatter the seeds

Behold the little plastic dish in which to place the compost

But there are no seeds

The sachet is not there

The pot is bereft

and life is not in it.

I am the victim of the world's most low-value crime

and  also quite a long-term one.

For who thieves a small sachet of chilli seeds thinking to fence it on the black market?

Where is the cut-price shop selling tiny sachets containing few seeds?

Woe unto they who cannot put their hands into their pockets for a pound to buy a packet of seeds 

And would rather source their greenhouse comestibles by thievery and deceit.

May wrath burn against them

but only mildly

Like unto an chipotle or an jalapeño

and not like unto the Scotch Bonnet

or the Carolina Reaper, which scorcheth the nether regions the day after consumption like the very fires of Gehenna.

May those who steal very small sachets of chilli seeds stub their toes very slightly when they go to bed at night.

May they have forget where they have lain their glasses

remembering not that they are on top of their heads.

May their remote controller run out of batteries 

just when Pointless is on the other channel.

May they wake up five minutes before their alarm goes off

and then fall asleep again, only to be awakened shortly afterwards.

May Windows install updates two minutes before their important Zoom meeting.

May their hair dye be just one shade out of what they expected.

Or - if male - may they go bald two weeks earlier than they would otherwise expect.

May the door bell ring when they are in the bath

and the Yodel delivery agent throw their package over the fence

But the box not be too badly damaged

and the goods inside basically OK.

So may they have minor frets

and lesser inconveniences

all the days of their lives.

Or at least for a couple of weeks.

What Nazanin Should Have Said

I would like to start by saying how grateful I am. To Liz Truss, who manages to look so inspiring on Instagram, and to Boris Johnson. It is true to say that having Boris Johnson as Prime Minister has truly righted the situation after all those previous Foreign Secretaries, who weren't as good as Liz Truss, failed.

As an Iranian-born dual national, I am especially duly grateful that the United Kingdom has gone to all the trouble of paying a decades-old debt, just so I can come to what I can regard - until Priti Patel revokes my citizenship - as home. 

I would like to thank all the people with Twitter accounts featuring Union Jacks and words like "Brexiteer" in their profiles. If they had not been referring to "mad mullahs" for all these years, the Iranian government would never have caved in and released me in the way they did.

I should especially add my husband Richard. Not only has he repeatedly gone on hunger strike to support me - but more importantly, he was grateful to Liz Truss. Whose taste in hats is arguably second only to Boris Johnson's stylish wearing of hi vis. I am very grateful. And, as his wife, I know he is right.

And I would like to make it clear that, with my dual nationality, I have really no right to be British at all - as you can see by looking at my skin tone. And so I am so grateful that people are prepared to consider me a bit British by marriage. 

Finally, I would like to thank Vladimir Putin. Without the oil crisis he generated by invading Ukraine, which meant Boris Johnson needed to find alternative sources,  I might still be under house arrest in Iran. So, like so many of the people with Union Jacks and "Brexiteer" in their profiles on Twitter, I owe so much to him.

I am very grateful.

Green and AstroTurfed Land

News from my friend Melissa Sparrow, famed for her terrible poems. Over in Grilsby-on-the-Hill where she lives, they've been getting fretful about the regular costs of cutting the grass in the churchyard. And there's been numerous fights over it. Being a traditional farming community, they go out and spray it with all sorts of poisons so as not to have any dandelions, daisies, nettles or primroses in the grass. But there's been an influx of "them woke types from the City what the Express warned us about", and they started to suggest a programme of leaving some uncut, raking up the mowings, building compost heaps and other such left-wing conspiracies.

So at the last PCC they voted to cover the graveyard with artificial grass.

Melissa is sad at the loss of the previously lovely stripy lawns.

And then there's the other downside. The terrifying Grilsby Badgers. Notorious for digging in the graveyard, mugging passing archdeacons, and excavating archaeological sites while nobody is looking.

Artificial turf is no match for badgers, it turns out. There's now two-foot holes dug through the turf all over the place. Some of the badgers have taken to getting under the fabric, then tearing around like soldiers on an assault course. It's causing terror to unsuspecting church visitors who become aware that chunky objects are heading towards them with plans to steal their shoes.

Yes. Grilsby badgers steal shoes. Which they then drag under the plastic grass. So now there's the green outlines of assorted shoes, sticking out of the graveyard.

And the parishioners of Grilsby really think, in retrospect, they should maybe have cut round the gravestones rather than straight over them. Some relatives are starting to complain. Although, to be fair, not too loudly in case they attract the attention of the badgers.

One did. And now there's the green outline, etc etc. The badgers are holding him hostage for more shoes.

If you're thinking of covering your graveyard with artifical turf - I wouldn't.

If Sting Wrote Hymns for Progressive Liberal Christians

Roxanne
You don't have to light up that tea light
Taize is over

We can go out all relaxed and feeling bright.

Roxanne 

Icons don't have to be used tonight

Just hold your seaside pebble

You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right.

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

 You don't have to light up that tea light

I've got that blissful feeling

Iona is appealing

I have to tell you just how I feel

I don't care who wrote Ephesians.

My liberal mind's all made up

So you can wear your make up

Told you once I won't tell you again

I won't judge you.

 

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

You don't have to light up that tea light

(Roxanne)

 You don't have to light up that tea light

The Name of the Moon

A lot of people getting very excited about the "Worm Moon", the made-up traditional name for today's full moon. And the Beaker Folk have asking me what the traditional Beaker names for the full moon were.

Well, I've done some investigation and I can confirm that the complete list of traditional Beaker names for moons is as follows:

January: Keith Moon

February: Sun Yung Moon

March: John O'Mooney

April: April* Moon

May: Button Moon

June: Clanger Moon

July: Daphne Moon

August: Under the Water Moon

September: Werewolf Moon

October: Hallowmoon

November: Ban Ki Moon

December: Moonmass

And I think everyone knows that, if there's a second moon in the month, it's a leap moon and you have to put the clocks to 1792.

* They took April off.

If Sting Wrote Fundamentalist Evangelical Hymns

Every breath we take

Every move we make

Each tambourine we shake 

Every cake we bake

You'll be judging us.

Every gift we bring

Every song we sing

Every bell we ring

Every sacred thing

You'll be watching us.

Oh we all know

We belong to you

Our knees just quake

With every vow we break.

Every night time prayer

All the clothes we wear

Each time we don't care

How we wear our hair 

You'll be watching us.

Dust

It's not his Lent yet, but still...

A little man sits at a long table

Face puffy with his fight against mortality

No one comes near

All must be tested

A mighty ruler, yet scared of a handshake

or a rogue breath, veering in the wrong direction.

So powerful, so great, his rule obeyed

So shrunken, so faded, so scared.

"I am almighty," he says, "or maybe I am just Herod, to be eaten from inside. "

Filling others' skies with manifest threat

While his own air is filled with one invisible.

Was that a speck of death?

Or just a particle of dust?