When Goldilocks Got into E-Commerce

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Emma and the Beast

Obviously I blame the Met Office and their Irish equivalents.

They were clearly jealous of America's hurricanes. Each with its own name. So they did it to the Irish and British equivalents. Which are generally heavy downpours. But if they're called Osric or Ortrude or something somehow they're more relatable apparently.

But then they were faced with the prospect of a bit of non-Atlantic-storm-related weather. Realising they couldn't give it a name in the official sequence, instead they personified it as "The Beast from the East."

Which is all very well. But names are powerful things. Give a weather phenomenon a name and it acquires a kind of moral force - a suggestion of purpose. Now we have weather with a personality.

And then we get Emma.

Storm Emma wasn't named by the weather people on the eastern side of the Atlantic. She was named in the Americas. And has made it across the Pond with all her faculties intact.

So what do the Beaker Folk do when the Beast comes from the East and Emma drives across from the West? They mythologise and anthropomorphise.

Now the Moon Gibbon Folk are rooting for the Beast - who they think may be able to give the Great Gibbon itself a good hiding should they meet up. While the Fertility Folk are supporting Emma - a good, wholesome English name, they say. The rival cults are even now praying to their respective deities to grant good weather.

Those Beaker Folk who are better at geography are concerned that Emma and the Beast are going to meet up at some point. And wonder what will happen. Some hypothesise that plucky Emma is going to slay the Beast, somewhere over Stonehenge, Spring will come, and the song of the turtle will again be heard in the land. Others point out the coincidence  with the casting of "Beauty and the Beast" and wonder whether they'll settle down and raise a family of young zephyrs.

And some, reflecting on the violence of Storm Emma and the chilly indifference of The Beast, are predicting terrible warfare in the heavens.

Giant idols of Emma and the Beast have appeared in the Orchard. Personally I reckon they've got her nose wrong. But that doesn't really matter.

What does matter is that they should never name another weather system. Numbers will be far more suitable. Just start at 1 and work up. A number won't hate you, take delight in blowing your house down, or laugh as the blizzard howls round your house. You can count on numbers.

Criminal Complains She's Being Treated "Like a Criminal"

Into the Schrodinger's-cat world of the speed laws, where a criminal is complaining that she is being treated as a criminal. Reminding me of the "Occasional Conformity Act" which "1066 And All That" defined as the only law at its time that you could choose when to obey it.

Alhough the criminal respects the law, she keeps being fined for breaking it. In fact, if she breaks the law much more, she may be put into the situation where she won't be able to break the law again. At least not without breaking a different law. Although some of us might think that there's no obvious reason why a criminal would worry about breaking the laws, the criminal assures us that if she breaks the law again, the new law she'd have to break to break the law, isn't the sort of law she'd break.

Unlike the law she'd have to break to be put in the position where she'd have to break the other law to break the first law. She reckons she can't help breaking that law.

The criminal tells us that nobody can help breaking the law which if she breaks it she won't be allowed to break the law. Ignoring the fact that, right up to the point where she breaks that law, she isn't breaking that law. So she actually spends quite a lot of time not breaking the law it's impossible not to break.

The law it's impossible not to break is estimated to have saved 4 lives. Presumably due to all the potential criminals choosing not to break the law because that would make them criminals. Even though it's impossible not to break that law. And everybody breaks it. Well you would, wouldn't you?

In fact the criminal could suffer less from breaking this law if she went on a course to learn why you shouldn't break the law. Except she can't because she broke another law.

Meanwhile the criminal tells us she's being penalised for breaking the law. So she may be incapable of keeping the law, but at least the criminal understands the way laws are supposed to work. Just not the speed limit. Which isn't a real law.

H/t  road.cchttp://road.cc/content/news/237844-driver-risks-losing-licence-repeatedly-breaking-20mph-limit

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

A Hymn for George Herbert's Day

A rich man was my father
Never short of a nicker.
But I resolved that I'd be rather
A saintly, rural vicar.

Forever on my round
I looked after the poor
I brought them  bread, their wounds I bound
I even swept the floor.

And though it wasn't nice
To work and pray all night
Through reckless, gruelling sacrifice
My book and hymns I'd write.

My parish rounds and prayer
My reputation make stronger
But if I'd taken some more care
I might have lasted longer.

A servant to the King,
Whose life my life has bought
But spending my life in caring,
I made my life quite short.

I am the priest devout
Who worked myself to death.
Rather than burn down, I burned out
Noble to my last breath.

(Inspired by Justin Lewis-Anthony)

Beast from the East: Altered Services

Today's Digging of Ceremonial Holes will be held in the Moot House, in the ritual sand pits. The ground is too hard outside.

Likewise, the Baptism service in the brook is being moved to the indoor swimming pool. I know the existence of an indoor pool will come as a surprise to most of you. But we keep it quiet so non-Druids don't know about it. If everybody starts using it, it plays havoc with our auras.

The Prayer Walk will now be round the sand pits in the Moot House. We'll project some pictures of beaches on the walls to remind you that you should have spent your money on a nice trip for some summer sunshine. Instead of supporting the Thatching Fund.

A lot of Beaker Folk have been asking, if Amanda Platell doesn't like native English people like Stormzy, why she can't go back where she came from. I guess they probably don't want her. And this isn't a case of immigrants (Australians) stealing the locals' jobs. Who'd write for the Mail?

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Emma Chambers - 1964 - 2018

Pure brilliance.

Rest in Peace.

Disgusted with Tunbridge Wells

What on earth is it with Tunbridge Wells? Home of the Ordinariate priest who got excited over the love life or otherwise of the Bishop of Grantham. He also suggested that +Grantham's domestic arrangements could "stretch the the fabric of the C of E to beyond breaking point." Personally I reckon that happened years ago. At any rate, the fabric of the C of E seems pretty much like it was in 2016 when I first commented on the matter.

Now Peter Sanlon tells us that, since the Diocesan Director of Ordinands* in Southwark Diocese is a lesbian, it's likely that straight men will never be selected for ordination training. Which makes you wonder how she ever got the job in the first place. If nobody ever selects somebody of a different gender, or a different sexual orientation, why hasn't every priest always been a married man like St Peter? How did the Southwark DDO sneak in, in the first place, if that's how it works?

Or maybe Peter Sanlon is suggesting that lesbians all hate men. That would be ridiculous, to suggest he stereotypes like that. But then he has previously seemed to equate paedophilia with homosexuality. So, you know.

He also tells us the problem with bad shepherds is that they go around whitewashing things:

It is a perennial temptation for  shepherds – that is ministers and lay leaders like us – to hope futilely that a lick of whitewash will cover over the fatal  structural flaws we are sitting on

Now I don't know about you, but I'm shocked to hear that's what shepherds do. They may use a bit of sheep dip. They used to use reddle - and maybe still do in parts of Wessex for all I know. Whitewash? While sitting on a a sheep with fatal structural flaws? What kind of shepherds are these?

It could be that Peter Sanlon has just mixed his metaphors. But best play it safe. If you're a Kentish sheep farmer and you see Peter Hanlon heading for your flock with a pot of white paint, get them safely in. That's my advice.

* Official potential vicar talent-spotter

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

The Gentle, Folksy, Genocidal Beaker Folk

So the votes are in on the Beaker occupation of the British Isles. And, let's be frank, it ain't pretty.

Turns out that the arrival of the Beaker Folk coincided with an abrupt decline in the population of the indigenous people. I say "coincided" as the scientists are careful not to say the Beaker Folk just wandered in and ate them all. Perhaps, like the European colonisation of the New World, it was just an unfortunate importation of new diseases the original inhabitants had no immunity to.

And, of course, a fair amount of genocide.

"Yeah, we wiped out the energy of our entire race and got invaded.
But at least the Sun God was satisfied with our work."

What it all means is that we are all the descendants of immigrants. Not one of us can seriously claim to be mostly descended from the people who walked across from the continent in the days when a prehistoric Nigel Farage was wondering how he was going to take control of the border with Doggerland. So anybody who says immigrants should go back where they came from, should start checking the flights to Poland.

I have to take issue with the comments that the pre-Beaker people were the ones who "built Stonehenge", however. I mean, yes. They started it. But if their population was declining from 3,500 on, then they weren't building Stonehenge III were they? Unless that was what wore them out. There are many mysteries to solve as now the dating suggests that either a weakened, depopulated Great British population still managed to build a huge stone monument, or in fact the Beaker Folk rocked up from the Continent. mopped up the locals, rolled up their sleeves and started shifting giant sarsens around - all in a century or two.

So there are many mysteries yet to sole. So I can keep making stuff up with ritual effect. Bradford University's Ian Armit's comments worry me though...

"In the centuries after the Beaker burials the DNA shows that the earlier Britons did not just come slipping back out of the woods."

Does he mean... they're still there?

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Billy Graham is Dead, Matthew Avery Sutton Not Yet

If it wasn't CS Lewis, then it was somebody who did an awesome impression of him at college, who told us that the problem with the present time is that it assumes everybody else was wrong, and the current bunch are right.

And so Matthew Avery Sutton, not even waiting till Billy Graham is cold, stomps in to tell us that Graham was "on the wrong side of history".

Which reveals that Dr Sutton has a pretty poor concept of what "history" means. Or, more importantly, that he doesn't realise it hasn't ended yet.

What side is history on? Ultimately, history is on the side of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Of futility, failure, decline and death. Viewed from the end of history, we will see that pretty much everything was a waste of time - a chasing after the wind. That the victories that were won, were short-lived. That joy is fleeting, and the best any of us can hope for is temporary bubble of stability and happiness in the midst of despair.

In this respect, Billy Grahams' view of history was more consonant with the reality of things than any progressive view on life. If he thought you should do what you could, while knowing that true happiness only comes at the restoration of all things - then he was at least 50% right. Maybe 100%. Whereas Matthew Avery Sutton's view of life is doomed to utter failure, and we all know it.

What really upsets Matthew Avery Sutton seems to be that Billy Graham's solutions to problems weren't statist. "Individuals alone can achieve salvation; governments cannot. Conversions change behaviors; federal policies do not." It's a fundamental rift in outlook this. And I probably need to use an insight from CS Lewis again to consider it.

If Christianity is true, then states and governments are temporary whereas individuals last forever. On the other hand, (my words) if Christianity is false, then both are temporary so what the hell. Who cares? Let's eat drink and be merry and relatively kind to each other, for tomorrow we die.

Worth remembering that, whatever his political influence, Billy Graham was a churchperson not a politician. So when Matthew Avery Sutton complains that Graham "criticized civil rights activists for focusing on changing laws rather than hearts" - well, yeah. What Sutton is saying is that he'd rather the law made people behave well than that they wanted to. Which, yeah, is pretty indicative of a statist view of life. Of course, the thing about states is they're not all as nice as the one M Sutton thinks we should have. Some states are frankly a bit crappy. Wouldn't it be nice if we all loved each other?

In the end, Matthew Avery Sutton's piece basically tells us the important piece of information that he didn't agree with Billy Graham. But only one of them, as of today, is dead. I wonder about the piece - did Sutton write it ages ago, and then wait for Graham to die? Or did he write it in a hurry, asked to knock a few hundred scathing words out? I hope it was the latter. Sutton has an excuse for its laziness and unexamined assumptions if it were the latter.

But I'll tell you this. A liberal deciding who is on the right side of history, two years after the Brexit vote and 15 months after the Trump one, with Putin in the Kremlin, Assad in Syria and Erdogan in Turkey may wonder where history is. And when the newspaper publishing his piece has a failing business model and is losing money hand over fist they may also wonder which way that arc is bending. Personally I'm more on the liberal side. But the idea we're heading for a liberal utopia strikes me as being as unrealistically eschatological as anything you're likely to hear.

So Billy Graham is dead, and Matthew Avery Sutton isn't yet. One day we may (or may not) find out what side history is on. But if your view of the Kingdom of God is that it's coterminous with the State, I'm guessing it's not on your side. States are temporary. Individuals last forever.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Generating Sermon Ideas

You know how it is. It's Wednesday. Prime day for panicking about Sunday. You're a preacher struggling with a sermon. We all do it. And you need an illustration but you're out of inspiration. How are you gonna enlighten, educate and entertain without at least one enlivening anecdote?

Fear not, little ones. Follow any of the steps below and your sermon will be improved. And lengthened by anything up to five minutes.

- Go for a journey with the bare minimum of fuel. NB this journey must be on God's Work. Otherwise your just limping home with a teaspoon in the tank will be a mere coincidence.

- Feel a bit sad. And then feel a bit better again.

- Develop an illness. Bear it bravely.

- Be rude about UKIP. You're vanishingly unlikely to be complained about at hustings. Next time.

- Go down to your local car park. Drive around praying for a space. Eventually your prayer will be answered. NB for best results, do not close your eyes while praying.

- Have lots of friends who don't mind you sharing their personal situations.

- Find a random word in the passage. Doesn't matter which. Wring every possible meaning and ambiguity out of the word's meaning in the original Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek; its usage in Middle English; that odd little second meaning of its translation into Latin; the way that in the Tagalog they had a bit of a problem with translation; the way the King James Version translates it as something totally different and is clearly correct.

- Recount the one time you were both witty and holy. Again.

- Walk up to 1,000 people and ask if they want to be saved. One may well say "yes".  They may have said the same to those Mormons yesterday, as they just like pleasing people. That doesn't matter. If you're really lucky the police will stop you for causing a disturbance. And now you've got a sermon illustration and you're a news story.

- Remember that time you went to a Billy Graham mission.

- It must be some kind of anniversary of Princess Diana? Mention how great she was.

- Explain why God is a bit like something God really isn't much like.

- Explain a difficult concept  (eg the Trinity) by analogy with a concept you don't really understand  (e.g. the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics). Pray there are no physicists in the congregation.

- Have a child so you have a source of amusing stories. If you're in more of a hurry, borrow a pet. Pets are less likely to hate you for it when they grow up.

- Throw in a hideously heretical analogy for the Trinity. Thus distracting attention from the thin-ness of the rest of the sermon.

- Complain how everyone on trains is looking at their phones and avoiding human interaction these days. Neglect to mention what the Evening Standard* was basically  invented for.

- Go for a walk in the countryside but forget to take your map. Thus enabling you to explain how you trusted God and got home safely. Ideally do this somewhere safe, like Buckinghamshire or Suffolk. Not Yorkshire where you could fall off a cliff in the dark And people would instead use you as a sermon illustration to needing a light unto your feet.

* Metro, Telegraph, Beano according to local conditions. Your mileage may vary.

The 6th Day of Lent

Just want to calm Beaker Folk down. They were panicking that possibly the Woodwose had gone feral again.

It's just Marston Moretaine going through Lent. Three years ago he gave up meat, and put on 2 stone by eating crisps to compensate.

Two years ago he gave up meat and crisps - and put on 2 stone by eating chocolate to compensate.

Last year he ate about 6 hundredweight of peanuts making up for not eating meat, crisps or chocolate.

So this year he's given the peanuts the push as well. And it takes a horrendous amount of cheese straws to make up for that loss of snack-based calories. Four packs a day, as it turns out.

Trouble is, all those cheese straws seem to have affected his biochemistry. Eight inch long body hair. And howling at where the moon would be, were there a moon.

It's only 6 weeks till Easter.  And we're all counting the days.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.