Living To Tell The Tale > The Online Diary > June 2004
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Salty Vicar
The study is slowly disappearing under all the papers and books that accumulate. Just occasionally it seems possible to try and do something about this, and this afternoon was one of those times. I took two plastic bags of books to the Oxfam shop (trying to limit the selection to things I thought they might be able to sell!) and some old journals to the dump. This is really depressing; because in spite of the effort, it has barely scratched the surface of the problem. In some ways the place looks worse, in fact, because I've moved stuff around, and there's still no more room on the shelves. And there are still so many books and documents that I haven't looked at for years, and don't especially want or like, but just can't bring myself to throw away. Like that venerable old Lima Text on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, that I wrote my first Grove booklet about. It's a part of my life, kinda.
So, why is it so hard to throw stuff away? Because
There are two conflicting aspects of self here. The Storyteller-Self never throws anything away; everything is stored in memory, or somewhere, because sometime it may become part of a story... The Christian-Self wants to throw away everything 'not needed on the journey' (i.e. just about all material possessions) so that it can travel light wherever the wind of the Spirit blows.
So here's some stuff about uncluttering: an article in Suite101; and Mind Over Clutter. There are lots more sites; but most of them are out to try and make money from you. What ever happened to the Web as a place for the free sharing of knowledge? We have made his Father's house a den of thieves.
The Story today tells of a fisherman, who left the whole life he had built up - lucrative family business, wife and family - to become the follower of an itinerant preacher. A man who spoke as he found, who was not afraid to make mistakes - or, afraid or not, made plenty of them - but was then not afraid to be put right, who was the first to recognise what the whole movement was really all about, but then denied his friend when he most needed him, who yet became the leader of the group, after their friend's death, who in the end shared his Chief's manner of death.
And now those who are ordained at this time - as I was 24 years ago - are admonished by the presiding bishop in these awesome terms:
A priest is called by God to work with the bishop and with his fellow-priests, as servant and shepherd among the people to whom he is sent. He is to proclaim the word of the Lord, to call his hearers to repentance, and in Christ's name to absolve and to declare the forgiveness of sins. He is to baptize and prepare the baptized for Confirmation. He is to preside at the celebration of the Holy Communion. He is to lead his people in prayer and worship, to intercede for them, to bless them in the name of the Lord, and to teach and encourage by word and example. He is to minister to the sick, and prepare the dying for their death. He must set the Good Shepherd always before him as the pattern of his calling, caring for the people committed to his charge, and joining with them in a common witness to the world.
In the name of our Lord we bid you remember the greatness of the trust now to be committed to your charge, about which you have been taught in your preparation for this ministry. You are to be messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord; you are to teach and to admonish, to feed and to provide for the Lord's family, to search for his children in the wilderness of this world's temptations and to guide them through its confusions, so that they may be saved through Christ for ever.
Remember always with thanksgiving that the treasure now to be entrusted to you is Christ's own flock, bought through the shedding of his blood on the cross. The Church and congregation among whom you will serve are one with him: they are his body. Serve them with joy, build them up in faith, and do all in your power to bring them to loving obedience to Christ.
Because you cannot bear the weight of this ministry in your own strength but only by the grace and power of God, pray earnestly for his Holy Spirit. Pray that he will each day enlarge and enlighten your understanding of the Scriptures, so that you may grow stronger and more mature in your ministry, as you fashion your life and the lives of your people on the word of God.
We trust that long ago you began to weigh and ponder all this, and that you are fully determined, by the grace of God, to give yourselves wholly to his service and devote to him your best powers of mind and spirit, so that, as you daily follow the rule and teaching of our Lord, with the heavenly assistance of his Holy Spirit, you may grow up into his likeness, and sanctify the lives of all with whom you have to do.
It's a serious business, then. And though you get accustomed to it, there is also much that grows more mysterious and awe-inspiring as the years go by, till you feel you will never get the hang of it, and it's just as well to have as a model the flawed, yet usable man that Peter was. Every year I re-read that charge. Next year, the Silver Jubilee, will be even more of an occasion.
It's a year since I preached that controversial sermon on St Peter, portraying him as a model for how we might change our thinking about the issue of homosexuality. Since then the Anglican Church has continued to agonise over the whole thing, threaten to tear itself apart, dance around the issue, suffer the mockery of the world and the media, and still be no nearer to agreement. Since then Jeffrey John has suffered pretty appalling treatment from the Church authorities, and even worse from the so-called Evangelicals. (I thought 'Evangelical' had something to do with the Gospel, meaning Good News, huh?) Since then, too, Gene Robinson's appointment and consecration have stirred controversy even further, and the churches in Africa and Asia (who won't accept that they have any gay clergy or Christians) continue to represent themselves - and maybe even believe their own rhetoric - as the sole defenders of orthodoxy.
This is one of the things that really gets my goat. The way that words like 'traditional' and 'orthodoxy' have been hijacked by people who no way represent the mainstream of authentic Anglicanism. Our learned and holy forebears in the tradition didn't just mouth the easy answers: "It is written in Leviticus and Paul's Epistles that homosexuals are damned; so damned they shall be!" They engaged with Scripture, and questioned their assumptions about what it meant, and how it is to be interpreted.
tom comments:
I (sic) feel that since my blog's name is simply that of my domain and DNS (sic) is case-agnostic I (sic) am allowed to avoid the use of capitalisation.
absolutely! i haven't anything against the use of lower case per se, in fact, it makes typing much easier for me, since i can't find the shift key without looking most of the time. it's just that as a design feature it suddenly seemed so common in all these christian sites, that it almost became pretentious. but better than the 16th century or whatever practice of starting every noun and every significant other word with a capital letter.
and
Also when following your link on 100 films to Christianity Today I was amused to see an advert on there for a dating service which promised more marriages per match than any other Christian dating service. Surely just the one marriage is required?
ah. maybe they got an advert for a mormon site, by mistake.
I'm delighted to announce that this site is now read by Benedictines of Curzon Park Abbey. Or by one member of the community, at least. Welcome!
I've got a hunch that St Benedict would have loved the Web and all the new technology, and the opportunities for communicating God's word and truth that it offers. It doesn't surprise me at all that lots of Benedictine communities (and I think, individual religious?) have their own web-sites.
Another day of triumph and blessing, with the Confirmation of those we baptised last Sunday. It's a curiosity of the Church of England, that people who are baptised on confession of their own faith are still encouraged (or is it required?) to be confirmed. I suppose it's part of being an episcopal church - that this is the one contact everyone has with a bishop, as the representative or symbol of the wider Church. In this case, the bishop was Bishop Bill, one of the assistant bishops in the diocese. He made a big impression, especially with his own testimony about his conversion as a student, when he had been confirmed at 14, before he really knew what it was about. I'm confident that our three candidates all knew what they were about, and spoke up from the heart.
God is faithful, and keeps his side of the bargain, even when we don't really understand, or fall away, or grow stale and forgetful. He honours our small steps of faith and commitment, and blesses them much more than they deserve. Like when I was 10 or 11, and entered my name in the blank space of John 3.16, in the back of the little blue pocket Testament I was given at Sunday School:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that A. R. PRICE who believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
And even though I didn't have any support from church membership, and even though I didn't follow through for years, God honoured that decision, and ten years later he found me in the wilderness of Oxford and brought me back.
Two more Christian blogs added to Blogs I Watch. I'm pleased to see Salty Vicar knows where the shift key is, even if textweek have lost theirs.
The local primary school celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend, with lots of hard work by staff, parents and Friends of the school. It's wonderful to see how many of the parents doing much of the work are our church members. My predecessor has been invited to give a short speech and open the proceedings. He was vicar here for 31 of those years, and I've been here for 13. May not seem much in comparison, but it's over one quarter of the length of the school's life, and I have been ordained for 25 years in all - half of it. It's odd to conjure with these proportions and statistics. (Though not always profitable or useful, as in: By the time Mozart was my age, he'd been dead 17 years. Hmmm.)
Now David Blunkett is throwing his weight about trying to get the Chief Constable of Humberside suspended, after he was criticised by the inquiry into the failings of police authorities and others over the Soham murder case. But wait a bit: didn't the Bichard Report also criticise the Home Office? Oy, you - David Blunkett! When are you going to suspend yourself?
Oxford Storytelling Circle this evening, not quite as well attended as last month. I told two stories: Tales From The Parish - The Case of Anne Green, and, The Hobyahs (21st Century). This has changed a bit since I first thought of it a month ago. Dubyah is the name of the chief Hobyah. I was nervous about this in case it was over controversial, but most people (including the San Franciscan present) seemed to approve.
Paul Benger gets bumped off the 'Blogs I Watch' list, for excessive talking about football. And for using some non-standard Microsoft format which doesn't render properly in Mozilla Firefox. Sorry, Paul! Come back when you've mended your ways.
Textblog gets added instead; a much more sensible kind of blog, where football is not god. There I discover Arts and Faith's list of the Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films. I have only seen about 28 of them. (Including that one.)
It's Wimbledon fortnight; so naturally, the weather changes. Instead of the fine, hot, sunny weather of the past few weeks, we have cloudy skies, rain, occasional thunder, and today, high winds. Leaves and even branches are falling as if it were autumn, and up the hill at Elsfield, under the great horse chestnut tree beside the church, the ground is covered with hundreds, if not thousands, of scarcely-formed conkers. Up till now, I had been thinking it would be a record year for them, there were so many horse chestnut candles last month when they were in bloom. This is what comes of playing football in June. It's contrary to nature.
And now the Big Two political parties are turning their attention to next year's General Election. I suppose, to distract our attention from their disastrous performances in the recent European Elections. According to the news, it's all about the NHS, stupid. The best the Tories can come up with is to mouth promises about Choice. Everyone is going to be able to choose which hospital they go to, and when, and how long they have to wait, etc. etc. Do they think people are stupid? Or just don't remember? I remember what Choice means under the Conservatives. When a Conservative talks about choice in the NHS, it's just like choice in education, it's like the choice I have of sending my son to Eton. I'm free to choose it all right, as long as I can pay. The trouble is, there are so many people who don't think beyond the knee-jerk response: Ooh, choice, that sounds good, yes, I'll have some of that. Put my big X down for the Tories, please.
But what real hope is there, when none of them dares talk about the unpalatable, un-British (and European!) truth: that better public services means higher taxes? A Labour Government that hasn't, in seven years, increased the higher rate income tax - which means that it has relied on indirect taxation, which falls disproportionately more heavily on the poor - has very nearly forfeited my allegiance. I'm still clinging on to the faith - but only just.
In Cornmarket Street today, a black man, an African, reading aloud from the New Testament and preaching the Word - to himself, as far as I could gather, for every single one of the passers-by was, well, passing by. We hear increasingly that the Church in Africa is stronger, bigger, growing more rapidly and possessing greater evangelistic zeal, than the Church in Britain, and is already sending missionaries to this country with the aim of converting us back to the Christian faith. But I could tell them - as anyone could tell them - that a man standing on his own in the street with a Bible is not the way to do it. You'd think that if they really were so full of spiritual life and the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit would be inspiring some ways of sharing the Gospel that might actually work. At the very least, it should be about making relationships with people, listening to them, engaging in a conversation. But tragically, most religious people don't learn anything very quickly, except for the tired, failed old lessons of the past. (I include myself in this sweeping criticism, naturally.)
This from Ulysses:
Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.
So, Every Story You Read Is Your Story, Every Story You Take Part In Is Your Story, Every film or book or poem or picture or joke that speaks to you, that you remember, that stays in your mind and heart, is your own.
What you forget, when you go in for a major computer task like reinstalling a Linux (aargh!) is just how many extra things you've added that aren't part of the default installation. I keep finding out what those things are: Vim, Emacs, SpamAssassin, Gnucash, goodness knows what all else that has become a staple of my everyday computing. Bit by bit they get put back; and so far all seems to be working well. Why do we inflict these trials on ourselves, and is it worth it? I used SUSE 8.2 for over a year quite happily, resisting the blandishments of 9.1, until a review of 9.2 said it was worth it just for the new kernel, 2.6. And I succumbed ...
To prove it really happened, and even though it was the shallow end, they really did go right under, and I really did get wet. (With thanks to Eileen who assisted. I think I'd have had a struggle getting the candidates under the water otherwise.)
Fun and games with the computer this weekend! The new SUSE Linux 9.1 was broken in inexplicable ways, chiefly to do with redrawing the screen which just seized up and took for ever. In the end I decided it needed a completely new install, instead of the update it had had. This of course meant making a new set of partitions on the hard disc, and none of this was straightforward. (Is it ever?) But at last it seems to be working. I managed not to lose any data, except for the configuration files, passwords, access data to Web and Email, etc., all of which need to be set up again. But at least the Linux system seems to be running properly, and quickly. But watch this space.
At church, major drama with an open-air total-immersion baptism of three of our young people, in the swimming pool of the only parishioners I've discovered who have one. A moving occasion. In the evening, our praise service was led by the Monday Home Group, and Alison preached. Good things happen, when lots of different people are involved and using their gifts.
Esther phoned from Athens, where she and companions have arrived safely.
Esther leaves this morning for her gap year travels - though in this case, God be praised, she's not going to Thailand or Australia, but only to the Greek Islands, and only for three weeks. Third daughter, Tui, the Joyous. I feel something of the same grief of loss that I have had each time that children have gone away for the first time, first when Tom went to boarding school, then when Martha and Naomi went to university.
Drove her to Trinity College, where she's meeting one of her companions and going to stay overnight with him before flying out tomorrow. We're greeted by a 30-something man as I'm taking her friend's bike out of the back of the car: "Hello, Esther! Can I help you with that?" This is Mark, one of the porters at Trinity. He's just really nice and friendly, explains Esther. She's not even an undergraduate there, just a friend of some who are - yet one of the porters knows her by her Christian name. That's the kind of young woman our Tui is.
Appalling news from Saudi Arabia, of the gruesome murder of an American hostage by Muslim extremists belonging to al-Qa'ida. When will this bloody hatred and violence end? See what a harvest is sprung from the sins of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
For that cause we decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whosoever saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.
Holy Quran, Surah V,32
Such is the way religious zealots of all faiths have of twisting their holy scriptures, that I suppose they believe this justifies the taking of this innocent life, rather than (as is obvious to everyone not infected with zealotry) condemning it in the starkest of terms. And in the mean time, to resist the terrorists, we continue to support the corrupt and iniquitous Saudi regime, and make the terrorist case ever stronger and more attractive to the oppressed. Truly, sin begets sin begets sin.
As well as being Bike Week (see June 14), this is also National Insect Week and Refugee Week. Well, I never. Anyone know of any other awareness weeks going on? Or any websites which give a complete list of what week it's supposed to be? (There was I, thinking it was the week of the First Sunday After Trinity - bless 'em: it's that time of year again!) Things go on like this, we'll need a Weekless Week to either give us a break from all the awareness weeks, or to increase our awareness of all the people and groups who don't have awareness weeks dedicated to them. National Bald Clergy Week. Or, Fathers-of-3-Daughters Week. (I looked up a website purporting to be a Calendar of Awareness Weeks - it didn't mention any of the above. I'd set up one myself; except I never know when they are and don't know how you find out. Perhaps no one else does.)
Much conversation with dear good friends last night from the Faith Sharing Team about the possibility of running an Alpha Course here in the parish. I had to tell them - with heartache - that I wasn't happy about this, then felt bad about it all. What if I'm standing in the way of something special God wants to do here? It would be just like him not to care two hoots about all the issues of taste that concern me about Alpha.
This morning reflected that it's perfectly predictable that I should dislike Alpha. I am the vicar who prefers Linux to Microsoft, driving a Nissan to a flashy SUV, being vicar of St Nicholas rather than St Evenbigger's - in fact, anything less fashionable, less high-profile, to whatever anyone else is doing. But I also offered all this in prayer this morning and he said "Do not quench the Spirit". He's got a way of showing you up like that, just when you've got your mind made up and are feeling comfortably set in your opinions.
Just as well, really. Ever felt it's a good job I'm not in charge of the universe?
It only takes a 3-0 victory over Switzerland to get all the football commentators quoting previous tournaments in which a team has lost the first game, and gone on to win the final - even playing the same side that beat them in that first game. Oh yes, and the fact that someone saw pigs flying in some mythical time past doesn't make me expect to witness it myself any time soon.
Why am I even talking like this? It's not as if I like football, and England never win when I actually watch them play (today's match proves my point: the only exception to this I can remember was the wonderful 5-1 trouncing of Germany in 2001). I feel like the woman in Fever Pitch who complains of being 'colonised' by football. All these international tournaments have that effect, as well as bringing out the worst in some Brits Abroad.
Bloomsday away from Dublin is like the Second Coming away from the Mount of Olives. Well, maybe not quite; we're told that when the Second Coming happens, we'll all know about it. Whereas some people claim they've never heard of Ulysses. Lots of good stuff about Bloomsday and Joyce on the Web, e.g in John Naughton's blog and the BBC Cheat's Guide to Ulysses. I'm not entirely a Stephen Fry fan, but I do think he's right that rubbishing Joyce is a typically British kind of anti-intellectual philistinism. You wouldn't get that in France or Germany ... but then, as we know, we don't want to have any part with France or Germany or any of our European neighbours. Let's just fester away in our mind-numbed, lager-loutish (except all the lager louts are drinking blooming European brews, instead of good English bitter!), increasingly culturally impoverished, class-ridden and socially backward insularism. So I'll just have to drink my solitary Guinness in a while, and dream of Dublin which I've only been fortunate enough to visit twice.
Thank the Lord for the Independent, which is the one pro-European newspaper which is actually making a case for staying in Europe. When are the politicians going to do the same? The whole debate has been hijacked by the tabloids and is being conducted on their usual level of slanging and prejudice. I was going to say, You don't see newspapers like that in France or Germany - but then I remembered Bildzeitung.
Spent some time last night trying to get CSS Validator to approve my Cascading Style Sheets. Felt a great sense of achievement when I earned the little tick at the foot of this page. Click on it if you don't believe me.
Cycling into town this morning was exceedingly pleasant: perfect summer weather, no hurry, before the real heat of the day. I even managed not to be stressed by the crowds of foreign tourists and visitors; I guess full term must have ended and the undergraduates are gone. So pleasant, after so long a time of not cycling, that I thought: Why don't I do this all the time? Here's why: What cycling is like in November, December, January, February, and any time it's wet and windy. The only time in my life I had chilblains, was when I used to cycle to school with Esther every day, the winter she started at middle school.
The thing about Joyce's Ulysses: The sheer attention to detail and observation of the thing, entering into everyone's thoughts and feelings, describing in such minute detail. It's a real pastoral attention, as Eugene Peterson says: 'Joyce woke me up to the infinity of meaning within the limitations of the ordinary person in the ordinary day.' ( Under the Unpredictable Plant, p.125.)
Added to the Blogs I Watch list. But hey - what happened to capital letters? Don't these christians know where the shift key is?
Alison has been at The Flat over the weekend: beautiful weather, and a good restful time. She comes back today, greatly envied. I finally re-assemble my bike, putting the front wheel on, determined to ride it because it's Bike Week and I could do with the exercise. I haven't ridden for over a year I should think, because I had a flat tyre and was too lazy to repair it. When I finally got the inner tube out on Saturday, I couldn't find a puncture anywhere, so put it back together, convinced that the Fairies must have mended it some time. Let's hope I'm right.
Finished Sense and Sensibility, so naturally it's time to dip into James Joyce's Ulysses, since the day after tomorrow is Bloomsday.
Oh yes, watched some TV last night. Don't know which is more
depressing: England losing 2-1 to France in the last three minutes,
after leading by a goal through most of the match; or Kilroy-Silk
gloating over victories for UKIP in the European Parliament
elections. I blame the BBC. They make him a millionaire by paying
him to host a show that pours evil garbage into people's homes day
after day, and by then have made said people ready to vote for him
and his mad cronies because
a) he's a household name, and
b) they've imbibed all the evil, racist, right-wing garbage and
think it's truth.
How's this for a sound bite? (From BBC News report on European Election result:) Celebrating his victory, Mr Kilroy-Silk said: "Now we know why the British public are fed up with the old parties. They are fed up with being talked to in that simplistic manner. They want their country back from Brussels and we are going to get it back for them."
What would simplistic from Kilroy-Silk sound like?
Preached this morning about Sin - makes a change. Then in conference with the families of next Sunday's Baptism candidates. We have three young candidates for baptism, who are opting for total immersion and are probably too big (though I haven't tried it) to be folded up like Flat Stanley for dipping in our font in church. So I have been hunting for baptistries we could beg, borrow or steal. Their non-portability is the main problem, and though one or two local Baptists were willing in theory to have us go and use theirs, we would really prefer to have the event on our own turf. So, while the search for portable baptistries continues (any offers?) the present best solution is an inflatable large paddling pool in Harvey and Jane's garden. Watch this space for the splash.
Good articles in the Observer again: one about Lynne Truss, God bless her. And one by Robert McCrum - always the second person I turn to, after John Naughton - about blogs. I looked up some of the ones he mentions as high-profile blogs, and I dunno, I didn't think much of them. There are a few, political commentaries etc., which really seem to be useful and important, and are probably written by journalists or even teams of journalists. And then there are others which are really, well, no better than this. And the interest of this blog is that it happens to be my life, actually.
The Observer is also blaming the Iraq War effect for the good kicking Labour got in Thursday's elections. But who can be surprised? However anxious we are to have and keep a Labour Government, the Faithful will not tolerate leaders who not only ignore but actually trample on all that they stand for and hold dear. We get enough of that when the Tories are in power; we don't have to take it from Our Own People. Tony Blair needs to take note of that. But it's hard on the hard-working Labour councillors - like our own here - who got voted out. If I were them, I'd be sending some sharpish questions Blair-wards at this moment. 'Ere, Tony! Why did you sacrifice your faithful local councillors, like sacrificial lambs, on the altar of your 'special relationship' with Dubya??
The Web is a big place! I registered with, and linked to, Blogshares , and don't really know whether this is a good link for a blog, or not. The blogging world is big and difficult to break into. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people, are casting the bread of their words and opinions upon the water of cyberspace. And celebrity in this world doesn't seem very different from celebrity anywhere: it's a lottery, it doesn't necessarily bear any relation to merit. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, as Ecclesiastes (that biblical blogger) said. Who are my friends and readers out there? Will they link to me, and let me know who they are so I can link to their blogs? I know someone is hitting this page; but I don't know who, so that I could add those links. Come on, friends: tell me who you are.
The Independent is quite clear that the reason for Labour's disastrous results in Thursday's local elections, is the public's revenge for taking us to war with Iraq. So it's not just me that voted with that intent; and fortunately a local election is a good place to make the point and still have the chance next year to vote Labour so we don't get a Conservative Government back. If only they might have got the message by then and ditched Blair (and, hopefully, Blunkett), and returned to a more unashamed Socialism.
It's not an easy time for politics, with all the lunacies of British xenophobia and insularity, leaning us towards the UKIP and BNP (as if the Tories weren't loony enough), and Labour in the pocket of Big Business too. And the War was a problem. Once it was clear it was going to happen, no matter what public opinion said, there was nothing for it but to be praying for the troops and that it would all be over as quickly as possible. And since the welcome defeat of Saddam Hussein - for he was a monstrous tyrant after all - the prayer that a new Government might be established as soon as possible and the occupation be ended. But the months have gone on and on, and the hole the Americans and we dug for ourselves seems deeper and deeper. Every extra day is another reason for Muslims to hate the West, and that plays into the hands of the evil people behind al-Qa'ida.
Religion's got a lot to answer for.
So the results of yesterday's election in our ward are:
Labour 693
Conservative 426
Green 157
Liberal Democrat 749
Majority for Liberal Democrat: 56
Lib/Dem gain from Lab
Total votes cast: 2025
Three cheers for democracy, eh? 2025 people turned out to vote. I don't know what sort of percentage this is, but it doesn't sound too high to me. Still, the result looks like a vote of no confidence for Labour, probably over The War. Which you can't help thinking is a good result.
Super Thursday? Yes, because it's polling day for most of the country in at least two if not three elections: local council elections, elections for the European Parliament, and in London, for Mayor. So, a big day for politics, and a grand day for national apathy. There have been lots of commentators drawing attention to the difference between the passion aroused by the European Football Championship, and the apathy of these elections for the British public. But who knows? There has also been a lot of talk about people's disillusionment with the Government, especially over Iraq, and that they want to send a signal about that.
All of which made it a tough decision day for me. How does a Party member vote in such circumstances, if he wants to send a signal to the Government? Fear of the hideously worse alternatives should not mean we just toe the Party line and vote like lambs for people who have departed so far from some of the most precious things we stand for, the things we joined the Party for.
So, even as I walked down to the Polling Station, I was still undecided, still praying over where to put my cross. (And I really don't fancy universal postal voting: the walk to the Polling Station, collecting the papers, going into the booth and then putting your paper into the box, is a sacred, ritual act.) I wanted to vote for someone Not The Party, but found that the candidate for the lot I favoured instead was someone I really didn't want to vote for. So ended up voting for one individual and party in the local election, and another for the European Parliament. This is the first time for more years than I can remember that I have voted (other than tactically) for Not The Party. I suppose I could get drummed out for it; but I guess they will still want my money.
Getting on to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which is much more knockabout comedy than the last two, more mature works I've read. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, like this in which Edward Ferrars, feeling melancholy and out of sorts, is replying to the suggestion that he would do better if he had a profession:
"I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it--and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since."
As someone who studied at Oxford (where I don't think I was entirely idle) and now 'prefers the church', however un-smart it is - probably today we should say uncool - I've got to laugh.
Well, I succumbed and decided to upgrade to SUSE Linux 9.1, which arrived from Amazon today. I bought just the Update edition, which is supposed to be identical to the full version, except for leaving out one of the manuals: specifically, the User Guide. Nervous moment: have I remembered to back up all the really essential data, just in case? Then boot from CD1, and keep fingers crossed. It takes quite a time, at least until it reboots with the new kernel, at which point everything starts to go faster. Could be a sign I've got rather a lot of applications loaded, and some time a leaner install from scratch might be good.
One worrying moment, when the sound appeared to have got broken; not again! Just like after moving up to 8.2 over a year ago. But I got YAST to reconfigure the audio card, and all seems to be OK. One or two small teething problems, and of course a different look to KDE. Apart from that, I look forward to learning some new things from the latest upgrade.
First day off in three weeks spent in Oxford, and it's not that I'm obsessive or anything, but I was looking forward to my routine Prêt À Manger sandwich. Also had my hair cut, by a shaven-headed black man called Junior. I was quite tempted to ask him to do mine like his - it looked nice and cool for a day when the temperature reached 31° in London - but he told me he had to shave it every three days to keep it like that.
Transit of Venus today, visible throughout because of the clear sunny day. Naomi and I managed to see it - not as dramatically as some - by focusing binoculars onto a sheet of card when you could clearly see a black dot on the image on the card.
Tinkering with the style-sheet, trying to make this look prettier. Well, I think it's better than the old one.
A frustrating day. Geoff our churchwarden had ordered a clavinova for the church hall, which was to be delivered this morning. Since he's away in York, the plan was I was going to wait in for the carrier, to open the church hall. When it came to midday I phoned the company to find out what was going on. Girl phoned back with the message: 'I'm sorry, our carrier can't guarantee a particular time of day,' ( - even though we had been promised morning - ), 'but it will definitely be before 6 p.m.' Came 4 o'clock, I was feeling more than a little peeved (who ever heard of a delivery driver working later than 4 anyway?) and thought to phone Geoff's house. Oh yes, it had been delivered there around 11, when only Chris was at home and didn't know anything about the plan, so the driver left it in the garage. Net result: my day's work has been severely hampered by having to wait in for nothing; Geoff has to find some way of getting a clavinova to the church hall. And presumably someone expects to be paid for this? Including delivery charge? I don't think so.
Name them and shame them! The sellers are Keyboards Direct, and the carriers Securicor Omega Express. Think twice before you use these. (And no hypertext links to them either. What, you think I'm going to link to their websites?)
The only positive outcome is, that I got around to dealing with my Tax Return, or rather, the questionnaire for Mintaplan who deal with this stuff for me. But it didn't take all day, and wouldn't have taken all day if I hadn't been stuck here.
Media full of D-Day commemoration stuff, and rightly so, for that day of drama and sacrifice was the beginning (or the next big step? - let's not forget those who, like my dad, had invaded Sicily and Italy the previous year) of the final blow against Hitler's tyranny. Do we value enough the freedom we enjoy, as a result of that liberation of Europe? How can we claim to be for freedom, when we countenance the oppression of Palestinians, the occupation of Iraq, the recurrent genocides in Africa and even in the Balkans?
When I was born, D-Day had happened little more than 5 years previously. It was part of the recent history, then, of my childhood world. And now they are wondering how many more years it will be commemorated like this, when most of the veterans will not be with us for many more years. What was recent history, becomes the living memory only of the very few, the very elderly. All flesh is grass.
Good article today by John Naughton, who is always one of the first people I turn to in the Observer each Sunday. (Sadly, he doesn't seem to have an article every week.) Writing today about Open Source Software: a phenomenon which should not rightfully exist, according to the capitalists and economists. Ain't that one of the main reasons I love it so?
And then there's their ridiculous statistics page called The OM index which includes the following:
So? Maybe the guy just moved away from Utah some time during that year. Wouldn't that account for it?
So I had a telephone message from a young man whose banns I read recently, who lives in this parish, but is getting married at St VeryBig's Church, not a million miles from here. He says, "I was speaking to the office manager in the office at St VeryBig's, and she says she hasn't yet received the banns certificate. She says would you post it direct to her at the office, or if it's easier to post it to me, that's OK too."
Generally, I tell people to collect the certificate from me, to give to the vicar who's marrying them. But I thought it was a bit mean to phone this young man and insist on that. After all, he's paid £27, so I shouldn't begrudge him a 28p stamp. But I wasn't going to send it to an Office, forsooth (if I had an office, my office might communicate with theirs) so I posted it to him at his home address. But to show I was not happy I didn't enclose a compliments slip. (Gosh, I hope that wasn't too pointed!)
This creeping office-isation of the Church of England is a pain in the butt, frankly. Like the time a few months back when the 'Social Justice Co-ordinator' (or some such) of St EvenBigger's sent a circular letter to all the local clergy to something like the following effect:
We are compiling a directory of all the Community Work being undertaken by churches in Oxford. Please fill in this form with full details of all the community activities your church is involved in, and return it to this office by SomedateOrOther, so that we can include it in the directory.
So because I'm actually trying to do the work, and we don't have a parish office with manager, or administrator - still less a Social Justice Co-ordinator - I had no alternative but to prioritise it into the bin. Now, of course, the directory has come out with no mention of this parish, giving the impression that we don't do anything in the community. The fact is, our members are probably just as active in community work as those of St EvenBigger's, if not more so.
Looks like the only solution is to set up a church office and employ an administrator. Then other churches' offices will be making work not for me, but for our office. Sounds kind of circular, no? We justify employing people by getting them to create work for other people so that they in turn have to employ people. And where, you ask, is this serving the Kingdom of God? Good question, I reply.
(This should really feature on the Rants page.)
Trying really hard to make peace in the Supermarket Wars. That's the name I give to all the hassle of supermarket shopping, especially at Kidlington Sainsbury's. But I'm getting too old for all this stuff, and in any case it's only me that is ever a casualty, like last summer when I did my back in for weeks after wrestling unsuccessfully with a trolley. Joe Sainsbury never suffers as a result of friendly or unfriendly fire: he always gets off scot-free. So here is the new policy:
Yes, I know: it's a tall order. But it did seem to help make today's shopping less traumatic than it has sometimes (often) been.
Had one of those 'Friends Reunited' experiences today - though without the actual intervention of Friends Reunited - when I met up with someone I haven't seen for over 30 years. Back then we were both team members of a CSSM doing a children's beach mission at Uphill, near Weston-super-Mare. Now he is the minister of a neighbouring Baptist church; but such is the way the ecumenical partnerships in this city work, that even though he's been there for a number of years, we haven't met up before now. It was good to catch up and share stories of our faith and calling, also to send my love to his sister who I had a bit of a crush on at the time. As time went on, some of our theological differences began to show through. Why do I always feel guilty when I seem to be less Evangelical than the person I'm talking to? What am I ashamed of? I happen to believe the Lord is more honoured by an authentic Anglican approach to scripture and authority, than by the shibboleths of where I used to stand.
Evening: with Daniel and Rosie to a wine tasting at Kellogg College. Theme: Italian wines. Excellent entertainment; didn't get any of them right; but resolved to learn more about Italian wines. Not enough food at the do, so we went on to ASK for a pizza afterwards.
In the mean time the Church's Year has moved on, the seasons of Easter and Pentecost are past, and we are in Ordinary Time again. Blessed Ordinary Time! It's my absolute favourite. None of this fussy stuff you get in the seasons, and endless repetition of the same psalms on the same day of each week. Though come to think of it, the Common Worship provision for Daily Prayer even in Ordinary Time isn't quite as plain as I could wish. Those of us with long memories remember that part of the rationale for the Book of Common Prayer was that worship had become so complicated, needing so many different books, directories, page-turnings and bookmarks, that there was a desperate need to make it simple. Now the pendulum has swung even further the other way again. Anyone who has tried to plan and lead a Common Worship service will surely feel a certain tough nostalgia for the simplicity and straightforwardness of the BCP.
Praying at Elsfield this morning, I was joined by a visitor from Montreal who was delighted by all she was able to see and take part in. Yes, a blessing that those of us who live in it take all too much for granted, and many of those who live nearby and never experience, just don't care about at all.
Rain in the night, and a grey start to the day: top of Ragleth shrouded in cloud. A good excuse not to don our boots and tramp off to the heights, and in any case Alison needed to get back to Oxford early to teach this afternoon. I waited on - in fact the weather brightened up a lot and a walk would have been possible - and spent some quiet quality time reading Jane Austen. I've got as far as Mansfield Park, which annoyed me tremendously at the beginning with this wretched Fanny Price being so put upon by the ghastly family. Somehow the whole class element, and the awfulness of it, seems worse in this book. But it grows better: either you become somehow hardened to it, or you realise that actually that's how it must have been for a poor 'gentlewoman', and there really wasn't any way for her to strike out and make her own way in the world, she really was wholly dependent on men and marriage. Given those circumstances, Fanny doesn't do too badly. There's also some good stuff about the clergy: again, totally compromised by having sold out to the social and class structures of the age. And pity the poor curates who did the work for so little of the pay. If they weren't eaten up and destroyed by envy and bitterness about the System, they must have been the real saints who kept the Church of England anywhere near the way of holiness.
Looking for May 3 on Beating the Bounds?
Living To Tell The Tale > The Online Diary > June 2004