Storyteller’s World

Oh dear, now I’ve gone and upset someone.

Internet quizzes can tell me (and you) that my theological world view is Evangelical Holiness / Wesleyan; that the theologian I follow is Schleiermacher; that my inner Disney character is Peter Pan. But they haven’t yet explained why this dyed-in-the-wool Anglican has the knee-jerk reactions of a nonconformist. Or perhaps that’s exactly why I’m an Anglican by conviction: because no one else is nowadays.

Following the recent terrible accident on the Oxford Bypass in which 3 teenagers and a young man were killed when a car crossed the central reservation, there has been a lot of local agitation for a crash barrier in the middle of the road. On Sunday one of the congregation came up to me after the service and asked me to sign the petition urging the Highways Department to do something.

I don’t like signing petitions at the best of times. But I specially don’t like signing them when I’m put on the spot; feel morally blackmailed; or when everyone else is signing them in a rush of outrage and concern.

But saying No - which is what I did - was probably not a Good Idea either. Life’s complicated for those of us who, in the ‘Which Character in a Popular Children’s Storybook are You?’ quiz, come out as 75% The Great Big Enormous Turnip.

I somehow thought that Tom’s wedding would be a breeze. After all, it’s not me having to organise it or buy new outfits. (I’m reliably informed that this will have to be done by the womenfolk up to four times, as it’s not possible to wear the same outfit, however expensive and brilliant it may be, for Sun’s, Li’s or Tui’s wedding, that you have worn for any of the weddings back up the line. Not sure if this is a law of physics, or appears in some part of Leviticus I read once and have forgotten.) All I have to do is hire a suit (pre-worn at some other wedding, pray note) from Moss Bros, bless ‘em - even that’s an adventure. Oh, and buy new shoes. But other than that, a breeze. All I have to do is swan in wearing a borrowed cope, say the words, and it’s off to the party.

But it turns out to be more complicated than that, and every little piece of the picture conjures up powerful emotions. I find I’m much more nervous about marrying my son and prospective daughter-in-law, than anyone else’s. For them at least, it matters that I should not sound unengaged, careless, pompous, parsonical, platitudinous. Matters even more, that’s to say, than other times - when I also aim to be none of the above, but if I’m having an off day it’s just an off day. This is 100% The Real Thing, got to be right first time.

“What words of wisdom can I give them? How can I help to ease their way?” So I turn back to that appendix to Holy Writ, Fiddler on the Roof. And it makes me cry, as always; but even more than usual; and I still don’t know what I’m going to say to them.

Meanwhile the car needs washing. I haven’t done that for years - have been taking it to the carwash or not bothering - so I dig around in the chaos of the garage and find a hose and brush and begin. We don’t yet have a hosepipe ban but I’m a little conscious that this is a prodigal use of water. No sooner have I started than a Thames Water van pulls up in front of the house. Paranoia kicks in. “My God! How have they found out so quickly? There must be a sophisticated hosepipe meter sending signals to the Water Police somewhere.” I disappear from sight, humming innocently, and the van pulls away. Nothing to do with my excessive water consumption.

[”That’s what he thinks.” Thames Water Police.]

Then there are a million and one last minute things to check up on. The camera. Do I know where it is? Is the battery OK? Have we got any film? There are the suddenly popping up doubts about whether the hotel booking is still OK. Does the car need new tires?

Alison is going through a similar process, though because she’s from Venus it shows itself a different way. Her first words to me on waking up this morning are, “Have you got any decent socks to wear?”

“What do you mean, decent? I’ve got millions of socks.”

But it turns out none of them are decent, under the meaning of the Act.

Meanwhile, Tom is blogging about writing his bridegroom’s speech, which Anne is helping to edit (she’s from Venus, too), and that the one thing he’s sure of the rightness of is marrying Annie. Amen to that.

Rumbled! Though you could say your spouse has an unfair advantage. Here, then, is my result for the Inner Disney Character quiz:

You scored as Peter Pan. Your alter ego is Peter Pan. You are a child at heart. Anything you believe is possible, and you never want to grow up. Peter Pan 69% Goofy 69% Donald Duck 56% The Beast 50% Sleeping Beauty 50% Pinocchio 44% Cinderella 31% Ariel 25% Snow White 25% Cruella De Ville 0%

Which Disney Character is your Alter Ego?
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When I was learning storytelling from Angela Knowles (who taught me most of what I think I know), she said after one of the group exercises, “It’s good to see someone who’s exploring his inner child.” I didn’t like to tell her, that’s how I am all the time.

Though Peter Pan only got it on a tie-break, all this still feels uncanny. How do they know so much about me?

Mary has been raiding the inarticulate and stirred up a debate about the seriousness of Internet quizzes. I challenged her and Kathryn to guess what my inner Disney character might be. Perhaps someone else might like to have a guess, before I reveal all?

It’s nice to know that we bloggers now have a father in God. According to Peter Preston’s review of The Broken Boy by Patrick Cockburn, it’s Claud Cockburn:

Andrew and Alexander’s dad, Claud, the spiritual father of bloggers everywhere as he banged scabrously away on his old Underwood typewriter.

scabrously? COED defines scabrous, adj. as 1. rough and covered with, or as if with, scabs. 2. salacious or sordid

I’m bound to ask myself, in a spirit of self-examination and genuine enquiry (surely there should be an Internet quiz about it somewhere?): How scabrous is my blogging? In either sense of the word?

Perhaps this is a good reason for observing Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tool #3: Beware of Adverbs.

And on an entirely different note, I’ve been re-reading Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum with a view to taking part in, or maybe just reading, the online book group at Europhobia later this month. And there I find, among a host of throwaway one-liners:

“The Benedictines are the heirs of the Druids. Everybody knows that.”

Maybe I’ve just not been paying attention.

Others who, like me, care about our writing, and are always looking out for ways to improve, may welcome Roy Peter Clark’s Fifty Writing Tools. Thanks to John Naughton for the link that led me here.

Tui’s home for the summer from her Northern (or Midland) University, having done well in her first year exams, and taken tearful leave of some of her friends who were exchange students from overseas, only here for one year.

It brings back memories of how she has always been like this. Even in first and middle schools, her closest friends were children from other countries, and after all too short a time, it always seemed, there came an emotional parting. It’s not just that Tui is by nature warm, friendly, welcoming, wanting to make people feel liked and accepted. She also really likes meeting people from other cultures, with different outlooks and life and different experiences.

She favours those attitudes which are more laid-back, relaxed, than us uptight Brits. So I come in for a lot of chafing on the way home when I’m swearing about the bl**dy Stobart lorry driver who pulls out into the outside lane of the A34 and then can’t pass the lorry in front, and who is still blocking the lane 2 or 3 miles further on. Chill, dad, she says. Or some such.

Anyone who is laid-back enough to tolerate being my passenger when I am in this maniac driver mood (usually at the end of an overdose of M1) deserves a Cool Award.

Borderlands, the St John’s College Durham journal of theology and education, has some good articles this time.

Paul Vallely on The Fifth Crusade: George Bush and the Christianisation of the War in Iraq

Fleming Rutledge on Tolkien for these Times

Josiah Idowu-Fearon (name drop! I was at Cranmer Hall at the same time as Josiah) on Conflict and Cooperation between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria

Philip Sheldrake on City of God / Human City

Tom Wright on Decoding Da Vinci

You can download the whole journal at 1.8Mb.

GAS-GUZZLING vehicles such as 4×4s and people carriers will pay the same road tolls as the smallest cars under government plans to replace fuel duty with nationwide congestion charging.

It’s official, according to Alistair Darling, quoted in Driving, motoring news and car reviews from the Sunday Times and The Times - Times Online: “If we make it more complicated it would be very difficult to get it going,” he said yesterday.

So satellite tracking and charging aren’t already complicated, eh?

Are we governed by idiots, or fools? Like I said: bad idea.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 75% Roman Catholic 75% Neo orthodox 75% Emergent/Postmodern 71% Classical Liberal 54% Modern Liberal 32% Charismatic/Pentecostal 32% Reformed Evangelical 14% Fundamentalist 0%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

I’m specially proud about the bottom line: 0% fundamentalist! But quite why they decided Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan was more significant than the equally rated Roman Catholic and Neo-Orthodox, I can’t imagine. The tie-break question was about infant baptism - which is surely not a preserve of Methodism? Still, I don’t mind being heavily influenced by that life-long Anglican, John Wesley.

Today’s Times has a depressing juxtaposition of stories on the front page. The lead article is about the Church of England’s financial crisis, which is so great that the bishops may have to consider “letting go” up to a third of the clergy. Next to it is a banner about an article later in the paper about the costs of professional footballers: over a billion pounds last year.

Something seems out of balance, here. (Bah! Always knew I should have signed for Spurs when I had the chance.)

One of the (extremely few) things that makes going to the supermarket interesting, is looking at what’s in other people’s baskets. Of course, even this doesn’t prove unfailingly interesting, because most of the time it’s just the same as what’s in yours. There’s only a limited amount of envy you can extract because of the people who get to eat more meat than you do; disgust at the amount people spend on pet food; or self-satisfaction that at least you don’t get through two bottles of scotch a week.

Last time I was there, the woman in front of me in the queue had in her basket: two coconuts, and three cans of Red Bull.

Clearly, a tale hangs hereby. Surely it can’t be as trivial as the fact that she’s discovered that if you empty out half the milk of a coconut and fill it up with Red Bull, you get a drink with interesting properties? Psychedelic? Aphrodisiac?

Has anyone out there tried it?

Favourite day off lunchtime pastime for this guy with simple tastes: a Prêt sandwich, a can of beer, and a video. Today it’s a charming comedy fantasy full of cartoon-like violence: The Long Kiss Goodnight, with Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s got all the usual fantasy elements: heroes impervious to bullets (in a crowded train station, while dozens are being mown down by the bad guys’ semiautomatics, our Heroes just run through the midst of it); heroes with unbreakable bones (blown through at least two glass windows and a frozen lake, they suffer only flesh wounds); heroes who carry on walking, talking, driving, fighting and killing long after being shot, stabbed, blown up, hurled hundreds of feet through the air, etc. The fantasy plot device involves a rogue Intelligence Agency chief who has gone over to the Dark Side and is conspiring with former criminal targets to stage a fake terrorist attack and set off an explosion in a crowded town, killing thousands of honeymooners, and blaming it on the Muslims. (It’s a wonder this gets shown on TV, don’t you think? - Only possible, no doubt, because all the rest is so fantastic.)

But then it just throws it all away by going completely OTT into the realms of total impossibility. This is about the reason for the Intelligence chief going to the bad. He was so pissed off with budget cuts that he’s staging this mayhem and fake terrorist attack, to get an increase in his departmental budget. This film actually shows a President who has cut military and intelligence spending, in order to spend it on healthcare.

Where do these guys dream this stuff up?

During the Second World War, when German U-Boats were wreaking havoc on British shipping, a large part of the scientific war effort was devoted to finding ways to deal with the U-Boat menace. One inventor turned up on a Monday morning at the offices of the Admiralty, announcing that he had solved the problem.

- How?

- It’s simple. I propose boiling the Atlantic Ocean.

- !? And how do you intend to do that?

- Oh, I’m just the ideas man. It’s up to someone else to work out the details.

In a similar spirit, I realise it’s quite out of order for me to criticise the Government’s transport plans, without outlining any better ideas.

Well, with a budget like they’ll need to do satellite tracking and charging, why don’t they just introduce nationwide teleportation? I know it can be done: I’ve seen it on Star Trek. (To say nothing of The Fly.)

Some may object that this hasn’t actually been invented yet. Pish! If that’s really insurmountable, I’ve thought of a cut-down version by which it’s possible to insta-transport from any place to anywhere else with the same name. Thus, to travel to Edmonton, Canada, all you have to do is go down to Edmonton, N.9. and hop on the NTL (Nomen TransLocator). It will save journey times, costs, and environmental damage. A slightly more sophisticated (’Smart’) version of NTL will allow translocation between identical street addresses; e.g. from 26 Acacia Avenue, Swindon, to 26 Acacia Avenue, Beijing. (This may necessitate some homogenisation of addresses from place to place.) We already have a sound infrastructure for this in the Church, where anywhere called The Vicarage will be a NTL node for all other buildings with the same name. Sometimes it feels like it’s already happened.

I just have the ideas: it’s up to someone else to work out the details.

Just off the top of my head, some reasons why the “Labour” Government’s ‘Pay-as-you-go’ road charge plan is a bad idea.

• It’s going to cost about as much as Bush’s ‘Star Wars’ programme to implement. Cost of the satellite, the fitting of however many million tracker units in existing vehicles, the whole computer network, systems (what’s the betting they use Micro$oft?), programming and operators required to work the thing.
• Alternatives to vehicle duty and fuel duties are not going to benefit anyone as much as the “heavy” road users: HGVs, gas guzzlers.
• There’s something deeply anti-social about putting further barriers of cost to people using the road, effectively limiting road use even more to the rich and powerful. Feels like charging for breathing: the Road is for everyone!

Bad idea, bad idea.

I love John Naughton’s blog. Here (Memex 1.1 - Blog Archive - Homage to Catalonia) he once again puts the eye in irony.

Thanks to those who commented on my post (I apologise for the ghastly title) musing on why there are no(t more) women evangelists. In the mean time I’ve had a few minutes to reflect on it a bit more, and there are some thoughts I’d be willing to start posting up as church-door kind of theses.

As maggi says, Mary Magdalene was the very first ever evangelist, running to tell the men that Jesus’ tomb was empty. She ran to share her experience, her amazement, her bewilderment, her confusion, her fear. Compare the modern “evangelist” hammering on about his certainties (which may or may not be serving to shore up his own doubts), his dogmas, his need to remake people in his own image.

Kathryn reminds us that every preacher, woman or man, should be conveying good news and if not they may as well hang up their preaching tabs (only kidding - I’ve never worn them either ) and stay in bed on a Sunday morning. This makes me reflect again on why it is that so many “evangelists” spend so much of their discourse telling us the Bad News: you’re all going to hell unless you do as I tell you. There’s something funny about a salvation that needs such a lot of explaining. “You see, it’s like this: this ship you’re all on is sinking, that’s to say, going under the water. If you stay on it, you will go under the water too, and because you are not a fish, you will not be able to breath under the water, and therefore you will die. But round the side of this ship there are smaller boats called lifeboats. If you follow one of these nice men called sailors, and do exactly what they tell you, they will guide you into one of the lifeboats and lower it into the water where it will float. This is called substitutionary embarkment Then perhaps in a little while another big ship will pass by and pick you up and take you back to dry land so that you won’t be drowned.”

The things people manifestly need saving from, like poverty, war, starvation, injustice, slavery, madness, loneliness, disease - these are not obviously things that are changed in any way when they turn to Jesus. So it’s not even clear that salvation “works”. Something else needs to happen, like the already “saved” getting off their butts and beginning to make the world more of a different place for the others they are trying to persuade to join them.

As to John’s comments about the “wings” of the Church that tend to have designated evangelists. It reminds me of the church where I met Alison, where the curate in charge of the youth group used to insist that the boys and girls prayed in separate groups, allegedly because girls couldn’t really pray. I don’t think I would have believed this, except that it sounds the same note as most of the rest of what he said and did, and well, there are so many other churches (and religions) which seem to think the same thing.

As for me, I must have been bitten by an evangelist in my pram. As a result, even though I’m a Christian, I spend most of any evangelistic address I have to listen to thoroughly resenting what feels like a heavy-handed attempt to manipulate my feelings, my thoughts, my life. I keep thinking, “But that’s not right. No, the Bible doesn’t actually say that. But what about X or Y? That doesn’t follow at all; it’s logical nonsense.” And so on. There must be a word for people like me. Evangelophobic?

Meanwhile, back to the sermon preparation. I’ve got some really good news to talk about …

From yesterday’s Independent:

This T-shirt costs £1.99 in Britain. It is made with cotton grown in the USA. This cotton sells for 48¢ a pound - 30¢ less than it costs to produce, thanks to subsidies worth $3.9bn a year. This is more than three times the level of US aid to Africa. The biggest subsidies go to farmers in Texas - home state of George W.Bush, where one farmer receives $17m a year. The cotton is turned into T-shirts in China by workers who are paid less than $1 a day. In Benin, which relies on cotton for 60% of its exports, farmers are going out of business because their government aren’t able to subsidise them. There were 80,000 five years ago; today, there are 26,000. As a result, the world’s 16th poorest nation is losing 1.4% of its GDP a year. No wonder 33% of the population live in poverty and life expectancy is 48 years. In Britain, the price of clothing has fallen by 14.7% over the past 5 years.

In the same paper’s Business section, Jeremy Warner comments on another subject, “It’s a funny old world that has the aspiring, generally quite poor economies of Asia helping fund the world’s richest economy, but that’s capitalism for you.” If that’s capitalism as we work it, it stinks and it ought to be changed.

The talk at this morning’s all age service centred on Jesus calling his disciples, with the words, “Follow me”. This began with me setting off round the church, follow-my-leader style, with all the children in tow, imitating my movements, gestures, expressions and sounds.

At one point the walk took on a strong likeness to an impression of John Cleese (though I had hoped I might look more like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix… ) Afterwards Gill said, “You’ve got a real ministry of silly walks.”

Not that she’s old enough to remember the Pythons: she must have heard about them from her grannie.

More good stuff from Simon Goldhill:

The simplest point that emerges from looking back at how the myths of Greece and Rome have functioned in the history of European culture is this: the past matters. It matters because in psychological, social, intellectual, artistic and political terms the past is formative of the present. It is the person’s or culture’s deep grounding. It matters how the past is understood or told. Stories change lives. They make foundations, they build hopes and they can kill. A self-aware appreciation of the past requires reflecting on the myths and the histories, the story-telling and the critical analysis, which make sense of the past - and thus the present. The shibboleth of ‘living in the present’ is no more than an infantile fantasy - the destiny of those who do not know how the past runs through them. To understand the present - as opposed to just living in it, like the child - requires a critical look backwards. And the person who does not understand the deep grounding of culture can only be a shallow person.
(p.319)

A little further on he tells us that ‘relevance’ is a contemporary idol. Preach it, brother!

I’ve been enjoying Simon Goldhill’s Love, Sex and Tragedy: Why Classics matters. I was surprised to find a whole section of the book, and one of the main thrusts of his argument, is about needing to know classics in order to understand the whole nature of Christianity, and hence of Western culture and civilisation. Because Christianity has its origins in classical antiquity, and its whole development was in assimilation of, and opposition to, the culture of its time. Hence T.S.Eliot’s demand that all readers who wished to see a Christian civilisation survive must acknowledge the importance of studying Latin and Greek.

Towards the conclusion of this strand of his argument, Goldhill tells this delightful story:

Sarah, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a friend of mine, was being prepared at school for a public exam in Religious Studies. For homework, she was asked the question ‘Why does Jesus tell parables?’ She was encouraged by her father, a pleasingly troublesome man, to read the Gospel of Mark, and especially chapter 4 verses 12-14, where Jesus explains his teaching technique. She dutifully did so, and quoted Mark in her answer: ‘I tell parables so that outsiders will not understand.’ Sarah’s teacher corrected her and said, “No, Jesus tells parables so that he could make his message available to all. Parables are a good way to get through to the ordinary, simple folk whom Jesus loved.” Sarah pointed out that the Gospel said the exact opposite. Parables are to exclude and baffle people. Her teacher underlined that ‘The answer is “so that everyone can get the message”.’ What’s a Gospel compared to a standard exam answer?

From the Men Behaving Badly Department

I’ve always hated buying shoes. Come to think of it, I’ve pretty much always hated owning shoes. Typical response, when the Best Beloved suggests I might like to buy some new shoes because there’s a sale on at the shoe shop, is, “Why would I want to buy shoes? I already have a pair.” The contents of my wardrobe looks like this:
Black shoes 1 pair
Brown shoes 1 pair
Trainers 1 pair
Slippers 1 pair
And somewhere under a desk or in a dark cobwebby corner:
Originally black shoes 1 pair, down at heel and with a hole in the sole, but being kept just in case the current pair gets lost or stolen.

But, having been reliably informed by the BB that I absolutely will need a new pair of decent black shoes (shiny) to wear with the penguin outfit for the Firstborn’s upcoming wedding, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to cross the threshold of a shoe shop in Shrewsbury. (Having first found out from her where there was a shoe shop in Shrewsbury.)

I should have known that half term week was the worst time to be trying to buy shoes. The shop was full of miserable children, screaming infants and near-suicidal parents. This accident of chronology brought back to me the experience that explains why I have this hatred of buying shoes, rather like Dudley Moore discovering, when Peter Cooke locks him in the wardrobe, that his neuroses spring from a perinatal trauma. It’s all those half terms during which Mum schlepped me round the shops trying to find a pair of shoes that would fit me, between the ages of 0 and - well, I don’t think that’s any of your business. Scarred for life, is what I am.

The thing is, I no longer have to behave myself when this ordeal is going on. Now I’m grown up, I can indulge myself in being overcome by resentment, panic, and nausea. This isn’t a neurosis, it’s perfectly natural claustrophobia, the dread of being forced into, and confined in, too narrow spaces. I have learned to accept the fact that, like most people, I have one foot a whole shoe size bigger than the other. But worse than that, I also have one foot a whole shoe size smaller than the other. When buying shoes, I can never remember which foot is which, so both feel as if the shoe I’m trying on is impossibly squeezing it like one of the Ugly Sisters trying to get into a glass slipper.

Then, at that darkest hour, redemption came in like Prince Charming and I suddenly spotted a pair in my size (that is, the size of my larger foot) but also in an Extra Wide fitting. I had never known my foot (or feet?) was/were extra wide. I grew up with the conviction that my feet were long and narrow, with a mega-high instep. But like a crazed polar bear suddenly released from Clifton Zoo into the Arctic wastes, my feet suddenly recognised their freedom. They could stretch! They could breathe! They could fly!

I now own two pairs of black shoes. And with them, a whole skein of nagging, unanswered questions. What sort of person might I be, how might my life have turned out differently, if I had known all along that my feet were not only a shoe size different in length, but also needed an extra wide fitting?

Here’s a real quickie.

I just stopped myself writing “a modern evangelist has to explain to his audience” - hold it, shouldn’t that be inclusive, “his/her”? - then thought: I’ve never even heard of a female evangelist. Is it just that I’ve led a sheltered life, and the world is actually full of women evangelists? But if not, why not?

I haven’t time to think it all through right now. But I suspect it is not at all a trivial question.

Where do the words “till death do us part” come from? I have just found them in a perfectly reputable book about the Classics, and find I’m spitting blood.

What seems clear (I know from the number of weddings I’ve conducted where someone - usually the bridegroom - wants to say it) is that lots of people think these words are part of the marriage service. Not in the Church of England, they ain’t. If you look in the Book of Common Prayer, or Common Worship, you’ll find that the actual words in the marriage vows are “till death us do part”.

So where did this reversal in the way people imagine they remember the words come from? Is it part of the secular marriage ceremony? Is it American? Is it from Johnny Speight’s BBC sitcom, which I remember as Till Death Do Us Part? But the BBC web page about it is confused and both forms of the title appear equally on the page. So which was it? And why? And why does this matter so much to me? (No, don’t try and answer that: that’s my problem.)

Good story in the new Radio Times.

There had been a terrible car crash on a Saturday evening, and one of the drivers was trapped inside his car. He asked the paramedic for a mobile phone, called his wife, and said, “I’m not going to be home in time. Can you record Doctor Who for me?”

It must be true, ’cause the paramedic was a friend of the producer …