Storyteller’s World

Paul Foot’s book is filling my head with politics, including more than usual disillusionment about our electoral processes and their outcomes, and renewed heart-searching about how to vote this time.

So how’s this for a dream?

In the election of May 2005, millions of Labour voters turn against the Government to give them a damn good whacking for all the betrayals and disappointments. The result is a Parliament in which the Tories are the largest party but without an overall majority. In consequence, their attempts to set a budget or do anything are stymied, and a second General Election is held in October. By this time the Labour Party have ditched the Leader, and replaced him with a socialist. Labour voters return to the fold, and Labour are returned with a small, but working, majority.

Naw, I guess it can never happen. But at least it might make politics interesting, and worth thinking about.

Dave Rattigan’s new site: Leaving Fundamentalism has just been launched, and looks like a useful resource for anyone trying to make the break.

Anything that helps people move on in their spiritual journey without the terrible guilt, sense of being a traitor, and depression, that can often be the result, is worth supporting. (And that’s not even beginning to talk about the fundamentalisms that you can’t leave, without your life being in danger.)

Dental mishap, reminds me of a passage from Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain which has stuck with me all these years.

So they dropped me at Horseheads and I got something to eat, and I broke my tooth on some nickel candy, and went walking off down the road reciting this rhyme:

So I broke my tooth
On a bar of Baby-Ruth.

It was not so much the tooth that I broke as something a dentist had put there. And then a business man in a shiny Oldsmobile gave me a ride as far as Owego.

In my case, what I broke my tooth (or something a dentist had put there) on, was a slice of granary bread in one of Van Doesburg’s excellent sandwiches. It feels like there’s a hole in my tooth big enough to have been made by the Odessa Crater meteorite. I phone Steve, my dentist, and he can’t see me till after Easter; so I have to make an appointment to see his partner.

Whatever it was that removed the tooth / filling, I swallowed the whole lot without noticing. (Note to self: should chew food more thoroughly.) In the middle of the night I wake up with stomach pains and a bad taste in my mouth, convinced that I’m suffering from mercury poisoning as a result of swallowing the filling. Diagnosis: another episode of acute hypochondria.

Paul Foot’s last book, The Vote: How it was won, and how it was undermined, is a fascinating and disturbing read. It’s another one of those books which makes me question the whole way I think of bits of history. Which means, questioning the whole way history was taught to me, and how it is represented in the media, in society in general, and in the way the nation tells its story about itself.

All those essay topics about The Causes of the Great War: remember them? In my O-level history course, the answers took you back through all the military and diplomatic alliances of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, during the second half of the 19th century. I vaguely remember there were times when it looked as if Britain would ally with Germany against France, almost as if it were a repeat of the Napoleonic Wars. Even then I wondered vaguely how such changes could be possible. Could they really be explained by the shifting colonialist ambitions, or expansionist visions, of the different nations; and in the end the necessity of standing up to the militarism and inhumanity of that nasty Kaiser (a grandson of our own beloved good Queen Victoria!)?

Paul Foot describes the social condition of Britain in the early years of the 20th century, a theme never touched on in O-level history in the 1960s. The ‘Great Unrest’ (1911-14) was the greatest period of class confrontation since the Chartist movement of the early 19th century. It came about because all of society seemed to have benefited from the good things of the glittering Edwardian age - except for the workers, whose wages were being cut over and over again by their employers. A wave of strikes began, and continued through the next four years. Again and again the strikes were successful, and employers were forced to concede something more like a living wage to their workers. H.G.Wells, writing in the Daily Mail, described the country as being “in a dangerous state of social disturbance … the opening phase of a real and irreparable class war.” And he urged his readers: “Wake up, gentlemen! We have to ‘pull ourselves together’. Our class has to set to work and make those other classes more interested and comfortable and contented.”

At the same time the movement for women’s suffrage was entering a new and militant phase. The rulers of the country (including the Government of the time, in the hands of the so-called Liberal Party) were running scared. But then came the outbreak of war in August 1914. Foot writes:

Then suddenly and tragically both movements shuddered to a halt. Workers’ militancy and suffragette militancy were stopped in their tracks by the guns of August. The strikes stopped instantly, as, in a great wave of militarism, workers signed up for the colours. The women’s movement was split as it had never been split before. The WSPU [Women’s Social and Political Union] had always insisted that the question of the vote should predominate over every other political issue. Now the question of the vote was tossed aside. Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst declared that the supreme priority was the need to win the war. Both women went round the country using all their oratorical skills to shovel young men into the charnel house.

So, what were the causes of the Great War? The competing militarisms of the colonial powers? Or the fear of the ruling classes in all countries, in the face of the growing determination of the working classes not to remain passive victims? And their willingness to sacrifice a generation of the world’s youth in order to cling to their power and privileges?

According to Friday’s Oxford Times, Lucy Pinder (”a photographic model, m’lud”) will not be visiting Lincoln College to pull pints in the Junior Common Room. This is a grievous blow to the students who won a competition in the Daily Star newspaper to have the 21-year old model (are they ever any other age?) visit and give out free drinks for the day. The College authorities have apparently ruled that she may not come because she is not a Common Room member.

What stings, however, is not this so much as the reason, according to Tom Woodhead, why it is such a disappointment: “Lincoln has been voted the least important Oxford college and this would really have put it on the map.”

Least important college?! What, with former students like John Wesley, Baron Von Richthofen, and me!

I shall get to know that road from Oxford to Nottingham; though today we varied the route slightly as I was so fed up with the slow road from Banbury to Daventry. Today we took the A34 from Kidlington to the M40, turned off at the next junction, followed the A43 to join the M1 at Northampton, then M1 all the way to Jnctn 25. It turns out to be no further than the other route, and quite a bit faster as so much of it’s motorway.

The occasion today was a reunion of Alison’s friends from university days in Manchester, partly for reunion’s sake, but also to say God speed to Roger and Miranda who are going back to Burundi for a two-year (or possibly longer) term. Their children have grown up and left home, and they feel the Lord is calling them to give this couple of years pre-retirement to the mission field they love.

This is just the kind of ‘call’ I resolutely and determinedly clamp my hands over my ears at, if I catch the slightest hint Someone might be trying to tell me something. And hum a hymn very loudly, to make sure any other voice gets comprehensively drowned out. Cowards, some of us. Compared with R and M.

Over at Kathryn’s place, there’s talk about how poetry can nerve the fainting liberal. So I thought I’d add my pennyworth, which is a poem I wrote while attending a clergy conference over a quarter of a century ago.

God’s Debatable Lands

We all are people who fight shy of borders:
We want to live safe, deep in black or white,
Are creatures of light or darkness, fearing twilight.
Look how we build up fences against marauders,
Miles, miles of wire that shout mankind’s disorders
In empty land. There Love cannot alight –
It is a frightened bird flung into flight,
A beaten madman cringing from his warders.

Loving our brittle refuge better than God,
We shun his country, the Debatable Lands.
– But then, by brambly ways we never trod
There comes to us, with broken, bleeding hands
Which hold out risk and healing, not a rod,
Our Jesus, Christ, the Man of the Borderlands.

The interesting thing to me is that I had only just been made a deacon, and started my curacy in a conservative evangelical, and low-church, parish. But it looks very much as if I was already beginning to think that this wasn’t me, quite. That inside there was a little liberal, sort of.

Margaret’s funeral this afternoon, in a packed church with many family and friends not only from this parish, but from other places she has lived. Many of them, too, were clergy: former curates or colleagues of her late husband, including one retired bishop (I was told afterwards, fortunately).

In what I said about her, I reflected on one of the things that most impressed me about her: that in spite of (or more accurately, because of) her somewhat traditional Anglican spirituality and devotion, she had a very generous, and liberal, approach to the sexuality debate:

She also brought us a deep, genuine pastoral sensitivity and broadmindedness. In all the current soul-searching agonies about the limits of Anglican inclusiveness, and about the Church’s teaching on sexuality, Margaret cut through the theoretical arguments about scripture and principle, to a personal, pastoral concern for real people who are wrestling to understand how they are made, and to live authentic Christian lives. I know her perceptiveness and acceptance have been a solid help and encouragement. Margaret knew that real, classical Anglican Christianity is generous, broad, open, inclusive; she knew it not as the result of intellectual argument, but instinctively, as a fruit of her prayer and love.

She was a very special lady.

Kathryn is agonising about Ruth Gledhill’s article in the Times, ‘Liberal and weak clergy blamed for empty pews‘.

Apart from the fact that Ruth Gledhill is a confirmed and delighted dysangelist or cacovangelist (come on folks, the Greeks must have had a word for someone who goes about spreading bad news), this savours all too much of the same phenomenon as the Government noticing that something is wrong with education and blaming the teachers, when it’s clear that the whole of society, including the parents, is to blame. Something’s wrong with the moral state of the nation, and they seem lacking in faith, so let’s blame the clergy.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with some people a few years back. They were doing the usual sort of complaining about the church embracing new-fangled music and liturgy instead of the Book of Common Prayer and King James Bible etc. So I challenged them: “If I changed all my services to BCP and KJV, would you come to my church then?” They looked a bit shamefaced at that, and then were honest enough to admit, “Well, no, actually.”

So there may be some parts of the world where the Church is growing because its ministers are preaching the kind of message people want to hear: “Hate your enemies and anyone different from you; crush the poor; make gays’ lives hell; tear paedophiles limb from limb …” Does that mean we have to do the same? Actually the clergy of the Church of England are (to a large extent - let’s exclude the ones preaching the above message) Christians, preaching a message that Jesus would recognise. Let’s not be ashamed of the word liberal: respectful and accepting of behaviour or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas; favourable to individual rights and freedoms; concerned with broadening general knowledge and experience; giving in generous amounts.

This is a time to hold fast to our convictions, not abandon them for the sake of a quick fix of popularity. A way of life which passionately preaches personal integrity and authenticity, along with compassion and sympathy for those who fail or are different, is the Jesus Way.

Ups and downs of parish life and ministry.

This afternoon, receiving the coffin in church, for Margaret’s funeral tomorrow. This is something I’m not often asked to do, (meaning, I don’t think I’ve ever done it before), so I’m pleasantly surprised to discover how good the material in Common Worship Pastoral Services is, for this occasion. It’s especially suitable for a faithful, life-long believer, who really was adopted in baptism, and nourished weekly by the eucharist, and living in hope of sharing in the heavenly banquet, and all the other things this liturgy talks about. Her four children are there to share in the prayers, and then to join in Evening Prayer.

And then, in the evening, the directors of Marston Church Properties spend a good part of their meeting discussing what are fair charges for users of the church hall, and rates of pay for the cleaner, and how to deal with the damp in the ladies’ loo, and the sticky latch on the main door, which are causing so many complaints from hall users.

There are lots of super-spiritual people who complain about these kinds of things having very little to do with the mission of God in the world. But you can’t get much more incarnational than getting the church’s toilets right. (I’m sure Julian of Norwich said something to that effect, didn’t she?)

If you read my earlier post about the Lincoln College student who put neighbouring Brasenose up for sale on eBay, you may be interested to read the sequel in this comment posted by a present member of Lincoln. Thanks, Current Lincolnite.

I just find this an immensely heart-warming little story. Surely it must be usable as a sermon illustration?

This book meme comes from scribblingwoman.

Bold the ones you’ve read. Italicize the ones you’ve partially read. Underline the ones you specifically want to read (at least some of). Read more. Convince others to read some.
(more…)

Oxford on a grey but dry Tuesday morning. And lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Or more correctly, the voices of the French teenagers who are returning with the spring, crowding the streets in cohorts of 50 at a time. They queue outside the Oxford Story, in one of the most beautiful streets in England, ten yards from the cross in the road that marks the spot where Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were burned to death for their faith, by the cruelty of others who claimed to be serving the same Christ. I wonder if they see any of this, talking about pop music or the clothes in the shops or how much money they’ve got to spend or whatever else it is teenagers talk about. Will they learn any English from this experience? Perhaps the best we can hope for, is that they might learn to love England a bit, and so want to learn its strange tongue.

And in Cornmarket the African Evangelist has also returned, exhorting us, “The Bible says, Believe in God, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s a cold reception he gets, no doubt confirming his view of the godlessness of the strange foreign culture he has come to. Perhaps, when missionaries first visited his country and preached to his ancestors, the appearance of a stranger in the streets with a story to tell, brought crowds of curious listeners flocking round to see the most interesting thing that had happened for months. Oxford passers-by have too many other things to interest them. They’ve seen and heard it all before, they think they know all about Christianity and either don’t need it or regard it as a worn-out thing of the past, and they don’t care. And they still don’t know Jesus.

But will they ever get to know him, if he’s offered in such a bizarre and strange guise? There must be a better way …

The congregation are reeling again, with the death of another saint. That makes about 8 really key members of the church who have died in the past 18 months or so. The latest is Margaret, who came into the parish 12 years ago like a whirlwind, and involved herself in just about everything, with great prayerfulness and devotion, until she suffered some mini-strokes a couple of years ago and had to withdraw from a lot of what she did.

We’re all feeling glum about this: we are certainly losing members far more rapidly than we are gaining new ones, and it’s very human to feel down in the dumps. But last week I was praying for Margaret when I suddenly thought, Hey, Margaret - it’s you who’ve got to pray for us, now. You’re much closer to the throne of God than we are. Pray harder, won’t you? We could really do with it, right now.

It feels very much as if more of our congregation are now in heaven, than left down here on earth. I suppose, if you’re part of a church that has been here at least 800 years, that’s not exactly surprising.

maggi posted me 5 questions in the interview game. She’s one perceptive woman! I found them really interesting and searching. Here’s my attempt at answering them.

1. You’re a story teller, Tony. What do stories do to your concept of
what’s “true”?

Who said (or should have done),
‘Story is truth, truth story’ - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know?

I’ve come to believe that all truth is a kind of story, and that story is the very best way of telling the truth. Story is more true than creed, dogma, definition; because it doesn’t close down people’s thinking and exploration, but leaves everything open, invites people to journey further.

When I was doing my sabbatical on storytelling, the word that kept coming to me (till I realised it must be from God) was “Trust the Story.” I’ve been trying to learn what that means, and how to do it, ever since. One thing I know, is that sermons, teaching etc. which either are in the form of story, or draw heavily on story, are both more popular and more effective in teaching, than sermons which don’t, or which are more like intellectual exercises. Not to say all my preaching works like this, or succeeds; but I’m sure telling stories has improved my preaching no end.

Sometimes it involves a risk! Like telling any of the ‘Jesus Legends’ from the Middle Ages (like How St Peter became bald). I have wanted to say on those occasions, “This is a legend” - as if the children might get this story confused with stories from the Bible. I should trust the children more, probably. I bet they wouldn’t get them confused.

In the end, I remember my role model. Jesus was a storyteller; that was his favoured way of communicating truth. If he thought it was a good idea, that’s good enough for me.

2. As a story-teller, you must be interested in audience reaction. Do
you blog more for yourself or for your readers? Would you blog at all
if no-one could read it?

I always thought I would be a writer, and then thought, when I was ordained, that giving up that ambition was a kind of sacrifice I was making for God. Then realised that I was writing for people all the time, in my sermons, and pieces for the parish magazine etc. So I realised the key thing was that I was gifted to be a communicator.

And telling stories is communication like nothing else. There is nothing quite like the buzz of telling stories to a live audience. It’s electric: the contact, the pulse that flows between you and your listeners. It’s addictive, no mistake. The reaction is instant, the whole act of telling is responsive, all the time you are telling you are responding to, answering back to, the tiny subtle shifts in the audience’s attention, interest, amusement, understanding. It’s like conducting an orchestra, or playing an instrument which is all the listeners and their thoughts and feelings.

Blogging is strangely different. I started off doing it for myself. For vanity. Because I could. And I would still do it, even if no one read it. (Or would I?) For what a thrilling thing it was when I began to find that there were people reading it. Yes, that’s immensely gratifying. But I also do it, I suppose, to have daily writing practice (which people might actually read the results of.) To try out ideas. To tell little bits of life story and experience that I may then tell in sermons or conversations. Looking out for things to blog about means observing life, thinking about all that happens around me, trying to look into its meaning and inner nature. It’s like a permanently public writer’s or artist’s notebook.

3. You have spent a lot of your life in the Church, and quite a few of
those years in ministry. Given the current shift towards
“post-christian” culture, and the profound difficulties within the
Church at the present, do you think the church has a future in Western
Culture?

I’ve been in the Church since I was baptised on October 23, 1949, maggi! And attending worship regularly, and active in the believing community, since I owned my baptismal faith in 1971. And ordained since 1979. I love this beautiful, infuriating, maddening, fascinating, mysterious Church of England. I am an Anglican by absolute conviction, that this is the place God has put me and nourished me and called me to follow Christ.

The future? Well, your question reminded me of something Gandhi is supposed to have said. When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he answered, “I think it would be a very good idea.”

Western culture may well not survive, like the Roman Empire. But in one form or other the Christian Church will; and I really think the future is with the Church that has its roots in the past, rather than with any of the newly invented expressions of the faith. Of course, we may not recognise the future form of the church: it will grow out of what we now have. But I believe if the Anglican Communion does split and all the Evangelicals leave, they are likely to suffer the same fate as all the other groups that have defected over the years: they may survive a couple of generations or centuries, but ultimately they will wither and fade away. Because God’s life is in his church. I love it that we have a history and can take the long view. But this shouldn’t make us complacent.

At the same time, the nearer I get to drawing my pension, the more I devoutly hope and pray for the Church of England’s unity, health, growth and wealth, so I can enjoy the fruits of all those years of service.

4. Do the members of your Parish read your blog? Do you ever “preach”
through the blog, or “censor” your subject matter to avoid stirring up
Parish issues?

It’s no secret that I blog; though I only know of three or four parishioners who read it at all regularly. And some of what I write is, I think, pretty outspoken, though doesn’t often produce a response. (I suppose, like a bad child, I should say more and more outrageous things to try and stir one up.)

I don’t mean to be preachy here, though I may wish to change people’s minds about things. Or try out ideas that might get used in sermons. To that extent, blogging is a cousin of journalism.

Yes, I am careful about what I blog. I wrote something about this last year in The Seal of the Blog, and I stand by that, pretty much. I will not write anything that I would not be prepared for anyone at all to read, including (especially) the people I’m writing about. My blog, though personal, is a public space, it’s here for all to read. I would hope to be able to stand up and swear to it in court, as I will before the throne of God. (Eek! this is getting heavy.) That’s the theory. I have just occasionally mentioned persons who I’m pretty sure won’t read this, and commented in ways that might break my own rules. But I try and make that a rare thing.

5. What’s it like being married to a very clever woman? Do you ever
feel threatened?

Ah, you see, when I married her, I didn’t know just how clever she was. I just thought she was fascinating and gorgeous and she made me feel good about myself by being interested in me - an intoxicating mix! If I had known what she would achieve and become, I think I would have been terrified. But on the other hand, all that we have both been able to achieve in our careers, in the years since then, is the result of our partnership, support and encouragement of each other.

What she is now doing and planning to do, might have threatened me some years ago. But I’ve become confident enough of my gifts and skills, (I hope!) and am still learning to trust God enough, to know that whatever we do together, and wherever we end up going, will be the right thing.

If you want to carry on the Interview Game by having me ask you five questions, email me at tony AT godspell DOT org DOT uk

Since I’m going off for a parish weekend at Launde Abbey this afternoon, I can’t wait to explain that mysterious allusion.

It’s a saying I came across years ago - though not one that was in family currency when I was growing up, as you may imagine: “An egg without salt is like a kiss without a moustache.”

It rather appealed to me when I grew my moustache 35 years ago (a few years before the full beard followed), and I contemplated using it as a chat-up line. Can’t remember that it actually worked, however … I shouldn’t fancy kissing anyone with a moustache myself … But then mine was a ludicrous, quaint, droopy, 70s, Sergeant Pepper kind of affair …

Anyway, the expression eventually (when the moustache was in any case no more) became conflated into the form “An X without Y (supply your own nouns) is like an egg without a moustache.”

Use it: it really works!

Just a quickie, ’cause a day without blogging is like an egg without a moustache. (Is this an allusion anyone recognises, or is it based entirely on some family mythology of my own?)

Deanery Synod this evening, which I go to reluctantly: after the years as Area Dean when I had to be there without fail, I’m still enjoying being able to choose, and usually choosing not. But tonight we had an excellent talk about Fair Trade, and I came back enthused about it and even about deanery synods. (Well, maybe that last bit is a slight exaggeration.)

Fair Trade!

Mark of hopefulamphibian posted a comment that’s a useful reminder not to over-simplify in our criticism of others. Though I’d plead the precision of how I try to write, and say that when I say Evangelical has become

a synonym for traditionalist … blinkered, bigoted, biblically simplistic and selective

it doesn’t actually say I believe it is a synonym for those things, let alone that this is true of all evangelicals (and most of my colleagues in this deanery would say I still am one, anyway.) It was meant to suggest that for lots of people outside the Christian world, the posturing and pontificating of some Evangelicals makes it look like that, and some of us inside the Christian world would agree, about far more of the pontificators than we would like.

Of course there are many who are not like that. Do they perhaps need to distance themselves a bit more vocally and publicly from those who are giving not only Evangelicals but the Gospel a bad name?

But there are other, more serious reasons, why I wanted to express a critique of the Evangelical world that I still observe with love and desperation; and they are to do with the fact that though it claims to have a Gospel (even a monopoly of one, sometimes) it all too often doesn’t. Look at the way so many sincere Christians, called to ministry, have ended up driven to breaking point by what they perceive as the demands of their theological position, colleagues, congregation etc. Have a look at Jason’s moving account of his ‘black dog’, and ask why we do this to ourselves and others. Evangelicals don’t have a monopoly of being driven like this, of course! Lots of other kinds of Christians are the same; but it’s particularly sad for a group that makes a great thing of grace to be doing it.

And then there’s the way that the preaching of justification by faith can so often turn faith into a work. The dear vicar who was such a great help to me when I was setting out, nevertheless got this wrong with me. He invited me for a conversation (to make sure I was soundly converted, I guess) and took me through John 3, about being born again. I was frankly baffled by the whole thing. It was only years later that I realised why. He was trying to get me to do something (You must be born again) - when the reason I was there was that something had happened to me (I had been born again). Sometimes our approach with people whom God is taking hold of, is as absurd as a midwife shouting at an unborn child and haranguing it to come out. The contrast is the calm description which explains that the beginning of life consists of being born from a human mother, and in pastoral-theological terms would be an invitation to praise God, in wonder at what he had brought about in the person’s life.

Sometimes our pre-chosen theological positions prevent us from seeing the reality of what’s going on. But again, that isn’t an exclusively Evangelical phenomenon either.

The No More Hiroshimas tour, with Bruce Kent, reaches Oxford on Friday, March 18.

The locally produced flyer describes him as ‘Bruce Kent, the former Catholic parish priest and university chaplain who retired in 1897 to work full time on peace and justice issues.’

This must surely be worth a visit. What was it Mark Twain (might have) said: “The report of my longevity was an exaggeration”?

In Orthodoxy the Jesus Prayer Rope is called komvoschoinion (Greek) or tchotki (Russian). Kallistos Ware tells us that when a monk is first clothed, in both Greek and Russian practice, he is given a prayer rope with these words: ‘Take, brother, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, for continual prayer to Jesus; for you must always have the Name of the Lord Jesus in mind, in heart and on your lips, ever saying: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.’

Kallistos Ware, The Power of the Name, p.32

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn anwyl i mi,
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri;
Ei gwrol rhyfelwyr, gwlad garwyr tra mad,
Tros ryddid collasant eu gwaed.

Chorus:
Gwlad, gwlad, pleidiol wyf i’m gwlad,
Tra mor yn fur
I’r bur hoff bau,
O bydded i’r heniaith barhau.

2. Hen Gymru fynyddig, paradwys y bardd,
Pob dyffryn, pob clogwyn, i’m golwg sydd hardd;
Trwy deimlad gwladgarol, mor swynol yw si
Ei nentydd, afonydd, i mi.
Chorus:

3. Os treisiodd y gelyn fy ngwlad dan ei droed,
Mae hen iaith y Cymry mor fyw ag erioed,
Ni luddiwyd yr awen gan erchyll law brad,
Na thelyn berseiniol fy ngwlad.
Chorus:

You can hear how it goes, and sing along, at
Hen Wlad fy Nhadau - The Welsh National Anthem site.

If your mouth doesn’t water even a little bit when you read this bacon blog, then you must be a far-gone vegetarian indeed. Even Alison, who is one of the most committed veggies I know, has been known to weaken at the offer of a bacon sandwich.

(On the other hand, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you may also be feeling all that fat might be a teensy bit too much of a good thing …)