Storyteller’s World

Today I have taken off to Wales to spend the week with Mum and the family as we get ready for Dad’s funeral on Friday. Everyone seems to be bearing up well, appreciating the blessing of having family and friends. (And I have felt tremendously supported by the prayers and good wishes of people at church, and by messages of support from blogging friends.) I don’t know what people do, who haven’t got all these means of support. Taking the services yesterday made me even more aware of the strength of the liturgy: having set forms of words that carry you when you haven’t got any words of your own, and which suddenly reveal whole new dimensions of meaning when you’re up against the reality of life and death. Even the Common Worship liturgy does this, though not quite as much as BCP.

Jan’s Mike arrived today too, from Houston. Alison and our children expect to be here on Thursday and Friday.

March 15, 1920 - October 29, 2005

Dad died yesterday afternoon.

He managed to hang on long enough for Jan to arrive from Houston to say her Goodbye. So both my sisters were there with Mum and my nephew, and Dad was conscious and knew they were there with him. Just a short time after they left he died quietly.

It was a good way to go, and it was his time.

I guess I might be blogging quite a bit about him in the next few days, while I’m working through all the stuff. What I’ve been remembering as I looked through some of the photos, is how he was when Tom was born and he first became a Granddad. When we moved to St Albans in 1979, Tom was 20 months old. In the back garden of the curate’s house, there was a large water-butt full of rainwater. Alison and I resolved that we weren’t going to tell Tom that you could take the lid off the butt, in case he tried to climb in. We also weren’t going to point out the tap at the bottom that drew off the water for watering the garden.

What happened the first time Dad came to visit, and took Tom out in the garden to play?

“Ooh, just look what’s under this lid!”

“That’s the way: take it down and pour it on the ground.”

Grandparents can be so irresponsible, can’t they?

So I’ve finished War and Peace at last. Yes, even the Second Epilogue, though it’s just possible I may have skimmed the odd word or two without really grasping it.

I had forgotten, having last (first) read it 35 years ago, what a significant impact it may have had, unconsciously, on my life. Here is Pierre, in Book Four, Part IV, chapter 12, thinking about the meaning of life:

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had continually sought to find - the aim of life - no longer existed for him now, That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared temporarily; he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at this time.

He could not see an aim, for he now had faith - not faith in any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learnt, not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling, what his nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learnt that in Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable, than in the Architect of the Universe the Freemasons acknowledged. He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to see into the far distance, finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.

… That dreadful question, What for? which had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, What for? a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: “Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man’s head.”

I didn’t realise, or soon forgot, that my quest that year was just the same as Pierre’s. A few months later I would be seeking those answers to the meaning of life, in the form of the novel The Time-Slayer that I was writing. I would be struggling with the same conundrum about the nature of time that Tolstoy struggles with. And I would be finding faith in God who furnishes an answer to all that seeking. And who furnishes many, many questions, when we think we have found rest from it.

And the next Big Book? I think I may be ready for a little smackerel of Winnie the Pooh.

Thanks to Claire in Seoul, writing about NaNoWriMo for a Korean news site at OhmyNews International, I get quoted and a link. Ain’t the Internet wonderful?

It was only when I arrived at the place of the assignation, a few minutes before the hour of eight, that I remembered what a big place the Turf Tavern is. There are three bars indoors, on ascending levels that put you in mind of Canterbury Cathedral (but without the beauty of holiness in quite the same way). There are two spacious seating areas outside, already full of Friday-night-merry students, and last night in addition there was a beer festival taking place on the top outside level, for the serious lovers of real ale.

My heart quailed at the thought of trying to meet an unknown number of people I’ve never met before, whose blog pictures - if any - may not be all that good a likeness, and without any agreed green carnation in the buttonhole, or other means of recognition. The possible consequences of approaching younger strangers and asking them “Are you Pandora?” or, “A sibilant intake of breath, is it?” were beginning to loom large in my febrile imagination.

Nothing for it but to buy a pint of Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, a favourite tipple at 5.0% alcohol, and stand eying everyone coming in or out to see if they would recognise the bald guy looking like a middle-aged version of Charlie Brown. After ten minutes of this, and a couple of anxious trawls up and down the bars, I embarked on a third tour, this time going outside, where in the dark alleyway a soft voice said, “Is that Tony?” Kate and Milan had already found each other and were considering whether to go inside.

Two more pints in hand, we looked for a place to sit outside, when Antonia and Jo arrived, easy to recognise from their being together and their excellent on-blog pictures. Mike arrived a little later, and found us among the crowds thanks to knowing Jo and Antonia of old.

And so it is, that journeys end in bloggers’ meeting. What an excellent group of people they are, too:

Jo, Antonia, Mike, Milan, Kate (Me behind the camera: my best side)
If you want one with me in, and them behind the camera, have a look at Jo’s picture or Milan’s.

I try to identify what it is that makes this group such good company. Several of us have some things in common - but not all. Some of us have studied at Oxford (some this century, even!) - but not all. There is even an improbably large Wadham connection. Some have had a connection past or present with the Church of England - but not all. All of us are currently living in Oxford, the best place in the world to live, naturally, but that alone doesn’t account for it: there are many people living in Oxford that I wouldn’t get along with.

No: these are bloggers, that’s what it is. And though there may be some bloggers who do it out of vanity, self-centredness, or some other unworthy motive, there is something about the true blogger that is essentially generous. Expansive and hospitable. Willing to let themselves be vulnerable to others. To share their curiosity and interest in life, their pains and puzzlements, with perfect strangers. And in so sharing, to offer their friendship as well as themselves. I love ‘em.

A bad night. I woke early in the dark, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Couldn’t get comfortable with the bed or the pillow or with the unseasonal warmth. Perhaps I’m more anxious than I know about Dad and everything else that’s going on in my life. When the alarm went, I had just dozed off again, and dreamed that Rowan Williams came to lunch, together with a whole crowd of other people Alison brought home with her.

Rowan was asking me about the parish. He often had requests from Americans who were coming to Oxford to study for doctorates, for recommendations of a good parish church to attend. I wanted to assure him there could not be a better one than ours for him to recommend: for its quintessential Englishness, authentic Anglicanism, friendly welcome, inspiring liturgy and thoughtful preaching. It was just when I would have found out the outcome of this, that the alarm went off. And I realised it couldn’t really have been Rowan Williams at all. His beard was much too short and well trimmed. And it was red.

So what I want to know is: Who is it that’s got into my dreams, impersonating the Archbishop of Canterbury?

I put on my Business Equipment Buyer’s hat as an excuse to visit MacExpo at Olympia today. It was good to get there early and be able to talk to a few people (even then there were queues to ogle and try out the new iMac G5s), because by lunchtime things were really seething.

I had hoped there would be some special exhibition offer, like 25% off any new Mac ordered at the exhibition. Nothing doing.

Li comes in with the degree certificate she’s just received for her Master’s, and we realise this is the first MSc we have in the family. (Well done, Li.) This adds to a family list which includes:

BAs (various), BSc, MA (Oxon) (the kind you pay for, so the rest of my loving family claim this doesn’t count), MA - the kind you have to work for (which is what they’ve got), MTh, MEng, DPhil, and now MSc. Plus assorted Dips, Certs, PGCEs and the like. Do you call this being perpetual students? Or having a love of lifelong learning? Or just needing to get a life?

It reminds me in any case of the limerick:

A maiden at college named Breeze
Weighed down by B.A.’s and Litt.D’s,
Collapsed from the strain.
Alas, it was plain
She was killing herself by degrees.

I thought it would make NaNoWriMo easier to tackle, if I retold an existing story, rather than tried to make up a completely original plot. (In any case, doesn’t C. S. Lewis say there’s no such thing as complete originality; the most creative people are shameless stealers of other people’s ideas?) So I decided on Dark Messiah, the story of the first anointed King of Israel, King Saul. He’s always seemed to me a tragic figure. First chosen and anointed by God, then rejected by him for an offence which seems to us entirely laudable, namely, not entirely carrying out the genocide of the Amalekites which God had commanded (stroke: which Samuel told him God had commanded).

The source for this tale is the First Book of Samuel; but when I look at it, I find the chronology leaves something to be desired. When I write a long fiction, I pretty much like to have a calendar in my hand on which all the events can be carefully listed and ticked off as they happen. The historians of the Old Testament don’t work like that. When Saul is first introduced he is a young man being sent on an errand by his father to round up some missing animals. He is intercepted by the seer Samuel who anoints him prince over the people. His “election” is subsequently confirmed at a gathering of the tribes. Next, Saul goes on his first military adventure and defeats the Ammonites. Then, before you can blink an eye, he’s going into battle again against the Philistines, and his son Jonathan (who hasn’t even been mentioned before) is a grown-up young warrior distinguishing himself among the troops by his exploits. Suddenly, from one chapter to the next, the young prince is the father of a warrior!

This chapter is introduced by a verse that reads something like this in modern translations:

Saul was … years old when he began to reign; and he reigned … and two years over Israel.

In other words, “We don’t have a clue either.” But the thing is, they don’t seem to have minded very much. Whereas readers of historical fiction tend to get distressed when the chronology is all to pot.

For the purposes of NaNoWriMo, which are chiefly to get 50,000 words written, chronology probably doesn’t matter much. But I’ve got a hunch it may bug me, quite seriously even.

Milan proposes that any interested OxBloggers meet at the Turf Tavern at 8 p.m. this Friday, October 28.

Storyteller’s World - Blog Archive - Welcome To Oxford

If you are reading this, can I suggest you reprint this proposal in your own blog with a Yes or No? And pass it on to everyone / anyone else? And send a message to Milan?

As of this time, barring accidents and emergencies, assuming spousal permission, etc. etc. I’m YES.

(Thanks, Milan.)

On a rare shared day off, we’re sitting in bed drinking the First Cup of Tea of the day, and reading our respective books. His: War and Peace. Hers: Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett.

The uninformed reader might think these reading matters have little in common. Not so! Their authors are one in their medical scepticism.

For when I shared one of Tolstoy’s jokes * with Alison:

After his liberation, [Pierre] fell ill and was laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed ‘bilious fever’. But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink - he recovered.

… I found she had just been reading:

“Is there a hospice in this city?” he said. “A decent doctor, even?”

“There’s the Lady Sybil Free Hospital,” said Miss Dearheart.

“Is it any good?”

“Some people don’t die.”

Perhaps when I get around to writing my doctoral thesis it will be on The Humour of Tolstoy and Pratchett: A Comparative Study.

* It’s true, fewer of them are belly laughs, than she is getting from Pratchett.

He was admitted to hospital last Tuesday, after falling down several times at home, and having to call the ambulance men out to get him up. When the carers who come in every morning tried to get him to sit up, he complained of pain in his back. The ambulance came again, and took him off to hospital, very weak and dehydrated. Sal phoned to tell me, and said she thought he might not last long. But once he was in hospital, and they started administering fluids by drip, he perked up wonderfully.

So we made the long drive to Aberystwyth, by way of the Flat, to see him. He looks very frail in the hospital bed, covered with a blanket and dressing gown. He’s had a couple more falls after getting up and wandering about the ward at night, so the nurses have put up the rails by the side of his bed. But somehow, after they had sat him in his chair, this old man who can hardly move with people helping him, had climbed over the rails and put himself back in bed.

When I got there, after parking the car, he was dozing - though from time to time talking in his ’sleep’, in response to our questions or comments.

We didn’t want to stay long, but I needed to be with him on my own for a while, in case this turned out to be the last time I talk to him. What can I say to my father, to let him know it’s all right, it’s all right to let go; he doesn’t have to cling on to life if it’s his time to go? I tell him not to worry, we’ll look after Mum and make sure she’s all right. I love him; and thanks for being such a great dad. I tell him what Alison (bless her) told me this morning: that she’s known Dad longer than she knew her own father (who died when she was only 7); that he’s been a father to her too. I give him love from all our children, his grandchildren, naming them one by one.

He’s more alert and attentive through all of this than I’ve seen him for a long time, only a bit confused at one moment when he seems to think I’m talking about his mother, and he tells me he’s been abroad for a long time and not able to be in contact with her; but it’s all right now.

How can you be a priest to your own father, who hasn’t been a regular churchgoer since he was a boy and sang in the choir at St Bartholomew the Great? It’s a father’s place to bless his children and grandchildren on his deathbed, not the other way round - I know that from Genesis, where the fathers usually get it wrong, or at least cause dismay and confusion. But I put my hand on his head and say “God bless” and hope that will be serve as a prayer and a blessing for both of us.

If I never see him again, this will have to be my Goodbye. And it is hard enough. How much harder for Sal who sees him every day, and has to put that much emotional investment into every single visit, every single parting, in case it is the last.

After all this talk of matriculation: this is just to prove that I was there, once. Though I’m not entirely sure it proves anything very much: all these official matriculation photos look exactly the same to me. I remember seeing Bill Clinton’s matriculation photo on TV a few years back and thinking, “I didn’t realise Clinton was at the same college as me!” then realising that he wasn’t: it was just that all those hopeful bright young faces look the same every year, at every college.

This is the official matriculation photo of the Lincoln College freshers of 1967.

Click for a larger image

And by this we know, children, what a historic image this is: that the matriculands are all male (in those days, Oxford colleges were all single-sex); and that there were no digital cameras, for this is the only image of me on that day.

Yes, that’s me ringed in yellow, for you should also know, I was not always bald. And that’s Mephistopheles, just behind and to the right of me.

Apart from him and one or two others, I haven’t a clue who most of these people are. Some are very well-off lawyers and bankers (and now benefactors of the college). Some are dead. One is now a storyteller and blogger.

Some new Oxford bloggers describe last Saturday’s matriculation:

• Milan in a sibilant intake of breath
• Ruth Anne and Jake in Beer, Bikes, Books and Good Eats
• Ali in Shaikley in the OX
• Rachel in Falling into Grace (but beware of annoying popups!)
• Adam in In Other News
• Kristin in KRS Adventures

Thanks to Milan for all these links.

Progress Report:

When you get to page 900 of a book and realise you’re only two-thirds of the way through, it’s time to take stock and think about whether you’ve got the reserves to see it through. I suppose Napoleon felt like this on the eve of the Battle of Borodino: he’d come too far to stop or turn back; the only option was to press on, whether it spelt victory or disaster. For those of you who haven’t read the book, I won’t tell you which it turns out to be…

Well, it’s a vast, sprawling book that I haven’t read for 35 years. (It’s another one of those great projects, like writing a novel, that I did when I spent a year in Germany. I also read Thomas Mann’s Joseph und seine Brüder - in German!) I really don’t remember enjoying it this much: perhaps it’s the kind of book you (that’s to say, I) have to have more experience of life to enjoy?

While reading it, I’ve often thought about Rosemary, to whose memory this reading is dedicated. I’ve wondered what bits she was tempted to skip when she read it as a young woman. The historical meditations? (Which are, frankly, a bit tedious.) The battle scenes? (Which you might imagine of a well-brought up young lady. But Rosemary was a bit of a tomboy; I think she might have relished them.) I’ll tell you the bits I’ve wanted to skip: all the tedious descriptions of these young women aristos getting ready to go to their first ball, and dancing the night away with shining faces, radiant with the consciousness of all these men doting on them. Ugh!

My friend L., with whom I used to take Holy Communion, together with Rosemary, and we used to talk about books, told me the other day that she has the audio book of War and Peace - maybe the very one Rosemary enjoyed so much. But she hasn’t been able to listen to it. It’s too exciting, she says; it keeps her awake at night.

Found in the Visitors’ Book in church this morning, signed by someone called Lucy, in what looks like a teenager’s or young woman’s hand:

I really don’t know what to believe … but as I sit here, which is the second time I’ve visited a church in my lifetime, I begin to have some faith again. I hope I can see some light in that new faith.

Thoughts?

• How important it is to be able to leave churches open, so that people can go in and sit with God, and maybe begin to discover a faith they didn’t know they had.
• Got to this age, and only been inside a church once before?!
• How intensely, incorrigibly Protestant the general secular cultural climate is, with this notion that faith is a personal thing, something you find or own privately, alone, rather than a shared, community thing which belongs to the group. Did this come in with the Reformation and its emphasis on justification by faith? Or some other whence?
• How can we get rid of it again?
• How can we help the Lucys of this world to explore and discover what faith is about, in company with others who they might warm to? (I’m sure the old vicar isn’t quite what’s needed here.)

Like the prayer request boards and books, the Visitors’ Book never ceases to amaze and move, with its half-glimpsed stories of people’s myriad lives.

I’ve been mulling this over for a few days, not quite sure where it was going; then thought I’d write something anyway (that’s what blogging’s all about, isn’t it?)

Claire posted something about the Chondogyo religion (which I’d never heard of) in which she quoted this:

Chondogyo preaches that there is God and that He resides in each of us - not in Heaven as Christianity and other religions preach. It strives to convert our earthly society into a paradise (Heaven) right here on Earth. It attempts to transform the believers into intelligent moral beings with high social consciousness. In this respect, it is humanistic socialism.

This got me thinking about where God is; and I realised I don’t believe God is in Heaven, if that means he is exclusively not anywhere and everywhere else. In fact, saying God is in Heaven is just as much only partially true as saying God is in creation, God is not in Heaven, or anything else.

In fact, my response to the whole of this paragraph is, more or less, “But that’s what my Christianity preaches, too.”

God is a part of creation, because God became incarnate, became part of it, in the person of Jesus. God resides in each of us: because we are created in God’s image, and because the Holy Spirit is in us. Christianity also strives to convert our earthly society into a paradise here on earth - why else do we have Christian service, and pray, “Thy Kingdom come on earth”? It attempts to transform believers into intelligent moral beings with high social consciousness - why yes, what’s the use of mindless, unquestioning devotees who haven’t a clue about what they believe or why? In this respect, Christianity is humanistic socialism - in fact, the only way to true humanism, and true socialism.

All of which made me think (slightly peevishly) “Don’t try and tell me what Christianity does or doesn’t teach!” In fact, it suggests that we should probably never give a lot of credence to what anyone affirms, or denies, about a religion they are not inside of.

Or maybe, the health warning needs to be even stronger than that. We should probably never give a lot of credence to what anyone affirms, or denies, even about the religion they are inside of.

After all, there will probably be dozens of people reading this and jumping up and down saying, “He’s got it all wrong: that’s nothing like the Christianity I believe in!”

How many Christianities (or variants of all the other religions) are there, anyway? As many as there are believers?

D*I*Y Planner has this “Hipster PDA” idea for all those who’ve lost the plot, or not yet got one, for their NaNoWriMo attempt: D*I*Y Planner Plot Pack (Hipster PDA) | D*I*Y Planner

My goal is to provide a road map for using alternatives, or the equivalent of a “12-step method” for getting off Microsoft software (as if it were an addiction). Of course, like any addiction or habit, people have to want to stop; this book helps them realize why they’d want to stop and what they can use instead.

From an interview in XYZ Computing with Tony Bove, the author of a new book called Just Say No To Microsoft.

More about the book, and a sample chapter, at No Starch Press.