We do not want this fudge you are proposing.
We want the Church of England to accept women bishops as fully valid as their male counterparts. No compromise. Any who don’t like it are free to put up with it or leave. They should certainly not be given the opportunity to perpetuate their opposition to the will of the Church, and be protected in doing so by our own rules.
So, so beautiful…
The Price Family ‘Christmas’ Gathering, at New Year 2012.
Doctor Shaggy had Christmas off, so he had to work New Year and couldn’t be with us. The rest of the grownups knew the drill for the family group photograph, but we had 2 young ‘uns with us for the first time, and one who was with us last time, but too young to remember how.
So Uncle Tom had the bright idea of waiting till the auto-timer had nearly run down before throwing Big Ted towards the camera, so that the three granddaughters would look that way.
The result:
Several tries later, without Big Ted’s help, the best result we got was this.
Back row (L to R): Tom, Rufus, Sun, Alex
Middle row: The Patriarch, Annie, Li, Tui, the Matriarch
Front row: Bethan, Libby, Lotte
Happy New Year, everybody!
A Month of Living Vicariously, by Tony Price
Adrian Burrows (42) is a mild-mannered librarian, living and working in Oxford. Trapped in a routine job and a relationship that looks as if it’s going nowhere, Adrian feels his life has stalled, and he has missed the last chance of fulfilling all the dreams he had as a younger man.
Then he decides to have another go at taking part in NaNoWriMo.
The experience takes him on a bizarre journey into a fantasy world of serial killers, real-world death threats, physical suffering, spiritual discovery; and as one relationship ends, a thrilling new one begins.
At the end of it all, Adrian realizes that though he hasn’t won NaNoWriMo, he’s actually begun to get a life.
Want to read it? Send me an e-mail or Comment, and I’ll send you the link.
A lovely story told at the funeral of our dear friend Tom, who died a couple of weeks ago.
Tom was a very traditional Anglican, as well as being a pilgrim and spiritual traveller. Born and bred in the country, he was a vicar’s grandson with a great love of the BCP.
At the funeral, his sister told how, when she was a girl of about 4, she had been thoroughly puzzled about the Easter story, and why the day Jesus was crucified was called ‘Good’ Friday. Her older brother Tom sat her on his knee and told her the whole story of Holy Week and Easter, the death of Jesus, what it meant, and his rising from the dead.
She listened with fascination and amazement.
Then asked, “Do vicars know all this?”
Discuss…
I specially enjoyed Richard Dawkins’s interview with Christopher Hitchens. (Alas, not included in the Observer’s website.) In between disagreeing with most of what Hitchens says, and being amazed that two such intelligent and educated men could be so prejudiced against Christianity, I really quite like Hitchens, his erudition and style and heart that rejects all forms of totalitarianism and intolerance.
And Robert McCrum’s Fifty things I’ve learned about the literary life, which made me feel strangely optimistic and encouraged about my NaNoWriMo novel. Even if it never finds a publisher or many readers or much approval, it’s a real piece of work, and it’s mine. And, yes, it makes me smile and feel good about my life.
A lecture at Christ Church on The Role of the King James Bible in our National Life, announced as to be given by ‘a senior Cabinet minister’ which turns out to be code (probably not very secret) for Prime Minister David Cameron. This was the concluding event in the Cathedral’s marking of KJV400, the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and Mr Cameron was there probably not as PM, but as one of our local MPs.
Mr Cameron comes across as being very plausible and sincere, rather more relaxed than he was a week ago at the European leaders’ summit — though we didn’t give him such a hard time, it’s true. He had some good, though hardly original, things to say about the KJV. What was most interesting was his very clear account of how important faith communities were for British life and culture, and how a solid Christian foundation for national life and values is not offensive to people of other faiths, but actually makes it easier for them to be people of faith, than is often possible in more secular countries.
Reported on BBC News website.
… on Wednesday evening, when we dined out with some of Alison’s former colleagues and friends, resulted in 8 hours in and out of bed, with alternate diarrhoea and vomiting. Followed by the next 24 hours in bed, mostly sleeping, in between moments of lucidity, feeling even too bad to read, and generally much sorrier for myself than I should.
Something about being sick, and the sensation of awfulness followed by the relief of feeling better and hoping that now it’s all over, feels like it ought to be an analogy for something. Just at the moment I can’t think what, and don’t want to discover too soon, what it is.
A Month of Living Vicariously, my NaNoWriMo novel, is now at the stage of being polished up, tweaked, corrected, offered to a few people I trust not to be too rude about it, for their comments.
I’ve been exploring ways of turning it into readable formats, like .mobi, with the result that I’ve been able to load it onto, and read it on my Kindle. This almost makes it feel like a real book!
There’s one sentence that still makes me laugh when I read it; quite a lot more that make me smile. So, still feeling pleased with myself.
I have a colleague who makes a special study of ‘creative repair’: the necessity and the benefit of creative activities for clergy or anyone in professions that involve a lot of giving out to others. They recharge the spiritual and emotional batteries, without them you burn out. I know she’s right about this; that doesn’t mean I do anything about it; partly because I’m not sure she does, always. 
But I thought I’d give it a go. I find winter generally, and November especially, a difficult time for fighting off the blues. Doing NaNoWriMo got me through November in better condition and with more energy than I’ve had at this time for many years. I felt better, got more work done, and I wrote 55,000 words of fiction.
Or, if you like, it is a sharing in the mysterious nature of a Creator God. How should we not be creative, if we are made in God’s image? It is something about how stories (and maybe other things you create, which I don’t know about) come to you like a gift, that seems to come from nowhere. You know you’ve worked at them, the sweat of your brow colours the result; but also it comes to you ex nihilo.
Lots of writers say their characters take on a life of their own, and go off in directions their authors never planned or envisaged for them. And I found that too, though in a completely good way. Once I had ‘got’ the characters and their settings, they just said and did what was right for them. I didn’t have to invent it, it flowed like water from a spring.
My NaNoWriMo novel has integrated parts of me (as it does my protagonist, Adrian). What started off as a rant: sex and swearing and debunking some aspects of religion and generally running over the traces in a way that I thought might be inappropriate: turns out to be quite religious in a way that probably makes it unpublishable. Adrian’s basic goodness shines out; he falls in love; the baddies lose out in the end. What more could you want?
Let’s do it again!