Jeanette Winterson tells me (in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal):
The genetic rule states that daughters are not taller than their fathers.
Eek! Good job I don’t believe it:
Giving Tui away, 19 July 2008
Taller
Reply
Positive Money Conference
My second visit to London in a week, this time for the Positive Money conference at Conway Hall.
What inspired you to come today? was the question in the first of the breakout groups.
My answer: Anger. I am angry with the bankers who caused the current global economic crisis by their greed and irresponsible recklessness, but have never been held to account and are still unaccountable. I’m angry with the politicians – especially New Labour – who didn’t regulate them, and instead exploited the prosperity of the boom years and left the Government bankrupt. I’m angry with the economists who pretend to be some holy priesthood serving a sacred mystery which we layfolk cannot understand. I’m angry that none of them have a clue what to do about it, and most of them don’t seem to care, they just carry on parroting the same tired ideological clichés that got us into this mess.
So I’m here because in Positive Money, there is a group of people who seem to know what they’re talking about, and who can explain why the system is broken, and have some straightforward proposals for mending it. It’s exciting to feel that maybe, just maybe, I’m in near the beginning of a movement that will make a difference, if enough of us get on board and make our politicians sit up and take notice.
What are you going to do about it?
Vocation (defn.)
Sun writes as her Facebook status:
“Miss, is it true that those people that can’t do anything else become teachers?”. Yes, yes it is.
But. That’s what vocation is: the thing you do because there is Nothing Else You Can, or Could, Do.
Or maybe, the thing you are, or were made to be.
Like my – and your – vocation(s).
Screwtape Reads Again
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of ‘St Jack’ – C. S. Lewis. He lived and died in this deanery, and the anniversary will be marked especially by a series of events at his parish church, Holy Trinity Headington Quarry,
Last evening the area dean was suggesting that as a deanery we might recommend one of C. S. Lewis’s books as a Lent book, and he suggested The Screwtape Letters as accessible and helpful.
So how about it? I much prefer reading an old favourite, to any of the myriad new Lent books which are so often rather disappointing. Who’d like to read Screwtape again, and maybe share some of your thoughts on the Web?
Country Mouse at Premier Christian Radio
I don’t go up to London very often, even though I was born there and grew up there and spent the first quarter-century of my life in various northern suburbs.
But I went up today on the Oxford Tube, and had one of those visits that made me wonder why I don’t go more often. London is fascinating, exciting, so BIG, and I know so little of it and wish I knew more.
I got off the coach at Marble Arch and took the underground to Tottenham Court Road. Yes, I could have walked the length of Oxford Street, but I love to ride the underground, and Oyster cards fascinate me – though I had to top mine up at the start of the day, and had a smaller balance left at the end than I expected. Have fares gone up a lot?
Drank a coffee at Caffe Nero, then walked down Charing Cross Road, through Trafalgar Square, on down Whitehall to Parliament Square, and along Millbank. It doesn’t matter how often you’ve been before, there’s always something new to see in London. But then, I’m such an infrequent visitor I didn’t even know they’d closed the top end of Charing Cross Road while they rebuild the underground station; or that there was now a ‘second cenotaph’ in Whitehall, commemorating the women of World War 2; or that there’s a Celtic kind of statue of Lloyd George in Parliament Square, his coat blowing out in a bronze Welsh wind.
What I was there for, was to be interviewed by Premier Christian Radio for their ‘Men At Work‘ programme that goes out on Saturday evenings. Through some media mafia which possibly involves our diocesan director of communications (Hi, Sarah!) they got hold of my name in connection with the publicity about the Bloxham Festival of Faith and Literature, where Hilary Campbell and I will be doing some storytelling performances and workshops, and thought it would be good to interview me. Well, maybe I’m cheaper than Sir Andrew Motion, Jasper fforde, or Richard Harries…
The format was a recording ‘as if’ live, with chat interspersed with the presenter’s favourite music. So, a bit like Desert Island Discs, but the interviewee doesn’t get to choose the music. It was fun; and that’s what I would like to come across.
It’s airing on February 9, and also available as a podcast. If you will be – thank you for listening.
Thank God for Women Priests
Just been to a great service organized by the diocese at Dorchester Abbey, a celebration and thanksgiving for the gift that the ministry of ordained women is to the Church of England. Three assistant bishops in attendance, while the preacher and celebrant were both women: one of them one of our archdeacons, and the other the rector of the Abbey.
The building was packed, and I found it a hugely emotional experience. The whole service was about Gift: the gift that our women priests are to the church. I felt more and more crushed by a sense of my deep ingratitude for all that God has given me, and my longing that I might learn to be more deeply grateful for all I have been given. How profoundly terrible it is, to turn our nose up at any of God’s gifts to us and say, “Thanks, God – but no thanks.” I feel deeply sorry and ashamed for all the times when I have responded like that – as we all do.
Yet all those who say “Thanks God, but no thanks” about women bishops (and mostly, still, about women priests) are doing just that, and are not even aware that that’s what they are doing. Because of some dogma or ideology or just rank gut prejudice, they deny themselves – and all the rest of us! – the good things that God wants to give his church.
Please, all of you who despise God’s gifts: open your eyes and see what you are doing when you refuse to see what God wants to give us in our day. Women priests are nothing less than a sign that God is making the Church and humankind whole again, and women bishops will be an even more powerful sign. For God’s sake and the Church’s, let’s welcome and follow the sign.
Prices’ Christmas E-Newsletter
This year we decided we would try and save time, money, paper, postage and maybe even a little bit of the planet by making the Prices’ Christmas Newsletter an E-Newsletter. Thanks to the wonders of Evernote, it was easy to compile all the selected bits of news from the past year, and some of our favourite photos to go with them, and then share a link to the note so that anyone can read our news online. And one of the best things is, we can update and add to it any time, and the note you view will always be the latest, most up-to-date version. Hope you enjoy it: do feedback any comments.
Down at the Vicky Arms
Lunch at the Victoria Arms felt like being on an island. Fortunately most of the flooding happens on the west bank, towards Summertown. (Quite right, too.)
This was the view from the terrace down across the slope where punters and other visitors sit in the summer. The river itself is just the other side of the nearer row of willows.
Santa came early
Santa came early this Christmas: in the shape of Tilly, visiting us yesterday.
The NRA and Happiness
So here’s one of those stories I have never been able to use in a sermon. I’ve searched hard for a sermon to use it in, but I am beginning to wonder whether such a sermon does, or could ever, exist.
Sir Winston Churchill and his wife are entertaining General and Mme de Gaulle. Halfway through dinner, Lady Churchill asks her guest, “And what is it you most want in life?”
Mme de Gaulle replies, “A penis.”
The General leans across a clearly discombobulated Lady Churchill and says to his wife, “My dear, I believe the English pronounce that word, ‘appiness.”
So here’s what the rest of the world are increasingly wondering about the NRA: Is what drives them really a fear that they just haven’t got a big enough Happiness? You know: Never mind my male member; just look at the size of my assault rifle…