Peace 2

Those who like happy endings look away now. The white racing-pigeon of peace (OK it wasn't a dove) has made some creature a very pleasant breakfast and the Old Rectory lawn has a display of feathers, blood and a skeleton. It was old, tired and not fit enough to survive. We'd better search for another metaphor to provide our spiritual sustenance. This one has ceased to be.

Creation Movie

I've enjoyed having a small part to play with Damaris in producing resources to go alongside the movie Creation which comes out next month. The resources will be available online and details of how to access them are below:

A Film and Focus event, with leader's guide and full publicity material
A special episode of Pollard on Film on the theme of why people believe things
A special episode of Culturewatch TV on the real Charles Darwin
Church service outline featuring footage from the film
Café-style Church meeting outline featuring footage from the film
Three sets of notes for House Group meetings on different themes
Downloadable clips from the film, with suggestions for use in meetings

All of these resources will be available at www.damaris.org/creationmovie

Peace

Surreal Christian experiences number whatever we've got to. I arrive at the church building and there is a white dove wandering around outside the door. Unlike other similar creatures it does not fly off as I get near, or scatter as the town pigeons do. It simply wanders around in circles picking up bits of this and that to eat. I crouch down and it ignores me completely, not scared by my voice.

'It's probably an angel,' says my colleague. 'Let it in.' Our church has, allegedly, had an angel trying to get in for some months now but on the only occasion we invited it in (prayerfully) the evening service was struck by a spirt of dullness.

Anyway if she thinks I'm getting a reputation for welcoming pigeons... so I speak to it. Hope nobody noticed. Damn, told the world by accident. I am somewhat relieved to discover it doesn't talk back. Balaam remains unique.

As I leave the church a few minutes later it is still there, pecking a wider path around the outside of the church. I walk with it. It seems fine with this and we share silent communion for a few minutes wandering.

I'm still listening.

Jesus on Wheels in Gozo

In the centre of the island of Gozo is the capital, Victoria. It is known as Rabat in Gozitan. In the centre of Rabat is a citadel, built by the knights of St John, to provide protection and sanctuary for the people of the island in the event of marauding Turks or other barbarians intent on taking the people into slavery.

It is fearsomely high and protected by sheer walls, cannon and the fact that any invasion has to be done in temperatures of over 30 degrees celsius most of the year.

There is a great view of the island if you are invited in rather than having to cross the ditch and climb the wall. It is a very Catholic island and I rather think they would have approved of my little bewheeled friend offering his hand of blessing and protection. There is probably a shop in the town which sells his friends. This has been a record breaking year for JoW and it will end with trips to Australia, Zambia and Germany.

Cricket

This is not the space for a cricket commentary or opinion piece. Others will do that far more articulately and with much greater expertise than me. But I played cricket, at a very low level, for a few years. And all I want to say is that you need to have played a game or two to realise just how difficult it is.

The only thing I was any good at was catching. I was a nimble fielder with very good reactions. In one of my last seasons I took a catch at square leg. The ball was hooked and came at me very fast. There is no time to think in such circumstances. Practice and experience tells you the position to get your hands in and how to give a little at the moment of impact to stop the ball bouncing out again.

I took the catch and then noticed that the webbing between the little and ring fingers of my left hand had split. Get your fingers in slightly the wrong position and that ball is very hard and very dangerous. Notice Ricky Ponting doing the post match interview with the scar of a ball's seam across his mouth. It's one of the many details that you only get to know if you play. The ball is hard. It hurts when it hits. It could kill you. It comes fast.

Those 22 guys who have been playing Tests for the last few weeks have had few injuries and have made amazingly few mistakes. In what other sport do you have to concentrate for two hours in case something happens and then have to dive to take a blinding catch? Ask a slip fielder on a flat track how they manage to keep their eyes on every ball.

It was good to watch England win but it was better to see how good those 22 players were at a very difficult sport. Respect.

Bureaucracy

I love a battle with a bureaucrat me. My father took on all comers at this, especially British telecom (he lived next door to a telephone exchange) and passed the baton to me. I had a few goes at unwinables when I was younger but have settled down recently to only having a go if I know I haven't erred.

So I love this one. I have received a Charge Certificate from the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council explaining that as I haven't paid my parking fine from June it has gone up by 50%. Three problems with this:

1. I didn't get the first Notice, apparently sent in July.
2. At the time of the alleged offence I was on holiday in Malta and my car was not in use.
3. I have not been to Bradford for over ten years.

So this one may run. I have phoned and left a message and sent a letter.

Faster Higher Longer

Someone once said that the world divides into two sorts of people - those who divide the world into two sorts of people and those who don't. But I wonder if the world divides into two sorts of people - those who care about records and those who don't. And I wonder if a few people have discovered they do care more than they thought after all, following Usain Bolt's 28.76 seconds of work this week.

Notwithstanding that every now and again people with unique physical qualities come along who laugh in the face of existing records - step forward Mr Bolt with your 90% twitch muscles compared with most of us and our 50% - we do seem to like our records.

If I can beat my PB round Tescos I feel that I have achieved something special with the shopping trip. Likewise the various machines at the gym. How fast can I row 1500 metres? 8.26 at the moment but it's coming down.

Or is it simply numbers of which we are fond? Facebook is full of quizzes at the moment. How evil are you? What is your top score at Bejewelled? How many books have you read? CDs do you own?

In trying to pump interest into a flagging formula Match of the Day are searching for 'stat of the day.' It's been ten years since their punditry was interesting. How about that?

Yet we seem capable of ignoring climate change stats. We find it hard to cope with politicians' use of stats - like a drunk uses a lamp-post, more for support than illumination (not original). Unless we are interested experts, numbers such as the FTSE, unemployment rates and A level pass rates are not ones we know what to do with. I have no shares, a job and note the constant improvement in exam pass rates such that some can't get to college with three Grade As. And this means? You can only tell if 9.57 is fast for 100 metres by comparing it with other runners' times. But other things change too. Improved swimming cossies = masses of world records. Did that exam just get easier?

You will have noted my preoccupation with counting the numbers at our church's early prayer meetings. Luke was pretty keen we should know that 3,000 were converted on one day of the early church's work. Jerusalem, Judea and the ends of the earth is a geographical target - we know they got there because I am posting from one of the ends.

Today my life would be improved by 8.25 seconds on the rower and a record-breaking partnership for the ninth wicket at the Oval against Australia.

Numbers. They count.

Beans on toast

This is an easy supper dish to prepare in the afternoon and leave until you need to heat it through. The flavours develop well. You will need:

2 x 400g tins of butter beans or about 600g cooked dry ones (the tins contain water)
6 ripe tomatoes or 1 400g tin
a big sprig of mint, roughly torn
a small onion, chopped
salt and pepper
oil or butter

Place the tomatoes in boiling water for two minutes to loosen the skin. Chill immediately and peel. Roughly chop, then set aside.

Soften the onion in oil or butter and then add the drained beans, the tomatoes and chopped mint to the pan. Stir well then remove from heat, cover and leave the mixture on one side until you need it.

Gently reheat on hob for twenty minutes. Serve on, or with, baked doorsteps of granary bread drizzled with olive oil (10 minutes in a hot oven), and a green salad.

This volume serves two hungry people.

Sleaze

A small story sneaked into the corner of the Guardian on Monday which I missed on first glance. Apparently Martin Bell and Terry Waite are 'marshalling a network of anti-sleaze independent candidates to target the seats of MPs discredited by their expenses claims...'

This warmed my heart. Firstly because a few quality independent MPs, whose hearts and minds have to be won by debate and argument rather than whips, in the House of Commons, has to be good for democracy. Secondly, because I fear that votes against expenses abuses will be cast for the opposition rather than for the opposite party to the fiddler. It is the New Labour project that has been stained by expenses claims regardless of the variety of political hues which were tainted. Moats, duck houses and wisteria-clearing were, as I recall, all Tory matters.

So bring on the white suits. Cheer me up.

6.00 a.m.

I thought I'd put a brief post on here for those who wish to be kept up-to-date about our August prayer initiative.

One of the things our congregational survey into the vision for the autumn threw up was that people felt the need to be sure the whole thing had been the subject of enough prayer. The vision involves spending a million pounds or so. Now how do you define 'enough.' Pray continually, said Paul to the Thessalonian Christians once. That's a standard isn't it?

So to be sure we were demonstrating clearly that we were doing something extra, we abandoned business meetings in the August evenings (a couple have sneaked through - tut tut) and offered the chance to pray at 6.00 a.m. every week day. We have also made Wednesdays in August a day of prayer. There is breakfast after the early prayers, several 'services' and the church open for prayer all day.

I offered to lead most of the early prayer times. Not out of anything especially holy but a cross between trying to lead by example and wanting to see how I would do at something that was really quite difficult. Maybe that is holy. Who knows? In fact, talking to another person who has been several times, a person I know not to be a morning person, I was told that the reason she had decided to come was 'because it is difficult.' Often we make it as easy as possible for people to come to things - convenient times, refreshments, short meetings. Why not consider doing something hard? The equality of opportunity is that everyone can choose to make the sacrifice.

So the first week we had four or five people each morning. Last week it drifted up to five or six. The first two days of this week have seen eight and ten. Wednesdays are different because there is a group that normally meets on a Wednesday who join us. Also, the smell of breakfast has a lure of its own. 17 and 15 people have prayed on Wednesdays at 6.00 a.m. There have been many younger adults with us (for whom 5.30 alarms are not easy) and that is impressive.

There is more information about specifics from lectionary readings (Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Proverbs, Mark and James) and about listening to God at the church web-site.

During this time, dry conditions have prevailed for those wanting to carry out a harvest, ventures and camps have been rain-free, some of the sick seem to be doing especially well and there is a sense of 'we're doing a good thing' amongst the attenders. If you are from the parish why not come once before the end of the month? Show God you are serious. Do a hard thing.

ENTP

Famous people with your same ENTP personality include: Alexander the Great, Thomas Edison, Weird Al Yankovic, Tom Hanks, Alfred Hitchcock and Celine Dion.

This from the analysis of my Facebook test - a short version of the real thing. Now excuse me a moment but does anyone know? I mean really know, how many of the above actually did a Myers Briggs personality-type indicator test?

Maybe the lack of interest in completing and finishing, moving from one interest to another explains a lot - Edison's 100 plus patents, Hanks' various roles all being a bit the same, weird Al ripping off hundreds of different artists, the lovely Celine's list of rubbish songs going on and on like her heart. But Alexander the Great. Did he wish to conquer at first but then got bored and simply globe-trotted as an aggressor?

I think we should be told. Meanwhile I'm bored and will post on something else in a bit. This could have been funny. I'm not easily bored - just drawn that way.

Language

From time to time language pedants register their distress at the change of use of a word. 'A perfectly acceptable noun press-ganged into use as a verb,' said the late, great Brian Redhead once of some change of use to which he objected. Today he would have a dicky fit. My latest note was that after a particularly dangerous horse-race some of the horses, we were told, had to be euthanased.

Today's word which is undergoing a tweak is 'evil.' I have always felt that people from time to time do evil things but are not wholly evil in themselves. But now the mother of Baby P, Tracey Connelly, has been identified the red tops seem very keen to brand her as evil. An evil person. No shades of grey. The stock photo of her is not especially alluring and it is constantly re-used. Shades of Myra Hindley and that photo. Hearing about Connelly's background and upbringing I would be more inclined, whilst not excusing her behaviour for a moment, to describe her also as a victim.

I think we are seeing a change in use of the word evil. A person who does one especially evil thing once will forever be marked as evil in themselves. It is beginning to work as a branding instrument. Evil Tracey Connelly. I think it is slap-dash. It lets us off the hook for our responsibility not to raise people who do cruel things in our society.

Torturing a baby is such a horrible thing to imagine that we feel more comfortable placing the mark of the beast on the forehead of the perpetrator than wondering how it came to this and how we can avoid it in future. People do evil. It's bad but it's not ontological, it's dysfunctional.

Chuffed

Minor achievement. Got my wordle (look to the right) to match the blog's colour scheme and fit in the space a bit better. Must do better with blog design though. 3 out of 10 currently.

The Guardian utterly wimps out

In the Guardian each day there is a wonderful 'Eyewitness' double page of a huge colour photograph. Always exciting, illuminating and worthwhile.

Last Tuesday the picture was of Mount Moses, Sinai. The caption in the paper said:

Sunrise on Mount Moses or Jebel Musa (7,497 ft) in Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments and Muhammed's horse Boraq ascended to heaven.

A letter writer said this, today:

Surely the caption on your picture of Mount Moses (Eyewitness, 11 August) stating it was "where Moses received the 10 Commandments and Muhammad's horse Boraq ascended to heaven" is missing the word "allegedly"?

The caption on the web page now reads:

Sunrise on Mount Moses or Jebel Musa, where Moses is said to have received the 10 Commandments and the prophet Muhammad's horse, Boraq, ascended to heaven.

Now I am not of the view that all Bible accounts are to be taken as historically accurate, but I love the introduction of uncertainty into the biblical account whilst maintaining unqualified acceptance of the Islamic tradition. Wimps. Unless it was deliberate. In which case - a curse on them and all their camels.

Morning

I sat drinking a coffee in my conservatory, watching the dawn break over Trendlewood. I don't know whether I've changed my life permanently but after seven successive week days of setting an alarm for 5.20 a.m. (yes, children, there are two 5.20s every day) today I woke up naturally at 5.13. Off to our August 6.00 a.m. prayer time in church now.

Mind you, not as awake as I thought. Spectacularly failed to open a deodorant quietly and the top flew across the room and bounced behind the dressing table. Now that's not a noise you want to wake to. I expect Mrs T will be having words with me later.

Dude

An advert on my Facebook page suggested I get ordained as a dude. Thought I was, until I visited Dudeism. Very funny.

Rebus

I've just finished Exit Music, the Ian Rankin novel in which his wonderfully drawn detective hero Inspector Rebus stands down. I won't plot spoil by telling you if he reached his retirement party in one piece but Rebus was a wonderful character, patrolling his native Edinburgh and demonstrating a personality that had many flaws - not a hero you would find it easy to be friends with.

I can understand why the series had to end. Rankin probably invested a lot of his own personality in that of Rebus - musical taste, real ale, a tendency to enjoy his own company. I wonder which of these were autobiographical.

Some crime novelists write to a type but avoid recurring characters (John Grisham, Elmore Leonard). Others take a character and develop them through adventures (P.D. James' Inspector Dalgliesh for instance). Christopher Brookmyre (another Scottish crime writer but using black comedy, very black) has characters who recur but not every time.

I imagine Rebus weighed Rankin down after a while. To extend his creative hand he had to draw a new cast.

There are seventeen Rebus novels. I've still got some to read. It doesn't matter whether you start at the beginning of the series or not.

Atlum Schema

Treats for those of you who enjoyed Atlum Schema at Cafe Create, Nailsea in January with some amazing live performances, with full band:

Gunfight at the OK Coral

Closing the Doors

Ink Star

Cafe Create should be back in September. More on this later.

RIP t'Pub

A moment's silence please. The three public buildings on Trendlewood Estate just became two. Sources close to the Old Farmhouse (neighbours) told me that they thought it had closed. A quick wander down at lunchtime showed vans taking away fruit machines and an empty car park.

Do we:

a) Start going to a pub with nice beer on a Monday night?
b) Open one of our houses up to become a drinking den?
c) Buy it?
d) Something brilliant I haven't thought of?

Not another multi-million pound building project. Someone's having a giraffe.

North Sea

Landscape archaeologists, geologists and whatever the ologists are who study under the water all agree. The North Sea was once a relatively flat land area roamed by grazing animals. The bones of creatures and the remains of primitive societies have been found down there.

Mrs T, the Lord bless her, is the Regional Manager at her company for the west of England. Stick with me. The first two paragraphs will join up.

I believe that Cargo Homestores Liz speaking how may I help you are still in possession of an early map of the British Isles which shows wildebeest grazing east of Great Yarmouth and village dwellers occasionally driving west to shop in Lowestoft.

Any other explanation of why High Wycombe is deemed to be in the west of England will be gratefully received.

Is it?

In some churches we say, 'This is the word of the Lord' after a reading. The people may, whilst thinking 'Get lost he never said that,' respond 'Thanks be to God.'

What is the word of the Lord? Those who wrote down the Bible, in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, often used expressions such as, 'The word of the Lord came to x (a prophet) and he said to the people...' So already the word of the Lord, what the prophet heard, is one degree separate for the people who had to hear what the prophet said he heard. Then someone, often the prophet but not always, wrote down these words which went through several processes of refinement, collation and editing before finding themselves in book form not unlike our contemporary Bibles. There was then a translation exercise to get them into English to become one of the many versions of the Bible we might choose. Phew.

John's Gospel tells us that the Word, logos, a philosophical idea which would have been understood to equate with ultimate reality, became flesh. This is John's way of saying who he thought Jesus was, and is. Never was the word of the Lord heard more clearly than when Jesus spoke. Sometimes the gospels disagree about precisely what he said at any given time though.

So maybe we ought to end readings by saying, 'This reading will lead us to the word of the Lord.' Or perhaps, 'May the word of the Lord speak to us through this reading.' Or maybe, 'Here ends the lesson.'

I'm still wrestling with Rowan Williams' 'The Bible is more a starting point than the correct answer to GCSE theology.' And although I can feel the hackles of some of my former evangelical colleagues rise, as they have done many times I'm sure, I'm with the Archbish.

Early Doors

I swear the words never came out of my brain, only my mouth. You see the question was, 'How can we be sure that we've got our vision right?' And the only answer is to be sure we've properly prayed it through - extra prayer, not just redirected existing prayer.

So I voiced a suggestion, just a suggestion mind, that we cancel business meetings in August evenings and make it a month of prayer. Good idea, said everyone. And so that we can make it possible for everyone who is at work to join in we should start really early, say 6.00 a.m. That was the bit that came out of my mouth without bothering to trouble any thought processes on the way through. Wow, said everyone, that's commitment.

Three days later I heard this being talked about by two other people, not as a suggestion but as a decision. And it seemed right that the clergy should lead by example and in August by and large that's me.

Today five people joined me for an hour's Morning Prayer at 6.00 a.m. and the time flew past. I'm quite looking forward to tomorrow. There will, from then, be a prayer journal in church so anyone can write down thoughts and ideas as they pray.

Join me once this month eh?

Host in the Post

Tired of all the discussion about swine flu and communion? Why not try this. Made me chuckle.